Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Matters of Interest: The Objects of Research in Science and Technoscience

This discussion paper proposes that a meaningful distinction between science and technoscience can be found at the level of the objects of research. Both notions intermingle in the attitudes, intentions, programs and projects of researchers and research institutions – that is, on the side of the subjects of research. But the difference between science and technoscience becomes more explicit when research results are presented in particular settings and when the objects of research are exhibited for the specific interest they hold. When an experiment is presented as scientific evidence which confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis, this agrees with traditional conceptions of science. When organic molecules are presented for their capacity to serve individually as electric wires that carry surprisingly large currents, this would be a hallmark of technoscience. Accordingly, we propose research on the ontology of research objects. The focus on the material presence of research objects makes this a specifically philosophical project

Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

The Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: automation for Space Station; intelligent control, testing, and fault diagnosis; robotics and vision; planning and scheduling; simulation, modeling, and tutoring; development tools and automatic programming; knowledge representation and acquisition; and knowledge base/data base integration

Driving vivid virtual environments from sensor networks

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-95).The rise of ubiquitous sensing enables the harvesting of massive amounts of data from the physical world. This data is often used to drive the behavior of devices, but when presented to users, it is most commonly visualized quantitatively, as graphs and charts. Another approach for the representation of sensor network data presents the data within a rich, virtual environment. This thesis introduces the concept of Resynthesizing Reality through the construction of Doppelmarsh, the virtual counterpart of a real marsh located in Plymouth Massachusetts, where the Responsive Environments Group has deployed and maintained a network of environmental sensors. By freely exploring such environments, users gain a vivid, multi-modal, and experiential perspective into large, multi-dimensional datasets. We present a variety of approaches to manifesting data in "avatar landscape", including landscapes generated off live video, tinting frames in correspondence with temperature, or representing sensor history in the appearance and behavior of animals. The concept of virtual lenses is also introduced, which makes it easy to dynamically switch sensor-to-reality mapping from within virtual environments. In this thesis, we describe the implementation and design of Doppelmarsh, present techniques to visualize sensor data within virtual environments, and discuss potential applications for Resynthesizing Reality.by Don Derek Haddad.S.M

Et Cetera

Et Cetera is woven together with five works that are essentially five bodies of writings as digital poetry -- a poetic practice that is made possible by digital media and technology in which aesthetic possibilities are extended through the semantic impact of data, alphabets, visuals, sound, etc. Interlaced by multimedial meaning-making, Et Cetera re(produces) installations that are engineered with algorithmic materials utilizing real-time data feeds, animated letterforms, performative instructions and sensory synthesis. Exploring different scenarios of human-machine coupling that consequently lead to multifarious illegibilities, Et Cetera amplifies the noise of information overflow in the concurrent mediascape with its rhizomatic networks largely beyond human conscious apprehension. On the B-side, Et Cetera is also involved with writing about the alphabetic writing apparatus, the role of artist as author as human-machine-centaur and networked subjectivity

Anamersion: Toward a postcinematic poetics of immersion

The contribution of my practice-led research is the development of anamersion, a postcinematic poetics of immersion, which attends to the immersive conditions of contemporary life forms. Notions of mutational convergences of bodies, environments, and technologies and their differential mapping and navigation are developed in dialogue with Unica Zürn’s figuration of (her) (female) body and its institutionalisation as one formation in her illustrated text The House of Illnesses, Kathy Acker’s conception of the labyrinth as the site where codes are made flesh, and Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s explorations of trauma in their computer games set in horror mansions, with special attention to the way writing, drawing, and algorithmic operations often co-constitute each other in their works and in my own practice. Bringing these predominantly pre-computational engagements to bear on technology-dependent forms of immersion in gaming and virtual reality (VR), my practice-led research provides an analysis of immersive, navigational, and environmental figurations through modes of drawing, moving image, and multimedia installation that respond to Wynter’s call for a New Studia, and Zürn, Acker, and Heartscape’s disruptions of anatomical, architectural, and textual figurations on its own terms. Developing anamersion primarily with reference to Sylvia Wynter’s thought and, by extension, that of Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Louis Chude-Sokei, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and others, emphasis is laid on the ways in which the over-represented genre of the human, Man, continues to manifest in and as bodies, environments, and technologies today. Understanding anamersion as a form of what Wynter calls figuration Work, anamersive approaches map, navigate, and traverse such generic structurations from the implicated and immersed positions, which have the potential to be in solidarity with the Wynterian unsettling of the genre Man by challenging conceptions of technology which carry over post-Enlightenment monohumanism into derivative posthumanisms, which continue to reproduce colonial logics with deadly consequences. Anamersion, as analytic and poetics, thus presents a significant and original contribution to the fields of artists’ moving-image and postcinematic studies, which focus on the environmental and navigational trajectories of moving-image and immersive technologies today and elaborates how these can be refigured to produce generative detachments and exits from the linear developmental narratives that underwrite a violent world order. KEYWORDS: anamersion, immersion, post-cinema, postcinematic, moving image, gaming, virtual reality, navigation, mapping, drawing, figuration, humanism, genre, environment, body, hybridity, technology, Sylvia Wynter, Kathy Acker, Unica Zürn, Porpentine Charity Heartscape

The Disappearing Frame.: A Practice-based investigation into composing virtual environment artworks

Through creative art making practice, research seeks to contribute a body of knowledge to an under researched area by examining how key concepts germane to computer based, interactive, three-dimensional, virtual environment artworks might be explicated, potential compositional issues characterised, and possible production strategies identified and/or proposed. Initial research summarises a range of classifications pertaining to the function of interactivity within virtual space, leading to an identification and analysis of a predominant model for composing virtual environment media, characterised as the "world as model": a methodological approach to devising interactive and spatial contexts employing visual and behavioural modes based on the physical world. Following this alternative forms of environmental organisation are examined through the development of a series of artworks beginning with Bodies and Bethlem, and culminating with Reconnoitre: a networked environment, spatially manifest through performative user input. Theoretical corollaries to the project are identified placing it within a wider critical context concerned with distinguishing between the virtual as a condition of simulation: a representation of something pre-existing, and the virtual as potential structure: a phenomena in itself requiring creative actualisation and orientated toward change. This distinction is further developed through an analysis of some existing typologies of interactive computer based art, and used to generalise two base conditions between which various possibilities for practice might be situated: the "fluid" and "formatted" virtual

The disappearing frame: a practice-based investigation into composing virtual environment artworks

Through creative art making practice, research seeks to contribute a body of knowledge to an under researched area by examining how key concepts germane to computer based, interactive, three-dimensional, virtual environment artworks might be explicated, potential compositional issues characterised, and possible production strategies identified and/or proposed. Initial research summarises a range of classifications pertaining to the function of interactivity within virtual space, leading to an identification and analysis of a predominant model for composing virtual environment media, characterised as the "world as model": a methodological approach to devising interactive and spatial contexts employing visual and behavioural modes based on the physical world. Following this alternative forms of environmental organisation are examined through the development of a series of artworks beginning with Bodies and Bethlem, and culminating with Reconnoitre: a networked environment, spatially manifest through performative user input. Theoretical corollaries to the project are identified placing it within a wider critical context concerned with distinguishing between the virtual as a condition of simulation: a representation of something pre-existing, and the virtual as potential structure: a phenomena in itself requiring creative actualisation and orientated toward change. This distinction is further developed through an analysis of some existing typologies of interactive computer based art, and used to generalise two base conditions between which various possibilities for practice might be situated: the "fluid" and "formatted" virtual.

Pattern Discrimination

Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation - in a digital world, identity politics is pattern discrimination. It is by recognizing patterns in input data that Artificial Intelligence algorithms create bias and practice racial exclusions thereby inscribing power relations into media. How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs