Material motion: motion analysis for virtual heritage reconstruction

Through the AHRC funded, 'Motion in Place Platform' project, a number of experiments were conducted to look for quantitative differences in movement in virtual vs material environments. Actors were asked to enact a number of activities hypothesised to have occurred in a British Iron Age roundhouse while wearing inertial motion capture suits. These activities were recorded both in a “virtual” studio (re)construction as well as material (re)construction at Butser Ancient Farm. The data from these experiments was then analysed to look for differences in movement which could be attributed to artefacts and/or environments. This paper explains the structure of the experiments, how the data was generated, how it has been analysed, and what theories may make sense of the data and what conclusions have been drawn about how objects and environments may influence human movement and how a better understanding of movement many help understand empirical remains

Crafting a critical technical practice

In recent years, the category of practice-based research has become an essential component of discourse around public funding and evaluation of the arts in British higher education. When included under the umbrella of public policy concerned with the creative industries", technology researchers often find themselves collaborating with artists who consider their own participation to be a form of practice-based research. We are conducting a study under the Creator Digital Economies project asking whether technologists, themselves, should be considered as engaging in practice-based research, whether this occurs in collaborative situations, or even as a component of their own personal research [1]

Experimental archeology and serious games: challenges of inhabiting virtual heritage

Experimental archaeology has long yielded valuable insights into the tools and techniques that featured in past peoples’ relationship with the material world around them. However, experimental archaeology has, hitherto, confined itself to rigid, empirical and quantitative questions. This paper applies principles of experimental archaeology and serious gaming tools in the reconstructions of a British Iron Age Roundhouse. The paper explains a number of experiments conducted to look for quantitative differences in movement in virtual vs material environments using both “virtual” studio reconstruction as well as material reconstruction. The data from these experiments was then analysed to look for differences in movement which could be attributed to artefacts and/or environments. The paper explains the structure of the experiments, how the data was generated, what theories may make sense of the data, what conclusions have been drawn and how serious gaming tools can support the creation of new experimental heritage environments

Comparison of ICD code-based diagnosis of obesity with measured obesity in children and the implications for health care cost estimates

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Administrative health databases are a valuable research tool to assess health care utilization at the population level. However, their use in obesity research limited due to the lack of data on body weight. A potential workaround is to use the ICD code of obesity to identify obese individuals. The objective of the current study was to investigate the sensitivity and specificity of an ICD code-based diagnosis of obesity from administrative health data relative to the gold standard measured BMI.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Linkage of a population-based survey with anthropometric measures in elementary school children in 2003 with longitudinal administrative health data (physician visits and hospital discharges 1992-2006) from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Measured obesity was defined based on the CDC cut-offs applied to the measured BMI. An ICD code-based diagnosis obesity was defined as one or more ICD-9 (278) or ICD-10 code (E66-E68) of obesity from a physician visit or a hospital stay. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated and health care cost estimates based on measured obesity and ICD-based obesity were compared.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The sensitivity of an ICD code-based obesity diagnosis was 7.4% using ICD codes between 2002 and 2004. Those correctly identified had a higher BMI and had higher health care utilization and costs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>An ICD diagnosis of obesity in Canadian administrative health data grossly underestimates the true prevalence of childhood obesity and overestimates the health care cost differential between obese and non-obese children.</p

Motion in Place: a Case Study of Archaeological Reconstruction Using Motion Capture

Human movement constitutes a fundamental part of the archaeological process, and of any interpretation of a site’s usage; yet there has to date been little or no consideration of how movement observed (in contemporary situations) and inferred (in archaeological reconstruction) can be documented. This paper reports on the Motion in Place Platform project, which seeks to use motion capture hardware and data to test human responses to Virtual Reality (VR) environments and their real-world equivalents using round houses of the Southern British Iron Age which have been both modelled in 3D and reconstructed in the present day as a case study. This allows us to frame questions about the assumptions which are implicitly hardwired into VR presentations of archaeology and cultural heritage in new ways. In the future, this will lead to new insights into how VR models can be constructed, used and transmitted

Installation to instrument: rebuilding Will.0.w1sp for "Listening Between the Lines" at Ars Electronica 05

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New photography: a perverse confusion between the live and the real

This paper focuses on the use of photographic images in performance. Specifically, it explores notions of liveness, realness, and place within a black-box performance space. The paper starts with a discussion of the noeme, or essence, of Photography and its relationship with the live and the real. It then discusses issues of “New Media” and how social and networked media have changed the act of viewing photographs, but not the essence of photography. The paper presents case studies where the author shot thousands of photographs and used live, digital techniques to give these images movement reminiscent of the original performers and locations combined with either live music, or live dance performance and asks how the use of real-time interactive media has changed the experience for the performers and the audience, why the collaborators wanted to go beyond simply presenting “slide-shows”, how the liveness of the still images animated the individual performances, how the politics of representation can direct which images are used and finally asks how photography and our experience of photographs is changing in our highly networked society

Will.0.w1sp

Will.0.W1sp is an interactive installation exploring our ability to recognise human motion without human form. It uses particle systems to create characters or "whisps" with their own drifting, flowing movement, but which also follow digitised human movements. The central point of the environment is a 2x6m curved screen allowing the whisps to be projected at human scale while giving them enough to space to move and avoid visitors through the use of a combination of video tracking and motion sensors. The installation systems perform realtime motion analysis both on the prerecorded motion capture sequences and the movement of the audience to determine how to route the particles across the scene. The motion vectors are simultaneously fed to an audio system to create sound flowing in synch with the imagery. Will.0.w1sp invites visitors to chase after virtual, intangible characters which continually scatter and reform just beyond their reach

Moving an audience: Will.0.w1sp and biological motion

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