A software vision to enable the holistic design of low carbon buildings

The need to reduce the energy used by buildings and the resultant carbon emissions is changing how they are designed, look and work. This position paper outlines the urgent need for new software that integrates thermal simulation with building information modelling. A vision for the software is presented

Interactive intelligence: behaviour-based AI, musical HCI and the Turing Test

The field of behaviour-based artificial intelligence (AI), with its roots in the robotics research of Rodney Brooks, is not predominantly tied to linguistic interaction in the sense of the classic Turing test (or, "imitation game"). Yet, it is worth noting, both are centred on a behavioural model of intelligence. Similarly, there is no intrinsic connection between musical AI and the language-based Turing test, though there have been many attempts to forge connections between them. Nonetheless, there are aspects of musical AI and the Turing test that can be considered in the context of non-language-based interactive environments–-in particular, when dealing with real-time musical AI, especially interactive improvisation software. This paper draws out the threads of intentional agency and human indistinguishability from Turing’s original 1950 characterisation of AI. On the basis of this distinction, it considers different approaches to musical AI. In doing so, it highlights possibilities for non-hierarchical interplay between human and computer agents

Zero and low carbon buildings: A driver for change in working practices and the use of computer modelling and visualization

Buildings account for significant carbon dioxide emissions, both in construction and operation. Governments around the world are setting targets and legislating to reduce the carbon emissions related to the built environment. Challenges presented by increasingly rigorous standards for construction projects will mean a paradigm shift in how new buildings are designed and managed. This will lead to the need for computational modelling and visualization of buildings and their energy performance throughout the life-cycle of the building. This paper briefly outline how the UK government is planning to reduce carbon emissions for new buildings. It discusses the challenges faced by the architectural, construction and building management professions in adjusting to the proposed requirements for low or zero carbon buildings. It then outlines how software tools, including the use of visualization tools, could develop to support the designer, contractor and user

Developing and evaluating a hybrid wind instrument

A hybrid wind instrument generates self-sustained sounds via a real-time interaction between a computed excitation model (such as the physical model of human lips interacting with a mouthpiece) and a real acoustic resonator. Attempts to produce a hybrid instrument have so far fallen short, in terms of both the accuracy and the variation in the sound produced. The principal reason for the failings of previous hybrid instruments is the actuator which, controlled by the excitation model, introduces a fluctuating component into the air flow injected into the resonator. In the present paper, the possibility of using a loudspeaker to supply the calculated excitation signal is evaluated. A theoretical study has facilitated the modeling of the loudspeaker-resonator system and the design of a feedback and feedforward filter to successfully compensate for the presence of the loudspeaker. The resulting self-sustained sounds are evaluated by a mapping of their sound descriptors to the input parameters of the physical model of the embouchure, both for sustained and attack sounds. Results are compared with simulations. The largely coherent functioning confirms the usefulness of the device in both musical and research contexts

Software engineering challenges: Achieving zero carbon buildings by 2019

The planet Earth is warming up. There is an urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings account for almost 50% of UK carbon dioxide emissions. [1] The UK Government have set out a programme to make all new buildings zero carbon by 2019. This will require a paradigm shift in how buildings are designed, with an increased reliance on computational modelling of building performance early in the design process. This paper outlines how architects have traditionally worked, the available software and how it is used. It discusses the challenges faced by building designers in achieving zero carbon buildings and then outlines how software tools might develop to meet not only the zero carbon challenge but also take the concept further to help design sustainable buildings

Traceability and AOSD - From Requirements to Aspects

The traceability question is addressed through the development of a framework to go from requirements to aspects using the Design by Contract methodology. It is demonstrated that by starting at the requirements stage, and specifying an early aspect in the same semi-formal language as the system's existing requirements, we have the basis from which to design the aspects at the implementation stage. The language of pre- and post-conditions is shown to match closely that of aspects, in that pre-conditions match the aspect's pointcut, and the post-condition matches the advice part of the aspect. This thus gives us traceability from 'early aspects' to 'late aspects'. This approach will shed some light on the relationship between requirements and their refinements to pre- and post conditions, and the traceability of requirements in the face of reuse over time. The addition of a new crosscutting requirement is investigated in terms of the framework, demonstrating the relationship between early and late aspects and traceability. The framework promises to help with the design of the late aspects. We propose the concept of relevancy: information in a requirement beyond its specification as pre- and post-conditions, as a way of identifying join points

Factors in human recognition of timbre lexicons generated by data clustering

Since the development of sound recording technologies, the palette of sound timbres available for music creation was extended way beyond traditional musical instruments. The organization and categorization of timbre has been a common endeavor. The availability of large databases of sound clips provides an opportunity for obtaining datadriven timbre categorizations via content-based clustering. In this article we describe an experiment aimed at understanding what factors influence the process of learning a given clustering of sound samples. We clustered a large database of short sound clips, and analyzed the success of participants in assigning sounds to the “correct” clusters after listening to a few examples of each. The results of the experiment suggest a number of relevant factors related both to the strategies followed by users and to the quality measures of the clustering solution, which can guide the design of creative applications based on audio clip clustering

Using discovered, polyphonic patterns to filter computer-generated music

A metric for evaluating the creativity of a music-generating system is presented, the objective being to generate mazurka-style music that inherits salient patterns from an original excerpt by Frédéric Chopin. The metric acts as a filter within our overall system, causing rejection of generated passages that do not inherit salient patterns, until a generated passage survives. Over fifty iterations, the mean number of generations required until survival was 12.7, with standard deviation 13.2. In the interests of clarity and replicability, the system is described with reference to specific excerpts of music. Four concepts–Markov modelling for generation, pattern discovery, pattern quantification, and statistical testing–are presented quite distinctly, so that the reader might adopt (or ignore) each concept as they wish

Using Problem Frames and projections to analyze requirements for distributed systems

Subproblems in a problem frames decomposition frequently make use of projections of the complete problem context. One specific use of projec-tions occurs when an eventual implementation will be distributed, in which case a subproblem must interact with (use) the machine in a projection that represents another subproblem. We refer to subproblems used in this way as services, and propose an extension to projections to represent services as a spe-cial connection domain between subproblems. The extension provides signifi-cant benefits: verification of the symmetry of the interfaces, exposure of the machine-to-machine interactions, and prevention of accidental introduction of shared state. The extension’s usefulness is validated using a case study

Collaborative music interaction on tabletops: an HCI approach

With the advent of tabletop interaction, collaborative activities are better supported than they are on single-user PCs because there exists a physical shareable space, and interaction with digital data is more embodied and social. In sound and music computing, collaborative music making has traditionally been done using interconnected networks, but using separated computers. Musical tabletops introduce opportunities of playing in collaboration through sharing physically the same musical interface. However, few tabletop musical interfaces exploit this collaborative potential (e.g. the Reactable). We are interested in looking into how collaboration can be fully supported by means of musical tabletops for music performance in contrast with more traditional settings. We are also looking at whether collective musical engagement can be enhanced by providing more suitable interfaces to collaboration. In HCI and software development, we find an iterative process approach of design and evaluation—where evaluation allows us to identify key issues that can be addressed in the next design iteration of the system. Using a similar iterative approach, we plan to design and evaluate some tabletop musical interfaces. The aim is to understand what design choices can enhance and enrich collaboration and collective musical engagement on these systems. In this paper, we explain the evaluation methodologies we have undertaken in three preliminary pilot studies, and the lessons we have learned. Initial findings indicate that evaluating tabletop musical interfaces is a complex endeavour which requires an approach as close as possible to a real context, with an interdisciplinary approach provided by interaction analysis techniques