Papers (sorted by Title)

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Title: Pixel of Matter: New Ways of Seeing With an Active Volumetric Filmmaking System
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

We introduce an installation art project using the active volumetric filmmaking technology to investigate its possibilities in art practice. To do that, we developed a system to film volumetric video in real time, thereby allowing its users to capture large environments and objects without fixed placement or preinstallation of cameras.

Title: Posture Platform and The Drawing Room: Virtual Teleportation in Cyberspace
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2014: Acting in Translation
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Three-hundred-sixty-degree audio/visual immersion and the restoration of non-verbal communication cues are essential features for interfaces inviting the human body in cyberspace. The Posture Platform is a network of bases that offers access to a shared virtual environment. Each base is composed of an immersive 360-degree visual display, a surround-sound system, an array of image capture devices, a microphone, an omnidirectional controller/pointer, and a computer with wifi and an internet connection. The Drawing Room is the most recent virtual space developed for the platform. It invites participants to a blank shared space where they draw their own environment collaboratively. The platform, and the project it hosts, is an example of the art, design, and engineering challenges and opportunities associated with development of inhabitable cyberspace.

Title: Pulse Shape 22: Audiovisual Performance and Data Transmutation
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2016: Data Materialities
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Pulse Shape 22 is an improvisational audiovisual performance featuring shortwave radio transmissions as the sole source material for real-time audio processing alongside video of the sun projected through cast-glass lenses designed specifically for this piece. The structure of the piece is derived from metrics on energy accumulation over a period of 2.2 nanoseconds resulting from the targeting of 60 laser beams on a single tetrahedral hohlraum in weapons testing experiments as carried out by the Los Alamos Inertial Confinement Fusion unit, at the Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester. Pulse Shape 22 is an exploration of architectural space through the use of site- and time-specific information found in regions of the electromagnetic spectrum outside the reaches of the human
sensory apparatus. It is an attempt to alter the audience’s perceptions of their surroundings and create
a moment of rupture from hidden worlds found in our local environment.

Title: Raised On YouTube: Cultural Data Materialization Using Plants
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2016: Data Materialities
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Raised on YouTube is an installation and game that grows plants using only the light of projected video and makes ecology legible as a multiplayer game. The challenge of finding the most nurturing video is crowdsourced online. As players watch a webcam feed of the plants surrounded by two-way mirrors, their computer power is diverted to photosynthetic video analysis. The system calculates the photosynthetic score for each video using a basic botanical model. The resulting shape and density of the plant grow bed serves as a data visualization of the energy patterns in the cultural stream. The system provides opportunities to reflect on the effects of long-term exposure to contemporary media and to imagine ecological possibilities of participatory culture.

Title: Re-Visioning the Interface: Technological Fashion as Critical Media
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: BioLogic: A Natural History of Digital Life
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This paper elucidates two positions (the positivist and the critical) that inform the creative design of technological fashion. On the one side is the instrumentalist trend toward the minimized or disappear-ing interface. On the other, some theorists and artists suggest that increased invisibility presents social and ethical concerns (such as invasiveness and control) when networking and communication devices are involved.

The positivist side has roots in modernist design. Positivist designers create responsive and control-lable fabrics using shape-changing polymers, e-textiles, and nano-scale electronics to resolve clumsy and prohibitive problems of hardware vs. body. The critical side draws upon archetypal ideas about technology and the body that are familiar from literature and science fiction, and includes writers and media artists who emphasize the intractable or mechanic nature of technological clothing to enhance, rather than erase, the body. The paper concludes that both positions must be considered as the field of technological fashion moves forward.

Title: REALational Perspectives: Strategies for Expanding Beyond the Here-and-Now in Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) Art
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This paper analyzes AR installations to demonstrate different strategies for producing a relational sense of place and time. By exposing actual environments as constructed (and, therefore, as virtual) landscapes, AR art exposes our situatedness and becomes a strong tool for activism that encourages us to think beyond familiar reality.

Title: Reality Versus Imagination
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1992: Art Show
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Fifteen years ago I exhibited some work that explored unusual perturbations in otherwise consistent color interpolation. The gallery was a part of University College, London and several scientists saw the show. One, a Polish mathematician and physicist called Andre Lissowski, chased me up. He was interested in the work I had done and wondered if it bore any relationship to other contemporary research into what ore now called non-linear phenomena-port of the field fashionably dubbed Chaos. Chaos studies were still an underground activity at that time and Andre took me along to small back rooms at the Royal Institution and ancient London Colleges where mostly young scientists along with the occasional Nobel laureate discussed the fantastic new ideas that were emerging worldwide.

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Title: Resonant Waves: Immersed in Geometry
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

“Resonant Waves” is a multisensory, immersive, interactive cymatic art installation/experience. This project reveals the natural phenomenon of sound and vibration as it forms intricate visual geometric patterns in water that are generated in real time through user interaction, while also exploring the effects on our physical, mental, and emotional systems.

Title: Rethinking Agency and Immersion: Videogames as a Means of Consciousness-Raising
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2001: n-space
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Until recently, most videogame characters did not reflect our everyday life for the simple reason that most of them were trolls, aliens, and monsters. However, this has changed since the introduction of “The Sims,” the people simulator. Nevertheless, characters in this game are still flat since “The Sims” simulates life in a Disneyland-like way, avoiding ideological conflicts.

Encouraged by authors like Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray, videogame designers have been taking for granted that a high level of agency and immersion are desirable effects. However, I will show that alternative, non-Aristotelian techniques could be used to develop character-driven videogames that enhance critical thinking about ideological issues and social conflicts while keeping the experience enjoyable. I will do this by borrowing some concepts from Bertolt Brecht’s and Augusto Baal’s ideas on non-Aristotelian theater and applying them to videogame design. In this paper, I propose that a modified version of “The Sims” would allow players to create behavioral rules for their characters that reflect their personal opinions. Like in Baal’s Forum Theater, this game would foster critical discussion about social and personal problems.

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Title: Rilievo: Artistic Scene Authoring via Interactive Height Map Extrusion in VR
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

An authoring environment for artistic creation in VR enables the effortless conversion of 2D images into 3D objects. Artistic elements are extracted and relief sculpting is performed by mixing height maps generated from the input image. The tool is showcased in an analog-virtual workflow in collaboration with a traditional painter.

Title: Robotype: Studies of Kinetic Typography by Robot Display for Expressing Letters, Time and Movement
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2018: Original Narratives
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Humans use letters, which are two-dimensional static symbols, for communication. Writing these letters requires body movement as well as spending a certain amount of time; therefore, it can be demonstrated that a letter is a trajectory of movement and time. Based on this notion, the author conducted studies regarding multidimensional kinetic typography, primarily using robots to display a letter and visualize its time and movement simultaneously. This paper describes
the project background and design of the three types of robotic displays that were developed and discusses possible expressions using robotic displays.

Title: Schizophrenia and Narrative in Artificial Agents
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2001: n-space
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

In recent years, computer graphics has turned to AI techniques in order to simplify the problem of modeling moving objects for rendering. By modeling the minds of graphically represented creatures, their movements can be directed automatically through AI algorithms and need not be directly controlled by the designer. But what kind of baggage do these AI algorithms bring with them? Here I will argue that predominant AI approaches to modeling agents result in behavior that is fragmented, depersonalized, lifeless, and incomprehensible. Drawing inspiration from narrative psychology and anti-psychiatry, I will argue that agent behavior should be narratively understandable and present an agent architecture that structures behavior to be comprehensible as narrative.

The approach I take in this essay is a hybrid of critical theory and AI agent technology. It is one example of a critical technical practice: a cultural critique of AI practice instantiated in a technical innovation. In the final section of this paper, I will describe the theoretical and practical foundations of the critical technical practice pursued here, which I term socially situated AI.

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Title: Secrets of Balanced Composition as Seen Through a Painter’s Window: Visual Analyses of Paintings Based on Subset Barycenter Patterns
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2019: Proliferating Possibilities: Speculative Futures in Art and Design
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

In this paper, various paintings are analyzed using the subset barycenter pattern implemented by the author. An image’s or an image group’s subset may reveal genre and artist characteristics. The suggested barycenter pattern analysis can enrich the methods of art history and criticism.

Title: Shadow Awareness: Enhancing Theater Space Through the Mutual Projection of Images on a Connective Slit Screen
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2011: Tracing Home in The Age of Networked Techniques
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This study discusses media technology that enables the continuous creation of performers’ physical improvisation as inspired by the reflection of imagery evoked from the audience. To realize this, the authors have focused on “shadow media,” which promote the continuous creation of imagery through “bodily awareness.” The authors have developed a system that can project shadows of the performers in various ways, which are then transformed into various shapes and colors. The shadows are connected to the performers’ feet and projected on a “passable” slit screen set up between the stage and the audience. As a result, the interactive and mutual creation of imagery by performers and audience can form an “empathetic” stage. To demonstrate its validity, the authors applied the system to a dance performance at Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy.

Title: Soundspheres: Resonant Chamber
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2012: In Search of the Miraculous
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This paper develops a brief historical account of the architectural development of auditory space and identifies the “soundsphere” as an acoustic project that connects the interrelationships between material, spatial form and sound. The instrumental design of the soundsphere has focused on three types of shells: hard, static, and inflexible; physically manipulable; and immaterial (or electroacoustic). This frames a disciplinary and historical context for Resonant Chamber, a prototype-based design research project that develops a kinetic and interactive interior envelope system aimed at transforming the acoustic environment through dynamic spatial, material, and electroacoustic technologies.

Title: Souvenirs du monde des montagnes
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: BioLogic: A Natural History of Digital Life
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This paper describes a particular book called Souvenirs du monde des montagnes, which draws its iconography from the history of a Swiss mountain family from 1910 to 1930. By simply dipping into the first few pages, the reader will be lost between real and virtual universes, wonder about the evolution of the images’ meanings, and question an object’s true content. This setup, developed using state-of-the-art computer vision technology, offers unprecedented freedom: we can make technological references disappear to place the user in fruitful turmoil between visible and hidden meanings. The shadow of a bird flies over the pages, foxes’ lanterns light up the text, paper mountains emerge. Once the last page has been turned, the reader will never look at books in the same way again.

Title: Stepping Inside the Classification Cube: An Intimate Interaction With an AI System
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2020: Think Beyond
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

The “Classification Cube” art installation invites participants to become familiar with a machine learning classification system which estimates their age, gender, emotion, and actions. Rapidly changing results encourage participants to actively perform their behavior to the system and alter the way it “sees” them.

Title: Super-Natural: Digital Life In Eastern Culture
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH Asia 2015: Life on Earth
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

We examine how digital media technologies are predominantly framed through a cultural Western lens then advance the proposition that by framing digital media technologies through an Eastern lens we may better understand how digital media and digital systems can promote a sense or perception of “technology-being-with-us”.

Title: Superanimism: The practice of formalised imagery
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1991: Art and Design Show
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This essay discusses the dichotomy between visual, animated images and the abstract computer program that generates them. This digital and numerical base adds an extra dimension to the animation, whereby the creative experience is divided into a number of different levels.

Digital images are informed by the status of their algorithmic source, creating in the viewer a kind of numerical perception, thereby introducing scientific knowledge into our understanding of the visual. But because of the computer’s formalism and arbitrariness, the relation between algorithmic source and the electronic visual effect is not stable. Imagery is of a different experiential type to logical structures, and this causes their disjuncture or alienation, although they are logically and deterministically connected. Thus synthetic images do not appear “human” or manmade but objective or “natural,” like photographs.

The underlying algorithm is so contingent that in terms of being an accessible entity it hardly exists at all without reference to its sensory manifestations. The actual substance of the animate is diffused into so many different levels at once, it loses its ontological identity. These effects lead to a description of a computer animation as an object able to vitalize both tangible and intangible spaces and become a super-animate.

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Title: SwarmVision: Autonomous Aesthetic Multi-Camera Interaction
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH Asia 2013: Art Gallery
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

A platform of exploratory networked robotic cameras was created, informing new directions in computer vision engineering and utilizing an aesthetic approach to experimentation. Initiated by research in autonomous swarm robotic camera behavior, SwarmVision is an installation consisting of multiple Pan-TiltZoom cameras on rails positioned above spectators in an exhibition space, where each camera behaves autonomously based on its own rules of computer vision and control. Each of the cameras is programmed to detect visual information of interest based on a different algorithm, and each negotiates with the other two, influencing what subject matter to study in a collective way. The emergent behaviors of the system suggest potential new approaches in scene reconstruction, video-based behavior analysis and other areas of vision and imaging research.

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Title: SyncDon II: Bio-Synchronical Communication
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH Asia 2015: Life on Earth
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

“SyncDon II” aims to transfer emotion to others non-verbally by the heartbeat synchronization, which induced by the stimuli correlated with heartbeat rhythms. Emotions on the rhythms are passed to someone else through the gift-box. “SyncDon II” tries to enhance our communication with the physical synchronicity.

Title: Teaching Cyber Art, Or How A Painter Copes With Computers In London
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1995: Digital Gallery
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Walking back from my paint­ing studio on a summer evening, looking up at the electronic flicker of TVs, I do wonder … how can a painting do anything in a living room? Does the future lie in the hands of the cyber artist? Hold on. I am a painter, and I use com­puters, and that combination makes a lot of sense, though nowhere in England can you study – or teach – the two together. Computer work is a different kind of art because it’s cyber-this or cyber-that? Oh. Even when it’s flavor-free? At ISEA 5 in Helsinki I wan­dered out of the interactive show and got absorbed in the early 20th Century Finnish painting next door, self por­traits in log cabins, a solitary fir tree losing its snow. Spring. I resolve to give my work more of a lived-in texture, make it connect with what I saw, give it a temperature, make it more reflective.

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Title: Temporal Coherence with Digital Color
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1990: Digital Image-Digital Cinema
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

To structure time with abstract visual materials requires a visual grammar of line, shape and color. Color is especially problematic, difficult to measure in all but the simplest applications; the literature of color theory and harmony is often confusing. To devise a syntax for structuring time with color, one can turn to the concepts of tension-release, of neutral, balanced and weighted color domains and of discrete computer raster images; they help to create and measure time-based color compositions. In para-metrically defined color palettes, Color Study #7 (a computer-generated animated film) demonstrates the application of these ideas to a simple and effective compositional approach. Codifying this now common film-making practice, the author hopes to encourage others interested in aesthetically strengthened visual presentation to explore and develop time-based visual grammars.

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Title: Terra Mars: When Earth Shines on Mars Through AI's Imagination
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2019: Proliferating Possibilities: Speculative Futures in Art and Design
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Terra Mars presents Mars in the visual style of Earth. An ANN was trained to learn the relation between topographical data and satellite imagery of Earth and was applied to topographical data of Mars to generate imaginary satellite images. This project suggests a new approach to creative applications of AI

Title: The 200 Year Continuum
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2009: BioLogic: A Natural History of Digital Life
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

The 200 Year Continuum is the producer, recorder, and exhibitor in Christian Kerrigan’s advancing anthology of narratives. Central to Kerrigan’s practice is storytelling and mythmaking as a means of engaging his audience. Kerrigan uses drawing as his primary mode of research into these narratives, which are consequently offered in the form of live internet-feed installations acting as ecological sites, scientific experiments introducing new organic technologies, and digital images of worlds unseen. Each addition acts as a “middle story” within The 200 Year Continuum. In his narrative, The Amber Clock, a ship is grown in the yew forest of Kingley Vale over a period of 200 years. The narrative explores the possibilities of time in relationship to technology and the natural world. In his narrative, artificial and wild systems are choreographed, and the natural production of resin is harvested from the yew trees as a way of measuring time.

Title: The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1994: Art and Design Show
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Much confusion and hyperbole surrounds discussions of the aes­thetics of interactive computer events. This essay works to clarify some of this confusion by analyz­ing the differences between inter­active and non-interactive events, reviewing the variety of forms included under the umbrella term “interactivity,” and investigating the theoretical rationales offered to support claims of interactivity’s superiority derived from psycho­logical, political, art historical, and techno-historical sources. Building on this analysis, the essay suggests extensions to current GUI design canons that uniquely attend to interactivity as an aesthetic issue. It also investigates the challenging interactivity possibilities of emerg­ing technologies.

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Title: The Aesthetics of Liminality: Augmentation as Artform
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2014: Acting in Translation
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

From ARToolkit’s emergence in the 1990s to the emergence of augmented reality (AR) as an art medium in the 2010s, AR has developed as a number of evidential sites. As an extension of virtual media, it merges real-time pattern recognition with goggles (finally realizing William Gibson’s sci-fi fantasy) or handheld devices. This creates a welding of real-time media and virtual reality, or an optically registered simulation overlaid upon an actual spatial environment. Commercial applications are numerous, including entertainment, sales, and navigation. Even though ARbased works can be traced back to the late 1990s, AR work requires some understanding of coding and tethered imaging equipment. It was not until marker-based AR, affording lower entries to usage, as well as geo-locational AR-based media, using handheld devices and tablets, that augmented reality as an art medium would propagate. While one can argue that AR-based art is a convergence of handheld device art and virtual reality, there are intrinsic gestures specific to augmented reality that make it unique. The author looks at some historical examples of AR as well as critical issues of AR-based gestures such as compounding the gaze, problematizing the retinal, and the representational issues of informatic overlays. This generates four gestural vectors, analogous to those defined in “The Translation of Art in Virtual Worlds,” which is examined through case studies. From this, a visual theory of augmentation will be proposed.

Title: The Bailey-Derek Grammar: Recording the Craft of Wire-Bending in the Trinidad Carnival
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2015: Hybrid Craft
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

This paper presents work on the development of a shape grammar that records the dying, undocumented craft of wire-bending in the Trinidad Carnival. This craft is important for the building and continuation of cultural heritage and identity. Due to the lack of prior research in this non-Western design practice, the author conducted site visits, interviews and observations, and visually examined wire-bent artifacts in Trinidad to develop this grammar. This paper presents the materials, steps and shape rules that begin to synthesize the craft, as well as one design. This study and the resulting grammar have positive implications for design education and practice.

Title: The Dual Skins of a Media Façade: Explicit and Implicit Interactions
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2015: Hybrid Craft
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

In the fall of 2013, Mégaphone, an architectural-scale interactive “Speakers’ Corner,” was deployed outdoors after dusk in downtown Montréal, Canada. This urban art installation included a monumental media façade designed to display a transcription of some of the words uttered into the microphone by end users. Driven by the system’s two temporal modalities—a performative “live mode” and an archival “sleep mode”—the video projections revealed the dual skins of a media façade that spanned almost an entire city block. This article examines how activists appropriated Mégaphone to transform an ordinary building into an urban mausoleum.

Title: The Electric "Now Indigo Blue": Synthetic Color and Video Synthesis Circa 1969
Author(s):
Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 2013: XYZN: Scale
Writing Type: Paper
Abstract/Summary/Introduction:

Circa 1969, a few talented electrical engineers and pioneering video artists built video synthesizers capable of generating luminous and abstract psychedelic colors that many believed to be cosmic and revolutionary, and in many ways they were. Drawing on archival materials from Boston’s WGBH archives and New York’s Electronics Arts Intermix, this paper analyzes this early history in the work of electronics engineer Eric Siegel and Nam June Paik’s and Shuya Abe’s Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer, built at WGBH in 1969. The images produced from these devices were, as Siegel puts it, akin to a “psychic healing medium” used to create “mass cosmic consciousness, awakening higher levels of the mind, [and] bringing awareness of the soul.” While such radical and cosmic unions have ultimately failed, these unique color technologies nonetheless laid the foundation for colorism in the history of electronic
computer art.

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