Machinima in Second Life

This chapter provides a brief history of machinima, films created by computer users within virtual worlds, and focuses on machinima produced within the social virtual world of Second Life, on how to create machinima in Second Life, and on highlighting select examples of Second Life machinima. This chapter also connects user-produced content, like machinima, with the openness and rules of the platforms in which content is created. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of legal thinking surrounding user-created content, including machinima, and points to the rise of the player-producer in these systems.

Theatre in Second Life® Holds the VR Mirror up to Nature

As creative people inhabit virtual worlds, they bring their ideas for art and performance with them into these brave new worlds. While at first glance, virtual performance may have the outward trappings of theatre, some believe they don’t adhere to the basic traditional definition of theatre: the interaction between an actor and an audience. Detractors suggest that physical presence is required for such an interaction to take place. However, studies have shown that computer mediated communication (CMC) can be as real as face-to-face communication, where emotional response is concerned. Armed with this information, the author can examine how performance in a virtual world such as Second Life may indeed be like “real” theatre, what the possibilities for future virtual performance are, and may require that we redefine theatre for online performance venues.

The Philosophies of Software

Software is philosophical. Software is designed by people who have been influenced by a specific understanding of the way objects, people and systems work. These concepts are then transferred to the user, who manipulates that software within the parameters set by the software designer. The use of these rules by the designer reinforces an understanding of the world that is supported by the software they use. The designer then produces works that mimic these same philosophies instead of departing from them. The three axes of these philosophies are analogy, reductivism, and transferred agency. The effects on computer-based artistic expression, the training in digital art production, and the critique of art are evaluated in this chapter. Tensions between the dominant scientific approaches and the dominant artistic approaches are also defined as destructive and constructive practice respectively. The conclusion is a new critical perspective through which one may evaluate computer integrated creative practice and inspire fresh creative composition.

EVO-PARK

Designing good and sound architectural projects is a hard job. Generally these kinds of projects involve many stakeholders, everyone with his/her own aims, and designing activities could be very difficult to face. We can make this process easier using an “autonomous genetic design facilitator” and “collective subjective designer” to realize projects that meet needs of every part involved in. The chapter describes a methodology we suggest as a process of urban parks design. This methodology can be adapted to other situations considering many variables (and consequently a huge amount of possible solutions) and many specific needs to satisfy.

A Graphics Tablet as a Fine Art Tool

People have used tools for artistic expression for millennia. Relatively recent is the use of digital technology to afford the creation of art. However, many draw into question digital technologies conduciveness to creativity during the artistic process. Recent developments of digital technology for artists have lead to the creation of a graphics tablet from Wacom Technologies. It is claimed that the graphics tablet is more favorable to creativity than other existing digital technologies. This chapter addresses this issue through a qualitative study of five artists using the Wacom graphics tablet, in particular the artist’s own experience using the graphics tablet is explored. The outcome of this study indicates that the graphics tablet is a useful tool. However, there are still several improvements required to advance the graphics tablet to a stage suitable for fine artists.

Holography

When writing this chapter it became apparent that we were not only exponents of digital holography, but also the critics. This is a problem when it comes to new media. How can one begin to make objective critical theory on a subject when there are no historical or ideological structures that produce and constrain it? While other digital technologies prove well developed, semantic and expressive, digital holography has some way to go before any quantized analysis of the subject is possible. This paper explores the function of digital holography, seeking comparison from other media and explores holography’s influence as a radical form of electronic digital three-dimensional image capture. Within this context we draw comparison with other forms of image making, from cave paintings in Lascaux (France), to Fox Talbot’s early experiments to capture light, Corbusiers architectural designs of space, to early television transmission. They all have one unifying factor: the unfamiliar and the strange, emblematic to visual possibilities in our perception of space.

The Computer Medium in Digital Art's Creative Process

Art objects might be described as symbolic objects that aim at stimulating emotions. They reach us through our senses (visual, auditory, tactile, or other). They are displayed by means of physical material (stone, paper, wood, etc.) and combine some patterns to produce an aesthetic composition. They convey some message, normally to suggest some state of mind or to induce an emotion and the consequent feeling on the side of the viewer. Digital art differs from conventional art pieces by the use of computers and computer-based artifacts that manipulate digitally coded information, inheriting the almost unlimited possibilities in interaction, virtualization and manipulation of information the computer medium offers. In this chapter the authors propose to analyze and discuss the concepts and definitions behind digital art, emphasizing how the computer medium is itself the tool and the raw material in its creation, especially if we stress the fact that the conception and design of artistic information content is at the heart of any artistic work. Furthermore the authors present a framework for digital art creation that consists of a common design space where digital artists can smoothly progress from the concept until the final artifact while exploring the computer medium to its maximum potential.

Memory Association Machine

“Memory Association Machine” (also known as “Self-Other Organizing Structure #1”) is the first prototype in a series of site-specific responsive installations inspired by cognitive processes. The artist provides a mechanism that allows the structure of the artwork to change in response to continuous stimulus from its context. Context is defined as those parameters of the environment that are perceivable by the system and make its place in space and time unique. “Memory Association Machine” relates itself to its context using three primary processes: perception, the integration of sensor data into a field of experience, and the free-association through that field. “Memory Association Machine” perceives through a video camera, integrates using a Kohonen Self-Organizing Map, and free-associates through an implementation of Liane M. Gabora’s model of memory and creativity.

Information Visualization and Interface Culture

This text seeks to contextualize the history of and discourse surrounding information visualization. It positions visualization in relation to broader 20th century visual culture and addresses the evolution of the interface as a ubiquitous tool and the aesthetics for understanding the organization of information. A timeline of precursors to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) is developed and a survey of recent related history and theory is conducted to deliver additional perspectives on information aesthetics. The text concludes with a brief survey of several recent visualization projects to illustrate the variety of fields being engaged and enriched by contemporary information design.

3D Sound Simulation over Headphones

What is the real potential of computer science when applied to music? It is possible to synthesize a “real” guitar using physical modelling software, yet it is also possible virtually to create a guitar with 40 strings, each 100 metres long. The potential can thus be seen both in the simulation of that which in nature already exists, and in the creation of that which in nature cannot exist. After a brief introduction to spatial hearing and the binaural spatialization technique, passing from principles of psychoacoustics to digital signal processing, the reader will be included on a voyage through multi-dimensional auditory worlds, first simulating what in nature already exists, starting from zero and arriving at three “soundscape dimensions”, then trying to advance the idea of a fourth “auditory dimension”, creating synthetically a four-dimensional soundscape.