Virtual reality in Africa – for Africa

The paper describes a number of virtual reality projects taking place in Africa. The availability of VR on PCs, it is argued, has made access possible for a large number of users. Applications for education and training and applications that preserve and promote African culture are particularly highlighted.     

Twenty years of artificial life art

This essay begins with discussion of four relatively recent works which are representative of major themes and preoccupations in Artificial Life Art: ‘Propagaciones’ by Leo Nuñez; ‘Sniff’ by Karolina Sobecka and Jim George; ‘Universal Whistling Machine’ by Marc Boehlen; and ‘Performative Ecologies’ by Ruari Glynn. This essay is an attempt to contextualise these works by providing an overview of the history and forms of Artificial Life Art as it has developed over two decades, along with some background in the ideas of the Artificial Life movement of the late 1980s and 1990s.1 A more extensive study of the theoretical history of Artificial Life can be found in my paper ‘Artificial Life Art—A Primer’, in the Proceedings of DAC09 and also at http://www.ace.uci.edu/Penny. Excerpts from that essay are included here.      

VALENCE: affective visualisation using EEG

VALENCE is an interactive visualisation controlled by live brainwave monitoring. We used a wireless EEG headset to monitor the player's alpha waves (an indicator of relaxation) and valence (an indicator of emotion or arousal). The game world is an emergent system of attractive and repulsive forces responding to EEG input.     

What chess games and chess problems tell us about digital games and art

This article examines the relationship between chess games and chess problems (‘compositions’) in order to describe the chess problem as art. Arguing that the chess problem is a manipulation of game form guided by human aesthetic principles (e.g. Schiller's ‘beauty’ and Wimsatt's ‘human condition’), the article draws a parallel between art derived from games and art derived from nature. This parallel has important implications in circumstances where a natural world is replaced by a virtual world and nature is, in some sense, ‘lost’ to the artist. The article argues that, in such circumstances, the interactive and ‘concreative’ nature of digital media – particularly digital games – allows for unabated aesthetic production.     

Exploring creative intersections: Ernest Edmonds and his time-based generative art

This article focuses on the experience of British artist Ernest Edmonds and the influences that have informed his art practice in the past forty years. How are these influences connected? The article has an historical focus. It develops the themes within Edmonds's art and shows his connections with the ‘Systems’ artists and their forebears. In particular, the article concentrates on the encounter of Edmonds with artistic thinking about systems and process in the broad sense, as well as digital and interactive work developed from the early 1980s. As the article will demonstrate, a passion for colour, time and structure, the encounter with a number of artists inspired by Constructivism in the early 1980s, and the educational context in which Edmonds has worked from the late 1960s until the present, have offered great opportunities of interdisciplinary exchanges and ideas that had a profound impact upon the nature of his art. These influences have enabled Edmonds to explore new constructs in art through the use of technology that are a constant stimulus in his creative research, both as an artist and as an academic.     

Digital design and time on device; how aesthetic experience can help to illuminate the psychological impact of living in a digital culture

ABSTRACT

Aesthetic techniques are increasingly used by marketeers to create enticing digital products. In this paper, I work with the aesthetic experiences of one audience group to consider the psychological impact of living in a culture where digital devices are deliberately designed to influence behaviour. I argue that aesthetic encounters can help with understanding the impact of the interplay between visual stimulus, affect and digital culture, in ways that may support situated understandings of mental distress in a digital age. I show how audiences respond to the artist-led research project Are We All Addicts Now? arguing that they generate ideas connected to submersion and being overwhelmed as a means of reporting on their own personal experiences of living in a digital culture that seeks to influence behaviour. The findings may have value for designers, curators and artists invested in understanding the experiential impact of digital devices.     

基于新疆民间相似织物图案的特征提取及评价

针对新疆民间艺术图案纹理复杂,相似程度高,提取不同特征会使分类器产生不同错误率的问题,提出了优化组合特征技术,建立了组合特征选择的评价模型.该模型的建立先是利用7种不同算法提取纹理描述特征.针对特征过多或欠佳而造成分类精度不高或分类实时性差的缺点,引入特征选取模型对特征进行可靠性、可区别性及独立性的标定及测评.给出最佳组合特征的参考模型及评价模式,提取较优特征组合,从而解决了特征过多或欠佳的问题.通过新疆民间艺术织物图案识别为例,实例结果证实了该评价方法的实用性.     

出行信息服务关键技术研究进展与问题探讨

随着城市交通出行需求的不断增长.出行信息服务应运而生.介绍了出行信息服务产业的国内外发展状况,提出了出行信息服务技术平台的体系结构.分析了通讯平台、定位平台和地图平台的地位、作用及其发展趋势.从交通信息采集与处理、空间数据模型、路径规划算法、短时交通预测、信息可视化和服务标准规范等方面评述了关键技术的研究进展,分析了出行信息服务产业发展需要重点解决的科学与技术问题.以促进出行信息服务技术研究的进一步深化.     

彩色图像中纯脸检测与定位的优化算法研究

人脸识别是当前模式识别应用的一个重要领域.在理解当前广泛使用的各种人脸识别算法的基础上,提出了一种基于多方法融合的彩色图像纯脸检测与定位的优化算法.该算法首先通过肤色检测及预处理技术缩小彩色图像人脸检测的搜索区域,然后应用基于物体区域方向的检测平面内任意旋转角度人脸计算方法;并通过二次计算旋转角度的方法来准确确定人脸区域的旋转角度;最后利用积分投影函数找到人脸候选区域中双眼的位置,结合人脸特征在人脸中的比例关系准确确定纯脸的位置.该算法还考虑了人脸侧偏时的情况.实验表明,本方法对平面内任意旋转及双眼存在的侧偏人脸有较好的检测效果,对不同光照条件有较好的鲁棒性.     

Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm

A perceived limitation of evolutionary art and design algorithms is that they rely on human intervention; the artist selects the most aesthetically pleasing variants of one generation to produce the next. This paper discusses how computer generated art and design can become more creatively human-like with respect to both process and outcome. As an example of a step in this direction, we present an algorithm that overcomes the above limitation by employing an automatic fitness function. The goal is to evolve abstract portraits of Darwin, using our 2nd generation fitness function which rewards genomes that not just produce a likeness of Darwin but exhibit certain strategies characteristic of human artists. We note that in human creativity, change is less choosing amongst randomly generated variants and more capitalizing on the associative structure of a conceptual network to hone in on a vision. We discuss how to achieve this fluidity algorithmically.