2014 | Buch

Digital Da Vinci

Computers in the Arts and Sciences

herausgegeben von: Newton Lee

Verlag: Springer New York

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Über dieses Buch

“Science is art,” said Regina Dugan, senior executive at Google and former director of DARPA. “It is the process of creating something that never exists before. ... It makes us ask new questions about ourselves, others; about ethics, the future.” This second volume of the Digital Da Vinci book series leads the discussions on the world’s first computer art in the 1950s and the actualization of Star Trek’s holodeck in the future with the help of artificial intelligence and cyborgs. In this book, Gavin Sade describes experimental creative practices that bring together arts, science and technology in imaginative ways; Mine Özkar expounds visual computation for good designs based on repetition and variation; Raffaella Folgieri, Claudio Lucchiari, Marco Granato and Daniele Grechi introduce BrainArt, a brain-computer interface that allows users to create drawings using their own cerebral rhythms; Nathan Cohen explores artificially created spaces that enhance spatial awareness and challenge our perception of what we encounter; Keith Armstrong discusses embodied experiences that affect the mind and body of participating audiences; Diomidis Spinellis uses Etoys and Squeak in a scientific experiment to teach the concept of physical computing; Benjamin Cowley explains the massively multiplayer online game “Green My Place” aimed at achieving behavior transformation in energy awareness; Robert Niewiadomski and Dennis Anderson portray 3-D manufacturing as the beginning of common creativity revolution; Stephen Barrass takes 3-D printing to another dimension by fabricating an object from a sound recording; Mari Velonaki examines the element of surprise and touch sensing in human-robot interaction; and Roman Danylak surveys the media machines in light of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message.” Digital Da Vinci: Computers in the Arts and Sciences is dedicated to polymathic education and interdisciplinary studies in the digital age empowered by computer science. Educators and researchers ought to encourage the new generation of scholars to become as well rounded as a Renaissance man or woman.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. From a Pin-up Girl to Star Trek’s Holodeck: Artificial Intelligence and Cyborgs

Abstract

Sometime between 1956 and 1958, an anonymous IBM programmer rendered a glowing image of a pin-up girl on a cathode ray tube screen of a $ 238 million U.S. military computer at Fort Lee, Virginia. “The pin-up image itself was programmed as a series of short lines, or vectors, encoded on a stack of about 97 Hollerith type punched cards,” recalled Airman First Class Lawrence A. Tipton who took the Polaroid photo shown in Fig. 1.1 that somewhat resembles a hybrid of Betty Boop and Esquire’s December 1956 calendar pin-up by George Petty.

Newton Lee

2. Experimental Creative Practices

Abstract

From the earliest human creative expressions there has been a relationship between art, technology and science. In Western history this relationship is often seen as drawing from the advances in both art and science that occurred during the Renaissance, and as captured in the polymath figure of da Vinci. The twentieth century development of computer technology, and the more recent emergence of creative practice-led research as a recognized methodology, has lead to a renewed appreciation of the relationship between art, science and technology.

Gavin Sade

3. Repeating Circles, Changing Stars: Learning from the Medieval Art of Visual Computation

Abstract

Good designs , very generally speaking, have a repetitive quality. Goodness in repetition has little to do with the viewer’s comfort in receiving the expected. Rather, we appreciate repetition because it allows us to recognize—or even to think that we wondrously discover—the new and the different amidst similarities. Whereas repetition implies consistent relations of similar parts, differences challenge these relations and stimulate our interpretive capacity towards recognizing multiple, unique but still meaningful, wholes. Dialogues that arise from repetition and variation characterize a good design. The aim below is to draw attention to a centuries old visual design with a repetitive quality that resonates with computational iteration while finds its character in variations that result from seeking and seeing different relations.

Mine Özkar

4. Brain, Technology and Creativity. BrainArt: A BCI-Based Entertainment Tool to Enact Creativity and Create Drawing from Cerebral Rhythms

Abstract

The present article presents a high-level study on creativity. From a theoretical point of view, we conceptualized cognitive framework of creativity based on the notion of balance between conscious and unconscious processes. Indeed, creativity may be considered a borderline state of mind, in which the thought seems to fluctuate in a near-consciousness state. When the idea arises to the consciousness, the mind turns back to its previous equilibrium, and divergent thinking is replaced by canonical thinking. Starting with this framework, we designed and developed an entertainment application, in which creativity is enacted by unconscious processes, but in collaboration with conscious motivation. Our aim was then to activate a new, dedicated balance between conscious and unconscious processes, in order to obtain a state of mind similar to the spontaneous creative process, but directly guided by brain activity without the intervention of verbal and semantic modulations

Raffaella Folgieri, Claudio Lucchiari, Marco Granato, Daniele Grechi

5. Video Ergo Sum: An Artist’s Thoughts On Inventing With Computer Technology In The Creation Of Artworks

Abstract

The computer, while not a new concept, has in its modern form transformed the way we disseminate ideas, interact with one another and enhanced our capacity to acquire information. From the artist’s perspective digital imaging presents opportunities for visual invention and challenges in how visual form is mediated. In my artwork I use the computer as a means to create imagery that would not be possible without its use, and that enables exploration of an artificially created space that enhances spatial awareness and challenges our perception of what we encounter. The computer enables the use of real time and recorded moving and still images to be embedded within artwork previously limited to still imagery and makes possible the fragmentation and reconstruction of the picture plane into multiple moving images with a remarkably high degree of resolution.

Nathan Cohen

6. Wasting Time? Art, Science and New Experience. Examining the Artwork, Knowmore (House of Commons)

Abstract

Today the future is travelling rapidly towards us, shaped by all that which we have historically thrown into it. Much of what we have designed for our world over the ages, and much of what we continue to embrace in the pursuit of mainstream economic, cultural and social imperatives, embodies unacknowledged ‘time debts’. Every decision we make today has the potential to ‘give time to’, or take ‘time away’ from that future. This idea that ‘everything’ inherently embodies ‘future time left’ is underlined by design futurist Tony Fry when he describes how we so often ‘waste’ or ‘take away’ ‘future time’. “In our endeavors to sustain ourselves in the short term we collectively act in destructive ways towards the very things we and all other beings fundamentally depend upon”.

Keith Armstrong

7. The Information Train

Abstract

The increased application of software-controlled digital electronics hinders the understanding of how things work. The information train is a scientific experiment exhibit that physically demonstrates how computers communicate. It comprises a network in which a model Lego train acts as a physical carrier transferring a picture’s pixels from one computer to the other. The sending end computer scans a simple picture, and directs a model train to send that pixel to the receiving end computer. This is done by sensing the approaching train and switching a rail junction depending on whether a pixel is on or off. The train carries on its top a piece that rotates depending on the train’s route, thus carrying the data between the two computers. At the receiving end, two sensors detect the shape’s orientation allowing the receiving-end computer to reassemble the picture bit-by-bit, pixel-by-pixel. The receiving-end computer is a One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO-1 machine, programmed using Etoys. This provides further opportunities for motivated adventurous children to interact with the experiment’s implementation.

Diomidis Spinellis

8. The QUARTIC Process Model for Developing Serious Games: ‘Green My Place’ Case Study

Abstract

Software engineering for pedagogy and game design for entertainment produce very different requirements and generate unique kinds of practical difficulties. The design and development of serious games relies heavily on the experience of practitioners to overcome the pitfalls inherent in joining these two distinct processes into one, but experience in tackling these problems is not widespread. This creates a requirement for a process model to guide any development of integrated game-like and education-like elements, helping to manage risk in areas of hidden difficulty such as tightly integrating the mechanics of play with the formal pedagogy. This paper presents a process model for developing contextualized educational games. Parallel streams of pedagogy and game development are married to streamline the process of deriving appropriate educational games from client requirements. The process model is illustrated in action using the case of Green My Place, a serious game developed as part of the SAVE ENERGY EU project to teach energy efficient knowledge and behaviour to users of public buildings around Europe. Our evaluation highlights the positive outcome of the project and the functioning of the serious game; this evidence also suggests a positive benefit from using the model.

Benjamin Cowley

9. 3-D Manufacturing: The Beginning of Common Creativity Revolution

Abstract

Leonardo da Vinci’s extraordinary creative versatility became the ultimate embodiments of the Renaissance humanist ideal. His codices contain numerous astonishingly futuristic blueprints of scientific and engineering inventions, among them flying machines (see Fig. 9.1) and hydraulic pumps. The staggering design of these inventions exceeded the available technology of the time. The limitations of the Renaissance manufacturing processes and materials prevented many of these inventions from reaching even the stage of a prototype.

Robert Niewiadomski, Dennis Anderson

10. The Shape of the Sound of the Shape of the Sound …

Abstract

The concept of a trans-phenomenal artifact arose from a project to digitally fabricate a series of bells, where each bell is shaped by the sound of the previous bell. This paper describes the recursive process developed for fabricating the bells in terms of generic stages. The first bells fabricated with this process raised the question of whether the series would converge to a static attractor, traverse a contour of infinite variation, or diverge to an untenable state. Reflection on these early results encourages further development of the recursive fabrication process, and lays groundwork for a theory of trans-phenomenal artifacts.

Stephen Barrass

11. Human-Robot Interaction in Prepared Environments: Introducing an Element of Surprise by Reassigning Identities in Familiar Objects

Abstract

My fascination with projected and kinetic characters started in 1996. It all began with ‘Red Armchair 4’, an interactive installation that utilised speech recognition. In this work audience expectations were manipulated by withholding the full appearance/identity of the projected character, whose face was never revealed. In Red Armchair 4, the visitor walks into a red-lit room and is presented with a projected image of a woman in a black dress. She is viewed from the back, seated on a red armchair which ensconces her in a shell-like embrace.

Mari Velonaki

12. The Messages of Media Machines: Man-Machine Symbiosis

Abstract

McLuhan’s famous dictum, the medium is the message, guides this chapter and its content. The statement, when paraphrased, may be understood as—it is the nature of a medium that decides what messages can be transmitted. This underlines the view that the form of the technology, its nature and characteristics, dictates the content. The focus here is to understand the computer as a medium—its form, supporting the greater ambition of defining its messages—its content.

Roman Danylak

Backmatter

Titel: Digital Da Vinci
herausgegeben von: Newton Lee
Verlag: Springer New York
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4939-0965-0
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-0964-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0965-0