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Invited
Speakers
Valery
D. Adzhiev, PhD
- HyperFun and
its Artistic Applications
This talk describes
a history, state of the art and prospects of the "HyperFun Project"
(www.hyperfun.org), devoted to developing original methods and tools
for creating volumetric and
multidimensional geometric models along with their visualization. For
a few years, the international team of collaborators has been working
on delivering free and open software tools. A non-profit organization
Hyperfunction Consortium is at the stage of registration; its main function
is to coordinate research and development activities based on principles
of open software. The project is centered around the HyperFun language
and the associated software freely available through the Internet. HyperFun
is a minimalist high-level modeling language for a parametrized description
of functionally-based multidimensional geometric shapes with attributes.
A model in HyperFun can serve as a lightweight exchange protocol to
support platform independence and Internet-based collaborative modeling.
Application software deals with HyperFun models through the language
interpreter or using the translator to C/Java and a set of utilities
of the HyperFun API.
- Among all the
application areas of this approach, one pays special attention to
education and computer art. Our extensive experience of using HyperFun
tools in education (geometry, computer graphics, animation and multimedia)
proves that all the tools can be easily mastered even by children
without intense guidance. As to an artistic case-study, a well-known
Russian artist, Igor Seleznev, has generously permitted us to experiment
with images of his real sculptures. The modern abstract sculpture
is very much about the quest for new non-trivial shapes, and we believe
the computer technology we have been developing can help in this creative
process. In this talk, along with presenting HyperFun models of real
sculptures as well as their textured and animated images, we show
how new interesting shapes can be produced. To generate a variety
of new shapes, an original metamorphosis operation over initial sculpture
models has been applied. We are about to demonstrate a prototype interactive
software that allows us on the fly to control metamorphosis process
by the position of a special tool with subsequent selection of the
shape and its editing by the artist through interactive carving on
its surface. All presented results hopefully having some artistic
appeal have been achieved by a team of students from different universities
and countries working collaboratively through the Internet.
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- Jon
Berman, MA
Emulation:
Definition, Discussion, and Debate
Meurig
Beynon, PhD
Liberating the
Computer Arts
Computer-based technology
has had a major influence over business, politics and education worldwide.
The practical consequences of ubiquitous computing are easy to see,
but there has also been a more subtle impact of the Information Age
upon the way we view the world. The power of the computer to transform
our interactions with our environment and each other through the digitisation
and symbolic representation of observables is patent. These developments
have enhanced the intellectual influence of a theoretical framework
endorsed by classical computer science, yet - at the same time - they
disguise from the user and expose to the designer the limitations of
that very framework itself. In the process, received computer science
and its associated technologies have helped to legitimise and promote
an incomplete view of science, and detracted from the real and potential
role of the arts and humanities in shaping our lives.
This paper examines
these issues with reference to the search for an alternative software
culture that can better serve the agenda of the computer arts. It attributes
the difficulties in establishing such a culture not merely to commercial
and political vested interests, but to the problem of integrating typical
computer use with human sense-making activities rooted in engagement
with the world, the acquisition of experience and reflection upon that
experience. Addressing this problem involves a reappraisal of the philosophical
roots of classical computer science that is motivated in this context
by contrasting the paradigms for the representation of experience that
might be seen as distinguishing the sciences from the arts. The paper
concludes with an introduction to a philosophical stance and practical
approach to computing, originating from the work of the Empirical Modelling
research group at the University of Warwick, that is aimed at liberating
the computer arts.
Benjamin
Britton, MFA
- The Virtual
Approach to Cultural Reality
Science objectively
seeks natural truth in a quest for progress. Art expresses the soul
of humanity, and its audiences connect with human culture. Together
Art and Science are being combined to express cultural reality as we
makers of virtual heritage projects attune ourselves to our time in
this world. Cultural reality is the true subject of virtual heritage,
the nature of which transcends both Science and Art, constituting a
further discipline, a new approach to thinking commensurate with the
sensibilities of twenty-first century humanity. Virtual heritage projects
are a manifestation of our cultural reality, and such projects serve
as a force bringing people together in communities, stimulating creative
efforts in Science and Art, reflecting humanity's beliefs and values.
In this presentation, the author traces the forms of three cultural
heritage projects made in virtual reality (LASCAUX, The MOON Project,
Underground Railroad), and, in the process, illuminates some characteristics
of this new discipline to describe aspects of and issues raised by the
creative synthesis of Science and Art, a natural resurgence arising
from humankind's continuing need to understand itself and to care for
ourselves and prosper in the universe we inhabit.
Benjamin
J. Britton (b. 1958) is an artist working with electronic art tools -
most recently virtual reality. Ben has an M.A. from Vermont College and
an M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has exhibited his electronic
art works nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards
for his gallery installations. He grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts,
America's Hometown. After completing virtual reality projects about The
Cave of Lascaux and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, Britton is currently developing
a script for multiuser virtual reality about America's Underground Railroad,
the anti-slavery resistance movement of the 19th century American midwest.
Ben currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio where he teaches Electronic
Art at the University of Cincinnati and engages in creative research on
Internet2 projects.
Richard
Cartwright, PhD
Distributed
Shape Modelling with Empirical HyperFun
This paper presents
technical architectures for a system to support distributed shape modelling.
This system will be applicable as a paradigm for other forms of free
and distributed computation for modelling. The technique described situates
the open range of shape implicit models supported by the HyperFun language
within an Empirical Modelling framework. This framework provides a means
for: managing the instanciation of shapes; collaborative and potentially
real-time sharing of shape models over the Internet by many users; distributed
computation for the calculation for the visualisation of shape. The
system is designed for use on the Internet in a platform independent
way and currently utilises the Java3D API for realisation of shape models
in Internet browsers. This is combined with a new and efficient HyperFun
to Java Bytecode translator. The Empirical Modelling support is provided
through the JaM2 API, a general Java API that enables the rapid development
of application domain-specific and object-oriented software that benefits
from dependency maintenance and other distributed
Michael
Cohen, PhD
Cyberspatial
Audio and Eartop Computing
Jerold
A. DeHart, MA
- Rethinking
School: University to Multiversity
Establishing educational
priorities when technological tides are rising and falling presents
an unusual difficulty for curriculum designers and instructors. Most
schools are still dealing with the
pressure to catch up with technology and are in a reactive-learning
mode when it comes to knowing what to do with the new found computing
power in the classroom. Part of the difficulty in navigating the current
reform is that while we have new tools available and new tasks being
assimilated into the classroom, instructional systems are ad libbing
with their older instructional and curriculum designs. while trying
to figure out how to adapt to torrential shifts. Sometimes those who
make adjustment decisions are not practicing educators or technologists.
Governmental educational commissions, for example, often provide financial
support, and politicians consistently surface the always popular improve-the-education
for all. These calls for improvement usually are directed at the schools
professionals who "have become slack or lenient in their duties."
The solution offered is to raise educational standards and hold professionals
accountable for the results, or just throw better computers into the
framework. This "rebuke the professional, reinforce technical computer
training, and roll more money into schools" simply fails to address
the newer fundamental questions of curriculum, instructional design,
and learning objectives.
This paper identifies
some of the former educational assumptions that have guided traditional
understanding, and explores new questions that come from utilizing virtual
educational systems. Are we addressing the right issues? Will technology
really deliver on its promise? Questions will focus on how the technology
is forcing us to reconceptualize school and affects the role of the
student, teacher and instructional design, and distance learning communities.
By thinking critically on the new opportunities, such as digital libraries
and computer aided instructions, educational environments may take on
entirely new dimensions that may redefine how we design and implement
instructional systems. This paper raises questions about the potential
impact of the technology on the educational and frameworks that question
the former schemata; by doing so, curriculum designers and instructors
could catch up and align themselves and their students to take advantage
of the resources.
Jerold
A. DeHart (b1953) is Assistant Professor in the Center for Language Research
at the University of Aizu. He is currently working on his doctorate degree
in Education, Leadership and Change with the Fielding Institute in Santa
Barbara, California. He
has a MA degree in counseling from Eastern Michigan University He is interested
in how personalities engage the learning environment, and how the learning
environment affects the learner. His research interests also include learning
systems, systems thinking, and ESL language acquisition and intercultural
communication.
James
M. Goodwin, PhD
Issues of Intellectual
Property Control
Tosiyasu
L, Kunii, PhD
- Practicing
Global Openness in Education: From Elementary Schools to Universities
An experience-based
summary of global open education is presented solely for promoting
global open education practices. It has been refreshing to practice
global open education. Compared to local open education, global
open education removes the boundaries of age, organizations, nations,
professions, sex, and disciplines. Many unseen barriers exist to
prevent global open education, mostly originating from survival-intuitions
and fights embodied within life. Hence, it is hard to practice and
therefore important to practice in order to see real advances in
our knowledge.
Tosiyasu
L. Kunii (http://www.kunii.com)
is currently Professor of Hosei University, where he has been practicing
open systems education by organizing open source seminars for the first
year undergraduate students to learn Linux kernels and PostgreSQL client/server
database management. His other roles include Director of the IT Institute
at Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Visiting Professor of Kanazawa Institute
of Technology, Honorary Visiting Professor of University of Bradford,
and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo. He was the Founding
President and Professor of the University of Aizu dedicated to computer
science and engineering as a meta discipline, from 1993 to 1997. There,
he coined and installed an integrated and computer-based educational system
on Unix workstations and on the Internet to cover all academic disciplines.
He received his B.Sc. in 1962, M.Sc. in 1964 and D.Sc. in 1967 all from
the University of Tokyo. He has been Professor of Department of Computer
and Information Science at the University of Tokyo from June 1978 until
March 1993. He received the 1998 Taylor L. Booth Education Award of IEEE
Computer Society, the highest educational award of IEEE Computer Society
given to one individual annually, for "initiating and promoting computer
and information science education in Japan and for seminal contributions
towards the integration of computer-based education in all academic disciplines"
on November 13, 1999. In January 1991 he was elected Fellow of IEEE for
his contribution to visual computer and visual computation. He was also
elected Fellow of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) for
"International Contributions to Pioneering in and Establishing the Discipline
of Visual Computing," March 14, 2000. He authored and edited over
50 books in computer science and in general areas, and published over
500 refereed original academic/technical papers in computer science and
applications. He developed networked workstations porting UNIX and was
the first in Japan to contract the source code license for academic use
and commercial use from Bell Lab. He exhibited the Unix workstations at
COMDEX in Las Vegas in 1983, making him among the first originators of
UNIX workstations in the world. Soon after, he also developed a broadband
network system, now a hot subject, and installed it at 500 sites for real
time control of various equipment and multimedia. This is only some of
his work to advance society by educating innovative people.
William
L. Martens, PhD
Human-centered
information display systems: The Lost Worlds of 2001
- When the film
"2001 - A Space Odyssey" was released, the view of the computer as
a ubiquitous partner featured such user-friendly features as speech
recognition and speech production. In 2001, the view of present information
technology revolves increasingly around the tiny keypad and tiny screen
of the mobile phone, which provides mobile access to a wide variety
of computer-mediated information services. The medium may be narrow-band,
and the display interface horribly constrained, but it is difficult
to compete with the convenience. However, with the advent of more
human-centered information display systems
comes the possibility of liberating human awareness via immersive
displays supporting telepresence, experiential documentation, and
augmented human telecommunication. As with any new medium that technologically
extends human association, the ``content'' that can be carried by
the medium is a primary concern of most developers, but the ``form''
of medium itself must also be considered. It is the premise of this
paper that only human-centered examination can show how new media
displays may shape and control the scale and nature of computer-mediated
human association and action.
Alexander
Pasko, PhD
- Shape Modeling
Styles and Standards in Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage
The issues of applying
different styles of modeling, corresponding standards and systems
in digital preservation
of shapes and internal structures of historical and cultural objects
are discussed. An overview of existing approaches to computer modeling
of shapes as well as corresponding problems are considered. The basic
mathematical representation in digital preservation should serve for
several purposes: reflect the logic of the object construction, support
modeling of parametric families of shapes, support specific modeling
operations with possibility to extend them, serve for generation of
polygonal, other surface models, and voxelization for visualization,
animation and virtual objects presentation on the Web, serve for direct
control of rapid prototyping machines with arbitrarily high precision
to reproduce the modeled objects, and be easily exchanged between different
systems. The data structures of currently widely used boundary representation
systems are proprietary, not robust, do not reflect the construction
of objects and will not last for a long time.We propose a digital preservation
paradigm quite different from the currently popular "scan and mesh"
approach yielding visible boundary surface models. Our approach is based
on using constructive modeling that reflects the logical structure of
the shapes rather than visible surfaces. Constructive Solid Geometry
(CSG) and function representation (FRep) are examined and practically
applied as the mathematical representations which fit the purposes of
long term digital preservation. Open and simple textual format of the
FRep geometric protocol called HyperFun is adequate for long-term digital
preservation and model exchange between systems and people. Examples
of CSG based reconstruction of historical temples in Aizu area of Japan
and FRep based modeling of traditional lacquer ware (Japanese shikki)
are given.
Francois
Pellegrini, PhD
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