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.

 

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