PlayTime: Where Technology & Culture Unite

Art Clay (CHE)

By combining communication and education theory with communicative arts, it is possible to convey complex ideas in a varied and incremental manner. The concept that is at the base of the PlayTime project takes this as its maxim to present of collection of projects in health, technology and the arts. All of the projects in the exhibtion celebrate various novel methods of proactive participation. The project concern themselves with such diverse themes as information retrieval using cross media solutions, creating interactive art using wearable technology, electronic training systems for proactive health, and realtime panoramics for presentations related to culture. Although diverse in theme, the projects find a common denominator in the way they engage the public. Visitors have the opportunity to enjoy interactivity for purposes of arts, edutainment, and of course good health.

PlayTime in System Design: The Invisible Made Visible

Sven Stauber & Dr. Ling Liu (ETH Zurich)

Bringing technology into a cultural context through creative projects has proved to be a challenge to the computer scientist, but helps spread the message that computer programming is a creative act. On the basis of the two projects "Drawing Code" and "Panoramic Art in Real Time" we provide insight into the technologies and design decisions behind the scenes. Common ground of both projects is the usage of the programming language Oberon and system software developed at the Native Systems Research Group at ETH Zurich. The underlying hardware platforms are indeed very different, ranging from an 8-bit microcontroller with several hundred bytes of memory to the QBIC Belt Integrated Computer (ETH Zurich) based on a 32-bit microprocessor with several hundred megabytes of memory. We explain how such differences affect the design of the system software and the way these systems are programmed.

The Making of Solid Air

Michael Bergdorf (CHE)

High-Reynolds number flows are computationally challenging, because of the broad spectrum of length and time scales inherent to the flow. This spectrum becomes wider with increasing Reynolds numbers. By employing state-of-the-art particle methods based on highly portable particle mesh frameworks developed in our group, we are able to obtain the full, transient vorticity field as calculated by hundreds to thousands of CPUs. Advanced visualization techniques such as GPU-based volume rendering allow us to inspect and dissect the flows and study their dynamics. The output of these simulations is commonly presented on computer displays and at times expanded into virtual environment, enabling the visual experiencing of the flow geometry. Solid Air enables the embodiment of the fleeting geometry of fluids and it exposes to the multitude of our senses the anatomy of the "muscles" of fluid flow.

About Creating Intent using Technology

Dr. Dennis Majoe (GBR)

The Tai Chi project investigates how modern technology can be used pro-actively in health care, exercising mind body “intent”, which has been associated with healing for many thousands of years. The visitor is placed into a computer based play experience that involves a sensory motor biofeedback that provides the “learning” situation. The system coaxes the visitor into a behavioral pattern and a set of small, slow movements that energizes parts of the body depending on the chosen algorithm and settings. After working with the system the visitor comes to understand that by focusing intent in the body in a playful way they can stimulate blood flow and internal energy in a way that supports the concept of proactive health.

Interactive Performance Design for Improvised Butoh Dance

Irene Kulka (CHE) & Thomas Stricker (CHE)

This talk will point out concepts of gesture and gesture recognition from motor physiology and physics and juxtaposes them with artistic concepts of gesture. From this, novel ideas regarding gesture recognition for artwork will be discussed. Chosing individual pieces of art, the talk will present characteristic examples of different gesture-based concepts, their developments as observed in performative and visual arts, and how gesture-based concepts form our thinking in multimedia art. The last part of the talk will discuss visions and reality, based on concrete examples of gesture-based artwork realized at the Department of Computer Science of the ETH Zurich.

Transdisciplinary Digital Art: Sound, Vision and the New Screen

Steve Gibson (CAN)

Transdisciplinary Digital Art is a collection of papers from two parallel conferences: Digital Art Weeks in Zurich, Switzerland and Interactive Futures in Victoria, Canada. The term “Transdisciplinary” distinguishes it from the older term Interdisciplinary Art. Interdisciplinarity implies a certain level of detachment across the mediums and transdisciplinarity implies a level of direct connection between mediums: the artist becomes the engineer and the engineer becomes the artist. In collaboration, both have enough expertise to address concerns across disciplines. This is acknowledges that there are varying levels of expertise within transdisciplinary work, but it also states that transdisciplinary art in its best sense makes the effort to understand the medium of the other in more than superficial terms. From the technical to the philosophical to the poetic, the papers cover a wide range of topics related to digital media art. Each paper contributes to a collective understanding of the topics and the volume as a whole aids and abets the furthering of an apparent transdisciplinary future.

Creating Expressive Software Instruments for Science, Art and Entertainment

Dr. Stefan Müller Arisona (CHE)

This talk presents challenges of constructing modern software instruments that leverage the possibilities of emerging display systems and human interaction devices. Typically, today's multimedia systems need to process vast amounts of data in real-time. High-dimensional data sets demand multi-modal and multi-user interaction techniques and computer-aided design methodologies. Specifically, we present our approaches to address such issues: Soundium is a software platform and also a research project at the Native Systems Group of ETH Zurich and at Media Arts and Technology of UC Santa Barbara. We will give concrete examples where Soundium has been applied to explore the capabilities of media-augmented environments.

Inventing Malleable Scores: From Paper to Screen Based Scores

Art Clay (CHE)

The contents of this talk approaches the idea of artistic license of the interpreting artist as a positive aspect of creative composition. The possibilities of participating in the creative act beyond the role of the traditional interpreter are illustrated through out the talk by tracing the development of "malleability" or non-linearity in music score writing in selected works of the author. Starting with the linear standard score, many visual and audio examples are given for the various forms and types of malleable scores. The talk concludes with a discussion of how this has all that lead up to the application of real-time electronic scores in which a concept of self-conduction is feasibly implemented for use in distributed ensemble.

Interactive Visualization

Martina Eberle (CHE)

NOVA is a volumetric LED object offering the unique opportunity to view content at 360° creating a totally new perception of visual content in a real three-dimensional imaging space projecting dynamic content onto panoramic RGB voxels arranged in a three-dimensional matrix. A boundless variety of configuration possibilities in combination with unlimited content management options invite the creative community in architecture, interior design and communications to explore the visual properties and possibilities of this new medium: The LED modules, equipped with voxel strings of variable length and distance between the voxels, offer the opportunity to create a wide range of physical objects; NOVA content creation software allows importing and transforming any kind of 2D and 3D content; NOVA player software allows to manage, manipulate and mix content from various sources including life streams using a variety of protocols including dmx.

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Stereoscopic Film in the Digital Age

Antoine Thomas-Gérard & Prof. Dr. Cary Kornfeld (ETH Zurich)

StereStereoscopic Imaging gives us a wonderful optical illusion of three dimensional perception. The resulting effects have the capability to captivate the viewer, providing images that are more stunning than real. Building a digital stereoscopic processing system for movie making requires a solid background in a variety of topics, ranging from the construction of computer systems and performance evaluation to an understanding of the human vision system. Traditional Film schools lack the engineering skills and background in binocular depth perception to teach 3D film making in all its aspects of cameras systems and software necessary to create these movies. Making movies in 3D quality requires not only special equipment, tools and knowledge, but teaching the subject proved to be a good “hands-on” example that can be used to develop a better understanding of visual perception and digital imaging.