Digital Artworks Research Articles

Transforming Fractals

This issue's article examines the digital artwork of Rod Seeley, who transforms basic fractal images into complex works of art.

From code to art.

This issue's article examines the digital artwork of Siebren Versteeg, whose proprietary code emulates characteristics of analog abstract paintings.

The Mind That Sees and Creates

This issue's article examines the digital artwork of Nicola Hawkes. Digital art enveloped UK-based Nicola Hawkes in ways she never anticipated. A previously undiscovered source of creativity emerged. Even though she had always appreciated modern analog art, the subject never hit home in school because she was consistently forced to study certain types of art that didn't speak to her. She prefers Corel PaintShop Pro over Photoshop, primarily because the latter gives too much to the user.

Exploration on the Man-Machine Relationship in Digital Art

As a unique combination of science and art, digital art is impacting on the traditional art form. Digital art is actively connected with popular culture and consuming culture by the use of television, computer, Internet and other means. Digital art also has a strong influence on public culture which is successfully avoided the defects such as personal privacy and narrow sense. Digital art is an art form which is built on some certain technology conditions. However, the artistic rules of digital art works should not be less than the technical rules. After all, artists should avoid changing and covering the shallow performance of the art concept by using the digital form of technology.

Creation and deconstruction.

This issue's article examines the digital artwork of Edwin van Munster.

Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0: Investigating the sublime in bacterial and digital communication

Abstract Cybernetic Bacteria is an ongoing transdisciplinary investigation that brings together art, philosophy, microbiology and digital technology to examine the relationship of the emerging science of bacterial communication to our own digital communications networks, looking in particular at ‘packet data’ and bacterial quorum sensing. The project seeks to compare philosophical notions of the sublime with a kind of bacterial sublime, demonstrating the greater complexity of the interactions taking place at a microscopic level, when compared to human communication technologies such as the World Wide Web (with particular focus on scale-free networks). The first artwork in the series employed a clear plastic tube of liquid agar jelly planted into earth to allow the soil bacteria beneath to grow upwards and become visible. A total of 100 µL of Homoserine Lactone, a hormone used by bacteria for quorum sensing (a form of bacterial communication), was then added by the artist as part of a performance lecture, with her in effect saying: ‘I’m here’ to the bacteria below. The microbes that have been communicated to then pass the signal on to their neighbours and so on. In theory this enables the signal to travel around the planet. However, the main issue with this work is one of Hermeneutics; the bacteria, which receive the communication, will not identify the artist as human – simply as another (albeit very large) bacterium. The project has subsequently evolved into a multiple screen digital artwork showing network traffic taking place in real time (web traffic, RFID and Bluetooth), a film of bacterial communication in progress (using two strains of genetically modified bacteria) and an interactive conceptualisation of the data from both sources generated using artificial life. The project continues.

Application of Reinforcement Learning System to Interactive Digital Art

The advance of science and technology has exerted huge impacts on arts and as result a new genre called digital art has emerged. In digital art, interaction is a very important element. Unique interactions, peculiar enjoyments or entertaining elements make digital art works look like a game. Various types of interaction are being implemented in digital art using touch, sound, movement, etc. Some digital art works are even called game art because game-like elements are expressed strongly. In general, interactive works adopting concepts such as ”goal” or ”contest” can be called game art. Digital art is quite similar to games by nature. An important fact is that those having the nature of game induce the spectators' involvement and immersion more than simple interactive works. The reason that artists include interactive components in their works is that they want the spectators' deeper appreciation and involvement. However, many of interactive works fail to induce interaction as much as the artists expect. If visible interaction is weak, spectators are not immersed much in the work. This study purposes to apply and implement to express digital art using the reinforcement learning technology, which is used in games that are highly interactive contents, for the interactivity of digital art works, and to evaluate and discuss the results. In this study, the reinforcement learning theory was applied to our art work ”The Flying,” a flight simulation game created as a digital art work using Kinect. This work is a game art for learning how to fly. It expresses the human desire to fly through the process of a bird's flying training, and in the process the spectator appreciates the work through reinforcement learning.

The Transducer Function: An Introduction to a Theoretical Typology in Electronic Literature and Digital Art

In this essay I introduce the notion of transducer function in the fields of electronic literature and digital art. Firstly, I survey the transduction concept throughout its history in such domains as physics, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, physiology, psychology, philosophy, logic and computer science. Secondly, I discuss the relevance of a transduction theory versus the advantage of a transducer function. I migrate the transduction concept into the fields of electronic literature and digital art, showcasing the contexts of application, and several transfer processes and functions. Finally, I apply the transducer function as a theoretical typology and a recognizable system, highlighting some artworks by R. Luke DuBois, Andre Sier and Scott Rettberg that can be read within this framework. Thus, it means taking into account a set of transfer and conversion processes: information, patterns and data among mechanisms, technologies, themes, creative and theoretical guidelines. In this sense, I develop a critical framework that operates as a method for analyzing and comprehend further digital artworks.

A folksonomy-based recommender system for personalized access to digital artworks

Museums have recognized the need for supporting visitors in fulfilling a personalized experience when visiting artwork collections, and they have started to adopt recommender systems as a way to meet this requirement. Content-based recommender systems analyze features of artworks previously rated by a visitor and build a visitor model or profile, in which preferences and interests are stored, based on those features. For example, the profile of a visitor might store the names of his or her favorite painters or painting techniques, extracted from short textual descriptions associated with artworks. The user profile is then matched against the attributes of new items in order to provide personalized suggestions. The Web 2.0 (r)evolution has changed the game for personalization from “elitist” Web 1.0, written by few and read by many, to Web content potentially generated by everyone ( user-generated content - UGC). One of the forms of UGC that has drawn most attention from the research community is folksonomy , a taxonomy generated by users who collaboratively annotate and categorize resources of interests with freely chosen keywords called tags. In this work, we investigate the problem of deciding whether folksonomies might be a valuable source of information about user interests in the context of recommending digital artworks. We present FIRSt ( F olksonomy-based I tem R ecommender sy St em), a content-based recommender system which integrates UGC through social tagging in a classic content-based model, letting users express their preferences for items by entering a numerical rating as well as by annotating items with free tags. Experiments show that the accuracy of recommendations increases when tags are exploited in the recommendation process to enrich user profiles, provided that tags are not used as a surrogate for the item descriptions, but in conjunction with them. FIRSt has been developed within the CHAT project “Cultural Heritage fruition & e-learning applications of new Advanced (multimodal) Technologies”, and it is the core of a bouquet of Web services designed for personalized museum tours.

파티클 시스템을 활용한 실시간 멀티미디어 시계:구상적 이미지를 통한 시간의 형상화

새롭게 등장한 미디어아트는 디지털미디어 시대에 맞추어 새롭고 다양한 표현방법으로 발전하고 있다. 전통예술과 다르게 관객이 적극적 주체가 되어 작품에 참여하고 상호작용하게 되면서 관객과의 소통이 크게 중요해졌다. 이러한 디지털 예술작품들이 이제는 단순히 갤러리에서만 구현되는 것이 아니라 일상생활에서 손쉽게 접하는 장소 및 물품에서도 그 모습을 볼 수가 있다. 이러한 작품들은 더욱 상호작용을 함으로써 미디어아트의 대중적 접근을 쉽게 만들고 있다. 이에 본 논문을 통해 파티클 시스템을 이용한 실시간 멀티미디어 시계 작품을 구성하는 연구를 하였다. 시간은 오랜 기간 동안 전통예술 영역에서 중요한 테마로 활용되어왔으며 다양하게 표현되고 있다. 시간의 연속성과 그에 따른 존재의 가치를 테크놀로지 기술을 바탕으로 표현하기 위하여 시계라는 대중적 매체를 활용하고 사용성과 관객의 상호작용에 의한 감성적 만족을 함께 제공할 수 있는 작품을 제안한다. The newly developed field of media art is quickly making progress to include various and up-to-date forms of expression. Unlike in traditional art, the communication between the art and the viewer has become vastly important, in which the viewer is an active agent who participates and interacts with the artwork. These digital artworks can now be readily observed in everyday places and things, rather than being confined solely in the gallery space. By encouraging open interaction with the public, media art has become more accessible. Accordingly, this thesis examines the construction of a real-time multimedia clock piece using particle systems. Time has always been a significant theme in the realm of traditional art, which continues to be explored extensively in various forms of expression. In an attempt to express the continuity of time and the state of being value of existence based on technological skills, the thesis presents an artwork that uses the popular medium of a clock while also providing both usability and emotional satisfaction for the viewer's sensibility through interaction.

A case study on the successes and difficulties of running an online e-portfolio support site for digital media students

This paper reports on the authors’ experience of running a targeted online e-portfolios and social networking website. The aims of this website were to provide a public platform for students and recent graduates to build and display e-portfolios, and showcase their skills and achievements to employers, specifically in the computer games and digital media industries. It was anticipated that students and graduates would use the service to build their online profiles; and employers and managers in industry would advertise jobs, communicate with job-seekers, and even recruit them through the website. Competitions and other career-focused events were also hosted or proposed through the website. Despite repeated provision of a wide range of information and encouragement provided to the network’s members, it was observed that few members either actively used the service, or participated in or actively supported its many career-focused events and projects. However, the website did encourage some students and recent graduates to build strong e-portfolios. Those members produced and documented their own games and digital artwork; applied for industry placements and jobs; and in some cases established their own new start-up studios.

The Seeing Machine Camera: An Artistic Tool for the Visually Challenged Conceived by a Visually Challenged Artist

The Vision Group at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed the Seeing Machine Camera (SMC) under the direction of Elizabeth Goldring, a visually challenged artist. The SMC is an innovative tool that enables artistic expression for those with decreased vision. The camera enhances the ability to see the face of a loved one, look at a painting in a museum, photograph landscapes or create digital artwork. For visually challenged artists who may feel isolated from their visual world, the SMC provides an opportunity to connect to the people around them, enjoy a greater sense of independence and expand their creativity.

Understanding Material-Based Imagination: Cognitive Coupling of Animation and User Action in Interactive Digital Artworks

We argue, from a perspective integrating cognitive science and the arts, that interactive animated visual graphics, as embodied images whose understanding relies on users’ perceptual and motor apparatuses, connect both mental and material notions of images. Drawing upon cognitive science theories of conceptual blending and material anchors, recent neuroscience results regarding mirror neurons, and phenomenological approaches to human-computer interaction, we bridge the gap between visual perception and bodily interaction in digital environments – calling this process as “material-based imagination” (in contrast to the general notion of imagination as purely a mental activity). Animated images trigger a reflective process in which material-based imaginative construction and elaboration can take place. When this process, enabled by today’s real-time control and rendering technologies, becomes instantaneous and continuous, it mobilizes a motor-sensory feedback loop. This type of user experience constitutes embodiment of meaning and intention through interaction with digital media artifacts. This kind of embodied understanding is pervasive in today’s digitally mediated environments. Through analyses of digital artwork, we show the important role of imaginative blends of concepts in making multiple levels of meaning through embodied expressiveness with motion-based motor input. The implications of these analyses collectively form a step toward an embodied cognition approach to animation phenomena and toward recentralizing understanding of artistic and humanistic production in cognitive research.

Art at the edges of materiality

This paper discusses digital artwork that through the act of creation investigates and integrates emotive subjective abstract imagery in digital and traditional forms.

Re-Composing the Digital Present

This paper investigates the temporality that is produced in some recent and historical examples of media art. In exploring works by Janet Cardiff, Dennis Del Favero, and Omer Fast, I use the philosophy of Michel Serres and Gilles Deleuze to understand the convergence of temporalities that are composed in the digital present, as one moment in time overlays another moment. Developing Serres' concept of multi-temporality and Deleuze's philosophy of time and memory into a means to understand the non-linear time presented in these works, I argue that the different compositional strategies enacted by these artists provide the aesthetic grounding to experience “temporal thickness.” From here I investigate the interactive digital artworks Frames by Grahame Weinbren and Can You See Me Now? by the artist group Blast Theory. In this investigation, I understand interaction with technology, and the way that it shapes our sensory and processual experience, as a specifically temporal and temporalizing transaction, where human movements in the present are overlayed by technological processes.

Who’s afraid of integrationist signs? Writing, digital art, interactivity and integrationism

The author describes the seminal influence that Roy Harris has had on the creation of her interactive digital artworks about writing. Broadly speaking, Harris’s integrationist theory of writing separates writing from speech and (re)aligns it with spatial configurations. This approach offered robust solutions to the author’s creative struggle. The resulting artworks express Harris’s theory in a manner that is impossible with written words on paper, such as the idea that no fixed boundary can be erected between language and the non-linguistic. The artworks also require Harris’s theory in order to explain the new kinds of signs that are created by human-computer interaction with the works, such as dynamic, reflexive and multidimensional written Arabic signs that show in writing, but not in words, how the user is to read them. A brief discussion of the challenges of integrationist theory for non-linguists concludes the paper.

Accidental Intrathecal Injection of Aminophylline in Spinal Anesthesia

Accidental Intrathecal Injection of Aminophylline in Spinal Anesthesia

Categorisation of New Classes of Digital Interaction

This article introduces a new concept, digital interactivity, through examining local digital culture; and video game culture is employed as a metaphor to interpret local digital culture. As a result, ‘control-’ and ‘communication’-based interaction are initiated, based on ‘user to media’ relationships. Based on the degree of physical interaction, ‘liminal’ and ‘transitive’ interactions are initiated. Less physical digital interaction is described as ‘liminal’ interaction and more physical digital interaction is described as ‘transitive’ interaction. These new classes of digital interaction can be applied to real-world examples, such as digital interactive installation artworks and video games.

Diferensiasi Karya Manual dan Digital

The Differentiation between Manual and Digital Artwork. Technology always develops as time goes by. It reaches and covers wider geographic area from urban until sub-urban region. New technology transforms the skills mastered by designers. The manual age has been replaced by the digital age. The transformation is speeded up by the design software and hardware that support each other more in all stages: pre-production, production, and post-production/ finishing stage. Unfortunately, instead of the fact that the technology development eases the work of designers, just at this moment design world is marked by the production of graphic designs with poor quality. One of the reasons is that in this field, both the designer and the design devotees feel to have the right to determine the final result of the designing process. It can be said that the advance technology and design equipment do not match with the designers’ conceptual ability. However, some designers still consider that manual skill is significant to create high-quality design. Keyword: manual, digital, technology

Visiosonics — Developing moving images in direct response to sound — improvising with technology

ABSTRACT‘Visiosonics’ is a term proposed here to describe digital audio-visual artworks (multimedia) where the sonic and the visual are presented in equitable unified interactive isomorphic combination. The term is suggested to describe nonlinear configurations of sound as visual art — sound as moving image and moving image as the recognizable expressive attributes of sound. Such digital forms often involve the use of production processes where the relationships between visual and sonic components are manipulated in improvised performance with technologies involving software (MAX/MSP Jitter) and/or interface usage. Exploring relationships between the physical (kinesthetic reactive) and the cognitive (learned experience) is formative for shaping approaches to improvisation — giving insights into how we arrive at balanced creative conclusion. The production of the visual component of the DVD — Uneasy Dreams www.uneasydreams.com by the Delta Saxophone Quartet — is a point of reference for this practical and theoretical exploration. Ideas that evolved in producing this artwork are discussed referencing notions of conceptuality and practice-based analysis such as the development of digital rhythm between and within media — notions of temporality and the overlapping of coexistent chaotic systems — synaesthesia and the construct of improvising metaphor.