Frock Paper Scissors [website]

Frock Paper Sissors (http://www.frockpaperscissors.com): curated web based fashion work. Research has focussed on creating a professional and ‘real world’ website (available in the international/public arena) while producing a high quality design and journalistic fashion medium. The hard copy Frock Paper Scissors magazine has been the focus of assessment in a Fashion and Style Journalism class for the last five years, and for the last three years, students from an Advanced Web Design class have been involved in the production of the accompanying web site, http://www.frockpapersissors.com. This project researches the ways in which synergies across design disciplines can be developed through student engagement on authentic design projects. The Frock Paper Scissors website is a curated collaboration of work from the Fashion,Journalism, Creative Industries and Communication Design discipline areas in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Research focusses on how this authentic assessment task has been integrated into the two design (and communication)classes; discussing the different approaches taken by teaching staff, the challenges faced, and the ways in which student learning outcomes have been improved through interactions between design disciplines. The final curated work is a public/international website which successfully displays student work and engages students from different design (and creative industries) fields on an authentic design project within their studies.

"Introduction"

Does heat have a cooling effect on culture? Sweat argues the reverse: culture thrives in the subtropical zones. While acknowledging that the subtropical generates ambivalence—being cast as alternately idyllic or hellish—Sweat nonetheless seeks to develop the specific voices of subtropical cultures. The uneasy place of this sweaty discourse is explored across art, literature, architecture, and the built environment. In particular, Sweat focuses on the most commonly experienced situation, the everyday house. While it addresses subjects from Japan, Brazil, and France, Sweat centres on Brisbane, Queensland—long in the shadow of Sydney and Melbourne in the Australian cultural psyche—due to its enduring and self-conscious attention to subtropical living.

Evaluation of image resolution and super-resolution on face recognition performance

While researchers strive to improve automatic face recognition performance, the relationship between image resolution and face recognition performance has not received much attention. This relationship is examined systematically and a framework is developed such that results from super-resolution techniques can be compared. Three super-resolution techniques are compared with the Eigenface and Elastic Bunch Graph Matching face recognition engines. Parameter ranges over which these techniques provide better recognition performance than interpolated images is determined.

'Music eScape': mHealth application

Research Background Young people’s avid use of mobile technologies in daily life has led to an increase in the design and research on mHealth (mobile health) interventions targeting young people. ‘Music eScape’ is a mobile based mood regulation app that uses an innovative approach to promoting young people’s wellbeing using music. Research Question The design, research, development and evaluation of ‘Music eScape’ addressed a number of research questions from across the fields of Psychology and Interactive and Visual Design. The specific design research question addressed was: How can interaction and visual design be utilized to promote and enable young people to effectively regulate their mood using music and how can the new design further promote their experience of empowerment, control and agency over actively directing their mood journey? Research Contribution Innovation and New Knowledge Through its unique visual interface design and interactivity, the application presents a novel approach to promoting young people’s wellbeing using music and a specific function that allows users to ‘draw’ their mood journey in order to generate a playlist. The mobile app is the first to contain a function that enables users to plan their mood journey and exercise a sense of agency, intentional choice and control over the mood shift and by extension, their wellbeing. The feature ‘drawing’ interface was designed by Oksana Zelenko using participatory design research and Russell’s circumplex model of affect (1980) to inform the key visual design concept and underpinning interaction design. Research Significance The significance of the design research component within the larger interdisciplinary practices that have informed ‘Music eScape’ (e.g. field of psychology, reported through journal articles and other related outcomes), is the unique visual and interactive presentation of participant data and music therapy research within the app interface and interaction design which improves and increases young people’s engagement with the health messages it contains. The industry quality standard is further demonstrated by the launch on Apple iTunes. This demonstrates the application meets the high professional requirements for national release and meets international standards. The app also creates a new benchmark for the quality of health apps on the market as it marks the industry release of a trialled evidence-based mHealth intervention co-designed with young people.

“Conversations Before the End of Time” : Refuturing Applications of a New Media Praxis

This chapter examines how the methods, outcomes and transformative potentials of my new media arts praxis have been understood by a range of critical commentators from disciplinary perspectives outside of my own ‘home territory’ of media arts. By drawing upon perspectives from Human Computer Interface Design, Engineering, Sustainability Design, Tertiary Education, Communication Design and Public Librarianship I demonstrate how ideas from my arts disciplines have had tangible ‘external’ significance and application.

Constellations: A participatory, online application for research collaboration in higher education interdisciplinary courses

The research establishes a model for online learning centering on the needs of integrative knowledge practices. Through the metaphor of Constellations, the practice-based research explores the complexities of working within interdisciplinary learning contexts and the potential of tools such as the Folksonomy learning platform for providing necessary conceptual support.

Alternative News Sources as 'Collaboratory' Journalism. A case study of Helsingin Sanomat and its relation with the Youth Voice Editorial Board

The new paradigm of connectedness and empowerment brought by the interactivity feature of the Web 2.0 has been challenging the traditional centralized performance of mainstream media. The corporation has been able to survive the strong winds by transforming itself into a global multimedia business network embedded in the network society. By establishing networks, e.g. networks of production and distribution, the global multimedia business network has been able to sight potential solutions by opening the doors to innovation in a decentralized and flexible manner. Under this emerging context of re-organization, traditional practices like sourcing need to be re- explained and that is precisely what this thesis attempts to tackle. Based on ICT and on the network society, the study seeks to explain within the Finnish context the particular case of Helsingin Sanomat (HS) and its relations with the youth news agency, Youth Voice Editorial Board (NÄT). In that sense, the study can be regarded as an explanatory embedded single case study, where HS is the principal unit of analysis and NÄT its embedded unit of analysis. The thesis was able to reach explanations through interrelated steps. First, it determined the role of ICT in HS’s sourcing practices. Then it mapped an overview of the HS’s sourcing relations and provided a context in which NÄT was located. And finally, it established conceptualized institutional relational data between HS and NÄT for their posterior measurement through social network analysis. The data set was collected via qualitative interviews addressed to online and offline editors of HS as well as interviews addressed to NÄT’s personnel. The study concluded that ICT’s interactivity and User Generated Content (UGC) are not sourcing tools as such but mechanism used by HS for getting ideas that could turn into potential news stories. However, when it comes to visual communication, some exemptions were found. The lack of official sources amidst the immediacy leads HS to rely on ICT’s interaction and UGC. More than meets the eye, ICT’s input into the sourcing practice may be more noticeable if the interaction and UGC is well organized and coordinated into proper and innovative networks of alternative content collaboration. Currently, HS performs this sourcing practice via two projects that differ, precisely, by the mode they are coordinated. The first project found, Omakaupunki, is coordinated internally by Sanoma Group’s owned media houses HS, Vartti and Metro. The second project found is coordinated externally. The external alternative sourcing network, as it was labeled, consists of three actors, namely HS, NÄT (professionals in charge) and the youth. This network is a balanced and complete triad in which the actors connect themselves in relations of feedback, recognition, creativity and filtering. However, as innovation is approached very reluctantly, this content collaboration is a laboratory of experiments; a ‘COLLABORATORY’.

Photographic database development of Nigerian fisheries: a complementary source of information documentation

The paper traces the history of the different documentation media used for information dissemination. Such early media are clay tablets, papyrus, and vellum or parchment codex. The invention of printing however revolutionized the information industry, enabling the production of books in multiple copies. Photography came into documentation mainly to preserve rare materials and those that easily deteriorate. This paper reports the efforts of National Institute for Freshwater Fisheries Research (NIFFR) and Kainji Lake Fisheries Promotion Project (KLFPPP), Nigeria, to develop an Object Oriented Database (OOD) using photographs. The photographs are stored in digitized form on commercial computers, using the program ACDSee 32 for classification, description and retrieval. Specifically the paper focuses on photographs in fisheries as visual communication and expression. Presently, the database contains photo documents about the following aspects of Kainji Lake fisheries: fishing gears and crafts, fish preservation methods

针对实时视觉通信的图像序列自动提炼

本文提出了一项新技术,它可以实现从任意的图像序列中自动提炼出简洁的表达方式,以便进行高效的视觉通信.我们认为,视觉通信的全过程可分为视频数据的传输和人眼对视觉信号的理解两个阶段.因此,本文以心理学中人对图像的认知规律的相火理论为指导,专注于研究如何同时提高图像的可压缩性和可理解性.我们借助一个缘提取算法来保留对人的视觉系统最为敏感的物体边界,再用一个非线性扩散算法减弱无足轻重的细节信号.为了使最终生成的动画保持时间上的一致性,本文的技术方案是在骼个时空域上没计的.而我们依然能够保持实时的处理速度,因为该方法可以方便地使用GPU作并行计算.为了演示新技术的实用性,我们还建立了一个以本文算法作为处理内核的完整的视觉通信系统并在该系统进行所有实验.统计数据表明,本文方法不仅可以明显地降低传输带宽,而且提高了图像序列的可理解性.

大地电磁测深反演方法对比与可视化及应用研究

At first, the article has an introduction of the basic theory of magnetotelluric and the essential methods of data acquisition and preprocessing. After that, the article introduces the methods together with their predominance of computing transfering function such as the Least-square method, the Remote-Reference method and the Robust method. The article also describe the cause and influence of static shift, and has a summarize of how to correct the static shift efficiently, then emphasizes on the theories of the popular impedance tensor decomposition methods as Phase-sensitivity method, Groom and Bailey method, General tensor-analyzed method and Mohr circle-analyzed method. The kernal step of magnetotelluric data-processing is inversion, which is also an important content of the article. Firstly, the article introduces the basic theories of both the popular one-dimensional inversion methods as Automod, Occam, Rhoplus, Bostick and Ipi2win and the two-dimensional inversion methods as Occam, Rebocc, Abie and Nlcg. Then, the article is focused on parallel-analysis of the applying advantage of each inversion method with practical models, and obtains meaningful conclusion. Visual program design of magnetotelluric data-processing is another kernal part of the article. The bypast visual program design of magnetotelluric data-processing is not satisfied and systemic, for example, the data-processing method is single, the data-management is not systemic, the data format is not uniform. The article bases the visual program design of magnetotelluric data-processing upon practicability, structurality, variety and extensibility, and adopts database technology and mixed language program design method; finally, a magnetotelluric data management and processing system that integrates database saving and fetching system, data-processing system and graphical displaying system. Finally, the article comes onto the magnetotelluric application.takeing the Tulargen Cu-Ni mining area in Xingjiang as the practical example, using the data-processing methods introduced before, the article has a detailed introduction of magnetotelluric data interpretation procedure.

Children drawing toy commercials: re-imagining television production features

Griffiths, M. (2005). Children drawing toy commercials: re-imagining television production features. Visual Communication. 4(1), pp.21-37. RAE2008

Badania archeologiczne a obrazowanie wizualne przeszłości

One can say that our times are dominated by visual communication. Usually all day long we have been faced by various pictures, visual forms and symbols. According to the subject of the book 'Archaeology-Culture-Ideologies' I found it interesting to pay attention to the problem of visual representation, or better say visual symbols in nowadays communication and culture, their meaning and importance. From this point of view I would like to show the role of archaeologists who discover, interpret or even create some of them. The subject is not new of course, but the most often it is taken into consideration by the scholars who practice in social anthropology or philosophy and quite rarely it appear in studies of archaeologies, especially in Polish tradition. In my opinion the subject concerning visual symbols communication and archaeology arise several important questions that are also valid for the theme of book 'Archaeology-Culture-Ideologies'. The first is socio-cultural role of our discipline, next the danger of political and propaganda misuse of the results of archaeological research and then also commercialisation of the archaeological activities. The problem of visualisation and visual-communication can be the matter of various studies. In my paper from the beginning I would like to present the general view concerning visual symbols and figural motifs and the main ideas and approaches to study them from different humanistic perspectives. Then in my presentation I am going to discuss the question why in our culture the visual symbols and representations became so popular – compare to other ways of human expression, for example verbal symbol communication. I would like to see the problem in historical perspective as well. There are a lot of evidences, which support the statement about the power of visual symbols in history. In ancient times for example Horace in 'Ars Poetica' suggested that human mind usually is much more impressed by eyes than by ears. In my opinion that is quite often in human culture that visual impression is before mental one. Visual representations and symbols are very powerful, they can show and communicate various phenomena, they act immediately and quite often in easily way they can associate. So for archaeological research it could be very important to make some studies concerning the ancient symbols and general iconography and also it would be grateful to make some attempts for the study what kind of potential meaning could have visual symbols. In my paper I can only make some general statement about it. But the most important for the topic is reflection on prehistoric and ancient visual symbols and representation and their presence in contemporary culture. So after some general statements concerning the visual symbols examined from various perspectives finally I would like to point out with support of some examples how ancient and prehistoric visual symbols and images are still used and captured by contemporary culture and what is or should be the role of archaeologists activity concerning this matter.

Opportunistic Control Over Shared Wireless Channels

© 2015 IEEE.We consider a wireless control architecture with multiple control loops over a shared wireless medium. A scheduler observes the random channel conditions that each control system experiences over the shared medium and opportunistically selects systems to transmit at a set of non-overlapping frequencies. The transmit power of each system also adapts to channel conditions and determines the probability of successfully receiving and closing the loop. We formulate the optimal design of channel-aware scheduling and power allocation that minimize the total power consumption while meeting control performance requirements for all systems. In particular, it is required that for each control system a given Lyapunov function decreases at a specified rate in expectation over the random channel conditions. We develop an offline algorithm to find the optimal communication design, as well as an online protocol which selects scheduling and power variables based on a random observed channel sequence and converges almost surely to the optimal operating point. Simulations illustrate the power savings of our approach compared to other non-channel-aware schemes.

A robust tri-state election algorithm for scalable applications

Existing election algorithms suffer limited scalability. This limit stems from the communication design which in turn stems from their fundamentally two-state behaviour. This paper presents a new election algorithm specifically designed to be highly scalable in broadcast networks whilst allowing any processing node to become coordinator with initially equal probability. To achieve this, careful attention has been paid to the communication design, and an additional state has been introduced. The design of the tri-state election algorithm has been motivated by the requirements analysis of a major research project to deliver robust scalable distributed applications, including load sharing, in hostile computing environments in which it is common for processing nodes to be rebooted frequently without notice. The new election algorithm is based in-part on a simple 'emergent' design. The science of emergence is of great relevance to developers of distributed applications because it describes how higher-level self-regulatory behaviour can arise from many participants following a small set of simple rules. The tri-state election algorithm is shown to have very low communication complexity in which the number of messages generated remains loosely-bounded regardless of scale for large systems; is highly scalable because nodes in the idle state do not transmit any messages; and because of its self-organising characteristics, is very stable.

Funciones de la fotografía en las relaciones interculturales entre familias inmigrantes

En este artículo presentamos los resultados y el análisis de uno de los objetivos del proyecto I+D+i aprobado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España titulado Mediaciones audiovisuales en las relaciones entre escuela y familias inmigrantes. Concretamente, el dirigido a conocer las funciones que tienen las imágenes fotográficas en las relaciones de un grupo de padres inmigrantes en el colegio al que asisten sus hijos e hijas. Los datos presentados corresponden a las narraciones biográfico-culturales y visuales iniciadas en las aulas por estas familias junto a la tutora del grupo, y continuadas en sus contextos personal y social. Concluimos que las fotografías en los relatos han tenido las funciones de: fuente de información, soporte de análisis, reflexión y debate y, finalmente, medio para comunicar el conocimiento experiencial generado. Dentro de esta última, se han utilizado tres procedimientos que hemos denominado: denotativo autorreferencial, connotativo texto-visual y secuencial.