Development of a novel immersive interactive virtual reality cricket simulator for cricket batting

Research in the field of sports performance is constantly developing new technology to help extract meaningful data to aid in understanding in a multitude of areas such as improving technical or motor performance. Video playback has previously been extensively used for exploring anticipatory behaviour. However, when using such systems, perception is not active. This loses key information that only emerges from the dynamics of the action unfolding over time and the active perception of the observer. Virtual reality (VR) may be used to overcome such issues. This paper presents the architecture and initial implementation of a novel VR cricket simulator, utilising state of the art motion capture technology (21 Vicon cameras capturing kinematic profile of elite bowlers) and emerging VR technology (Intersense IS-900 tracking combined with Qualisys Motion capture cameras with visual display via Sony Head Mounted Display HMZ-T1), applied in a cricket scenario to examine varying components of decision and action for cricket batters. This provided an experience with a high level of presence allowing for a real-time egocentric view-point to be presented to participants. Cyclical user-testing was carried out, utilisng both qualitative and quantitative approaches, with users reporting a positive experience in use of the system.

A internet como meio de criação artística: internet art

Esta investigação pretende explorar a relação entre arte e tecnologia, focando a Internet como meio de criação artística através do exemplo da Internet Art (também denominada arte de Internet ou net art). Desenvolvendo-se através de dois núcleos centrais, que configuram os dois capítulos principais foca, respectivamente, a Internet enquanto meio e espaço de criação artística, e a arte de Internet. A Internet, rede de comunicação global e tecnológica, é apresentada enquanto meio de criação artística a partir de um interesse recorrente pelo desenvolvimento de ambientes e obras virtuais, imersivas, interactivas e ilusórias. A partir deste enquadramento, são apresentadas e analisadas as características deste meio de comunicação, exemplificando através de várias obras de net art a forma como os artistas apropriam estas mesmas características nos seus trabalhos, destacando desta forma a clara relação entre meio e prática artística. A arte de Internet é, por sua vez, apresentada através de um estudo das suas características e das suas particularidades no que respeita a tipologias, temáticas e principais questões no contexto do desenvolvimento de novas possibilidades para a obra, para o artista e para o público. A relação entre a Internet, enquanto meio de comunicação tecnológico, e a arte de Internet, enquanto expressão artística contemporânea, é compreendida através da análise da produção com base nas características que definem a rede. Procura-se, desta forma, destacar a importância da net art no seio da arte contemporânea, promovendo uma nova perspectiva para a compreensão da Internet enquanto meio e espaço de criação artística.

Exploring the Roles of Technology and Social Play in Art Museums

This co-written chapter was included in an edited book featuring invited authors from different countries and different areas of museum research and practice. The chapter uses a theory of play by Johan Huizinga (1938) to frame case studies of play-based interactive experiences in museums in various countries. The aim was to use theory to ground museum practice, in order to evaluate existing practical implementations as well as to inform the design of new ones. The book was nominated as one of the 10 best museum education books of 2011 by Museum Education Monitor, and the chapter led to a subsequent technology residency the author undertook in the Spike Island gallery, Bristol in 2012, funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Arts and Humanities Research Council and Arts Council England. It also informed his subsequent postgraduate teaching, an example of which is a recent MA project, which deconstructs play from a computational perspective. Collaborations have continued with the co-author, which have resulted in a number of invited lectures. In this chapter the authors explore play as a structure for supporting visitor learning, drawing from international research in museums and interaction design. Four aspects of play first proposed by Huizinga are explored – the free-choice aspect of play, play as distinct from real life, play as an ordering structure, and the role of play in bridging communities. The chapter argues that play provides museums with ready-made structures and concepts, which can help planning for visitor learning. The research was equally divided between the co-authors, who developed the conceptual and theoretical aspects of the article by drawing on their own research alongside key examples of museum design and digital media.

TINSEL – a web-based intelligent tutoring system on electrical installation design

This paper presents a project consisting on the development of an Intelligent Tutoring System, for training and support concerning the development of electrical installation projects to be used by electrical engineers, technicians and students. One of the major goals of this project is to devise a teaching model based on Intelligent Tutoring techniques, considering not only academic knowledge but also other types of more empirical knowledge, able to achieve successfully the training of electrical installation design.

Formulation interactive des requêtes pour l’analyse et la compréhension du code source

Nous proposons une approche basée sur la formulation interactive des requêtes. Notre approche sert à faciliter des tâches d’analyse et de compréhension du code source. Dans cette approche, l’analyste utilise un ensemble de filtres de base (linguistique, structurel, quantitatif, et filtre d’interactivité) pour définir des requêtes complexes. Ces requêtes sont construites à l’aide d’un processus interactif et itératif, où des filtres de base sont choisis et exécutés, et leurs résultats sont visualisés, changés et combinés en utilisant des opérateurs prédéfinis. Nous avons évalués notre approche par l’implantation des récentes contributions en détection de défauts de conception ainsi que la localisation de fonctionnalités dans le code. Nos résultats montrent que, en plus d’être générique, notre approche aide à la mise en œuvre des solutions existantes implémentées par des outils automatiques.

Temporalité et surveillance dans l'art de David Rokeby

Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire à été dépouillée de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Le recyclage du déchet dans l'art du XXIe siècle : trois études de cas

Pour respecter les droits d'auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de ses documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Élaboration d'interventions en enseignement de l'art dramatique fondées sur les concepts de la communication

Thèse diffusée initialement dans le cadre d'un projet pilote des Presses de l'Université de Montréal/Centre d'édition numérique UdeM (1997-2008) avec l'autorisation de l'auteur.

L'art public : les nouveaux modes d'expression artistique et le processus d'intégration en milieu urbain

L’art public se présente sous divers modes d’expression artistique dans l’espace public. Qu’il soit permanent, temporaire ou éphémère, qu’il soit singulier, interactif ou participatif, qu’il soit traditionnel ou numérique, l’œuvre intégrée ou insérée dans ce contexte tente d’interpeller le public. Cette recherche examine l’évolution des modes d’expression artistique dans l’espace public, dans l’espoir de trouver une définition de l’art public. L’étude de cas de la Ville de Montréal est la base de cette recherche pour examiner les nombreuses manifestations de l’art dans l’espace public et ses périmètres. Dans une perspective conceptuelle et transdisciplinaire, sous lesquels nous considérons les approches artistiques, paysagères et politiques dans l’analyse du sujet, nous nous intéressons aux frontières des modes d’expression artistique et les moyens de les représenter. En somme, nous souhaitons saisir ce que l’on considère comme l’art public dans l’aménagement urbain montréalais et générer des connaissances plus générales. Notre revue de littérature et les observations faites sur le terrain révèlent de nouveaux enjeux qui influencent les pratiques artistiques et la perception que peut susciter une œuvre d’art public aujourd’hui. Nous examinons les facteurs qui les influencent à ce jour. En étudiant la question, nous constatons que la tâche de définir ce qui constitue l'art public est difficile, d'autant plus que les pratiques évoluent constamment. Souvent définie comme une fonction plus cosmétique qu’artistique et dans une logique d'équipement, l'art dans l'espace public joue un rôle passif et fait l'objet de débats et de critiques. Pour le public, l'art public est difficile à discerner bien que sa présence semble être appréciée. Nos résultats mettent en lumière la complexité des processus politiques, les attentes spécifiques, les règles et modalités oppressantes pour l'artiste, la difficulté à saisir les œuvres d'art et le manque de médiatisation pour sensibiliser le public. Avec la politique d'intégration, l’art dans les espaces publics résulte souvent d'une médiation conflictuelle dans un rapport de compromis et d’attentes contrastées afin que soit réalisée une œuvre. Les résultats permettent de penser que les processus de sélection sont souvent pervers et fermés aux initiatives artistiques. En outre, il serait nécessaire dans ce contexte que les artistes définissent mieux leur statut professionnel et leur pratique. Malgré des efforts du Bureau d'art public de Montréal, l'art public semble peu perçu sur son territoire. Par ailleurs, les nombreuses discussions avec le grand public portent à l'attention l'absence de médiatisation pour les arts publics sur le territoire de Montréal.

Dylan Walsh - dance : art, mourning, archive.

Cet essai envisage le deuil du point de vue d’un homme endeuillé. Sur la base de ma propre expérience de deuil, j’ai questionné les théories freudiennes sur le sujet. Face aux théories derridiennes sur l’archive, je me positionne non pas comme un archiviste professionnel mais comme une personne endeuillée trouvée engagée dans un processus d’archivage. Au regard de la psychanalyse et de l’archive, ce texte n’entend ni ne prétend avancer de nouvelles théories sans prendre en compte leurs histoires respectives. Ce texte propose une étude comparée pour une tentative de définitions à la lumière d’une expérience personnelle. Ces questions seront finalement mises à l’épreuve dans le monument performatif audio-visuel Dylan Walsh – dance.

Diagnostic value of the Dominic Interactive Assessment with children exposed to intimate partner violence

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Musealising hope: reflections on the saga of an artistic installation of human solidarity

“Musealising hope” reflects on the trials and tribulations of an installation designed as a tribute to the struggle for survival of African peoples who dare make the long trek to Europe by sea. Its accomplishment involved a number of players whose conduct and reactions to events bear witness to the manner in which artists, the media, heads of cultural institutions, museologists, welfare institutions, and politicians cope with the phenomenon of immigration and with our present-day multicultural societies. In turn, this artistic endeavour and its symbolic signification highlight the changes which art and culture have undergone over the past few years and the kind of transformation which new inter-ethnic communities have brought to bear on concepts such as national heritage, identity or memory.

A technique for evaluation of interactive evolutionary systems

Very large scale scheduling and planning tasks cannot be effectively addressed by fully automated schedule optimisation systems, since many key factors which govern 'fitness' in such cases are unformalisable. This raises the question of an interactive (or collaborative) approach, where fitness is assigned by the expert user. Though well-researched in the domains of interactively evolved art and music, this method is as yet rarely used in logistics. This paper concerns a difficulty shared by all interactive evolutionary systems (IESs), but especially those used for logistics or design problems. The difficulty is that objective evaluation of IESs is severely hampered by the need for expert humans in the loop. This makes it effectively impossible to, for example, determine with statistical confidence any ranking among a decent number of configurations for the parameters and strategy choices. We make headway into this difficulty with an Automated Tester (AT) for such systems. The AT replaces the human in experiments, and has parameters controlling its decision-making accuracy (modelling human error) and a built-in notion of a target solution which may typically be at odds with the solution which is optimal in terms of formalisable fitness. Using the AT, plausible evaluations of alternative designs for the IES can be done, allowing for (and examining the effects of) different levels of user error. We describe such an AT for evaluating an IES for very large scale planning.

Can objects perform?: agency and thingliness in contemporary sculpture and installation

In his 1967 essay, “Art and Objecthood”, Michael Fried bemoaned the theatricality of minimalist sculpture, which replaced the presentness of compositional sculpture with the staging of an experience for the viewer as performer. His argument has since been inverted by artists and art writers invested in the idea of sculptures as props forming part of an artistic experience economy. This discourse has accompanied the rise of relational aesthetics as a dominant paradigm for contemporary art. More recently, however, there has been a turn away from relationality to ‘object-oriented’ art, where objects are seen to stage their own theatrical experiences, performing themselves without requiring the activation of a viewer’s body. We trace parallels between the philosophy of Bruno Latour and the “Speculative Materialism” group and this emerging trend in sculpture. In ascribing agency to objects, Latour proposes a radical shift from philosophy’s traditional investigation of the relationship between the mind and the world. Drawn to the idea that matter can be creative, artists have embraced his thinking. However, we argue that this has lead to a generalized, universalizing humanism that disables political action. Moreover, it undermines the potential for anti-humanist critique latent in object-oriented philosophy.

Public Art Commission Rung by Rung, Tina O'Connell

Research based on a significant public art commissions awarded through competition (peer reviewed) – Pearse Street Clinic Public Art Commission (€20K). Research was examining issues of the relationship between sculpture, exchange and communication, health and well-being. The research used an approach to question the aspirations and dreams of those who were visiting the health centre as part of a routine of daily life. Based on the aspirational concerns of individual visitors, and secondary research of positive effects of light, the final output draws on ideas based around the language of physical signage to occupy a space concerned with visitor health and wellbeing – a Health Clinic. The output has had an impact both at the site and more broadly in the context of examining sculpture and fine art as a social catalyst - based on work of socially-engaged historical practices. The installation at Pearse Street work in Dublin in Nov 09 has received critical and local acclaim. Further commissions within the public arena have been forthcoming despite difficult local economic landscape.