Recommendation of Multimedia Objects Using Metadata and Link Analysis

We investigate methods for recommending multimedia items suitable for an online multimedia sharing community and introduce a novel algorithm called UserRank for ranking multimedia items based on link analysis. We also take the initiative of applying EigenRumor from the domain of blogosphere to multimedia. Furthermore, we present a strategy for making personalized recommendation that combines UserRank with collaborative filtering. We evaluate our method with an informal user study and show that results obtained are promising.

Max Strauss Collection 1911-1935

Documents, medals, and photos pertaining to Max Strauss' service in the German Army before and during World War I:

headspace Digital Art Exhibition

headspace Digital Art Exhibition is a curated collection of artwork created during a youth arts project and research in which young people’s improved mental health wellbeing and mental health literacy were the focused outcomes for the project. The project aimed to improve mental health literacy, and offer greater opportunities for creative expression supporting young people facing mental health challenges. The Inside project aimed to build dialogue related to youth, arts, mental illness and recovery, through a partnership approach. The partnership approach involved artists and health workers in two separate headspace youth mental health services and aimed to provide opportunities to explore the potential of an arts and health framework. The project ran over ten weeks at both centres, incorporating themed activities such as unleashing inner selfie (sketching, photography and digital manipulation); creating dioramas (found object, three dimensional modelling); creating avatars (sculptural and digital animation); and digital narrating and poster creation (visual, written and spoken texts). Two professional artists facilitated the project, one in each location alongside headspace health workers at weekly workshops. A research component explored the appreciation of how artsbased workshops can be used alongside more traditional responses in youth specific mental health services. Both headspace centres had previously provided unstructured art activities as a way to showcase their services to young people, increase access, and to create a welcoming ‘safe’ youth friendly environment. However, these activities were generally extemporaneous and not specifically evaluated. The digital art exhibition collectively shares the artwork created by the young people and reveals the inter-relationships between risk and resilience and overcoming the odds. Inside unleashed possibilities for a sense of well-being and even happiness into the future.

Stillness: A meditation in new media art

While technology is often seen as a noisy, impatient and pervasive aspect of our lives, this practice-led research project investigated the counter proposition–that we might be able to evoke sensations of stillness through technology-mediated artworks. Investigations into stillness were informed by Buddhism, phenomenology, and experiences of meditation and the practice of archery. By combining visual art, performance, installation, video and interaction design, a series of experimental, interdisciplinary artworks were produced and exhibited to evoke a sense of stillness and to impel audiences to consider the form and nature of stillness in relation to time, space and motion.

From mundane to smart: Exploring interactions with ‘smart' design objects

In addition to functional and technological features, the role of augmented objects should also be seen in terms of how effectively they fit into the everyday practices of users and how they enhance users' experiences. In this article, the authors introduce a low-tech, internet-of-things technology called CAM (Cooperative Artefact Memory) that is used as a collaborative tool in design studio environments. CAM works as an object memory technology and allows industrial and product designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design objects, such as sketches, collages, storyboards, and physical mock-ups in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. In the context of this study, CAM serves as an important probing device to understand designers' interaction and experiences with augmented design objects, in their natural environment. The authors carried out a small-scale field trial of CAM in an academic design studio, over three student design projects. In this article, they discuss the findings of their field trial and show how CAM was used by the participants, how it was integrated into the design process and how it was appropriated for different purposes. The authors also found that CAM supported coordination and awareness within the design teams, yet its serendipitous and asynchronous nature facilitated creative and playful interactions between team members. In general, the results show how CAM transformed mundane design objects into “smart” objects that made the creative and playful side of cooperative design visible.

Complimentary collaborations: Teachers and researchers co-developing best practices in art education

Australia is currently experiencing a huge cultural shift as it moves from a State-based curriculum, to a national education system. The Australian State-based bodies that currently manage teacher registration, teacher education course accreditation, curriculum frameworks and syllabi are often complex organisations that hold conflicting ideologies about education and teaching. The development of a centralised system, complete with a single accreditation body and a national curriculum can be seen as a reaction to this complexity. At the time of writing, the Australian Curriculum is being rolled out in staggered phases across the states and territories of Australia. Phase one has been implemented, introducing English, Mathematics, History and Science. Subsequent phases (Humanities and Social Sciences, the Arts, Technologies, Health and Physical Education, Languages, and year 9-10 work studies) are intended to follow. Forcing an educational shift of this magnitude is no simple task; not least because the States and Territories have and continue to demonstrate varying levels of resistance to winding down their own curricula in favour of new content with its unfamiliar expectations and organisations. The full implementation process is currently far from over, and far from being fully resolved. The Federal Government has initiated a number of strategies to progress the implementation, such as the development of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to aid professional educators to implement the new curriculum. AITSL worked with professional and peak specialist bodies to develop Illustrations of Practice (hereafter IoP) for teachers to access and utilise. This paper tells of the building of one IoP, where a graduate teacher and a university lecturer collaborated to construct ideas and strategies to deliver visual arts lessons to early childhood students in a low Socio- Economic Status [SES] regional setting and discusses the experience in terms of its potential for professional learning in art education.

The fabric of transcultural collaboration: Interweaving the traditional Korean vocal form of p'ansori and the contemporary Japanese dance form of butoh in a transculturally Australian context

This practice-led research investigated the negotiation processes informing effective models of transcultural collaboration. In a creative project interweaving the image-based physicality of the Japanese dance form of butoh with the traditional Korean vocal style of p'ansori, a series of creative development cycles were undertaken with a team of artists from Australia and Korea, culminating in Deluge, a work of physical theatre. The development of interventions at 'sites of transcultural potential' resulted in improvements to the negotiation of interpersonal relationships and assisted in the emergence of a productive working environment in transculturally collaborative artistic practice.

Running Men

In this multi-screen installation, iconic male characters from Hollywood films are reconfigured to create infinitely looping scenes of running; trapping the characters in a kind of Nietchzen eternal recurrence. Stemming primarily from my investigation into anxiety as a shared social experience, the carefully edited, looped, and rotoscoped characters become avatars or surrogates for myself, and for the viewer. Through this editing, they are caught in a space of relentless confusion and paranoia – they run with, and from, anxiety. They are never caught by any unseen pursuers, but are equally unable to catch up to any unseen goal. These figures act as models of masculinity, they are objects of identification and emulation. Simultaneously, as celebrities, they are also fictions of the media sphere, both real and ethereal, they are impossible to grasp. In this duality, the work also references cinema’s tangled conflation of character and celebrity identity. It examines the subjective and intersubjective engagements we can have with popular culture, and the way that these engagements can as strategies to ‘make sense’ of social experiences. The work was exhibited in the Carriageworks space of ‘You Imagine What You Desire’, the 19th Biennale of Sydney.

The digital-bricoleur: Contemporary screen-based visual art practices

This paper describes a practice-led methodology that combines contemporary art theory and processes, as well as concepts of fan studies to construct a space for the critical and creative exploration of screen culture. The research promotes new possibilities for purposeful creative engagements with the screen, framed through the lens of what I term the digital-bricoleur. This performative, link-making approach documents the complicit tendencies that arise out of my affective relationship with screen culture, mapping out a cultural terrain in which I can creatively and critically ‘play’. The creative exploitation of this improvisational and aleatory activity then forms the creative research outputs. It appropriates and reconfigures content from screen culture, creating digital video installations aimed at engendering new experiences and critical interpretations of screen culture.

Running men: The precarious, paranoid body in screen culture

This paper discusses my video installation Running Men as an example of how an artist’s appropriative engagements with screen images of the perilous body can reflect the technological zeitgeist of the last hundred years but also create a space of meditative and mediated reflection in Slavoj Žižek’s “endlessness” of the present-future. In this artwork, iconic male characters from Hollywood films are recontextualised to create infinitely looping scenes of running; trapping the characters in a kind of Nietchzen eternal recurrence that suspends them between impending violence and uncertain futures. Stemming primarily from my investigation into anxiety as a shared social experience, one perhaps primed by the increasing intensity of visual culture in the 21st century, these digitally reconfigured bodies become avatars or surrogates for myself, and for the viewer. Through selective editing, these emblematic figures are caught in a space of relentless confusion and paranoia – they run with, and from anxiety. They are never caught by any unseen pursuers, but are equally unable to catch up to any unseen goal. These figures map an historical trajectory of violence and masculinity as it has been projected through various iterations of screen culture Simultaneously, as celebrities, they are also fictions of the media sphere, both real and ethereal, they are impossible to grasp but paradoxically are objects of identification and emulation. In this duality, the work also references cinema’s tangled conflation of character and celebrity identity. This discussion will address the two distinct but connected sites and activities of body/image engagement. Firstly, the artistic process and conceptual ramifications of this activity, and secondly in the artwork’s potential as an installation to provide an opportunity for the viewer (like the artist) to reflect on the constructed-ness and complicated power structures at play in the representation of a gendered body.

Recognition of nonstructural protein-peptides by cytotoxic t-lymphocytes raised against japanese encephalitis-virus

We have previously reported that Lyt(2+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) can be raised against Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) in BALB/c mice. In order to confirm the presence of H-2K(d)-restricted CTL and to examine their cross-recognition of West Wile virus (WNV), we tested the capacity of anti-JEV CTL to lyse uninfected syngeneic target cells that were pulsed with synthetic peptides. The sequence of the synthetic peptides was predicted based upon the H-2K(d) binding consensus motif. We show here that preincubation of uninfected syngeneic targets (P388D1) with JEV NS1- and NS3-derived peptides [NS1 (891-899) and NS3 (1804-1812)], but not with JEV NS5-derived peptide [NS5 (3370-3378)], partially sensitized them for lysis by polyclonal anti-JEV CTL. These results indicate the CTL recognition of NS1- and NS3-derived peptides of JEV.

Catacoustics

'Catacoustics' was an exhibition of sculptural assemblages and photographs that continues my exploration of self-portraiture and the sculptural object. The exhibition was presented as part of the 2015 MetroArts curated exhibition program (Curator: Amy-Clare McCarthy). The work specifically extends the formal vocabulary of my studio practice to incorporate a replica casting of the Ian Fairweather memorial rock at Bribie Island, Queensland. The resulting casts are combined with a series of heptagonal forms derived from the memorial plinth and other sundry components taken from previous exhibitions.,The final arrangement of this diverse field of elements are determined in part by their formal properties (e.g. their capacity to nest, prop, balance, support each other) frequently also taking the horizontal/vertical and the orientation of surrounding walls as formal cues. In so doing, the body of work acts as a manifestation of object-agency. Within this studio methodology, practice is theorised as a site for the interplay of non-human agents. The resulting exhibition thus acts a meditation on the ontology of art practice, conceived as a 'topology' - a fluid network of relationships forged largely by objects.

A real-time algorithm for simulation of flexible objects and hyper-redundant manipulators

Flexible objects such as a rope or snake move in a way such that their axial length remains almost constant. To simulate the motion of such an object, one strategy is to discretize the object into large number of small rigid links connected by joints. However, the resulting discretised system is highly redundant and the joint rotations for a desired Cartesian motion of any point on the object cannot be solved uniquely. In this paper, we revisit an algorithm, based on the classical tractrix curve, to resolve the redundancy in such hyper-redundant systems. For a desired motion of the `head' of a link, the `tail' is moved along a tractrix, and recursively all links of the discretised objects are moved along different tractrix curves. The algorithm is illustrated by simulations of a moving snake, tying of knots with a rope and a solution of the inverse kinematics of a planar hyper-redundant manipulator. The simulations show that the tractrix based algorithm leads to a more `natural' motion since the motion is distributed uniformly along the entire object with the displacements diminishing from the `head' to the `tail'.

Translink Public Art Installation

This project is a public art work commissioned by Harbinger Consultants and installed at Translink's North Lakes bus station. It comprises 4 reflective stainless steel spheres of various sizes, and 2 screens covering the bus drivers' tea room.

IASDR 2015 Interplay Exhibition 2-5 NOV 2015

It has been said that we are living in a golden age of innovation. New products, systems and services aimed to enable a better future, have emerged from novel interconnections between design and design research with science, technology and the arts. These intersections are now, more than ever, catalysts that enrich daily activities for health and safety, education, personal computing, entertainment and sustainability, to name a few. Interactive functions made possible by new materials, technology, and emerging manufacturing solutions demonstrate an ongoing interplay between cross-disciplinary knowledge and research. Such interactive interplay bring up questions concerning: (i) how art and design provide a focus for developing design solutions and research in technology; (ii) how theories emerging from the interactions of cross-disciplinary knowledge inform both the practice and research of design and (iii) how research and design work together in a mutually beneficial way. The IASDR2015 INTERPLAY EXHIBITION provides some examples of these interconnections of design research with science, technology and the arts. This is done through the presentation of objects, artefacts and demonstrations that are contextualised into everyday activities across various areas including health, education, safety, furniture, fashion and wearable design. The exhibits provide a setting to explore the various ways in which design research interacts across discipline knowledge and approaches to stimulate innovation. In education, Designing South African Children’s Health Education as Generative Play (A Bennett, F Cassim, M van der Merwe, K van Zijil, and M Ribbens) presents a set of toolkits that resulted from design research entailing generative play. The toolkits are systems that engender pleasure and responsibility, and are aimed at cultivating South African’s youth awareness of nutrition, hygiene, disease awareness and prevention, and social health. In safety, AVAnav: Avalanche Rescue Helmet (Jason Germany) delivers an interactive system as a tool to contribute to reduce the time to locate buried avalanche victims. Helmet-mounted this system responds to the contextual needs of rescuers and has since led to further design research on the interface design of rescuing devices. In apparel design and manufacturing, Shrinking Violets: Fashion design for disassembly (Alice Payne) proposes a design for disassembly through the use of beautiful reversible mono-material garments that interactively responds to the challenges of garment construction in the fashion industry, capturing the metaphor for the interplay between technology and craft in the fashion manufacturing industry. Harvest: A biotextile future (Dean Brough and Alice Payne), explores the interplay of biotechnology, materiality and textile design in the creation of sustainable, biodegradable vegan textile through the process of a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY). SCOBY is a pellicle curd that can be harvested, machine washed, dried and cut into a variety of designs and texture combinations. The exploration of smart materials, wearable design and micro-electronics led to creative and aesthetically coherent stimulus-reactive jewellery; Symbiotic Microcosms: Crafting Digital Interaction (K Vones). This creation aims to bridge the gap between craft practitioner and scientific discovery, proposing a move towards the notion of a post-human body, where wearable design is seen as potential ground for new human-computer interactions, affording the development of visually engaging multifunctional enhancements. In furniture design, Smart Assistive chair for older adults (Chao Zhao) demonstrates how cross-disciplinary knowledge interacting with design strategies provide solution that employed new technological developments in older aged care, and the participation of multiple stakeholders: designers, health care system and community based health systems. In health, Molecular diagnosis system for newborns deafness genetic screening (Chao Zhao) presents an ambitious and complex project that includes a medical device aimed at resolving a number of challenges: technical feasibility for city and rural contexts, compatibility with standard laboratory and hospital systems, access to health system, and support the work of different hospital specialists. The interplay between cross-disciplines is evident in this work, demonstrating how design research moves forward through technology developments. These works exemplify the intersection between domains as a means to innovation. Novel design problems are identified as design intersects with the various areas. Research informs this process, and in different ways. We see the background investigation into the contextualising domain (e.g. on-snow studies, garment recycling, South African health concerns, the post human body) to identify gaps in the area and design criteria; the technologies and materials reviews (e.g. AR, biotextiles) to offer plausible technical means to solve these, as well as design criteria. Theoretical reviews can also inform the design (e.g. play, flow). These work together to equip the design practitioner with a robust set of ‘tools’ for design innovation – tools that are based in research. The process identifies innovative opportunity and criteria for design and this, in turn, provides a means for evaluating the success of the design outcomes. Such an approach has the potential to come full circle between research and design – where the design can function as an exemplar, evidencing how the research-articulated problems can be solved. Core to this, however, is the evaluation of the design outcome itself and identifying knowledge outcomes. In some cases, this is fairly straightforward that is, easily measurable. For example the efficacy of Jason Germany’s helmet can be determined by measuring the reduced response time in the rescuer. Similarly the improved ability to recycle Payne’s panel garments can be clearly determined by comparing it to those recycling processes (and her identified criteria of separating textile elements!); while the sustainability and durability of the Brough & Payne’s biotextile can be assessed by documenting the growth and decay processes, or comparative strength studies. There are however situations where knowledge outcomes and insights are not so easily determined. Many of the works here are open-ended in their nature, as they emphasise the holistic experience of one or more designs, in context: “the end result of the art activity that provides the health benefit or outcome but rather, the value lies in the delivery and experience of the activity” (Bennet et al.) Similarly, reconfiguring layers of laser cut silk in Payne’s Shrinking Violets constitutes a customisable, creative process of clothing oneself since it “could be layered to create multiple visual effects”. Symbiotic Microcosms also has room for facilitating experience, as the work is described to facilitate “serendipitous discovery”. These examples show the diverse emphasis of enquiry as on the experience versus the product. Open-ended experiences are ambiguous, multifaceted and differ from person to person and moment to moment (Eco 1962). Determining the success is not always clear or immediately discernible; it may also not be the most useful question to ask. Rather, research that seeks to understand the nature of the experience afforded by the artefact is most useful in these situations. It can inform the design practitioner by helping them with subsequent re-design as well as potentially being generalizable to other designers and design contexts. Bennett et. al exemplify how this may be approached from a theoretical perspective. This work is concerned with facilitating engaging experiences to educate and, ultimately impact on that community. The research is concerned with the nature of that experience as well, and in order to do so the authors have employed theoretical lenses – here these are of flow, pleasure, play. An alternative or complementary approach to using theory, is using qualitative studies such as interviews with users to ask them about what they experienced? Here the user insights become evidence for generalising across, potentially revealing insight into relevant concerns – such as the range of possible ‘playful’ or experiences that may be afforded, or the situation that preceded a ‘serendipitous discovery’. As shown, IASDR2015 INTERPLAY EXHIBITION provides a platform for exploration, discussion and interrogation around the interplay of design research across diverse domains. We look forward with excitement as IASDR continues to bring research and design together, and as our communities of practitioners continue to push the envelope of what is design and how this can be expanded and better understood with research to foster new work and ultimately, stimulate innovation.