Abstract
Only recently has computation fostered profound new ways of designing, fabricating, constructing, and thinking about architecture. While the profession sits at the end of the beginning of this historically transformative shift, it is now possible to look back upon the rapidly maturing landscape of projects, influencers, and tools that have finally begun to catch up with the visionary thinking of the past. A newly-released book, The Evolution of Computation in Architecture, is the first comprehensive overview of the pioneering works, events, and people that contributed to the paradigm shift defined by computation in architecture. Join authors Brad Bell and Michael Fox as they discuss their book – this conversation is sure to inspire students of computation in architecture, as well as researchers and practicing architects to think about how the tools we use and the ways we design our buildings and environments with them can truly impact our lives.
Michael Fox received his Master of Science in Architecture degree with honors from MIT and his undergraduate professional degree in Architecture from the University of Oregon. He has been elected twice as the President of ACADIA (Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture). Fox founded a research group at MIT to investigate interactive and behavioral architecture, which he directed for 3 years. He has taught at Art Center College of Design, USC, MIT, HKPU, and SCIARC and is a Full Professor at Cal Poly Pomona. Fox’s work has been featured in numerous international periodicals and books and has been exhibited worldwide. He is the author of two previous books on architectural computation. He is a practicing registered architect and directs the office of FoxLin Architects. foxlin.com.
Brad Bell received his Master of Science in Architecture degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning & Preservation and a Bachelor of Environmental Design from Texas A&M. Brad is the former Director of the School of Architecture (2016-2023) and an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Arlington. He currently directs the Digital Architecture Research Consortium (DARC) at UT Arlington and was a founding member of TEX-FAB (2008-2017). In 2020 Brad was honored by the Texas Society of Architects with the Award for Outstanding Educational Contribution in Honor of Edward J. Romieniec FAIA. Brad is a member of the Board of Directors of The Dallas Architecture Forum and Chairs The Forum’s Lecture Programming Committee. He has previously taught at Tulane University and the University of Colorado. His research focuses on innovative material applications and computational fabrication within the architectural design process. darc.uta.edu.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
seminar.mat.ucsb.edu.
Sketches of Sensorium
Sketches for Sensorium showcases core elements of the late environmental artist Newton Harrison’s (1932 - 2022) long-term project, Sensorium for the World Ocean. It will premiere at the AlloSphere as a satellite to the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art and Technology’s forthcoming exhibition, Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, produced in partnership with the 2024 Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide initiative. The installation will incorporate immersive audio and visual scientific climate and ocean health data provided by the Ocean Health Index of the Halpern Lab at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
Sketches for Sensorium is a project of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure in collaboration with Virtual Planet Technologies, Almost Human Media, and the AlloSphere Research Group. It will premiere with an original spatialized composition and an interactive data world, following Newton’s wish to impart a sense of hope to audiences.
For more information, please visit:
www.independent.com/2024/09/11/sketches-of-sensorium-part-of-getty-pst-art-at-uc-santa-barbara
allosphere.ucsb.edu/research/sketches_of_sensorium/2024.html
The title of the NSF award is Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication. Professor Jacobs was awarded the NSF Career Award to further her research in integrating skilled manual and material production with computational fabrication.
The CAREER Program offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
Professor Jacobs thanks all of the amazing members the Expressive Computation Lab whose research contributed the intellectual foundations of this award.
NSF link: Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication
George Legrady: Scratching the Surface. Digital Pictures from the 1980s to Present.
RCM Galerie, Paris
Tuesday, December 17 2024 to Sunday February 16, 2025
32 rue de Lille, 75007
Tue-Fri 2pm-7pm & by appointment
whitehotmagazine.com/articles/32-rue-de-lille-paris/6789
Dr. Rincon is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the AlloSphere Research Facility at UC Santa Barbara. His interestes include Architectural Design/Engineering, Computational Design and Fabrication, New Media Architectures and Immersive VR Environments.
https://leonardo.info/blog/2025/01/21/recognition-of-leonardos-outstanding-peer-reviewers
α-Forest: An Immersive Sound and Light Journey Through Inner-consciousness Exploration
Production Team: Olifa Hsieh (MAT visiting scholar), Timothy Wood (MAT researcher), and Weihao Qiu (MAT PhD student).
The subconscious is where your intrinsic qualities thrive; where seeds of inspiration reside; and where many impulses, emotions, and thoughts are hidden and never expressed. Sometimes they only appear in dreams.
α-Forest is a participatory immersive theater with healing qualities, created by the following three artists: Olifa Ching-Ying Hsieh, Timothy Wood, and Weihao Qiu. The work integrates electronic sound, interactive design, and AI algorithmic imaging technology to capture the audience’s brainwaves (Electroencephalography, EEG) and collect data on their physical movements, resulting in real-time co-created content. At a residency base offered by the Experimental Forest of National Taiwan University, the artists collected unique forest sounds from a mountainous area in central Taiwan, Nantou. They also visited the region’s indigenous tribe and learned about their culture.
More about the exhibition (PDF)
The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
The Computer Music Tutorial, Second Edition (2023) by Curtis Roads
Curtis Roads, professor in Media Arts and Technology and affiliate faculty in Music at UCSB, has announced the publication of an expanded, updated, and fully revised Second Edition of his textbook The Computer Music Tutorial (2023, The MIT Press, 1257 pages).
Essential and state-of-the-art, The Computer Music Tutorial, Second Edition is a singular text that introduces computer and electronic music, explains its motivations, and puts topics into context. Curtis Roads's step-by-step presentation orients musicians, engineers, scientists, and anyone else new to computer and electronic music.
The new edition continues to be the definitive tutorial on all aspects of computer music, including digital audio, signal processing, musical input devices, performance software, editing systems, algorithmic composition, MIDI, and psychoacoustics, but the second edition also reflects the enormous growth of the field since the book's original publication in 1996. New chapters cover up-to-date topics like virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, and instrument and patch editors. Exhaustively referenced and cross-referenced, the second edition adds hundreds of new figures and references to the original charts, diagrams, screen images, and photographs in order to explain basic concepts and terms.
Features include:
New chapters on virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, instrument and patch editors, and an appendix on machine learning.
Two thousand references support the book's descriptions and point readers to further study.
Mathematical notation and program code examples used only when necessary.
Twenty-five years of classroom, seminar, and workshop use inform the pace and level of the material.
As Prof. Roads states: "I finished writing the first edition in 1993. It finally came out in 1996, the year I joined the UCSB Music faculty as a Visiting Associate Professor. Writing the Second Edition required going through the research literature in the field since 1993. It often felt overwhelming but I just had to keep going. In 2017 I devoted all my creative time to the project. I promised myself I would finish it in 2020, and at 10 PM on 31 December 2020 I finished writing. Time for Champagne! The production process took all of 2021 and most of 2022. In a way it was a perfect project for the pandemic lockdown, as it gave me a daily purpose in a time of isolation. The textbook has been the core of my teaching at UCSB."
An article about the release of the 2nd edition was published in the UCSB Current:
The book can be found at MIT Press:
mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044912/the-computer-music-tutorial
Professor Roads's previous books include Microsound (2001, The MIT Press) and Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (2015, Oxford University Press).
Synaptic Time Tunnel, SIGGRAPH 2023.
Sponsored by Autodesk, the Synaptic Time Tunnel was a tribute to 50 years of innovation and achievement in the field of computer graphics and interactive techniques that have been presented at the SIGGRAPH conferences.
An international audience of more than 14,275 attendees from 78 countries enjoyed the conference and its Mobile and Virtual Access component.
Contributors:
Marcos Novak - MAT Chair and transLAB Director, UCSB
Graham Wakefield - York University, UCSB
Haru Ji - York University, UCSB
Nefeli Manoudaki - transLAB, MAT/UCSB
Iason Paterakis - transLAB, MAT/UCSB
Diarmid Flatley - transLAB, MAT/UCSB
Ryan Millet - transLAB, MAT/UCSB
Kon Hyong Kim - AlloSphere Research Group, MAT/UCSB
Gustavo Rincon - AlloSphere Research Group, MAT/UCSB
Weihao Qiu - Experimental Visualization Lab, MAT/UCSB
Pau Rosello Diaz - transLAB, MAT/UCSB
Alan Macy - BIOPAC Systems Inc.
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin - AlloSphere Research Group, MAT/UCSB
Devon Frost - MAT/UCSB
Alysia James - Department of Theater and Dance/UCSB
More information about the Synaptic Time Tunnel can be found in the following news articles:
Forbes.com: SIGGRAPH 2023 Highlights
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Media Arts and Technology (MAT) at UCSB is a transdisciplinary graduate program that fuses emergent media, computer science, engineering, electronic music and digital art research, practice, production, and theory. Created by faculty in both the College of Engineering and the College of Letters and Science, MAT offers an unparalleled opportunity for working at the frontiers of art, science, and technology, where new art forms are born and new expressive media are invented.
In MAT, we seek to define and to create the future of media art and media technology. Our research explores the limits of what is possible in technologically sophisticated art and media, both from an artistic and an engineering viewpoint. Combining art, science, engineering, and theory, MAT graduate studies provide students with a combination of critical and technical tools that prepare them for leadership roles in artistic, engineering, production/direction, educational, and research contexts.
The program offers Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Technology. MAT students may focus on an area of emphasis (multimedia engineering, electronic music and sound design, or visual and spatial arts), but all students should strive to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and work with other students and faculty in collaborative, multidisciplinary research projects and courses.