Develop your technical literacy
and creative design skills
For more information, visit:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/mad
Develop your technical literacy
and creative design skills
For more information, visit:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/mad
Emergent Expression: Distributing Human-Nonhuman Creative Agencies in Computational Art Practices
Abstract
Since the 1950s, computer artists have used generative systems to explore creative agency in collaboration with autonomous processes that exhibit emergent behavior and self-organization. In the 1990s, artistic and scientific investigations into life-like computation introduced aesthetic frameworks inspired by biological growth and digital morphogenesis. More recently, advancements in materials and fabrication technologies have made translating generative processes into the physical domain increasingly feasible.
This dissertation presents findings from my artistic practice, conceptualized as emergent expression, in the context of distributed creative agencies involving computational and material processes. These processes can display novel behaviors that influence the form in unexpected ways. The research encompasses both virtual and physical domains, investigating how generative systems can be effectively integrated into digital fabrication and craft workflows. Through practice-led research and collaborative projects, I develop computational complex systems informed by artificial life aesthetics, as well as new fabrication methodologies tailored for craft applications. These systems result in hybrid prototypes that demonstrate how generative form, material behavior, and human intervention can be combined into cohesive artworks.
This investigation centers emergence as a creative construct, builds on my art practice-based research, and leads to the development of novel computational tools, techniques, and workflows that negotiate human creative agency.
Flow Sphere: A 3D Visualization Project for EEG Signals Tracking Brain Wave of Flow State in Response to Individual & Group Music Performing
Abstract
Everyday objects and tools, such as power drills and game controllers, are typically designed with interfaces optimized for easy access by the grasping hand, allowing users to interact while maintaining a secure hold. Designing personalized, hand-reachable interfaces tailored to individual grasping conditions remains a significant challenge. Recent advancements in parametric and generative design technologies present new opportunities to reduce the workload of developing customized interfaces. Furthermore, as physical and virtual realities increasingly intersect, designers face complex challenges and opportunities to create hybrid interfaces seamlessly integrating physical and digital UI elements. Understanding and characterizing user-specific hand-object interactions is central to this endeavor. To address these challenges, this work introduces a novel empirical design approach that seeks to shift the design workflow to provide personalized interfaces and adapt the interface to the user instead of the user adapting to a generic interface. By leveraging hand-tracking technology, this approach generates kinematic profiles that capture individual finger reachability during object grasping. Additionally, the approach incorporates physiological signals, such as electromyography (EMG) and displacement costs, to explore how they can characterize physical effort within their reachable space. Building on previous work (Aponte and Caetano et al. 2024), we present a design framework that utilizes volumetric boundaries and trajectories derived from user data to create personalized interaction profiles. These profiles can be integrated into standard 3D modeling tools to assess user-specific hand-object interaction conditions and identify optimal regions of interest for UI element placement, providing a foundational baseline for the interface design process. The results and insights from an initial formative user study on reachability, motion cost, and guidelines for implementing the introduced design methodology are presented. This approach makes personalized interface development more feasible by enabling designers to create new interfaces from standard poses, refine existing designs, and evaluate scenarios involving limited mobility.
The fellowship allows Croskey to pursue a project that she is passionate about - enabling marginalized communities to secure their place in the future historical record, ensuring that emergent technologies, such as AI, elevate and empower these groups by reflecting their histories.
"Receiving the NSF GRFP amid our current political climate has given me an even greater sense of responsibility to pursue my research with full force,” Croskey said."
Read more in the UCSB College of Engineering Newsletter.
This year’s theme was “Myths and Legends”. Other artists receiving the award with Professor Kuchera-Morin were Mary Heebner, Gabriela Ruiz, Manjari Sharma, and Diana Thater.
The Loop Lab Busan Exhibition is a collaborative citywide event spanning approximately 20 cultural spaces, including public and private museums, alternative spaces, and galleries throughout Busan, Korea.
www.looplabbusan.com/exhibition
www.ocadu.ca/events-and-exhibitions/research-talks-dr-haru-ji
The software creates personalized visuals and abstract art in an immersive landscape that is based on the memories of the crew members. The news articles highlight their work on a software pipeline that was being used at the St. Kliment Ohridski base on Livingston Island, Antarctica.
For more information, please see:
UCSB's The Current news magazine article:
New frontiers for well-being in Antarctica and isolated spaces.
Santa Barbara Independent article:
UC Santa Barbara Researchers Design Tools to Combat Isolation in Extreme Environments.
Iason Paterakis, Nefeli Manoudaki - AI driven visuals: Icescape
Iason Paterakis, Nefeli Manoudaki - AI driven visuals: Beach
Iason Paterakis, Nefeli Manoudaki - AI driven visuals: Plains
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.
UCSB News: Making Automation More Human Through Innovative Fabrication Tools
NSF link: Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication
From the author/composer:
"For this album I have assembled a collection of contrasting works from the archives. Some have previously been released, others not. Three pieces: Sculptor, Touche pas, and Bubble chamber are based on the microsound techniques of granular synthesis and micro-montage. By contrast, Modulude, Clang-tint, and Still life were conceived before my microsound period."
"For any given piece, my compositional practice usually takes years. For example, Modulude was initially conceived in 1998 and finished 23 years later. What I call my microsound period began in 1998 and culminated in the book Microsound (The MIT Press) and the album POINT LINE CLOUD (2004), re-issued by the Presto?! label (Milan) in 2019. Sculptor appeared on that album. Clang-tint traces back to 1991. It was finally released in 2021 by the SLOWSCAN label (’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands) in a limited edition LP. Prior to this, the first movement of Clang-tint, Purity, appeared on the album CCMIX Paris (2001 Mode Records, New York). The origins of Still life date back even further, to the 1980s. Touche pas appeared on the DVD FLICKER TONE PULSE (2019 Wergo Schallplatten, Mainz). Bubble chamber is a new release."
ellirecords.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-music-1994-2021
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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.
Congratulations to Payton Croskey, who recently received one of the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
Professor Kuchera-Morin has received a 2025 Art Award by The Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. The awards ceremony took place on July 13, 2025 at MCASB in downtown Santa Barbara.
The audio-visual work Artificial Nature by MAT alumni Graham Wakefield and Haru Ji is being exhibited at the Busan Loop Lab exhibition and Roof Top Busan Festival in Busan, South Korea.
An AI driven audio-visual system developed by MAT PhD students Iason Paterakis and Nefeli Manoudaki has been featured in the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper and the UCSB Current magazine. The system was developed to help researchers cope with the difficulties of working in remote, extreme environments.
MAT Professor Jennifer Jacobs has been awarded the NSF CAREER Award to conduct research in Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication.
A new album and CD of professor emeritus Curtis Roads’ work is being released in May 2025 by Elli Records, France. The album is titled “Electronic Music 1994-2021.
