MAT 256 Visual Design Through Algorithms: Explorations of Visual Perception



Jerry Gibson, George Legrady
August Black

Tuesday  13:00-14:00 - Estudio
Thursday 12:00-15:00 - Estudio


Interactivity Analysis & Processes

Basic components of a technologically driven user-interactive system consist of:

A control device such as mouse, keyboard, or any sensing device by which the spectator can send commands to the computer to

Activate changes in data processing activity such as selection, calculation, and transformation of data usually expressed through visual and aural events

The resultant events function as feedback that position the viewer to respond with additional actions creating a dialogue between the viewer and the system. The process must be meaningful and engaging to create motivation for further interaction.

Different interactive methods can be implemented:

Sequential

Team Based

Learning

Symbolic

Where the event is a direct consequence of one's actions: turning the steering wheel (Shaw)

Initializing a process such as digital plant growth (Sommerer/Mignonneau);

Where multiple participants are required

System gathers information about actions and then continuously adapts its responses

where the interaction may not literally indicate its intentions but the effect is one where the medium is used as a technique of expression.

User-Interaction Systems & Aesthetics

. How to translate navigation in information space [Kay] into a codifiable lexicon
. How to expand the complexity and interest of the image through technological interference.

(the transition from one state to another, or defining what it takes for the audience to be engaged with the interaction) and

(the play from the familiar to the non-familiar). Designing the interface sensing system involves studying how the space influence the actions to be generated based on location change, timing, behavior: motivation, calmness, nervousness, hesitation, assuredness.

Gesture and movement of a viewer is recorded through DT to control visualization attributes seen on a screen. The image may be of a realtime video signal from a controllable webcam where focus, zoom, angle of view can be controlled by viewer's movements or handling of a device such as a wireless 3D control unit.

Gesture (pA) is mapped to visualization (pB) through DT according to a set of rules affecting attributes of pB such as focus, zoom, direction of camera.

DT functions as a control system but is also implemented to record and monitor viewer's actions (p)

Figure 2. Modeling the Gesture Movements

Noise Compression Research

Meanwhile noise is introduced randomly into visualization pB and this is recorded as well so that F1 and F2 can be correlated to record how the viewer responds to random noise intrusions at F2.

The viewer's interations involves two sets of behaviors:

. A controlling of the framing of the camera seen in the visualization, and

. A response to the noise intrusion both of which are processed and monitored through DT.

Aesthetic Research Questions

• The cultural and aesthetic questions are:

Whereas engineering and scientific problems are addressed through systematic inquiry, artistic approach functions according to a less definable model:

the viewer and artist aim to resolve an inner tension in response to a situation.

. How to succeed in providing motivation for the viewer (interactive language),
. How to create meaning, and where does meaning enter, or result through the experience.

The current state of research considers aesthetic experience to be an unquantifiable process but this may change as we begin to understand further how biological, mental and cultural processes intersect. So one of the artistic goals of this project is to begin to address the question of aesthetic measurability by defining a situation where data is to be collected in response to decisions and choices through viewers actions.

Another major consideration is the development of precision motion-sensing and recording hardware and software by means of which the spectators adjust through subtle transformations the quality of real-time televised images. The parallel research goal of this process is to develop dependable precise motion-sensing interfaces that can deliver accurate and precise data of spectator gestures and movement in a 3D space as a means to record what spectators consider as best visual results.