Visualisation Symposium

Visualisation Symposium

Tuesday 4 November 2008 Curtin, 203:122

Schedule

9.30 Welcome: Paul Thomas

9.40 Introductory Remarks: The Translation of Data to Visualisation: Julian Goddard

Session 1

9.50 Mike Phillips

10.10 Errol Tout

10.30 Clyde McGill

10.50 Morning Tea

(Melbourne Cup will be shown during this time)

Session 2

11.20 Paul Thomas

11.50 Dave Hedgecock

12.10 Julian Goddard

12.30 Lunch

Session 3

1.15 Julian Stadon

1.35 Kevin Raxworthy

1.55 Suzette Worden

2.15 Discussion Chaired By Paul Thomas

Mike Phillips. Keynote Presentation

Base Data

“Idly, he wondered what these geometric forms really represented - he knew that only a few seconds earlier they had constituted an immediately familiar part of his everyday existence - but however he rearranged them spatially in his mind, or sought their associations, they still remained a random assembly of geometric forms.”

(Ballard, JG)

This presentation challenges the easy absorption of data visualisation (through technologies such as CAVES and immersive dome environments) into the dominant ideology of Cinema. It attempts to recover the space of the dome and other vehicles for data visualisation from the hegemony of the cinematic by providing alternative, but equally usurped, models drawn from the more recent history of digital/interactive art. The brave but flawed attempts of cinema to capture and represent temporal/spatial experiences are compared with the unique opportunities offered by dome environments that more readily embrace the new polysensory interfaces facilitated by information technologies. Whilst the origins of the blurring between these territories are explored, strategies are suggested for decoupling the dome from its superficial similarities with the cinema (moving image, projection and screen) and an argument is made to understand the dome for what it ‘is’ and not what it ‘looks like’.

“Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown is purely coincidental”

(Powell, M. Pressburger, E)

The presentation draws on the work of i-DAT (the Arch-OS/i-500 projects and the Immersive Vision Theatre at the University of Plymouth) and the activities of an international community of Full Dome researchers (such as the Elumenati.com and the NCSA). A range of data types are explored, from astronomical visualisations (such as Uniview) to social data manifest through projects like Cornwallculture.co.uk and the ‘Social Operating System’ (www.s-os.org) designed to manifest the social life of a City.

Mike Phillips is Reader in Digital Art & Technology, University of Plymouth, School of Computing, Communications & Electronics, Faculty of Technology. www.nascent-research.net. .

Phillips is director of i-DAT and heads the Nascent Art & Technology Research Group [www.nascent-research.net]. His transdisciplinary R&D orbits digital architectures and transmedia publishing, and is manifest in two key research projects: Arch-OS [www.arch-os.com], an 'Operating System' for contemporary architecture ('software for buildings') and the LiquidPress [www.liquidpress.net] which explores the evolution and mutation of publishing and broadcasting technologies. These projects and other work can be found on the i-DAT web site at: www.i-dat.org

Errol Tout

I Want it to Sound Like This

The current modes of architectural representation indicate a compelling inclusion of technology, more specifically, the use of the computer. It can be observed how the computer can do what we could do before, only quicker. I then asked ‘what can digital technology offer that we did not have on the table before?’ I started to think about the way it can work with sound. It can record it, it can manipulate it, it can carry it around, it can play it back, pretty much, wherever we want. We could not do that before. It can tell us what things sound like when we have recorded them. It can do this in mono, stereo or surround sound. Is this exclusive to the computer? We have had mobile recording for quite a while now. We did not have the capacity to make sound field or ambisonic recordings before and they certainly weren’t mobile.

We can use sound to offer a simulation of what it may be like to be in a certain space. This may offer a potential description of a space. It may tell us things that drawings may not be able to offer us. The sound of a space has an affordance that images do not. The research question unfolds as ‘Can we use sound to tell us things about space that, perhaps, images cannot?’

Could there be a way of collating a number of environmental sounds and using some type of MIDI controller to assemble a soundscape from the sounds? Can the controller manipulate them to create a sonic objective of how they would want the space to be? The userwould becreating a soundscapeof whatthey want a building tosound like, of what it's like to be in. They can try lots of sounds, different combinations, etc these are played back to them immediately in an interactive manner until they create something they feel what the space should do in terms of an aural landscape. If you had that, could we then proceed to design the physical space that this soundscape will inhabit?

Errol H. Tout is Head of Department of Architecture + Interior Architecture in the faculty of BEAD at Curtin University of Technology. Errol completed his Bachelor of Architecture at WAIT in 1983; he received his Master of Architecture from Curtin in 2000. He is a full time senior lecturer. Previously Errol was the Chair of the Science and Technology Stream and Chair of the Design Communication Stream.

Clyde McGill

My area of research is the difference between areas of opposition. This is mostly seen as borders or coincident boundaries that are the places of tension where the gradient of inequality is steepest (between species or across cultures). As a visual artist and a veterinarian, I have a particular interest in the enmeshment and collaboration of biology and art. In short the art of the science of art. With this in mind, I have recently established an artist in residence program in the Veterinary School at Murdoch University.

In this presentation I will discuss and speculate on the transformations that occur between the imagining of the artwork and its journey into biological data before it is manifest as perhaps an aesthetic experience.

Clyde McGill is a visual artist working in a range of media including performance, print, video and sound. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Art in 2005, and Honours in 2006 and is currently enrolling in a PhD. His research interests include borders, appositional forces, and the politics and culture of inclusion/exclusion. Clyde is the 2008 Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar in Visual and Performing Arts

Paul Thomas

Nanoessence
The Nanoessence research is based on data gathered as part of a residency at
SymbioticA, Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, University of Western
Australia and the Nanochemistry Research Institute, (NRI) Curtin University
of Technology.
The Nanoessence project aims to examine life at a sub cellular level,
re-examining space and scale within the human context. A single HaCat skin
cell is analysed with an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to explore
comparisons between, life and death at a nano level. The humanistic
discourse concerning life is now being challenged by nanotechnological
research that brings into question the concepts of what constitutes living.

Dr Paul Thomas is the coordinator of the Master of Electronic Art and the Studio Electronic Arts (SEA) at Curtin University of Technology. Paul has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space that met weekly and developed a series of artistic resources fitting an Artslab concept. Media-Space was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. From 1981-1986 the group was involved in a number of collaborative exhibitions and was instrumental in the establishment a substantial body of research. Paul, is the founder of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth. Paul has recently submitted his PhD researching a reconfiguration of spatial attitudes and is also a practicing electronic artist whose research can be seen on his website ‘Visiblespace’. http://www.visiblespace.com

Dave Hedgcock

Boomtown 2050

The urban and regional planning system has traditionally used a wide range of data to inform the development of strategic plans. However much of this data has often be ‘hidden’ in relation to both its content and impact. One reason behind this has been the difficulty in representing data in an accessible form. As a consequence when plans are presented to the public the data input that drove the planning outcome can not be interrogated and alternative planning outcomes are constrained.

This presentation will showcase new approaches to long term strategic planning referred to as ‘data scaping’. It will show how data can be more effectively presented and how this can be used to genuinely engage the community in discussions about future urban form. The Perth metropolitan region will be used as a basis for this exercise and a 40 year planning interval will be used to generate future planning options for ‘Boomtown 2050’.

Professor David Hedgcock is Dean of the School of Built Environment Art and Design, a position he has held since the start of 2004. He began his academic career as a lecturer in urban and regional planning at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (the forerunner of Curtin University) in 1979. He was the Head of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning for over 10 years before taking up the role of Deputy Head of the School of Architecture Construction and Planning in 2001. The School was created following a restructure of the Faculty of Humanities in 2003.

Julian Goddard

This short paper examines the use of data in the work of the painter Sine McPherson.

Her paintings are derived from a pain-staking gathering of data, which is then translated, into images that while describing that data give it aesthetic value. The data is gleaned from diverse sources; dictionaries, weather forecasts, plants and birds. Her act of translation from the domain of statistics into a visual code makes for another way of understanding the world about us.

Julian Goddard is the Head of the Department of Art, a position he has held since 2006. He is also the director of Goddard de Fiddes Gallery and a founding member of the Bureau of Ideas.

Julian Stadon

Fluid Bridging Virtual and Real Content through Mixed Reality Environments

This presentation will focus on the data transfers that occur in interactive virtual environments, particularly Second Life and will speculate how the visualisation of this process has created a new model for the experimentation and rapid prototyping of ideas and created content. This will lead to an open discussion regarding the potential contribution such a visualisation methodology has to creative practice and education.

Dialogue will specifically relate to the SLARiPS (Second Life Augmented Reality in Physical Space) prototype, recently on show at DOFA, John Curtin Gallery and successfully submitted as a final Master of Electronic Art project.

Julian Stadon has recently completed a Master of Electronic Art and was the recipient of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) Emerging Artists Mentorship project for the SLARiPS project , working in Linz, Helsinki and Manchester. Julian is a Web Developer and e-Learning Researcher with Online Universities Australia and a Research Assistant for the National Organisation of Media Arts, as well as a practicing interdisciplinary Artist.

Kevin Raxworthy

Midas Project

I wanted to create a piece of software using the principles of evolution that will create a transformative visual artwork. The software I have written creates bots from the instructions contained in their genes. The bots then grow, feed, breed and die based on those programmed instructions, and the environment in which it exists. The bots gain their energy from eating the red, green and blue colours from the image buffer of a computer screen. This evolutionary process creates screen based emerging ink like artworks.

Kevin Raxworthy is a Master of Electronic Art graduate and Head Technician for the Studio of Electronic Art, Department of Art, Curtin University.

Suzette Worden

Construction and Manipulation for the Visualisation of Minerals Across the Arts and Sciences.

Visualisation is a complex process for artists and scientists. In both science and art a visualisation can refer to objects that have material existence or the visualisation can be a representation of conceptual or abstract phenomena. As a contribution to the symposium’s theme of emerging technologies and convergence this presentation will examine contexts where there has been a convergence of interest in the visualisation of minerals. This will include historical examples from the 19th and 20th centuries as the background for considering potential synergies in present day arts-science collaboration.

The presentation will also refer to the current theoretical approaches to visualisation where knowledge building, the expressive potential of visualisation of data and ideas and a consideration of visual representations and models as tools and mediators are providing new ways of understanding and appreciating the complexity of our visual culture.

Suzette Worden was appointed Professor of Design in 2002. She currently supervises postgraduate students and coordinates Design (Honours) and the Master of Design (Coursework). She also contributes lectures to undergraduate units. She has previously taught courses on design history, craft history and digital arts at Brighton University and the University of West of England, Bristol (UWE), UK as well as at Curtin University of Technology.
She is developing collaborative research projects related to Western Australian resources. The 'Wool and Comfort' project is in collaboration with researchers at the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia (DAFWA). The 'Virtual Pit' is being developed with John Reed and Dave Carson alongside a ' 3diaspora' Cornish mining project.