Workshop on
Pervasive Computing and Interactive Art
May 14th,
2009, 13:30 – 18:00
Digital
and interactive art has been developing rapidly in the last twenty years and
has now become a mature field. Artists are now experimenting with the latest
technologies and are sometimes developing works together with researchers in
order to explore new types of interaction and novel use of digital
technologies, including mobile technology, context-aware devices, sensor
networks, etc. The key point is that artworks are aimed to be in direct contact
with the general public and therefore provide an excellent test-bed to
experiment new ideas and their acceptance by the mainstream public. Many
digital artworks can thus also be seen as innovative devices engaging the
public in new types of interactions with new media and envisioning thus usages
and social impact. The objective of the workshop is to bring together
artists, researchers and media designers in order to explore innovative use of
pervasive and ubiquitous technologies for cultural applications. Artists are
now exploring new horizons beyond the “white box” or the “black box” inside
museum exhibitions, e.g. digital artworks installed in public space which
require minimal and intuitive interaction that can take advantage of today’s
pervasive technologies. We believe that such a domain can be explored only through
an inter-disciplinary dialogue between science, technology, art and the
humanities.
Proceedings of the workshop are here.
1.
Schedule
13:30 – 15:30 Papers and Demos
(1)
Kazushige
Murata "The Importance of
University-related Informal Networks for the Contents/IT Industry
Creation"
(2)
Philippe
Codognet and Gilbert Nouno "From Landscape to Soundscape”
(3) Ryohei Nakatsu "Dance Robot for Physical Entertainment"
(4) Naoko Tosa
" Hitch Haiku: An Interactive Supporting
System for Composing Haiku Poem"
15:30 – 16:00 Break
16:30 – 18:00 Panel Discussion
Interactive Cultural Experience - Interactions with Asian Cultures
Chair: Ryohei Nakatsu (National
University of Singapore)
Panelists: Ryohei Nakatsu (National University
of Singapore)
Naoko Tosa (Kyoto University, Japan)
Michihiko Minoh (Kyoto University, Japan)
Kazuyuki Konagaya (Osaka City University,
Japan)
Haruo Takemura (Osaka University, Japan)
Philippe Codognet
(CNRS/JFLI, Japan)
2.
Papers and Demos
Kazushige Murata, "The Importance of University-related Informal Networks
for the Contents/IT Industry Creation"
When new
industry emerges, especially in the area of IT and contents, the key issue is collaboration
among several companies that supplement each other by exchanging ideas and
supporting other companies. Basically the policy of achieving business for
companies is to choose internal business rather than external business as the
former is more profitable and secure. However in the case of a business
focusing new market/industry, it is risky for one company to try to realize
this. Therefore it is important for companies to collaborate
each other and to create intermediate organization that would focus the new
market/industry. Based on the case studies, this paper will state that this
methodology well works in the case of collaboration among universities
utilizing informal networks among them.
Philippe Codognet, Gilbert Nouno "Red
Light Spotters: Images-driven sound and rhythm landscape"
Red Light Spotters is a multi-contextual
interactive project which aims to create an open and real-time musical
environment sharing relations with and extending a natural ambient environment,
namely an urban landscape. This interactive sound installation is intended to
be exhibited in a "City View" observatory that are becoming more and
more frequent in top oors of skyscrapers buildings,
and to be an auditory complement to the visual stimulus from the elevated point
of view over the city. In a first step, this project is speciacally
developed for Tokyo, as there the blinking red lights on top of buildings are
creating a mesmerizing dynamic virtual landscape and can be used to create
rhythms and music. But it can be further adapted for other cities. It encompass artistic creation process embedding image
tracking, artificial intelligence with inductive original tempo tracking and
beat prediction algorithms. We perform pertinent image and symbolic descriptors
extractions, as pulsation and rhythm features, in order to synchronize both
musical and control worlds with the natural visual environment. We end up with
emergent rhythmic process for musical creation interpreted and performed to a
certain extent
by sound artists.
Ryohei Nakatsu, "Dance
Robot for Physical Entertainment"
Dance
is one form of entertainment where physical movement is the key factor. The
main reason why robots are experiencing a kind of “boom” is that they have a
physical body. We propose a robot dance system that combines these two
elements. First, various factors concerning entertainment and dance are
studied. Then we propose the dance system by robot using motion unit and the synthetic rule
referring the speech synthesis. Also we describe the details of the system by
focusing on its software functions. Finally we show the evaluation results of
robot dance performances.
Naoko Tosa, " Hitch Haiku: An Interactive Supporting System
for Composing Haiku Poem"
Human
communication is fostered in environments of regional communities and cultures
and in different languages. Cultures are rooted in their unique histories.
Communication media have been developed to circulate these cultural
characteristics. The theme of our research is “Cultural Computing”, which means
the translation of cultures using scientific methods representing essential
aspects of Japanese culture. We study the reproduction of a traditional
Japanese Haiku by computer. Our system can abstract an essence of human
emotions and thoughts into a Haiku, a Japanese minimal poem form. A user
chooses arbitrary phrases from a chapter of the essay “1000 Books and 1000
Nights.” Using the phrases chosen by the
user, our system generates the Haiku which includes the essence of these words.
3.
Panel discussion: Interactive
Cultural Experience - Interactions with Asian Cultures
Asia
is a vast treasure trove of cultures based on its long history. Its culture
includes historical heritages, religions, various forms of arts, life styles in
different countries, etc. At the same time Asian cultures have a lot of
variations as they cover various kinds human races,
regions, climates, etc. For Westerners Asian cultures have been a kind of
mystery as they look so different from Western cultures.
However,
the integration of interaction technologies and Asian cultural contents would
make it possible for Westerners to approach Asian cultures more easily and to
have a better understanding for them. In this panel first we want to discuss
how we could develop various kinds of interactive exhibits for museums and
other places so that through the interactive experiences with these exhibits
Westerners would have better understanding of Asian cultures.
At
the same time the advance of communication and network technologies has made it
clearer that Westerners and Asians share a lot of basic characteristics as well
as cultures. Therefore in this panel also we want discuss the basic nature of
Asian and Western cultures and hope to reach a consensus that at the bottom
these two cultures share a lot.
Chair: Ryohei Nakatsu (National University of Singapore)
Panelist: Ryohei Nakatsu (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
Naoko Tosa
(Kyoto University, Japan)
Michihiko Minoh
(Kyoto University, Japan)
Kazuyuki Konagaya
(Osaka City University, Japan)
Haruo Takemura (Osaka University, Japan)
Philippe
Codognet
(CNRS/Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics, Japan)
Short Biography
of Ryohei Nakatsu :
Ryohei Nakatsu
received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from Kyoto
University in 1969, 1971 and 1982 respectively.
After joining NTT in 1971, he mainly worked on speech recognition
technology. In 1994, he joined ATR
(Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute) as the president of ATR Media
Integration & Communications Research Laboratories. In 2002 he became a professor at School of
Science and Technology, Kwansei Gakuin
University. Since March of 2008 he is a
professor at National University of Singapore (NUS) and a director of
Interactive & Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at NUS.
His research
interests include interactive media, entertainment technologies and
communication robot/agent.
In 1978, he
received Young Engineer Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information
and Communication Engineers Japan (IEICE-J).
In 1996, the best paper award from the IEEE International Conference on
Multimedia. In 1999, 2000 and 2001,
Telecom System Award from Telecommunication System Foundation and the best
paper award from Virtual Reality Society of Japan. In 2000, the best paper award from Artificial
Intelligence Society of Japan.
He is a fellow
of the IEEE and the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication
Engineers Japan (IEICE-J). He is a
member of various academic societies such as IEEE, ACM, IEICE-J, the Acoustical
Society of Japan, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese
Society for Artificial Intelligence., and so on. Also he is a chair of IFIP Technical
Committee on Entertainment Computing.
Short Biography of Naoko Tosa:
Naoko Tosa is Japanese media artist and
Professor. She received a Ph.D. in engineering for Art and Technology research
from the University of Tokyo. She is professor at Kyoto University from 2005.
She was Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced
Visual Studies (CAVS) 2002-2004. She was a researcher at the ATR (Advanced
Technology Research Labs) Media Integration & Communication Lab. 1995-2001.
Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the New York
Metropolitan Art Museum, ACM SIGGRAPH, ARS ELECTRONICA, the Long Beach Museum,
International Berlin Film Festival New media Division and other locations
worldwide. Her works are also part of the collections at the Japan Foundation,
the American Film Association, the Japan Film Culture Center, The National
Museum of Art, Osaka and the Toyama Prefecture Museum of Modern Art. In 1996,
she received the best paper award from the IEEE International Conference on
Multimedia. In 1997, the L'Oreal Grand Prix for research combining art and
science awarded her First prize. In 2000, she received prizes from the
Interactive Art section in ARS Electronica, as well
as a 2nd Prize for Nabi Digital Storytelling
Competition of Intangible Heritage, Organized by UNESCO 2004. She received a
research funding from the agency for cultural affairs in Japan 2000, from Japan
Science and Technology Agency 2001-2004, from France Telecom R & D
2003-2005, from one of the biggest game company, Taito Corp. (they built
"Space Invaders") 2005-2008, from the National Institute of
Information and Communications Technology (NICT) 2005-2008.
Short Biography of Philippe Codognet:
Philippe Codognet is currently
professor at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan), at the Research Institute for
Digital Media and Content, where he is developing researches on “Intelligent
Public Spaces” combining artificial intelligence and interactive sound
installations. He is full professor in computer
science at University Pierre et marie
Curie (Paris 6), currently on leave at CNRS. He is the co-director of the
Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics, a joint laboratory between CNRS,
UPMC, University of Tokyo, Keio University and National Institute for
Informatics in Japan. From 2003 to 2007, he was Attache for Science and Technology at the French Embassy in
Japan (Tokyo). Following mathematics and computer science studies at the
University of Bordeaux, he received a Ph.D. from this University in 1989 and
then joined the French National Institute for Computer Science (INRIA) as
senior researcher in 1990. After a sabbatical leave at Sony Computer Science
Laboratory in Paris in 1997/8, he joined University Pierre et
Marie Curie (Paris 6) in September 1998, as full professor. His researches
focused on programming languages, artificial intelligence, logic, multi-agent
systems and virtual reality. He participated in many national and European
projects and over 80 publications in international journals and conferences are
detailing his researches.
In addition to his purely scientific activities, he
worked on the relationships between art and new technologies as
theoretician/art critic , workshop organiser
and curator. He was member of the
Scientific Council for research and innovation of the Visual Arts Department of
the French Ministry of Culture from 2000 to 2003.