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1. CfP on Immersive Virtual, Mixed, or Augmented Reality Art
2. NYT: Where Science and Art Collide
3. ITALY: Pari Center Blogs
4. AESTHETIC PEACE Group
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From: mroussou@acm.org
Subject: CfP on Immersive Virtual, Mixed, or Augmented Reality Art
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:48:45 +0200
Call for Papers on Immersive Virtual, Mixed, or Augmented Reality Art
a Special Issue of the International Journal of Arts and Technology
http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=914
Important Dates
Submission intent (title and 300-word abstract): 1 September, 2008
Deadline for full paper submission: 31 October, 2008
Review results returned to authors: February 29, 2009
Deadline for camera-ready papers: June 30, 2009
Guest Editors:
Maria Roussou, makebelieve design & consulting, Greece
Maurice Benayoun, UniversitÎ"© Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, France
For the past fifteen years, virtual reality (VR) and, more recently, mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR) environments that immerse their participants in imaginary space, have emerged to define an area that blurs the lines between the seemingly different worlds of research, creativity, and technological practice, while exploring the interdependencies between the virtual and the physical. From the immersive, yet more esoteric, CAVE®-based projects of the mid-nineties to the contemporary open experiences spread out in virtual as well as physical space, creative VR/MR/AR applications are challenging the ways we perceive both digital art and the science and engineering behind them.
Early enthusiasm with the use of projection-based display structures and the development of authoring solutions for application-building has brought a level of maturity, characterized by the emergence of new technical and conceptual forms. It is this particular moment in the evolution of immersive VR/MR/AR art practice that this special issue seeks to capture. Hence, in this special issue, we aim to bring forth the topic of immersive art in its current maturity, present the newest developments and explore its evolving forms, aspiring to shape a framework that will help us to develop the next generation of environments.
Therefore, this special issue will not include contributions that deal solely with describing a narrow and specific piece of art or research without reference to a conceptual framework or a critical analysis; rather we encourage contributions that take a broad and integrative view of relevant topics, encompassing both theoretical and empirical perspectives of digitally-generated creative spaces.
Submissions are invited that touch on but are not limited to the following themes:
* Theoretical discourse on immersive virtual, mixed or augmented reality art environments.
* Novel design concepts, applications, implementations and experiences from the actual deployment of immersive VR/MR/AR art applications
* Research or empirical work addressing some of the open questions in the design of immersive art environments. For example:
* Issues concerning creativity and aesthetics, visual depiction, storytelling and narrative, triggering other senses, embodiment, etc.
* The fine line between designing for entertainment or for artistic pleasure
* Issues in the design of interactivity, interfaces, and interaction methodologies, such as navigation by and tracking of multiple users, meaningful group interaction, the integration of multi-modal interfaces (e.g. tactile and haptic displays, sensing technologies), etc.
* Issues concerning the design and development process of immersive artwork, such as the conceptualisation and collaboration challenges presented by multitalented interdisciplinary teams working together, the unavailability of resources and work environments, etc.
* Issues in the deployment of different display configurations, sizes, and installations, as well as challenges in the practical use with diverse audiences (e.g., the need to guide people in experiencing the artwork)
Contributions are encouraged from different disciplinary perspectives, including fine arts, computer science, performance art, theatre, design, architecture, communications and social sciences, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and enabling technologies.
Contributions should take a broad and integrative view of relevant topics, rather than merely describing a narrow and specific piece of art or research.
See http://www.inderscience.com/browse/callpaper.php?callID=914 for more information.
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From: id@elumenati.com
Subject: NYT: Where Science and Art Collide
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:29:29 +0200
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/science/26elas.html
February 26, 2008
Where Science and Design Collide, a Few Weird Sights to Behold
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/john_schwartz/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
In the drawing, a nude man and woman stand on either side of a wall.
Each wears a plastic breathing mask that covers the nose and mouth; the
masks are connected to air hoses that pass through the wall. The hoses
attach to pouches at each other's underarms and crotches.
It is a device that allows people — and there is no polite way to put
this — to sniff each other. Remotely.
Things can get weird when the worlds of science and design collide. A
new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Design and the
Elastic Mind," contains more than 200 arresting and provocative objects
and images that may evoke a "whoa" or an "ugh" or simply "huh?"
When art museums take on science, the results are often pretty but
superficial, with blown-up images from under a microscope or through a
telescope and artificial colors, said Peter L. Galison, a Harvard
professor of the history of science and of physics. He said this
"out-of-context aestheticization" was not just "kitschy," but could also
kill the depth and context that made science interesting.
"Design and the Elastic Mind," Dr. Galison said approvingly, is
different — playful, yet respectful of the science that informs each
object on display. "It's science in a new key," he said.
In this exhibition, Paola Antonelli, senior curator in the museum's
department of architecture and design, gathered the work of designers
and scientists, meeting in the sweet spot on a cultural Venn diagram
where the two disciplines overlap.
The exhibition came together through an unusual process, Ms. Antonelli
said. Some two years ago, she began talking with Adam Bly, the editor of
a hip science magazine, Seed, and asked him to collaborate with her on a
series of salons devoted to exploring the relationship between science
and design.
"At the beginning it was this sort of apology-fest," Ms. Antonelli said.
She recalled the way scientists would open their talks by saying, "I
don't know what art is," and the artists would say they did not know any
formulas. Through the salons — with speakers like Benoît Mandelbrot, a
mathematician who pioneered the creation of gorgeous images from
mathematical functions, and leading designers — the outlines of an
exhibition took form.
The works that come from laboratories have a quality that can evoke
wonder: a soft-bodied robot designed to move like a caterpillar, and
movies of a circular pool with wave-generation machines ringed around it
that beat the water in rhythms and that can form letters of the
alphabet. And, yes, some images come from under microscopes. But they
stay true to their scientific roots, said Paul W. K. Rothemund, a
scientist at Caltech, whose work is on display. He manipulated molecules
of DNA to create a series of microscopic smiley faces that are one
one-thousandth the width of a human hair.
"The work isn't mere artwork," he wrote in an e-mail message in response
to questions. "Artwork is necessary for engineering and science."
The designers tend to approach the work with a bit more puckishness.
There are visual displays of data that present, for example, thousands
of personal advertisements in a heart-shaped flux of bubbles that can be
searched and manipulated. And there are the smell tubes. The designer of
the "Smell +" project, James Auger, said he wanted to underscore the
diminished importance the sense of smell had in our lives by creating a
device that allowed people to smell each other's bodily scents before
they met. It would be a kind of olfactory blind-dating service.
Is it a serious proposal? Mr. Auger, who is from Britain, hedges. The
science of smell, he notes, is serious, and he cites research into smell
as a marker for genetic compatibility. He said he was fascinated by
science and scientists, who were "creating amazing possibilities of what
it means to be human. But they don't necessarily understand what to be
human is. That's where design can play a very important role."
So while scientists have studied the ways that smell might have
developed to warn humans of food gone bad or an approaching fire, it is
up to designers to encourage people to think about what is lost when we
have "fire alarms and sell-by dates and fridges" and, for that matter,
deodorants and perfume.
Other projects try to build by nature's plan. Joris Laarman, a designer
in the Netherlands, is designing chairs and sofas based on his research
into the way that bone grows — giving support where needed and removing
material where less support is required. A result is an eerily elegant
assortment of legs that form a whole, using software that mimics
evolutionary processes. "I try to create beautiful objects that make
sense," Mr. Laarman said.
And what can we make of the display of "dressing the meat of tomorrow"?
It is a fanciful representation of what meat might look like when
tissues for food can be cultivated cheaply in vats instead of through
grazing and slaughtering. Practical applications that would bring the
cost of "cruelty free" tissue down to affordable prices are years away,
at best.
But James King, a British designer who created the prototype for the
brave new meat, said edible tissues from the lab opened possibilities
for what cultured meat might look like. "It's not designed by the
anatomy of the animal," Mr. King said. Instead of slabs of steak, he
envisions a delicate design that resembles "the cross section of a cow."
Some of the objects have an otherworldly beauty. Tomas Gabzdil
Libertiny, who lives in the Netherlands, studied bees and developed a
scaffolding he could use to enlist them in the manufacture of objects.
His beeswax vase, a golden wonder that droops slightly on a pedestal
near the entrance to the exhibition, exemplifies what he calls "slow
prototyping." Like the "slow food" movement, he sees his vase as showing
the way to a kind of thing that demands attention and respect, in part
because it is not just knocked out by a machine — it embodies, he said,
"the sort of thrill in the heart that you get when you see an object
that has magic."
Dr. Mandelbrot, a professor emeritus of mathematical science at Yale,
spoke with joy in an interview about the new exhibition, but also with
an air that suggested he was wondering why it had taken so long for the
world to catch up to him. "I have been fighting on that front for a very
long time," he said.
Dr. Mandelbrot said the separation of science and aesthetics had always
puzzled and frustrated him, though now "the separation is decreasing, or
vanishing," as more people find ways to bridge the gap.
Mr. Bly, of Seed magazine, agreed. Bringing diverse disciplines together
corrects a mistake in intellectual history and "harks back to the
Renaissance," he said, adding: "We created disciplines. Nature didn't
create disciplines."
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From: rmalina@prontomail.com
Subject: ITALY: Pari Center Blogs
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:33:47 +0200
We have started two blogs. One is to encourage discussion around
themes in F. David Peat's "Pathways of Chance". Current topics
include Indigeneous Knowledge, Language, Gentle Action, Quantum
theory and the culture of Liverpool. Please feel free to post
your comments.
You can find this blog at :
http://www.paripublishing.com/blogs/pathwaysofchance/
The second blog is to foster debate on Religion and Science, in
particular the topics discussed in essays from "The Pari
Dialogues". Again your comments are most welcome.
This blog can be found at
http://www.paripublishing.com/blogs/paridialogues/
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From: rmalina@prontomail.com
Subject: AESTHETIC PEACE Group
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:41:45 +0200
Aesthetic Peace
Type:
Entertainment & Arts - Online Media
Description:
The Aesthetic Peace Group aims through art and creativity to inspire new approaches and create new metaphors for peace between Israel and its neighbors.
The Arab conflict with Israel is an aesthetic problem that calls for an artistic solution. All political processes and road maps from Oslo to Annapolis are doomed to failure because the conflict is not political but rather aesthetic.
Rug weavers from Islamic lands intentionally weave a patch of dissimilar pattern to break the symmetry of their rugs honoring their belief that only Allah creates perfection. Instead of seeing Israel as a blemish in the Islamic rug spreading across North Africa and the Middle East, Israel needs a to be seen as counter-pattern affirming Allah’s will.
Peace requires a fresh aesthetic metaphor that symbolizes the fulfillment of Mohammed’s prophecy in the Koran (Sura 17:104): “And we said to the Children of Israel, ‘scatter and live all over the world’…and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land.â€
In the Aesthetic Peace group, Jews, Muslims, and Christians join together to promote an aesthetic metaphor for peace in the Middle East.
Contact InfoEmail:
melalexenberg@yahoo.com
Website:
