<s5>Æliens</s5> -- slide(s)

As you gather from reading this book, the field of multimedia is widely divergent. However, when you develop a multimedia application, you will find that all topics treated so far will become relevant. There will be a need to mix multiple media formats. You will have to find suitable codecs for your video. You will be asked whether search is possible. And, not the least important, you will have to balance navigation and presentation.

This chapter is based on the work we, that is my students, have been doing in the domain of cultural heritage. In the first section, we will introduce the notion of digital dossier and outline our general approach. We will then in section 2 look at some examples, and describe how we deploy concept graphs as a universal navigation tool for complex information spaces. Finally, in section 3, we will explore the options for presenting multimedia material and discuss the design issues as well as the technical issues that have arisen in the course of our work.

multimedia casus

The assignment in the multimedia casus is to develop a virtual environment for some cultural or governemental institute or company.

The practicum takes the form a stage, in which external supervision plays an important role.

In the multimedia casus, techniques learned in previous courses (see the afterthoughts) will be applied to create the application.

At the start of the course the actual assignment will be determined.

Examples of possible assignments are: the development of a virtual exposition hall for the Dutch Royal Museum of the Arts, a virtual city square, which gives information about both the present and the past, a virtual shop, with online buying facilities, or an online broker, which offers facilities for inspecting houses.

Given an information space, create a VR that resolves the duality between information and presentation, using intelligent multimedia technology. The VR must offer access to all relevant information entities, organized in a suitable spatial layout, and must allow for presentations from a variety of perspectives, making full use of graphical and rich media facilities.

...

front page of the INCCA website

INCCA

In 1999, a group of eleven international modern art museums and related institutions applied to the European Commission (Raphael Programme) under the umbrella International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA). The INCCA project was accepted and work started in January 2000 led by the organiser, the ICN (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage) and the co-organiser, Tate, London.

objectives

INCCA's most important set of objectives, which are closely interlinked, focuses on the building of a website with underlying databases that will facilitate the exchange of professional knowledge and information. Furthermore, INCCA partners are involved in a collective effort to gather information directly from artists.

mission

INCCA's guiding mission is to collect, share and preserve knowledge needed for the conservation of modern and contemporary art.

checklist

roles -- create a team
project goal -- develop a vision
production -- construct the assets
quality assesment -- test and control
delivery -- present and archive
manage -- all along
document -- track project's history

judgement

group -- (2) effort, 5 (product), 3 (documentation)
individual -- (4) responsibility, (3) productivity, (3) quality

deliverables

group -- project plan, design, project report, product
individual -- detailed weekly account of activities

schedule

project organisation
project definition
planning and design
construction and development
integration and delivery
presentation and archiving

...


physical control cube	head-mounted display

application area	metaphor	familiar knowledge
operating environment	desktop	office tasks
spreadsheets	ledger sheet	columnar table
object-oriented environment	physical world	real world
hypertext	notecards	organization of text
learning environment	travel	tours, guides, movement
file storage	piles	categorizing
multimedia environments	rooms	spatial structures
cooperative work	multi-agents	travel agents, servants

interaction styles

command entry
menus and navigation
forms fills and spreadsheets
natural language dialog
direct manipulation

digital dossier

Create a VR that realizes a digital dossier for a work of a particular artist. A digital dossier represents the information that is available for a particular work of art, or a collection of works, of a particular artist. The digital dossier should be multimedia-enhanced, that is include photographs, audio and other multimedia material in a compelling manner.

Webster New World Dictionary

dossier (dos-si-er) [ Fr < dos (back); so named because labeled on the back ] a collection of documents concerning a particular person or matter
archive -- 1) a place where public records are kept ... 2) the records, material itself ...

...


main node	interviews

everything must be highly intertwinkled

...

presentation of video clips from Marina Abramovic

...

Reconstruction of Terra della Dea Madre in VRML.

style issues

what icons should be used to identify the elements of the concept graph?
what categories and relationships are most appropriate?
how should the information be displayed, simultaneously or more focussed?
how do we allow the user to choose between multiple information items?
how do we avoid visually disturbing elements?

...


no light	half light	full light

user-centered design methods

field studies, user requirement analysis, iterative design, usability evaluation, task analysis, focus groups, formal/heuristic analysis, user interviews, prototype (without user testing), surveys, informal expert review, card sorting, participatory design

usability evaluation

learnability -- time and effort to reach level of performance
throughput -- the amount of work done
flexibility -- accomodating changes in the task
attitude -- of users to the system

task world ontology

task -- activity performed by an agent to reach a certain goal
goal -- a desired state in the task world or system
role -- a meaningful collection of tasks
object -- refers to a physical or non-physical entity
agent -- an entity that is considered active
event -- a change in the state of the task world

next generation dossier(s)

adaptation of representation to Dublin Core (+ annotation needed for presentation)
XML-based content management, with php forms (extending what we have now)
there should also be a possibility to present the information and material in a 'plain' web format
as well as in (a new version of) 3D dossiers
we should think about the proper presentation parameters.

structures

Video -- to display video fragment, including interviews
Picture -- to present pictures of the artwork
Artwork -- contains all information connected to a work of art
TextItem -- to present text, from the interview or any other source
MaterialItem -- to present information about material(s) used
GroupNode -- to combine nodes in the concpet graph
Information -- acts as the outer container for all nodes

concept graph


  Information {
   informationNodes [
    GroupNode {
  	ID "MAIN"
  	shortName "Main"
  	longName "Main"
  	urlModel "models/conceptGraph/main/modelMain.wrl"
  	description [ "Central information node" ]
  	connectedNodesIDs [ "ARTWORKS", "KEYWORDS", 
  	                         "INTERVIEWS", "REPORT" ]
  	}
    GroupNode {
  	shortName "Artworks"
  	longName "Artworks"
  	description [ "Node that connects to all the artworks" ]
  	ID "ARTWORKS"
  	connectedNodesIDs [ "MAIN", "TRANSITORY", 
  	              "ULAY", "VIDEOINSTALLATION", "ABRAMOVIC" ]
  	urlModel "models/conceptGraph/artworks/artworksGroup.wrl"
  	}
  	## ...
   ]
  }


  Artwork {
    shortName "Terra degla Dea Madre"
    longName "Terra degla Dea Madre"
    description ["15:40 min, colour, sound."]
    ID "AV24"
    connectedNodesIDs ["VIDEOINSTALLATION", "DTV24", 
               "TTV24", "PV24", "CV24", "VV24", "G0"]
    urlPreviewImage "images/previewImages/AV24.jpg"
    widthPreviewImage 479
    heightPreviewImage 349
  }


  Video {
    ID "CV24"
    shortName "Interview clip Terra degla Dea Madre"
    longName "Interview clip showing Terra degla Dea Madre"
    url "interviewclips/interview_terra_degla.avi"
    width 320
    height 360
    urlPreviewImage "images/previewImages/interview_terra_degla.jpg"
    widthPreviewImage 320
    heightPreviewImage 240
    description [""]
    connectedNodesIDs ["CLIP", "AV24"]
  }


  TextItem {
    shortName "Instruction"
    longName "Green Dragon Lying instructions for the public."
    description ["Text explaining the way the public has to interact with the artwork."]
    ID "ITO05"
    connectedNodesIDs ["AO05", "INTERACTION"]
    url "text/AO05_instruction.txt"
  }

Dublin Core

title -- name given to the resource
creator -- entity primarily responsible for making the content of the resource
subject -- topic of the content of the resource
description -- an account of the content of the resource
publisher -- entity responsible for making the resource available
contributor -- entity responsible for making contributions to the content of the resource
date -- date of an event in the lifecycle of the resource
type -- nature or genre of the content of the resource
format -- physical or digital manifestation of the resource
identifier -- unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
source -- reference to a resource from which the present resource is derived
language -- language of the intellectual content of the resource
relation -- reference to a related resource
coverage -- extent or scope of the content of the resource
rights -- information about rights held in and over the resource

...

location of Tower of Babel project

I-GUARD

Contemporary art is an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage. Installations, performances, video and other forms of media art, as for example web art, have the interest of a small group of adherents, but are in comparison with more traditional art forms, far more difficult to present to a general audience. Another problem presents itself, due to the type of materials used and the context-specific aspects of these art forms, in the conservation of the works.

In our research we address the issue of providing access to these contemporary art forms from a wide variety of perspectives, ranging from the interested layman to the expert that has to deal with archiving, conserving and the possible re-installation of the art works.

intelligent guidance

filtering the information space according to the user's perspective, and
intelligent agents, that (pro) actively aid the user in searching the information space.

digital dossier(s)

representation of information of one or multiple works of art,
presentation of that information in a rich media presentation environment,
intelligent navigation and interaction, and
support for interaction with loosely-structured natural language.

...

outside view of Tower of Babel project

...

Inside view of Tower of Babel project.

(new) media art

audio art -- no definition available
computer art -- any art in which computers played a role in production or display of the artwork.
digital art -- art created on a computer in digital (that is, binary) form.
electronic art -- entry to game producer, should be Leonardo.
generative art -- art or design generated, composed, or constructed through computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical autonomous processes
hacktivism -- the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bits, to promote political ideology
interactive art -- a piece of art that involves the spectator in some way.
internet art -- art or, more precisely, cultural production which uses the Internet as its primary medium and, more importantly, its subject.
performance art -- art where the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time, constitute the work.
robotic art -- page does not exist
software art -- is an intersection of two almost non-overlapping realms: software and art.
video art -- is a subset of artistic works which relies on "moving pictures" and is comprised of video and/or audio data.
video game art -- involves the use of a computer game for the creation of a digital artwork.

10. application development

(*) What information system support is needed in the domain of cultural heritage? Explain what considerations playa role in developing multimedia applications in this domain.

concepts

technology

projects & further reading

As a project, devlop a data format for text, images and video in XML, and implement stylesheets in XSLT to convert the format for display, for example in HTML frames or using SMIL.

You may further explore the formulation of criteria for selecting software and tool support for developing multimedia applications.

For further reading I suggest, apart from the manuals and learning materials that come with your tools, to study example projects and in particular the workflow, that is the dependencies between stages in the production, as for example explained in [Effects].

the artwork

website of Montevideo Collection Catalogue. To avoid being parochial here, I should also mention similar institutes abroad, such as Electronic Arts Intermix from New York, USA, and LUX, from London, UK.
website of INCCA.
tangible virtual museum -- from [Tangible], see section 10.1.
digital dossier -- concept graph for abramovic dossier, see section 10.2.
digital dossier -- presentation gadget in abramovic dossier, with video of Relation in Time, with Ulay.
digital dossier -- installation Terra dea degli madre, as 3D model.
conservator's studio -- Self-Portrait with Braid, see section 10.2
diagram -- task world ontology, [Euterpe].
tower of babel -- location where the event took place, see below.
tower of babel -- projection of tower of babel project, see section 10.3, submitted by Katelijne Arts. The project is a concept of Katelijne Arts, Tineke Goemans, Franka van de Goor, Leidi Haaijer en Bert Vogels.
tower of babel -- a view from the inside of the building.
signs -- sports, [Signs], p. 278, 279.

Æliens

2009

multimedia casus

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schedule

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digital dossier

projects & further reading