CompAesth 11: Workshop on Computational Aesthetics

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Artistic Canvases for Gestural and Non-linear Typography
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Kirton, Travis; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
This paper presents an exploration of gestural and non-linear typography through the production of two software applications, TextDraw and TypeIs. Both were created through a media-art-research practice, wherein extended periods of development and artistic practice were exclusive of one another. This approach yielded applications which challenge contemporary typesetting methodologies, and produced new artistic works which exemplify gestural and non-linear typesetting techniques. This paper discusses the development of both software applications, the artworks made possible through their use, and situates the work within a history of experimental western typography in the 20th century.
Performing Animator Instrument for Live Media
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Dulic, A.; Newby, K.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
In this paper we discuss the design of Performing Animator, an expressive instrument for live media, we developed in support of our situated interdisciplinary performance practice. The concept of a cinema of braided processes is introduced as a basic structure for media instrument design. This media performance instrument is described in terms of its conceptual, design and performative aspects. The Performing Animator Instrument is analogous to a musical instrument that enables generative animation, film editing and compositing, tailored for improvisational expression of projected visual media elements. Design of the instrument evolved based on eight years of development (2003-2011) initiated by a number of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural performance productions as well as inspirations drawn from our study of Balinese Shadow Play (Wayang Kulit). Our instrument presents the performer with a large set of techniques that enable flexible media manipulation and generation. The paper also addresses issues related to the tensions between narrative structure and perfomative expression, live and recorded media and the structuring of improvised media.
Symmetry Hybrids
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Cullen, B.; O'Sullivan, C.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
How we perceive the world is strongly governed by symmetry. Symmetry presents itself in both natural and manmade structures giving aesthetic appeal to the world. This paper presents an approach to form intuitive tree based representations that minimally describe input patterns. We explore how new hybrid patterns can be generated by grafting different symmetry trees together. A new algorithm is proposed to generate new hybrid patterns that maintain the overall appearance of the inputs while allowing control over the amount of variation generated.
ActionPlot: A Visualization Tool for Contemporary Dance Analysis
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Carlson, K.; Schiphorst, T.; Shaw, C.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
This paper illustrates a prototype for visualizing contemporary dance through a movement analysis tool, entitled ActionPlot. Contemporary dance is an experiential and time based art form with few available analysis techniques. Our design facilitates structural analysis of dance performance by codifying and plotting expert viewer information. ActionPlot is then useful to experts familiar with choreographic strategies and illustrates three levels; viewing for interpretation or meaning, for structural or performative information or for detailed movement information. Plotted elements include the number of performers, the performer's attention and intention, the amount of effort used,tempo of the effort, the balance of the movement within the body and the time the action is performed. This process conveys information about the viewing experience in context, allowing the user to see structural and performative patterns, similarities and differences while comparing between two works. We detail our motivation, design decisions, implementation and a qualitative evaluation for the presented system.
Double Meandering Algorithm: From Drawing Game to Automated Animation
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Gao, Shelley; Pullen, Lucy; Gooch, Amy A.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
We introduce artist Lucy Pullen's Double Meandering Algorithm, first in its original form as a pen-and-paper drawing algorithm and then as a procedurally generated animation. We utilize a chain of cubic Bézier curves to represent the characteristic spiraling line, assigning each control point according to a pseudo-randomized algorithm. The resulting curves are then animated segment by segment, reflecting the artist's process of creating the pen-and-paper drawing. By digitizing the Double Meandering Line drawing, we can also reveal the process of creation through animation, granting us the ability to exhibit a fundamental part of the drawing that is lost in the traditional pen-and-paper presentation.
Interactive Modeling of Muqarnas
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Hamekasi, N.; Samavati, F.F.; Nasri, A.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
Muqarnas is a mesmerizing 3D feature of Islamic architecture that exhibit intricate geometry. Such designs are composed of several basic structures combined in successive layers, producing complicated 3D surfaces. In this paper we propose a new approach for interactive modelling of muqarnas based on their layered structure. As a guidance for the modeling workflow, floor plans are used. We also discuss how to edit the resulting models and how to automatically generate new forms.
gamutHeatMap: Visualizing the Colour Shift of Rendering Intent Transformations
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Gat, Christopher; Zhang, Hanyu; German, Daniel M.; Tory, Melanie; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
When a photograph is printed, its original colours are converted to those of the output medium using a rendering intent transformation. This process takes into consideration the colour properties of the paper and the printer used. gamutHeatMaps are a visualization that highlights the perceptual difference between a soft-proof of a photograph in the intended output medium, and its original. They can be used to compare different output media to determine the one that most accurately renders the colours of a given photograph.
Simple Motion Textures for Ambient Affect
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Lockyer, M.; Bartram, L.; Riecke, B. E.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
The communication of emotion and the creation of affect are core to creating immersive and engaging experiences, such as those in performance, games and simulation. They often rely on atmospheric cues that influence how an environment feels. The design of such ambient visual cues for affect is an elusive topic that has been studied by painters, theatre directors, scenic designers, lighting designers, filmmakers, producers, and artists for years. Research shows that simple motions have the capacity to be both perceptually efficient and powerfully evocative, and motion textures patterns of ambient motion throughout the scene are frequently used to imbue the atmosphere with affect. To date there is little empirical evidence of what properties of motion texture are most influential in this affect. In this paper we report the results of a study of simple, abstract motion textures that show path curvature, speed and texture layout can influence affective impressions such as valence, comfort, urgency and intensity.
EMVIZ: The Poetics of Movement Quality Visualization
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Subyen, Pattarawut; Maranan, Diego; Schiphorst, Thecla; Pasquier, Philippe; Bartram, Lyn; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
This paper describes the design of an interactive visualization prototype, called EMVIZ, that generates abstract expressive visual representations of human movement quality. The system produces dynamic visual representations of Laban Basic-Efforts which are derived from the rigorous framework of Laban Movement Analysis. Movement data is obtained from a real-time machine-learning system that applies Laban Movement Analysis to extract movement qualities from a moving body. EMVIZ maps the Laban Basic-Efforts to design rules, drawing parameters, and color palettes for creating visual representations that amplify audience ability to appreciate and differentiate between movement qualities. EMVIZ was demonstrated in a gallery context. The audience reported that the system produces evocative and meaningful visual representations of Laban Basic-Efforts. This paper describes the metaphoric mapping process used to design and implement the visualization system and discusses the aesthetics of the resulting visual style.
ColourVis: Exploring Colour Usage in Paintings Over Time
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Haber, Jonathan; Lynch, Sean; Carpendale, Sheelagh; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
The colour palette of painters over history has been of interest to many, including: art historians, archeologists, and art lovers. Colour usage in art changes from culture to culture and season to season and is often thought of as reflecting or inspiring mood and ambience. We present ColourVis: a visualization that supports exploration of colour usage in digital images. In particular, we use as a case study European art over the last six centuries. Visualizing this relatively unexplored area offers insights into such questions as: How blue was Picasso's blue period?; How do realist painters' colour choices compare to that of surrealist painters; or How has the usage of colours changed over time? Through ColourVis we offer an exploration and comparison tool for individual paintings, groups of paintings and trends in colour usage over time.
Sympathetic Guitar: Humans Respond Socially to Interactive Technology in an Abstract, Expressive Context
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Vidyarthi, J.; Riecke, B.E.; Antle, A.N.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
There seems to be an inherent sociality of computers which is somehow related to their interactivity. However, existing research on this topic is limited to direct interaction, semantic information, clear goals and the visual modality. The present work replicates and extends a previous study on human politeness toward computer systems using a different interaction paradigm involving indirect remote sensors in the context of expressive musical performance with a guitar. Results suggest that the quality of interactivity of a system contributes to its sociality, demonstrating the relevance of an existing body of literature on social responses to technology to the aesthetic of abstract, expressive systems such as video games, artistic tools, ambient systems, media art installations, and mobile device applications. Secondary findings suggest the possibility of manipulating the inherent social presence of an interface through informed design decisions, but a direct investigation is needed on this issue.
Predicting Stereoscopic Viewing Comfort Using a Coherence-Based Computational Model
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Richardt, Christian; Swirski, Lech; Davies, Ian P.; Dodgson, Neil A.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
We introduce a novel computational model for objectively assessing the visual comfort of stereoscopic 3D imagery. Our model integrates research in visual perception with tools from stereo computer vision to quantify the degree of stereo coherence between both stereo half-images. We show that the coherence scores computed by our model strongly correlate with human comfort ratings using a perceptual study of 20 participants rating 80 images each. Based on our experiments, we further propose a taxonomy of stereo coherence issues which affect viewing comfort, and propose a set of computational tools that extend our model to identify and localise stereo coherence issues from stereoscopic 3D images.
Images from Self-Occlusion
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Alexa, Marc; Matusik, Wojciech; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
We propose a complete system for designing, simulating, and fabricating surfaces with shading due to selfocclusion that induce desired input images. Our work is based on a simple observation. Consider a cylindrical hole (a pit) in a planar surface. As the depth of the hole increases, the radiance emitted from the surface patch that contains the hole decreases. This is because more light is trapped and absorbed in the hole. First, we propose a measurement-based approach that derives a mapping between average albedo of the surface patch containing the hole and the hole depth. Given this mapping and an input image, we show how to produce a distribution of holes with varied depth that approximates the image well. We demonstrate that by aligning holes with image features we can obtain reproductions that look better than those resulting from regular hole patterns despite using slightly less holes. We validate this method on a variety of images and corresponding surfaces fabricated with a computer-controlled milling machine and a 3D printer.
Building The Plotter - an Aesthetic Exploration with Drawing Robots
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Wanner, A.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
This paper presents the drawing robot The Plotter and an exploratory preliminary study with other drawing robots. Around notions of authorship, control and Eigensinn , the paper describes these artworks and situates them in a context of generative art and abstract expressionism. Relating to Brooks' subsumption architecture for Artificial Intelligence, this paper addresses the question, if the chosen setup is capable of evoking particular aesthetics that lie beyond the control of the programmer. The paper concludes with describing potential visual attributes of such aesthetics.
Aesthetic Agents: Swarm-based Non-photorealistic Rendering using Multiple Images
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Love, J.; Pasquier, P.; Wyvill, B.; S.Gibson,; Tzanetakis, G.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
The creation of expressive styles for digital art is one of the primary goals in non-photorealistic rendering. In this paper, we introduce a swarm-based multi-agent system that is capable of producing expressive imagery through the use of multiple digital images. At birth, agents in our system are assigned a digital image that represents their 'aesthetic ideal'. As agents move throughout a digital canvas they try to 'realize' their ideal by modifying the pixels in the digital canvas to be closer to the pixels in their aesthetic ideal. When groups of agents with different aesthetic ideals occupy the same canvas, a new image is created through the convergence of their conflicting aesthetic goals. We use our system to explore the concepts and techniques from a number of Modern Art movements. The simple implementation and effective results produced by our system makes a compelling argument for more research using swarm-based multi-agent systems for non-photorealistic rending.
Generating Op Art Lines
(The Eurographics Association, 2011) Inglis, Tiffany C.; Kaplan, Craig S.; Douglas Cunningham and Tobias Isenberg
A common technique in Op Art is the use of parallel lines to depict simple shapes such as circles and squares. Some artists have attempted to create more complex images using this technique but faced the problem of producing undesirable artifacts such as line breaks and T-junctions within their artworks. To this end, we developed a novel algorithm that takes an arbitrary image and automatically generates the corresponding Op Art composition of this style. For 2-colour images, the algorithm produces artworks without any unwanted artifacts; for images with more colours, the basic algorithm cannot guarantee the removal of all artifacts, but we use a global optimization technique to minimize the number of artifacts. The results have applications in graphics design, data visualization, puzzle creation and line drawings.

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