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Exclusive Events
Test Media Convergence in Practice and Theory
Abigail De Kosnik, UC Berkeley
Thursday, January 17, 2013
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Situating oneself simultaneously as a new media practitioner and theorist in the contemporary academic scene is fraught with challenge and laden with opportunity. Professor De Kosnik shares her experiences as a “media theater” maker and a scholar of popular digital culture working towards tenure at UC Berkeley.
Abigail De Kosnik is an Assistant Professor at the University of California – Berkeley in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies. She is the co–editor of The Survival of Soap Opera (University Press of Mississippi, 2011), and has published articles in Transformative Works and Cultures, Cinema Journal, Modern Drama and The International Journal of Communication, as well as a number of edited essay collections. She specializes in fan studies, andis currently authoring a book on the history of Internet fan fiction. In 2009, she testified before the U.S. Copyright Office at their hearings regarding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), in favor of an exemption to the DMCA’s ban on the circumvention of digital copyright technologies. Her regular course offerings include Sound Design & Media Theater, Performance and Television, and the History and Theory of New Media.
Haptics: The Final Frontier
Don Marinelli, Visiting Professor
Thursday, January 10, 2013
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Haptics refers to tactile feedback technology, which takes advantage of the sense of
touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. This mechanical
stimulation can be used to assist in the creation of virtual objects in a computer
simulation, to control virtual objects, and/or to enhance the remote control of
machines and devices (as in “telerobotics”). Haptics has been described as “doing for
the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision.”
In 2007, Novint Technologies released the Falcon, the first consumer 3D touch device
with high resolution three–dimensional force feedback; this allowed the haptic
simulation of objects, textures, recoil, momentum, and the physical presence of objects
in games.
This talk will present an overview of the progression of haptic technology, will
reference the Novint Falcon, and will also postulate where the future of haptics for
gaming is potentially heading.
Dr. Marinelli will be joined by Dr. Walter A. Aviles, prime developer of the Novint
haptic technologies, in this discussion about the final frontier of feedback devices.
Digital Culture Showcase
Friday, December 7, 2012
noon–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Featuring projects and performances from students in the ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering's Digital Culture program, the Digital Culture Showcase will be a lively, entertaining day of interactive digital media. Come see the cutting edge projects that students are creating from interactive performances to sound installations and web-based projects.
Performances will be held from 2-3 p.m.
The gallery opening will be held from 3-3:30 p.m.
Digital Culture Capstone Presentations II
Thursday, December 6, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Digital Visuals & Animation
GreenTeen, Chris Dean, Ben Luke, and Kenya Rodriguez
GreenTeen is a kinect–based video game that educates students in the subject of Sustainability. This teacher–moderated game explores the daily life of an average teenager to give students insight into sustainability issues in everyday life. The user encounters choice paths that cover a range of topics, from micro sustainability issues such as home utility usage, to macro issues such as developing alternate renewable energy resources. It promotes class discussion on difficult topics while providing an engaging embodied learning experience.
Space Wizards, Cody Molumby, Alex Ebertz, and Wesley de la Rosa
Space Wizards is a MMO game app that uses real world data from “smart” devices.The game uses GPS coordinates in relation to Open Street Maps tagsto generate the game content.
What is Twitter Used For?, Samantha Valtierra Bush
My capstone aims to answer fundamental questions about how Twitter is used. I have created a tool with Processing that scrapes Twitter for all tweets in a specific geographic region that include my search terms. Those results are displayed in a graph. The treemap shows the words used with the highest frequency of words used in all the tweets. The timeline shows how quickly users tweet about a news event after the event occurs. The directed graphs attempt to show what users retweet celebrities and news organizations. The visualizations convey to the user how Twitter is best used, whether it be for news, sharing gossip or chatting withfollowers.
Parallels, Zachary Short
Parallels is a fully interactive installation that replaces a users refection with one that I have created. It uses facial tracking to analyze the users position within a mirror and replace it with a mask that I have created. This will be accomplished using a rear projection system and a half silvered mirror.
Digital Sound & Computer Music
Genesis, Caleb Kilian + Justin Boord–Balash
Genesis is a dance performance with reactive music that depicts the concept of the empowerment in self–realization. A single dancer is bedizened with sensors that detect her movement and muscle activity. Music is synthesized in real–time, and data from the sensors is used to control various aspects of the sound. The dancer’s movement represents a metaphorical birth, which analogizes her realization that she has the power to control her musical environment.
Point of Interest Portal, Ryan Hiemstra
Point of Interest Portal is an immersive environment that simulates the experience of being in nature. Natural landscapes, accompanied by ambient sounds, are projected onto a large, convex, panoramic screen that partially surrounds the viewer. Sensors detect the viewer’s position and orientation as they move throughout the environment. This data is used to position the sound in binaural space and adjust the projection’s view parallax to achieve a sense of depth and spaciousness. As the viewer journeys towards the screen, they are presented with a carefully constructed sequence of such landscapes which recreates the experience of withdrawing from urban life.
Digital Culture Capstone Presentations I
Thursday, November 29, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Hybrid Products & Spaces
The Bilateral Bench
Daniel Grabowski + Nicole Lovett
The Bilateral Bench seeks to reinvent the way we occupy space. The benches move autonomously in an attempt to redefine the space around them and encourage collaboration.
Sunrise, Sunset
Danielle Havard + Simon Hood
Sunrise, Sunset is an interactive project that informs the users/viewers on how various kinds of light works through a large room in which natural light and artificial are aesthetically and harmoniously integrated.
The Conniving Chair
By Janelle Hinesley
A smart, interactive chair that will learn through its interactions with the environment, its owner, and other people to which the chair will respond accordingly.
Second Chance
By Aziza Ismail
Seeking to improve the reading and writing skills of preliterate adults, specifically in developing countries, by building an interactive iPad application for unschooled adults who are passionate about learning to read.
Interactive Environments & Gaming
Indo Board Surfing Sim - Joshua Bors
Quantum Eventuality Distributor - Elizabeth Cardy, Sarah Simzyk, Tenneille Choi
3+DSLR - Trevor Shaffer
Projection Mapping - Adeola Kassim
Katie's Super Magical Environment - Kaytlyn Lowry
WorkTop - Patrick McCracken
EyeControl - Zane Kellar
D-Sphere - Ketan Dewan, Armando Serrano
Enriching 3D Computer Animation Practices Through Performance and Installation Contexts
Vita Berezina–Blackburn, Ohio State University
Thursday, November 15, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Combining the typical 3D computer animation process with technologies such as performance tracking and capture, photogrammetry, digital fabrication, and 3D projection mapping brings out the fresh creative potential of this medium. Among the unique qualities of 3D animation is a possibility of separating motion from its source and embodiment, an opportunity to transfer and interpret spatial and temporal data. Also exciting is the potential of bidirectional conversion between physical and digital forms.
Applying such approaches in the contexts of live performance practices makes the typically preconceived process of computer animation more open to improvisational and phenomenological approaches that embrace both the narrative and the algorithm. Berezina–Blackburn will present the process of incorporating the above mentioned technologies in making 3D animation as part of several collaborative projects at the Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design.
Vita Berezina–Blackburn is a visual artist working with 3D computer animation and performance capture for film, performance and installation. She is currently on staff at the Ohio State University’s ACCAD where she teaches graduate classes and engages in collaborative research. Berezina–Blackburn’s works were featured at MIT Museum, Columbus Museum of Science and Industry, PBS, Dance Theatre Workshop Gallery as well as at animation festivals in the US, Brazil, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, and the Netherlands. Berezina–Blackburn has presented her process at SIGGRAPH, Dance on Camera, Boston CyberArts, KAFI and other conferences. Her collaborative works with choreographers, such as Bebe Miller, were featured at Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, PICA, Red Cat, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Art of Business/Business of Art
Linda Essig, School of Theatre and Film
Thursday, November 8, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
You have an entrepreneurial idea for an arts-based venture. Now what? In this talk, Linda Essig discusses business model generation for artists (and other people) and the various business forms artists can use to bring their work to a sustainable reality.
Science. It Works. . .
David McKeown, University College Dublin
Thursday, November 1, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
David will start by trying to convince you that engineers are the friendly duct tape of any creative team, guaranteed to hold together and strengthen any project with their extraordinary brilliance (and humility). With that in place, he will turn the looking glass what happens when Science and Art come together. Will they have a baby? (Answer: That’s not possible). He’ll then coyly ask, can science research exist outside a university? If put into the hands of the public, will they break it? Perhaps cover it in jam? This will all be loosely tied together using examples of projects David has worked on.
Dr. David McKeown is a Mechanical Engineer from Dublin, Ireland. David completed his PhD in 2009 and is a recipient of the IMechE Frederic Barnes Waldron Prize. He currently designs spacecraft control systems for European Space Agency in University College Dublin. In his spare time he likes to make and create, leading him to work with advertising agencies and artists as a technical consultant. He is a co–founder of Dublin Mini Maker Faire and Science Hack Day Dublin. He can be regularly found giving “Ignite” talks on science topics and sometimes crashing the waves of Irish radio. He has been known to play soccer to a standard which legally defines mediocre.
DIWire and 3D Printing
Marco Perry, Pensa Consulting
Thursday, October 25, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
In recent years, 3D rapid prototyping machines have gone mainstream. These printers split a volume into thin slices and build up the form by printing a layer of material and bonding it to the next. We needed a device that could 3D print lines in space, so we created the DIWire – a 3D CNC wire bender that is as simple to use as a 3D printer. Pensa believes in prototyping early and often so you can quickly iterate through many concepts on the path to the best idea. In this talk, Marco Perry will share his perspective of the prototyping process, and where rapid prototyping techniques fit in.
Marco Perry is a founder of Pensa, a Brooklyn NY consultancy that focuses on product strategy, design, development and invention. Marco has over 20 years experience inventing, designing and engineering just about everything from diapers to lab equipment to vending machines.
Groups, Creativity, and Collaboration
Linda Essig, School of Theatre and Film
Thursday, October 18, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Creative ideas often emerge from collaborative groups. This talk will look at the ways creative groups form and the factors that can affect group performance. A small-group creative ideation exercise will test the differences between heterogenous and homogenous groups.
Extreme Resolution Visualization of Extreme Data
Dr. Laura Monroe, Los Alamos National Lab
Thursday, October 11, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Both petascale computational simulations and sensor networks produce a deluge of data that are helpful to visualize in order to understand underlying mechanisms. In this talk, Dr. Monroe will discuss visualization of such large data at Los Alamos, the systems that generate and process this data, and possible future paths for such data visualization.
Dr. Laura Monroe is Special Projects Team Leader in the Los Alamos National Laboratory High Performance Computing division, and is Project Leader for the DOE ASC Production Visualization project at LANL. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and since that time has been working in the areas of visualization, graphics and HPC at LANL and at NASA Glenn.
Image Extracted from LA-UR-11-10840
Writing Music for Asian Instruments and Electronics
Marc Battier
Thursday, October 4, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
On the international stage, Asian musical instruments are increasingly visible. This happens in classical contemporary music as well as in popular music. It underlines the shift in musical forms of today, at a time when composers strive to encompass various styles and enlarge their own language. Even though Western music was introduced in Asia in the 19th century, and Asian composers have widely adopted the Western musical language, there has been, recently, a strong interest in local cultures. While Western culture is spreading all over the world, interest is growing in what a country has built over centuries in terms of spirituality, philosophy and social practices. It is thus not unusual to see Western and Asian musical instruments mixed together on stage. It is not always easy to do so: while Western musical instruments tend to be universal and somewhat neutral, allowing all kinds of music and modes of playing, traditional instruments have their own possibilities and limits. That is what’s drawing me to them: as a composer, I am interested in writing music for performers (and for the audience!) who bring along their own technique and sensibility, and above all their understanding of their own instruments. The freedom given to performers of traditional instruments is quite large. It appears that the contact of traditional instruments with contemporary music is very attractive and yet not easy. It is in this double language, new music and old instruments, that I write music for instruments and electronics. Often, the electronic sounds are derived from the sounds of the instruments, enhancing the consistency of the music.
I will present excerpts of my pieces for shakuhachi, narrator and electronic sounds(Bird of the Capital); for pipa, visuals and electronic sounds(I Gysin)and a video clip of my latest piece for koto, Constellations.
Marc Battier is a professor of musicology (electroacoustic music studies) at the university of Paris Sorbonne and a composer of electroacoustic music commissioned in France, Europe, China, Japan and USA, and performed by Itinéraire, Ensemble intercontemporain, and 2E2M. He has worked at GRM with François Bayle as computer music assistant, then at IRCAM with Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Henry, Joji Yuasa and others. Battier is co-founder and president of Electroacoustic Music Studies Network and founder of EMSAN, Electroacoustic Music Studies Asia Network. He is an executive member of Electronic Music Foundation and a guest professor at the University of California at San Diego and University of Montréal; residences at the University of California at Irvine and the University of Fine Arts and music of Aichi (Japan). He is a member of the editorial board of Leonardo Music Journal (USA) and Organised Sound(UK), a former member of the editorial board of Computer Music Journal, and a founding member of ICMA and former member of its of board of directors. In 2012, he was DAAD Edgar Varese Visiting Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin.
Algorithmic Architectures, Critviz, and Snake Robots
Thursday, September 27, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Algorithmic Architectures
David Newton, School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the Design School
The use of digital tools to model, generate, and fabricate designs for physical objects opens up entirely new worlds of possibility for how our homes and cities can look and function. This lecture will focus on Newton’s teaching and research around the topic of algorithmically generated design and digital fabrication.
Critviz and Snake Robots
David Tinapple, School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Tinapple will introduce two projects he is working on, both relating to “crowdsourcing” in the area of education. CritViz is an experimental online classroom management tool that allows students to see each other’s work, provide each other with feedback, and rank one another. The driving idea behind CritViz is that to better immerse and engage students in the classroom, they need to see, evaluate and rate each other’s work in new ways. The second project is a collaboration between ASU, Carnegie Mellon, and the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, in which researchers are building an interactive museum installation that will help robotics researchers better design interfaces to drive snake robots. Snake robots are highly articulated robots that mimic snake movement in order achieve new levels of mobility, but which are notoriously difficult to “drive”. The team is building a museum installation at MSI Chicago that will allow museum visitors to try their hand at driving these robots. The research question is: can we analyze the strategies of museum visitors’ attempts to drive these robots in order to develop better robot interfaces?
What Do We Mean When We Talk About Arts Entrepreneurship?
Linda Essig, School of Theatre and Film
Thursday, September 20, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
This discussion will look at the entrepreneurial process as defined in classic economic literature on the topic, consider what the entrepreneurial process means specifically for the arts, and then look at habits of mind as a framework for thinking about specific entrepreneurial behaviors. Includes Q&A and a workshop exercise.
The 8 Commandments of Successful Creative Ventures, Patrick Koppula
Thursday, September 13, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
How do some creative projects achieve profit, fame or influence while most fail miserably or just disappear? Patrick will discuss 8 rules successful creative ventures follow and explain how to use them to make better choices about what to work on and with whom. Derived from Richard Cave's brilliant theory on the unique economics that arise when commerce meets art, (Creative Industries, 2002), Patrick's advice reflects his 15 years as a commercially succesful digital creative and advisor to other digital creatives. The session also includes time to ask him individual questions about improving the chances of a happy career in digital culture.
Mesa Arts Center Matchmaker Presentation
Thursday, August 30, 2012
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Cindy Ornstein, Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center (MAC), the largest comprehensive arts center in the southwest U.S., will introduce a special opportunity at the MAC for ASU students.In March 2013, the Center will feature spark! Mesa’s Festival of Creativity, a five-day immersive festival designed to celebrate and inspire creativity, with extraordinary international performers, exciting new art projects, and showcasing of innovative student work that blends and explores the intersection of art and technology.
The presentation will feature a PBS mini-documentary about the festival, photos, a preview of performers and projects, and an invitation to participate!
Digital Culture Showcase
Friday, April 20, 2012
noon–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Featuring projects and performances from students in the ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering's Digital Culture program, the Digital Culture Showcase will be a lively, entertaining day of interactive digital media. Come see the cutting edge projects that students are creating from interactive performances to sound installations and web-based projects
The installations will be available throughout the day and performances will be held from 3-3:30 p.m., followed by a project pitch contest from 3:30-4:30 p.m.
High Five: AME Graduate Presentations
Friday, April 13, 2012
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Come hear AME graduate students share their work with faculty, students, and community members in a series of lightweight but rapid-fire presentations. With a format inspired by Pecha Kucha, Ignite, and similar styles, the event will be lively and fast-paced way to find out about AME research.
KARLAX: Real time absolute control
Philippe Geiss, Superior School of Arts in Strasbourg, France
Friday, March 16, 2012
4–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Philippe Geiss was one of the first musicians to work on Karlax developpement with Remi Dury, the inventor. He has performed with the Karlax throughout Europe, Japan & South America.
This new multimedia controller is a great link between sound, gesture and visual art. Philippe Geiss works on how to integrate the Karlax in performances, compositions and teaching. There is a quickly growing research community around this new instrument. Geiss will share his experience and talk about amazing Karlax possibilities.
Philippe Geiss is a saxophonist, Karlist, composer and Professor at the Superior School of Arts in Strasbourg, France. He is a research and development member of Selmer saxophones, Rico reeds & Da Fact instruments and a beta tester for Karlax. Geiss is one of the first musicians from the French saxophone school who has built his own “crossover” style between classical and improvised music and plays the entire saxophone family from sopranino to bass saxophone. As an active musician worldwide, Philippe has given concerts and master classes all over the world.
For many years, Geiss has been very involved in instrument research & development. He develops reeds with Rico, saxophones with Selmer Paris and electronic instruments with Da Fact. He just started to work on the Karlax, a new electronic instrument that can control sound, light and video by keys, switches and gestures.
As a composer, his music has been performed by renowned musicians and ensembles including the U.S. Navy Band, Brandford Marsalis, Nederland Wind Ensemble, Slovenian Police Orchestra, Trombonissimo and leading saxophone quartets including Habanera, Alliage Diastema, Ellipsos and more. Philippe’s own musical style lies somewhere between contemporary classical, jazz and world music. His compositions include works for beginners to high level performers and he is published by Robert Martin, Billaudot and Leduc. For more about Geiss, visit his website.
Making it LIVE! Collaborative Performance-Based Video Installations
Carole Kim
Friday, March 9, 2012
3–4:30 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
For nearly 15 years I’ve been intent on pulling the moving image off the big screen, out of the monitor, removed from a fixed timeline and into space. At every juncture of its delivery, I’ve pushed the medium in all kinds of ways in an attempt to make it as LIVE, and expressive–in–the–moment as possible. Through the use of translucent scrims, I am intrigued by the insertion of actual space between the layers of projected image–compositing with the eye through physical space. There is a different quality to this three–dimensional compositing that can appear more atmospheric and allows for the space to navigate between. Immersion has been an important keyword in the circles of media artists working with installation. The immersion I am seeking has less to do with an “augmented reality” or “virtual reality” than a hybrid space in which both illusory and actual merge together in an “other worldly” environment. The use of live–feed cameras amplifies the concept of instantaneity to the work. That which is “live” and “mediated” are presented in an integrated manner.
The kind of collaboration that interests me most stems from establishing a group dynamic that places equal weight on what each person contributes—no medium is serving another. Such initiatives yield a generative hybrid that defies categorical definition. I am also more interested in performance as discovery rather than a presentation of an idealized outcome. When all disciplines are riding the edge equally, it creates an arena for heightened exchange in the moment.
I am invested in emergent technologies in so far as their potential for metaphorical and experiential impact—how the technology helps create situations entirely unlike anything one would encounter in the every day and what that means. Projects have ranged from the use of a live laptop mix to working with streaming media feedback loops, audio–visual interfaces, multi–site network–based performance, and live multi–channel spatialized installation/performances. Although the projects I mount can be fairly complex, I seek to handle technology with subtlety and consideration towards a distilled form of poetic expression and phenomenology.
Carole Kim is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on live video performance and performance–based video installation. She explores video for its most tactile, expressive and responsive potential as a live medium. Kim is interested in the experiential impact of emergent technologies and their metaphorical potential. She seeks an integration of media where moving image, sound, dance and space are on equal planes engaging in a dynamic reciprocating and mutually supportive dialogue. Kim’s installations are hybrid spaces in which the illusory and actual (i.e. mediated and live) merge together in an “other worldly” environment. (MFA – California Institute of the Arts, Film/Video/Integrated Media; MFA – Cranbrook Academy of Art, Printmaking; BA – Brown University)
'Style-Based Robotic Motion' And 'Choreographic Abstractions in Robotics'
Amy LaViers and Magnus Egerstedt
Georgia Tech
Friday, January 27, 2012
3–4:30 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
How do you get a robot to do the disco? Or perform a cheerleading routine? These acts involve understanding two distinct movement styles. In this talk, we posit that “style of motion” can be taken into account in a principled manner: through discrete motion sequencing followed by trajectory generation for each motion. The talk explains how formal methods such as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) and existing dance theory, namely that of Rudolf Laban, can be used to generate stylistic behavior. Distinct stylized motion sequences built from the same underlying building blocks animated on the NAO humanoid robot and in simulation will demonstrate the overarching objective of the research: to facilitate subtle degrees of control over systems through a useful parameterization for stylistic human movement.
Amy LaViers is a third year graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. She studies movement and dance through the lens of robotics and control theory with Prof. Magnus Egerstedt. With her PhD, she hopes to push our understanding of dance and develop tools for artists using quantitative methods from engineering. This exploration began with her senior thesis, Learning the Primary Colors of Dance, at Princeton University where she earned a certificate in dance and degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The thesis won top honors in her both of her academic departments and the School of Applied Science and Engineering. In Atlanta she dances every chance she gets. This past fall she was lucky to be a part of Emily Christianson’s Shaken and is currently working on a piece with Susan Eldridge’s company, DENSE.
When programming robots to perform tasks, one is inevitably forced to make abstractions at different levels in order to answer questions such as “What should the robot be doing?” and “How should it be doing it?” In this talk, we draw inspiration from choreography in order to produce these abstractions in a systematic manner. Manifestations of this idea will include robotic marionettes and humanoid, dancing robots that execute complex motions and we will develop a formal framework for specifying and executing such motions by combining tools and techniques from control theory and choreography.
Magnus B. Egerstedt is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. He also holds an adjunct appointment in the Division of Interactive and Intelligent Computing with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Magnus Egerstedt received the M.S. degree in Engineering Physics and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology in 1996 and 2000 respectively, and he received the B.A. degree in Philosophy from Stockholm University in 1996. Dr. Egerstedt’s research interests include hybrid and networked control, with applications in motion planning, control, and coordination of mobile robots, and he serves as Editor for Electronic Publications for the IEEE Control Systems Society and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Magnus Egerstedt is the director of the Georgia Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (GRITS Lab), is a Fellow of the IEEE, received the ECE/GT Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award in 2005, and the CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2003.
Leveraging Intelligent Tutoring, Natural Language Processing, and Games to Improve Education
Danielle S. McNamara
Learning Sciences Institute
Psychology Department
Arizona State University
Friday, January 20, 2012
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Dr. Danielle S. McNamara recently joined ASU as a Professor in the Psychology Department and Senior Scientist in the Learning Sciences Institute. Her academic background includes a Linguistics B.A. (1982), a Clinical Psychology M.S. (1989), and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology (1992; UC–Boulder). Her research involves the development and assessment of game–based intelligent tutoring systems, natural language processing, and the use of interactive dialog in automated tutoring systems. She and her team of researchers have developed a number of educational technologies (e.g., iSTART–ME, Coh–Metrix, and the Writing–Pal) with a particular focus on providing students with training and practice to use strategies to improve comprehension and writing. Their research examines how the benefits of these automated tutoring systems depend on individual differences and can be optimized for individual learners. One particular focus of their work is on developing methods to improve success for struggling high school students. Dr. McNamara will describe these technologies, the foundational research that led to the development of these systems, and their recent work showing their effectiveness. She will also discuss the relative benefits of game–based learning — when it may be beneficial, and when it may not be.
Deborah Aschheim
Friday, January 13, 2012
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Deborah Aschheim makes installations based on invisible networks of memory and perception. For the past five years, she has been trying to understand and visualize memory, a subject that has led her to collaborate with musicians and neuroscientists. Aschheim will present recent work: sprawling and delicate webs of video and light that map her memories across the gallery spaces, and sound–sculptures from her collaboration with San Francisco musician/composer Lisa Mezzacappa that translate Aschheim’s memory for language into music, as well as a new series that considers the interrelationship of memory and place.
Deborah Aschheim has had solo and group exhibitions at across the United States, including the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA; the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC; Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MO; the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, PA; Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA; Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA. She recently exhibited a five year survey of her work about memory at San Diego State University Art Gallery. She is a 2011–2012 California Community Foundation Fellow, and from 2009–11 she was the Hellman Visiting Artist at the Memory and Aging Center in the Neurology Department at the University of California, San Francisco medical school.
Digital Culture Showcase
Friday, December 2, 2011
Noon–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
ASU Tempe Campus
Featuring projects and performances from students in ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering's Digital Culture program, the Digital Culture Show will be a lively, entertaining day of interactive digital media. Come see the cutting edge projects that students are creating from interactive performances to sound installations and web–based projects.
The installations will be available throughout the day and performances will be held from 3–4 p.m.
An information session about the newly approved BA in Digital Culture will be held by the School of Arts, Media and Engineering Director Thanassis Rikakis from 1–2 p.m. in Stauffer B125. Anyone who is interested in learning about the new degree is welcome to attend.
Body/Machine vs. Brain/Machine interfaces
Sandro Mussa–Ivaldi
Friday, November 18, 2011
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
The current frontier in brain–machine interface concerns the establishment of effective bi–directional, closed loop interactions. This, in practice, means connecting the decoding problem with the problem of encoding state information in patterns of stimuli. The body–machine interface is based on the idea of redirecting the available mobility to control external devices. Many of the encoding/decoding issues are analogous to the brain/machine communication. But the body–machine interface aims not only at controlling devices, but also at empowering paralyzed people to use their intact body skills and to develop new forms of motor dexterity. My goal is to have a discussion about challenges and directions in these two related fields.
Sandro Mussa–Ivaldi was born in Torino (Italy). He graduated in physics from the University of Torino with a thesis on the oculo–motor system. In 1987 he obtained a PhD in biomedical engineering from the Politecnico of Milano. In 1982 he moved to the United States, to work at MIT in the laboratory of Emilio Bizzi in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Although he planned to stay there for a brief training period, he left 11 years later to take a faculty position in Chicago at Northwestern University, where he is currently Professor of Physiology, Physical medicine and Rehabilitation and Biomedical Engineering. He joined the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and founded the Robotics Laboratory, dedicated to the study of human motor learning and to the rehabilitation after stroke and spinal cord injury through the interaction with intelligent machines. His areas of interest and expertise include robotics, neurobiology of the sensory–motor system, motor learning and computational neuroscience.
Career Advice for Digital Creators
Patrick Koppula
Friday, October 21, 2011
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
Zynga and Facebook are desperate to hire more people, but they reject most applicants. Come hear the surprising truth of what makes a candidate stand out in the current digital culture job market.
Speaker: Patrick Koppula is co–founder of three digital culture startups: ffwd, iLike and GarageBand; a mentor to seed funds, incubators, and venture capital portfolios; and an advocate for making entrepreneurship more accessible.
Daragh Byrne
Assistant Research Professor, School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Friday, September 30, 2011
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
Our life stories enable us to reflect upon and share our personal histories. Through emerging digital technologies the possibility of collecting life experiences digitally is increasingly feasible; consequently so is the potential to create a digital counterpart to our personal narratives. Lifelogging tools can be used to collect digital artifacts continuously and passively throughout our day. These include images, documents, emails and webpages accessed; texts messages and mobile activity. This range of data when brought together is known as a lifelog. Given the complexity, volume and multimodal nature of such collections, it is clear that there are significant challenges to be addressed in order to achieve coherent and meaningful digital narratives of our events from our life histories.
This presentation will explore the construction of personal digital narratives from lifelog collections. It describes the organization and transformation of data sampled from an individual's day–to–day activities into a coherent narrative account. Inspired by probative studies conducted into current practices of curation, from which a set of fundamental requirements were established, a 2–dimensional spatial framework will be motivated as a suitable platform for storytelling. The talk will also discuss the development of tool support to support this storytelling endeavour and the provision of computational support for the the structuring of lifelog content and its distillation into storyform through information retrieval approaches. It will also discuss qualitative and quantitative insights into such digital narratives and their generation, composition and construction yielded from this investigation. Finally, in a novel investigation with motivated third parties we demonstrate the opportunities such narrative accounts may have beyond the scope of the collection owner in: personal, societal and cultural explorations, artistic endeavours and as a generational heirloom.
Daragh Byrne is an Assistant Research Professor with the School of Arts Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. He defended his PhD at Dublin City University (DCU) in August 2011, and also holds a M.Res. degree in Design and Evaluation of Advanced Interactive Systems from Lancaster University and a BSc in Computer Applications from DCU. He has additionally published over 30 scientific papers and the majority of his work is situated within the lifelogging domain, or the capture of personal experience through digital means. His doctoral work focused on the creation of personal digital stories from long–term multimodal lifelog content.
Technological Advances in Stroke Rehabilitation: Opportunities and Challenges
Friday, September 23, 2011
3–4:30 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
PANEL THEME:
Stroke is the leading cause of serious, long–term disability in the United States. Four of every five American families will be touched by stroke during their lifetime. Advancements in technology are exposing new avenues for diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of stroke survivors. These technological advancements range from improved brain scanning techniques, to rehabilitation robotics, interactive media therapy, tele–rehabilitation and computerized databases and registries. Emerging research findings, in conjunction with better technological tools, also foster a better understanding of the complex network of influences that impact the health condition of stroke survivors. However, while technology and research in stroke therapy are advancing , increasing costs and continuously reduced resources are limiting the treatment duration and long term care for stroke survivors. This decline in services continues to escalate despite current research findings showing that long–term therapy can positively impact functional recovery. This panel will discuss the opportunities offered by new technologies, research questions that still demand exploration about the impact of new technologies in stroke rehabilitation and the clarification of challenges to provide long–term, individualized, evidence–based care for stroke survivors.
PANELISTS:
Steve L. Wolf is professor in the departments of Rehab Medicine, Medicine, and Cell Biology at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He has defined the selection criteria for the application of EMG biofeedback to restore upper extremity function among chronic patients with stroke. He recently completed his role as Principal Investigator for the NIH nationally funded EXCITE Trial, the first multi–center Phase III non–surgical, non–pharmacological, upper extremity stroke rehabilitation study ever funded by the NIH. He has many publications and has given frequent national and international presentations on these topics. He is the recipient of numerous rehabilitation research awards.
W. Zev Rymer serves as the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) John G. Searle Chair in Rehabilitation Research and is director of the Sensory Motor Performance Program, a position he has held since 1987. He oversees all research endeavors throughout the RIC system of care. He is the RIC's most senior scientist and the founder of many of its current research programs. Dr. Rymer holds appointments as professor of physiology and biomedical engineering at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and at the Hines VA Hospital in Hines, Ill.
Claude P. Ghez is professor of Neuroscience and Neurology at Columbia University. He investigates the neural mechanisms underlying the control of voluntary movements in normal human subjects and patients with motor disorders. In particular he studies the execution of aimed movements and examine the implicit and explicit aspects of learning necessary for movement accuracy. Important goals are to determine how neural mechanisms break down the computational task of controlling the moving limb and the roles of sensory processing in motor learning.
Jeffrey Kleim is associate professor in the ASU School of Biological & Health Systems Engineering. He studies how neural plasticity supports learning in the intact brain and “relearning” in the damaged or diseased brain. His research is directed at developing therapies that optimize plasticity in order to enhance recovery after stroke and Parkinson's Disease.
Pavan Turaga, Assistant Professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University
Friday, September 9, 2011
3–4 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
Large collections of rich visual data have become ubiquitous and are now extremely interwoven into our daily life. How can mathematics and technology help in guiding a person to find his needle in this visual haystack? Some of the challenges that need to be tackled are the multitude of meanings one can attach to the same image, and the fact that often the meaning we extract from an image is tied strongly to the task we want to accomplish. While there seems to be no general solution to this problem, we discuss a particular paradigm of qualitative sifting that is intended as a first step in exploratory data analysis. This paradigm is intended for an analyst to gather a ground-level understanding of the data he/she faces, before committing oneself to seeking the answer to a specific question. For example, if you wish to show 5 spots in the ASU campus to a visitor, with no pressing task except to maximize the breadth and diversity of experiences, which 5 places would you visit? We believe the answer to such questions will provide tools that will help users in quickly gaining an understanding of their problem domains in more complex situations such as security analysis, managing medical anatomical databases, and organizing YouTube videos.
We model the problem as an optimization problem with specific well–motivated metrics, and show its application in organizing actions, describing scenes, and shape sampling. Some of the mathematical challenges that we tackle include dealing with the complex non–Euclidean geometry of visual patterns, and providing fast algorithms for the same. We hope that this line of inquiry will be relevant with some of the applications being pursued here at ASU.
Pavan Turaga is an Assistant Professor in Arts, Media and Engineering, and Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering. He received the B.Tech. degree in Electronics and communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India, in 2004, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008 and 2009 respectively. He then spent 2 years as a Research Associate at the Center for Automation Research, UMD. His research interests are in statistics and machine learning with applications to computer vision and pattern analysis. His research work includes human activity analysis from videos, video summarization, dynamic scene analysis, and statistical inference on manifolds for these applications. He was awarded the Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship by UMD in 2009, and was selected to participate in the Emerging Leaders in Multimedia Workshop by IBM, New York, in 2008.
Garth Paine, Visiting Faculty in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering,
Arizona State University
Friday, August 26, 2011
3–5 p.m., Stauffer B, Room 125
Tempe Campus
Garth Paine is joining the faculty of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering for the coming academic year. In this presentation he will give an overview of several projects he has been working on in Australia that may be of interest to colleagues at ASU. These include a bio–sensor driven dance work with dancer/choreographer Hellen Sky. This work uses bio–sensors on the dancers to create all of the music for the performance in real–time. Garth will discuss the challenges of making a choreographic work that is entirely interactive and is seeking interest in also bringing the visual domain of the piece into the real–time domain. He will also talk about another project called Thinking Through the Body and his real–time MoCAP sonification of breathing patterns for an exhibition work. He will also play an acousmatic music work that is the result of ambisonic field recordings in the Shoalhaven river area of New South Wales in Australia – a work he made whilst in residence at the Arthur Boyd residency, Bundanon. Whilst at ASU, Garth intends to make ambisonic recordings of the deserts of Arizona – seeking ‘ empty space’ – a space in which one might be aware of ones own presence as a kind of negative space.
Dr. Garth Paine is Senior Lecturer in Music Technology, a researcher at MARCS Auditory Research labs and director of the Virtual, Interactive, Performance Research environment (VIPRe). He is particularly fascinated with sound as an exhibitable object. This passion has led to several interactive responsive environments where the inhabitant generates the sonic landscape through their presence and behavior. It has also led to several music scores for dance works, generated through real–time video tracking and or bio–sensing of the dancers. His work has been shown throughout Australia, Europe, Japan, USA, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Dr. Pain's ensemble SynC acts as a platform for research into new interfaces for electronic music performance. SynC has performed in, Paris (2006), New York (2007), Liquid Architecture (2007), Aurora festival (2006, 2008), and The Australian New Music Network concert series (2008). He is a member of the advisory panel for the Electronic Music Foundation, New York and an advisor to the UNESCO funded Symposium on the Future. Dr Paine is a Chief Investigator on several current Australian Research Council grants. His work can be found at www.activatedspace.com
