Out of dissatisfaction with currently available software, we built a music management program for large digital music libraries. We propose a system that solves some of the difficulties of organising these libraries. The system introduces a new visual interaction style with the user’s music collection. A physics system coupled to album’s genre information allows the user to spatially order his or her music on screen and make selections. Also, the graphical appearance of the albums on screen reveals some of their properties, like age or genre, at a single glance. This, combined with an advanced search mechanism and the ability to add custom properties and information to the music, ensures rapid retrieval of music from even the largest of databases. User evaluations confirmed that all functions form welcome improvements over those of well-known text-based alternatives.

As long as there have been museum collections they have been interpreted and displayed according to the prevailing philosophy of their time. In the post-modern period many schools of thought have influenced museum interpretation, amongst them Constructivism. The model of the Constructivist Museum is one where visitors are involved in the process of interpretation and the construction of knowledge. Though examples of this have been rare in the world of physical museum display, with advances in technology and the development of the World Wide Web, visitors to online museums have more opportunity for participation. This paper examines how and if the concept of the Constructivist Museum is manifesting itself in the world of museums and the Web. Using several online projects as examples, it seeks to discover how user-generated content is being incorporated into museums and why there is a reticence amongst the public to dispute or edit official interpretation. It examines issues of trust, authority and the challenges to the traditional hierarchy of knowledge that arise in its doing so. This paper contends that whilst user-generated content is often encouraged on museum websites it is rarely allowed to infiltrate the official museum interpretative process and suggests that reluctance amongst museum professionals and curators to relinquish power and control might be responsible. It also suggests that museums might need to review the way they interact with their users in terms of presenting content on existing internet platforms.

The importance and magnitude of the problem facing society about preserving our digitally encoded intellectual and cultural capital is not in doubt. However, there are a number of fundamental challenges which must be overcome in order to provide adequate solutions. This paper will describe the progress which has been made so far in solving these challenges and the further progress which must be made if we are to safeguard our digital holdings. For example, the terminology used in different disciplines is a barrier to sharing ideas and improving practice; the OAIS reference model has provided a partial solution to this but more can be done. There is a fundamental divide in mind-sets and approaches between those dealing with rendered objects and those dealing with digital objects which are processed rather than rendered which causes much confusion; this paper will provide a view which resolves these differences. Claims for the various digital preservation techniques abound, yet which ones actually work? A fundamental approach to providing rather convincing evidence, which should be used to test any such claims, will be described. Claims that a repository is preserving the digital holdings with which it has been entrusted are hard to test; how can depositors in or funders of repositories know which repositories can be trusted? This talk will describe the mechanism which is being developed to ISO certify repositories and what is left to do.

The Mesopotamian invention of suspended narratives in mineral pigment and glaze produced in the fifteen thousand year old ‘new technology’ of the ceramic tile sets the scene for my talk for EVA 2010 (and this published paper which is intended to act as a prologue to that talk). It was this invention, a mass-produced media technology with the limit of a prototype glass screen that allowed commentators to distinguish between the repetitious, the mimetic and the bespoke for the first time.

This paper discusses the use of visualisation to enhance audience and performer understanding of a distributed networked musical performance by addressing issues of anticipation of upcoming sonic events.

This research is concerned with applying evolutionary algorithms to explore the creation and optimisation of authentic and novel human character faces. Utilising computer software to create an authentic three-dimensional character face usually requires a graphic artist to spend a considerable amount of time and attention to painstaking detail to evolve authentic facial topology. Given that character faces share many common properties of proportion and relative positioning of facial components such as eyes, nose and mouth, then perhaps some novel face may be evolved from some standard base face through a user-centred application of a stochastic search process. Further, can such a system support the non-visually creative practitioner in the realisation of his or her own conceptual visualisations of an authentic character representation? An initial investigation applying these ideas within the context of a 3D modelling environment (Maya) to creating a human face and parametrically generate faces with varying characteristics for head shape, eye, nose, and mouth is reported. This work involves the integration of an interactive evolutionary process which utilises user-selected mesh components within the Maya environment.

Eye.Breathe.Music is a musical interface that can be controlled by movement of the pupils and breath pressure. The interface uses a pressure sensor to measure breath intensity; a camera to track eye movement and a display to provide the user with interactive feedback. This paper discusses the background research into the instrument, how this was used to design and construct the system, an evaluation of the resulted prototype, future development and possible applications.

This paper uses psychoanalysis to explore the magic of the immersive experience, comparing 18th century peepshows with the latest in virtual reality. A project to produce a museum artefact based on an existing antique peepshow, is the driving force behind this research to rediscover the enchantment of the peepshow, and to question how new technologies can add to this experience.

The proliferation of artists, audiences, and participants who have the ability to create mirror copies of original digital media arts work challenges us to re-examine how value is assigned to digital media arts work. Historically, space and capital limitations restricted the public’s accessibility to artwork, but the growth of mass digital reproduction and alternative forms of art exhibition spaces is having a profound effect on the experience and valuation of digital media arts work. For example, the online distribution of digital media arts work across networks facilitates the circumvention of traditional valuation models. In this essay, I explore the background and challenges to assigning value to digital media arts work. This essay also investigates alternative models of exhibition and valuation of digital media arts work in the institutional, private, and public spheres.

Internet art that employs data visualisation techniques may be engaged with both in terms of the data used and also the interface to that data. Such an approach allows it to be understood as opening the possibility of an awareness of the contingency of the way any given community is constructed. The focus is shifted away from understanding data visualisation art as providing a transparent representation of reality. This is exemplified in the work They Rule which, approached in these terms, invites an engagement with the law’s role in enabling networks of powerful people to be constructed. They Rule opens the possibility of perceiving the law’s violence in the way that it asserts the authority of enabling and enforcing the existence of such connections. An awareness of the constructed nature of legal networks opens the law to the possibility of change by those it excludes.