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Dancers at Encounters The conceptual approach, artistic creation and technical design of Encounters were realised through an iterative, collaborative process between visual artists, composers, dancers and computer scientists. Professional dancers contributed through developing a score (that is, broad guidelines which they would follow, rather than detailed choreography) aiming to demonstrate use of the installation and encourage participation. The dance score consisted of four phases, inspired by the Cosmic aesthetic of the audio and visual components of the installation: 1. Weightlessness: orbiting limbs and joints, pauses. Performed individually in midst of participants. 2. Gravitational pull: becoming heavier, ready for orbit. Performed in the space around participants. 3. Creating clusters: forming audiences into groups. Dancers aim to group participants. 4. Asteroid shower: rapid movement between platforms, moving to area directly in front of screen Dancers disperse groups then create distance.  

Dancers at Encounters The conceptual approach, artistic creation and technical design of Encounters were realised through an iterative, collaborative process between visual artists, composers, dancers and computer scientists. Professional dancers contributed through developing a score (that is, broad guidelines which they would follow, rather than detailed choreography) aiming to demonstrate use of the installation and encourage participation. The dance score consisted of four phases, inspired by the Cosmic aesthetic of the audio and visual components of the installation: 1. Weightlessness: orbiting limbs and joints, pauses. Performed individually in midst of participants. 2. Gravitational pull: becoming heavier, ready for orbit. Performed in the space around participants. 3. Creating clusters: forming audiences into groups. Dancers aim to group participants. 4. Asteroid shower: rapid movement between platforms, moving to area directly in front of screen Dancers disperse groups then create distance.  

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Conference Paper
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In this paper, we report on Encounters, an interactive public installation that provides a basis for studying the effect of dance performances on the emergence of creative, social experiences. Based on observations and interviews with dancers and participants, we identified a range of tensions that arise from integrating a staged performance with p...

Citations

... While deep models were initially used to generate realistic images or modify them, GANs are also capable of performing image to image translation tasks, as demonstrated in [26,27]. In these examples, the output images of GANs are conditioned on source images, which usually represent the 'content' and the task of the GAN is generating new images that show the same content (e.g. ...
Article
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Creating realistic animations of human faces is still a challenging task in computer graphics. While computer graphics (CG) models capture much variability in a small parameter vector, they usually do not meet the necessary visual quality. This is due to the fact, that geometry‐based animation often does not allow fine‐grained deformations and fails in difficult areas (mouth, eyes) to produce realistic renderings. Image‐based animation techniques avoid these problems by using dynamic textures that capture details and small movements that are not explained by geometry. This comes at the cost of high‐memory requirements and limited flexibility in terms of animation because dynamic texture sequences need to be concatenated seamlessly, which is not always possible and prone to visual artefacts. In this study, the authors present a new hybrid animation framework that exploits recent advances in deep learning to provide an interactive animation engine that can be used via a simple and intuitive visualisation for facial expression editing. The authors describe an automatic pipeline to generate training sequences that consist of dynamic textures plus sequences of consistent three‐dimensional face models. Based on this data, they train a variational autoencoder to learn a low‐dimensional latent space of facial expressions that is used for interactive facial animation.
... 8 In addition to musical performance applications, one participant (amateur dancer) saw a potential use of the system to recognise dance movements and map them to audio-visual responses. 9 Interestingly, systems for extending other form of interactive dance performances have been recently developed [34,35]. ...
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We present MyoSpat, an interactive system that enables performers to control sound and light projections through hand-gestures. MyoSpat is designed and developed using the Myo armband as an input device and Pure Data (Pd) as an audiovisual engine. The system is built upon human-computer interaction (HCI) principles; specifically, tangible computing and embodied, sonic and music interaction design (MiXD). This paper covers a description of the system and its audiovisual feedback design. Finally, we evaluate the system and its potential use in exploring embodied , sonic and music interaction principles in different multimedia contexts.
... Notably, this design goal does not necessarily imply that the 'success' of an interactive system is proportionate to increasing the number of interactions [Brignull and Rogers, 2003]. Even the absence of any interaction from bystanders contains a potential opportunity for their interaction at a later stage [Tang et al., 2008], or for watching the activities that are performed by active participants [Meisner et al., 2007;Webber et al., 2015]. As such, besides providing active participants in a system with a pleasant experience, systems should take into account the different degrees of participation in their vicinity, while unobtrusively inviting bystanders to engage in participation . ...
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Media architecture aims to alter our experience of public space through the use of digital media integrated within the built environment. While most current manifestations serve general commercial, artistic or entertaining purposes, we believe media architecture has the potential to become more socially and architecturally relevant. However, little is known on how media architecture becomes more contextually integrated, from a socio-demographic, technical and architectural perspective. In this dissertation, we describe the design and eval- uation of four in-the-wild case studies that each address particular contextual challenges of media architecture. All studies utilise a design-oriented research methodology that com- bines architectural and participatory methods with those from human-computer interaction. - In OpenWindow, we handed over the control of public displays to households. We were able to demonstrate how such open public displays positively influence social cohesion. - In StreetTalk, we evaluated how participatory design is able to broaden the design space of sociable media architecture, and how user-generated content is characterised by particular local relevance. - In Encounters, we analysed the contextual, spatial and social factors that influence engagement in public interactive systems. - In Stories of Exile, we evaluated how participatory media architecture serves as an interface between local community members and refugees. Our case studies demonstrate how media architecture becomes a sociable tool that is rele- vant in its context, by: 1) enabling multiple stakeholders to collaborate in the design; 2) communicating information that is grounded in the local identity; 3) incorporating design characteristics to promote engagement; and 4) optimising the integration within the sur- rounding architectural context.
... Notably, this design goal does not necessarily imply that the 'success' of an interactive system is proportionate to increasing the number of interactions [3]. Even the absence of any interaction from bystanders contains a potential opportunity for their interaction at a later stage [32], or for watching the activities that are performed by active participants [22,35]. As such, besides providing active participants in a system with a pleasant experience, systems should take into account the different degrees of participation in their vicinity, while unobtrusively inviting bystanders to engage in participation [17]. ...
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In HCI, the honeypot effect describes how people interacting with a system passively stimulate passers-by to observe, approach and engage in an interaction. Previous research has revealed the successive engagement phases and zones of the honeypot effect. However, there is little insight into: 1) how people are stimulated to transition between phases; 2) what aspects drive the honeypot effect apart from watching others; and 3) what constraints affect its self- reinforcing performance. In this paper, we discuss the honeypot effect as a spatiotemporal model of trajectories and influences. We introduce the Honeypot Model based on the analysis of observations and interaction logs from Encounters, a public installation that interactively translated bodily movements into a dynamic visual and sonic output. In providing a model that describes trajectories and influences of audience engagement in public interactive systems, our paper seeks to inform researchers and designers to consider contextual, spatial and social factors that influence audience engagement.
Article
The virtualization of traditionally in-person experiences has altered the workflows of performing arts communities, resulting in modifications to performance venues and alterations to expressiveness and interaction. 25 professional movement-based performers who have participated in both live and online performances were interviewed in order to determine how virtualization processes affected their practices and how they adapted to these changes. We discovered that performers viewed online performances as time-limited, non-interactive film recordings. Instead of avoiding distant venues, performers adapted to new limitations, inventing improvisation strategies in distracting environments and using time and technological constraints as creative constraints. To investigate how a distanced paradigm affects the live-action workflow of dancers, we staged a performance in which a dancer interacted with a robot in a remote location. The case study demonstrated that the performer modified her rehearsal techniques to work with remote technology and adapted to live interaction with a remote audience by visualizing unseen interactions. This study provides guidance for the design of interactive technology for virtual performances, taking into account the adaptation strategies that performers are currently employing to circumvent limitations of time, location, and absence.
Chapter
In this paper, we set out to explore how to design for spontaneous group formation, as part of shared encounters in a public installation. Spontaneous group formation describes a phenomenon where pedestrians form groups with other pedestrians, to whom they are previously unacquainted, for the purpose of interacting with an installation. This was accomplished by developing a 5 by 5 m version of the game based on the Simon game, with flashing lights and oversized buttons, designed to encourage spontaneous group formation by giving an advantage to larger groups, up to a maximum of four. Over three days of testing, the prototype was found to generate 11 spontaneous group formations out of 161 total use cases, showing evidence that effective lures are one of the key factors behind the phenomenon.