CumInCAD is a Cumulative Index about publications in Computer Aided Architectural Design
supported by the sibling associations ACADIA, CAADRIA, eCAADe, SIGraDi, ASCAAD and CAAD futures

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_id 4a1a
authors Laird, J.E.
year 2001
title Using Computer Game to Develop Advanced AI
source Computer, 34 (7), July pp. 70-75
summary Although computer and video games have existed for fewer than 40 years, they are already serious business. Entertainment software, the entertainment industry's fastest growing segment, currently generates sales surpassing the film industry's gross revenues. Computer games have significantly affected personal computer sales, providing the initial application for CD-ROMs, driving advancements in graphics technology, and motivating the purchase of ever faster machines. Next-generation computer game consoles are extending this trend, with Sony and Toshiba spending $2 billion to develop the Playstation 2 and Microsoft planning to spend more than $500 million just to market its Xbox console [1]. These investments have paid off. In the past five years, the quality and complexity of computer games have advanced significantly. Computer graphics have shown the most noticeable improvement, with the number of polygons rendered in a scene increasing almost exponentially each year, significantly enhancing the games' realism. For example, the original Playstation, released in 1995, renders 300,000 polygons per second, while Sega's Dreamcast, released in 1999, renders 3 million polygons per second. The Playstation 2 sets the current standard, rendering 66 million polygons per second, while projections indicate the Xbox will render more than lOO million polygons per second. Thus, the images on today's $300 game consoles rival or surpass those available on the previous decade's $50,000 computers. The impact of these improvements is evident in the complexity and realism of the environments underlying today's games, from detailed indoor rooms and corridors to vast outdoor landscapes. These games populate the environments with both human and computer controlled characters, making them a rich laboratory for artificial intelligence research into developing intelligent and social autonomous agents. Indeed, computer games offer a fitting subject for serious academic study, undergraduate education, and graduate student and faculty research. Creating and efficiently rendering these environments touches on every topic in a computer science curriculum. The "Teaching Game Design " sidebar describes the benefits and challenges of developing computer game design courses, an increasingly popular field of study
series journal paper
last changed 2003/04/23 15:50

_id ga0026
id ga0026
authors Ransen, Owen F.
year 2000
title Possible Futures in Computer Art Generation
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary Years of trying to create an "Image Idea Generator" program have convinced me that the perfect solution would be to have an artificial artistic person, a design slave. This paper describes how I came to that conclusion, realistic alternatives, and briefly, how it could possibly happen. 1. The history of Repligator and Gliftic 1.1 Repligator In 1996 I had the idea of creating an “image idea generator”. I wanted something which would create images out of nothing, but guided by the user. The biggest conceptual problem I had was “out of nothing”. What does that mean? So I put aside that problem and forced the user to give the program a starting image. This program eventually turned into Repligator, commercially described as an “easy to use graphical effects program”, but actually, to my mind, an Image Idea Generator. The first release came out in October 1997. In December 1998 I described Repligator V4 [1] and how I thought it could be developed away from simply being an effects program. In July 1999 Repligator V4 won the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation prize for "Best Graphics Program of 1999". Prize winners are never told why they won, but I am sure that it was because of two things: 1) Easy of use 2) Ease of experimentation "Ease of experimentation" means that Repligator does in fact come up with new graphics ideas. Once you have input your original image you can generate new versions of that image simply by pushing a single key. Repligator is currently at version 6, but, apart from adding many new effects and a few new features, is basically the same program as version 4. Following on from the ideas in [1] I started to develop Gliftic, which is closer to my original thoughts of an image idea generator which "starts from nothing". The Gliftic model of images was that they are composed of three components: 1. Layout or form, for example the outline of a mandala is a form. 2. Color scheme, for example colors selected from autumn leaves from an oak tree. 3. Interpretation, for example Van Gogh would paint a mandala with oak tree colors in a different way to Andy Warhol. There is a Van Gogh interpretation and an Andy Warhol interpretation. Further I wanted to be able to genetically breed images, for example crossing two layouts to produce a child layout. And the same with interpretations and color schemes. If I could achieve this then the program would be very powerful. 1.2 Getting to Gliftic Programming has an amazing way of crystalising ideas. If you want to put an idea into practice via a computer program you really have to understand the idea not only globally, but just as importantly, in detail. You have to make hard design decisions, there can be no vagueness, and so implementing what I had decribed above turned out to be a considerable challenge. I soon found out that the hardest thing to do would be the breeding of forms. What are the "genes" of a form? What are the genes of a circle, say, and how do they compare to the genes of the outline of the UK? I wanted the genotype representation (inside the computer program's data) to be directly linked to the phenotype representation (on the computer screen). This seemed to be the best way of making sure that bred-forms would bare some visual relationship to their parents. I also wanted symmetry to be preserved. For example if two symmetrical objects were bred then their children should be symmetrical. I decided to represent shapes as simply closed polygonal shapes, and the "genes" of these shapes were simply the list of points defining the polygon. Thus a circle would have to be represented by a regular polygon of, say, 100 sides. The outline of the UK could easily be represented as a list of points every 10 Kilometers along the coast line. Now for the important question: what do you get when you cross a circle with the outline of the UK? I tried various ways of combining the "genes" (i.e. coordinates) of the shapes, but none of them really ended up producing interesting shapes. And of the methods I used, many of them, applied over several "generations" simply resulted in amorphous blobs, with no distinct family characteristics. Or rather maybe I should say that no single method of breeding shapes gave decent results for all types of images. Figure 1 shows an example of breeding a mandala with 6 regular polygons: Figure 1 Mandala bred with array of regular polygons I did not try out all my ideas, and maybe in the future I will return to the problem, but it was clear to me that it is a non-trivial problem. And if the breeding of shapes is a non-trivial problem, then what about the breeding of interpretations? I abandoned the genetic (breeding) model of generating designs but retained the idea of the three components (form, color scheme, interpretation). 1.3 Gliftic today Gliftic Version 1.0 was released in May 2000. It allows the user to change a form, a color scheme and an interpretation. The user can experiment with combining different components together and can thus home in on an personally pleasing image. Just as in Repligator, pushing the F7 key make the program choose all the options. Unlike Repligator however the user can also easily experiment with the form (only) by pushing F4, the color scheme (only) by pushing F5 and the interpretation (only) by pushing F6. Figures 2, 3 and 4 show some example images created by Gliftic. Figure 2 Mandala interpreted with arabesques   Figure 3 Trellis interpreted with "graphic ivy"   Figure 4 Regular dots interpreted as "sparks" 1.4 Forms in Gliftic V1 Forms are simply collections of graphics primitives (points, lines, ellipses and polygons). The program generates these collections according to the user's instructions. Currently the forms are: Mandala, Regular Polygon, Random Dots, Random Sticks, Random Shapes, Grid Of Polygons, Trellis, Flying Leap, Sticks And Waves, Spoked Wheel, Biological Growth, Chequer Squares, Regular Dots, Single Line, Paisley, Random Circles, Chevrons. 1.5 Color Schemes in Gliftic V1 When combining a form with an interpretation (described later) the program needs to know what colors it can use. The range of colors is called a color scheme. Gliftic has three color scheme types: 1. Random colors: Colors for the various parts of the image are chosen purely at random. 2. Hue Saturation Value (HSV) colors: The user can choose the main hue (e.g. red or yellow), the saturation (purity) of the color scheme and the value (brightness/darkness) . The user also has to choose how much variation is allowed in the color scheme. A wide variation allows the various colors of the final image to depart a long way from the HSV settings. A smaller variation results in the final image using almost a single color. 3. Colors chosen from an image: The user can choose an image (for example a JPG file of a famous painting, or a digital photograph he took while on holiday in Greece) and Gliftic will select colors from that image. Only colors from the selected image will appear in the output image. 1.6 Interpretations in Gliftic V1 Interpretation in Gliftic is best decribed with a few examples. A pure geometric line could be interpreted as: 1) the branch of a tree 2) a long thin arabesque 3) a sequence of disks 4) a chain, 5) a row of diamonds. An pure geometric ellipse could be interpreted as 1) a lake, 2) a planet, 3) an eye. Gliftic V1 has the following interpretations: Standard, Circles, Flying Leap, Graphic Ivy, Diamond Bar, Sparkz, Ess Disk, Ribbons, George Haite, Arabesque, ZigZag. 1.7 Applications of Gliftic Currently Gliftic is mostly used for creating WEB graphics, often backgrounds as it has an option to enable "tiling" of the generated images. There is also a possibility that it will be used in the custom textile business sometime within the next year or two. The real application of Gliftic is that of generating new graphics ideas, and I suspect that, like Repligator, many users will only understand this later. 2. The future of Gliftic, 3 possibilties Completing Gliftic V1 gave me the experience to understand what problems and opportunities there will be in future development of the program. Here I divide my many ideas into three oversimplified possibilities, and the real result may be a mix of two or all three of them. 2.1 Continue the current development "linearly" Gliftic could grow simply by the addition of more forms and interpretations. In fact I am sure that initially it will grow like this. However this limits the possibilities to what is inside the program itself. These limits can be mitigated by allowing the user to add forms (as vector files). The user can already add color schemes (as images). The biggest problem with leaving the program in its current state is that there is no easy way to add interpretations. 2.2 Allow the artist to program Gliftic It would be interesting to add a language to Gliftic which allows the user to program his own form generators and interpreters. In this way Gliftic becomes a "platform" for the development of dynamic graphics styles by the artist. The advantage of not having to deal with the complexities of Windows programming could attract the more adventurous artists and designers. The choice of programming language of course needs to take into account the fact that the "programmer" is probably not be an expert computer scientist. I have seen how LISP (an not exactly easy artificial intelligence language) has become very popular among non programming users of AutoCAD. If, to complete a job which you do manually and repeatedly, you can write a LISP macro of only 5 lines, then you may be tempted to learn enough LISP to write those 5 lines. Imagine also the ability to publish (and/or sell) "style generators". An artist could develop a particular interpretation function, it creates images of a given character which others find appealing. The interpretation (which runs inside Gliftic as a routine) could be offered to interior designers (for example) to unify carpets, wallpaper, furniture coverings for single projects. As Adrian Ward [3] says on his WEB site: "Programming is no less an artform than painting is a technical process." Learning a computer language to create a single image is overkill and impractical. Learning a computer language to create your own artistic style which generates an infinite series of images in that style may well be attractive. 2.3 Add an artificial conciousness to Gliftic This is a wild science fiction idea which comes into my head regularly. Gliftic manages to surprise the users with the images it makes, but, currently, is limited by what gets programmed into it or by pure chance. How about adding a real artifical conciousness to the program? Creating an intelligent artificial designer? According to Igor Aleksander [1] conciousness is required for programs (computers) to really become usefully intelligent. Aleksander thinks that "the line has been drawn under the philosophical discussion of conciousness, and the way is open to sound scientific investigation". Without going into the details, and with great over-simplification, there are roughly two sorts of artificial intelligence: 1) Programmed intelligence, where, to all intents and purposes, the programmer is the "intelligence". The program may perform well (but often, in practice, doesn't) and any learning which is done is simply statistical and pre-programmed. There is no way that this type of program could become concious. 2) Neural network intelligence, where the programs are based roughly on a simple model of the brain, and the network learns how to do specific tasks. It is this sort of program which, according to Aleksander, could, in the future, become concious, and thus usefully intelligent. What could the advantages of an artificial artist be? 1) There would be no need for programming. Presumbably the human artist would dialog with the artificial artist, directing its development. 2) The artificial artist could be used as an apprentice, doing the "drudge" work of art, which needs intelligence, but is, anyway, monotonous for the human artist. 3) The human artist imagines "concepts", the artificial artist makes them concrete. 4) An concious artificial artist may come up with ideas of its own. Is this science fiction? Arthur C. Clarke's 1st Law: "If a famous scientist says that something can be done, then he is in all probability correct. If a famous scientist says that something cannot be done, then he is in all probability wrong". Arthur C Clarke's 2nd Law: "Only by trying to go beyond the current limits can you find out what the real limits are." One of Bertrand Russell's 10 commandments: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric" 3. References 1. "From Ramon Llull to Image Idea Generation". Ransen, Owen. Proceedings of the 1998 Milan First International Conference on Generative Art. 2. "How To Build A Mind" Aleksander, Igor. Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1999 3. "How I Drew One of My Pictures: or, The Authorship of Generative Art" by Adrian Ward and Geof Cox. Proceedings of the 1999 Milan 2nd International Conference on Generative Art.
series other
email
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id 4805
authors Bentley, P.
year 1999
title Evolutionary Design by Computers Morgan Kaufmann
source San Francisco, CA
summary Computers can only do what we tell them to do. They are our blind, unconscious digital slaves, bound to us by the unbreakable chains of our programs. These programs instruct computers what to do, when to do it, and how it should be done. But what happens when we loosen these chains? What happens when we tell a computer to use a process that we do not fully understand, in order to achieve something we do not fully understand? What happens when we tell a computer to evolve designs? As this book will show, what happens is that the computer gains almost human-like qualities of autonomy, innovative flair, and even creativity. These 'skills'which evolution so mysteriously endows upon our computers open up a whole new way of using computers in design. Today our former 'glorified typewriters' or 'overcomplicated drawing boards' can do everything from generating new ideas and concepts in design, to improving the performance of designs well beyond the abilities of even the most skilled human designer. Evolving designs on computers now enables us to employ computers in every stage of the design process. This is no longer computer aided design - this is becoming computer design. The pages of this book testify to the ability of today's evolutionary computer techniques in design. Flick through them and you will see designs of satellite booms, load cells, flywheels, computer networks, artistic images, sculptures, virtual creatures, house and hospital architectural plans, bridges, cranes, analogue circuits and even coffee tables. Out of all of the designs in the world, the collection you see in this book have a unique history: they were all evolved by computer, not designed by humans.
series other
last changed 2003/04/23 15:14

_id 3fb8
authors Monedero, Javier
year 1999
title Can a Machine Design? A Disturbing Recreation of Turing's Test for the Use of Architects
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1999.589
source Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000 [eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9523687-5-7] Liverpool (UK) 15-17 September 1999, pp. 589-594
summary In 1950, fifty years ago, Alan Turing published a much-quoted paper that has given rise to a long list of articles and books. It presented, perhaps for the first time, in a clever and somehow sarcastic way, what has become one of the main big questions raised by the use of computers in human societies. The title of that paper was "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Mind, Vol. LIX, No. 236, October 1950) and the game proposed in it, called by Turing "the imitation game" has come to be known as "Turing's Test". The paper presented here is a rather simple adaptation of Turing's Test. It may, I hope, present in a, perhaps, not too serious a way, some central points related to the way that computers have integrated themselves in architect's, engineer's and building enterprises and, through them, in the way that architecture evolves in our times and adapts itself to modern societies.
series eCAADe
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:58

_id ga0010
id ga0010
authors Moroni, A., Zuben, F. Von and Manzolli, J.
year 2000
title ArTbitrariness in Music
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary Evolution is now considered not only powerful enough to bring about the biological entities as complex as humans and conciousness, but also useful in simulation to create algorithms and structures of higher levels of complexity than could easily be built by design. In the context of artistic domains, the process of human-machine interaction is analyzed as a good framework to explore creativity and to produce results that could not be obtained without this interaction. When evolutionary computation and other computational intelligence methodologies are involved, every attempt to improve aesthetic judgement we denote as ArTbitrariness, and is interpreted as an interactive iterative optimization process. ArTbitrariness is also suggested as an effective way to produce art through an efficient manipulation of information and a proper use of computational creativity to increase the complexity of the results without neglecting the aesthetic aspects [Moroni et al., 2000]. Our emphasis will be in an approach to interactive music composition. The problem of computer generation of musical material has received extensive attention and a subclass of the field of algorithmic composition includes those applications which use the computer as something in between an instrument, in which a user "plays" through the application's interface, and a compositional aid, which a user experiments with in order to generate stimulating and varying musical material. This approach was adopted in Vox Populi, a hybrid made up of an instrument and a compositional environment. Differently from other systems found in genetic algorithms or evolutionary computation, in which people have to listen to and judge the musical items, Vox Populi uses the computer and the mouse as real-time music controllers, acting as a new interactive computer-based musical instrument. The interface is designed to be flexible for the user to modify the music being generated. It explores evolutionary computation in the context of algorithmic composition and provides a graphical interface that allows to modify the tonal center and the voice range, changing the evolution of the music by using the mouse[Moroni et al., 1999]. A piece of music consists of several sets of musical material manipulated and exposed to the listener, for example pitches, harmonies, rhythms, timbres, etc. They are composed of a finite number of elements and basically, the aim of a composer is to organize those elements in an esthetic way. Modeling a piece as a dynamic system implies a view in which the composer draws trajectories or orbits using the elements of each set [Manzolli, 1991]. Nonlinear iterative mappings are associated with interface controls. In the next page two examples of nonlinear iterative mappings with their resulting musical pieces are shown.The mappings may give rise to attractors, defined as geometric figures that represent the set of stationary states of a non-linear dynamic system, or simply trajectories to which the system is attracted. The relevance of this approach goes beyond music applications per se. Computer music systems that are built on the basis of a solid theory can be coherently embedded into multimedia environments. The richness and specialty of the music domain are likely to initiate new thinking and ideas, which will have an impact on areas such as knowledge representation and planning, and on the design of visual formalisms and human-computer interfaces in general. Above and bellow, Vox Populi interface is depicted, showing two nonlinear iterative mappings with their resulting musical pieces. References [Manzolli, 1991] J. Manzolli. Harmonic Strange Attractors, CEM BULLETIN, Vol. 2, No. 2, 4 -- 7, 1991. [Moroni et al., 1999] Moroni, J. Manzolli, F. Von Zuben, R. Gudwin. Evolutionary Computation applied to Algorithmic Composition, Proceedings of CEC99 - IEEE International Conference on Evolutionary Computation, Washington D. C., p. 807 -- 811,1999. [Moroni et al., 2000] Moroni, A., Von Zuben, F. and Manzolli, J. ArTbitration, Las Vegas, USA: Proceedings of the 2000 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference Workshop Program – GECCO, 143 -- 145, 2000.
series other
email
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id ga9908
id ga9908
authors Senagala, Mahesh
year 1999
title Artistic Process, Cybernetics of Self and the Epistemology of Digital Technology
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary From the viewpoint of Batesonian cybernetics, ‘conscious purpose’ and artistic process are distinct ends of a spectrum of the functioning of self. Artistic activities— by which I mean art, poetry, play, design, etc.— involve processes that are beneath the stratum of consciousness. By definition, consciousness is selective awareness and is linear in execution and limited in its capability to synthesize complex parameters. As Heidegger pointed out, technology is a special form of knowledge (episteme). A machine is a manifestation of such a knowledge. A machine is a result of conscious purpose and is normally task-driven to accomplish a specific purpose(s). The questions this paper raises are to do with the connections between conscious purpose, artistic process and digital technology. One of the central questions of the paper is "if artistic process requires an abandonment or relinquishment of conscious purpose at the time of the generation of the work of art, and if the artistic process is a result of vast number of ‘unconscious’ forces and impulses, then could we say that the computer would ever be able to ‘generate’ or ‘create’ a work of art?" In what capacity and what role would the computer be a part of the generative process of art? Would a computer be able to ‘generate’ and ‘know’ a work of art, which, according to Bateson, requires the abandonment of conscious purpose? The ultimate goal of the paper is to unearth and examine the potential of the computers to be a part of the generative process of what Bateson has called "total self as a cybernetic model". On another plane of discourse, Deleuze and Guattari have added a critical dimension to the discourse of cybernetics and models of human mind and the global computer networks. Their notion of ‘rhizome’ has its roots in Batesonian cybernetics and the cybernetic couplings between the ‘complex systems’ such as human mind, biological and computational systems. Deleuze and Guattari call such systems as human brain and the neural networks as rhizomatic. Given the fact that the computer is the first known cybernetic machine to lay claims to artificial intelligence, the aforementioned questions become even more significant. The paper will explore how, cybernetically, the computer could be ‘coupled’ with ‘self’ and the artistic process — the ultimate expression of human condition. These philosophical and artistic explorations will take place through a series of generative artistic projects (See the figure below for an example) that aim at understanding the couplings and ‘ecology’ of digital technology and the cybernetics of self.
series other
email
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id 1419
authors Spitz, Rejane
year 1999
title Dirty Hands on the Keyboard: In Search of Less Aseptic Computer Graphics Teaching for Art & Design
source III Congreso Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings] Montevideo (Uruguay) September 29th - October 1st 1999, pp. 13-18
summary In recent decades our society has witnessed a level of technological development that has not been matched by that of educational development. Far from the forefront in the process of social change, education has been trailing behind transformations occurring in industrial sectors, passively and sluggishly assimilating their technological innovations. Worse yet, educators have taken the technology and logic of innovations deriving predominantly from industry and attempted to transpose them directly into the classroom, without either analyzing them in terms of demands from the educational context or adjusting them to the specificities of the teaching/learning process. In the 1970s - marked by the effervescence of Educational Technology - society witnessed the extensive proliferation of audio-visual resources for use in education, yet with limited development in teaching theories and educational methods and procedures. In the 1980s, when Computers in Education emerged as a new area, the discussion focused predominantly on the issue of how the available computer technology could be used in the school, rather than tackling the question of how it could be developed in such a way as to meet the needs of the educational proposal. What, then, will the educational legacy of the 1990s be? In this article we focus on the issue from the perspective of undergraduate and graduate courses in Arts and Design. Computer Graphics slowly but surely has gained ground and consolidated as part of the Art & Design curricula in recent years, but in most cases as a subject in the curriculum that is not linked to the others. Computers are usually allocated in special laboratories, inside and outside Departments, but invariably isolated from the dust, clay, varnish, and paint and other wastes, materials, and odors impregnating - and characterizing - other labs in Arts and Design courses.In spite of its isolation, computer technology coexists with centuries-old practices and traditions in Art & Design courses. This interesting meeting of tradition and innovation has led to daring educational ideas and experiments in the Arts and Design which have had a ripple effect in other fields of knowledge. We analyze these issues focusing on the pioneering experience of the Núcleo de Arte Eletrônica – a multidisciplinary space at the Arts Department at PUC-Rio, where undergraduate and graduate students of technological and human areas meet to think, discuss, create and produce Art & Design projects, and which constitutes a locus for the oxygenation of learning and for preparing students to face the challenges of an interdisciplinary and interconnected society.
series SIGRADI
email
last changed 2016/03/10 10:01

_id avocaad_2001_16
id avocaad_2001_16
authors Yu-Ying Chang, Yu-Tung Liu, Chien-Hui Wong
year 2001
title Some Phenomena of Spatial Characteristics of Cyberspace
source AVOCAAD - ADDED VALUE OF COMPUTER AIDED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Nys Koenraad, Provoost Tom, Verbeke Johan, Verleye Johan (Eds.), (2001) Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst - Departement Architectuur Sint-Lucas, Campus Brussel, ISBN 80-76101-05-1
summary "Space," which has long been an important concept in architecture (Bloomer & Moore, 1977; Mitchell, 1995, 1999), has attracted interest of researchers from various academic disciplines in recent years (Agnew, 1993; Benko & Strohmayer, 1996; Chang, 1999; Foucault, 1982; Gould, 1998). Researchers from disciplines such as anthropology, geography, sociology, philosophy, and linguistics regard it as the basis of the discussion of various theories in social sciences and humanities (Chen, 1999). On the other hand, since the invention of Internet, Internet users have been experiencing a new and magic "world." According to the definitions in traditional architecture theories, "space" is generated whenever people define a finite void by some physical elements (Zevi, 1985). However, although Internet is a virtual, immense, invisible and intangible world, navigating in it, we can still sense the very presence of ourselves and others in a wonderland. This sense could be testified by our naming of Internet as Cyberspace -- an exotic kind of space. Therefore, as people nowadays rely more and more on the Internet in their daily life, and as more and more architectural scholars and designers begin to invest their efforts in the design of virtual places online (e.g., Maher, 1999; Li & Maher, 2000), we cannot help but ask whether there are indeed sensible spaces in Internet. And if yes, these spaces exist in terms of what forms and created by what ways?To join the current interdisciplinary discussion on the issue of space, and to obtain new definition as well as insightful understanding of "space", this study explores the spatial phenomena in Internet. We hope that our findings would ultimately be also useful for contemporary architectural designers and scholars in their designs in the real world.As a preliminary exploration, the main objective of this study is to discover the elements involved in the creation/construction of Internet spaces and to examine the relationship between human participants and Internet spaces. In addition, this study also attempts to investigate whether participants from different academic disciplines define or experience Internet spaces in different ways, and to find what spatial elements of Internet they emphasize the most.In order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the spatial phenomena in Internet and to overcome the subjectivity of the members of the research team, the research design of this study was divided into two stages. At the first stage, we conducted literature review to study existing theories of space (which are based on observations and investigations of the physical world). At the second stage of this study, we recruited 8 Internet regular users to approach this topic from different point of views, and to see whether people with different academic training would define and experience Internet spaces differently.The results of this study reveal that the relationship between human participants and Internet spaces is different from that between human participants and physical spaces. In the physical world, physical elements of space must be established first; it then begins to be regarded as a place after interaction between/among human participants or interaction between human participants and the physical environment. In contrast, in Internet, a sense of place is first created through human interactions (or activities), Internet participants then begin to sense the existence of a space. Therefore, it seems that, among the many spatial elements of Internet we found, "interaction/reciprocity" Ñ either between/among human participants or between human participants and the computer interface Ð seems to be the most crucial element.In addition, another interesting result of this study is that verbal (linguistic) elements could provoke a sense of space in a degree higher than 2D visual representation and no less than 3D visual simulations. Nevertheless, verbal and 3D visual elements seem to work in different ways in terms of cognitive behaviors: Verbal elements provoke visual imagery and other sensory perceptions by "imagining" and then excite personal experiences of space; visual elements, on the other hand, provoke and excite visual experiences of space directly by "mapping".Finally, it was found that participants with different academic training did experience and define space differently. For example, when experiencing and analyzing Internet spaces, architecture designers, the creators of the physical world, emphasize the design of circulation and orientation, while participants with linguistics training focus more on subtle language usage. Visual designers tend to analyze the graphical elements of virtual spaces based on traditional painting theories; industrial designers, on the other hand, tend to treat these spaces as industrial products, emphasizing concept of user-center and the control of the computer interface.The findings of this study seem to add new information to our understanding of virtual space. It would be interesting for future studies to investigate how this information influences architectural designers in their real-world practices in this digital age. In addition, to obtain a fuller picture of Internet space, further research is needed to study the same issue by examining more Internet participants who have no formal linguistics and graphical training.
series AVOCAAD
email
last changed 2005/09/09 10:48

_id ae61
authors Af Klercker, Jonas
year 1999
title CAAD - Integrated with the First Steps into Architecture
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1999.266
source Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000 [eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9523687-5-7] Liverpool (UK) 15-17 September 1999, pp. 266-272
summary How and when should CAAD be introduced in the curriculum of the School of Architecture? This paper begins with some arguments for starting CAAD education at the very beginning. At the School of Architecture in Lund teachers in the first year courses have tried to integrate CAAD with the introduction to architectural concepts and techniques. Traditionally the first year is divided by several subjects running courses separatly without any contact for coordination. From the academic year 96/97 the teachers of Aplied aestetics, Building Science, Architectural design and CAAD have decided to colaborate as much as possible to make the role of our different fields as clear as possible to the students. Therefore integrating CAAD was a natural step in the academic year 98/99. The computer techniques were taught one step in advance so that the students can practise their understanding of the programs in their tasks in the other subjects. The results were surprisingly good! The students have quickly learned to mix the manual and computer techniques to make expressive and interesting visual presentations of their ideas. Some students with antipaty to computers have overcome this handicap. Some interesting observations are discussed.
keywords Curriculum, First Year Studies, Integration, CAAD, Modelling
series eCAADe
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:54

_id ga9925
id ga9925
authors Ambrosini, L., Longatti, M. and Miyajima, H.
year 1999
title Time sections, abstract machines
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary conditions a time-spatial discontinuity in the urban grid, ancient walls casually discovered in a substrate of the contemporary town needs a surplus of information to be understood and interfaced with their current condition. diagrams diverse chronological stages of the urban evolution are mapped on the area, in order to read the historical stratifications as a multiplicity of signs; this abstract approach leads to consider the roman space as guided by metrics, a system of measure superimposed on the landscape, vs. medioeval spatial continuity, where more fluid relations between the same urban elements create a completely different pattern.assemblage (time sections) a surface, automatically displaced from the medioeval diagram, moves along the z axis, the historical stratification direction, intersecting in various, unpredictable, manners a series of paths; these paths start as parallels, allowing an undifferentiated access to the area, and mutate along their developing direction, intertweening and blending each other; linear openings are cut on the surface, virtually connecting the two levels by light, following the roman grid in rhythm and measure. Projected on the lateral wall, the cadence of the vertical and horizontal elements becomes a temporal diagram of the design process.movement time takes part into the process through two kinds of movement: the first one, freezed when reaches the best results, in terms of complexity, is given by the surface intersecting the tubular paths; the second one is represented by multiple routes walking on which the project can be experienced (in absence of any objective, fixed, point of view, movement becomes the only way to understand relations). Thresholds between typical architectural categories (such as inside-outside, object-landscape etc.) are blurred in favour of a more supple condition, another kind of continuity (re)appears, as a new media, between the different historical layers of the city.
series other
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id 5cba
authors Anders, Peter
year 1999
title Beyond Y2k: A Look at Acadia's Present and Future
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.acadia.1999.x.o3r
source ACADIA Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 1, p. 10
summary The sky may not be falling, but it sure is getting closer. Where will you when the last three zeros of our millennial odometer click into place? Computer scientists tell us that Y2K will bring the world’s computer infrastructure to its knees. Maybe, maybe not. But it is interesting that Y2K is an issue at all. Speculating on the future is simultaneously a magnifying glass for examining our technologies and a looking glass for what we become through them. "The future" is nothing new. Orwell's vision of totalitarian mass media did come true, if only as Madison Avenue rather than Big Brother. Futureboosters of the '50s were convinced that each garage would house a private airplane by the year 2000. But world citizens of the 60's and 70's feared a nuclear catastrophe that would replace the earth with a smoking crater. Others - perhaps more optimistically -predicted that computers were going to drive all our activities by the year 2000. And, in fact, theymay not be far off... The year 2000 is symbolic marker, a point of reflection and assessment. And - as this date is approaching rapidly - this may be a good time to come to grips with who we are and where we want to be.
series ACADIA
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:49

_id ga9922
id ga9922
authors Annunziato, M. and Pierucci, P.
year 1999
title The Art of Emergence
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary Since several years, the term emergence is mentioned in the paradigm of chaos and complexity. Following this approach, complex system constituted by multitude of individual develop global behavioral properties on the base of local chaotic interactions (self-organization). These theories, developed in scientific and philosophical milieus are rapidly spreading as a "way of thinking" in the several fields of cognitive activities. According to this "way of thinking" it is possible revise some fundamental themes as the economic systems, the cultural systems, the scientific paths, the communication nets under a new approach where nothing is pre-determined, but the global evolution is determined by specific mechanisms of interaction and fundamental events (bifurcation). With a jump in scale of the life, also other basic concepts related to the individuals as intelligence, consciousness, psyche can be revised as self-organizing phenomena. Such a conceptual fertility has been the base for the revision of the artistic activities as flexible instruments for the investigation of imaginary worlds, metaphor of related real worlds. In this sense we claim to the artist a role of "researcher". Through the free exploration of new concepts, he can evoke qualities, configurations and hypothesis which have an esthetical and expressive value and in the most significant cases, they can induce nucleation of cultural and scientific bifurcation. Our vision of the art-science relation is of cooperative type instead of the conflict of the past decades. In this paper we describe some of the most significant realized artworks in order to make explicit the concepts and basic themes. One of the fundamental topics is the way to generate and think to the artwork. Our characterization is to see the artwork not as a static finished product, but as an instance or a dynamic sequence of instances of a creative process which continuously evolves. In this sense, the attention is focused on the "generative idea" which constitutes the envelop of the artworks generable by the process. In this approach the role of technology (computers, synthesizers) is fundamental to create the dimension of the generative environment. Another characterizing aspect of our artworks is derived by the previous approach and specifically related to the interactive installations. The classical relation between artist, artwork and observers is viewed as an unidirectional flux of messages from the artist to the observer through the artwork. In our approach artist, artwork and observer are autonomous entities provided with own personality which jointly intervene to determine the creative paths. The artist which generate the environment in not longer the "owner" of the artwork; simply he dialectically bring the generative environment (provided by a certain degree of autonomy) towards cultural and creative "void" spaces (not still discovered). The observers start from these platforms to generate other creative paths, sometimes absolutely unexpected , developing their new dialectical relations with the artwork itself. The results derived by these positions characterize the expressive elements of the artworks (images, sequences and sounds) as the outcomes of emergent behavior or dynamics both in the sense of esthetical shapes emergent from fertile generative environments, either in terms of emergent relations between artist, artwork and observer, either in terms of concepts which emerge by the metaphor of artificial worlds to produce imaginary hypothesis for the real worlds.
series other
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id 9aaf
authors Burrow, Andrew and Woodbury, Robert
year 1999
title Pi-Resolution in Design Space Exploration
source Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures [ISBN 0-7923-8536-5] Atlanta, 7-8 June 1999, pp. 291-308
summary In studying the phenomenon of design we use models to envision mechanisms by which computers might support design. In one such model we understand design as guided movement through a space of possibilities. Design space explorers embody this model as mixed-initiative environments in which designers engage in exploration via human computer interaction. Constraint resolution provides a formal framework for interaction in design space explorers. Rather than directly providing solutions to design problems, constraint resolution provides a mechanism for organizing construction. Therefore, we are less interested in the set of solutions to a constraint problem than the process by which intermediate steps are generated. Pi-resolution is one such mechanism applicable to design space explorers. It describes the solution, by recursive enumeration, of feature structure type constraints. During pi-resolution, satisfiers are constructed by the application of type constraints drawn from an inheritance hierarchy. This constructive process provides a strong model for design space exploration. The constraint solver does not do the work of the designer, but rather design efforts are situated in, and organized by, constraint resolution. Therefore, the efficiency of the recursive enumeration in finding solutions is not an issue, since non-determinism in the search is resolved by the human user as design space exploration.
keywords Design Space Explorers, Typed Feature Structures, Functional Decomposition, Mixed Initiative
series CAAD Futures
email
last changed 2006/11/07 07:22

_id 8802
authors Burry, Mark, Dawson, Tony and Woodbury, Robert
year 1999
title Learning about Architecture with the Computer, and Learning about the Computer in Architecture
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.ecaade.1999.374
source Architectural Computing from Turing to 2000 [eCAADe Conference Proceedings / ISBN 0-9523687-5-7] Liverpool (UK) 15-17 September 1999, pp. 374-382
summary Most students commencing their university studies in architecture must confront and master two new modes of thought. The first, widely known as reflection-in-action, is a continuous cycle of self-criticism and creation that produces both learning and improved work. The second, which we call here design making, is a process which considers building construction as an integral part of architectural designing. Beginning students in Australia tend to do neither very well; their largely analytic secondary education leaves the majority ill-prepared for these new forms of learning and working. Computers have both complicated and offered opportunities to improve this situation. An increasing number of entering students have significant computing skill, yet university architecture programs do little in developing such skill into sound and extensible knowledge. Computing offers new ways to engage both reflection-in-action and design making. The collaboration between two Schools in Australia described in detail here pools computer-based learning resources to provide a wider scope for the education in each institution, which we capture in the phrase: Learn to use computers in architecture (not use computers to learn architecture). The two shared learning resources are Form Making Games (Adelaide University), aimed at reflection-in-action and The Construction Primer (Deakin University and Victoria University of Wellington), aimed at design making. Through contributing to and customising the resources themselves, students learn how designing and computing relate. This paper outlines the collaborative project in detail and locates the initiative at a time when the computer seems to have become less self-consciously assimilated within the wider architectural program.
keywords Reflection-In-Action, Design Making, Customising Computers
series eCAADe
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:54

_id b4d2
authors Caldas, Luisa G. and Norford, Leslie K.
year 1999
title A Genetic Algorithm Tool for Design Optimization
doi https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.acadia.1999.260
source Media and Design Process [ACADIA ‘99 / ISBN 1-880250-08-X] Salt Lake City 29-31 October 1999, pp. 260-271
summary Much interest has been recently devoted to generative processes in design. Advances in computational tools for design applications, coupled with techniques from the field of artificial intelligence, have lead to new possibilities in the way computers can inform and actively interact with the design process. In this paper we use the concepts of generative and goal-oriented design to propose a computer tool that can help the designer to generate and evaluate certain aspects of a solution towards an optimized behavior of the final configuration. This work focuses mostly on those aspects related to the environmental performance of the building. Genetic Algorithms are applied as a generative and search procedure to look for optimized design solutions in terms of thermal and lighting performance in a building. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is first used to generate possible design solutions, which are then evaluated in terms of lighting and thermal behavior using a detailed thermal analysis program (DOE2.1E). The results from the simulations are subsequently used to further guide the GA search towards finding low-energy solutions to the problem under study. Solutions can be visualized using an AutoLisp routine. The specific problem addressed in this study is the placing and sizing of windows in an office building. The same method is applicable to a wide range of design problems like the choice of construction materials, design of shading elements, or sizing of lighting and mechanical systems for buildings.
series ACADIA
email
last changed 2022/06/07 07:54

_id ga9924
id ga9924
authors Cardalda, Juan Jesus Romero J.J.
year 1999
title Artificial Music Composer
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary Traditional Musical Computation Systems had to face the differences between the computational techniques and the characteristics of musical creation. Characteristics such as a high degree of subjectivity, a great irrational component, and a learning process based on the use of examples and environmental absorption, have made music difficult to be formalized through algorithmic methods or classical Artificial Intelligence methods such as Expert Systems. We propose the creation of a cybernetic model of a human composer in a primeval stage of human musical evolution, following a paradigm of cognitive complex models creation, based on the use of the human reference, not only in a static point of view but also considering its evolution through time. Therefore, the proposed system simulates musical creation in one of the first stages of musical evolution, whose main characteristics are the percussive and choral aspects. The system is based on Genetic Algorithms, whose genetic population is integrated by several tribes. This model carries out the task of musical composition, led by the user who expresses his/her musical taste assigning a punctuation to each tribe. The GA selects the worse tribes as individuals to be eliminated. In order to select those tribes which are going to be used as parents, a random function is used, having each tribe a probality proportional to its punctuation. The new tribe is produced by crossing the parent tribes in each individual. Afterwards, mutation takes place in the created individuals. The experiments carried out with this system have proved its functionality in the composition of rhythmic patterns. It is intended to enlarge the experiment's scope by communicating the system via Internet. This would enable its use by users of different musical cultures, taking into account that the system is user-friendly, since it requires no musical knowledge.
series other
email
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

_id avocaad_2001_02
id avocaad_2001_02
authors Cheng-Yuan Lin, Yu-Tung Liu
year 2001
title A digital Procedure of Building Construction: A practical project
source AVOCAAD - ADDED VALUE OF COMPUTER AIDED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Nys Koenraad, Provoost Tom, Verbeke Johan, Verleye Johan (Eds.), (2001) Hogeschool voor Wetenschap en Kunst - Departement Architectuur Sint-Lucas, Campus Brussel, ISBN 80-76101-05-1
summary In earlier times in which computers have not yet been developed well, there has been some researches regarding representation using conventional media (Gombrich, 1960; Arnheim, 1970). For ancient architects, the design process was described abstractly by text (Hewitt, 1985; Cable, 1983); the process evolved from unselfconscious to conscious ways (Alexander, 1964). Till the appearance of 2D drawings, these drawings could only express abstract visual thinking and visually conceptualized vocabulary (Goldschmidt, 1999). Then with the massive use of physical models in the Renaissance, the form and space of architecture was given better precision (Millon, 1994). Researches continued their attempts to identify the nature of different design tools (Eastman and Fereshe, 1994). Simon (1981) figured out that human increasingly relies on other specialists, computational agents, and materials referred to augment their cognitive abilities. This discourse was verified by recent research on conception of design and the expression using digital technologies (McCullough, 1996; Perez-Gomez and Pelletier, 1997). While other design tools did not change as much as representation (Panofsky, 1991; Koch, 1997), the involvement of computers in conventional architecture design arouses a new design thinking of digital architecture (Liu, 1996; Krawczyk, 1997; Murray, 1997; Wertheim, 1999). The notion of the link between ideas and media is emphasized throughout various fields, such as architectural education (Radford, 2000), Internet, and restoration of historical architecture (Potier et al., 2000). Information technology is also an important tool for civil engineering projects (Choi and Ibbs, 1989). Compared with conventional design media, computers avoid some errors in the process (Zaera, 1997). However, most of the application of computers to construction is restricted to simulations in building process (Halpin, 1990). It is worth studying how to employ computer technology meaningfully to bring significant changes to concept stage during the process of building construction (Madazo, 2000; Dave, 2000) and communication (Haymaker, 2000).In architectural design, concept design was achieved through drawings and models (Mitchell, 1997), while the working drawings and even shop drawings were brewed and communicated through drawings only. However, the most effective method of shaping building elements is to build models by computer (Madrazo, 1999). With the trend of 3D visualization (Johnson and Clayton, 1998) and the difference of designing between the physical environment and virtual environment (Maher et al. 2000), we intend to study the possibilities of using digital models, in addition to drawings, as a critical media in the conceptual stage of building construction process in the near future (just as the critical role that physical models played in early design process in the Renaissance). This research is combined with two practical building projects, following the progress of construction by using digital models and animations to simulate the structural layouts of the projects. We also tried to solve the complicated and even conflicting problems in the detail and piping design process through an easily accessible and precise interface. An attempt was made to delineate the hierarchy of the elements in a single structural and constructional system, and the corresponding relations among the systems. Since building construction is often complicated and even conflicting, precision needed to complete the projects can not be based merely on 2D drawings with some imagination. The purpose of this paper is to describe all the related elements according to precision and correctness, to discuss every possibility of different thinking in design of electric-mechanical engineering, to receive feedback from the construction projects in the real world, and to compare the digital models with conventional drawings.Through the application of this research, the subtle relations between the conventional drawings and digital models can be used in the area of building construction. Moreover, a theoretical model and standard process is proposed by using conventional drawings, digital models and physical buildings. By introducing the intervention of digital media in design process of working drawings and shop drawings, there is an opportune chance to use the digital media as a prominent design tool. This study extends the use of digital model and animation from design process to construction process. However, the entire construction process involves various details and exceptions, which are not discussed in this paper. These limitations should be explored in future studies.
series AVOCAAD
email
last changed 2005/09/09 10:48

_id 37d1
authors Corona Martíne, Alfonso and Vigo, Libertad
year 1999
title Before the Digital Design Studio
source III Congreso Iberoamericano de Grafico Digital [SIGRADI Conference Proceedings] Montevideo (Uruguay) September 29th - October 1st 1999, pp. 247-252
summary This paper contains some observations which derive from our work as Studio Professors . In the last years, studios are in a transition phase with the progressive introduction of computers in later stages of the design process. The initiative generally belongs to students rather than to studio masters, since the former are aware that a knowledge of CAD systems will make them able to get work in architects offices. It is the first few Studios that will guide the student in forming a conception of what is architecture . Therefore, we have observer more attentively the way in which he establishes his first competence as a designer. We believe it is useful to clarify design training before we can integrate computers into it. The ways we all learn to design and which we transmit in the Studio were obviously created a long time ago, when Architecture became a subject taught in Schools, no longer a craft to be acquired under a master. The conception of architecture that the student forms in his mind is largely dependent on a long tradition of Beaux-Arts training which survives (under different forms) in Modern Architecture. The methods he or she acquires will become the basis of his creative design process also in professional life. Computer programmes are designed to adapt into the stages of this design process simply as time saving tools. We are interested in finding out how they can become an active part in the creative process and how to control this integration in teaching. Therefore, our work deals mainly with the tradition of the Studio and the conditioning it produces. The next step will be to explore the possiblities and restrictions that will inevitably issue from the introduction of new media.
series SIGRADI
email
last changed 2016/03/10 09:49

_id 7546
authors Coyne, R.
year 1999
title Technoromanticism - digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real
source MIT Press
summary It's no secret that contemporary culture romanticizes digital technologies. In books, articles, and movies about virtual community, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, artificial life, and other wonders of the digital age, breathless anticipation of vast and thrilling changes has become a running theme. But as Richard Coyne makes clear in Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real, a dense but rewarding piece of academic criticism, we also get romantic about the new technologies in a more rigorous sense of the word. Whether heralding an electronic return to village communalism or celebrating cyberspace as a realm of pure mind, today's utopian thinking about the digital, Coyne argues, essentially replays the 18th- and 19th-century cultural movement called Romanticism, with its powerful yearnings for transcendence and wholeness. And this apparently is not a good thing. Romanticism, like the more sober Enlightenment rationalism against which it rebelled, has outlived its usefulness as a way of understanding the world, Coyne argues. And so he spends the duration of the book bombarding both the romantic and the rationalist tendencies in cyberculture with every weapon in the arsenal of 20th-century critical theory: poststructuralism, Freudianism, postmodern pragmatism, Heideggerian phenomenology, surrealism--Coyne uses each in turn to whack away at conventional wisdoms about digital tech. Whether the conventional wisdoms remain standing at the end is an open question, but Coyne's tour of the contemporary intellectual landscape is a tour de force, and never before has digital technology's place in that landscape been mapped so thoroughly. --
series other
email
last changed 2003/04/23 15:14

_id ga0021
id ga0021
authors Eacott, John
year 2000
title Generative music composition in practice - a critical evaluation
source International Conference on Generative Art
summary This critical evaluation will discuss 4 computer based musical works which, for reasons I shall explain, I describe as non-linear or generative. The works have been constructed by me and publicly performed or exhibited during a two year period from October 1998 to October 2000. ‘In the beginning…’ interactive music installation, strangeAttraction, Morley Gallery, London. July 1999 ‘jnrtv’ live generative dance music May 1999 to Dec 2000 ‘jazz’ interactive music installation, another strangeAttraction Morley Gallery, London. July 2000-09-26 ‘the street’ architectural interactive music installation, University of Westminster Oct 2000 Introduction I have always loved the practice of composing, particularly when it means scoring a work to be played by a live ensemble. There is something about taking a fresh sheet of manuscript , ruling the bar lines, adding clefs, key and time signatures and beginning the gradual process of adding notes, one at a time to the score until it is complete that is gratifying and compensates for the enormous effort involved. The process of scoring however is actually one distinct act within the more general task of creating music. Recently, the notion of ‘composing’ has met challenges through an increased interest in non-linear compositional methods. It is actually the presence of Chaotic or uncontrolable elements which add real beauty to music and many if not all of the things we value. If we think of a sunset, waves lapping on the shore, plants, trees a human face and the sound of the human voice, these things are not perfect and more importantly perhaps, they are transient, constantly changing and evolving. Last year and again this year, I have organised an exhibition of interactive , non-linear music installations called 'strangeAttraction'. The title refers to what Edward Lorenz called a ‘strange attractor’ the phenomenon that despite vast degrees of Chaos and uncertainty within a system, there is a degree of predictability, the tendency for chaotic behaviour to ‘attract’ towards a probable set of outcomes. Composition that deals with 'attractors' or probable outcomes rather than specific details which are set in stone is an increasingly intriguing notion.
series other
more http://www.generativeart.com/
last changed 2003/08/07 17:25

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