SA '19- SIGGRAPH ASIA Art Gallery/Art Papers

Heritage visualisations are works of the cultural imaginary and this paper examines the artwork Artistic License: VR Sydney Cove ca. 1800 which foregrounds the interpretive nature of heritage visualisation. It is a re-imagining in virtual reality of A View of Sydney Cove, New South Wales, 1804, a contemporaneous print of Sydney Cove. Existing in the liminal space between accuracy and authenticity it is both art object and heritage visualisation. The dual nature of this work supports engagement with wider audiences, fostering and broadening debate at individual, institutional, academic and societal levels about the nature and role of heritage.

Through a detailed account of a recent practice-based research project - a short animation project called Jasper, this paper explores how a hybrid analogue/digital production approach can generate a unique and engaging visual style - one that sits between the tangible, handcrafted feel of miniatures and the cleanness, fluidity and flexibility of computer-generated animation. The author examines the new creative possibilities and challenges that a hybrid animation production approach presents and also outlines various technical platforms encountered during the production of Jasper, including motion-controlled camera systems, 3D printing, game engines, point cloud scans and augmented reality.

Our ways of telling stories have evolved along with advances in technology. This has led to the emergence of digital storytelling. This project explores narrative influences on Quality of Experience of users in digital stories. This is done by creating and implementing a location driven digital story presented to the user by an augmented reality application on a mobile device. This narrative system has been evaluated by 30 people who have participated in a subjective evaluation. The results show that the narrative setup results in a richer, livelier and more engaging experience.

In this paper, we explain the creation of "flow" in social media and real spaces using AI technology to colorize black-and-white stock photographs from digital archives and other locations. When visualizing the colors that the photographs should have had, the impressions of "freezing" in black-and-white photographs are "rebooted," and viewers can more easily imagine the events depicted. This bridges the psychological gap between past events and modern daily life, sparking conversations. The "flow" generated here causes the emergence of lively communication and increases the value of information. This method can help to pass precious materials and memories of past events into the future.

The purpose of this paper is to explore new perspectives to learning Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) through embodied interaction with focus on learning and experience with traditional Cantonese Porcelain crafting. This research developed a WebAR application where various processes are presented through the tangible interaction of virtual porcelain represented by physical objects. The learner is able to directly interact with the plate that bridges the tangible materials and making processes of ICH utilizing WebAR. Empirical studies found that the WebAR and embodied interaction can enhance student's tangible learning experience to transfer knowledge between craftsman and student.

This paper presents Extraordinary Accident, an immersive experience exploring how different levels of abstraction can coexist and collaborate in the representation and recreation of urban space. Using Hong Kong as both inspiration and data source, the work attempts to liberate virtual reality compositions from their metaphorical ballast -that is, their recreational onus- and instead, with a temporal amalgamation of poetic representation at different scales, contribute to an alternative, potentially more intimate, understanding of the urban experience.

This paper reports the exposition of an artistic installation, gravityZERO, and its ongoing technical development. It consists of virtual sound, VR and robotic technologies in order to simulate the state of zero gravity. Audience members can experience a floating sensation within this virtual environment. gravityZERO (zero gravity) is an installation that combines video, sound, and robotics. Translucent cubes are assembled at the venue. Images are quasi-holographically projected on the cube's surfaces, and speakers are placed in the cube's corners. A person is suspended from the ceiling and floats as if there is no gravity. Each rope can be freely moved in 3D space within the cube through motor operation. This project is based upon an idea that utilizes an interface closely related to a human body, and also pursues new possibilities of the performance of Augmented Reality and Projection Mapping.

The personality of living things is beautiful. Is it possible to have a personality in the digital world? CharActor is a video work that produces animation by recognizing shader programs as genes and by changing the mathematical expression itself using evolutionary computation.

When we feel and sense through machines, are we still ourselves? In a mixed reality where embodied actions and blinding visions are part woman/part machine, the tactile surface of plants is a portal that conjures augmented materialities into existence.

'Dream Clanger' is a hybrid art/computer science project that re-imagines AFL Player GPS data and match video. Building on Baden Pailthorpe's 2017 major exhibition 'Clanger', this work pushes the envelope further by integrating machine learning.

This artwork is an installation that expresses the future in which users can manufacture designer's babies themselves. You can design, customize and manufacture your baby with your favorite gene on your laptop. A 3D printed child appears from the display, and the child's face created based on the visitor's face.

LightWing II creates a mysterious sensation of tactile data. In this interactive installation, a kinetic construction is augmented with stereoscopic 3D projections and spatial sound. A light touch sets the delicate wing-like structure into a rotational oscillation and enables the visitor to navigate through holographic spaces and responsive narratives.

Numb, shaped as an exaggerated eyeball, follows you and reflects the blinks of yours. It makes you become aware of your own blinking and sensitive to your own sensation. Numb illustrates how we build relationship with technology through senses, and how we become sensitive to ourselves by and with technology.

Smile is a mixed-media installation consisting of a screen in a black box, mounted on the wall. When an interactor smiles, drone-footage of the ruins of Gaza fades in. If the interactor stops smiling, the video stops. It only plays when the interactor widely smiles at it.

Tactile Microcosm of ALife offers interaction with artificial organisms, whereby the user can enjoy playing with fish-like organisms through aerial imaging and haptic feedback. The holographic organisms float in water in a petri dish, and the user can feel a forcefield of the vital of the organisms via force feedback.