Dennis Del Favero

In a myriad of ways, the effects of the rapid uptake and convergence of new media technologies are felt and experienced by populations and individuals at the level of a virtual and actual sense of dislocation. Fragmentation of “community,” urbanization, and the collapse of locale and neighborhood, the erosion of the private spaces of the sexual and the familial–all these have emerged as themes attributable to the restructuring and divergent flows of new information economies and mediascapes. –Anna Munste

In the last few decades, there has been a significant increase in demand for Wearable Assistive Technologies (WATs) useful to overcome functional limitations of individuals. Although advances in Computer Graphics (CG), Computer Vision (CV), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have the potential to address a wide range of human needs, fully integrated systems that consider age-related changes in elderly people are still pretty uncommon. In this work, we present a WAT that follows interaction design guidelines to ensure reliability, usability, and suitability for everyday use. The WAT enables elderly people to improve interactions with Mixed Reality (MR) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. It properly aids and assists elderly people in daily activities such as analysing the environment, recognising and searching for objects, wayfinding, and navigation. We believe that this technology is helpful for blind, low-vision, or hearing-impaired independent elderly people to improve their quality of life while maintaining self-independence.

Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies have the capacity to provide a safe environment for elderly people and to monitor and analyse gathered data which have been proven to be valuable in detecting activities that underpin health decline. Although there is a growing interest for these technologies, older people face some difficulties interacting with the technology. In an AAL environment, the interaction problem due to changes in perceptual and motor skill capabilities that often accompany the aging process in elderly people is further complicated as the immense quantity of sensors, with varying user interface and user interaction, makes full interoperability difficult. As elderly people navigate through this environment, they should be able to discover, configure, and directly interact with a myriad smart objects and digital information delivered to them. To increase the uptake of these technologies, there is a need for an intuitive interaction technique that considers elderly people’s personal profile and presents contextual information when needed. In this paper, we present an interaction design research which aims to explore opportunities and challenges inherent to the development of an Assistive Technology (AT) for elderly people. The proposed AT, which is a combination of Mixed Reality (MR) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, aims to improve the Quality of Life (QoL) and to maintain the self-independence of people aged 65 or above. The intended users are elderly people, their family, their closest friends, and their healthcare network. The main contribution of this project is to provide a set of interaction design principles for combining MR and IoT as an AT. This is achieved by a carefully planned participatory design approach. The benefits and drawbacks of each phase are discussed transparently to inform current practices which are still mostly technology driven.

Dennis Del Favero's collaborative research program comprises work across the fields of art, humanities, engineering and science, exploring the theorisation of interactive aesthetics and its application in intelligent visualisation systems. Nebula III explores emergent aesthetic of Georg Buchner, the 19th German dramatist and scientist. This aesthetic is characterised by its emergent dialogic spatial aesthetics, namely its approach to space as a two relationship between things where it is not simply a linear connections between entities. It foreshadows the aesthetics of Karen Barad, the contemporary theoretical physicist and philosopher who conceived of the concept of 'intra-action' to conceptualise how all spatial matter never pre-exists, but is always shaped and formed through the interactive relationships between its constitutive elements. Using this intra-active spatial aesthetic as its inspiration, Nebula III presents a 3D particle world that explores this notion of ...

ABSTRACT This article introduces iDesign, a novel full-body immersive 3D digital set modelling system currently in joint development by the Sydney Theatre Company, the University of New South Wales’ iCinema Centre, the University of Technology Sydney, and the National Institute for Dramatic Art (Australia; 2018–21). Deploying a visualisation pipeline that utilises a 3D digital environment that remotely located creatives can share, iDesign enables collaborative ideation, testing and iteration of production design concepts in real time, to be supported by an artificially intelligent (AI) system. The article contextualises iDesign’s underpinning aesthetic rationale by reviewing the functionalities and ontological differences of physical and virtual models as epistemological conduits and representative objects. It outlines the system’s key features and capabilities and discusses them in relation to other visualisation approaches currently trialled across the entertainment industry, such as Virtual Reality (VR), 3D modelling suites and pre-visualisation software. Considering the system’s archival capabilities, the text further sketches iDesign’s value as an educational platform and closes with a reflection on the impacts of digital technologies on scenographic practice.

The current state of computer vision methods applied to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research has not been well established. Increasing evidence suggests that computer vision techniques have a strong impact on autism research. The primary objective of this systematic review is to examine how computer vision analysis has been useful in ASD diagnosis, therapy and autism research in general. A systematic review of publications indexed on PubMed, IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library was conducted from 2009 to 2019. Search terms included [‘autis*’ AND (‘computer vision’ OR ‘behavio* imaging’ OR ‘behavio* analysis’ OR ‘affective computing’)]. Results are reported according to PRISMA statement. A total of 94 studies are included in the analysis. Eligible papers are categorised based on the potential biological/behavioural markers quantified in each study. Then, different computer vision approaches that were employed in the included papers are described. Different publicly available datase...

Over the last few decades, Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces have received great attention from academia and industry. Although a considerable amount of research has already been done to support collaboration between users in MR, there is still no systematic review to determine the current state of collaborative MR applications. In this paper, collaborative MR studies published from 2013 to 2018 were reviewed. A total of 259 papers have been categorised based on their application areas, types of display devices used, collaboration setups, and user interaction and experience aspects. The primary contribution of this paper is to present a high-level overview of collaborative MR influence across several research disciplines. The achievements from each application area are summarised. In addition, remarkable papers in their respective areas are highlighted. Among other things, our study finds that there are three complementary factors to support and enhance collaboration in MR environments: (i) annotation techniques, which provide non-verbal communication cues to users, (ii) cooperative object manipulation techniques, which divide complex 3D object manipulation process into simpler tasks between different users, and (iii) user perception and cognition studies, which aim to lessen cognitive workload for task understanding and completion, and to increase users’ perceptual awareness and presence. Finally, this paper identifies research gaps and future directions that can be useful for researchers who want to explore ways on how to foster collaboration between users and to develop collaborative applications in MR.

Currently the dominant position in aesthetics conceptualizes narrative as mono-temporal or linear. The digital, by contrast, is conceptualized as a-temporal or non-linear. This monochronic explanation reduces narrative to a mono-temporal process that fails to account for not only the potential of interactive digital narrative but also the workings of conventional cinematic narrative itself. In contrast the concepts of dialogic and

This paper takes the form of a series of thematic reflections on digital aesthetics. These reflections are focused around an experimental artwork, entitled T_Visionarium, we are currently developing at the iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Centre, University of New South Wales and ZKM, Karlsruhe. The essential thrust of the paper is to suggest that databases can be productively approached using aesthetic and philosophical concepts of transposition and ascription rather than the conventional archaeological concepts of access and retrieval.

The article outlines conceptual frameworks and experimental studies developed at the University of New South Wales, surveying a selection of creative arts industry research projects. These deliver fully immersive interactive visualisation systems that enable new forms of embodied engagement with artistic, cultural and performance datasets, deploying Artificial Intelligence to analyse and augment user navigation for improving data identification, access and processing. Sketching the developmental trajectory of intelligent aesthetics across these projects, the paper closes with a critical consideration of effects and implications of human-machine co-agency in this new context of cultural reflection.

... Brown et al., Performing Digital Aesthetics 219 ... Nanotechnology, Nanoscale Science and Art ... To celebrate, Leonardo is seeking to publish papers and art-works that involve the intersections of chemistry, nanotechnology and art for our on-going special section “Nanotechnology ...