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AV-Jam @ Sydney Powerhouse Museum

The AV-Jam system is exhibiting at the beta_space facility within the Sydney Powerhouse Museum, Australia. AV Jam is a generative audio-visual system that is controlled by multiple MIDI sliders. It is designed to encourage collaboration by having 5 controllers, one each for Drums, Bass, Harmony, Lead and Video. It is a real-time system that allows visitors to the Beta_Space to create their own audio-visual performances. The installation will be open to the public for 6 weeks from February to mid March 2008. According to its creators at the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design,

"AV-Jam is an application that generates music and video that you can control while it plays. AV-Jam is collaborative, so you play with your friends to jointly control the music and video using a network of control surfaces connected to a computer. Jam just like a band, but without the need for complex instrumental skills. The AV-Jam system was designed to promote meaningful engagement with media art for people of all ages. Clever algorithmic processes generate music and video that you control. You shape the result by adjusting parameters on the AV-Jam interface. The idea is to experiment and listen to the sound and make great grooves, and watch the video and adjust interesting effects. Work with others to control all parts of the music and video. The key to success is to take risks, be creative and listen to the sounds that your actions make."

Here is an example of the first piece made at the installation by Andrew Brown & Steve Dillon.

"Amazing Creations" competition

The NV Art competition "Amazing Creations" hosted by the CG Society of Digital Artists and sponsored by Nvidia have announced their winners. Artists were invited to submit computer-generated imagery that could exist only in a virtual, imaginary world. The winning art was unveiled at a reception at the San Jose Museum of Art on February 1. The winners were:

1st place:
"Growth of Cubic Bacteria" by V·clav Pajkrt, Czech Republic (image shown above)
2nd place:
"Corner Fire" by Brett Keyes, Canada
3rd place:
"Leopardo" by Najeeb El-Faith, Saudi Arabia

With honorable mentions to:
- "Fractalissimo" by FranÁois Coulon, France
- "Many Ways" by Ramiro Amilcar Fernandez, Argentina
- "The Birth of Crystal - The Begin II" by Alvin Tea, New Zealand
- "Alien Biomechanical Shapes 00.2 - Alien Core" by Maciej Frolow, Poland
- "Torn" by Monsit Jangariyawong, Thailand
- "Coral Sim" by Brett Keyes, Canada
- "Rest of Sinews" by V·clav Pajkrt, Czech Republic

Lessons about interaction and learning

Two of the great exponents of usability and learning combine in this video from the early 1980s from which we can still learn lessons today. Alan Kay is one of the pioneers of human computer interaction and a key person involved with object-oriented programming and th development of the graphical interface. Kay introduces, as an example of effective use of multiple modes (sense) of understanding, Tim Gallway, author of The Inner Game of Tennis book, who demonstrates how he approaches tennis coaching by focusing attention on critical aspects of the skill and using sound, action and language in a combined way to assist understanding. From these two legends of interaction design we can gain a lot of knowledge about the construction of interactive computational art works, and about how we can better approach the learning of skills required for crafting computational arts works.

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