Recent Projects

A selection of projects recently carried out by members of the Creative Systems Lab. Most projects have a link to a PDF paper that describes the research in more detail.

Interactive Music Systems

Self-Karaoke Machine by Alice Eldridge is an interactive sampler/ loop station with its own agenda. The system uses the cybernetic principle of homeostasis  to re-organise samples taken by the user and acts to extend the user's  improvisations. FondPunctions.mp3 is an extract from a gig using the system with a cello. SKPHarp.mp3 is an example of a visitor using the system when it was set up as a gallery exhibit. [PDF]

Ashby's Grandmother's Footsteps, also by Alice Eldridge, is an installation which extends the  power and play environments of early digital practitioners like Myron  Krueger. Based on the childhood game of grandmother's footsteps, the  user has to creep down a corridor without disturbing the system.  Observed by a digital camera with a homeostatic brain, every movement  is augmented sonically, creating a strange sound world which  screeches out if the user moves too quickly. One person's journey can be heard here: agf3a.mp3. [PDF]

Live Performance

klipp av are committed to live performance and on-the-spot manipulation of captured sound and visuals. They are active developers of technologies for realtime audio and video event capture with crossmodal synchronisation. The A is usually Nick Collins and the V is usually Fredrik Olofsson, but these roles are not fixed, and blur with the meeting of modalities. They have been exploring an audiovisual link up since 2003, and have performed in many countries, including gigs in Sydney, Tokyo, New York, London, Helsinki, Berlin and Amsterdam.

Drawbots

This interdisciplinary AHRC-funded project is exploring the use of evolutionary robotics (ER) techniques to develop drawing robots. The team (Bill Bigge, Jon Bird, Maggie Boden, Paul Brown, Phil Husbands and Dustin Stokes) are using the experiments to develop a theory of minimal creativity as well as an installation for gallery display. [PDF]

Virtual Instruments

Thor Magnusson is researching the cognitive aspects in designing musical interfaces for computers. Both physical and virtual interfaces are of interest here, but the focus is on virtual interfaces as they are the containers of the musical structures. He is interested in the semiotics of virtual technologies; how their design conveys the mental model of the software designer and how that is interpreted by the user. The research project is therefore very much an empirical study in the philosophy of technology. [PDF]

Conceptual Research

Maggie Boden, Dustin Stokes and Ron Chrisley are involved in ongoing philosophical investigations into creativity. Chris Thornton works on formalising Boden’s computational theory of creativity, aiming to promote its more wide spread use in creative tools. Some of the questions that this research addresses include: What kind or degree of autonomy is required for creative behaviour? What is the appropriate understanding of novelty for a cognitive science of creativity? With respect to creativity, what is the difference between combining, transforming or inventing concepts? What is the importance of embodiment and/or social context to creativity? [PDF]

Interactive Installations

Jon Bird has been building cybernetic-inspired software to control the light patterns generated by Network, a floating installation of buoy-mounted LEDs, in collaboration with artist Jane Prophet and computer scientist Mark d'Inverno. [PDF]

Manuela Jungmann is developing Sim-Suite, an interactive art installation combining social interaction with reaction-diffusion systems and gaming elements. Members of the public engage with projected virtual, real-time graphics whilst standing in close proximity to each other on sensor-enhanced wobble boards. Interactions occur through the manipulation of the three boards on the basis of visual cues in the reaction-diffusion simulation. [PDF]

Genophone

James Mandelis is using evolutionary computing to produce sound designs and performance mappings for instruments. [PDF]

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