Screen and Media - Collected Works

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    Exploring architectural discourse and form through game-like on-line learning strategies
    (Key Centre of Design Computing, University of Sydney, 2003) Scriver, Peter ; Wyeld, Theodor
    This paper describes and interprets the use of game-like on-line learning strategies in an introductory course on the theories and histories of 20th Century Architecture and Landscape. Analogies between games and design have been observed by both design theorists and educators (Hubbard, 1980; Woodbury, 2001). The game/design analogy is a particularly useful conceptual framework for design learning, we argue here, because of its robustness as both a theory of design-thinking, and a heuristic representation through which design discourse and practice may be subjected to playful yet critical scrutiny. Game-like learning strategies described in this paper enabled students to develop a critical 'feel for the games' (Bourdieu, 1990) inherent in the form-making and theoretical discourses of recent architectural history. We discuss the game-like dynamics and objectives of two interrelated on-line components of the course's assessment scheme. We make some preliminary observations on student experience with these exercises. We also reflect on relevant sub-issues in the discursive dynamics of on-line design learning, with particular regard to the use of on-line discussion-boards and VRML as a modelling medium portable across the internet that can enable the exploration of spatial and narrative aspects of design discourse in real time.
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    Reflections on reflection: blogging in undergraduate design studios
    (INCSUB, 2005-05) MacColl, Ian ; Morrison, Ann ; Muhlberger, Ralf ; Simpson, Matthew ; Viller, Stephen ; Wyeld, Theodor
    In this paper we describe our experiences introducing weblogs as an online design journal into two design-based IT degrees. We introduced weblogs to support reflection by the students within a studio process. We view this introduction as successful and we have continued using blogs in the subsequent academic year, although we have made some changes to take account of problems with scale, sophistication and effort.
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    The pedagogical benefits of stepping outside the perspective paradigm: challenging the ubiquity of western visual culture
    (IEEE, 2005-07) Wyeld, Theodor
    The difficulty in stepping out of the prevailing perspectival paradigm by students of design was investigated in a pedagogical exercise. It explores their ability to generate new spatial conventions. In both supporting the notion of the transference of manual perspective as a convention to digital media and offering alternatives to its seemingly reduced expression of experience beyond that of the illusion of depth alone, the exercise described in this paper goes some way towards explaining interaction with 3D media in general.
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    The pedagogical benefits of remote design collaboration in a 3D virtual environment
    (IEEE, 2005-07) Wyeld, Theodor
    Researchers are beginning to explore the role of digital design collaboration within multi-user 3D virtual environments. In the latest installment of an ongoing remote digital design collaboration project with the Sydney University Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition, the University of Queensland Information Environments Program (IEP) co-coordinated an online performance of T. S. Eliot's 'The Cocktail Party' in a 3D virtual world environment. This paper describes the process and pedagogical outcomes of early learners collaborating remotely in digital 3D media.
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    Design collaboration using a 3D virtual environment: a pedagogic case study
    (Norsearch Reprographics, 2005-07) Wyeld, Theodor
    Researchers are beginning to explore the role of digital design collaboration within multi-user 3D virtual environments. In the latest installment of an ongoing remote digital design collaboration project with the Sydney University Key Centre of Design Computing and Cognition (KCDC), the University of Queensland Information Environments Program (IEP) co-coordinated an online production of T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party in a 3D virtual world environment. This paper describes the process and pedagogical outcomes of early learners collaborating remotely in digital 3D media.
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    3D information visualisation: an historical perspective
    (IEEE, 2005-07) Wyeld, Theodor
    The use of 3D visualisation of digital information is a recent phenomenon. It relies on users understanding 3D perspectival spaces. Questions about the universal access of such spaces has been debated since its inception in the European Renaissance. Perspective has since become a strong cultural influence in Western visual communication. Perspective imaging assists the process of experimenting by the sketching or modelling of ideas. In particular, the recent 3D modelling of an essentially non-dimensional Cyber-space raises questions of how we think about information in general. While alternate methods clearly exist they are rarely explored within the 3D paradigm (such as Chinese isometry). This paper seeks to generate further discussion on the historical background of perspective and its role in underpinning this emergent field.
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    The 3D CVE as a cross-cultural classroom
    (Episode Publishers, 2006) Wyeld, Theodor ; Prasolova-Forland, Ekaterina ; Chang, Teng Wen
    Much architectural design work increasingly addresses an international audience. But many designers continue to work in isolation. In practice, however, their work includes international collaboration. This requires cross-cultural understandings with their cocollaborators. There are few opportunities for this to occur in a pedagogical setting. The 3D co-located laboratory (3DCollab) described in this paper was used as a cross-cultural exchange platform to address the need for design students to practice collaborating remotely. What the 3DCollab did was to facilitate cross-cultural exchange in a fun and informative environment where learning was constructed and played out in a 3D virtual environment (3DVE). The project involved students across three cooperating institutions: The University of Queensland (Australia); the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan); and, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim (Norway). It builds on previous exercises conducted by the authors. As far as the authors of this paper are aware this is the first e-learning application to focus on crosscultural understanding in a 3DVE.
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    The virtual city: perspectives on the dystopic cybercity
    (Routledge, 2006) Wyeld, Theodor ; Allan, Andrew
    3D computer modelling is increasingly relied upon as a decision-making tool in the visualisation of urban infrastructure by architects, planners, and developers. 3D computer-generated geometry relies on perspective and its derivatives, isometry and axonometry, to provide the illusion of spatial depth. Hence, architects, planners, and developers unwittingly base their decisions on the agreed instrumentality of a perspectival space that has its origins in the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance. This approach extends into other forms of city visualisation too---such as those portrayed in photography, cinematography, animation, computer games, and so on. As a manifestation of Panofsky's 'window on reality', the contemporary use of perspective perpetuates a perspectivist ideology that pervades much of Western visual media in general. To begin to understand how perspective has become such a large part of the architect's practice and subsequent depictions of the modern city we need to explore the rise of this method for organising the world visually. Hence, this article offers: an historical overview of the rise of perspective and the concomitant rise of the scientific method which claims to underpin its validity as an organisational method; and, the semiological influence of perspective as a way of thinking, and how it is reflected in post-photographic images of the city. It concludes with a brief discussion on the finitudes of virtual reality and how these might be interpreted historically.
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    Using the Amazon metric to construct an image database based on what people do, not what they say
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Wyeld, Theodor ; Colomb, Robert M
    Current image database metadata schemas require users to adopt a specific text-based vocabulary. Textbased metadata is good for searching but not for browsing. Existing image-based search facilities, on the other hand, are highly specialised and so suffer similar problems. Wexelblat's semantic dimensional spatial visualisation schemas go some way towards addressing this problem by making both searching and browsing more accessible to the user in a single interface. But the question of how and what initial metadata to enter a database remains. Different people see different things in an image and will organise a collection in equally diverse ways. However, we can find some similarity across groups of users regardless of their reasoning. For example, a search on Amazon.com returns other products also, based on an averaging of how users navigate the database. In this paper we report on applying this concept to a set of images for which we have visualised them using traditional methods and the Amazon.com method. We report on the findings of this comparative investigation in a case study setting involving a group of randomly selected participants. We conclude with the recommendation that in combination, the traditional and averaging methods would provide an enhancement to current database visualisation, searching, and browsing facilities.
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    Visualising collaboration via email: finding the key players
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Puade, Onn Azraai ; Wyeld, Theodor
    Email is an important form of asynchronous communication. Visualizing analyses of email communication patterns during a collaborative activity help us better understand the nature of collaboration, and identify the key players. By analysing the contents of email communication and adding reflective comments on its perceived importance from the participants of a collaboration new information can be gleaned not immediately obvious in its original flat form. This paper outlines a proof-of-concept prototype collaborative email visualisation schema. Data from a collaboration case study is analysed and subsequently employed to construct a display of the relative impact of both key players and the types of email used.
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    Performing traditional knowledge using a game engine: communicating and sharing Australian Aboriginal knowledge practices
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Pumpa, Malcolm ; Wyeld, Theodor ; Adkins, Barbara
    This paper challenges current practices in the use of digital media to communicate Australian Aboriginal knowledge practices in a learning context. It proposes that any digital representation of Aboriginal knowledge practices needs to examine the epistemology and ontology of these practices in order to design digital environments that effectively support and enable existing Aboriginal knowledge practices in the real world. Central to this is the essential task of any new digital representation of Aboriginal knowledge to resolve the conflict between database and narrative views of knowledge (L. Manovich, 2001). This is in order to provide a tool that complements rather than supplants direct experience of traditional knowledge practices (V. Hart, 2001). This paper concludes by reporting on the recent development of an advanced learning technology that addresses this.
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    Virtually collaborating across cultures: a case study of an online theatrical performance in a 3DCVE spanning three continents
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Wyeld, Theodor ; Prasolova-Forland, Ekaterina ; Chang, Teng Wen
    Much information communication technology (ICT) design work involves international collaboration. This requires cross-cultural understandings with one's co-collaborators. There are few opportunities for this to occur in a pedagogical setting. This paper outlines a pedagogically-oriented case study of the use of a 3D collaborative virtual environment (3DCVE). The 3D co-located laboratory (3DCollab) described in this paper served as a cross-cultural exchange platform. It fostered deeper understandings of alternate meanings to everyday social and work practices and design computing assumptions. The project involved students across three cooperating institutions, on three different continents in different time zones. It builds on previous exercises conducted by the authors.
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    Database and narratological representation of Australian Aboriginal knowledge as information visualisation using a game engine
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Pumpa, Malcolm ; Wyeld, Theodor
    Current database technologies do not support contextualised representations of multi-dimensional narratives. This paper outlines a new approach to this problem using a multi-dimensional database served in a 3D game environment. Preliminary results indicate it is a particularly efficient method for the types of contextualised narratives used by Australian Aboriginal peoples to tell their stories about their traditional landscapes and knowledge practices. We discuss the development of a tool that complements rather than supplants direct experience of these traditional knowledge practices.
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    A qualitative assessment of communicating spatial concepts in virtual and physical environments via a text-based medium
    (IEEE, 2006-07) Puade, Onn Azraai ; Wyeld, Theodor
    The pedagogical exercise described here was used to investigate how spatial communication about the manipulation of objects in a virtual and physical space is communicated between remote partners. It continues work done by others. Where it differs from previous research in this area is in its use of a qualitative methodology to study how these types of interactions are structured, communicated and interpreted via text-based media. What emerged from the qualitative analysis are new insights over the previous quantitative investigations. This paper reports on completed research.
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    Creating an authentic aural experience in the Digital Songlines game engine: part of a contextualised cultural heritage knowledge toolkit
    (Springer, 2006-10) Gibbons, Craig ; Wyeld, Theodor ; Leavy, Brett ; Hills, James
    Digital Songlines is an Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) project that is developing protocols, methodologies and toolkits to facilitate the collection, education and sharing of indigenous cultural heritage knowledge. The project explores the areas of effective recording, content management and virtual reality delivery capabilities that are culturally sensitive and involve the indigenous custodians, leaders and communities in remote areas of the Australian 'outback'. It investigates how players in a serious gaming sense can experience Indigenous virtual heritage in a high fidelity fashion with culturally appropriate interface tools. This paper describes a 3D ambient audio quilt designed and implemented specifically for the Digital Songlines software, which is built using the Torque Game Engine. The audio quilt developed provides dynamic ambient fauna and flora sound effects to represent the varying audio environment of the landscape. This provides an authentic contextualised interesting aural experience that can be different each time a location is entered. This paper reports on completed and ongoing research in this area.
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    Theatrical place in a 3D CVE: an online performance of Plato's 'Allegory of the cave' in a distributed 3D CVE
    (IEEE, 2007-03) Wyeld, Theodor ; Prasolova-Forland, Ekaterina ; Viller, Stephen
    This paper discusses a theatrical performance in a 3D collaborative virtual environment (3D CVE). Place in a performative 3D CVE is contingent on immersion and presence generated by social interaction. It discusses the production of an online performance of Plato's 'Allegory of the cave' involving students from three different continents. It was found that theatrical activities in a 3D CVE share some of the characteristics of both cinema and traditional theatre. The paper identifies different types of places in 3D CVE and discusses their role in an educational context.
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    3D remote design collaboration: a pedagogical case study of the cross-cultural issues raised
    (IEEE, 2007-04) Wyeld, Theodor ; Prasolova-Forland, Ekaterina ; Chang, Teng Wen
    Much architectural design work increasingly addresses an international audience. But many designers continue to work in isolation. In practice, however, their work includes international collaboration. This requires cross-cultural understandings with their co-collaborators. There are few opportunities for this to occur in a pedagogical setting. The 3D co-located laboratory (3DCollab) described in this paper was used as a cross-cultural exchange platform to address the need for design students to practice collaborating remotely. What the 3DCollab did was to facilitate cross-cultural exchange in a fun and informative environment where learning was constructed and played out in a 3D virtual environment (3DVE). The project involved students across three cooperating institutions: The University of Queensland (Australia); the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (Taiwan); and, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim (Norway). It builds on previous exercises conducted by the authors. As far as the authors of this paper are aware this is the first e-learning application to focus on cross-cultural understanding in a 3DVE.
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    Narratological constructs in the Gestalt of the 3D game environment: Aboriginal knowledge and its connection to the data landscape metaphor
    (IEEE, 2007-07) Wyeld, Theodor ; Pumpa, Malcolm
    This paper reports on a project federally funded by the Australian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID). It investigates the use of a 3D game engine as a landscape metaphor for hosting Australian Aboriginal knowledge practices based on performed narratives. It communicates some recent findings. Central to these findings is the need to communicate a better understanding of the complex interrelationships indigenous Australian people share with their country, how this is reflected in their narratives, and what this can tell us about digital narrative in general. It is pitched at a broad audience which includes, theorists, practitioners, and technologists. It continues issues raised in another paper presented to the European Information Visualisation conference 2006 (IV 06).
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    Visualising a skeletal dysplasia knowledgebase
    (IEEE, 2007-07) Jakobsen, Ingrid B ; Wyeld, Theodor ; Hansen, David P ; Zankl, Andreas
    Skeletal dysplasias affect around 4 million people worldwide. Various nosologies exist for describing and classifying their clinical, radiological, and genetic features. A methodological framework is needed to establish a single consolidated nosology for skeletal dysplasias based on the existing multiple classification systems.. Once established, the terms used can be linked to an existing database of exemplar x-ray images and explored interactively. As a proof-of-concept, a pilot study was conducted to investigate the potential in both establishing a consolidated nosology and visualisation of the results. This paper reports on a preliminary methodological framework for proceeding and initial visualisation results which go some way towards demonstrating the potential of such a system. The aim of this project is to assist clinicians to make more accurate diagnoses of skeletal dysplasias and to foster translational research. This is set against the background of an existing unwieldy classification system.
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    A non-expert organised visual database: a case study in using the Amazon metric to search images
    (IEEE, 2007-07) Puade, Onn Azraai ; Wyeld, Theodor
    In a previous paper the notion of 'using the Amazon metric to construct an image database based on what people do, not what they say' was introduced (see [1]). In that paper we described a case study setting where 20 participants were asked to arrange a collection of 60 images from most to least similar. We found they organised them in many different ways for many different reasons. Using Wexelblat's [2] semantic dimensions as axes for visualisation in conjunction with the Amazon metric we were able to identify common clusters of images according to expert and non-expert orderings. This second study describes the construction of a visual database based on the results of the first case study's non-expert participants' organising strategies and rationales. The same participants from the first study were invited to search for 'remembered' images in the visual database. A better understanding was gained of their detailed reasonings behind their choices. This led to the development of a non-expert organised visual database that proved to be useful to the non-expert user.This paper concludes with some recommendations for future research into developing a non-expert, selforganising, visual, image database using multiple thesauri, based on these core studies.