Browsing by Department "Department of Art and Media"
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- Aalto University - Acoustics Lab: Lab presentation
Foreword / postscript(2021) Lokki, Tapio; Meyer-Kahlen, Nils; Schlecht, Sebastian; Välimäki, VesaThe professor’s and researchers working at the Aalto Acoustics Lab have prepared video presentations and demos in the special facilities of the laboratory. The laboratories were renovated two years ago, so they are now in great shape. Most of the video material is recorded binaurally so that it can be enjoyed well with headphones. - ACT OF FICTION : Simultaneously experienced multiple perspectives of (un)reality when engaging with narrative-based art
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2023-08-01) Amir, Einat; Sofaer, Joshua; Sams, MikkoThe authors propose a new conception of the mechanism that occurs during a narrative-based art experience—the “Act of Fiction.” They claim that there is no “suspension of disbelief” but rather something more similar to our decision-making systems, enabling us to simultaneously be present in the real and the unreal (fictional). The article’s first part contains a narrative account in which an Act of Fiction takes place; it exemplifies what it also describes. The second part provides an analysis of this phenomenon through a review of current literature and our position on it. The third part proposes an outline for a primary examination of what might be happening in the brain in the experience of an Act of Fiction. The authors conclude by suggesting directions for future research. - "An Adapt-or-Die Type of Situation”: Perception, Adoption, and Use of Text-To-Image-Generation AI by Game Industry Professionals
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023-10-04) Vimpari, Veera; Kultima, Annakaisa; Hämäläinen, Perttu; Guckelsberger, ChristianText-to-image generation (TTIG) models, a recent addition to creative AI, can generate images based on a text description. These models have begun to rival the work of professional creatives, and sparked discussions on the future of creative work, loss of jobs, and copyright issues, amongst other important implications. To support the sustainable adoption of TTIG, we must provide rich, reliable and transparent insights into how professionals perceive, adopt and use TTIG. Crucially though, the public debate is shallow, narrow and lacking transparency, while academic work has focused on studying the use of TTIG in a general artist population, but not on the perceptions and attitudes of professionals in a specific industry. In this paper, we contribute a qualitative, exploratory interview study on TTIG in the Finnish videogame industry. Through a Template Analysis on semi-structured interviews with 14 game professionals, we reveal 12 overarching themes, structured into 39 sub-themes on professionals' perception, adoption and use of TTIG in games industry practice. Experiencing (yet another) change of roles and creative processes, our participants' reflections can inform discussions within the industry, be used by policymakers to inform urgently needed legislation, and support researchers in games, HCI and AI to support the sustainable, professional use of TTIG, and foster games as cultural artefacts. - Adorned in Memes: Exploring the Adoption of Social Wearables in Nordic Student Culture
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022-04-30) Epp, Felix Anand; Kantosalo, Anna; Jain, Nehal; Lucero, Andres; Mekler, ElisaSocial wearables promise to augment and enhance social interactions. However, despite two decades of HCI research on wearables, we are yet to see widespread adoption of social wearables into everyday life. More in-situ investigations into the social dynamics and cultural practices afforded by wearing interactive technology are needed to understand the drivers and barriers to adoption. To this end, we study social wearables in the context of Nordic student culture and the students’ practice of adorning boiler suits. Through a co-creation process, we designed Digi Merkki, a personalised interactive clothing patch. In a two-week elicitation diary study, we captured how 16 students adopted Digi Merkki into their social practices. We found that Digi Merkki afforded a variety of social interaction strategies, including sharing, spamming, and stealing pictures, which supported meaning-making and community-building. Based on our findings, we articulate “Memetic Expression” as a strong concept for designing social wearables. - Advantages of virtual reality childbirth education
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2024-02-29) Siivola, Marjaana; Leinonen, Teemu; Malmi, LauriMany expectant parents do not prepare enough for childbirth, and not getting a tour of the birthing hospital is causing them unnecessary stress. We enhanced childbirth education with an online virtual reality program for the users to experience what it might be like to give birth in a hospital. In this paper, we report a study that included observational user testing with a virtual reality headset and autonomic testing with the device of the user's choice. Data was collected with a pre-questionnaire, observations from the user tests, a semi-structured interview with the expecting parents, a post-questionnaire, and a follow-up questionnaire. The program improved learning outcomes and offered realistic and concrete birthing examples. Usability was good with the virtual reality headsets, while other devices need more research. - Aesthetic Choice in the Age of Ecological Awareness
A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa(2023-10-23) Lehtinen, SannaIn this chapter, I discuss how environmentally conscious aesthetic values become explicit in the form of preferences and concrete choices in everyday situations in which one is able to choose between two or more equally accessible alternatives. Climate awareness, in particular, is affecting attitudes and the experienced responsibility for one’s personal aesthetic preferences and concrete situations in which one is choosing between two or more options with varying degrees of environmental implication. This type of accountability for the long-term sustainability of subjective choices and deliberation between different types of possibly conflicting values is present in many everyday situations ranging from the mundane to more complex matters. The chapter presents case examples in which the need to make everyday decisions is directly linked to aesthetic value and consumption choices. The broader claim made in the article is that these moments of everyday aesthetic decision-making cause mental friction and affect the well-being of an individual in complex ways. Environmental and aesthetic values can and do coexist but they do not necessarily align neatly and neither does one always possess required knowledge to make thoroughly informed decisions. - Afterword
A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa(2023) Leslie, Esther; Iliffe, Samuel; Mueller, Lucas M.; Krijgsheld, Pauline; Lehmann, Ann-Sophie; Pitman, Sophie; Boumediene, Samir; Aldes Wurgaft, Benjamin; Anderson, Leah; Urfer, Maximilien - Art from Home to School: Towards a Critical Art Education Curriculum Framework in Postcolonial and Globalisation Contexts for Primary School Level in Uganda
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2022) Muyanja, MichaelArt from Home to School is an investigation, which examined various aspects to transform the school curriculum, restore a stronger sense of historical cultural awareness; promote tolerance and cultural diversity through art education at primary school level in Uganda. Art from Home to School argues against censored cultural heritage; earmarked as indigenous art and mother tongue use in primary schools of Uganda. It provides an inquiry into colonial and postcolonial educational policies that promote a Euro centered school curriculum that stresses rote learning, encourages school violence through corporal punishment and ultimately that may result in physical abuse, along with dropping out of school. Further, Art from Home to School attends to other antagonisms in the society and school where the student persists; which cause socioeconomic inequalities and exploitation by reason of globalisation in education. It builds its knowledge base on Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed to transform teaching and learning focused on social change. In it, ethnographic research was used to review art works produced by students as resistance to previously silenced voices and obtained results were used to plan a hypothetical critical curriculum of art education suggesting a captured vision of decolonising reforms. - Art of Research 2023
D6 Toimitettu ammatillinen kokoomateos(2023-11-30) Laakso, Harri; Pantouvaki, Sofia; Valle-Noronha, Julia; Krokfors, Karin; Helke, Susanna; Falin, PriskaVIII Art of Research Conference: Re-Imagining The theme of the eighth Art of Research conference is “Re-Imagining”, addressing the various gestures of going back, returning to take another look, or for starting anew. It suggests that research in the context of artistic and creative practice could have a special relation to time; simultaneously attaching itself to a prior moment in time and from there propelling imagination to unforeseen futures. The theme proposes reassessments where the evaluation of past events, integral to research, is in unison with the anticipation potential, integral to the arts. It wonders about new conceptions of an idea, place, space, object, and ways of doing and making that emerge from a reverse glance — the challenges, updates, and improvements. The Art of Research conferences promote the continuous dialogue of research practices in art and design. The previous seven international conferences have contributed to the development of rapidly growing and spreading discourse on artistic and practice-led research. Over the two decades, the conferences have had a significant role in engaging in multiple notions of research where diverse modes of creative practice are used as catalysts for enquiry. This year, we have received an outstanding number of submissions, a total of 170. Through the double-blind peer review the programme selected 29 full papers and 41 explorative papers to be presented in the conference. With the shorter explorative papers, the conference expects to welcome other ways of looking at artistic research. We continue to emphasize the relevance of the creative outputs in artistic research through an exhibition related to the papers presented at the conference, with 32 contributions. In addition, we complete the conference programme with two keynotes that explore the conference themes from exciting perspectives: Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago and Laura Beloff. The conference takes place between the 30th November and 1st December at Aalto University, Espoo, Finland. - Art of Research 2023
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2023) Laakso, Harri; Pantouvaki, Sofia; Valle Noronha, Julia; Krokfors, Karin; Helke, Susanna; Falin, Priska - Artificial Aesthetics and Aesthetic Machine Attention
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2022-10) Okulov, JaanaThe aesthetics of artificial intelligence is often viewed in relation to the qualities of their generated expressions. However, aesthetics could have a broader role in developing machine perception. One of the main areas of expertise in aesthetics is the understanding of feature-based information, which involves how the aesthetics of sensory features can cause affective changes in the perceiver, and the other way around - how affective states can give rise to certain kinds of aesthetic features. This two-way link between aesthetic features and affects is not yet well-established in the interdisciplinary discussion; however, according to perceptual psychology, it fundamentally constructs the human experience. Machine attention is an emerging technique in machine learning that is most often used in tasks like object detection, visual question answering, and language translation. Modern use of technology most often focuses on creating object-based attention through linguistic catego-ries, although the models could also be utilized for nonverbal attention. This paper proposes the following perceptual conditions for aesthetic machine attention: 1) acknowledging that something appears (aesthetic detection); 2) suspension of judgment (aesthetic recognition); and 3) making the incident explicit with expression (aesthetic identification and amplifica-tion). These aspects are developed through an interdisciplinary reflection of literature from the fields of aesthetics, perceptual psychology, and machine learning. The paper does not aim to give a general account of aesthetic perception but to expand the interdisciplinary theory of aesthetics and specify the role of aesthetics among other disciplines at the heart of the techno-logical development of the human future. - Artificial intelligence as relational artifacts in creative learning
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2023) Lim, Jeongki; Leinonen, Teemu; Lipponen, Lasse; Lee, Henry; DeVita, Julienne; Murray, DakotaArtificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly advanced in creating professional-level media content. In creative education, determining how students can benefit without becoming dependent on them is a challenge. In this study, researchers conducted an exploratory experiment that positioned AI as a relational artifact to students in a series of drawing activities and examined the potential impact of affective relations with machines in socio-cultural creative learning. The resulting artifacts, observations, and interview transcripts were analyzed using the Consensual Assessment Technique and a grounded theory approach. The study's results indicate that the design professors reliably evaluated the student drawings as more creative than the AI drawings, but neither demonstrated a consistent increase in creativity. However, the presence of AI engaged the students to explore different approaches to artistic prompts. We theorize that AI can be mediated as a learning artifact for transformative creativity if the students perceive their relationship with AI as empathetic and collaborative. - Arts of vulnerability. Queering leaks in artistic research and bioart
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Doctoral dissertation (monograph)(2023) Pevere, MargheritaThe dissertation addresses artistic practice that combines the manipulation of organic and living matter with biotechnology (bioart) with a more-than-human theoretical framework of feminist studies, queer studies and environmental humanities. At the heart of the research there are the two bioart works Semina Aeternitatis(2019) and Wombs (2018–2021). Semina Aeternitatis manipulates individual memories through a series of biotechnological procedures and genetic engineering of bacteria. The series Wombs (W.01, W.02, W.03) addresses sex, gender and hormonal contraception from an ecological perspective. I realized both artworks in collaboration with international scientific laboratories.Placing the artworks at its heart makes this dissertation a contribution to the field of artistic research. After giving insights into the realization of the artworks, I offer the two concepts ‘arts of vulnerability’ (AoV) and ‘poetics of uncontainability’ (PoU). These interrelated concepts illuminate different aspects of engaging and making art with unstable, living materials. The concepts emerge as aesthetic instances rooted in the art practice but, through the queer feminist theoretical framework, become ethical and epistemic tools to deal with the more-than-human in unstable times. - Arvioinnin äärellä - Lukion kuvataiteen arviointia ja lukiodiplomia kehittämässä KAARO-hankkeessa
School of Arts, Design and Architecture | D4 Julkaistu kehittämis- tai tutkimusraportti tai -selvitys(2022) Henrika Ylirisku, Elina Härkönen & Jani Vepsä (toim.) - Atmospheric listening instruments : Art and science technologies for attuning to our natural environments
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2024-07-18) Regino, Juan Carlos DuarteThis article introduces a curated selection of artistic instrument-based practices centred around listening to geophonic and biophonic aspects of the natural soundscape. Featured artists, including Ariel Guzik (Nereida), Joyce Hinterding and David Haines (Earthstar), Pauline Oliveros (Echoes from the Moon), Nicolas Montgermont (Axis Mvndi) and Juan Duarte (Augury), employ instrumental approaches to engage with natural environments. The article delves into the role of technology in mediating environmental awareness, establishing connections with key concepts such as attunement, resonance and techno-embodiment. The exploration unfolds as a genealogy of art and science instrument-based practices unified by the overarching idea of utilizing technologies to expand human sensorium, primarily through sound. The practices examined advocate for ecocentrism, presenting it as a strategic approach to cultivating empathy towards natural environments by acknowledging nature as an independent entity. Through instrumental relations, these practices enable humans to attune to the profound, otherwise imperceptible voice of nature, resonating beyond the confines of human language. - Audio peak reduction using a synced allpass filter
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022) Schlecht, Sebastian J.; Fierro, Leonardo; Välimäki, Vesa; Backman, JuhaPeak reduction is a common step used in audio playback chains to increase the loudness of a sound. The distortion introduced by a conventional nonlinear compressor can be avoided with the use of an allpass filter, which provides peak reduction by acting on the signal phase. This way, the signal energy around a waveform peak can be smeared while maintaining the total energy of the signal. In this paper, a new technique for linear peak amplitude reduction is proposed based on a Schroeder allpass filter, whose delay line and gain parameters are synced to match peaks of the signal's autocorrelation function. The proposed method is compared with a previous search method and is shown to be often superior. An evaluation conducted over a variety of test signals indicates that the achieved peak reduction spans from 0 to 5 dB depending on the input waveform. The proposed method is widely applicable to real-time sound reproduction with a minimal computational processing budget. - Audio Peak Reduction Using Ultra-Short Chirps
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2022-06) Välimäki, Vesa; Fierro, Leonardo; Schlecht, Sebastian; Backman, JuhaTwo filtering methods for reducing the peak value of audio signals are studied. Both methods essentially warp the signal phase while leaving its magnitude spectrum unchanged. The first technique, originally proposed by Lynch in 1988, consists of a wideband linear chirp. The listening test presented here shows that the chirp must not be longer than 4 ms, so as not to cause any audible change in timbre. The second method, called the phase rotator, put forward in 2001 by Orban and Foti is based on a cascade of second-order all-pass filters. This work proposes extensions to improve the performance of the methods, including rules to choose the parameter values. A comparison with previous methods in terms of achieved peak reduction, using a collection of short audio signals, is presented. The computational load of both methods is sufficiently low for real-time application. The extended phase rotator method is found to be superior to the linear chirp method and comparable to the other search methods. The practical peak reduction obtained with the proposed methods spans from 0 to about 3.5 dB. The signal processing methods presented in this work can increase loudness or save power in audio playback. - Audiovisual Congruence and Localization Performance in Virtual Reality: 3D Loudspeaker Model vs. Human Avatar
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2024-10) Hofmann, Anja; Meyer-Kahlen, Nils; Schlecht, Sebastian; Lokki, TapioThis paper investigates audiovisual congruence in virtual reality with both horizontal and vertical offsets between audio and visual rendering. Audiovisual congruence and localization errors are assessed using loudspeaker playback and nonindividualized headphone rendering. To account for the influence of different types of visual information on congruence, presentations of a loudspeaker model and 3D human avatar were compared. Therefore, a new dataset of audiovisual speech was recorded. Results show that human avatar rendering increases perceived congruence, and experienced listeners have an increased tendency to respond with “incongruent” when a loudspeaker model is shown but not when the human avatar is presented. Moreover, a correlation is found between localization precision and audiovisual congruence for horizontally offset stimuli and avatar presentation. For vertical offsets, the angular range of congruence is generally large, and localization errors are high, so no correlation can be observed between the two. The paper contributes congruence ranges for audiovisual speech in virtual reality, which also has implications for augmented reality telepresence use. - The auditory perceived aperture position of the transition between rooms
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä(2022-09-01) McKenzie, Thomas; Schlecht, Sebastian J.; Pulkki, VilleThis exploratory study investigates the phenomenon of the auditory perceived aperture position (APAP): the point at which one feels they are in the boundary between two adjoined spaces, judged only using auditory senses. The APAP is likely the combined perception of multiple simultaneous auditory cue changes, such as energy, reverberation time, envelopment, decay slope shape, and the direction, amplitude, and colouration of direct and reverberant sound arrivals. A framework for a rendering-free listening test is presented and conducted in situ, avoiding possible inaccuracies from acoustic simulations, impulse response measurements, and auralisation to assess how close the APAP is to the physical aperture position under blindfold conditions, for multiple source positions and two room pairs. Results indicate that the APAP is generally within ± 1 m of the physical aperture position, though reverberation amount, listener orientation, and source position affect precision. Comparison to objective metrics suggests that the APAP generally falls within the period of greatest acoustical change. This study illustrates the non-trivial nature of acoustical room transitions and the detail required for their plausible reproduction in dynamic rendering and game audio engines. - Augmented Granular Synthesis Method for GAN Latent Space with Redundancy Parameter
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa(2022-09-13) Tahiroğlu, Koray; Kastemaa, MirandaIn this paper we introduce an augmented granular sound synthesis method for a GAN latent space exploration in audio domain. We use the AI-terity musical in- strument for sound generating events in which the neural network (NN) parameters are optimised and then the features are used as a basis to generate new sounds. The exploration of a latent space is realised by creating a latent space through the original features of the training data set and finding the corresponding audio feature of the vector points in this space. Our proposed sound synthesis method can achieve multiple audio generation and sound synthesising events simultaneously without interrupting the playback grains. To do that we introduce redundancy parameter that schedules additional buffer slots divided from a large buffer slot, allowing multiple latent space vector points to be used in granular synthesis, in GPU real-time. Our implementation demonstrates that augmented buffer schedule slots can be used as a feature for a sound synthesis method to explore GAN-latent sound synthesis of granular-musical events with multiple generated audio samples without interrupting the granular musical features of the synthesis method.