Portugal

As a first step towards studying the ability of human crowds and machines to effectively co-create, we explore several human-only collaborative co-creation scenarios. The goal in each scenario is to create a digital sketch using a simple web interface. We find that settings in which multiple humans iteratively add strokes and vote on the best additions result in sketches with the highest creativity (combination of value and novelty). Lack of collaboration leads to a higher variance in quality and lower novelty or surprise. Collaboration without voting leads to high novelty but low quality.

ICCC&#39;20

Exploring Crowd Co-creation Scenarios for Sketches

sketches

co-creation

crowd

collaboration

Computational creativity is the art, science, philosophy and engineering of computational systems which, by taking on particular responsibilities, exhibit behaviours that unbiased observers would deem to be creative. As a field of research, this area is thriving, with progress in formalising what it means for software to be creative, along with many exciting and valuable applications of creative software in the sciences, the arts, literature, gaming and elsewhere.

The ICCC conference series organized by the Association for Computational Creativity since 2010 is the only scientific conference that focuses on computational creativity alone and also covers all aspects of it.


ICCC'20

The ICCC conference series organized by the Association for Computational Creativity since 2010 is the only scientific conference that focuses on computational creativity alone and also covers all aspects of it.
Computational creativity is the art, science, philosophy and engineering of computational systems which, by taking on particular responsibilities, exhibit behaviors that unbiased observers would deem to be creative. As a field of research, this area is thriving, with progress in formalizing what it means for software to be creative, along with many exciting and valuable applications of creative software in the sciences, the arts, literature, gaming and elsewhere.



poster

## Please click on the link to watch the explanation video: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYjrolmlly



"Les Manifs - The Sound of Solidarity Is an audiovisual piece reflecting upon the artists’ experiences of the French ‘Gilets Jaunes’ protests in December 2018. 

Whilst living in the Occitanie region, the artists witnessed the rise of the protest movement sweeping the country. The grassroots group was sparked by rising fuel prices and the cost of living. The movement grew to encompass broader sentiments of domestic discontent and socioeconomic injustice. With wide support from many different demographics, weekly disruptive demonstrations expanded to almost every town in the country.

President Macron was quick to condemn the protests. He was categorical in his refusal to concede any of the movement’s demands. However the resolute tenacity of the Gilets Jaunes was underestimated. After 8 consecutive weeks of protests, Macron was forced to make concessions. Regardless, the protests continued unabated for 45 consecutive weeks in Paris, attracting over 300,000 demonstrators nationally at its height. 

As support for the movement grew, so too did the tension. Police clashed violently with rioters, known as the Ultra-Jaunes. Cities were heavily vandalised: rioters targeted banks, speed cameras, and parking meters. The Police response was equally controversial. Their aggressive tactics inflicted many (sometimes life changing) injuries to rioters and peaceful protestors alike.

The piece comprises binaural sound recordings and photographs of the 10th week of demonstrations in the city of Toulouse, where 10,000 protestors took to the streets. In gonzo-journalistic style, the photographer and recordist individually explored the protests through their mediums.

Both were drawn in with nightfall by the chaos and drama of the ultra-jaunes, where lawlessness reigns and revolution is romanticised.

The work portrays the story of a day of direct action with the Gilets Jaunes, following different groups and factions to a dangerous climax. Ultimately, the artists discover a place where for a fleeting moment, amidst barrages of tear gas, flash grenades and water cannons, some of the most disenfranchised members of society find their voices."



Les Manifs - The Sound of Solidarity

Light is one of the most enduring and resilient components of the Universe. The speed of light is a constant regardless of location. This video audio art work has been produced using two algorithmic regimes. 

The first regime involves scanning scientific experiment data visualisations, resulting in audio being generated from the visual data. The audio is then compiled into a soundtrack. The second regime involves putting the soundtrack into software that generates animated form. The production of the audio-video art work is cameraless. 

Light seen and unseen involved scanning scientific visualisations from various light wavelengths – at nonvisible (Gamma ray wavelength), UV, visible and infrared wavelengths. Visualisations used were of a photon shower from the Veritas atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope array in Arizona; a solar prominence eruption recorded on May 3rd 2013 at UV wavelengths; a Hubble image of the Serpens constellation of the Eagle Nebula giving birth to new stars, at visible light wavelengths; and an image of the nebula NCG2174 at infra-red wave-lengths.

Technical information
Light seen and unseen
Video mp4 encoding, 5 minutes 24 seconds
1920 x 1080 px, 29 frames per second
Stereo audio 48kHz 

Light seen and unseen

As a lay user creates an art piece using an interactive generative art tool, what, if anything, do the choices they make tell us about them and their preferences? Both within the generative art form, and otherwise? As a preliminary study, we collect preferences from 311 subjects, in a specific generative art form and in other walks of life. We train machine learning models to predict a subset of preferences from the rest. We find that preferences in the generative art form cannot predict preferences in other walks of life better than chance (and vice versa). However, preferences within the generative art form are reliably predictive of each other.

Predicting A Creator's Preferences In, and From, Interactive Generative Art

## Please watch the explanation video for this work here: https://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cYjro8mlws


"By April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced half of humanity to suspend their daily activities and spend most of their time at home. The abrupt interruption of human activities seemingly generated an unexpected noise-free soundscape. In this (temporary?) departure of humankind from the outside world, it seemed that nature was regaining its space, also, but not only, its acoustic space. 
The Sound Outside is a sound installation based on an international project run from the end of March 2020 and still ongoing. The project aims to gather sound designers and sound makers from all over the world to collectively document the changes in the urban soundscape recording “from their windows”, during lockdown. The goal is not only to foster a form of active resistance, an example of resiliency of the human inhabitants which re-appropriate of the collective urban space through active listening, but also the opportunity, as a community, for designers and creators of sounds to re-imagine the future of the urban soundscape. The installation uses both recorded soundscapes and the voices of the authors to create a sonic journey through the unprecedented events of the past few months, filtered by the – in some ways - privileged point of listening of sound practitioners."

The Sound Outside - Listening to the World at COVID-19 Time

In an attempt to teach my computer how to produce portraits, these eight animate reconstructions are produced by an autoencoding neural network that was trained on the faces of Chinese engineering students. This piece treats the neural network’s inherent “flaws” as a medium through which to filter depictions of the human body: by reappropriating the generative blurriness in the facial reconstructions it seeks to illustrate how novel AI technologies can be used as a self-fulfilling form of erasure.
In this case, the ghostly images that result reflect western society’s tendency to dehumanize people of Asian descent often in terms that focus on them as an aggregate, as autonomous laborers devoid of individual identity. In the age of worldwide pandemic where a renewed and heightened xenophobia permeates much of society, these quiet, voiceless animations capture the ways in which people of Asian descent are often silenced and subjugated along cultural lines. As an Asian American, I impose myself onto these representations by projecting video of my own Asian facial features on top of these images to create a computer-mediated cyborg composited from both the living body and the digitally-imagined. Field-recordings of the ambient sounds from manufacturing factories in Shenzhen, China accompany the videos.

Artist Talk: Engine Errors / Self-Portrait

Please click on the link to watch the explanatory video of this work: 

Inspired by Einstein's paper introducing the special theory of relativity titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," "Sobre a eletrodinâmica dos corpos de trabalho" offers a time-distorted view of the concrete plant in Quarry Maljoga in Dade from the Viseu Rural archive (the only sound source). It portrays the work as it echoes off the landscape in compressed time, frozen time, and smeared timelines. It is a reflection on the efforts of man-made forces, the persistence of natural forces over time, and the interfaces between them.

**## Please click on the link to watch the explanation video:**
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OZTXbvDaQ15va-vRfm9YwBFoU-tRxKly/view?usp=sharing

Sobre a eletrodinâmica dos corpos de trabalho

In the Middle of the Room is a fixed media work for voice, sampled and layered upon itself in counterpoint, to explore tenuous new connections among the word fragments that emerge. It reflects on the reminiscences of an elderly woman whose memories are fanciful, regretful, pensive, and failing, inspired by Elisabeth's friendship with an extraordinary woman who, sadly, passed away soon after creating this work.

## Please watch the explenatory video for this work:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/pf-upload-01/u-59356/0/2020-08-19/he23rdh/Morris-Blair-NMB2020.mp4

In the Middle of the Room

## „Ghost Hunting – A field experience from hertz to gigahertz“ 

The corona pandemic has changed public life dramatically. Only recently have shops that do not provide basic services been allowed to reopen in isolated cases. Until then, the inner cities were deserted.  But what happens in the urban space when public life does not take place or only to a limited extent? 
„Ghost Hunting“ makes the world of electromagnetic fields tangible. In other words, the oscillation frequencies that cannot normally be perceived by the human ear.
We are not only surrounded by electromagnetic fields in cities. There they were created quasi unintentionally as a side effect of technological development.  Whether under the street lamp, at the junction box, at the ticket machine or at high-performance cables, Internet nodes or mobile phone transmission masts - electromagnetic fields surround us almost everywhere. They are also present in nature. Some of these fields overlap or form so-called interference fields. With increasing digitalisation and the expansion of mobile phone networks, their effects on health are also being discussed, as is the question of how to develop resilience in this context. 
Electromagnetic fields are usually hidden from the human ear. But wouldn‘t it be wonderful to be able to access this world? What do the electromagnetic fields of urban places tell us? What does urban space sound like at night when everything is quiet? What do the spirits that live in the electromagnetic landscapes tell us?
Are these areas not rather invisible spaces of poetry?



## Start the Ghost Hunting tour here:
## https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Start.htm

For further stations scroll down and activate the audio tracks on the map.


**Links to the sound files:**

01_Foundation Kuenstlerdorf: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Start.html

02_Vechte-swimming-pool: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Vechtebad.html

03_Plague-Cemetery: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Pestfriedhof.html

04_Church: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Kirche.html

05_City-Park: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Stadtpark.html

06_Old-town-hall-traffic-lights: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Rathaus.html

07_Parking-lot: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Parkplatz.html

08_Telecommunications-tower: https://ghosthunting.431art.org/Fernmeldeturm.html



www.ghosthunting.431art.org 
In autumn 2020, „Ghost Hunting“ will be realized as an audio walk at 8 stations in downtown Frankfurt/Main. 



Ghost Hunting – A field experience from hertz to gigahertz

Paisajes distantes is a networked audio-visual performance linking human and non-human soundscapes and visuals from two cities — Bogota, Colombia and Pittsburgh, US — captured during the COVID-19 quarantine period of 2020. Conceived as a dialogue between two urban auras in isolation, the piece juxtaposes dissimilar atmospheres including sounds and imagery of ferrovial systems, water canals, urban fauna, and domestic life. These form the substrate for a live performance comprising digitally processed and computer-generated sounds including layers of granular synthesis, heavily processed guitar sounds, and additional samples. The piece will be produced remotely and in real time by the artists — who are also distant from each other, each one in one of the two cities — through a networked music performance (NMP) system. In Coimbra, the performance will be preferably experienced as an ambient intervention in an open area. Accompanying the sound will be a video screen or projection with a split image displaying visuals collected during the lockdowns in the two cities. With these elements, the piece employs digital mediations to explore different conceptions of distance — social, geographic, and affective. Captured while in the midst of an unprecedented moment of personal and collective isolation, the sonic and visual materials give structure to an improvisational, networked digital music performance. Paisajes distantes thus reflects on the possibilities of new encounters, new forms of presence, and new modes of creative engagement shaped by the necessity of isolation and enabled by digital networks and computational processes.

Paisajes distantes

We  argue  that  frameworks  employed  in  architecting self-adaptive systems allow the system to exhibit creative  behaviour,  and  that  many  of  the  existing  self-adaptive systems operating in domains which are typically not associated with creativity are inherently creative.  However, even the current state-of-the-art solutions do not fully exploit stronger forms of creative behaviour, which are required in complex environments, where the system constantly encounters fundamentally novel situations.  To this end, software development necessitates a paradigm shift parallel to moving from procedural design methodology toward self-aware systems where the system adapts to its context at run time.

Exploring Crowd Co-creation Scenarios for Sketches

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Les Manifs - The Sound of Solidarity

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