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Dagstuhl seminar 02291: Aesthetic computing. From july 14 to 19,
2002 (Dagstuhl, Germany). With Paul Fishwick (univ. of florida,
usa), Roger Malina (leonardo, mit press, usa), and Christa Sommerer
(atr media, japan).
This workshop represents an investigation in alternative, cultural
and aesthetically-motivated representations for models found in
computer science. Example model types include automata networks,
flow graphs, software visualization structures, semantic networks,
and information graphs. Models serve a variety of purposes from
modeling the behavior and dynamics of software, or a physical system,
to modeling the static information relations among concepts.
The motivation for the workshop is best seen in light of the wave
of rich, personalized sensory modes being made more economic by
the perpetual march toward faster and better interfaces. If it were
possible to build software models from any material, and with great
speed and agility, what new forms of expression would we craft?
If the Holodeck from Star Trek were here today, how would we construct
these models, or even the fundamental mathematical representations
underlying them? An inherent assumption can be drawn that with the
right economy for Holodeck-like 3D, immersive environments, we would
be building our models much differently than exemplified by the
textual and diagrammatic forms populating our existing media. Cheaper,
faster and more expressive methods of representation will burgeon
given recent trends in hardware and software, and this will lead
to an emergence of aesthetics and artist-driven approaches to model
representation. Flat, and relatively standardized textual, modes
of communication are present primarily for economic reasons, and
as the economies shift, we need to study new modes of expression
in mathematics and computer science. Scientific visualizations tend
to present output, and not the model structures that, when simulated
or executed, drive the output. Aesthetic Computing heralds a new
beginning for model representations where art and science come together,
with art in direct support of science.
Aesthetic computing may also be understood to be "Artistic Computing"
or perhaps even "art computer" to differentiate it from "computer
art" -- the infusion of artistically motivated representational
schemes into models for computing (i.e., art computer) rather than
the employment of computing tools in support of creations of pure
art (i.e., computer art).
>from "Introduction
of 2002 Dagstuhl seminar on aesthetic computing"
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