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NYC Next Idea 2010-2011

Posted by on September 16th, 2010 · competition, Sept 2010

This Competition provides students and recent alumni of non-U.S. schools the unique opportunity to access substantial funding and support to implement their business ideas in New York City.

In addition to funding prospects, the contestants will gain valuable experience interacting with leaders from top venture capitalist firms and businesses in New York City, as well as the opportunities to tour the City and learn about its robust business and entrepreneurship community.

Teams of 2-5 participants are invited to submit business plans for ideas that may be commercially viable in New York City. Six teams of finalists (three from the undergraduate track and three from the graduate track) will win a six-day, all-expenses-paid trip to New York City in April 2011 to participate in the final round of the Competition, which will be hosted at Columbia University.

UNSW was identified as a strong candidate for the Competition due to the superior quality of our programs and students.

More information on the Competition can be found on at the NYCEDC website (www.nycedc.com/nextidea). Also see attached a poster and press package. 

Assignment 2 – submission

Posted by on September 14th, 2010 · assignments

There are three components you will need to submit:

1) Storyboard of your design (due week 8, your lab session)

2) The JavaScript files for all your scripts (due Sunday 19 September 2010, 23:59)

3) A web version of your game (due week 9, your lab session, i.e. the first lab session after Sunday 19 September 2010)

[Read more →]

Lab 8 – Arrays

Posted by on September 14th, 2010 · Lab

This week’s lab involves experimenting with arrays.

Start with the following behaviour:


// Flowers.js
var flowerPrefab : GameObject;
var heights : float[];
var flowers : GameObject[];

function Start() {
// make as many instances of the prefab
// as there are entries in the 'heights' array
// scale each one according to the height
// store them in the flowers[] array
}

function Update() {
// Find the smallest flower and make it grow a little
}

Task 1: Complete the Start() method so that it creates multiple instances of the prefab with the specified heights. Make them stand in a line (or, if you’re more adventurous, a circle). Add the script to an empty object (lets call it the flowerbed) in the world and test it out with different values of the heights array.

Store a reference to each flower you make in the flowers array, so we can access them in Update().

Task 2: Complete the Update() method so that on each frame the whichever flower is currently smallest and make it grow a little.

To do this, you will need to use a for loop to look at all the flowers in the flowers array and check its height against the smallest you have found so far.

Test your code with different numbers of flowers. Does it work with 10? 100? 1? 0?

Upcoming Seminar: Scaffolding Learning in an Online Environment

Posted by on September 13th, 2010 · Showcasing Teaching

Dr Arianne Rourke & Kathryn Coleman, COFA
21 September, 12.30 – 2pm, Learning & Teaching Workshop (Room 416), Level 4 Mathews Building, Kensington Campus

In a Postgraduate course on writing a research paper, students learn online using peer review, concept mapping and worked examples to scaffold the learning experience and support active, student-centered learning. Dr Arianne Rourke and Research assistant Kathryn Coleman will discuss the why, what and how of the course design, and the relevance of the approach to different disciplines.

Register here: www.edtec.unsw.edu.au/event_rego/events.cfm

See more upcoming seminars in the ‘Upcoming Seminars’ page…

FASS Wikispaces pilot

Posted by on September 13th, 2010 · Resources

As discussed in the Connections seminar: “Exploring the affordances of the online learning tool, UNSW Wikispaces, in enhancing the group assessment experience for both students and tutors” Helen Caple and Mike Bogle, FASS, you can read about Ben Miller’s (FASS) wikispaces pilot here: http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/telt/blog/2009/12/07/ben-miller-wikispaces-pilot/

Assignment 1 is ready to collect

Posted by on September 12th, 2010 · assignments

Assignment 1 marking is finished. You can collect your mark using

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~give/Student/give.php

You may contact your tutor during your assigned lab session for more information in regards to the marking.

Schema Design!

Posted by on September 10th, 2010 · Uncategorized

Its been a big week as we have been concentrating on Schema Design. We have  been analysing the new datasets that have been coming our way and continuing our phone and face to face interviews with CIs to clarify and refine exactly how we need to extend over coverage in the ares of Exhibitions, Organisations,  Galleries, Curators, Gallery Directors and more.

A lot of issues are emerging about how important it is to capture data on the development of Arts infrastructure and industries.  It is so exciting talking to the CIs about their research and to find out in detail how researchers are using the DAAO.  As I listen to Caroline Jordon or Cathy Speck talk about the history of Australian Arts infrastructure,  I keep seeing in my head all the amazing visualisations we could produce to articulate the relationships between money, people, insitutions, works and more over time. One of the most obvious example of the power of dynamic, relational visualisation as a research tool is Gapminder. http://www.gapminder.org/

Unfortunately such wonders are not for this LIEF, but we will be able a database which such good structure in this grant, that all kinds of uses of it will be possible for future development.

Another highlight of this week has been analysing Amy Griffiths’ research database on Artist Run Initiatives. Capturing the complexity of organisations and exhibitions is a key concern for this LIEF and being gifted such a well researched database on such a vital area really helps us design fields to capture previously elusive information.  Amy Griffiths is completing a Masters in Arts Administration at COFA.

We have now also organised the process of consultation and sign off for the SCHEMA DESIGN stage of this project.TWO advisory groups have been formed to drive the schema refinement and extension; ART  Advisory Group and DESIGN  Advisory Group.  The Editorial Board will ‘shadow’ discussions in both groups ( these will  be synopised to keep information manageable) and can contribute to discussions at the same time as the advisory groups.  The aim is for consensus between advisory group and editorial board and the process is designed to produce such outcomes.

The Diagram below maps the workflow of consulting, testing and sign off.

CI Consultation Diagram

  • –

We have almost completed initial consult stage

We have begun refining our scenarios and benchmarks.

Due to the tight timeline of this project, if we are to launch on time and complete on budget,we need a tight turnaround on feedback from our CIs.  We must remain on time. Please book some time in your busy schedules during the relevant weeks for feedback and testing. Each Advisory group will be notified of its timelines by email. Turnaround period will be one week.

We will email information for feedback to Groups and Ed Board. We will use online survey to gauge your feedback. WE ALWAYS WELCOME A PHONE CALL. Talking is very efficient. If you feel your feedback cannot be captured by the survey we provide. We can call you.

Once we get your feedback, we will make a quick wireframe database so we can test that we are capturing the relationships we need. We will be asking you to test the database by setting it the type of queries you need answered. Again the turnaround period will be one week.

9th European Event on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design

Posted by on September 10th, 2010 · Uncategorized

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

evomusart 2011

9th European Event on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art
and Design

27-29 April, 2011, Torino, Italy

evomusart 2011:
http://www.evostar.org/call-for-contributions/evoapplications/evomusart/
evo* 2011: http://www.evostar.org/
CFP in pdf:
http://www.evostar.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/call_evomusart.pdf
—————————————————————————-
INTRODUCTION
—————————————————————————-

The use of biologically inspired techniques for the development of artistic
systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a
growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as:
visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound
synthesis; architecture; video; poetry; and design.

evomusart 2011 is the ninth european event on Evolutionary Music and Art.
Following the success of previous events and the growth of interest
in the field, the main goal of evomusart 2011 is to bring together
researchers who are using biologically inspired techniques for artistic
tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss
ongoing work in the area.

The event will be held from 27-29 April, 2011 in Torino, Italy
as part of the evostar event.

Accepted papers will be presented orally at the event and included
in the evoapplications proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the
Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.

—————————————————————————-
TOPICS OF INTEREST
—————————————————————————-
The papers should concern the use of biologically inspired techniques –
e.g. Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Artificial Neural Networks,
Swarm Intelligence, etc. – in the scope of the generation, analysis and
interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic fields.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– Generation
o Biologically Inspired Design and Art – Systems that create drawings,
images,

animations, sculptures, poetry, text, designs, webpages, buildings, etc.;
o Biologically Inspired Sound and Music – Systems that create musical
pieces,

sounds, instruments, voices, sound effects, sound analysis, etc.;
o Robotic Based Evolutionary Art and Music;
o Other related generative techniques;
– Theory
o Computational Aesthetics, Emotional Response, Surprise, Novelty;
o Representation techniques;
o Surveys of the current state-of-the-art in the area; identification
of weaknesses and strengths; comparative analysis and classification;
o Validation methodologies;
o Studies on the applicability of these techniques to related areas;
o New models designed to promote the creative potential of biologically
inspired computation;
– Computer Aided Creativity
o Systems in which biologically inspired computation is used to promote
the creativity of a human user;
o New ways of integrating the user in the evolutionary cycle;
o Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biologically
inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these
approaches; the resulting artifacts;
o Collaborative distributed artificial art environments;
– Automation
o Techniques for automatic fitness assignment;
o Systems in which an analysis or interpretation of the artworks is
used in conjunction with biologically inspired techniques to produce
novel objects;
o Systems that resort to biologically inspired computation to perform
the analysis of image, music, sound, sculpture, or some other types
of artistic object;

—————————————————————————-
IMPORTANT DATES
—————————————————————————-
Submission: 22 November 2010
Notification: 7 January 2011
Camera ready: 1 February 2011
Workshop: 27-29 April 2011

—————————————————————————-
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND SUBMISSION DETAILS
—————————————————————————-
Submit your manuscript, at most 10 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS
format (instructions downloadable from
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-164-2-72376-0,00.html)

no later than November 22, 2010 to site http://myreview.csregistry.org/evoapps11

The reviewing process will be double-blind, please omit information about the
authors in the submitted paper.

The papers will be peer reviewed by at least three members of
the program committee. Authors will be notified via email on the
results of the review by January 7, 2011.

The authors of accepted papers will have to improve their paper on the
basis of the reviewers’ comments and will be asked to send a camera
ready version of their manuscripts, along with text sources and
pictures, by February 1, 2011. The accepted papers will appear in the
workshop proceedings, published in Springer LNCS Series, which will be
available at the workshop.

Further information, including the Online Submission Details, can be found
on the following pages:

evomusart2011:
http://www.evostar.org/call-for-contributions/evoapplications/evomusart/
evostar 2011: http://www.evostar.org/
CFP in pdf:
http://www.evostar.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/call_evomusart.pdf

—————————————————————————-
WORKSHOP CHAIRS
—————————————————————————-

Juan Romero
University of A Coruna, Spain
jj AT udc DOT es

Gary Greenfield
University of Richmond, USA
ggreenfi AT richmond DOT edu

ArtLab

Posted by on September 8th, 2010 · Uncategorized

ArtLab

Applications close: 7 December 2010

The Inter-Arts office of the Australia Council for the Arts supports
new interdisciplinary research and creative development projects with
grants of $75,000.

The ArtLab initiative is for experimentation and collaboration between
artists from multiple disciplines to explore new artistic practices.
It supports substantial, long-term research and development projects.

The emphasis is on innovation, risk taking, artistic integrity and the
creation of new ideas. ArtLab brings together artists and
collaborators in new creative contexts that fuel cross-fertilisation
of ideas and artforms.

The main objectives of the program are to provide significant
opportunities for:

new collaborations between artists that explore creative risk-taking
and cross-artform experimentation
promoting the importance and critical role of interdisciplinary
research and development in the arts.

Guidelines

ArtLab proposals should present research and development projects with
an artistic process that demands a very high degree of risk-taking
from all involved. Artists involved in ArtLab are expected to
experiment with radical creative processes and be flexible to outcomes
that cannot be predicted in advance.

The project should span a significant period of time – from 1 to 2
years – with a detailed budget and research plan corresponding to this
timeframe. The project may involve presentation of work in progress or
peer feedback via some other public forum.

Proposals must demonstrate significant cash or in-kind support for the
ArtLab to occur.

Examples of previous successful ArtLab applications can be found on
our website

Assignment 2 – Grouping list

Posted by on September 8th, 2010 · assignments

The grouping has been done for Assignment 2 and you can check it at

http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1400/10s2/groups.html

Please make sure your grouping is exactly as you had asked.

Report any possible mistake to your tutor before Tuesday 14 September 2010.