Digital Da Vinci ― Computers in the Arts and Sciences

“Science is art,” said Regina Dugan, senior executive at Google and former director of DARPA. “It is the process of creating something that never exists before. ... It makes us ask new questions about ourselves, others; about ethics, the future.” This second volume of the Digital Da Vinci book series leads the discussions on the world’s first computer art in the 1950s and the actualization of Star Trek’s holodeck in the future with the help of artificial intelligence and cyborgs. In this book, Gavin Sade describes experimental creative practices that bring together arts, science and technology in imaginative ways; Mine Ozkar expounds visual computation for good designs based on repetition and variation; Raffaella Folgieri, Claudio Lucchiari, Marco Granato and Daniele Grechi introduce BrainArt, a brain-computer interface that allows users to create drawings using their own cerebral rhythms; Nathan Cohen explores artificially created spaces that enhance spatial awareness and challenge our perception of what we encounter; Keith Armstrong discusses embodied experiences that affect the mind and body of participating audiences; Diomidis Spinellis uses Etoys and Squeak in a scientific experiment to teach the concept of physical computing; Benjamin Cowley explains the massively multiplayer online game “Green My Place” aimed at achieving behavior transformation in energy awareness; Robert Niewiadomski and Dennis Anderson portray 3-D manufacturing as the beginning of common creativity revolution; Stephen Barrass takes 3-D printing to another dimension by fabricating an object from a sound recording; Mari Velonaki examines the element of surprise and touch sensing in human-robot interaction; and Roman Danylak surveys the media machines in light of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum “the medium is the message.” Digital Da Vinci: Computers in the Arts and Sciences is dedicated to polymathic education and interdisciplinary studies in the digital age empowered by computer science. Educators and researchers ought to encourage the new generation of scholars to become as well rounded as a Renaissance man or woman.

Dennis Anderson is Chair and Professor of Management and Information Technology at St. Francis College. Prior to this appointment he was a Professor of Information Systems & Computer Science and served as Associate Dean at Pace University. He is a strong advocate of technology-enhanced learning, emerging technologies, sustainable technologies, and knowledge entrepreneurship. He also has taught at NYU, City University of New York, and Pace University. Dennis received his Ph.D., M.Phil. and Ed.M. from Columbia University. In addition, he holds an M.S. in Computer Science from NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Keith Armstrong has specialized for 18 years in collaborative, hybrid, new media works with an emphasis on innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, public arts practices and art-science collaborations. His ongoing research focuses on how scientific and philosophical ecologies can both influence and direct the design and conception of networked, interactive media artworks. Keith's artworks have been shown and profiled extensively both in Australia and overseas and he has been the recipient of numerous grants from the public and private sectors. He was formerly an Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, a doctoral and Postdoctoral New Media Fellow at QUT's Creative Industries Faculty and a lead researcher at the ACID Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design. He is currently a part-time Senior Research Fellow (2 days pw.) at QUT and an actively practicing freelance new media artist.

Stephen Barrass is a researcher and academic at the University of Canberra where he lectures in Digital Design and Media Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Design. He holds a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (1986) and a Ph.D. titled Auditory Information Design from the Australian National University (1997). He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Kommunication in Bonn (1998) and Guest Researcher in Sound Design and Perception at IRCAM in Paris (2009).

Nathan Cohen is a professional artist exhibiting internationally for over 25 years, including solo shows at Annely Juda Fine Art, London; Museum Mondriaanhuis, Holland; Tokyo Gallery, Japan and many other venues worldwide. His interdisciplinary research in art and science embraces neuroscience, optics and augmented reality technologies resulting in recent interactive art installations exhibited at Ars Electronica, Austria (Hybrid Ego 2008), the Aisho Miura gallery (Intangible Spaces 2010), Japan and University College London (Another Way of Seeing 2013). In collaboration with Tachi Lab (Tokyo) and researchers in Japan and the UK he creates artworks that challenge spatial perception, incorporating motion sensing and real-time projection into 2 and 3-dimensional constructions created to give the impression of multi-layered spaces. In 2011 Nathan Cohen established the first Masters program in Art and Science (Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London) and is currently Director. His professional activities also embrace publishing, directing an archive, curating exhibitions internationally and writing. He was a recipient of the Vordemberge-Gildewart Award in 1994 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (BA Hons.) and Chelsea School of Art (MA), London.

Benjamin Cowley received his Bachelors degree on Information and Communications Technology from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, in 2003, and subsequently defended his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, in 2009. Initial post-doctoral projects focused on investigating the psycho-physiological correlates of learning in the domain of serious games, in the Centre for Knowledge Innovation and Resear