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This paper describes the Metaplastic Cyber Cosmos evolution through its own memetic approach for the realization of new cyber media and interdisciplinary methodologies of Cyber Arts between reality and virtual realities. It introduces the open and conceptual platform of met plastic discipline. The following paragraphs use the metaplastic definitions within art and sciences application fields. In the conclusion of this paper a practical example is introduced.

This paper proposes seamless display connection between two display styles, AR display and table-top display. The former is used in most augmented reality applications, and the latter is used in table-top display. Our framework supports three types of annotations, inner annotation, outer annotation and adaptive annotation. We developed the prototype system that can seamlessly switch the two display styles.

Summary form only given. This paper presents the MetaPlastic Art&Design Manifesto and its own Open MetaPlastic Virtual Platform.

Artists, designers and craft makers are currently exploring new materials and processes such as 'Accumulated Printing' within their practice to bring forth new forms and extend ideas. Often this is through a hybrid dialogic process of a maker's thoughts translated into code in the virtual world for production in the real world. Resulting in unique crafted objects created without the 'touch' of the hand-made, while encapsulating craft-thinking in the machine-made. This real-virtual-real approach is further streamlined, and without the craft signature, when working in shared virtual space. As artists are moving objects across the virtual from the real and back into solid form, so cyberspace gains a foothold in the real through materialisation and a return to the virtual. The second life platform is relatively new and still under development, but there are a number of artists beginning to explore the possibilities of this virtual world outside its commercial premise. The phenomena of the re-materialisation of the art object will be presented through the shift in art-thinking since mid-last century, as evidenced by Lucy Lippard and derived from the impact of earlier art. The paper will review the current situation via contemporary understandings, and where new technologies have allowed for a re-materialisation of the art object, exampling the work of artists such as Intersculpt, Michael Eden and those in the Kritical Works in SL II exhibition. This re-positioning of the art object allows a return to the initial formative conceptual framework, and offers a way through to a cutting-edge form of post conceptual art practice.

This paper proposes a method for controlling video images in performance using video signals in the audio domain. It also describes a demonstration performance system using this representation method. This system consists of hardware for converting the component video signal to audio and software for easy control of image to produce the pitch(frequency), intensity(amplitude), rhythm and timbre(wave shape). Also included is data for verification of effectiveness of the proposed system and method of performance operation using a questionnaire survey of subject experiment, and demonstration of audio-visual performance in a public hall. This proposed representation method was created as a new unique relationship between video and audio signals, and also shows a new aspect of computer as a musical instrument.

We have been developing T2V (Text-To-Vision) technology which enables to produce CG animation from text. This technology is built on a TVML (TV program Making Language) core engine which produces TV-program-like animation from text input using real-time CG, voice synthesizing technique and so on. Recently, we have ported the TVML engine on a game engine UNITY. The TVML SDK on UNITY is provided to game developers enabling to make various interactive applications using T2V technology. Our aim is to integrate two different media: TV and Game to make new type of media named 'gaming TV' owing to the T2V technology. In this paper, as one of the functioning developments of gaming TV, we will introduce 'Interactive TV' application using the SDK. In this application, a user can interrupt the on-going show at any time to have a dialogue with the actors in the show, then return to the point that had been interrupted and resume the show. We have confirmed the potential of gaming TV through the user experience of our functioning development.

Emotion recognition from Electroencephalogram (EEG) rapidly gains interest from research community. Two affective EEG databases are presented in this paper. Two experiments are conducted to set up the databases. Audio and visual stimuli are used to evoke emotions during the experiments. The stimuli are selected from IADS and IAPS databases.14 subjects participated in each experiment. Emotiv EEG device is used for the data recording. The EEG data are rated by the participants with arousal, valence, and dominance levels. The correlation between powers of different EEG bands and the affective ratings is studied. The results agree with the literature findings and analyses of benchmark DEAP database that proves the reliability of the two databases. Similar brain patterns of emotions are obtained between the established databases and the benchmark database. A SVM-based emotion recognition algorithm is proposed and applied to both databases and the benchmark database. Use of a Fractal Dimension feature in combination with statistical and Higher Order Crossings (HOC) features gives us results with the best accuracy. Up to 8 emotions can be recognized. The accuracy is consistent between the established databases and the benchmark database.

Minimally invasive arthroscopic surgery has become the gold standard for orthopedic surgery procedures on joints done by making small incisions on the skin through which special miniature pencil-like cameras and tools are inserted. Simulation of the arthroscopic procedures in virtual environments is based on the specifics of the arthroscopic camera which is normally not a common forward-looking but a short-focus side-looking camera. In this paper we write about two problems which arise when modeling views seen through the virtual arthroscopic camera controlled by a desktop hap tic device in a hybrid image-based virtual environment. These are automatic creation of panoramic images of the surgical field from the actual arthroscopic videos and removing fish-eye distortions from the individual video frames.

The development of digital software has enabled increasingly sophisticated visualization strategies in the development of concepts across a wide range of creative disciplines. Three dimensional CAD software is increasingly becoming a viable tool for some sculptural work (both solid and involving Additive Layer Manufacture). In respect to sculptural form, digital software permits thorough, detailed and associative analysis of form. More recently, animation plug-ins have widened the interogability of form by virtue of animation and simulation capabilities along with moving camera path features. As a result, both development of three dimensional form and increasingly display can be achieved in the virtual environment. Traditional gallery and museum exhibitions are being augmented by virtual exhibitions, variously, non-interactive or partially interactive. Websites such as CanDo Interactive and Virtual Armada sell 'off the peg' virtual exhibition galleries or environments ranging from the modern minimalist through neo-classical and villagy to the gothic. Future developments will no doubt increase the interactivity of exhibits and probably involve hap tic sensory devices enabling the gallery goer to virtually feel of the shape and weight of an object from a remote location via the internet. While a virtual gallery will never be a substitute for the real thing, they may increasingly act as artist's CV's and/or advertising portals to encourage viewers to attend a particular exhibition as a professional practice vehicle for artists. They will also widen the reception mechanisms and enable remote critical analysis of the work of individual artists and group exhibitions. This paper presents a novel virtual gallery configuration that is held to be more consistent with the social and outdoor virtual life environment and as such would encourage a more relaxed viewing context.

Digital signage has been getting more popularity due to the recent development of underlying hardware technology and improvement in installing environments. Any signage is required to make its content more attractive to viewers by evaluating the current attractiveness on the fly, in order to deliver the message from the sender more effectively. However, most previous methods for signage require time to reflect the viewers' evaluations. In this paper, we present a novel, viewer-adaptive digital signage displaying academic conference posters, which automatically learns what structure and content are being attractive through the viewers' involuntary behaviors, and makes them more adapted to the viewers. This system takes away the current gap between viewers' evaluations and the content actually displayed on digital signage, and makes efficient mutual transmission of information between the cyber world and the reality.

This paper presents our project of designing Edge Write text entry methods for Japanese language. We are developing two versions of Edge Write text entry method for Japanese language: Roman-Kana Edge Write and Katakana Edge Write. Roman-Kana Edge Write is a straightforward application of the original Edge Write to Japanese phonograms. In Roman-Kana Edge Write, each Japanese phonogram is represented as a combination of a consonant and vowel, each of which is specified by an English character in the original Edge Write. Katakana Edge Write specifies the line stroke directions and writing order of the Japanese Katakana character. The ideal corner sequence pattern of Edge Write for each Katakana character is designed based on its line stroke directions and writing order.

The area of virtual environments has received an increasingly growing attention from the research community, leading to the design of various innovative albeit incompatible protocols. In this paper, we present an open modular middleware that allows the clients and servers of multiple virtual worlds to be dynamically interfaced via a granular design. Our technology significantly alleviates the workload traditionally imposed to developers, and we see it as an important step forward towards the design of universal interfaces for interoperable virtual environments.

Web applications are abundant and used daily by a variety of people. Planning a trip, for example, has become much easier with Web applications such as Google Maps. Nevertheless, to thoroughly design a personalized trip, the user often needs to manually search for additional information and mentally combine all the information to make many key decisions. To address the need for a comprehensive system, we have designed OnMyWay, a mash up system which effectively incorporates the ability to search points of interest and to assess essential information for designing personalized road trips. This paper presents our task-oriented design for presenting information and supporting user interactions applied to OnMyWay, and provides evaluations of the system's design and usability based on two informal user studies.

There has been a long-standing question of whether sound or audio annotations may assist in data visualization tasks. This paper presents our study focusing on enhancing timeline/storyline like visualizations with audio annotations. Timeline visualizations are widely used to illustrate interactions among different entities over time. This type of visualizations facilitate reviewing important activities and their associations. For a long timeline, however, it is difficult for the viewer to remember all the essential information found in the visualization process. Since hearing is another primary human sense for perceiving information, we conjecture that adding audio annotations to selected sections of a timeline visualization can help improve the viewer's recall of important events. We have designed a user study based on augmenting storyline visualizations with verbal text, and tested subjects with three different settings: visual cues only, verbal text only, and both. While our test results do not give a strong indication of the clear advantage of adding verbal text, the lessons learned in our study suggest directions for further study and will help us and others design audio-augmented visualization systems.

Our study in this paper aims to visualize railway stations' usability for expectant and nursing mothers from the point of users' experiences. We created the web content which shows the users' views about station's usability on the map.