Category Archives: Research

Esri CityEngine – 3D City Modeling for Architecture, Film, and Games

Esri CityEngine, is a 3D modeling software application developed by Esri R&D Center Zurich (formerly Procedural Inc.) and is specialized in the generation of three dimensional urban environments. With the procedural modeling approach, CityEngine enables the efficient creation of detailed large-scale 3D city models with merely a few clicks of the mouse instead of the time exhaustive & work intensive method of object creation & manual placement. CityEngine works with architectural object placement & arrangement in the same manner that VUE manages terrain, ecosystems & atmosphere mapping & is equally as diverse in its ability of object manipulation & environmantal conformity/harmony as its VUE counterpart. The recent acquisition of CityEngine by Esri is aiming to push the innovations in 3D GIS and Geodesign technology (from Wikipedia). Continue reading →

Procedural City – Biometric Cities at Your Fingerprints

Permanent Exhibition Ars Electronica Center, 2009 – 2012

Procedural City is an interactive media installation which has incorporated the generative modeling features of CityEngine along with a biometric fingerprint scanner. It enables the user to create his/her own personal city according to their fingerprint. Continue reading →

ETH Zurich’s Digital Art Weeks

I am co-founder and scientific director of ETH Zurich’s Digital Art Weeks. The Digital Art Weeks, an annually recurring festival, are concerned with the application of digital technology in the arts. Consisting of a symposium, workshops and performances, the program offers insight into current research and innovations in art and technology as well as illustrating resulting synergies in a series of performances, making artists aware of impulses in technology and scientists aware of the possibilities of the application of technology in the arts. In 2008 and 2010, a very successful version of Digital Art Weeks took place in Shanghai and Xi’an, China, and currently DAW’13 (early 2013) in Singapore is preparation… Continue reading →

Book: Transdisciplinary Digital Art

Edited by Randy Adams, Steve Gibson, Stefan Müller Arisona, 2008

This volume collects selected papers from the past two instances of Digital Art Weeks (Zurich, Switzerland) and Interactive Futures (Victoria, BC, Canada), two parallel festivals of digital media art. The work represented in Transdisciplinary Digital Art is a confirmation of the vitality and breadth of the digital arts. Collecting essays that broadly encompass the digital arts, Transdisciplinary Digital Art gives a clear overview of the on-going strength of scientific, philosophical, aesthetic and artistic research that makes digital art perhaps the defining medium of the 21st Century. Continue reading →

Computer-assisted Media Authoring Techniques

Stefan Müller Arisona, research fellowship at UCSB, 2007 – 2008

Project Summary

The volume of digital media content has enormously grown in the recent years: Emerging internet-based applications, such as YouTube or MySpace, are media-rich, emphasise on content sharing, and attract huge communities. As the volume of content further expands, we see an increasing need for not only being able to annotate and retrieve content, but also to produce and edit content in a computer-assisted manner and by employing (semi-) automated methods. However, existing work so far does not satisfy these needs — both in terms of usable software instruments as well the underlying theoretical frameworks. This viewpoint is also acknowledged by upcoming European Union IST projects: The Framework Programme 7 (FP7) calls for projects addressing Intelligent Content and Semantics and targets at advanced authoring environments for interactive and expressive content [ICT Programme Committee, 2007, Objective ICT-2007.4.2]. Continue reading →

SQEAK – Real-time Multiuser Interaction Using Cellphones

This research project explored one approach to providing mobile phone users with a simple low cost real-time user interface allowing them to control highly interactive public space applications involving a single user or a large number of simultaneous users. Continue reading →

The Digital Marionette

The interactive installation Digital Marionette impressively shows the audience the look and feel of a puppet in the multimedia era: The nicely dressed wooden marionette is replaced by a Lara Croft – like character; the traditional strings attached to puppet control handles emerge into a network of computer cables. The installation is currently exhibited at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz. Continue reading →

In 15 Minutes Everybody Will Be Famous

I recently (2012) stepped across this submission again, and was surprised and also feeling a bit depressed that we never fully realised this piece at that time – this was before facebook & co took off, see “the next hype” box in the picture below. Anyway, the concept is still here, and I believe the assertion is still valid. Continue reading →

Pianist’s Hands – Synthesis of Musical Gestures

PhD Thesis – Stefan Müller Arisona, 2004

The process of music performance has been the same for many centuries: a work was perceived by the listening audience at the same time it was performed by one or a group of performers. The performance was not only characterised by its audible result, but also by the environment and the physical presence of the performing artists and the audience. Further, a performance was always unique in the sense that it could not be repeated in exactly the same way. The evolution of music recording technology imposed a major change to this situation and to music listening practise in general: a recorded performance suddenly became available to a dramatically increased number of listeners, and one could listen to the same performance as many times as desired. However, in a recorded music performance, the environmental characteristics and the presence of the performing artists and the audience are lost. This particularly includes the loss of musical gestures, which are an integral part of a music performance. The availability of electronic music instruments even enforces this loss of musical gestures because the previously strict connection between performer, instrument, and listener is blurred. Continue reading →