EXHIBITIONS:

THE CONSTRUCTOR
This project describes a virtual space model like a conceptual metalanguage engine for abstract art interaction experience.

CYBERWORLDS 2006, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne(EPFL), Switzerland, 2006

Museum of Modern Art of Toluca, Mexico, 2008


THE VIRTUAL MUSEUM PROJECT
Virtual performance as museum visit.

CYBERWORLDS 2006, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne(EPFL), Switzerland, 2006



VR WORKSHOP ART&DESIGN
Workshop projects exhibition

Ecole du Louvre, Paris
ICHIM05, Biblioteque Nationale du France, Paris, 2005


XENSE project
Virtual free synesthetic performance in a imaginary space.

ICHIM04, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2004
Diesel-new art contest (online exhibition)

Designing imaginary Space
This study propose an interactive open-ended virtual environment which implies space to experiment and build its learning construct.

Nicephore Days Colloque Scientifique International
Chalon Sur Saone, France, 2004

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Visual metalanguage model

Metaplastic virtual space

METAPLASTICITY: METAPLASTIC ARTS & DESIGN

The complexity of abstract art languages create new semantics in Art. The gap between Art and Technology has been approached with fuzzy logic engine which uses a Red and Black semantic codification. The art project is related to abstract art languages applied to the virtual world concept. The media arts fields review many works representing software concepts and modeling systems which creates art. The applied formal methodologies are generally implemented with storyboard, sketching or textual scripting languages method that often requires user specific technical background. I propose a meta-language for the digital environments description through visual codification that leads to the definition of abstract art world modelling. The following indications introduce five theoretical and necessary specifications:

-The Metaplastic transdisciplinary research field is composed by Humanities,Science and Technology that defines studies through the definition of metaplastic symbolic system [1].

- The Metaplastic Arts&Design is the specific field that defines models and methodologies based on metaplastic languages [2][3].

- The Metaplastic languages are the conceptual models based on abstract art languages rules applied to digital symbolic systems [3].

- The Digital-Virtual Metaplasticity is the specific quality which defines methodologies that apply metaplastic art languages to digital symbolic systems[1].

- The Metaplastic Virtual Worlds are complex digital spaces which directly interact and act behaviors within the applied metaplastic metalanguage rule configurations [3][4][5][6]. The conceptualization of the metaplastic theoretical model of virtual space leads to the definition of a dynamic system, constituted through a visual formal language and puts into effect the composition rules of abstract languages.The poetic model of the abstract language is,in fact,a cyber world engine and “bearer of a signifying that is put into effect to a deeper level” explained by Greimas(1984) for Fine Art and Design.


REFERENCES

AA.VV.,"Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds:Aesthetics ans Semantics concepts",IGI-global,USA,2010

Metaplastic Arts&Design Research Group,http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?gid=132266830447&ref=ts
and http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=100000671460515

Mura,G.,"The Metaplastic Virtual Worlds",IEEE Computer Society,CYBERWORLDS 07,Leibniz,Universitat Hannover,Germany,2007

in  in  "The Visual Computer"
International journal of Computer Graphics, Volume 23, Number 5, Pag. 359-368, ISSN 0178-2789(Print), 1432-2315(Online), May 2007
Springer Berlin Heidelberg Online journal article

"The Red and Black semantics: a fuzzy language"
IEEE Computer Society, CYBERWORLDS 2006 International Conference
Ecole Polytechnique Federale du Lausanne (EPFL)
Switzerland, 2006 http://vrlab.epfl.ch/cw2006/cw2006.htm

"Conceptual artwork model for virtual environments"
in "Journal of Computing Information Systems", JICS, Vol.3, Number 1

Metaplastic Arts & Design, from Wikipedia online enciclopedia

[click to view the models]

STUDENT'S WORKS SELECTION

MEMORY FORMS
student: Elena Castells Poch
VR Workshop project
This project proposes a virtual environment which is characterized with its plastic "mnemonic" surface that moulds and maintain it shapes as a memory of the accomplished visit.


IMAGE ECHOES
student: Giulia Ghidoni
Supervised Thesis exhibition
The three rooms of this installation evoke different memories of ancient places which recall us of ours traditional roots in a walk-through virtual environment.


ART AND CRAFT WEB "PUZZLE"
students: Daniela Marizzoni, Vera Lodda
VR Workshop Project
The project describes a multimedia system that guides the user within the cultural informations discoveries, composing its own knowledge "puzzle".


DIGITAL INTERSECTIONS
student: Giannantonio Bongiorno
VR Workshop Project
The aims of this project is to create a layer of social and cultural information network, that would connect and share selected knowledge "pieces" to its users.


UNIVERSITY COURSES PROJECTS
n.36 student's projects about visual design,interaction,exhibition and media arts.

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Light Rainbow


Unknown Gate
[Click to view the movie]

Project Exhibit:   Nicephore Days, Chalon sur Saone, France, 2004

DESIGNING IMAGINARY SPACE
The design’s process complexity involves several fields of knowledge like technical and scientific information, social, cultural and psychological factors. The abstraction levels and the construction of meaning for multidisciplinary analysis requires the development of a multidimensional knowledge system. This project will contribute to the evolution of the “knowledge-based position” in virtual reality design studies with the focus on the planning imaginary places through relationships of virtual art languages. The mediation between different realities could be made through new complex hypothesis to produce a meaningful integration of the design principles and knowledge bases with extended experience. The best result within the act of showing, brings an optimisation and its dialectics between the intentions   of the presenter and the best expectances of the spectator. The planning of the dynamic process in the virtual environment requires, in fact, a particular sensibility about the dialog construction between the visitor’s extended senses and the surrounding immaterial space. This study proposes an interactive open-ended planning for virtual environment which implies space to experiment and build its learning constructs with cultural contents.The fluid immersive multidimensional space is, in fact, the landscape of knowledge where the user could made his abstract sourrounding experience. The remote presence of the user’s body and his extended multisensoriality like analogue/opposite field polarity of the immaterial-materiality of sound,light,form and colour to produce various space aesthetic effects. The user in these new plastic spaces could explore and interact with the information and contribute to change it,delete or recreate different concept landscapes. The user’s results give important information about concept’s expression of his artwork and outcomes landscape maps, and its dynamics within the virtual environments.

PUBLICATION
"Designing imaginary spaces"
Nicephore Days, Colloque Scientifique International
Chalon sur Saone, France, 2004

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Workshop meeting: Ecole du Louvre, Paris
Projects Exhibition: ICHIM, Biblioteque Nationale du France, Paris

The workshop has obtained a High Patronage of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It discusses themes linked with creation and application of the virtual reality in the Arts and Craft, to produce and communicate cultural content. The event gives an occasion to express and discuss different combinations of art languages and industrial design planning. The activity develops in two different but interactive levels: the student laboratory and the discussion forum about inherent themes. The meetings will be held at the Ecole du Louvre and Politecnico di Milano, Industrial Design Faculty between professors and students. Simultaneously through a web blog there will be a continuous debate and elaboration on the proposed projects. As results, the workshop offers different exposition models with significant examples developed within the student laboratory.
The complexity of digital media for expositions, request a particular attention to describe the relations between visitor and interactive devices. The analysis of those relations solves conceptual problems about the communication of cultural content. For that purpose, the designer-planner should have suitable competences and high sensibility, regarding elements for discussing cultural complexity. The international workshop offers an important occasion for interdisciplinary collaboration and analysis of the phenomena at various levels with consequential elaborations of methods and tools on related themes.

The "Virtuality in Arts and Design Workshop", during its sessions has taken into consideration different media tipologies and its inherent problems. Those thoughts has permitted a development of a theoretical meta-model for the expositions planning for cultural content. The developed model is a "Conceptual Map" defined within three fundamental study fields: the information field for the "Construction of knowledge"; the sensorial field for "Emotional involvement" and the area of "Social Partecipation". Every field mentioned before, has been defined with more subfields. The parameters has been placed on the conceptual map axis, each for every field through a qualitative evaluation to define a digital communication media. The two external zones are defined, respectively, as the "Private space" and the "Social space", within the use of media and its cultural content. The internal circle width, visually indicates the conditions of being part of the media within or not within the social spaces. Defining that media property, we define different reality conditions: virtual reality, extended reality or mixed reality. The level that describes the "emotional involvement" area, indicates which conditions has been improved to create an immersive reality.

The application of the methodology to the laboratory projects, define their quality and makes it visible for the different categories and various relations levels. The resultant models of the virtual media, offers useful indications about the shared informations; the definition of the user's activity; the interaction modalities with the information and with other connected users. The visual language model has confirmed the importance of the aesthetic value as a meaning element and to emphasize the emotional intensity of the medium. The workshop has experienced the encounter of museology and museography disciplines with industrial design, using theoretical instruments to develop unifying project practice. The final results could be considered helpful as a comparison base for successive didactic improvement.




This project proposes an immersive virtual environment which offers the visitor a sensorial exploration and interaction with the staged artefact. The environment is characterized with its plastic "mnemonic" surfaces that moulds and maintain it shapes as a memory of the accomplished visit. The visitor becomes an active and integrated part of the exhibition dynamics, with transforming and updating continously the informations, making it available for the following visit. The exposed artefacts becomes useful elements of the acquiring knowledge. The direct interaction process with the informations, allows the visitor to create its personal visit described with the wide sensorial involvement. The particularity is to make new memorable experiences filled with intense emotions. The exposition is suitable for different use : installations within different equipped environments or on wide interactive screens, connected to the web.

PROJECT CONCEPTS

MEMORY FORMS




The aim of this project is to obtain a virtual museum model that would broaden the possibility of knowledge acquisition through expositions. It describes a multimedia system that guides the visitor within the cultural informations discoveries, composing a knowledge "puzzle". The system provides the user with the possibility to accomplish cultural experience through different personal exhibition theme combinations. The visitor's interaction composes a theme map of the information route, carried out with indications about the obtained results. The virtual museum could be used to support the real museum visit or the new opportunity to create original theme exhibition Interpretation on the global network. The final representation acquires its aesthetic value through the use of the modern artistic languages.

WEB/WAP VIRTUAL MUSEUM



Each day of our life, we need elements that makes it easier: elements that could guide you on your's daily path. Most of those are cultural informations. The aim of this project is to create a layer of social and cultural information network, that would connect and share selected knowledge "pieces" to its users. The information structure becomes, in this way, new social tissue expanding the museum boundaries toward other connected places which belong to the same space-time dimension. I imagine architecture that speaks directly to you, buildings that suggest you the right path, calling you with your own name. The virtual fluid architecture found its "dimensional interzone" of knowledge diffusion that is available by passing the gates with your own personal device as: PDA, mobile phones and satellite navigators. This project as been inspired by the "Situationist" projects of the '60 and especially by the Constant's project.

INTERSECTIONS



The museum becomes an "incubator" of personal and global culture informations. The project proposes interfaces, elements that characterize the internal and external space, which allow the visitor to approach the museum's virtual reality. The information units "info-cocoon" are made of octagonal transparent surfaces. They lead again to the baptistery form which symbolically though its architecture should have led the Man to the celestial spirituality. That should conduct to leave the cultural experience as a regeneration and constructive form. The same way, the cultural information emitted by the technological architecture becomes itself a "new skin" of the visitor. The inside of the device allows the access to the informations through polarized surfaces named "Pilkington". The connections from the outside to these spaces "info-cocoon" of the museum are made with wireless systems like blue tooth or wi-fi system that enables the download of the required informations.

PUBLICATIONS
"VR WORKSHOP: Virtuality in Arts and Design"
ICHIM05, International Conference "Digital Culture and Heritage"
Biblioteque Nationale du France, Paris, 2005

http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/ichim_05.html
Xavier Perrot, Gianluca Mura,"Virtuality in arts and Design:virtual exhibition projects"

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Project Exhibitions:
XENSE AT ICHIM BERLIN04
XENSE AT DIESEL-ART CONTEST

XENSE
Virtual Reality is currently the subject of academic research and artistic works of new media to enhance experiences for cultural information. The conceptual activity of designing Virtual Environments (VE) poses a number of problems to solve in different ways, through a direct relationship between the visitors' psycological being and both the emboding interface and the mediated content. This means that the user in these virtual places, emerges as a Virtual Performer with its own complexity as a corporal,emotional and social entity. This enables him to interact with the environment and make new forms of data creations, also with other connected users.

1.INTRODUCTION
This project XENSE developes from wholes of the actual multimedia systems and justifies the virtual environment suitable for artistic and cultural expression, to achieve the maximum in the emotional and intellectual impact for the user,
I decided to adopt the new paradigm for the virtual and immersive environment carefully designed to obtain its best efficency.

2.VIRTUAL ARTWORK CONCEPTS
The desire for "mental and sensorial dimension" in the artistic space has always been "the goal" for Art of All Times. This has been the basic statement which conducted to the central relation between the user and the synthetic environment. The user has achieved different definitions during times, based on his role and level of participation/inclusion inside the virtual environment. The research about the human hybridization with the virtual space has been conducted in various artistic currents like the Body Art, Fluxus and the most recentely NetArt. From these analyses emerges the need for suitable communication space.

3.SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
This approach proposes a space for realizing virtual environments (VE) that can be experienced by the users for interactions with cultural contents. The Performers have the ability to select,modify or create every elements of the entire VE and make their own personal artwork experience through writing,painting,sketching and dancing. So, all the aspects of the high intense emotions were organized to add the partecipants' knowledge acquisition and entertainment, mainly focusing on the educational aspect. The volume forms developes into a system maps and has a route orientation function. The orientation in the system is possible through signs which indicates to the user the possible options. The dialog's function with the environment are divided into four steps:
- Sensing: Observing, Orientation
- Feeling:Exploration, Wayfinding
- Thinking: Elaborate, Decision making
- Acting: Touching, Modifing,Manipulation,Active/deactive
The process of the dialog starts with touching and proximity with the object or the environment, and continues through an action making process loop. This is a multisensorial interaction that as a result create the artwork or new space rhythm forms.

4.CONCLUSIONS
The interactions in the performance produce aesthetic effects of the virtual environment transforming the entire system into a new artwork. These new configurations could be saved or left on disposal for further elaborations. Every performer could develop or collect their own results and produce a virtual collage of all its artwork. The VE provides functions in single mode or in collaboration mode,on the network or local mode for the desktop,VideoWall or CAVE systems.

PUBLICATION
"XENSE: art space for virtual performance"
ICHIM04 International Conference "Digital Culture and Heritage"
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2004
http://www.ichim.org/jahia/Jahia/pid/356