Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2011

In this paper, we propose visualization for mass information in the social network with a holistic view, which focused on representing the effect of user communication. With the Rapid Expansion of social network, it is necessary to provide a holistic view to the users and researchers to understand the effect of information communicated in the network. The social network users will be visualized in 3-dimension space, with 2-dimension graph layouts delivering various characteristic of the network. The layout is mainly based on user's role in the network, but not the relationship of users in the traditional way. By visualizing the disseminating and stop of information flow among users, we can distinguish users by their effect and contribution in communication among the network. The visualization combines technology, content and expression. We can then study the social network by the performance of the network structure situation and information flow.

Re-thinking methods for Museums, Galleries and Institutions to Archive their most vital images and documents as resized hard copy ink jet artefacts to increase likelihood of their survival into the 23rd Century in a format that is easy and inexpensive to achieve.

Museums and galleries have in recent years spent considerable time and effort in digitisation projects, yet the software resources available to fully explore their collections are still largely unsatisfactory. In a joint project between the new media company Deep Visuals, the Scott Polar Research Institute, and Anglia Ruskin University we are developing a new browsing system aimed at enabling museum visitors to experience more fully the museum's digital assets beyond the exhibited artefacts.

Extensive research in colour naming has been more focused on a small number of consensual colour categories than towards the development of more subtle colour identifications (Gage 1993, Berlin & Kay 1969) but how can we communicate "basic" and more "delicate" colour names within and between different cultures in an agreeable way?

In their pioneering paper "The Creative Process Where the Artist is Amplified or Superseded by the Computer" (1973) Cornock and Edmonds describe a model for the classification of artworks according to their systemic behaviour. In this presentation I revisit this model, discuss its subsequent development (Edmonds, Turner & Candy, 2004) and present an extension to it that incorporates my own research into the use of the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1987) as basis for an expanded description of the 'interactive art system'.

Having been granted access to the archive and to objects that are seldom seen outside their acid free boxes, this presentation explores ways in which phenomenological approaches to the process of filming and editing can capture the experience of perception as a springboard for the creative impetus.

Given the state of modern technical applications and the advance of the game industry, it is only a matter of time until interactive application will completely control all levels of entertainment and mass media. Also social interactions in general are subject to change. Usually these changes are only considered within in the digital context of the internet. Nevertheless the basic human need for direct communication and interaction remain.

With the help of an experimental artistic approach and in reference to positions from semiotics and linguistics, I investigate under which conditions visualisations are experienced as interesting and charming. After extensive research in the semiotic fundamentals of the visualisation of theoretical texts (Reichl, 2008; Reichl, 2009), this research project is concerned with what makes visualisations of theoretical concepts interesting and enjoyable. A special focus lies in this context on the designs of visual metaphors.

The objective of this text is to analyze the awarded artwork Sensitive Rose as a model to discuss and reflect about the potentialities of using mobile tags as tools for augmented reality and cross-media.

Dance is increasingly a site of research for experts within the discipline and beyond. With the development of digital technologies, artists and researchers are exploring ways to develop new dance events, to engage with audiences and in doing so, to shed more light on the art form itself whilst expanding its boundaries and limitations. Building on these developments the presentation will share problems and challenges faced when motion capture technology tries to capture dance movement which emerges through somatic movement practices, in particular, an established practice, Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT).

Visual communicators, authors, publishers and their audiences are now feeling the cultural and economic effects of technological convergence on the transmission and reception of ideas. In January 2011 Amazon.com claimed to be selling more Kindle ebooks than traditional paperbacks in the USA. This suggests a shift in reading habits towards a more blended transmedia experience and a shift in buying habits away from printed publications.

Emmanouil Kanellos and Anastasios Maragiannis, PhD researchers, are co-founders of TERASlab; an online virtual project that demonstrates how the amalgamation of virtual typography and visual sound, influences the process of design communication, within creative media practices. One of the key roles of typography is to visually communicate spoken language. In this project letterforms are employed as visual elements to represent the sounds. The sounds that are utilized for the experimental projects are mainly real world recordings, electro-acoustic or vocal.

This paper looks at the possibilities of re-engaging with imagery and symbolism from earlier cultures through the medium of 3D digital environments. It examines three of the author's digital artworks - Oculus, Lux Nova and Music of the Spheres - as vehicles for this process, and the means by which this engagement with the past can also generate new ideas within the area of art and technology. The recreation of an architectural sense of space and position is of particular importance, as is the development of particular approach to 3D software.

Birdsong for Prisoners explores the ways in which we interpret sound, recalling memories of chords and phrases that trigger new stories and challenge our perception of a world where sound is only available with accompanying still and moving images. Created from a variety of sources including birdsong, improvised jazz and the creative use of piezo mics to record the rarely heard sounds of the human smile, Birdsong for Prisoners presents an opportunity to explore how listeners react to, and interpret, an original composition that places sound at the centre of an audience response.

In recent years, the number of data collections that are publicly available via the Internet has dramatically increased. Web based semantic databases like Wikipedia derivate DbPedia extend the functionality of Wikipedia by allowing semantic annotations to the information that is usually in form of free text. Since these data collections also cover broad topics related to the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain, they might be well suited to serve as data sources for Cultural Information Systems. Besides the mentioned community based knowledge bases, a number of dedicated Web galleries, for example the Web Gallery of Art (WGA), offer huge digital collections of artworks and relevant metadata. Moreover, renowned institutions like the Getty Foundation provide rich vocabularies of CH related terms that are rather aimed at professional users. We believe that a combination of such different sources might provide interesting insights that would not be available when using each source alone. We therefore propose a system that combines these sources and displays them by using methods from Information Visualisation. We apply the metaphor of 3D Information Landscapes, based on a graph visualisation showing artists and their artworks as nodes and their mutual relationships such as teacher/student, parent/child etc. as edges. The resulting network is drawn in chronological order, thus allowing users to explore art history in a new way.

This paper looks at the online presence of the exhibition 'Things' by artist Keith Wilson that took place at Wellcome Collection in October 2010. It examines the process by which objects were temporarily acquired from members of the public for an exhibition, and the way in which those images were digitised and managed to form the online element of the exhibition, using the photo sharing website Flickr. It looks at the role of student volunteers and their reaction to the use of technology, as well as the reactions of the public to the use of images online to represent their donated objects, and some alternatives to the conventional 'object' photography that museums employ. It draws the conclusion that images, and digital images in particular, form an increasingly important part of the museum paradigm at all levels.

When the eccentric and reclusive connoisseur William Beckford (1760-1844), having exhausted the largest inherited fortune in England, finally abandoned his doomed architectural extravaganza at Fonthill Abbey, he retired to Bath. His enthusiasm for tower-building soon revived, and with the help of his trusted gardener Vincent and an able young architect Henry Goodrich he set about making a linear landscape garden stretching from his home in Lansdown Crescent to the hilltop 100m above. Though the Crescent house he lived in, and the tower he built on the hill, survive with little change, everything in between is now lost beneath more recent development.

This practice-led research project seeks to address the use of New Media in contemporary artistic productions in the field of Performance Art in relation to the current "consumption" of Media in everyday life contexts. The research will be carried out through the analysis of works and the practical exercise of performances that include pre-recorded image and / or live image, as well as video performances, covering theoretical aspects of Media and Visual Culture, in a critical study supported by ideas from existing discourses on the common "language" and "gestures" that are being produced by the current consumption and contact with the Media. The project will allow establishing points of contact between contemporary social and cultural perspectives on image and sound, and performative notions of space and time, considering the latter as two formally interrelated poles where issues of visuality, aurality, spectatorship, site-specificity and kinaesthetic qualities lay upon.

Mobile devices have become an integral part of 21st century lifestyle. From social networking and business to day-to-day scheduling and multimedia applications, smartphones and other portable handsets are now the go-to devices for interaction in the digital world. Currently, mobile devices typically utilise direct user interfaces such as touch screens, where interactions are performed directly by controlling graphical elements or controls on the interface. This project looks to bring device interaction out of the virtual world and into the physical world. With a 'free-gesture' approach, portable applications can break away from the virtual world, enabling the mobile platform to be harnessed as a physical augmented interface for musical performance, education, medical research and beyond.

The paper presents an on-going process to digitally reconstruct the Imperial Gates of the old Romanian orthodox churches scattered on a large geographical area in Transylvania. Due to the locations of the churches and to the indestructible character of the iconostasis, the 3D scanning had to be contact-free. The actual chosen method is a low cost method, based upon free software that allows scanning of three-dimensional objects and does not rely on specific hardware. The intended final result is to provide a collection of 3D models of the Imperial Gates that could be further integrated in other projects of the Art and Design University and of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, "Babe? Bolyai" University, from Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Weather forecasts are nearly always portrayed from either a satellite view perspective, a numerical or symbol based representation. None of these methods actually portray weather visually from the point of view of the observer, that is, they do not represent our experience of weather. This problem presents a challenge to displaying weather using real-time 3D computer graphics. 3D Weather is a proposed method to solve this problem, to create more believable representations of the weather using real weather data. By employing computer graphic techniques and computer game concepts the project intends to create a localized display of weather using mapping and weather data. Started in 2010, the project has been exploring existing techniques, scoping out the needs of stakeholders (such as the Met Office), and creating a prototype to explore the issues. The paper concludes that the quest for realism with computer graphics can be a double-edged sword. It can lead to expectations of accuracy in the data its meant to represent, which can be desired, but in the case of the weather forecast the representation is not necessary what the weather will be, its what the weather might be. The continuing project will explore the balance of issues when representing the weather for past events as well as for forecasts.

Optical measurement systems were originally developed for industrial applications. Due to their versatility of use and "touchless" non-invasive method of working they have also been employed for many years in the field of restoration, conservation and preservation of cultural heritage. The capabilities of a variety of optical measuring methods e.g. photogrammetry, laser triangulation and interferometry have been theoretically described and their varying applications for restoration and conservation explored 10 years ago. This paper provides an overview of the utilization and implementation of Optical Measurement Systems in the field of restoration, conservation and preservation of cultural heritage that could be observed over the last ten years. Theory and function of the above mentioned systems for shape and deformation measurement of Cultural Heritage will be introduced shortly. The paper will then focus on the practical benefit of Optical Technology such as: 3D and digital archiving, monitoring of deterioration and deformation over time, precise copying and reconstruction, documentation and research, transportation packaging, etc.

Digital-altered photographs are now popular among artists due to advancements in digital technology. Manipulating or gathering pieces of images and combining them into one in computers, artists who produce digital-altered photographs not only deliver impressive technological effects for shock value, but also, and perhaps more importantly, capitalize on the style's ability to express their particular messages. To understand digital-altered photographs and the messages behind them, I propose that we start with investigating artists' worldviews, or what artists value as knowledge. This inquiry can be achieved by asking about artists' views of reality and by examining how their views of reality manifest in their digital-altered photographs. Contemporary photographer Matt Siber and his digital projects, Floating Logos and The Untitled Project, provide an example of how investigating digital photographers' views of reality and interpreting these views through theories can help us identify and clarify the valuable knowledge provided by their work.

Following the manufacture of the Virtual 3D Object Rig Model 1 (V3DORm1) in 2008 (http://www.versi.edu.au/3d) and subsequent testing in the Australian Institute of Archaeology (AIA) in Melbourne, an advanced Virtual 3D Object Rig Model 2 (V3DORm2) has been designed and manufactured in the La Trobe University Department of Physical Sciences Engineering Laboratory and is being currently tested.

This paper discusses the interim results of the AHRC RTISAD project. The project has developed and tested a range of techniques for gathering and processing reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) data. It has also assembled a detailed understanding of the breadth of RTI practice. Over the past decade the range of applications and algorithms in the broad domain of RTI has increased markedly, with current working addressing issues such as large resolution capture, 3D RTI, annotation, enhancement amongst others. Capture of RTI datasets has begun to occur in all aspects of cultural heritage and elsewhere. This has in turn prompted the development of policies and methods for managing and integrating the large quantities of data produced. The paper describes these techniques and issues in the context of a range of artefacts, including painted Roman and Neolithic surfaces, examples of ancient documents in a variety of forms, and archaeological datasets from Herculaneum, Catalhoyuk, Abydos and elsewhere. The paper also identifies on-going software development work of value to the broad EVA community and proposes further enhancements.

Digital simulation is a process of calculation technologies in the goal of modelling real phenomena and proposing some mimetic or theoretical formalizations of them. The computers interfaces make appear some calculated figures that have been automatically treated by the machine. In the art field, the modelling of the symbolic forms through the computer programming and the calculated simulation seems to be a revolution for the state and the status of the representation. How is it made and where is it situated? By effect how to situate and define it, from real to virtual, from mimetism to abstraction, etc? And what is the nature of this new kind of artifice, produced by the calculation technology?

In this paper we present the design and development of an interactive application which uses open source software (Processing, libfreenect, DarwiinRemote, OSC) and hacked games hardware (both the Microsoft Kinect sensor and Nintendo Wiimotes) to create a low-cost markerless motion tracking system that allows the recording, playback, visualisation and analysis of movement in 3D, using children's clapping games as an example. This fully-functional proof of concept provides researchers in the arts and humanities with a new and innovative way of visualising, analysing and archiving gesture and movement such as clapping games, and opens up possibilities for other applications in movement, music and the performing arts.

Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ubiquitous. The photograph with its long track record as a representational artefact now portrays individuals in ever broader contexts. The once distinctive practice of the snapshot aesthetic in capturing the banal and everyday has become culturally pervasive and children are key creators, producers and sharers of digital photographs. Designers of innovative digital media for children and young people face real problems in establishing requirements. Early experiments using children's photographs to inspire design and game evaluation methods led to tangible improvements in the user experience. To date however, the benefits of a robust discourse on the vernacular photograph in this context have come secondary to the pragmatics of design. This paper will explore the role of the photograph as a cultural arbitrator in the design of innovative software for personal and social education. It will examine the construct of the photographic index and its changing value in dialogue associated with digital images; will consider how this inherently ambiguous dimension of human experience can be investigated to better appreciate children's affective and cognitive responses to photographs in design contexts and will discuss the benefits and challenges of harnessing the photograph as a cultural arbitrator.

Educating and engaging museum audiences in contemporary times is becoming even more important, considering the persistent information society, which has created the need for museums to utilise new methods of communication. Digitisation has therefore become the new instrument for access and preservation in museums. However, the process of digitisation has brought about many challenges for museums, one of the most problematic is deciding what to digitise in the first instance from the wide range of collections. This paper presents a case study of the Hermitage museum and its process of digitising a small part of its large collection, as well as the procedures and strategies regarding the main selection criteria for the objects to be digitised. This study is based on qualitative research using a case study of the Hermitage museum utilizing interviews with the museum's officials responsible for digital collections and projects managers of the International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation, who developed the digital library for the museum. The study employs the analysis of the empirical material and draws on the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin, Fiona Cameron, and others. It reveals that the selection process of the objects being digitised is still crucial and relevant for the current agenda of digitisation in museums. The results of the analysis suggest that such a selection process should be more open and should rely on the opinion of interested communities and museum stakeholders.

This paper discusses the capabilities of the Vist3D system which enables non-technical users, specifically users without knowledge of 3D modelling techniques, interface design, data manipulation and creation of multimedia artefacts to build historical 3D spatiotemporal visualisations from natural language narratives. The user (e.g. museum curator, people involved with cultural heritage) need only supply a narrative of the event and a specification of the artefacts, e.g. buildings, ships.

As an integral component of contemporary culture, technology creates a potential for the development of dynamic spaces. These spaces have an ability to interact and communicate with users. To approach this idea, we proposed interactive wallpaper which responses to human activity. Wallpaper with a "transactive intelligence" (Ludovce, 2001) which can transform both the user and itself. The implication of such scheme can be wallpaper in spaces that lack sense of interaction and consequently create a dull environment. The best example of such space is a waiting room in a hospital.

In this paper we will examine the use of the digital screen display as a primary form of accessing information within the museum context. We will argue that this mode of dissemination, achieved primarily through a Graphic User Interface (GUI) though highly efficient in providing contextual support, can be detrimental to a wider sense of social interaction and engagement between visitors, both of which are recognised as key aspects of how we experience and learn within the museum. By using the Edward Gordon Craig: Space & Light exhibition held at the V&A Museum as a case study, we will explore the potential of a more performative mode of digital interactivity, whereby through notions of the re-enactment, a material reality can be constructed, based not on interpretation or objecthood, but oscillation and trajectory. As such, new perspectives and understandings can emerge through the activation and experience of the visitor within the museum, creating a more embodied sense of learning.

This paper presents the ongoing process, challenges and approach of integrating open source hardware with the iPhone. The aim of the project was to create software and an accompanying device using Arduino, an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-touse well documented hardware and software extensively used by artists. The iPhone was chosen primarily because of it ubiquitous presence but also because of creative possibilities due to computational power, networking functionality, inbuilt sensors and storage capabilities. However, restrictions and complexities to the way we can interface with those technologies mean many of those possibilities are lost. The ecology of open source tools available to digital artists make highly technical environments accessible to low technology users, yet the closed environment provided by Apple, used by the vast majority of owners, force corporate agenda onto the ways we choose to communicate. Users are actively discouraging from understanding how these tools work, be that through hardware interface, technical language, levels of knowledge or literal licensing restriction. The process of building an interface to these technologies reveals the restrictive mechanisms at play and provides insight into ways they may be challenged or subverted.

Social media has emerged as a prominent element in the current digital landscape and its widespread use reflects how Web 2.0 technologies have become embedded in our lives. Use of social media technologies for learning signals a departure from the use of purely educational or institutional technologies, where educators or the institutions control the technology and the content and impose the rules. This development brings unique and fundamental opportunities, alongside challenges, for rethinking learning in museums. In a museum context, social media tools may make it possible for people to situate objects within contextual information, enable users to make links with other objects or topics and initiate discussions among them. These processes highlight the social aspect of museum experience, advocated by Falk and Dierking (1992; 2000), and it is thus hypothesised that use of social media will lead to - and enhance - a shared understanding around objects, which will facilitate the meaning-making process and thus, learning. The study presented in this paper (part of a PhD research project) is concerned with the potential of Web 2.0 technologies for enhancing young people's museum learning experience and facilitating their meaning-making process.

This paper discusses our findings resulting from SWAP funded project - On The Beach. SWAP funds support research into SUPPORTING WRITING FOR ASSESSMENT PURPOSES :creative approaches to reading, note-making and writing development. A Second Life handbook was produced to enhance learning and teaching of writing skills within the context of new media technology platforms. The project interprets the notion of an essay is an investigation into a topic by an author - be it visual, textual or kinaesthetic or if well done - through all these inter-relational modes, with attention to content, structure, style and language accuracy.

"Tratado de imagenes" ("Image treaty") - 2009 - is a piece for live trio - violin, clarinet, piano - and video track. It is a practical research on the possible relationships between sound and image, explored from a joint approach: sound was not considered to be something external to the image, nor was image complementary to the sound. The artistic intention behind this work is for both images and sounds to build the musical context together, instead of thinking one of them purely as a translation (or embellishment) of the other. Synchrony is therefore used exhaustively in the piece, as it is a powerful means of uniting the different media.

The Augmented Tonoscope is an artistic study into the aesthetics of sound and vibration through its analogue in visual form - the modal wave patterns of Cymatics. Key to the research is the design, fabrication and crafting of a sonically and visually responsive hybrid analogue/digital instrument that will produce dynamic Visual Music based on the physics, effects and manifestations of sound and vibration. This paper describes the first stage of the study - a series of artistic investigations into analogue tonoscope and digital tone generator design integrating light and camera control - driven by an artistic experimental method devised specifically for the project. The paper concludes with future directions for the research: Can the inherent geometries within sound provide a meaningful basis for Visual Music? Will augmenting these physical effects with virtual simulations realise a real-time correlation between the visual and the musical?

Searching for a true complementarity of music and visual art reflected John Whitney's desire to develop a methodology that would ensure that computer generated sound and visual imagery could be produced in a way that would go beyond all earlier attempts to simultaneously create an artwork based on a system that would equate individual colours with specific notes. Discussed in his book 'Digital Harmony' (Whitney 1980), Whitney argued that all composition in music was firmly based on a methodology that excluded improvisation and if a similarity of scale was applied to the use and development of colour, a system could be devised that met his objective of providing an agreed means of finally equated colour with sound, through computer programing.

This paper presents a practice research project based at The Curzon Community Cinema, Clevedon, UK. Working closely with the cinema to develop a locative or context-aware heritage application for the iPhone, the project aims to enhance the Curzon's new Heritage Lottery Funded exhibition, enabling visitors to gain further insight into the building, projection equipment and the history of cinema itself. The paper discusses the iterative design process, evaluates the first iteration and outlines plans for the next iteration, when the project will attempt to move seamlessly from the exterior of the building to inside the cinema

The proposed demonstration calls upon participants to be part of a process that explores the intersection of movement, time, collectiveness and space through an interactive installation, which incorporates new technologies to manifest memory and to create new one via an inter-structural experience.

This paper investigates the nature of remote and virtual creative interaction; the issues, potential and questions arising in the uniting of a diverse group of people as a collaborative working team in the development of a range of digitally generated products and creative outputs. In the early 20th century Zika Ascher established a textile concept that integrated the provenance of high craft with the creativity of the leading exponents of the art world. Using a unique approach to making Ascher commissioned artists to generate imagery that featured as an exceptional moderating collaboration between the dislocated fields of Art and design. Ascher collaborated with artists such as Matisse, Picasso, Alexandra Calder and Henry Moore inspiring and leading them to engage with new mediums and exciting forms of artistic expression. Bringing this ideology into the contemporary virtual landscape a conceptual brand was created in the winter of 2009 that explored the collaborative ground, non-located working processes, and the potential of developing a product with a virtual team to create a commercial product utilising digital technologies. A group of artists and creative makers from a wide range of backgrounds and diverse modes of creative expression, some established, others emerging or outsider artists, were invited to participate in the project though social networking. This paper reflects on the nature of collaborative working in the virtual worlds of social networking and new media. It problematizes methods of remote team building and working with virtual individuals. In the discussions arising from the case study issues of clarity, communication and isolation are considered and analysed within a clear theoretical context.

As an island nation, the UK has a rich maritime heritage charting centuries of international trade and exploration. Evidence of this lies in abundance around the coastline in the form of historic shipwrecks. From 17th century remnants of Samuel Pepys navy off Goodwin Sands to bomb laden WWII liberty ships in the Thames estuary. Unlike land based heritage sites, the majority of these underwater locations are virtually invisible to the public gaze. Their inaccessibility limits public perception of their importance; out of sight, out of mind. In rare cases, e.g. the Mary Rose, the wrecks are recovered and placed in purpose built museums alongside artefacts recovered from them. The enormous cost of archaeological recovery, preservation and exposition restricts this practice.

It is post structuralist that offers us a working notion of images as systems of signs whose semantic spaces are defined by networks of changing conceptual relationships. As a dialectical method it has provided useful paradigms for addressing our conceptual interaction with, and interpretation of, diverse art, design & media visualisations. However, it is limited in effectively accounting for the significant interaction between the abstractions that are media images and actual behaviours as practices outstrips theoretical understanding of the relationship between the sign and the signified, the simulation and the social, the model and the real.

In my series, Thought and Memory, I explore how the mind wanders, following mythic paths, identifying with the Hero's Journey, diving into murky worlds that haven't yet congealed into archetypes, and experiencing transformation.

Sustainable digital access to cultural heritage has become an important policy goal and field of research. In Flanders (Belgium), a collaborative interdisciplinary research project is being carried out that looks into challenges posed by sustainable digital archiving and access as they affect cultural, educational and scientific sectors. This presentation focuses on the challenges that need to be overcome on an organizational, financial and policy level within this research project, Archipel.

In this paper we are presenting a tangible prototype interface for Cultural Heritage dissemination in Mixed Reality (MR) environments. Drawing from previous work on MR (Billinghurst et al. 2001), this study aims to explore alternative and interactive modes of engaging the public with archaeological information and suggests that early stage user evaluations can significantly inform interpretive design.

Whispers of The Still City is a 15 min performance integrating interaction design, augmented reality, scenography and character creation. This performance installation conveys a nostalgic place with people who belonged to it once and now they only exist through traces of the past. In particular, Whispers of The Still City exhibits an affectionate space composed of a liquid architecture, which is not only a physical place but also a place with sensation. In other words, scenography of the place is anthropomorphized with life similar to a human character with sensation and memory.

Many UK museums are developing their expertise in the creation of 3D models of objects in their collection. To-date, these authentic, high-quality models have not been made available to the digital creative industries, who instead have relied on manually created models that cannot be relied on to be accurate. This paper introduces ICON, a cross-sector collaborative R&D project that is developing workflows and a technology platform to repurpose digitised models created for curatorial purposes so they can be used in film, TV, games and other creative applications.

Increasingly museums are developing information systems and guides to be accessed from small mobile devices. Some of these initiatives utilise proprietary hardware and software that can require substantial development resources. More recently museums have had the option to target personal mobile devices, (e.g. Apple iPhone or Google Android handsets) which potentially require a lower investment cost on the part of the institution. While the sophistication of these handheld devices means that a large volume of information can be stored and displayed, the challenge for museums is to provide usable access via the small screen area available. Taking examples from work done during the development of the British Museum multimedia guide, this paper discusses the processes and techniques available for usability testing in a 'live' museum environment and shows how the use of low-cost usability and user testing techniques can be quickly fed back into the development process, making a valuable contribution to the ultimate design and effectiveness of the user interface.

Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, in the North East of Scotland, is unique in the quantity and quality of historic heritage, building and environments in existence and is now at risk. As exemplified by the likes of Historic Scotland's current signature project, "The Scottish Ten", high-definition scanning is a recognised method for the accurate portrayal of objects in 3-d digital environments. The technology is some of the most advanced in the built environment, yet the process of data collection is much simpler and quicker than more traditional methods of surveying. It is a powerful aid to the recording and future treatment of historic buildings and their environment. This study, as an exemplar, focuses on buildings of significant risk (of demolition or disrepair). These include examples of church and theatre architecture, where interior detail and mass are central to the design. The buildings studied are also notable due to the presence of large open volumes and decorative ornamentation, which would be extremely difficult to record through traditional surveying methods. High definition scanners collect a 'point cloud', which is assembled using scans taken from selected locations. The process followed in this study was similar to that reported previously in the literature (Barber et al. 2006; Arayici 2007, Brown et al 2008), where a range of techniques have been used to employ the resultant dataset within architectural modelling.