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elena — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:19:22 +0000

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pat — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:50:43 +0000

My research paper Character Animation and the Embodied Mind-Brain has been published recently in ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal’, published by Sage. The abstract, below, gives an indication of the interdisciplinary track taken, in particular with regard to creative 3D character animation.

This interdisciplinary investigation of aspects of 3D characteranimation synthesizes relevant research findings from diverseperspectives, including neuroscience, narratology, robotics,anthropology, cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind, andconsiders how they might be integrated as theory for animatorsand animation studies. The article focuses on the creative natureof character conception and creation in a 3D animated environmentand on aspects of character — narrative and style, inparticular. It examines how findings from interdisciplinaryresearch on the embodied mind—brain, including neuroscientificresearch with regard to mentalizing and simulation theory, caninform the creative animation process and might be gainfullysynthesized in an animation studies context to inform both pedagogyand creative practice.

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elena — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:32:30 +0000

The Secrets of Biblioland game is now available via the web.The game website is: http://www.biblioland.org

The game can be played on all major browsers with a Flash 7 (min) plugin.
However the game is optimised for Firefox and it is recommended, when possible, to download the latest Flash plugin. Please click on the Biblioport icon to start the game. Players now have a choice of playing without registration or registering for free by choosing a username and password. Registration allows players to save their progress in the game.

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pat — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:03:57 +0000

A serious candidate it seems for that holy grail of physics, A Theory of Everything, has popped up from an unexpected source. Garrett Lisi, a surfer/physicist with no regular job and unaffiliated to any university, has come up with the new unified theory based on the most elegant and intricate geometrical pattern known to mathematics - E8. It’s reception is mixed as might be expected, but it’s being treated very seriously by many in the physics establishment. If it works, it promises to be simpler and more elegant perhaps than the reigning contender, String Theory (which has extra space-time dimensions and other strings attached). It may be feasible to test predictions from the theory in the Large Hadron Collider being built at CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland, when it starts up next year. Damn you Lisi, I was just about getting my own theory off the ground.

A New Scientist article on the paper

Have a look at the paper itself - An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

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pat — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:03:27 +0000

I’ve just recently finished reading a book that that I stumbled upon serendipitously. It’s called ‘The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture’, and it turns out this was written by Wendy Wheeler, a colleague here at London Metropolitan University. Wendy is a Reader in English in the Department of Humanities, Arts and Languages and The Whole Creature is both a call for creative liminality between the often disparate domains of culture, arts and sciences and a fine example of creative liminality in itself. The synthesis of biology, semiotics, complexity, culture and creativity is timely, insightful and well… creative, in its interdisciplinary perspectives and in its conclusions. The Whole Creature is the epitome of well-written interdisciplinary research. It’s both learned and accessible, and very well worth reading. It was pubished by Lawrence And Wishart in September 2006.

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pat — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:46:42 +0000

Zotero is a wonderful new free open-source research tool, that’s well worth
investigating if you’re not already using it. Functionality is similar to tools
like EndNote but Zotero is much more sophisticated and looks to have far
more potential. It sits in the latest version of the Firefox browser and can be
used seamlessly for citation and referencing with MS Word, OpenOffice and
WordPress. It can be dowloaded for free from Zotero.org.

Zotero has been developed by academics primarily for use in academic
research and is undergoing extensive research and development. It’s been
developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason
University in the U.S. and is funded by the United States Institute of
Museum and Library Services, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The current release is Zotero 1.0 Release
Candidate 2. It’s already a powerful and innovative tool at this early stage
of development and I wouldn’t be at at all surprised to see it become the
de facto standard for academic research. Functionality is too sophisticated
to summarise here … just go have a look for yourself.

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pat — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:58:40 +0000

These posts will cover an eclectic range of interdisciplinary
subjects at the intersection of the arts and sciences. Issues
discussed will include emotion and meaning, play and playfulness,
narrative and story, complexity and systems theory, neuroscience,
cognition and consciousness, digital media and animation and
approaches to creativity. It’s in the liminal interplay between these
dynamic and interdisciplinary domains that labile connections
can creatively resonate.

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admin — Thu, 17 May 2007 18:43:05 +0000

Hi there!

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