Ubiquitous Music Ecologies
Ubiquitous music is an interdisciplinary area of research that lies at the intersection of music and computer science. Initially evolving from the related concept of ubiquitous computing, today ubiquitous music offers a paradigm for understanding how the everyday presence of computers has led to highly diverse music practices. As we move from desktop computers to mobile and internet-based multi-platform systems, new ways to participate in creative musical activities have radically changed the cultural and social landscape of music composition and performance. This volume explores how these new systems interact and how they may transform our musical experiences.Emerging out of the work of the Ubiquitous Music Group, an international research network established in 2007, this volume provides a snapshot of the ecologically grounded perspectives on ubiquitous music that share the concept of ecosystem as a central theme. Covering theory, software and hardware design, and applications in educational and artistic settings, each chapter features in-depth descriptions of exploratory and cutting-edge creative practices that expand our understanding of music making by means of digital and analogue technologies.
Hardware and Software Support for Virtualization
This book focuses on the core question of the necessary architectural support provided by hardware to efficiently run virtual machines, and of the corresponding design of the hypervisors that run them. Virtualization is still possible when the instruction set architecture lacks such support, but the hypervisor remains more complex and must rely on additional techniques.Despite the focus on architectural support in current architectures, some historical perspective is necessary to appropriately frame the problem. The first half of the book provides the historical perspective of the theoretical framework developed four decades ago by Popek and Goldberg. It also describes earlier systems that enabled virtualization despite the lack of architectural support in hardware.As is often the case, theory defines a necessary--but not sufficient--set of features, and modern architectures are the result of the combination of the theoretical framework with insights derived frompractical systems. The second half of the book describes state-of-the-art support for virtualization in both x86-64 and ARM processors. This book includes an in-depth description of the CPU, memory, and I/O virtualization of these two processor architectures, as well as case studies on the Linux/KVM, VMware, and Xen hypervisors. It concludes with a performance comparison of virtualization on current-generation x86- and ARM-based systems across multiple hypervisors.
Stochastic Partial Differential Equations for Computer Vision with Uncertain Data
In image processing and computer vision applications such as medical or scientific image data analysis, as well as in industrial scenarios, images are used as input measurement data. It is good scientific practice that proper measurements must be equipped with error and uncertainty estimates. For many applications, not only the measured values but also their errors and uncertainties, should be--and more and more frequently are--taken into account for further processing. This error and uncertainty propagation must be done for every processing step such that the final result comes with a reliable precision estimate. The goal of this book is to introduce the reader to the recent advances from the field of uncertainty quantification and error propagation for computer vision, image processing, and image analysis that are based on partial differential equations (PDEs). It presents a concept with which error propagation and sensitivity analysis can be formulated with a set of basic operations.The approach discussed in this book has the potential for application in all areas of quantitative computer vision, image processing, and image analysis. In particular, it might help medical imaging finally become a scientific discipline that is characterized by the classical paradigms of observation, measurement, and error awareness. This book is comprised of eight chapters. After an introduction to the goals of the book (Chapter 1), we present a brief review of PDEs and their numerical treatment (Chapter 2), PDE-based image processing (Chapter 3), and the numerics of stochastic PDEs (Chapter 4). We then proceed to define the concept of stochastic images (Chapter 5), describe how to accomplish image processing and computer vision with stochastic images (Chapter 6), and demonstrate the use of these principles for accomplishing sensitivity analysis (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 concludes the book and highlights new research topics for the future.
A Survey of Blur Detection and Sharpness Assessment Methods
Blurring is almost an omnipresent effect on natural images. The main causes of blurring in images include: (a) the existence of objects at different depths within the scene which is known as defocus blur; (b) blurring due to motion either of objects in the scene or the imaging device; and (c) blurring due to atmospheric turbulence. Automatic estimation of spatially varying sharpness/blurriness has several applications including depth estimation, image quality assessment, information retrieval, image restoration, among others. There are some cases in which blur is intentionally introduced or enhanced; for example, in artistic photography and cinematography in which blur is intentionally introduced to emphasize a certain image region. Bokeh is a technique that introduces defocus blur with aesthetic purposes. Additionally, in trending applications like augmented and virtual reality usually, blur is introduced in order to provide/enhance depth perception. Digital images and videos are produced every day in astonishing amounts and the demand for higher quality is constantly rising which creates a need for advanced image quality assessment. Additionally, image quality assessment is important for the performance of image processing algorithms. It has been determined that image noise and artifacts can affect the performance of algorithms such as face detection and recognition, image saliency detection, and video target tracking. Therefore, image quality assessment (IQA) has been a topic of intense research in the fields of image processing and computer vision. Since humans are the end consumers of multimedia signals, subjective quality metrics provide the most reliable results; however, their cost in addition to time requirements makes them unfeasible for practical applications. Thus, objective quality metrics are usually preferred.
Incidental Exposure to Online News
Rapid technological changes and availability of news anywhere and at any moment have changed how people seek out news. Increasingly, consumers no longer take deliberate actions to read the news, instead stumbling upon news online. While the emergence of serendipitous news discovery online has been recognized in the literature, there is a limited understanding about how people experience this behavior. Based on the mixed method study that investigated online news reading behavior of residents in a Midwestern U.S. town, we explore how people accidentally discover news when engaged in various online activities. Employing the grounded theory approach, we define Incidental Exposure to Online News (IEON) as individual's memorable experiences of chance encounters with interesting, useful, or surprising news while using the Internet for news browsing or for non-news-related online activities, such as checking email or visiting social networking sites. The book presents a conceptual framework of IEON that advances research and an understanding of serendipitous news discovery from people's holistic experiences of news consumption in their everyday lives. The proposed IEON Process Model identifies key steps in an IEON experience that could help news reporters and developers of online news platforms create innovative storytelling and design strategies to catch consumers' attention during their online activities. Finally, this book raises important methodological questions for further investigation: how should serendipitous news discovery be studied, measured, and observed, and what are the essential elements that differentiate this behavior from other types of online news consumption and information behaviors?
Hacking in the Humanities
What would it take to hack a human? How exploitable are we? In the cybersecurity industry, professionals know that the weakest component of any system sits between the chair and the keyboard. This book looks to speculative fiction, cyberpunk and the digital humanities to bring a human - and humanistic - perspective to the issue of cybersecurity. It argues that through these stories we are able to predict the future political, cultural, and social realities emerging from technological change. Making the case for a security-minded humanities education, this book examines pressing issues of data security, privacy, social engineering and more, illustrating how the humanities offer the critical, technical, and ethical insights needed to oppose the normalization of surveillance, disinformation, and coercion. Within this counter-cultural approach to technology, this book offers a model of activism to intervene and meaningfully resist government and corporate oversight online. In doing so, it argues for a wider notion of literacy, which includes the ability to write and fight the computer code that shapes our lives.
Optimization of Sustainable Enzymes Production
This book presents a systematic approach to analyze evolutionary and nature-inspired population-based search algorithms. The book presents current research on various applications of machine learning and discusses optimization techniques to solve real-life problems.
Dragon’s Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity
Perhaps no arcade game is so nostalgically remembered, yet so critically bemoaned, as Dragon's Lair. A bit of a technological neanderthal, the game implemented a unique combination of videogame components and home video replay, garnering great popular media and user attention in a moment of contracted economic returns and popularity for the videogame arcade business. But subsequently, writers and critics have cast the game aside as a cautionary tale of bad game design. In Dragon's Lair and the Fantasy of Interactivity, MJ Clarke revives Dragon's Lair as a fascinating textual experiment interlaced with powerful industrial strategies, institutional discourse, and textual desires around key notions of interactivity and fantasy. Constructing a multifaceted historical study of the game that considers its design, its makers, its recording medium, and its in-game imagery, Clarke suggests that the more appropriate metaphor for Dragon's Lair is not that of a neanderthal, but a socio-technical network, infusing and advancing debates about the production and consumption of new screen technologies. Far from being the gaming failure posited by evolutionary-minded lay critics, Clarke argues, Dragon's Lair offers a fascinating provisional solution to still-unsettled questions about screen media.
Code Musicology
Software mediates a great deal of human musical activity. The writing, running, and maintenance of code lies at the heart of such software. Code Musicology: From Hardwired to Software argues why it is time for a "code musicology," then outlines what that should entail. A code musicology opens a conduit between musicology and software studies, providing insights into both of these now interlinked fields along the way. It extends an ethnomusicology of technoculture from the world of hardware and the hardwired to software, code, and algorithms. For popular music studies, it helps direct attention to a newly relevant industrial focus--IT and software-centered transnational commerce--as a result of sectorial transformation.Denis Crowdy demonstrates how analysis from software studies, critical code studies, and the digital humanities offers insights into power relations, diversity, and commerce in music. Crowdy weaves readings of code and application programming interfaces (APIs) into the discussion, as well as ethnomusicological fieldwork exploring music and mobile phones from the Global South. Analysis of the author's own music apps and associated distribution infrastructure provides unique insights into the machinations of music "appification."
Interfaces and Us
We're all familiar with smart TVs making suggestions on our future watching, real-world exercise data being transferred into stats and infographics on our workout apps and turning up our home heating before we start our commute - but how does this world of technological interfaces affect our actions and perceptions of self?When society relies on computer models and their interfaces to explain and predict everything from love to geopolitical conflicts, our own behaviour and choices are artificially changed. Zachary Kaiser explores the harmful social consequences of this idea - balanced against speed and ease for the user - and how design practice and education can respond positively. - Concepts of freedom vs convenience - Smart objects and manipulation - Real world information transformed into data - Technology's decisions made on our behalf
Extreme Photoshop CS
Following a renowned fifteen-year history, Photoshop CS emerges as the newest edition to the Adobe family. This dynamic version allows you to create myriad styles--ranging from pixel, to vector, to 3D, and more. But what about proper instruction and guidance? Enter: Extreme Photoshop CS. This in-depth, versatile book will help you make the jump from Photoshop user, to professional designer.
Advanced ActionScript Components
Macromedia's architecture is like a chest filled with precious jewels, and this book is quite simply the key to open it! One of the most important tools provided with Flash is the Macromedia Component Architecture: a framework of components written in ActionScript 2, based on established design patterns, that provides a wealth of functionality you can just bolt on to your Flash applications when desired. This can save you an enormous amount of time during application development and help you improve the quality of your code. What's more, the source code is included, so if you can't find the component you need within the component architecture, you can just modify existing components to create your own!
Foundation Flash 8 Video
Video on the Internet is becoming hugely popular due to higher bandwidth making it feasible, and improvements in software are putting it within the reach of anyone with a reasonable level of computer literacy. This is one of the first books solely dedicated to Flash 8 Video development and goes a lot deeper into the subject than other books. It is suitable for those with no previous Flash experience who want to discover the best way to create video applications for the Web. It starts with the very basics, and by the end of the book the reader will be creating advanced interactive video applications, using video alpha channels, masking, blends and filters, the Camera object, and much more. Flash 8 features a lot of new advancements for video, and developers are crying out for information on its uses. This book fulfills that need.
Life in Death
Life in Death: My Animated Films 1976-2020 explores death as it relates to experience, storytelling, theory, and narrative.
Mad Eyed Misfits
One of the most stylistically original and provocative writers in animation returns with this informal sequel to his previous books on indie animation, Unsung Heroes of Animation and Animators Unearthed. 　 　 　 　 　 　 　
Crowdsourcing During Covid-19
Crowdsourcing is a means by which public interest is sought and leveraged to achieve specific goals, and this fascinating study highlights how the model has been used to challenge the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Digital TV and Wireless Multimedia Communications
This book presents revised selected papers from the 18th International Forum on Digital TV and Wireless Multimedia Communication, IFTC 2021, held in Shanghai, China, in December 2021.The 41 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. They were organized in topical sections on image analysis; quality assessment; target detection; video processing; big data.
Mad Eyed Misfits
One of the most stylistically original and provocative writers in animation returns with this informal sequel to his previous books on indie animation, Unsung Heroes of Animation and Animators Unearthed. 　 　 　 　 　 　 　
Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems, MESAS 2021, held as a virtual event due COVID-19, in October 2021.The 30 full papers together with 2 short papers included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: M&S of intelligent systems, R&D and application; and AxS/AI in context of future warfare and security environment and future challenges of Advance M&S Technology.
The Immersive Enclosure
Winner, 2023 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association Although virtual reality promises to immerse a person in another world, its true power lies in its ability to sever a person's spatial situatedness in this one. This is especially clear in Japan, where the VR headset has been embraced as a way to block off existing social environments and reroute perception into more malleable virtual platforms. Is immersion just another name for enclosure? In this groundbreaking analysis of virtual reality, Paul Roquet uncovers how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation. He examines how VR in Japan diverged from American militarism and techno-utopian visions and became a tool for renegotiating personal space. Individuals turned to the VR headset to immerse themselves in three-dimensional worlds drawn from manga, video games, and genre literature. The Japanese government promised VR-operated robots would enable a new era of remote work, targeting those who could not otherwise leave home. Middle-aged men and corporate brands used VR to reimagine themselves through the virtual bodies of anime-styled teenage girls. At a time when digital platforms continue to encroach on everyday life, The Immersive Enclosure takes a critical look at these attempts to jettison existing social realities and offers a bold new approach for understanding the media environments to come.
Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment, INTETAIN 2021. Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the conference was held virtually. This year's conference put an emphasis on the future of technologies for interactive entertainment. The 25 full papers presented at the conference and thus included in this book were selected from 50 submissions, and present novel and innovative work in areas including art, science, design and engineering regarding computer-based systems or devices that provide intelligent human interaction, learning, or entertainment experiences. The papers are grouped in 2 sessions of thematic issues on emerging applications and augmented reality.
Aesthetics, Digital Studies and Bernard Stiegler
Aesthetics, Digital Studies and Bernard Stiegler frames the intertwined relationship between artistic endeavours and scientific fields and their sociopolitical implications. Each chapter is either an explication of, or a critique of, some aspect of Bernard Stiegler's technological philosophy; as it is his technological-political-aesthetical-ethical theorisations which form the philosophical foundation of the volume. Emerging scholars bring critical new reflections to the subject area, while more established academics, researchers and practitioners outline the mutating nature of aesthetics within historical and theoretical frameworks. Not only is interdisciplinarity a prevailing topic at work within this collection, but so too is there a delineation of the mutating, hybrid role inhabited by the arts practitioner - at once engineer, scientist and artist - in the changing landscape of digital cultural production.
Take your Best Shot
Written for complete beginners, this photography book is easy to read and understand, even if you have never worked with a camera before, or a budding photographer who wants to improve. It has step-by-step tutorials covering the basics of digital cameras and photographic techniques. In this guide you'll exploreTypes of cameras availableHow digital cameras workCamera CardsLenses and FiltersTechniques used to take better photographsHow to align and compose your photosSuggested camera settingsUnderstanding f-stops, shutter speed and ISOUnderstanding depth of field and focusTaking photos and using shooting modesHow to transfer your Photos to your computerBasic Photo Editing and TouchupWe want to create the best possible resource to help you, so if we've missed anything out then please get in touch using office@elluminetpress.com and let us know. Thanks.
Principles of Systems
Jay W. Forrester (1918 - 2016) was a pioneering American computer engineer and systems scientist. He was a professor at MIT and later at MIT Sloan School of Management. Forrester is credited with being one of the inventors of magnetic core memory, the creator of the first computer animation, and the father of the field of System Dynamics - a computer-aided approach for strategy and policy design. In Principles of Systems, Professor Forrester explains the basic principles behind system behavior. He introduces the concepts of structure and dynamic behavior that were first introduced in his prior books, Industrial Dynamics (1961) and Urban Dynamics (1971). Due to the general nature and wide applicability of the principles discussed, this book has been adopted by numerous colleges and universities as an introduction to teaching System Dynamics in many multidisciplinary courses on urban, environmental, corporate, and other complex social systems. The accompanying workbook also allows students to gauge their learning throughout the book. The book serves on its own as well as being a complement to other books on the nature of social systems. Professor Forrester wrote many widely known papers in engineering and management. In addition, his other books laid the foundations for the application of System Dynamics to the behavior of complex social systems: Industrial Dynamics, reprinted in 1999, originally published in 1961 Urban Dynamics, 1969 World Dynamics, Second Edition 1973, originally published in 1971 Collected Papers of Jay W. Forrester, 1975 These are available for purchase at www.systemdynamics.org.
New Masters of Photoshop
Computer Arts Magazine, Dec 2001 If you use Photoshop and want to progress your skills, this book will open your eyes www.pixelsurgeon.com This book is a tempting, friendly design gigolo, and will do absolutely anything you ask of it. DT & G Magazine - www.Design-Bookshelf.com If you care for your craft, you'd be foolish indeed to let this opportunity slip away. Book of the year. Photoshop User Magazine, January 2002 The variety of artwork and approaches is a definite plus. CGI Magazine, February 2002 Not just a book about graphics, it's a work of art in itself. As a piece of software, Adobe Photoshop is rare - perhaps alone - in evoking genuine passion from its users. As it evolves, it finds its way into the lives of more and more professional creators, tempting them away from their traditional materials, and expanding their horizons. Yes, it can alter photographs. It can also alter careers. New Masters of Photoshop is a showcase of Masters who use Photoshop, and Masters of Photoshop use. The photographers, animators, artists, and designers assembled here have a myriad of different skills: some manipulate, some animate, some create from scratch. All of them produce remarkable, beautiful things. In these pages, the authors will demonstrate examples of their print work, web work, public work, and private work, explaining the techniques they use to achieve their results. More than that, though, they'll tell you how they think: who their influences are, where their ideas come from, and how they find inspiration when the well has run dry. friends of ED has scoured the world for the leading exponents of Photoshop technique. This book is a gallery of Photoshop practice and theory, backed with essays on the influences and inspirations that lie behind the sharpest digital art in today's media-saturated world. The book deconstructs sophisticated, complex, and astonishing Photoshop graphics, providing motivation, skills and inspiration in equal parts. Support for thisbook is available on the friends of ED web site (friendsofed.com). From the Publisher Creating a Photoshop image is a process that occurs as much in the head as it does on the screen. Uniquely, New Masters of Photoshop documents it all, from the seeds of an idea, to the outcome on screen, paper, or canvas. The projects include examples of collage and montage that involve manipulation of whole images and tiny fragments - working on a grand scale, and at a pixel-by-pixel level. Layers and masks, with all their subtleties, are used in fascinating ways; and filters are treated with the sensitivity and discretion they require. The CD contains: Audio, video, and written interviews with the authors Source files for the tutorials Unflattened Photoshop files for closer inspection About the Author Michael Cina Michael Cina is an artist and designer living in a small village outside of minneapolis. he creates stuff (mikecina.com) and things (trueistrue.com) out of his house in that village. companies like mtv or adobe may even call him to do some work. every now and then he leaves his village to speak at design conferences. often he will leave his house to buy cds or books (or both if he got paid). otherwise he rides his bike, fishes, chases his cat or girlfriend, takes pictures, makes fonts, paints, e-mails people, struggles over writing things like books and bios... currently michael is working on his new company, weworkforthem.com, with michael young. WeWorkForThem is half art and half design studio. Mike Young Mike Young is an artist currently residing in Washington, DC, USA. Mike has created and maintained sites such as designgraphik.com and submethod.com, and is currently starting weworkforthem.com with Michael Cina of trueistrue.com. While working on these projects, Mike has also served as art director for two years at Vir2l Studios, where he directed and designed on projects such as vir2l.com, which won prestigious awards such as the New York Festivals New Media Competition
Illustrator CS Most Wanted
Adobe Illustrator is the professional illustrator's tool of choice for creating and publishing vector graphics in print or online. It's the most comprehensive 2D vector graphics drawing package and, with the latest CS release, incorporates powerful new 3D drawing tools and blending effects. Closer integration of Adobe's Creative Suite products (Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, and Acrobat Professional) means that Illustrator is now more accessible to new users who are already familiar with the Adobe interface and helps existing pro users becomes more creative and efficient.
Photoshop Elements 2 Face Makeovers
Bored with your family snapshots? Ugly friends? We'll show you how to harness the power of Photoshop Elements 2 to subtly improve or distort them beyond all recognition as you see fit! Packed full of creative, fun ideas, each explained with step-by-step tutorials, and with all the source files on the accompanying CD, this book will show you how to: Produce caricatures by distorting faces with the popular Liquify tool Transform ordinary snapshots into works of art by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Van Gogh Turn your kids into clowns, or tigers, or anything else they can dream up with digital face paint Eliminate red eye and achieve perfect skin tone on your everyday shots Tweak out to freak out! Give your nearest and dearest the cosmetic surgery you think they deserve! Enter the world of fantasy with some sumptuous mystical makeovers ...and more!
New Masters of Flash
Flash has upped the standard for web motion graphics and has been welcomed with open arms on account of its powerful new ActionScripting capabilities. Following the phenomenal success of New Masters of Flash, the Flash Annual will bring together a new collection of the hottest Flash design talents on the planet, all of whom have grabbed attention in the preceding year. New Masters of Flash: The 2002 Annual gives competent web artists inspiration for cutting-edge Flash design techniques, as well as hard tutorial information on how to build top class effects. The format builds on the best of the original best-selling title while improving in areas where the first volume was weaker, (e.g. generic customizable code examples), while the talents, the inspirations and effects are all of the moment and represent the mature and expert deployment of the staggering new capabilities of Flash 5 ActionScript. The Flash Annual format: The Intro is a series of 3 "field-report" essays written by key New Masters from the previous year covering new talents, new techniques and new trends. The main body of the book is then an evolution from the original format. This time, as well as the inspiration and tutorial sections, we add a third section to each chapter, headnotes. Part summary, part chapter commentary, part code overview, the Headnotes section teases out the reusable and generic elements of the previous tutorial and suggests ways forward for the reader.
The Immersive Enclosure
Winner, 2023 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association Although virtual reality promises to immerse a person in another world, its true power lies in its ability to sever a person's spatial situatedness in this one. This is especially clear in Japan, where the VR headset has been embraced as a way to block off existing social environments and reroute perception into more malleable virtual platforms. Is immersion just another name for enclosure? In this groundbreaking analysis of virtual reality, Paul Roquet uncovers how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation. He examines how VR in Japan diverged from American militarism and techno-utopian visions and became a tool for renegotiating personal space. Individuals turned to the VR headset to immerse themselves in three-dimensional worlds drawn from manga, video games, and genre literature. The Japanese government promised VR-operated robots would enable a new era of remote work, targeting those who could not otherwise leave home. Middle-aged men and corporate brands used VR to reimagine themselves through the virtual bodies of anime-styled teenage girls. At a time when digital platforms continue to encroach on everyday life, The Immersive Enclosure takes a critical look at these attempts to jettison existing social realities and offers a bold new approach for understanding the media environments to come.
The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction
A theory of HCI that uses concepts from semiotics and computer science to focus on the communication between designers and users during interaction.In The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction, Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza proposes an account of HCI that draws on concepts from semiotics and computer science to investigate the relationship between user and designer. Semiotics is the study of signs, and the essence of semiotic engineering is the communication between designers and users at interaction time; designers must somehow be present in the interface to tell users how to use the signs that make up a system or program. This approach, which builds on--but goes further than--the currently dominant user-centered approach, allows designers to communicate their overall vision and therefore helps users understand designs--rather than simply which icon to click.According to de Souza's account, both designers and users are interlocutors in an overall communication process that takes place through an interface of words, graphics, and behavior. Designers must tell users what they mean by the artifact they have created, and users must understand and respond to what they are being told. By coupling semiotic theory and engineering, de Souza's approach to HCI design encompasses the principles, the materials, the processes, and the possibilities for producing meaningful interactive computer system discourse and achieves a broader perspective than cognitive, ethnographic, or ergonomic approaches.De Souza begins with a theoretical overview and detailed exposition of the semiotic engineering account of HCI. She then shows how this approach can be applied specifically to HCI evaluation and design of online help systems, customization and end-user programming, and multiuser applications. Finally, she reflects on the potential and opportunities for research in semiotic engineering.
Life of an Exotic Entertainment Photographer
Before Facebook and smart phones film was king. In 1996 professional photographers laughed at the cheap digital camera I started bringing into strip clubs. Five years later they weren't laughing anymore. This was the time to create magic. And thanks to so many topless club owner friends of mine, adult magazines I wrote for such as "Xtreme Magazine", top feature talent agencies such as Pure Talent, and so many adult entertainer friends of mine, we created a lot of magic. Which we will probably never see the likes of again. On my alphapro.com web site I claim to be the first to bring digital photography into strip clubs. Well, maybe someone else did, but I sure haven't heard about him. While I had a local club provide me with my own phone line to access the internet, free drinks on the house, and my own table just five feet from the club's main stage. We (my dancer and club manager friends and I) could shoot all the pictures we wanted from my digital camera, put them on my laptop and broadcast them all over the world through our Lost Angels chat. No one else was doing it. Those guys shooting film just didn't get it. While the dancers I knew did and my manager and owner friends running the clubs were very quick at grasping what this new technology could do for them. Those were incredible times back then. Which in the new world of post Covid 19, Facebook and the Smart Phone we are likely to never see again. Contributor Notes (986 / 2500) Jack Corbett wrote his first novel, "Death on the Wild Side" about the wild adult entertainment scene in the St. Louis Metro East where he spent a lot of time in the topless clubs preparing his material. Soon after its publication he started up his alphapro web site and took the plunge into digital photography while when it was in its infancy. He then started writing for adult magazines while branching out into professional photography to augment his articles. He is perhaps best known for his Xtreme Weapons articles for Xtreme Magazine, his coverage of major adult entertainment events, and his interviews of famous feature entertainers. By the time he bought his beach front condo in Thailand, he had written over 100 articles for four adult magazines while shooting over 100,000 pictures of adult entertainers and key adult industry events. His experiences on his condo committee while dealing with a Second World culture provided the inspiration for "Welcome to the Fun House".
Image and Video Forensics
Nowadays, images and videos have become the main modalities of information being exchanged in everyday life, and their pervasiveness has led the image forensics community to question their reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and security. Multimedia contents are generated in many different ways through the use of consumer electronics and high-quality digital imaging devices, such as smartphones, digital cameras, tablets, and wearable and IoT devices. The ever-increasing convenience of image acquisition has facilitated instant distribution and sharing of digital images on digital social platforms, determining a great amount of exchange data. Moreover, the pervasiveness of powerful image editing tools has allowed the manipulation of digital images for malicious or criminal ends, up to the creation of synthesized images and videos with the use of deep learning techniques.In response to these threats, the multimedia forensics community has produced major research efforts regarding the identification of the source and the detection of manipulation. In all cases (e.g., forensic investigations, fake news debunking, information warfare, and cyberattacks) where images and videos serve as critical evidence, forensic technologies that help to determine the origin, authenticity, and integrity of multimedia content can become essential tools.This book aims to collect a diverse and complementary set of articles that demonstrate new developments and applications in image and video forensics to tackle new and serious challenges to ensure media authenticity.
Meta Learning with Medical Imaging and Health Informatics Applications
Meta-Learning, or learning to learn, has become increasingly popular in recent years. Instead of building AI systems from scratch for each machine learning task, Meta-Learning constructs computational mechanisms to systematically and efficiently adapt to new tasks. The meta-learning paradigm has great potential to address deep neural networks' fundamental challenges such as intensive data requirement, computationally expensive training, and limited capacity for transfer among tasks. This book provides a concise summary of Meta-Learning theories and their diverse applications in medical imaging and health informatics. It covers the unifying theory of meta-learning and its popular variants such as model-agnostic learning, memory augmentation, prototypical networks, and learning to optimize. The book brings together thought leaders from both machine learning and health informatics fields to discuss the current state of Meta-Learning, its relevance to medical imaging and health informatics, and future directions.
Sculpting the Blender Way
Get started with the latest sculpting features in Blender 3D and learn key sculpting workflows such as Dynotopo, Voxel Remesher, QuadriFlow, and MultiresolutionKey FeaturesUse Blender's core sculpting workflows: basic sculpting, Dynotopo, Voxel Remesher, QuadriFlow, and MultiresolutionLearn how to use and customize Blender's sculpting brushes to create fantastic art effortlesslyExplore common techniques in Blender 3.0 for creating facial features, clothing, accessories, and moreBook DescriptionSculpting the Blender Way is a detailed step-by-step guide for creating digital art with the latest Blender 3D sculpting features. With over 400 reference images, 18 Sculpting in Action videos, and dozens of 3D sculpture example files, this book is an invaluable resource for traditional and digital sculptors looking to try their hand at sculpting in Blender. The first part of the book will teach you how to navigate Blender's user interface and familiarize yourself with the core workflows, as well as gain an understanding of how the sculpting features work, including basic sculpting, Dyntopo, the Voxel Remesher, QuadriFlow, and Multiresolution. You'll also learn about a wide range of brushes and all of the latest additions to the sculpting feature set, such as Face Sets, Mesh Filters, and the Cloth brush. The next chapters will show you how to customize these brushes and features to create fantastic 3D sculptures that you can share with the ever-growing Blender community. By the end of this book, you'll have gained a complete understanding of the core sculpting workflows and be able to use Blender to bring your digital characters to life.What you will learnConfigure your graphics tablet for use in 3D sculptingSet up Blender's user interface for sculptingUnderstand the core Blender sculpting workflowsFamiliarize yourself with Blender's basic sculpting brushesCustomize brushes for more advanced workflowsExplore high-resolution details with brush alphas and MultiresolutionTry out the all-new Cloth brushRender your finished artwork for and make it portfolio-readyWho this book is forThis book is for artists who want to get started with the exciting new sculpting features in Blender 3D. Whether you have experience using ZBrush or traditional sculpting, or are completely new to sculpting, this book will have something new for you to learn. Prior experience with Blender or other 3D software may be helpful but is not required. However, a graphics tablet from Wacom, XP-Pen, or Huion is highly recommended to be able to follow along the concepts and examples covered in the book.Table of ContentsExploring Blender's User Interface for SculptingOverview of Blender's Sculpting WorkflowsSculpting a Simple Character Head with Basic BrushesHow to Make a Base Mesh for a 3D SculptureLearning the Power of Subdivision and the Multiresolution WorkflowUsing Advanced Features and Customizing the Sculpting BrushesMaking EyeballsMaking Accessories and ClothingCreating Teeth, Eyebrows, and HairRendering Sculptures for your Portfolio
Using Computers
Industry veteran Raymond Nickerson provides an extensive introduction to the information technology revolution that is transforming industrial society. He focuses particularly on the study of person-computer interaction, noting how computers are affecting their users and society as a whole, and describes a variety of ways in which information technology is expected to develop in the forseeable future.Nickerson summarizes the development of information technology and discusses many of its applications - in farming, research, education and training, manufacturing, general management, retailing, defense, and elsewhere - that have already had a substantial impact on society. He reviews the human-factors research that has been done and is underway, with special attention to the physical and cognitive interface, including languages, conversational interactions, and the concepts of friendliness and usability.Raymond S. Nickerson is Senior Vice President of BBN Laboratories, a subsidiary of Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. A Bradford Book.
Machine Learning Methods for Signal, Image and Speech Processing
The signal processing (SP) landscape has been enriched by recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), yielding new tools for signal estimation, classification, prediction, and manipulation. Layered signal representations, nonlinear function approximation and nonlinear signal prediction are now feasible at very large scale in both dimensionality and data size. These are leading to significant performance gains in a variety of long-standing problem domains like speech and Image analysis. As well as providing the ability to construct new classes of nonlinear functions (e.g., fusion, nonlinear filtering). This book will help academics, researchers, developers, graduate and undergraduate students to comprehend complex SP data across a wide range of topical application areas such as social multimedia data collected from social media networks, medical imaging data, data from Covid tests etc. This book focuses on AI utilization in the speech, image, communications and yirtual reality domains.
Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements 2022 - Fourth Edition
Become an accomplished photo editor, image retoucher, or creative artist with this well-illustrated, easy-to-understand, and end-to-end guideKey Features: Updated to the latest version of Photoshop Elements 2022 with focused coverage of Adobe's latest AI technologyOrganize, search, and manage an ever-increasing number of images, videos, and multimedia using expert practicesFind solutions to a wide range of photographic and image-editing problemsBook Description: Managing thousands of images while producing perfectly edited results has now become a must-have skill for bloggers, influencers, all social media users, and photography enthusiasts.Photoshop Elements 2022 has all the right tools to help you manage your growing multimedia assets and significantly boost your creative output.This fourth edition is updated with Elements 2022's latest features, including Adobe's AI-powered tools that perfectly complement its entire creative workflow. Each chapter is designed to help you get the most from your image files in a simple, easy-to-follow way. You'll find out how to add significant visual improvements to your projects using brilliant AI-driven single-click edits or through more complex manual adjustments, all depending on your skill level and requirements. The book is packed with clear instructions to guide you effortlessly through the hundreds of processes, tools, and features in Photoshop Elements 2022. You'll cover everything from developing your organizational skills through to creating remarkable images using photos, text, graphics, downloadable content, animation, and a range of fantastic AI-driven features.By the end of this Photoshop Elements book, you'll have learned how to leverage the impressive tools available in Photoshop Elements 2022 with confidence.What You Will Learn: Identify the five parts of Elements and set up your computer, camera, and color monitor for best resultsImport, organize, and keep track of your imported media libraryAdd impressive visual effects to your work in secondsDevelop advanced picture retouching skillsDiscover how to add text and graphic elementsCultivate your understanding of multi-image and multi-layered editing techniquesDevelop illustrative skills using the many drawing and design toolsFind out how to troubleshoot your work when things don't come out the way you hoped they would Who this book is for: This Photoshop Elements book is for creative and enthusiastic photographers who have elementary experience in photo editing. If you are looking to organize your picture collection, make simple yet effective edits, and take control of post-processing requirements, you'll find this book useful.
Mediating Nature
Mediating Nature considers how technology acts as a mediating device in the construction and circulation of images that inform how we see and know nature. Scholarship in environmental communication has focused almost exclusively on verbal rather than visual rhetoric, and this book engages ecocritical and ecocompositional inquiry to shift focus onto the making of images.Contributors to this dynamic collection focus their efforts on the intersections of digital media and environmental/ecological thinking. Part of the book's larger argument is that analysis of mediations of nature must develop more critical tools of analysis toward the very mediating technologies that produce such media. That is, to truly understand mediations of nature, one needs to understand the creation and production of those mediations, right down to the algorithms, circuit boards, and power sources that drive mediating technologies. Ultimately, Mediating Nature contends that ecological literacy and environmental politics are inseparable from digital literacies and visual rhetorics. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the fields of Ecocriticism, Ecocomposition, Media Ecology, Visual Rehtoric, and Digital Literacy Studies.
Image and Video Compression for Multimedia Engineering
The latest edition provides a comprehensive foundation for image and video compression, featuring updated chapters and content, along with several new chapters and sections. It adheres to current international standards, including JPEG standard.
Simulation of Dynamic Systems with Matlab(r) and Simulink(r)
The book presents an integrated treatment of continuous simulation with all the background and essential prerequisites in one setting. It features updated chapters and two new sections on Black Swan and the Stochastic Information Packet (SIP) and Stochastic Library Units with Relationships Preserved (SLURP) Standard.
Adobe Animate 2022 for Creative Professionals - Second Edition
Step into the world of animation and go beyond the fundamentals of Adobe Animate to bring experiences to life with the help of expert-led contentKey Features: Produce rich motion graphics and interactive animations for multiple platformsExplore the key features and enhancements in the latest Adobe Animate releaseTake your Adobe Animate projects to the next level with creative workflows Book Description: Adobe Animate is platform-agnostic asset creation, motion design, animation, and interactivity software. Complete with explanations of essential concepts and step-by-step walkthroughs of practical examples, this book will guide you in using Adobe Animate to create immersive experiences by breaking through creative limitations across every medium.We begin by getting up to speed with all that you need to know about Adobe Animate. You'll learn how to get started with Animate as a creative platform and explore the features introduced in its most recent versions. The book will show you how to consume and produce media assets for multiple platforms through both the publish and export workflows. Following this, you'll explore advanced rigging techniques and discover how to create more dynamic animation with advanced depth and movement techniques. You'll also find out how to build projects such as games, virtual reality experiences, and apps for various platforms as the book demonstrates different ways to use Animate. Finally, it covers the different methods used to extend the software for various needs.By the end of this Adobe Animate book, you'll be able to produce a variety of media assets, motion graphic design materials, animated artifacts, and interactive content pieces for platforms such as HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, and mobile devices.What You Will Learn: Gain a solid understanding of Adobe Animate foundations and new featuresUnderstand the nuances associated with publishing and exporting rich media content to various platformsMake use of advanced layering and rigging techniques to create engaging motion contentCreate dynamic motion using the camera and variable layer depth techniquesDevelop web-based games, virtual reality experiences, and multiplatform mobile applicationsExtend Animate with extensions, application-level scripting, and the creation of custom integrated tutorialsWho this book is for: This book is for web, graphic, and motion design professionals with basic experience in animation who want to take their existing skills to the next level. A clear understanding of fundamental animation concepts will help you to get the most out of this book and produce impressive results.
Multimedia for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces
The book Multimedia for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces is to be the first resource to provide in-depth coverage on topical areas of multimedia computing (images, video, audio, speech, haptics, VR/AR, etc.) for accessible and inclusive human computer interfaces. Topics are grouped into thematic areas spanning the human senses: Vision, Hearing, Touch, as well as Multimodal applications. Each chapter is written by different multimedia researchers to provide complementary and multidisciplinary perspectives. Unlike other related books, which focus on guidelines for designing accessible interfaces, or are dated in their coverage of cutting edge multimedia technologies, Multimedia for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces takes an application-oriented approach to present a tour of how the field of multimedia is advancing access to human computer interfaces for individuals with disabilities.Under Theme 1 "Vision-based Technologies for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces", multimedia technologies to enhance access to interfaces through vision will be presented including: "A Framework for Gaze-contingent Interfaces", "Sign Language Recognition", "Fusion-based Image Enhancement and its Applications in Mobile Devices", and "Open-domain Textual Question Answering Systems". Under Theme 2 "Auditory Technologies for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces", multimedia technologies to enhance access to interfaces through hearing will be presented including: "Speech Recognition for Individuals with Voice Disorders" and "Socially Assistive Robots for Storytelling and Other Activities to Support Aging in Place". Under Theme 3 "Haptic Technologies for Accessible Human Computer Interfaces", multimedia technologies to enhance access to interfaces through haptics will be presented including: "Accessible Smart Coaching Technologies Inspired by Elderly Requisites" and "Haptic Mediators for Remote Interpersonal Communication". Under Theme 4 "Multimodal Technologies for AccessibleHuman Computer Interfaces", multimedia technologies to enhance access to interfaces through multiple modalities will be presented including: "Human-Machine Interfaces for Socially Connected Devices: From Smart Households to Smart Cities" and "Enhancing Situational Awareness and Kinesthetic Assistance for Clinicians via Augmented-Reality and Haptic Shared-Control Technologies".
Simulation for Cyber-Physical Systems Engineering
This comprehensive book examines a range of examples, prepared by a diverse group of academic and industry practitioners, which demonstrate how cloud-based simulation is being extensively used across many disciplines, including cyber-physical systems engineering. This book is a compendium of the state of the art in cloud-based simulation that instructors can use to inform the next generation. It highlights the underlying infrastructure, modeling paradigms, and simulation methodologies that can be brought to bear to develop the next generation of systems for a highly connected society. Such systems, aptly termed cyber-physical systems (CPS), are now widely used in e.g. transportation systems, smart grids, connected vehicles, industrial production systems, healthcare, education, and defense. Modeling and simulation (M&S), along with big data technologies, are at the forefront of complex systems engineering research. The disciplines of cloud-based simulation and CPS engineering are evolving at a rapid pace, but are not optimally supporting each other's advancement. This book brings together these two communities, which already serve multi-disciplinary applications. It provides an overview of the simulation technologies landscape, and of infrastructure pertaining to the use of cloud-based environments for CPS engineering. It covers the engineering, design, and application of cloud simulation technologies and infrastructures applicable for CPS engineering. The contributions share valuable lessons learned from developing real-time embedded and robotic systems deployed through cloud-based infrastructures for application in CPS engineering and IoT-enabled society. The coverage incorporates cloud-based M&S as a medium for facilitating CPS engineering and governance, and elaborates on available cloud-based M&S technologies and their impacts on specific aspects of CPS engineering.
Recent Trends in Computer-Aided Diagnostic Systems for Skin Diseases
Recent Trends in Computer-aided Diagnostic Systems for Skin Diseases: Theory, Implementation, and Analysis provides comprehensive coverage on the development of computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems employing image processing and machine learning tools for improved, uniform evaluation and diagnosis (avoiding subjective judgment) of skin disorders. The methods and tools are described in a general way so that these tools can be applied not only for skin diseases but also for a wide range of analogous problems in the domain of biomedical systems. Moreover, quantification of clinically relevant information that can associate the findings of physicians/experts is the most challenging task of any CAD system. This book gives all the details in a step-by-step form for different modules so that the readers can develop each of the modules like preprocessing, feature extraction/learning, disease classification, as well as an entire expert diagnosis system themselves for their own applications.
Intelligent Equipment, Robots, and Vehicles
The three-volume set CCIS 1467, CCIS 1468, and CCIS 1469 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2021, and of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Computing for Sustainable Energy and Environment, ICSEE 2021, held in Hangzhou, China, in October 2021. The 159 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 430 submissions.The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on: Medical Imaging and Analysis Using Intelligence Computing; Biomedical signal processing, imaging, visualization and surgical robotics; Computational method in taxonomy study and neural dynamics; Intelligent medical apparatus, clinical applications and intelligent design of biochips; Power and Energy Systems; Computational Intelligence in Utilization of Clean and Renewable Energy Resources, and Intelligent Modelling, Control and Supervision for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction; Intelligent Methods in Developing Electric Vehicles, Engines and Equipment; Intelligent Control Methods in Energy Infrastructure Development and Distributed Power Generation Systems; Intelligent Modeling, Simulation and Control of Power Electronics and Power Networks; Intelligent Techniques for Sustainable Energy and Green Built Environment, Water Treatment and Waste Management; Intelligent Robot and Simulation; Intelligent Data Processing, Analysis and Control in Complex Systems; Advanced Neural Network Theory and Algorithms; Advanced Computational Methods and Applications; Fuzzy, Neural, and Fuzzy-neuro Hybrids; Intelligent Modelling, Monitoring, and Control of Complex Nonlinear Systems; Intelligent manufacturing, autonomous systems, intelligent robotic systems; Computational Intelligence and Applications.
The New Fiction Technologies
The Internet has fundamentally altered our perceptions of narrative and its core components, including authorship, setting, characterization, reader reception and more. With new trends, tropes and conventions emerging at the speed of cyberspace, digital media like web comics, video games and fan fiction have become laboratories for experimentation on the boundaries of contemporary storytelling. While web comics, video games and fan fiction have received much scholarly study, this book focuses on the common ground they share, and how their processes, motivations and evolution may be more similar than we think. These media are all regarded as unique genres of digital fiction, and this book aims to bridge the gap between them. Understanding these phenomena as expressions of the same principles could be crucial to understanding the future of narrative storytelling.
Video Coding for Emerging Multimedia Services
This book presents an in-depth study of video coding and elucidates its applications. It targets to bring together latest developments and applications of video coding. This book can be beneficial for researchers, engineers, graduate and postgraduate students, experts in this field, and hopefully, also for people who hold interest in video coding. The book talks about error resilient algorithms for H.264/AVC, wavelet-based coding, concerning latest video coding standards, high efficiency video coding (HEVC), multiple description coding, developed compression techniques for multimedia applications, shape compensation, region of interest (ROI) coding, facial video coding, and hardware implementations. Also, it provides many helpful ideas for your own research and aids to bridge the gap between basic video coding techniques and practical multimedia applications. We hope this book will make for a good read and help in contributing to video coding.
Advances in Digital Multimedia Broadcasting: Volume I
This book presents various topics on digital multimedia broadcasting, written by numerous experts. It discusses some of the most important multimedia broadcasting techniques and their applications. Some of the researches in this book are case studies of techniques that have already been implemented and are helping human life in different ways. The aim for producing this book is to provide our readers with best of conceptual knowledge regarding broadcasting techniques. This book will help students, engineers in the field of networking as well as multimedia designing, and all those who are in the field of communication.
