Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
This article describes a prototype immersive musical instrument that expands the concepts of traditional musical elements and allows the integration of a spatial dimension using 3D music and sound objects into the musical environment by employing physical, visual, and sound immersion. From the prototype's evaluation results, the authors conclude that immersive musical instruments naturally give users a way to perform, compose, or improvise music (in real time) with a high degree of control. © 2007 IEEE.

Abstract
Digital technologies have become ostensibly ubiquitous and highly expressive over the last 15 years. Today, more people are exploring innovations in information and communications technology in global communication networks, as well as in media tools, to create new aesthetical representational forms of information. In this article, the author discusses and analyzes the concepts and definitions behind digital art and the technological issues related to artistic and cultural heritage applications. © 2007 IEEE.

Abstract
Digital personalities are virtual characters that possess situation dependent, personality revealing behaviors. This paper introduces concepts, current and prospective usages of personality-rich virtual characters, and focus on authoring issues for artists that want to create digital portrays of digital persons. Different categories of digital personalities are introduced, in particular virtual actors for CG-movies are explained in more detail because of the importance of understanding the functioning of virtual actors-other types of virtual personalities will often be build upon the faculties of virtual actors. It is proposed that an essential feature of the prospective authoring process of digital personalities is the support of generalization. This would allow for a "concrete authoring", that modifies and defines concrete cases. Thus, the author would be able to employ concrete cases as basis for generalizations. In this context, possible technologies that would support a concrete authoring process are presented, in particular Case-Based Reasoning.

Abstract
This paper presents Geospatial L-systems, a new extension of L-systems that incorporates geospatial awareness, and shows an application of this new tool in the expeditious modelling of urban environments, integrated with a modelling system with interoperable access to data sources. L-systems have been used in Computer Graphics for the modelling of plants, and in a few experiments to model urban environments. However, the lack of geospatial awareness is a limitation and in spite of some developments like open l-systems introduced the ability to communicate with the environment, there was a need for more flexibility. A new modelling system, named XL3D, generates virtual urban environments automatically from a XL3D document with a modelling specification. This modelling system accesses data sources in a interoperable way and the modelling processes are based on L-systems. The integration of geospatial L-systems with the XL3D modelling system has increased its potential for automation and improved the potential to generate virtual urban environments with a higher level of detail and visual fidelity, with a lower level of complexity of the modelling processes. These facts are shown in a case study where a virtual urban environment taken from an area in the Porto downtown is generated by this solution. © The Eurographics Association 2006.