Character Development for Visual Storytelling in Traditional and Digital Media

This chapter is focused on text visualization and storytelling delivered in various literary styles. Discussion pertains storytelling by drawing, both with traditional techniques and digital storytelling for multimedia. Building characters for visual storytelling is discussed in theoretical and historical terms, followed by a description of the process of creating characters, their environment, writing a storyline, designing a storyboard and animatic. Projects offer practical examples of the visual storytelling production.

Sustainable Cinema

Beyond mere inspiration, a subset of artists have given the natural world a more influential role in the outcome of their work. By harnessing the physics, biology, and ecology of the natural environment as artistic tools, they have used natural phenomena as a co-creator in their art-making practices. This use of natural force impacting the actual form of an artwork can also extend into moving image arts. Sustainable Cinema is a series of kinetic public sculptures that merge natural power sources with early optical illusions to create a moving image. The variations within this series now cover seven distinct image generating systems, multiple animation narratives, and several alternative energy sources. This chapter reviews each sculpture in form, content and site and discusses how collectively they create a case study for a larger perspective on culture's relationship with the forces of nature and the materiality of the moving image.

Knowledge Visualization as a Teaching Tool

There are many applications and techniques where art makes the inherent component. Knowledge visualization is one of such instances, as a group of techniques for creating visual communication through images, graphics, and animations. Applications of visualization may include data-, information-, and knowledge visualization; scientific visualization; visual analytics; educational visualization, and many other ways to create sensory, often interactive representation of abstract data. This chapter introduces basic visualization concepts and then discusses several related issues including metaphors in visualization, bio-inspired applications and apps, knowledge visualization based on visual literacy, visualization aesthetics, and criticism of visualization, product design and product semantics. Further part of the chapter puts forward a proposition of introducing knowledge visualization and programming from the beginning of schooling, and then discusses teaching with knowledge visualization and visual problem solving.

Addressing Diverse College Students and Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences Through Online Virtual Laboratory Instruction

Habits in note-taking and media usage of the current generation of undergraduate college students are very different from prior generations. Current students are attracted to multi-dimensional teaching approaches which utilize visual learning aids and increased social interactions beyond the traditional lecture. Moreover, the diversity with respect to first generation college student/immigrant and returning learners is growing. This learning situation becomes further complicated in teaching interdisciplinary biopsychology courses, where students may not possess a complete set of foundational concepts. Thus, students require increased learning opportunities, sustained practice, as well as positive and corrective feedback to meet curricular proficiency expectations. At the same time, many students also have difficulty receiving, accepting, and implementing necessary feedback in order to succeed in their academic endeavors. To address this “feedback” issue, we have proposed a theoretical approach using “error-based” learning, for a biopsychology curriculum, to remedy this student learning problem through virtual laboratory instruction. Notably, this approach can be used in other integrative fields of learning.

Digitally Mediated Art Inspired by Technology Integration

Artistic practice is a uniquely personal thing. As such artistic activities and the products produced thereby often develop and unfold in highly idiosyncratic ways. In reading a comprehensive artistic biography one often becomes familiar with the who, what, where when, how and why of a creative individual's formative influences, education and the development of their art. Following that model, in this Chapter I am attempting to elucidate the progression of my artistic practice from pre- to post-digital activities. After more than 25 years of blending computer-drive practice with traditional media studio practice my artwork is truly digitally mediated and heavily influenced by the many possibilities offered by technology integration. Perhaps through showing this unique range of influences, activities and experiences it will be possible to more clearly illustrate how influences as diverse as a degree program in traditional painting, multiple projects in scientific illustration, and years spent in the practice and practical application of computer science have inspired me to move along a path from pencils to pixels and archeological sites to digital displays in museums internationally. It is my hope that this “personal history” can inspire others to see less obvious possibilities and move ahead into realms that might be difficult to predict at any point along potential the arc of one's artistic career.

Bridges Among Visualization, Aesthetics, and Technology

This chapter presents the motivation, background, implementation, and comparison of two interactive projects created by the same artist—Living Mandala: The Cosmic of Being1 and Through the Aleph: A Glimpse of the World in Real Time2. Living Mandala is an interactive graphics installation that combines real-time data, multi-cultural mandalas, scientific imagery, and cosmological and mythological symbols; this living graphical system is an exploration into uncharted territories of the human soul sculpted by our present time. Through the Aleph is a net art project offering an unprecedented visual and interactive experience where many places on Earth and in space can be seen simultaneously in an instant; with an unexpected approach to surveillance cameras and global networks, this meditative web project draws the connections between individuals and the global environment, Earth and outer space, eternity and time, and art and science. Built in an open source environment using live data and complex graphics, both projects visualize microcosm (the diversity of human civilizations and perceptions of life) and macrocosm (the unity of humanity and the ever-changing universe). Although one work is responsive to the physical environment while another to the virtual space, each project merges multiple layers of dynamic imagery and symbols related to cultural heritage, cosmology, science, technology, and nature in a globalized society through time and space in the present moment. 3 In spite of the differences in visual expressions and media platforms between the two projects, the quintessential force bridging visualization, aesthetics, and technology emerges from the artist's journey of being a humble student of Life.

The Four-Color Theorem and the Geometry of Nature

The four-color theorem stands at the intersection of Science and Art. The mathematical reasoning used to solve the theorem lead to many practical applications in mathematics, graph theory, and computer science. One aspect of the four-color theorem, which was seldom covered and relevant to the field of visual communication, is the actual effectiveness of the distinct 4 colors scheme chosen to define its mapping. This chapter briefly reviews the historical and scientific background of the theorem, puts in perspective contemporary scientific and technical data pertaining to the perception of color, and studies the theorem in a particular color scheme on a fluorite crystal, which was chosen because of its colorless appearance and the mathematically symmetrical nature of its structure.

Factors Influencing Learners' Cognitive and Affective Processes in Visual Learning

This chapter focuses on the cognitive and affective factors that may influence learners' performance in visual learning. Both cognitive and affective factors were identified with cognitive factors aiming to reduce cognitive load, making meaningful learning through schema connection and activation. The affective factors focused on meeting the psychological and self-fulfillment needs in visual learning. Discussions were made on the implications of the chapter in terms of supporting professionals and educators in their design of effective visual learning in education.

Communicating Spatial Relations Using Online Chat

The block construction exercises described in this chapter were used to investigate how spatial communication about the manipulation of objects in virtual, physical, and graphical space is communicated using online text. Where this study differs from previous research in the area is in its use of a qualitative methodology to investigate how these types of interactions are structured, communicated, and interpreted via text-based media. What emerges from the qualitative analysis is new insights over the previous quantitative investigations. More particularly, this mode of investigation has revealed the apparent superior efficacy of the fragmenting of three-dimensional spatial arrangements into two-dimensional planar representations using a simple ABC123 grid-wise coordinate system. The spatial terms used by participants in their textual communications are filtered according to Lefebvre's thirdspace and deictic spatial expressions.

Ideas and Issues Concerning the Learning Environment

This chapter reviews the essential features of present learning environment and puts forward some educational propositions that may be of service in schools on all levels. First, it examines the selected philosophical, psychological, and cognitive theories pertaining learning and teaching. Next, characteristics of current learning environment are discussed, and the focus is put on a need for introducing the integrative learning into the global K-20 schooling. Propositions comprise the iterative model of inducing new concepts and information into the curriculum; introduction of such universal languages as Latin, Music, and Mathematics; thinking and learning visually with the use of visualization techniques; teaching students to write codes in various languages for computer programs; instruction in serious and educational gaming; inclusion of virtual reality into school environment; and promoting an active learning through the use of social platforms for global exchange of thought. This instructional design model focuses on developing skills that correspond to the needs and expectations typical of present-day society.