This is a meeting on new multimedia technologies and their use by children. The meeting is concurrent to the ICMC97 and is co-organized by ICMC97, the European Children’s Television Center (ECTC) and the municipality of Agioi Anargiroi.

The meeting will include talks, demos, hands-on workshops, concerts, and a testing ground in the form of a multimedia playground.

Talks, demos and workshops will focus on how youngsters of age 12-15 can be trained in multimedia technologies being discussed and how they will benefit from such training.

Concurrently with the meeting, a multimedia playground will be running. It will include many of the technologies being discussed. The playground will be continuously visited by kids age 12-15. Participants in the meeting will have the opportunity to visit the playground and observe the kids work with the applications. Participants will also have the opportunity to play at the playground and become familiar with the technologies.

The participants will also attend concerts that will include works created by the technologies being presented at the meeting and by other innovative multimedia technologies. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss on a one to one basis with the creators of each work by visiting the booth of the creator at the ICMC97 exhibition hall.

The co-organizers of the meeting will be starting in the fall of 1997 a pilot municipal center for multimedia education. This center will aim to introduce all children interested, regardless of the training, to multimedia technologies and encourage them to use these technologies creatively. The co-organizers are interested in scheduling private meetings with the speakers of the Multimedia Education meeting , with the exhibitors of the Children’s Corner or with other exhibitors or participants of ICMC97 using multimedia technologies. The goal of these meetings is to discuss the possible inclusion of the applications being presented in the center being created and the possibility of the presenters returning to Greece to install their applications in the center and teach its use to the staff of the center and to children. If you are interested in such a possibility please contact the European Children’s Television Center at ectc@beryl.kapatel.gr

MORNING SESSION (10:00-12:00 Exhibition Hall, Pavilion 8, HELEXPO)

In the morning, the participants will have the chance to visit the installations of the children’s corner at the exhibition hall, and a number of other multimedia installations at the exhibition hall, play and get hands on experience with the applications being discussed in the seminar. They will visit the following installations:

-FREE TIME (see abstract of talk), Sonic Movement (see abstract of talk), Music of the Crowd (a system that can automatically compose a background music from moving images), Symbiosis (an installation for computer/synthesizer and coordinated slide projectors).

AFTERNOON SESSION (14:00-17:00, hall B, Pavilion 8, HELEXPO)

14:00-14:45 Don Buchla, Buchla and Associates, (USA): The Buchla Lighting Controllers

Lightning is a spatial interface the uses natural gestures (striking, waving, pointing, positioning) to control selected parameters in musical (and other responsive) systems. Without requiring extensive training, Lightning enables the realization of complex musical ideas in an immediate and expressive fashion.

Equipment: stereo sound system, NTSC video, video projector, and standard (yellow) lights

15:00-15:45 Wayne Siegel, DIEM, (Denmark): The DIEM Digital Dance System

The DIEM Digital Dance System is an interface for interactive dance which allows a dancer to control the music. Bending sensors mounted on the dancer's wrists, elbows, knees and ankles send data to a computer via a wireless transmitter. The system will be demonstrated and excerpts from Wayne Siegel's composition, Movement Study 1, will be presented.

Equipment: PowerMac. Mixer, sound system

16:00-17:00 Tom Demeyer, STEIM,(Netherlands): Image/ine

Image/ine is an interactive video performance program, controllable by midi and sound (apart from the computer keyboard). It allows the user to manipulate live video, quicktime, text, pictures; all in real time.

Equipment: PowerMac 85(6)00, min 32meg, 4mb video ram, video monitor or projector).

MORNING SESSION (10:00-13:00, hall C, Pavilion 8, HELEXPO)

10:00-11:00 Bruce Mitchell, Geoff Coco, Phillip Reay, Andy Schloss, Michael Lee, Paradigm Learning Systems and The Frontiers of Perception Institute, (USA): "FREE TIME Dynamic Multimedia Explorer"

FREE TIME" is a computer mediated interactive environment. It is designed to merge creativity and learning in children's minds. Children choose instruments made of sensors. Using these instruments, they play with music and light. In playing, they can gain capacity to change the environment as they see fit.

Equipment: ?????

11:00-12:00 Dimitris Daskopoulos, Dimitris Adam, Katerina Tzedaki, Athina Kafetsiou, IPSA (Greece): Creation and application of interactive sound/movement environments (sonic movement).

A talk on combining movement sensing technologies (Buchla, Big Eye) with real time, digital sound technologies (real-time cmix and tool-kit on SGI O2) and algorithmic composition programs (MAX and other C based programs) for the creation of interactive movement/sound environments. A discussion of the wide range of educational applications of these interactive programs (art education, aesthetic education, therapeutic and rehabilitation uses).

Equipment: their own (from their booth)

12:00-13:00 Joran Rudi, Norsk nettverk for Teknologi, Akustikk og Musikk (NoTAM),(Norway): DSP for Children

The lecture "DSP - for children" describes a new tutorial tool for music education, tailored particularly for children between 13 - 16 years old. The CD-ROM contains texts, computer programs for generating and shaping

sound, a computer music animation, and finally a demo where the users take a musical work apart, and in the process learns both how the programs on the CD-ROM actually work, and also something about composing with sound.

Equipment: A PC, Windows 95 with a soundcard, video projector, sound system

AFTERNOON SESSION (14:00-17:00, hall C, Pavilion 8, HELEXPO)

14:00-15:00 Insook Choi, NCSA, University of Illinois, (USA):Rolling Stone

In this demo/performance a VR interface and graphical music/synthesis notation system are used to control real-time sound synthesis and to control an analog circuit to generate musical signals. Notation objects are manipulated in real-time to control the sound generators. The VR performance environment is capable from a desktop display to a fully immersive display with 3D gesture control. The VR environment is displayed as a synchronized computer graphics accompaniment.

Equipment: 3 O2 computers, sound system, video projector

15:00-16:00 Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, UCSD, (USA and Poland): "Catch the image by a sound.”

Digital media open new opportunities for artists and educators in presenting the world as a synergetic whole. The work "Catch the Tiger!", the title of which may be paraphrased as "catch the image by a sound", will be used to discuss ways of teaching multimedia which may help develop this new awareness.

Equipment: VHS (PAL) player, video projector.

16:00-17:00 Leonello Tarabella, Computer Music Dept. of CNUCE/C.N.R. (Italy): “Wireless”.

Wireless is a multimedia performance executed live with gestural interfaces designed and carried out at the Computer Music Lab in Pisa, consisting of synthesized electro-acoustic music and computer generated graphics projected on a large video-screen. The composition wants to emphasize the fact that gesture of performers are detected by remote sensing devices, that is with no electrical or mechanical link with the computer system, but based on video captured image processing and infra-red technology.

Equipment: ????

Gautam Dasgupta (USA) and Veiko Keranen (Finland): Using “Mathematica” for teaching junior high school mathematics through sound and image.

10:00-12:00 talk (Hall C Pavilion 8),

14:00-17:00 hands-on workshop (Mathematica Booth, Exhibition Hall)

Symbolic computation in terms of algebraic variables is becoming popular for rapid prototyping. After an algorithmic idea is developed via interactive experimentation, numerical simulation of test cases can be carried out using higher level languages and subsequent presentation of graphic data can be easily achieved utilizing a large number of built-in functions. This data can also be used to control evolving musical passages or sonic features. The synergistic result of marrying a high-level symbolic computation environment with sound producing capabilities is an extremely powerful algorithmic environment for the exploration of sonic art.

Equipment: A PC with sound card, Windows 95

16:00-16:45 A visit to the installation “Wireless” (Leonello Tarabella, CNUCE)

 

 

Schedule of selected concerts (from the concert program of ICMC97), for the participants in the Multimedia Education meeting

 

>Works for computer and video

"These Roads", FICARRA Evelyn, BOHSE Suse, UK, 8 minutes

"Birdship", NILSSON Per Anders, SWEDEN, 6 minutes

"Galileo's First Glimpse", HARRIS Craig, USA, 7 minutes

“Concrete Net”, RUDI Joran, NORWAY, 12 minutes

“Lizzard Point”, BRUEMMER Ludger, GERMANY, 20 minutes

>Works for interactive sound/movement technologies

"Wireless”, TARABELLA Leonello, ITALY, 11 minutes

Part A: Lema I’ - Transcontinental graphics/music jam by G. Lewis, M. Puckette, R. Steiger.

Part B: “Lament for Jerusalem” By D. Oppenheim, “Between the Lines” by Chris Chaffe and Fred Malouf

“Angels and Ladders” by S. Horenstein

"Mathematica", CAMPION Edmund, USA, 10 minutes (Theta)

"Cruelties” WILLCOCK I., 17 minutes , UK, (SurPlus)

"Watershed III", REYNOLDS Roger, USA, 30 minutes (SurPlus with S. Schick soloist)

"Six Japanese Gardens", SAARIAHO Kaija, FINLAND, 9 minutes (S. Schick)

>Compositions/Choreographies for interactive movement/sound systems.

"Ping-Bang", SABURO Hirano, JAPAN, 10 minutes

"Movement Study I",SIEGEL Wayne, DENMARK, 12 minutes

"Memory of Absence", PINKSTON Russell, USA,12.00

"Sonic Movement I", TZEDAKI Katerina, ANTHIMIDOU Maria, GREECE, 9 minutes

"Sonic Movement II", ADAM D., SAKKA M. DASKOPOULOS D., GREECE, 9 minutes

"Vacum", KAMAROTOS Dimitris, GREECE, 9 minutes