Maribeth J. Back

Design: the what of XFR: eXperiments in the future of reading

Step up to the joystick on the exhibit to the right. A cartoon image of a young boy is projected on the screen. Kids crowd in around you as you read about Henry and his world. (See Figure 1.) There is a world of cartoon images. Lines trail off to small drawings falling away as though seen through a fisheye. As you push the joystick, another image of Henry rolls into view along one of the lines, and a comic-book dialog bubble appears. The story Henry tells is of the things in his imagination and his everyday world. One image leads to the next and then to the next. Over to the left of Henry is a sort of work bench with a touch-screen workstation sitting on it. No pictures on the screen this time, just a title (“Harry the Ape”) and a long paragraph of text. The story is about the creatures that live in Harry’s fur. Sprinkled around A Glimpse of XFR

Method for generating rich sound environments using genetic or shaped algorithms

Small, high-quality soundfiles are algorithmically recombined and their behavior altered to create rich, non-looping sound environments. These environments consist of sound effects as well as musical tones; for example, the sound of a single water drop or a single ocean wave can be replicated and regenerated according to algorithmic rules to create a long-running non-looping sound effect. Sonic parameters such as pitch, start time, intensity, and apparent spatial location are given initial values which are then changed in realtime via genetic algorithms to generate new values. When applied in Web-based 3D environments (e.g., VRML, Java3D, etc.), the present invention dramatically reduces the necessity for downloading large soundfiles. The present invention may also be used in real-world systems to produce long-running, interactive, non-looping sound environments. Applications of the present invention include awareness systems, entertainment systems, real/virtual interplay, and long-term auditory monitoring and display.