Multi-Scale Information Composition: a New Medium for Freeform Art Curation in the Cloud
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Multi-Scale Information Composition: a New Medium for Freeform Art Curation in the Cloud Abstract We develop a new medium of freeform curation for digital Andrew M. Webb Andruid Kerne arts catalogues that integrates an infinite zoomable Interface Ecology Lab Interface Ecology Lab canvas, sketching, and spatial arrangement of rich Texas A&M University Texas A&M University catalogue elements. We characterize media of curation on College Station, Texas College Station, Texas two levels: the individual elements that are collected and [email protected] [email protected] how those elements are put together through assemblage. The elements of prior digital arts catalogues are assembled Rhema Linder Nic Lupfer using linear lists or grids. These assemblages do not scale Interface Ecology Lab Interface Ecology Lab well, making them agonizing to wade through when Texas A&M University Texas A&M University collections are large. Assemblage in our new medium College Station, Texas College Station, Texas supports curating across multiple scales, easing demands [email protected] [email protected] on visual attention, while opening conceptual horizons. We present our artifact, The Digital Curated, as an Yin Qu Kade Keith example of a digital arts catalogue represented in our new Interface Ecology Lab Interface Ecology Lab medium. We narrate ways in which one would explore this Texas A&M University Texas A&M University catalogue to make evident the new medium's benefits. College Station, Texas College Station, Texas [email protected] [email protected] Author Keywords information-based ideation, visual interfaces, creativity Matthew Carrasco support environments Interface Ecology Lab Texas A&M University ACM Classification Keywords College Station, Texas H.5.m [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., [email protected] HCI)]: Miscellaneous. Copyright is held by the author/owners. 1 Introduction thumbnails may ameliorate the problem, to some extent. In their best cases, the digital arts have worked to However, they don't scale very far, particularly since challenge and transform people's senses of technology's unless metadata for each entry is simultaneously potential, e.g. addressing what is possible, what is displayed, the presentation is uninformative. Linear appropriate, what is intimate, and what is scary. Yet, representations quickly fill a display. In short, the medium while boundaries have been blurred and hybrids assembled, of the elements resembles that of the print art catalogue. the form of the arts catalogue has hardly advanced. We The medium of assemblage is in many ways worse (see develop a new medium of curation that applies digital arts example, Figure1), because catalogues as print books and sciences methodologies to the digital arts catalogue. afford thumbing through. Thumbing through a printed The medium is freeform and referential, visual and catalog typically constitutes a rich, high fidelity experience semantic, scalable and expressive. Deeply structured because the media assets are nicely printed photographs, metadata, textual exegesis, rich imagery, video, and and the grain of the paper is tactile. In contrast, digital sketching are integrated with fluid interaction techniques. lists and grids can be experienced as arbitrary edifices, in which order, selection, and presentation read as machinic. Figure 1: The Museum of Media of Curation Modern Art has one of the better We consider the construction of media of curation. The digital catalogues. Yet, clicking Information Composition on the Medium:Installation link affordances and structures of a medium of curation We consider precursors to the present new medium of from an artwork by Bill Viola impact user experience. Our framework of analysis and curation. In spatial hypertext, elements were flexibly brings us here, to 20 of 270 synthesis address the representational characteristics of organized by users in 2D space, using features such as size results [13]. It looks pretty, but media of curation on two levels. First, we address the and weight [12, 14]. The elements were typically plain text form is trumping function. We medium of the individual elements that are collected. In scraps, which don't support re-finding or engage viscerally. can see neither the scope of the personal digital curation these are forms such as collection, nor its associationality. bookmarks and clipped Web content. At the same time, Information composition extended spatial hypertext by Further, the page lacks a label for we address the medium of assemblage, that is, how a emphasizing the visual [8]. Composition is an artistic Installation. As a result, the user medium enables these elements to be put together. For method. Composition literally means to assemble could forget what this collection example, on Pinterest people curate Pin elements into elements to form a coherent whole. Information represents, as I myself did, while board assemblages. composition added emphasis on images, overlap, and preparing the present research. translucence to spatial hypertext's flexible 2D medium of In prevailing digital art catalogues, each element consists assemblage. From the start, information composition of a few digital media assets and some descriptive constituted a medium of curation, in that elements metadata. Works for a particular artist are grouped typically included source URLs and so afforded re-finding. (linked) together. Facets, such as medium and genre, may The medium of information composition was found to be specified (or not). As soon as collections grow large, improve navigation while browsing a collection of web the user is often left to fend through long lists, with pages, as compared to linear text [9]. Composition was perhaps 10 items on a web page. These are agonizing to subsequently found to improve creativity during wade through. They are hardly usable. The use of grids of open-ended tasks through a field study of students [8] and 2 a laboratory study [10], and to contribute to phenomena We illustrate principles of multi-scale information of situated creative learning and distributed creative composition as a new medium [5] for freeform art curation cognition [7]. through an example curation, The Digital Curated [18] (see Figure2). In this exemplar, we curate media from Webb et al. extended information composition by museums, exhibitions, and scholarly literature, enhancing the medium of the elements of curation [19]. In synthesizing the topics of this extended abstract, itself. this form of information composition, the elements that users collect and assemble are rich bookmarks. A rich Visual and Semantic Elements of Curation bookmark is an image or text clipping, which a user The composition's elements of curation consist of rich chooses from within a web page, enriched by contextual bookmarks, textual annotations, and sketches. metadata, including the URL and title of the source Annotations are used in The Digital Curated to call out document. Rich bookmarks can contain additional themes, such as aesthetics, abstract, kinesthetic, structural metadata, such as a paper's journal title, embodied, digital, analog, rhythm, found object, and authors, references, and citations. Composition of rich assemblage (see Figure3). Each rich bookmark, in turn, bookmarks was found to support reflection and consists of a clipping (image, text, or video) enhanced interpretation during information-based ideation. with metadata. For example, in the area delimited by the labels embodied, kinesthetic, and touch, we see rich Figure 3: Annotations label New Medium of Curation: themes in the Digital Curated, bookmarks e.g. from works by Schiphorst [16], Rokeby such as embodied, kinesthetic, Multi-Scale Information Composition [6], and Candy and Edmunds [3]. The clipped images abstract, and rhythm. The present research extends prior work on information depict amalgams of gestures, everyday users, dancers, composition through the incorporation of sketching and a sculptures, wearables, and projections. A YouTube video zoomable user interface in a cloud-based interactive is embedded. It can be played, paused, and scrubbed system, which is freely available to users, called directly from within the curation, IdeaMACH^ E[´ 5]. Sketching adds freeform lines to the composition of image and text rich bookmarks. It can be Activating a rich bookmark presents its metadata (see thought of as a graphical form of annotation. Zoomable Figure4). For an ACM article, this metadata is quite rich; user interface techniques enable assembling information e.g., for soft(n) [16], we expand the reference list, and in on and across levels. This, in turn, enables conceptually turn, discover an article on second and third wave HCI and cognitively scaling the assemblage of a curation. methodology [1]. We see, through the metadata field for Incorporating curation tools into the cloud makes data this article's abstract, again without leaving the available anywhere, freeing the user from working on composition as curation, that this involves topics of particular computers. And more. Through IdeaMACH^ E's´ multiplicity, context, boundaries, experience and web browser plug-in, which processes drag and drop participation that arise as technology spreads throughout events, all of the content a user browses directly affords everyday cultures, while context and application types incorporation into the curation environment, which also broaden and intermix. Thus, we discover an interesting resides in the browser. conceptual juxtaposition