The proliferation of the Internet and the convergence of telecommunication, computing, compact disc, and media technologies have paved the infrastructure for new interactive music environments. It is essential for those in the field of new media to be aware of the ramifications of these developments. Furthermore, there has been a growing interest among new media developers to provide the tools necessary to allow an end-user to take an active role in the outcome of an interactive multimedia presentation. This concept introduces the notion of end-user as artist and collaborator. This concept introduces the notion of end-user as artist and collaborator. This thesis investigates the diverse applications and technologies that have emerged through cross-disciplinary collaboration and how they may be used to specify and design innovative musical environments.

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HMC Clinic with Matterport, Inc.

This case study examines some key factors that influence student engagement in a blended learning environment, in particular, when using interactive online resources to learn Carpentry theory. The participants were volunteers from two parallel classes of secondary school students working toward Level 1 Building Construction and Allied Trade Skills Certificate designed for secondary schools by the Building Construction Industry Training Organisation. The participant researcher was also the teacher for both classes. Data in this case study was collected by observation, reflective journal writing, student records, group discussion and analysis of student course results. It showed that the students responded positively to the blended classroom environment and the interactive online resources developed by the researcher for this study. The blended learning environment in the classroom increased student participation, aided classroom management, and more than halved the time needed for both classes to finish the Instrumental Drawing Unit Standard 7502 while the interactive online resources enhanced student engagement and achievement in other areas of their theory. Students responded positively to the automated formative feedback and were encouraged by knowing their results instantly; working to gain top results and correct answers rather than just completing an activity by filling in the blanks. A competitive element was introduced by integrating a timer into the resources. Challenges encountered included limited access to computers and the necessity for students to share computers, a network failure which made the online resources unavailable for an extended period, and storage problems for the online resources to allow them to be accessed from the online learning environment at school and at home. This study concluded that technology can enable teachers to enhance their teaching and enrich the student learning environment through the introduction of a variety of media. Students still depended on face-to-face teacher input but, in the blended classroom environment and the online environment, the role of the teacher changed noticeably to a role of facilitator.

In the Western tradition and beyond, there is a long history of art that has sought to describe and present Jesus of Nazareth from a historical and documentary perspective. The challenge I endeavor is to express the coexistence of the seen and unseen world in the present.As a Christian and an artist this project is an effort to see a marriage between my creative process and my spiritual ethos. My hope in this project is to engage a diverse audience and challenge its perspectives on the merging of faith and art. / Department of Art

The purpose of this study was to create two multimedia projects using computer software that combined a soundtrack with an interpretive visualization of music written for two pianos, and to document the technical procedures involved in the creation of the multimedia projects.This study was a collaborative undertaking between the author and the other member of PALENAI Piano Duo, Adrienne Shannon. A companion to the current dissertation has been submitted by Ms. Shannon, titled Black and White in Color: The Creative Aspects Involved in the Production of Two Computer Multimedia Projects Based on Music for Two Pianos.The goal of the multimedia projects was to produce visualizations of the musical elements and compositional devices found in the selected compositions. The two pieces selected for these visualizations were "Le Cygne", from Le Carnaval des Animaux by Camille Saint-Satins, and the Prologue from the Sonata for Two Pianos by Francis Poulenc. The SWAN project is visualized by means of realistic photography and the PROLOGUE project makes use of abstract imagery.This study examines the technical procedures in all stages of the projects, including the creation of the source photographs and the scanning procedures, the image editing and manipulation stage that was carried out in Adobe Photoshop, the composition of the project using Adobe Premiere, and the output to a computer-based presentation by compiling the project into a QuickTime movie.The projects in this study are intended to express the music by visual means as a creative endeavour, as an educational tool, and as a demonstration of the capabilities of two Adobe software programs within a Macintosh environment. / School of Music

The purpose of this study was to create two multimedia projects using computer software that combined a soundtrack with an interpretive visualization of music written for two pianos, and to document the creative factors involved in the creation of the multimedia projects.This study was a collaborative undertaking between the present writer and the other member of PALENAI Piano Duo, Joy Innis. A companion to the current dissertation has been submitted by Ms. Innis, titled Black and White in Color: The Technical Procedures Involved n the Production of Two Computer Multimedia Projects Based on Music for Two Pianos.The goal of the multimedia projects was to produce visualizations of the musical elements and compositional devices found in the selected compositions. The two pieces selected for these visualizations were "Le Cygne", from Le Carnaval des Animaux by Camille Saint-Satins, and the Prologue from the Sonate pour deux pianos by Francis Poulenc.The study begins with a traditional analysis of the works followed by a description of the images that were selected from the image pool for the visualizations (the image pool is described in detail in the companion dissertation); an explanation of the criteria for image enhancement and manipulations that were carried out in the Adobe Photoshop program; and a detailed outline of the composition stage of the projects using the Adobe Premiere program.The projects in this study are intended to express the music by visual means as a creative endeavour, as an educational tool, and as a demonstration of the capabilities of two Adobe software programs within a Macintosh environment. / School of Music

This thesis is divided into two parts. In part one, we study the k-median and the k-means clustering problems. We take a different approach than the traditional worst case analysis models. We show that by looking at certain well motivated stable instances, one can design much better approximation algorithms for these problems. Our algorithms achieve arbitrarily good approximation factors on stable instances, something which is provably hard on worst case instances. We also study a different model for clustering which introduces limited amount of interaction with the user. Such interactive models are very popular in the context of learning algorithms but their effectiveness for clustering is not well understood. We present promising theoretical and experimental results in this direction. The second part of the thesis studies the design of provably good learning algorithms which work under adversarial noise. One of the fundamental problems in this area is to understand the learnability of the class of disjunctions of Boolean variables. We design a learning algorithm which improves on the guarantees of the previously best known result for this problem. In addition, the techniques used seem fairly general and promising to be applicable to a wider class of problems. We also propose a new model for learning with queries. This model restricts the algorithms ability to only ask certain “local” queries. We motivate the need for the model and show that one can design efficient local query algorithms for a wide class of problems.