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Tag: 2004

Attempting to build the Semantic Web: The Ontological Approach

Erhardt Graeff

Award

This paper won the 2007 RIT Institute Writing Contest in Technical Writing.

Full Text

graeff-2004-semanticweb

Introduction

When father of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee first envisioned the World Wide Web, he imagined it as “an information space, with the goal that it should be useful not only for human-human communication, but also that machines would be able to participate and help.” (1998, Introduction, para. 1) However, what amassed was a mess of poorly formed HTML documents boasting animated GIFs and information displayed without regard for meaning or context. What Berners-Lee was wishing for, and continues to wish for, is a better World Wide Web—a Semantic Web. This ultimate realization of the Internet’s potential is something that Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are still working on. With millions of users and billions of documents, the web is constantly growing and evolving. The W3C hopes that it evolves into the Semantic Web—and that hope lies in something called an ontology. (Clark, 2002)

A Modest Faux Pas

Erhardt Graeff

Script

graeff-2004-modestfauxpas

Synopsis

Mark is a high-schooler plagued by strange dreams and urges. He thinks he might be a cannibal. He “comes out” to his friends Kerry, Tim, and Phil, who have very strong and very different reactions to the news. In the end, Mark finds the strength to be his true self despite Tim’s outrage.

Virtual Reality as a Gateway for Cultural Immersion

Erhardt Graeff

2004 Summer Internship at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Helped Prof Miho Aoki construct a 3D Japanese home model for cultural instruction in a virtual reality CAVE.

Overview

Using initial designs and textures developed by Prof Aoki, I constructed a 3D Japanese home model using Maya. All models were exported using Maya’s own exporting tools for VRML, as well as the conversion plug-in PolyTrans for OpenGL C code. The VRML files were associated with a configuration file that would allow them to be viewed in 3-d using the VRScape virtual reality software engine. The C files, after code editing, were displayed via OpenGL through the VRJuggler virtual reality framework. The Japanese home was designed to be used in an immersive environment by a small class of students, specifically within the CAVE-based system at the Discovery Lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Summary Paper

graeff-2004-arscpaper

The Model in Action

I, Archive

Erhardt Graeff

Artist’s Statement

graeff-2004-iarchivetheorypaper

Synopsis

The purpose of this performance art piece is to illustrate a few archival concepts, the barriers and nuances of archive, specifically. The basis for the experiment is in the simple scenario of “Question & Answer.” I, playing the archive, put myself in the position of interviewee three times. Each time I am asked questions. The first two times, the questions are identical. The third time they are altered ever so slightly. For this to occur, of course, the questions must be scripted which raises a few philosophical questions. Even more questions are raised when users of the archive are privy to an example of someone else’s method of interaction with the archive. And then, how do the users react/interact when they are witness to a previous session via a pre-recording as well as a concurrent video example via a live recording from only a few moments earlier.