Interactivity has been applied in various forms of artisic expression since the popularization of personal computers and other equipment. However, the ramifications of application of digital technology differ in artsitic and technological interpretation. Techno-centric ideas may have lost humanities, historically associated with the arts. This paper focuses on this issues from the artist's viewpoint. The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing distinguishes mechanical intelligence from human intelligence. There is also lesser-known version of the "Turing Test" which distinguishes gender through a series of questions displayed on a monitor. The Turing Test is usually charactized as method for identifying mechanical intelligence while the other version is ignored. This suggests another technological approach may have been overlooked. This paper explores the discrepancies between techno-centric and human-centric thinking.

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Fluid water is a suitable interface to use in performing flowing sound and music, since fluid and sound have common characteristics. For example, both media change shape over time and so they cannot be grasped. We use flowing water in a musical instrument installation. As water is frequently used in daily life as an essential resource among various fluid materials, such an instrument using water will be more friendly and become an amenity in our life. Recently there have been many installations and interactive artworks using water, but they do not exploit the ability to use water itself as a medium. This research aims to find practical uses of fluid media for musical instruments. In addition, we propose a method to sense the amount of water flow for enjoying music. For judgement of user's actions, we use the changes of the upper flow from the faucet and in the lower flow toward drains as well as the difference between these two values. This conflgulation leads to a novel concept of "Source and Drains," which is also applicable to traditional wind instruments. Based on this concept, we introduce installations that are named "Tangible Sound" #1 and #2 as novel musical instruments that use water as input media.

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This paper introduces an interactive multimodal artistic environment for communication between human and human-collaborative mobile robot, especially for musical performance. The developed system is a sort of active aids for the performance that allows users to get feedback for emotional activation in terms of sound, music, image and motion using a mobile robot with audio-visual input and output. In addition, the system provides a useful designing environment for musicians and composers not only to create music but also to coordinate media with the aid of MIDI Network. Two case studies on collaborative works of multimodal mobile robot with artists such as musician, coreographer and dancer are reported.

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"ANOMALOCARIS" is an interactive work, which represents virtual creature through visual and haptic sensation. Anomalocaris is a name of an animal that supposed to live during the Cambrian Era. Virtual anomalocaris is displayed on the HapticScreen. HapticScreen is a new configuration of a force feedback device. HapticScreen has an innovative mechanism that creates sense of touch on whole palm. The device deforms itself to present shapes of virtual object. Typical force feedback device uses a grip or thimble. On the other hand, users of HapticScreen can touch virtual object without wearing anything. HapticScreen employs a flexible screen made of cloth. Video image is projected on the flexible screen so that the participant can directly touch the image and feels its rigidity. Actuators are set under the screen, which make deformation. Original HapticScreen employs 36 linear actuators set at an array of 6 x 6. The screen deforms by the actuators. Each actuator has a force sensor. Hardness of the screen is variable by these actuators and sensors. We have developed a simplified and robust mechanism of HapticScreen for the exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center.

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"the happy medium" is interactive piece, which makes a new type communication through the computer networks. It has 3 axes motion platform with three legs controlled by air compressing cylinders, and also be controlled by a computer. The platform gets balance from participants on the platform by air pressure sensors. This system can externalize each balance of participants in the cyber space. We think this system could realize a kind of non-verbal communication using computer network. This system is a media installation to make a study of new communication construction. The aim of the study is to examine a structure of the communication.

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In Digital Fukuwarai, two video cameras capture the images of two participants' faces. The images are then decomposed into manyjigsaw-shaped pieces, which are presented in random arrangements on a screen. The pieces are dynamically updated from the real-time video images and are never still, even while both participants are moving them simultaneously. The participants compete to assemble the pieces into their respective faces. Changing one's facial expression and moving one's head is helpful in identifying the connectivity among the pieces. Alternatively, they can simply mix parts of their faces in collaboration.

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This paper discribes the art work "Visible Place" exhibited at the forth VRSJ annual conference. By analyzing the work, we try to grasp the relationship between art and technology.

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The cognitive rate offour levels of hardness was experimentally examined in ten normal volunteers with actual object as well as virtual object displayed by a glove-shaped force display, in order to discuss the role of visual, tactile and proprioceptive sensation in cognition of the hardness of an object. The experiment was carried out under five conditions as follows, 1 ) actual object; 2) actual object without tactile information about the object deformation; 3) actual object without proprioceptive information; 4) virtual object using a force display and 5) virtual object with visual information. The cognitive rates were 94, 82.8, 92.6, 83.6, 90.4%, respectively. The role of visual information was greater than proprioceptive information, however less than tactile information. A method to enhance the hardness display performance by alternating the visual information was proposed and its effectiveness was shown experimentally as the increase of the hardness cognition rate from 90.4 to 93.0%.

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Motor skills are difficult to be transferred from a trainer to a trainee, because it's not easy to describe his/her skills by words. VR techniques have a potential to make training more efficient. We propose a new mechanism of haptic interface mainly for transfer of delicate handwork skills , which is composed of a multi-joint link mechanism and a fingertip pressing device added on it. The link mechanism displays information of position and motion, and the fingertip pressing device displays force information of trainer's finger(s). Experimental results show that by using the fingertip pressing function, the trainee can perceive how strongly he/she should press the object.

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Parametric patches can express a smooth curved surface. However, to deform such a surface, we are required much the special technique and mathematical knowledge about parametric curves. These technique and knowledge are very far from deformation process in the real world and are not intuitive for us. Our goal is to deform a these-dimengional parametric surface by intuitive operations likely to "pushing" in the real world. For this purpose, we introduce the shape function defining a deformation shape and Bernstein inverse mapping function. Our system can deform a parametric surface by using a given shape function with a set of connected control points. We indicate effects and availability of proposed method to deform a finite surface by some experiments.

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