To a behavioural Design, 
an other perspective for the 3D perspective of image synthesis 
to be immerse in new virtual worlds 
and to settle in its proper life.

by Patrick Saint-Jean, CREACI at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, CRI at the University Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris, France.


Summary

On the one hand, the evaluation of the results of a study relating the 2D expression on paper media of the 3D realisation of a fiction scenario, undertaken by a French and Japanese population, and on the other hand, the pupils or students evolution in situation of apprenticeship in view to use the artistic creation for industrial purposes or educational purposes in the technique, invites us at analyse the current situation where the traditional representation methods or presentation did not suffice more and where the new technologies fascinate but sufficiently frighten for escaping or avoiding the passage to the act that implies sometimes a restructuration but especially new methods of work.
Observing the imminence of the professional change, we pose the problem of the teaching, of the objectives and risks of the numerical image and tempt of evaluating solutions for the current and the future moment.


Introduction

 To century of the planetary and spatial communications, the electronics has opened new ways, and has pushed us to a more specific thought on the ergonomy of the human communication (communication human-machine but equally between humans via the machines), for the general public as well as the professionals with relationships that one and the other can have between they by the educational factor that they imply.

The television and the revolution of the media

The photography, the cinema, the television and the trips have shaken the world of Gutenberg, several centuries old (1451), where the printed document supporting the speech, the memory and the communication by the illustrated text, creates habits of reading, of writing and of action developed around of the paper document. The increase of the information taken in account, has provoked the publishing of documents superficial or simplified for the general public, or very dense or overloaded for specialists. That is often the case for industrial drawings where the leaf of paper, insufficient, is replaced by a large file relating the different components.
But it remains true problems of communication on the one hand between specialists of professions or of different know-how, and on the other hand between a specialist and a non specialist that have to know the work for speaking and doing making, to integrate specialities in more general projects leading to the realisation and to the production. Such is the case of the designer (stylistician) that is working with the engineer and the man of marketing without, as for much, to be the specialist of these two last domaines. It is the same for the great yards (construction, engineering, spatial, cinema, and others) where all professions have to be taken separately and together in the definition of the notebook of contraintes and of costs, as well as in the idea and the conception, and until the production.
The teaching seeks to face this situation with a very generalized or specialized program in the face of a general public population of all source or pre-specialised. But the how communicate between specialities or between a speciality and an external person to this speciality without that the time of communication is spent for explain the containing more than the content, stays a true problem.
If the book, the newspaper, the magazine and the paper document are adapted to the reading, the four decades old new world of the animated image and the audio-visual (perhaps the world of Mc Luhan), where the street and the television upset the habits, provoke exchanges, incite both together to mixes and to the identification of cultures, and favours the communication by the image commented, proposing thus the understanding by the observation, the look, the trip, the reporting, the realisation of a work or of self-even, with or through others.
The numerical image, the multimedia, and the virtual reality bring the solutions ; and the computer system becomes the unimedia ideal where undertake necessary passages for the expression and to the co-ordination of these different points of view : progressive passage and "continuous" of the objective to the subjective, the quantitative to the qualitative, the simple to the complex, the rigidity to the suppleness, an aesthetics to an other, an ethic to an other, a behavior to an other.

The digital and the revolution of the multimedia

The parallel evolution of the computer and of the computer systems, from the centre of calculation to the personal computer well equipped, has made to discover or to emerge a new world : this one of the numerical Virtual, the central or the peripheral memory (electronics, magnetic, magneto-optic, or optical), props of the coded number (not only passive data) allowing the logical and arithmetical calculations as the visualisations on the screen or the printings, provoking the automatisms, the conversationalism, the programmation and the interactivity, the immersion in the visual environment, the movements and gestures and even the multi-sensorial perceptions.
The intellectual can not therefore be contented by the writing, by the reading and by the traditional and ancestral speech, since the fact that on the one hand the users have a need increasingly great (time, quantity and quality) for a better understanding, for a better showing and demonstration, and on the other hand the audio-visual, the hypertext, the numerical multimedia and hypermedia can allow of rendering better account, by the text, the image, by the sound and the movement, of the messages that we want to communicate to a maximum of persons (and non only to initiate), and especially of problems, always more complex, than we try to approach, to understand and to solve. Whole this changes deeply our acquired, in our methods of understanding and our modes of expression, that integrate increasingly components, and consequently are changing our own mental.
To the duality concrete-abstract putting in before what is perceptible by our senses and conceptualisable by our spirit - having elsewhere provoked the social split technicians-intellectuals -, the numerical puts in obviousness the importance of the Virtual linked to the simulation, to the imaginary, to the inductive in more of the deductive. And the projection to be thought it and acted, on the support numerical and logistics, re-establishs the balance concrete-abstract, whole as the balance educational sciences-letters allowing to insure the research and the development by the experimentation in workshops of the concrete (workshop of the traditional artist, technical laboratory where are treaties by the action and the perception of objectivated entities as real), in workshops of the Virtual (spaces of numerical information, programmable central memory visualised on the interactive screen or peripheral memories of the computer, where are stocked and treated all what the coding and the symbolism render potential, not necessary possibly real but sensitively possible then virtual), and in workshops of the concept (library, table of the writer and the seeker where one processes the idea and the concept). But the workshop of the Virtual puts increasingly easily in the workshop of the concrete and on the table of the writer and favors the projections of same and physical order non-mystic metaphysical and why not spiritual. The numerical Virtual becomes all simply a common place. Then why not to exploit it fully in the education and the professional, without for as much to eliminate neither the diversity neither the reality of the concrete by a modelization simplified told "easier", and the abstract by a manipulation in great number of the containers of the concept more or less independently of its contents. Indeed the Virtual is only a mental image stimulation of the concrete and the abstract often richer that the synthetic and the artificial. But it becomes gradually and massively a generator of images simulating the concrete and the traditional abstract and equally a inconceivable or impracticable generator of new images to a given moment but being able to project the future and consequently influencing strongly the achievable and the conceivable. The numerical Virtual is not therefore only the potential field expression but equally fields of influence that necessary is well for us to know to better use them.

The realisation 3D on support 2D of the child to the adult


SigKids, Siggraph 94

 A study on the role of the graphic representation in the modelization of the physical space, by a comparative approach (2) of the system of representation initial with constants and variable study in the resolution of figurative problems has attracted our attention on the suitable followings :

Evoked reasons of such differences are : These reasons are expressed with regard to Japan as world producer of technology. While the teaching in France has to face a lack of teachers on the subject adapted to the new know-how, and especially to a lack of need to make. The opposition intellectual-manual of the 70s and 80s years and the depreciation of the manual by lack of practice, has made the France a country that is no longer considered by the financiers as a country producer of technique. In fact, that can change, because, if the world of the concrete becomes "too slow" to the apprenticeship of the technique to seduce arriving generations, the numerical Virtual can second it efficiently. More intellectual countries can then virtualise this that more "poor people countries" can concretise massively manner less expensive, provided that the passage of one to the other is facilitated, meanwhile that a better world dividing up of work become more human and balanced.
We find indeed these results in the practice of the teaching computer arts in applied arts (slice of 20 age to 25 years old) where the one observes in more than : To 15 th century all scientists could join together because numerous bit and connoisseurs of whole for the period ; to 19 th century the impossibility to meet becomes permanent due to specialisation ; currently the computer and telecommunications tempt again to favor the meeting. The risk of non communication would be great if the tool data-processing, common place to the artist and to the technician, did not come to compensate this double incompetence : the technician to present to the artist a too loaded plan (multiple lines coded in multicouche and quotations in great number) to make emerge a form with its clean liberty degrees to the creation (problem of the deformed form including a mechanism), and the artist to present to the technician of forms too complex or too skimped to allow the emergence of a mechanical functionality, electrical or electronic (problem of the Aborigine to five unmarketable paws for integrating in a form).
The correspondence 2D and 3D (with texture, transparency, lighting and interactive manipulation) on simple even computer system, with layers or masks allow or have to allow to visualise the useful information (image 2D or 3D, quotation, quantification) to process technical problems and artistic problems together in the Design.
If the new method teaching is not a pedagogical problem but a financial or more a decisional problem to solve problems of equipment, training of masters accustomed to others methods, and recovery of the delay accumulated by report to the other countries, it becomes more problematical when it becomes professional because, as for the mechanics, the equipment has to be industrial at least in these principles. Method gold of work are not again stabilised, high equipment fault level, financing, training of the personnel and especially organisation of the chains and workshops of realisation and production of products finished. In effect if the computer tool integrates in parallel to methods traditional, for needs of maquettage, memorisation of models for purposes of adjustment, modification or archival, in replacement more rapid and less expensive of classic methods, it will be necessary to wait or to provoke a plug of conscience greater of the computer entity with all its specificities, to integrate it totally all along the chain of information in the course of the idea, the simulation, the production, the installation on site, the utilisation or the analysis of the consumption by the client and the recycling.

 The Market : a driving risk of intelligence and reflection to do not lack to advance without destroying

Soon, analysing industry of leisure's (games, culture, information, tourism, hobby) to Japan, K. William, the Division company, specialist of the virtual reality estimated, in October 1994, in its statement to the first conference on the potential reality to Geneva, financed by Swiss banks :

This under way establishment market to USA arrives in Europe and in France inescapably and increase exponentialy. It puts problems, just as for the language technique, that the container (words, objects) transports the content (the language, the style, the aesthetics, the culture). Games in are already premises. And if there is no manufacture (or adaptation), utilisation and personalised local development, consumers and the street will impregnate strongly with the other cultures, burying cultures and the local patrimony sources of intellectual wealth (knowledge, and know-how) and social intelligence (reflection from several points of view). That is true for Europe is true for all country (in and between) and the market need specific things for specific people to stay rich : one thing for everybody make profit immediatly but destroy the market (sale at a loss by no-respect of the specific taste, less differentiated creations and events by uniform taste).
On the other hand, the new technology welcome, even if they are required by leisure's, has very rapidly to be followed by a recovery before consumption, in the idea and the realisation of tools and polyagogic instruments, it is to tell capable to form at the same time to several disciplines in facilitating passages and comparisons. Then the representations and presentations of concepts and realisations potentials can be expressed by the numerical image (or more globally in the numerical Virtual) gradually but especially according to different modes adapted to bodies of trades specialised.
Evolving thus, gradually of the artistic sketch to the plan of production, in pass by technical diagrams, the organigram and notebook of marketing and manufacture costs, plans of realisation models and small series, simulations of manufacture, utilisation and recycling, specialised trade bodies create a generalist chain of virtual production where all intervention and modification remain possible. The whole organised from a basis on data, the interactive multimedia representation is then rendered adaptive and commutative.
The notion of "polyagogy" was introduced by Iannis Xénakis to baptise the first interactive systems for the visual and musical composition, that we had conceived on minicomputer, between years 1974 to 78, at the Centre of Study of Mathematical and Automatic Musical (UPIC: Polyagogic Computing Unit of the CEMAMU). The system put in before the possibility to learn together the applied mathematics, the drawing, the music, the architecture (the matter, materials, structures and functions) and the plasticity (of forms and colours) of the micro composition of the sound and the image to the macro composition of the musical and visual work.

 To the market of the leisure attaches the market of the education, the culture and the information in pass by educate leisure's (15 to 20% of education in the game to stimulate the research of excitation by the suspense, the rapid action, the reflex) and the education by the game (15 to 20% of game in the education to stimulate the research of information by the experience, the reflection, the strategy, the immediate performance being secondary but stimulant to exceed self-even, or simply reactivate the training), so on the plan concerned numerical products that instruments allowing their utilisation's, surety to new needs and provoking new arts and trades.

A Cybernetics by interactive and feedback process integrating the Virtual

 The economic cycle evolving the trilogy to produce-consumer-recycle, it is necessary to anticipate from the idea the totality of the process and in to insure its optimum development. If the production in great quantity of same products, seems to excel actually, its impact on the unemployment, on the cultural wealth impoverishment linked to the variety, to the difference from points of view, to the personality and to the originality, provokes a contradiction, that has to evolve to the conceivable, the programmable, the personnalisable by the integration of the Virtual in its process :
1 - Presentation of concepts (ideas, objectives, storyboard, sketches, scenario).
2 - Plans of organisation, idea, realisation and marketing (design), utilisation of elements 2D of libraries multimedia of the trade or personnel's providing element meadow synthesised, or virtualised (digitalisation of the sound, the image, the volume and the film with processing meadow for its utilisation in the numerical Virtual).
3 - Meadow-model concrete (if need is), for the appreciation of the concrete or the realisation of virtualisable objects (2D or 3D or animation).
4 - Virtual representation by plans and visualisations of the realisation of the model-object and the model-environment in the numerical Virtual (utilisation and modelling or deconstruction-construction elements of libraries multimedia of the trade or personnel's, integration of the video-numerical environments).
5 - Simulation by visualisation: presentation of concepts, representation the model-alone object or in the model-environment (placement in situation, animation).
6 - Interactive simulation : manipulation of the model-object in the model-environment (staging in the Virtual).
7 - Putting in virtual live with interactive simulation in immersion : to live with the model-object in the model-environment, worlding and sound-waving for the telepresense of the work in system, (passage of the state of observer to the state of actor, traveller, explorer, scientist in and by the virtual reality and the virtual worlds), ergonomy of the manufacture and the utilisation, "ergogenology" (research and study of sources of work linked to the manufacture or to the utilisation of the objects), setting for manufacture and removing for maintenance, repair and recycling.
8 - Feedback to 1, 2 and 4 for modification.
9 - Concrete model (if need be).
10 - Plans of execution.
11 - Concretisation for identification and authentification by the realisation in small series.
12 - Tests with feedback to 1, 2 and 4 if necessary.
13 - Manufacture in great series.
14 - Marketing with visual communication.
15 - Maintenance of the consumption (information, advertisment, service after sale).
16 - Reorientation and feedback to 13.
with in parallel feedback :
17 - Analysis of the consumption for return in 1 for purposes of modification or idea of new products.
18 - Analysis of the Design, realisation and manufacture tools and feedback to 1 to make evolve methods.
19 - Analysis and interactive training by the simulation to strengthen sensory-motive and conceptual abilities.

Remark on the cybernetics process:

The constraint of the art and the art of the constraint