LogBoy meets FilterGirl--a toolkit for multivariant movies

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 86-89).by Ryan George Evans.M.S

Some assembly required : cinematic knowledge-based reconstruction of structured video sequences

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-65).by David José Tamés.M.S

The moviemaker's workspace : towards a 3D environment for pre-visualization

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-76).by Scott Clark Higgins.M.S

Synthetic movies derived from multi-dimensional image sensors

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1989.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-152).by V. Michael Bove, Jr.Ph.D

The Space Re-Actor : walking a synthetic man through architectural space

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Leaf 85 blank.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-83).Spatial qualities in architectural design cannot be fully evaluated solely by observing geometrical constructs without reference to inhabitants placed inside. However, imagining what happens to those inhabitants and appreciating their movement is difficult even for trained architects. This thesis proposes a computational method for visualizing animated human reactions to physical conditions that are described in a synthetic architectural model. Its goal is to add a sense of place to the geometry, and augment the representation of its spatial quality for designers and audience. The proposed method introduces a walking scale figure in a geometric model. Through agent-based computation, it moves inside the model and displays various behaviors in reaction to spatial characteristics such as transparent surface, opaque surface, perforation and furniture. The figure is assigned a psychological profile with a different degree of sociability, and reacts to proximity and visibility of others in the same model. Today's advanced computational design tools can produce complex forms and sophisticated visualizations of light, materials and geometry. But they are not suitable for helping people to quickly study and understand a spatial design as it would be inhabited. The proposed method lays a foundation for developing a new kind of software that overcomes this shortcoming.by Taro Narahara.S.M

Movie / Cinema: Rearrangements of the Apparatus in Contemporary Movie Circulation

This thesis investigates how cinema’s specificities are defined in relation to technological developments. I propose that the most appropriate way to do this is by taking the whole cinematographic circuit into account – that is, the complete set of socio-technical operations that are involved in the medium, as remote as they might seem to be from actual cinematographic practices. I depart from the definition of circulation as a socio-technical continuum of the production, distribution, exhibition and evaluation of movies, explaining how these activities might be enacted in three different technological regimes: film, video and digital computation. Then, following an account of the early history of the pirate film society Cine Falcatrua (2003-2005), I show how the specificity of the medium is constituted and preserved throughout its technical progress. Acknowledging the limits of traditional film and screen studies to deal with these questions, I attempt to find an alternative research approach by engaging in practice-based investigation using curatorial strategies. By bringing together and analysing different film and art pieces in an exhibition entitled Denied Distances (2009), I propose a framework that allows an understanding of how media technology are defined in relation to one another, exposing how seemingly expanded practices such as installations and performances might be contained within conventional cinematographic apparatus. I conclude by suggesting that, in order to keep up with the ever-changing nature of the medium, the study of cinema would profit from engaging the extremes of scientific criticism and art practice

Because I am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy and Virtual World Aesthetics

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL? Through a qualitative research method mixing distribute aesthetics, digital art and media theories, the goal is to examine aesthetic exchange in the virtual: subjectivity and identity and their possible shifting patterns as reflected in avatar-artists. A theoretical and methodological emphasis from a media studies perspective is applied to digital media and networks, contributing to the reshaping of our epistemologies of these media, in contrast to the traditional emphasis on communicational aspects. Four case studies, discourse and text analysis, as well as interviews in-world and via email, plus observation while immersed in SL, are used in the collection of data, experiences, objects and narratives from avatars Eva and Franco Mattes, Gazira Babeli, Bryn Oh and China Tracy. The findings confirm the role that aesthetic exchange in virtual worlds has in the rearrangement of ideas and epistemologies on the virtual and networked self. This is reflected by the fact that the artists examined—whether in SL or AL—create and embody avatars from a liminal (ambiguous) modality of identity, subjectivity and interaction. Mythopoeia (narrative creation) and experiencing oneself as ‘another’ through multiplied identity and subjectivity are the outcomes of code performance and machinima (films created in-world). They constitute a modus operandi (syntax) in which episteme, techne and embodiment work in symbiosis with those of the machine, affected by the synthetic nature of code and liminality in SL. The combined perspective from media studies and distribute aesthetics proves to be an effective method for studying these subjects, contributing to the discussion of contemporary virtual worlds and art theories

Learning progression in secondary students' digital video production

Assessing learning progression in Media Education is an area of study which has been largely\ud neglected in the history of the subject, with very few longitudinal studies of how children\ud learn to become "media literate" over an extended period of time. This thesis is an analysis of\ud data over three years (constituted by the production of digital video work by a small group of\ud secondary school students) which attempts to offer a more extended account of this learning.\ud The thesis views the data through three concepts (or "lenses") which have been key to the\ud development of media education in the UK and abroad. These are Culture, Criticality and\ud Creativity, and the theoretical perspectives that the thesis should be viewed in the light of\ud include the work of Bourdieu, Vygotsky, Heidegger and Hegel.\ud The examination of the student production work carried out in the light of these three lenses\ud suggests that learning progression comes about because of a relationship between all three,\ud the key metaphorical idea put forward by the thesis that describes that relationship is the\ud dialectic of familiarity. This suggests that for media education at least, the learning process is\ud a dialectic one, in which students move from cultural and critical knowledge and experiences\ud that are familiar -or thetic - to ones that are unfamiliar, and hence antithetical. Over time this\ud antithetical knowledge becomes familiar and students synthesise together their popular\ud cultural and critical experiences with the critical experiences that they have in the media\ud classroom. This synthesis is driven by the creative act of production work, which brings\ud together the cultural and the critical, the familiar and unfamiliar.\ud It is this key metaphor then, that offers an account of learning progression in media\ud production, and the relationship of that process to creativity, criticality and popular culture

Place for video games : a theoretical and pedagogical framework for multiliteracies learning in English studies

Students are now involved in a vastly different textual landscape than many English scholars, one that relies on the “reading” and interpretation of multiple channels of simultaneous information. As a response to these new kinds of literate practices, my dissertation adds to the growing body of research on multimodal literacies, narratology in new media, and rhetoric through an examination of the place of video games in English teaching and research. I describe in this dissertation a hybridized theoretical basis for incorporating video games in English classrooms. This framework for textual analysis includes elements from narrative theory in literary study, rhetorical theory, and literacy theory, and when combined to account for the multiple modalities and complexities of gaming, can provide new insights about those theories and practices across all kinds of media, whether in written texts, films, or video games. In creating this framework, I hope to encourage students to view texts from a meta-level perspective, encompassing textual construction, use, and interpretation. In order to foster meta-level learning in an English course, I use specific theoretical frameworks from the fields of literary studies, narratology, film theory, aural theory, reader-response criticism, game studies, and multiliteracies theory to analyze a particular video game: World of Goo. These theoretical frameworks inform pedagogical practices used in the classroom for textual analysis of multiple media. Examining a video game from these perspectives, I use analytical methods from each, including close reading, explication, textual analysis, and individual elements of multiliteracies theory and pedagogy. In undertaking an in-depth analysis of World of Goo, I demonstrate the possibilities for classroom instruction with a complex blend of theories and pedagogies in English courses. This blend of theories and practices is meant to foster literacy learning across media, helping students develop metaknowledge of their own literate practices in multiple modes. Finally, I outline a design for a multiliteracies course that would allow English scholars to use video games along with other texts to interrogate texts as systems of information. In doing so, students can hopefully view and transform systems in their own lives as audiences, citizens, and workers

Realistic visualisation of cultural heritage objects

This research investigation used digital photography in a hemispherical dome, enabling a set of 64 photographic images of an object to be captured in perfect pixel register, with each image illuminated from a different direction. This representation turns out to be much richer than a single 2D image, because it contains information at each point about both the 3D shape of the surface (gradient and local curvature) and the directionality of reflectance (gloss and specularity). Thereby it enables not only interactive visualisation through viewer software, giving the illusion of 3D, but also the reconstruction of an actual 3D surface and highly realistic rendering of a wide range of materials. The following seven outcomes of the research are claimed as novel and therefore as representing contributions to knowledge in the field: A method for determining the geometry of an illumination dome; An adaptive method for finding surface normals by bounded regression; Generating 3D surfaces from photometric stereo; Relationship between surface normals and specular angles; Modelling surface specularity by a modified Lorentzian function; Determining the optimal wavelengths of colour laser scanners; Characterising colour devices by synthetic reflectance spectra