Towards a Critical Understanding of Music, Emotion and Self-Identity

The article begins by outlining a dominant conception of these relations in sociologically informed analysis of music, which sees music primarily as a positive resource for active self-making. My argument is that this conception rests on a problematic notion of the self and also on an overly optimistic understanding of music, which implicitly sees music as highly independent of negative social and historical processes. I then attempt to construct a) a more adequately critical conception of personal identity in modern societies; and b) a more balanced appraisal of music-society relations. I suggest two ways in which relations between self, music and society may not always be quite so positive or as healthy as the dominant conception suggests: 1) Music is now bound up with the incorporation of authenticity and creativity into capitalism, and with intensified consumption habits. 2) Emotional self-realisation through music is now linked to status competition. Interviews are analysed

Autoscopic Space: Re-thinking the Limits Between Self and Self-Image

open access journalAn experimental installation project of my own making, the diplorasis, aims to re-think the human sensorium by considering the bodily perceptual boundaries that are induced by visual media processes. Within the installation space the participant will, unexpectedly, encounter stereoscopic projections of himself/herself from previous instances and multiple perspectives. The photographic cameras within the device that are attached to sensors have been programmed to capture different views of the moving participant, and then to digitally split (and in some cases manipulate) the images before sending them to screens that project the image for the participant’s view. These stereoscopic images induce an illusionistic three-dimensional projection of the subject. The reduplicated, projected, and three-dimensionally simulated self in the diplorasis begins to trigger a questioning of how the body is understood within visual media. During the visual experience one has a solipsistic perception of oneself. The participant views himself both from outside and inside his body. The out-of-body experience of observing oneself from the multiple points of view of another (as a simulated object) is somehow countered to the embodied operation of the physical binocular eyes. The uncanny closeness of a neutral image “out there” (e.g. of a house) evoked by the original stereoscopes is now subverted, as the digitization of the stereoscope allows for unexpected self projections of the viewer. The diplorasis brings to the fore a particular reading of a sensory body that veers between, on the one hand, a projected image generated by electronic information, and on the other, the embodied response to this projected spectral other. As electronic processes are changing the perceptual and cognitive limits of the body, how do these shift our understanding of inside/outside

Dynamic Composite Data Physicalization Using Wheeled Micro-Robots

This paper introduces dynamic composite physicalizations, a new class of physical visualizations that use collections of self-propelled objects to represent data. Dynamic composite physicalizations can be used both to give physical form to well-known interactive visualization techniques, and to explore new visualizations and interaction paradigms. We first propose a design space characterizing composite physicalizations based on previous work in the fields of Information Visualization and Human Computer Interaction. We illustrate dynamic composite physicalizations in two scenarios demonstrating potential benefits for collaboration and decision making, as well as new opportunities for physical interaction. We then describe our implementation using wheeled micro-robots capable of locating themselves and sensing user input, before discussing limitations and opportunities for future work

Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Classical Theory: Affinities Rather than Divergences

Conceptual Metaphor Theory makes some strong claims against so-called Classical Theory which spans the accounts of metaphors from Aristotle to Davidson. Most of these theories, because of their traditional literal-metaphorical distinction, fail to take into account the phenomenon of conceptual metaphor. I argue that the underlying mechanism for explaining metaphor bears some striking resemblances among all of these theories. A mapping between two structures is always expressed. Conceptual Metaphor Theory insists, however, that the literal-metaphorical distinction of Classical Theories is empirically wrong. I claim that this criticism is based rather on terminological decisions than on empirical issues. Conceptual Metaphor Theory focusses primarily on conventional metaphors and struggles to extend its mechanism to novel metaphors, whereas Classical Theories focus on novel metaphors and struggle to extend their mechanisms to conventional metaphors. Since all of these theories study metaphors from the synchronic point of view, they are unable to take into account any semantic change. A diachronic perspective is what we need here, one which would allow us to explain the role of metaphor in semantic change and the development of language in general

Interplayable surface: an exploration on augmented GUI that co-exists with physical environments

The main goal of this experiment-driven thesis is to envision and design an interactive GUI1(graphic user interface) that coexists with physical surfaces. Based on an understanding of user behavioral patterns for getting access to information in these types of situations, experimentations and prototypes are implemented and tested with participants. In particular, to observe the user behavioral pattern for augmented GUI within certain environments and circumstances, this thesis presents several types of participatory experimentations with physical GUIs. The experiment participants were encouraged to participate in re-creates and reorganizes physical GUI, relating to their own situational specificity or informational tendencies they have. Based on extracted insights from research and experiments, in the last phase, I propose two thesis models about how interactive GUI applies to a physical environment: simulation mock-ups for user scenarios of augmented GUI and interactive GUI surface combined with projection mapping. Related to people’s behavioral patterns on augmented GUI, the thesis models will show several types of information structures and interactions. Also, in framing the overall data structure and wireframe for the thesis product model, informative affordance corresponding with users’ situational specificity2 is considered as a crucial direction point, actualized on an artifact in a perceptible way. Through experimentally prototyping a thesis model, consequently, I would like to expand the speculative usability interactive GUI will feature in the near future

Delaying dispreferred responses in English: From a Japanese perspective

This article employs conversation analysis to explore the interpenetration of grammar and preference organization in English conversation in comparison with a previous study for Japanese. Whereas varying the word order of major syntactic elements is a vital grammatical resource in Japanese for accomplishing the potentially universal task of delaying dispreferred responses to a range of first actions, it is found to have limited utility in English. A search for alternative operations and devices that conversationalists deploy for this objective in English points to several grammatical constructions that can be tailored to maximize the delay of dispreferred responses. These include the fronting of relatively mobile, syntactically ?non-obligatory? elements of clause structure and the employment of various copular constructions. A close interdependence is observed between the rudimentary grammatical resources available in the two languages and the types of operations that are respectively enlisted for the implementation of the organization of preference

MVGrasp:Real-time multi-view 3D object grasping in highly cluttered environments

Nowadays robots play an increasingly important role in our daily life. In human-centered environments, robots often encounter piles of objects, packed items, or isolated objects. Therefore, a robot must be able to grasp and manipulate different objects in various situations to help humans with daily tasks. In this paper, we propose a multi-view deep learning approach to handle robust object grasping in human-centric domains. In particular, our approach takes a point cloud of an arbitrary object as an input, and then, generates orthographic views of the given object. The obtained views are finally used to estimate pixel-wise grasp synthesis for each object. We train the model end-to-end using a synthetic object grasp dataset and test it on both simulation and real-world data without any further fine-tuning. To evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we performed extensive sets of experiments in four everyday scenarios, including isolated objects, packed items, pile of objects, and highly cluttered scenes. Experimental results show that our approach performed very well in all simulation and real-robot scenarios. More specifically, the proposed approach outperforms previous state-of-the-art approaches and achieves a success rate of in all simulated and real scenarios, except for the pile of objects which is 82%. Additionally, our method demonstrated reliable closed-loop grasping of novel objects in a variety of scene configurations. The video of our experiments can be found here: https://youtu.be/c-4lzjbF7fY

Virtual reality as an educational tool in interior architecture

Ankara : The Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design and the Institute of Fine Arts of Bilkent Univ., 1997.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1997.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis discusses the use of virtual reality technology as an educational tool in interior architectural design. As a result of this discussion, it is proposed that virtual reality can be of use in aiding three-dimensional design and visualization, and may speed up the design process. It may also be of help in getting the designers/students more involved in their design projects. Virtual reality can enhance the capacity of designers to design in three dimensions. The virtual reality environment used in designing should be capable of aiding both the design and the presentation process. The tradeoffs of the technology, newly emerging trends and future directions in virtual reality are discussed.Aktaş, OrkunM.S