Design guidelines for limiting and eliminating virtual reality-induced symptoms and effects at work: a comprehensive, factor-oriented review

Virtual reality (VR) can induce side effects known as virtual reality-induced symptoms and effects (VRISE). To address this concern, we identify a literature-based listing of these factors thought to influence VRISE with a focus on office work use. Using those, we recommend guidelines for VRISE amelioration intended for virtual environment creators and users. We identify five VRISE risks, focusing on short-term symptoms with their short-term effects. Three overall factor categories are considered: individual, hardware, and software. Over 90 factors may influence VRISE frequency and severity. We identify guidelines for each factor to help reduce VR side effects. To better reflect our confidence in those guidelines, we graded each with a level of evidence rating. Common factors occasionally influence different forms of VRISE. This can lead to confusion in the literature. General guidelines for using VR at work involve worker adaptation, such as limiting immersion times to between 20 and 30 min. These regimens involve taking regular breaks. Extra care is required for workers with special needs, neurodiversity, and gerontechnological concerns. In addition to following our guidelines, stakeholders should be aware that current head-mounted displays and virtual environments can continue to induce VRISE. While no single existing method fully alleviates VRISE, workers' health and safety must be monitored and safeguarded when VR is used at work

Emotional Responses to Immersive Media

The five experiments presented in this thesis aimed to investigate the relationship between subjective presence (the sense of 'being there' in a mediated environment) and subjective and physiological emotional responses. The investigation served as an initial step in the evaluation of emotion-based corroborative measures of presence. Two of the determinants of presence (Media Form and Media Content) were experimentally manipulated in order to create varying levels of presence and different types of subjective and physiological emotional responses. Varying levels of presence were created by manipulating Media Form characteristics in the context of a video display - specifically, the absence and presence of stereoscopic cues (Experiments I and 2) and small versus large eye-to-screen visual angles (Experiments 3 and 5). Media Content (video clips) with varying types of emotional impact was presented to participants via the video displays (Experiments I, 2, 3 and 5). The research showed that enhancements in Media Form increased both subjective presence and subjective arousal across all Content types. However, there was little evidence to show that Media Form manipulations affected physiological arousal, indicating limited utility for physiological measures of presence in this context. Media Content characteristics were investigated in more depth in Experiments 4 and 5. Differences in SUbjective presence between Media Contents shown to elicit different types of subjective emotion were investigated and correlations between subjective presence and subjective emotion were examined. The research indicated that the quality and intensity of emotional responses elicited by Media Content are potentially important determinants of subjective presence. The thesis concludes by suggesting that in further investigations of presence and emotion, which aim to identify corroborative measures of presence, it may be useful to analyse the relationship between different dimensions of presence (physical Space, Naturalness and Engagement) and different components of emotional responses (Subjective, Cognitive, Behavioural and Physiological)

Posture and visuomotor performance in children : the development of a novel measurement system

The aim of this thesis was to develop and test a platform which was capable of measuring the developmental trajectory of postural stability and fine motor control. Moreover, the thesis set out to explore the interdependence of these motor processes through synchronous measurement of postural and fine-motor control processes. The thesis introduces an objective, fine-motor measure sensitive enough to detect gender differences in children. This system was developed further to incorporate measures of postural sway, providing objective measures of postural performance that were capable of detecting age-dependant task-based manipulations of postural stability. Further development of the platform to incorporate low-cost consumer products allowed the cost barrier to large-scale measurement of posture to be addressed. This meant that accurate, synchronous and objective measurement of postural control and fine-motor control could take place outside of the laboratory environment. The developed system was deployed in schools and this allowed an investigation into the effect of seating on postural control. The results indicated that (a) seating attenuates the differences in postural control normally observed as a function of age; (b) postural control is modulated by task demands. Finally, the relationship between postural control and fine-motor control was investigated an interdependent functional relationship was found between manual control and postural stability development

Shadows and Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, the temporary home for the museum during construction for a major expansion project. Finally it explores Gehr’s two major solo exhibitions, Panoramas of the Moving Image: Mechanical Slides and Dissolving Views from Nineteenth-Century Magic Lantern Shows from 2007, and Carnival of Shadows from 2015. Descriptive analysis of each film or installation, inflected with methodologic devices of film history, art history, and philosophy, grounds discussion of the works within the surrounding context of the Museum

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 253 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in October 1975

Virtual reality as an artistic medium: A study on creative projects using contemporary head-mounted displays

There has been a lack of discussion concerning virtual reality as an expressive medium. It is essential to emphasise the aesthetic dimension of virtual reality in order to develop the medium as a powerful artistic mode of expression. This thesis examines how head-mounted display-based virtual reality can be used for artistic expression, focussing on the aesthetic pleasures of the medium. Pioneering first-generation VR artworks are reviewed through the scope of artistic exploration, and four key aesthetic pleasures in VR experience are proposed: immersion, agency, navigation, and transformation. The demonstration of VR aesthetics is investigated through the qualitative content analysis of four contemporary VR installations. The study reveals following findings: (1) the coherence of a virtual environment is more crucial than a realistic representation of the physical world in inducing a sense of immersion; (2) the degree of agency is inverse in proportion to the degree of authorship in VR experiences; (3) placing constraints on participants’ movements can bring about a strong emotional impact; and (4) the participant’s attitude and behaviour changes according to the given identity in a virtual environment. It is suggested that the capacity of virtual reality is not currently used to its full extent when it comes to artistic manifestation. It is therefore the responsibility of artists, developers, and researchers to establish the language of virtual reality as an artistic medium for the future production of VR experience

Radiant Sites: Projection and the Mobile Spectator in Contemporary Moving-Image Installations

This dissertation examines contemporary moving-image installations that use projected images to expand and elaborate upon the cinematic experience. It focuses on works by Douglas Gordon (b. 1966), Jim Campbell (b. 1956), and the partnered artists Janet Cardiff (b. 1957) and George Bures-Miller (b. 1960), all of whom have reconfigured the classical cinematic system of viewing since the 1990s. Through their works, I trace the term “expanded cinema” as a literal extension of projected light from the screen into the open gallery and beyond. I argue that the term “projection” – as thrown light, mental anticipation, and moving bodies – brings together cinema’s apparatus, text, and reception as a cohesive experience. These artists transport their light-based images to the gallery, exposing the projected image to mobile spectators, as well as to lighting conditions less conducive to a clear picture. However, the works I will discuss also maintain an explicit connection to the theatrical projection of narrative film. As these artists expand the exhibition spaces of cinema from theater to gallery, they also converge numerous cinematic formats, including celluloid film, magnetic videotape, digital video, still photography, and dynamic audio. I offer “projection” as a term which tethers the myriad trajectories of cinema’s expansion back to its apparatus, and even to the mobile spectator. Beyond the light phenomenon, I also draw from psychoanalytic theories of projection, especially relevant given its foundational contribution to film theory since the 1970s by authors such as Laura Mulvey, Christian Metz, and Mary Ann Doane. Furthermore, the “suture” theory of Kaja Silverman and others offers a link between classical Hollywood editing conventions and the spatial orientation of the gallery spectator. From these theorists, I ultimately offer a notion of the projecting viewer, a physically active version of the “embodied viewer” as conceived by phenomenological film theorist Vivian Sobchack. By observing their similarities to the common multiplex, art house, or even living rooms, these otherwise uprooted screens reveal in fleeting flickers traces of what we might intuitively call “the cinematic.

Canvassed and Delivered: Direct Selling at Keystone View Company, 1898-1910

This thesis addresses an under-studied aspect of the stereoscopic photograph industry: the business and sales practices employed by American stereograph publishers at the dawn of the twentieth century, as exemplified by Keystone View Company. Stereographic sales practices are an essential element in understanding stereoscopy’s ubiquity and place in American culture, but have been too frequently oversimplified or wholly overlooked in existing scholarship. Using concepts from business history, this thesis addresses the ways in which Keystone’s structure and scale allowed it to function as a national and international entity, and examines the role of communication in the sale of photographs. Keystone’s success hinged on the corporate communications between the company and its direct-selling sales agents, communication between sales agents and prospective consumers, and the communication between consumers and the company (both tacitly through purchase and directly through written praise of the products). Furthermore, this thesis considers the affective qualities and social claims of stereoscopy by proposing the role of aspiration as a motivating factor in the images’ consumption. Aspiration was woven into the company’s prescribed sales pitch, the character of the sales agents employed by Keystone, and in recommendations and testimonials from Keystone users. Consumers’ emotional response to stereography, and especially the way that stereography was sold, served as a significant influence in the sales process. Successful sales were Keystone’s motivation, and its business practices propelled the company’s success, especially through corporate communication and framing stereographs aspirationally. This thesis concludes that the role of business practices in stereoscopic production contributes to the understanding of the cultural phenomenon of stereoscopy, and permits a more complete sense of the market in which these photographs circulated

Canvassed and Delivered: Direct Selling at Keystone View Company, 1898-1910

This thesis addresses an under-studied aspect of the stereoscopic photograph industry: the business and sales practices employed by American stereograph publishers at the dawn of the twentieth century, as exemplified by Keystone View Company. Stereographic sales practices are an essential element in understanding stereoscopy’s ubiquity and place in American culture, but have been too frequently oversimplified or wholly overlooked in existing scholarship. Using concepts from business history, this thesis addresses the ways in which Keystone’s structure and scale allowed it to function as a national and international entity, and examines the role of communication in the sale of photographs. Keystone’s success hinged on the corporate communications between the company and its direct-selling sales agents, communication between sales agents and prospective consumers, and the communication between consumers and the company (both tacitly through purchase and directly through written praise of the products). Furthermore, this thesis considers the affective qualities and social claims of stereoscopy by proposing the role of aspiration as a motivating factor in the images’ consumption. Aspiration was woven into the company’s prescribed sales pitch, the character of the sales agents employed by Keystone, and in recommendations and testimonials from Keystone users. Consumers’ emotional response to stereography, and especially the way that stereography was sold, served as a significant influence in the sales process. Successful sales were Keystone’s motivation, and its business practices propelled the company’s success, especially through corporate communication and framing stereographs aspirationally. This thesis concludes that the role of business practices in stereoscopic production contributes to the understanding of the cultural phenomenon of stereoscopy, and permits a more complete sense of the market in which these photographs circulated

Naturalistic depth perception and binocular vision

Humans continuously move both their eyes to redirect their foveae to objects at new depths. To correctly execute these complex combinations of saccades, vergence eye movements and accommodation changes, the visual system makes use of multiple sources of depth information, including binocular disparity and defocus. Furthermore, during development, both fine-tuning of oculomotor control as well as correct eye growth are likely driven by complex interactions between eye movements, accommodation, and the distributions of defocus and depth information across the retina. I have employed photographs of natural scenes taken with a commercial plenoptic camera to examine depth perception while varying perspective, blur and binocular disparity. Using a gaze contingent display with these natural images, I have shown that disparity and peripheral blur interact to modify eye movements and facilitate binocular fusion. By decoupling visual feedback for each eye, I have found it possible to induces both conjugate and disconjugate changes in saccadic adaptation, which helps us understand to what degree the eyes can be individually controlled. To understand the aetiology of myopia, I have developed geometric models of emmetropic and myopic eye shape, from which I have derived psychophysically testable predictions about visual function. I have then tested the myopic against the emmetropic visual system and have found that some aspects of visual function decrease in the periphery at a faster rate in best-corrected myopic observers than in emmetropes. To study the effects of different depth cues on visual development, I have investigated accommodation response and sensitivity to blur in normal and myopic subjects. This body of work furthers our understanding of oculomotor control and 3D perception, has applied implications regarding discomfort in the use of virtual reality, and provides clinically relevant insights regarding the development of refractive error and potential approaches to prevent incorrect emmetropization