Conjoint probabilistic subband modeling

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-133).by Ashok Chhabedia Popat.Ph.D

Essential Learning Objectives For Graphic Designers, Post Secondary

Graphic designers today need to possess a wide variety of skill sets in order to adequately perform their duties. The skill sets include areas of study in Art, Design, Computer Technology, and Print Technology. My goal is to find what learning objectives in these areas and others are essential for a person to become a graphic designe

The use of computer graphics and virtual reality for visual impact assessments

Changes to the visual character of the landscape can become a key issue capable of influencing the outcome of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). These changes are commonly referred to as visual impact, and it is recognised, unlike many other aspects of EIAs, that Visual Impact Assessment (VIA) relies less upon measurement than upon experience and judgement (IEATLI, 1995). Currently, there are very few quantitative techniques for the evaluation of visibility and it is mostly assessed qualitatively since it is concerned with the human appreciation of the landscape (Zewe and Koglin, 1995 and Wherrett, 2002). The main problem with qualitative techniques in assessing visual impact is that they may lead to bias due to their inherent subjectivity, hence there is a need for a more structured and consistent approach towards VIA. To reduce the subjectivity currently associated with VIAs, new quantitative techniques have been developed and existing spatial and qualitative techniques have been improved upon. The techniques developed in this research use Computer Graphics (CG) technology, including the field of Virtual Reality (VR). A quantitative method to calculate percentage view change has been developed that allows the accurate determination of the variation in any view, caused by an existing or proposed development. The method uses three dimensional (3D) CG models of an environment and software that has been developed using a scripting language from a 3D modelling software package. A new method has also been developed to create Fields of Visual Influence (FVIs) using standard 3D modelling techniques. The method improves upon the accuracy and efficiency of existing FVI techniques. A novel VR simulation technique has also been developed that attempts to reduce the subjectivity associated with simulations, by integrating quantitative and spatial techniques

The emergence and organization of communicative signals through interaction

Social interaction is a key feature of our daily lives; humans simply cannot help but interact with one another. This interaction is special with regard to its quantity, but it also shows distinct qualities such as a special propensity to read each other’s intentions. One specific kind of interaction that humans engage in frequently and that exemplifies this particularly well is communication. By producing and interpreting signals in their specific context, interlocutors are able to communicate successfully, even about concepts for which they do not yet share conventional signs. Over repeated interaction, these novel signals can conventionalize, and eventually be culturally transmitted to new individuals. Through repeated episodes of transmission, entire communicative systems, such as languages, can emerge and evolve. In this thesis, I build on the framework above to study how human communicative signals can emerge and become organized via interaction. To this end, I present the results of three empirical studies each concerned with one specific question. The first study represents two artificial language experiments investigating the role of context for the successful emergence of novel communicative conventions, the second study focuses on the evolution of population-level cultural patterns, and the third study aims to relate existing communicative conventions about color terms in natural languages to novel conventions created within a smartphone application. The three studies show the usefulness of combining different methodological approaches – experimental laboratory studies, large-scale online experiments, and massive data sets of online behavior – to address questions at different levels of granularity. Taken together, the studies place individual interactions firmly at the base of both the emergence and organization of communicative signals. As a result of these interactions, entire systems of communication can emerge

Variable Format: Media Poetics and the Little Database

This dissertation explores the situation of twentieth-century art and literature becoming digital. Focusing on relatively small online collections, I argue for materially invested readings of works of print, sound, and cinema from within a new media context. With bibliographic attention to the avant-garde legacy of media specificity and the little magazine, I argue that the “films,” “readings,” “magazines,” and “books” indexed on a series of influential websites are marked by meaningful transformations that continue to shape the present through a dramatic reconfiguration of the past. I maintain that the significance of an online version of a work is not only transformed in each instance of use, but that these versions fundamentally change our understanding of each historical work in turn. Here, I offer the analogical coding of these platforms as “little databases” after the little magazines that served as the vehicle of modernism and the historical avant-garde. Like the study of the full run of a magazine, these databases require a bridge between close and distant reading. Rather than contradict each other as is often argued, in this instance a combined macro- and microscopic mode of analysis yields valuable information not readily available by either method in isolation. In both directions, the social networks and technical protocols of database culture inscribe the limits of potential readings. Bridging the material orientation of bibliographic study with the format theory of recent media scholarship, this work constructs a media poetics for reading analog works situated within the windows, consoles, and networks of the twenty-first century