Gestural patterns: a new method of printed textile design using motion capture technology

The aim of this research is to develop a new method, Hybrid Printing System (HPS) to explore digital craft methods to create surface patterns for printed textile design. This novel method of creating ‘handcrafted’ prints is a result of the integration of two technologies such as motion-capture (MOCAP) and digital textile printing (DTP). The research towards such an innovation required a current, historical, contextual and experimental study of use of motion capture in Art &Design. The research contextualises the hand and its relationship to digital crafting methods in printed textile design, the digital medium and the process of audience participation in printed textile design to create a new conceptual framework balanced in practice and theory. The practical research then develops three new methods of motion capture such as, motion tracing, motion sensing and motion tracking to generate gestural motifs and gestural patterns. This thesis and the accompanying set of experimental work demonstrates that HPS culminates in developing new aesthetics through a new mode of creation in a new medium, which will impact the user, the designer and the product as a part of the cyclical process. HPS is an advancement of printed textile design, centred in active participation of its audience at the generative stage of design. This results in a shifting role of a designer and subverts the current model of printed textile design practice. HPS is a democratic design process where the participants design for themselves, have their own voice, which induces a sense of community, togetherness and harmony in the creative process

Intonaspacio : comprehensive study on the conception and design of digital musical instruments : interaction between space and musical gesture

Site-specific art understands that the place where the artwork is presented cannot be excluded from the artwork itself. The completion of the work is only achieved when the artwork and place intersect. Acoustically, sound presents a natural relation with place. The perception of sound is the result of place modulation on its spectral content, likewise perception of place is dependent on the sound content of that place. Even so, the number of sound artworks where place has a primary role is still very reduced. We thus purpose to create a tool to compose inherently place-specific sounds. Inherently because the sound is the result of the interaction between place and performer. Place because is the concept that is closer to human perception and of the idea of intimacy. Along this thesis we suggest that this interaction can be mediated by a digital musical instrument - Intonaspacio, that allows the performer to compose place-specific sounds and control it. In the rst part we describe the process of construction and design of Intonaspacio - how to access the sound present in the place, what gestures to measure, what sensors to use and where to place them, what mapping to design in order to compose place-speci c sound. We start by suggesting two di erent mappings to combine place and sound, where we look at di erent approaches on how to excite the structural sound of the place, i.e., the resonant frequencies. The rst one, uses a process where the performer can record a sample of sound ambiance and reproduce it, creating a feedback loop that excites at each iteration the resonances of the room. The second approach suggest a method where the input sound is analyzed and an ensemble of the frequencies of the place with the highest amplitudes is extracted. These are mapped to control several parameters of sound e ects. To evaluate Intonaspacio we conducted an experiment with participants who played the instrument during several trial sessions. The analysis of this experiment led us to propose a third mapping that combines the previous mappings. The second part of the thesis intends to create the conditions to give longevity to Intonaspacio. Starting from the premise that a musical instrument to be classi ed as such needs to have a dedicated instrumental technique and repertoire. These two conditions were achieved first, by suggesting a gestural vocabulary of the idiomatic gestures of Intonaspacio based on direct observation of the most repeated gestures of the participants of our experiment. Second, by collaborating with two composers whom wrote two pieces for Intonaspacio.A arte situada é uma disciplina artística tradicionalmente ligada a Instalação que pretende criar obras que mantêm uma relação directa com o espaço onde são apresentadas. A obra de arte não pode assim ser separada desse mesmo espaço sem perder o significado inicial. O som pelas suas características físicas reflecte naturalmente o espaço onde foi emitido, isto é, a percepção que temos de um som resulta da combinação do som directo com as reflecções do mesmo no espaço (cujo tempo e amplitude est~ao directamente relacionados com a arquitectura do espaço). Nesta lógica a arte sonora seria aquela que mais directamente procuraria compôr som situado. No entanto, o espaço é raramente utilizado como fen omeno criativo intencional. Nesse sentido, o trabalho aqui apresentado propõem-se a investigar a possibiliade de criar sons situados. O termo Espaço está muitas vezes associado a algo de dimensões vastas e ilimitadas. Assim sendo e na óptica da arte situada, onde h a uma necessidade de criar uma relação, parece-nos que lugar é um termo mais adequado para enquadrar o nosso trabalho de investigação. O lugar, para além de representar um espaço onde se podem estabelecer relações de intimidade (proximidade), apresenta dimensões que são moldáveis consoante a percepcção e o corpo humano. Ou seja, o Homem ao deslocar-se no lugar vai ao mesmo tempo de nindo as fronteiras desse mesmo lugar. Esta visão do lugar aparece no final do século dezanove quando a filosofia começa a orientar o pensamento para uma visão mais direccionada para o Homem e para a percepcção humana. O lugar passa então a representar algo que e estabelecido na acção e pela percepcção humana, onde e possível estabelecer relações de intimidade, ao contrário dos não-lugares (sítios mais ou menos descaracterizados onde as pessoas estão só de passagem). Re-adaptámos por isso a nossa questão inicial não só para realçar esta ideia de lugar mas também para reflectir uma bi-direccionalidade perceptiva que é fulcral para a arte situada - como criar e controlar sons inerentemente localizados? Inerentemente porque para existir de facto uma interacção entre lugar e obra de arte sonora são necessárias duas condições: por um lado o som possa provocar uma resposta do lugar, e por outro, o lugar possa modificar a nossa percepcção dele mesmo. A existência de uma relação interactiva abre espaço a um novo ponto que não tinhámos considerado anteriormente e que acrescentámos a nossa nova questão, o controlo. Propomos como possível reposta a esta questão a construção de um instrumento musical digital, o Intonaspacio, que servir a de mediador desta interacção e que possibilitará ao performer a criação e o controlo de sons localizados. Primeiro poque o instrumento musical possibilita o aumento das capacidades humanas, através da extensão do corpo humano (tal como um garfo extende a nossa mão, por exemplo). Segundo, porque o instrumento musical digital pelas suas características, nomeadamente pela separação entre o sistema de controlo e o sistema de geração de som abre novas possibilidades sonoras antes excluídas por limitações mecâncias ou humanas. Podemos por isso visionar um acesso mais alargado a novas dimensões espaciais e temporais. Esta tese está dividida em duas partes, na primeira parte descrevemos a construção do Intonaspacio, e na segunda estabelecemos as bases para permitir a sua longevidade. A primeira parte começa por investigar formas de acesso ao som do lugar, composto pelo conjunto dos sons ambiente e dos sons estruturais do lugar (ressonâncias próprias resultantes da arquitectura). Pensamos que uma das possíveis formas de compôr sons localizados e precisamente através da possibilidade de poder ter os sons ambiente a gerar e a amplificar os sons estruturais. Surgem então duas novas questões de natureza técnica: Como integrar o som ambiente na obra sonora em tempo-real? Como permitir que estes excitem a resposta do espaço? Para as responder desenhámos dois mapeamentos diferentes. Um primeiro em que o performer pode gravar pequenos trechos de som ambiente que são emitidos e re-gravados criando um ciclo de feedback que excita as ressonâncias do lugar. Um segundo método onde se faz uma análise espectral ao som captado e se extrai um conjunto de frequências cujas amplitudes são as mais elevadas. Estas são posteriormente utilizadas para controlar parâmetros de vários efeitos sonoros. Colocámos ainda no instrumento um conjunto de sensores diferentes para captar o gesto do performer. Estes estão localizados em diferentes areas do esqueleto do instrumento de modo a permitir areas sensíveis maiores e consequentemente um maior n umero de graus de liberdade ao performer. Neste momento o Intonaspacio permite extrair cerca de 17 características diferentes, agrupadas em três secções - orientação, impacto e distância. Estas podem ser utilizadas para modelar o som gerado pelo instrumento através dos diferentes mapeamentos. Ambas as propostas de mapeamento foram avaliadas por um conjunto de pessoas durante um teste de utilização do Intonaspacio. Os resultados deste permitiram-nos chegar a uma terceira sugestão de mapeamento onde combinamos características de ambas as propostas anteriores. No terceiro mapeamento mantém-se a análise ao som captado pelo instrumento mas a informação recolhida e usada como material sonoro de um algoritmo de síntese aditiva. A segunda parte da tese parte de uma premissa estabelecida durante o trabalho realizado nesta tese. Um instrumento musical deve possuir uma técnica instrumental própria e um repertório dedicado para que seja considerado enquanto tal. Neste sentido e com base na observação directa dos gestos mais comuns entre participantes do nosso estudo, propusémos um vocabulário gestual dos gestos idiomáticos do Intonaspacio, ou seja, dos gestos que dependem exclusivamente da forma do próprio instrumento e da localização dos sensores na estrutura do instrumento (zonas sensíveis) e são independentes do mapeamento. Colaborámos ainda com dois compositores que escreveram duas peças musicais para o Intonaspacio. O Intonaspacio revelou ser um instrumento complexo e expressivo que possibilita aos performers incluir o lugar enquanto parâmetro criativo, no entanto apresenta ainda alguns problemas de controlo. No primeiro mapeamento, embora a integração do lugar seja sentida como mais directa e apresentando resultados sonoros mais interessantes (de acordo com os participantes do estudo), a sensação de controlo é muito baixa. Já no segundo mapeamento, embora tenha um controlo mais fácil, a presença do lugar é muito subtil e pouco perceptível. Esperamos que o terceiro mapeamento venha contribuir para solucionar este problema e aumentar o interesse no instrumento, principalmente por parte dos compositores com quem colaborámos e iremos colaborar no futuro

Violins, venues and vortexes : interrogating pre-reflective relationality in orchestral work : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management at Massey University, Manawatū Campus, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis explores the social structures of organising through an analysis of pre-reflective relationality in orchestral performance across three exemplary settings. These are: the opening stanza of a performance by the orchestra in which I play; a highly regarded performance by a well-known orchestra and conductor; and a concert performed under the shadow of COVID-19. Within these contexts, the player’s relationship with instrument and score, the role of the conductor, relations between conductor and player, and the player’s relations with audience, artifact and colleague are discussed. The study draws on autoethnography and the descriptive phenomenological method of Giorgi (2012). This framework allows work practices that are specialized, tacit, and entrenched to be interrogated through the theoretical lens of Merleau-Ponty’s (1968) late ontology as represented by the constructs of reversibility, écart, and Flesh. The research contributes to organisational knowledge on three dimensions. The contribution to theory is made through the interrogation of the pre-reflective relational bonds in symphony orchestras, first between individuals and artifacts, and then between individuals and colleagues, which shape the inter-collegial ‘between space’ (Ladkin, 2013) where the organizing of performance – the music-making itself – happens. The contribution to method is made in the exploration of specialized personal experience for research purposes through Giorgi’s framework and Merleau-Ponty’s constructs, while the contribution to practice builds on this foundation by using Merleau-Ponty’s ideas to acknowledge the inanimate alongside the human and so offer a fresh starting point for the understanding of organizational relationality. This approach also allows orchestral performance to emerge as a primordially interwoven, inherently reversible meshwork of relational connectivity harnessed in pursuit of a collective purpose. As organizations look beyond COVID-19 to a world where the virtual and hybrid must be accommodated alongside the longstanding and traditional, holistic approaches such as the one offered here will resonate with researchers and managers alike as they come to terms with relational structures and organizational contexts transformed by the combined effects of pandemic-related disruption and technological change

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Tools for expressive gesture recognition and mapping in rehearsal and performance

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-101).As human movement is an incredibly rich mode of communication and expression, performance artists working with digital media often use performers' movement and gestures to control and shape that digital media as part of a theatrical, choreographic, or musical performance. In my own work, I have found that strong, semantically-meaningful mappings between gesture and sound or visuals are necessary to create compelling performance interactions. However, the existing systems for developing mappings between incoming data streams and output media have extremely low-level concepts of "gesture." The actual programming process focuses on low-level sensor data, such as the voltage values of a particular sensor, which limits the user in his or her thinking process, requires users to have significant programming experience, and loses the expressive, meaningful, and metaphor-rich content of the movement. To remedy these difficulties, I have created a new framework and development environment for gestural control of media in rehearsal and performance, allowing users to create clear and intuitive mappings in a simple and flexible manner by using high-level descriptions of gestures and of gestural qualities. This approach, the Gestural Media Framework, recognizes continuous gesture and translates Laban Effort Notation into the realm of technological gesture analysis, allowing for the abstraction and encapsulation of sensor data into movement descriptions. As part of the evaluation of this system, I choreographed four performance pieces that use this system throughout the performance and rehearsal process to map dancers' movements to manipulation of sound and visual elements. This work has been supported by the MIT Media Laboratory.by Elena Naomi Jessop.S.M

Inside the conductor's jacket : analysis, interpretation and musical synthesis of expressive gesture

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-167).We present the design and implementation of the Conductor's Jacket, a unique wearable device that measures physiological and gestural signals, together with the Gesture Construction, a musical software system that interprets these signals and applies them expressively in a musical context. Sixteen sensors have been incorporated into the Conductor's Jacket in such a way as to not encumber or interfere with the gestures of a working orchestra conductor. The Conductor's Jacket system gathers up to sixteen data channels reliably at rates of 3 kHz per channel, and also provides mcal-time graphical feedback. Unlike many gesture-sensing systems it not only gathers positional and accelerational data but also senses muscle tension from several locations on each arm. The Conductor's Jacket was used to gather conducting data from six subjects, three professional conductors and three students, during twelve hours of rehearsals and performances. Analyses of the data yielded thirty-five significant features that seem to reflect intuitive and natural gestural tendencies, including context-based hand switching, anticipatory 'flatlining' effects, and correlations between respiration and phrasing. The results indicate that muscle tension and respiration signals reflect several significant and expressive characteristics of a conductor's gestures. From these results we present nine hypotheses about human musical expression, including ideas about efficiency, intentionality, polyphony, signal-to-noise ratios, and musical flow state. Finally, this thesis describes the Gesture Construction, a musical software system that analyzes and performs music in real-time based on the performer's gestures and breathing signals. A bank of software filters extracts several of the features that were found in the conductor study, including beat intensities and the alternation between arms. These features are then used to generate real-time expressive effects by shaping the beats, tempos, articulations, dynamics, and note lengths in a musical score.by Teresa Marrin Nakra.Ph.D

Sensitive and Makeable Computational Materials for the Creation of Smart Everyday Objects

The vision of computational materials is to create smart everyday objects using the materi- als that have sensing and computational capabilities embedded into them. However, today’s development of computational materials is limited because its interfaces (i.e. sensors) are unable to support wide ranges of human interactions , and withstand the fabrication meth- ods of everyday objects (e.g. cutting and assembling). These barriers hinder citizens from creating smart every day objects using computational materials on a large scale. To overcome the barriers, this dissertation presents the approaches to develop compu- tational materials to be 1) sensitive to a wide variety of user interactions, including explicit interactions (e.g. user inputs) and implicit interactions (e.g. user contexts), and 2) makeable against a wide range of fabrication operations, such cutting and assembling. I exemplify the approaches through five research projects on two common materials, textile and wood. For each project, I explore how a material interface can be made to sense user inputs or activities, and how it can be optimized to balance sensitivity and fabrication complexity. I discuss the sensing algorithms and machine learning model to interpret the sensor data as high-level abstraction and interaction. I show the practical applications of developed computational materials. I demonstrate the evaluation study to validate their performance and robustness. In the end of this dissertation, I summarize the contributions of my thesis and discuss future directions for the vision of computational materials

THE VARIETIES OF USER EXPERIENCE BRIDGING EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES FROM SOMATICS AND PERFORMANCE TO HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION

Embodied Interaction continues to gain significance within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Its growing recognition and value is evidenced in part by a remarkable increase in systems design and publication focusing on various aspects of Embodiment. The enduring need to interact through experience has spawned a variety of interdisciplinary bridging strategies in the hope of gaining deeper understanding of human experience. Along with phenomenology, cognitive science, psychology and the arts, recent interdisciplinary contributions to HCI include the knowledge-rich domains of Somatics and Performance that carry long-standing traditions of embodied practice. The common ground between HCI and the fields of Somatics and Performance is based on the need to understand and model human experience. Yet, Somatics and Performance differ from normative HCI in their epistemological frameworks of embodiment. This is particularly evident in their histories of knowledge construction and representation. The contributions of Somatics and Performance to the history of embodiment are not yet fully understood within HCI. Differing epistemologies and their resulting approaches to experience identify an under-theorized area of research and an opportunity to develop a richer knowledge and practice base. This is examined by comparing theories and practices of embodied experience between HCI and Somatics (Performance) and analyzing influences, values and assumptions underlying epistemological frameworks. The analysis results in a set of design strategies based in embodied practices within Somatics and Performance. The subsequent application of these strategies is examined through a series of interactive art installations that employ embodied interaction as a central expression of technology. Case Studies provide evidence in the form of rigorously documented design processes that illustrate these strategies. This research exemplifies 'Research through Art' applied in the context of experience design for tangible, wearable and social interaction

The Aural and the Quotidian: Everyday Experience in Listening and Practice

The research herein comprises an examination of the following question: in what ways do our experiences of the everyday inhere in our experiences of the aural as aesthetic and meaningful? It is not concerned with forging a definition of everyday sound as a category of sonic effects, but instead an analysis of the ways that the everyday, aural and otherwise, is interpenetrating with our perceptual capacities and the cultural practices encompassing aural aesthetic production and experience. This thesis extends extant discourses surrounding the notion that the experience of sound as meaningful and aesthetic is connected to our general experience as embodied beings in the material world. The following analysis encompasses aspects of auditory perception, music aesthetics, and sound art production from the perspective of the body, as it is the locus of the listening subject situated within the domain of everyday experience. This includes an investigation of sound transduction technologies, as the devices that enable aural aesthetic practice are central to its analysis in the context of the everyday. Listening attitudes are transformed through cultural practice, structuring the relationship between the domain of the everyday, the embodied listening subject, sound recordings as cultural artefacts, and the attendant process of transduction. Discourses that attribute non-material, disembodied understandings to aesthetic experience are examined and challenged. From this, a fundamentally material, embodied approach to auditory experience is proposed, and with it a consideration of the ways that sound art and acousmatic music engage with the process of human understanding and the constitution of meaning in sound. Self-reflexive methodologies in aural aesthetic practice are exemplified, with the aim of promoting an expanded conception of aural context that includes the technological, cultural, and phenomenal aspects of its production

Tailoring Interaction. Sensing Social Signals with Textiles.

Nonverbal behaviour is an important part of conversation and can reveal much about the nature of an interaction. It includes phenomena ranging from large-scale posture shifts to small scale nods. Capturing these often spontaneous phenomena requires unobtrusive sensing techniques that do not interfere with the interaction. We propose an underexploited sensing modality for sensing nonverbal behaviours: textiles. As a material in close contact with the body, they provide ubiquitous, large surfaces that make them a suitable soft interface. Although the literature on nonverbal communication focuses on upper body movements such as gestures, observations of multi-party, seated conversations suggest that sitting postures, leg and foot movements are also systematically related to patterns of social interaction. This thesis addressees the following questions: Can the textiles surrounding us measure social engagement? Can they tell who is speaking, and who, if anyone, is listening? Furthermore, how should wearable textile sensing systems be designed and what behavioural signals could textiles reveal? To address these questions, we have designed and manufactured bespoke chairs and trousers with integrated textile pressure sensors, that are introduced here. The designs are evaluated in three user studies that produce multi-modal datasets for the exploration of fine-grained interactional signals. Two approaches to using these bespoke textile sensors are explored. First, hand crafted sensor patches in chair covers serve to distinguish speakers and listeners. Second, a pressure sensitive matrix in custom-made smart trousers is developed to detect static sitting postures, dynamic bodily movement, as well as basic conversational states. Statistical analyses, machine learning approaches, and ethnographic methods show that by moni- toring patterns of pressure change alone it is possible to not only classify postures with high accuracy, but also to identify a wide range of behaviours reliably in individuals and groups. These findings es- tablish textiles as a novel, wearable sensing system for applications in social sciences, and contribute towards a better understanding of nonverbal communication, especially the significance of posture shifts when seated. If chairs know who is speaking, if our trousers can capture our social engagement, what role can smart textiles have in the future of human interaction? How can we build new ways to map social ecologies and tailor interactions