1,071 research outputs found

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    Reframing museum epistemology for the information age: a discursive design approach to revealing complexity

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    This practice-based research inquiry examines the impact of an epistemic shift, brought about by the dawning of the information age and advances in networked communication technologies, on physical knowledge institutions - focusing on museums. The research charts adapting knowledge schemas used in museum knowledge organisation and discusses the potential for a new knowledge schema, the network, to establish a new epistemology for museums that reflects contemporary hyperlinked and networked knowledge. The research investigates the potential for networked and shared virtual reality spaces to reveal new ‘knowledge monuments’ reflecting the epistemic values of the network society and the space of flows. The central practice for this thesis focuses on two main elements. The first is applying networks and visual complexity to reveal multi-linearity and adapting perspectives in relational knowledge networks. This concept was explored through two discursive design projects, the Museum Collection Engine, which uses data visualisation, cloud data, and image recognition within an immersive projection dome to create a dynamic and searchable museum collection that returns new and interlinking constellations of museum objects and knowledge. The second discursive design project was Shared Pasts: Decoding Complexity, an AR app with a unique ‘anti-personalisation’ recommendation system designed to reveal complex narratives around historic objects and places. The second element is folksonomy and co-design in developing new community-focused archives using the community's language to build the dataset and socially tagged metadata. This was tested by developing two discursive prototypes, Women Reclaiming AI and Sanctuary Stories

    A Taxonomy of Freehand Grasping Patterns in Virtual Reality

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    Grasping is the most natural and primary interaction paradigm people perform every day, which allows us to pick up and manipulate objects around us such as drinking a cup of coffee or writing with a pen. Grasping has been highly explored in real environments, to understand and structure the way people grasp and interact with objects by presenting categories, models and theories for grasping approach. Due to the complexity of the human hand, classifying grasping knowledge to provide meaningful insights is a challenging task, which led to researchers developing grasp taxonomies to provide guidelines for emerging grasping work (such as in anthropology, robotics and hand surgery) in a systematic way. While this body of work exists for real grasping, the nuances of grasping transfer in virtual environments is unexplored. The emerging development of robust hand tracking sensors for virtual devices now allow the development of grasp models that enable VR to simulate real grasping interactions. However, present work has not yet explored the differences and nuances that are present in virtual grasping compared to real object grasping, which means that virtual systems that create grasping models based on real grasping knowledge, might make assumptions which are yet to be proven true or untrue around the way users intuitively grasp and interact with virtual objects. To address this, this thesis presents the first user elicitation studies to explore grasping patterns directly in VR. The first study presents main similarities and differences between real and virtual object grasping, the second study furthers this by exploring how virtual object shape influences grasping patterns, the third study focuses on visual thermal cues and how this influences grasp metrics, and the fourth study focuses on understanding other object characteristics such as stability and complexity and how they influence grasps in VR. To provide structured insights on grasping interactions in VR, the results are synthesized in the first VR Taxonomy of Grasp Types, developed following current methods for developing grasping and HCI taxonomies and re-iterated to present an updated and more complete taxonomy. Results show that users appear to mimic real grasping behaviour in VR, however they also illustrate that users present issues around object size estimation and generally a lower variability in grasp types is used. The taxonomy shows that only five grasps account for the majority of grasp data in VR, which can be used for computer systems aiming to achieve natural and intuitive interactions at lower computational cost. Further, findings show that virtual object characteristics such as shape, stability and complexity as well as visual cues for temperature influence grasp metrics such as aperture, category, type, location and dimension. These changes in grasping patterns together with virtual object categorisation methods can be used to inform design decisions when developing intuitive interactions and virtual objects and environments and therefore taking a step forward in achieving natural grasping interaction in VR

    Cerebral Metamorphopsia: Perceived spatial distortion from lesions of the adult human central visual pathway

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    Metamorphopsia is the perceived visual illusion of spatial distortion. Cerebral causes of metamorphopsia are much less common than retinal or ocular causes. Cerebral metamorphopsia can be caused by lesions along the central visual pathway or as a manifestation of epileptogenic discharges. Geometric visual distortions may result from structural lesions of the central visual pathway after reorganisation of the retinotopic representation in the cortex. Very few experimental investigations have been performed regarding cerebral metamorphopsia as it is often viewed as a clinical curiousity and analysis of the perceived distortion is difficult due to its subjective nature. Investigations have been undertaken to understand cortical plasticity as an explanation for visual filling-in. There has been much interest in cortical reorganisation after injuries to the peripheral and central visual pathway. Behavioural experiments aimed at quantifying the possible visual spatial distortion surrounding homonymous paracentral scotomas may be able to demonstrate cortical reorganisation after brain-damage and provide clues regarding the neural processes of visual perception. The aims of the thesis are: 1. To identify which cases of metamorphopsia, both published and unpublished, might be a consequence of cortical spatial reorganisation of retinotopic projections. 2. To investigate perceptual spatial distortion surrounding homonymous paracentral scotomas in adults with isolated unilateral injuries of the striate cortex. A review of the literature describing cases of cerebral metamorphopsia was performed. Metamorphopsia caused by retinal or ocular pathology, psychiatric conditions, drugs or medications were excluded. A retrospective case series of eight patients with metamorphopsia from a cerebral cause was performed in two clinical neurology practices specialising in vision disorders. Two cases who suffered from paracentral homonymous scotomas due to isolated unilateral primary visual cortex (V1) lesions were identified from a Neuro-ophthalmology practice. Neuropsychophysical experiments to investigate visual spatial perception surrounding their scotomas were developed and tested using MATLAB and Psychtoolbox. The use of the term 'metamorphopsia' was only in reference to cases in which contours or lines were experienced as distorted. In the published literature, few cases of cerebral metamorphopsia have been identified as being potentially due to cortical reorganisation. The main result is a statistically significant visual spatial distortion in the visual field surrounding a paracentral homonymous scotoma when compared to a normal control. There is also significant distortion of perception in the subjects' "unaffected" visual hemifield. After lesions of V1, visual perceptual spatial distortions may occur in the visual field surrounding homonymous paracentral scotomas. The spatial distortion may also occur in the normal hemifield possibly due to long-range cortical connections crossing to the other hemisphere through the corpus callosum. A collaborative approach across disciplines within vision science is required to further investigate the mechanisms responsible for perceptual visual illusions. Behavioural testing in brain-damaged cases remains important in developing theories of normal visual processing. New neuroimaging and neuroscience techniques could then test these theories, furthering our understanding of visual perception. An understanding of normal visual perception could allow future modification of neuronal processes to harness cortical reorganisation and potentially restore functional vision in humans with lesions of the central visual pathway

    Grounds for a Third Place : The Starbucks Experience, Sirens, and Space

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    My goal in this dissertation is to help demystify or “filter” the “Starbucks Experience” for a post-pandemic world, taking stock of how a multi-national company has long outgrown its humble beginnings as a wholesale coffee bean supplier to become a digitally-integrated and hypermodern café. I look at the role Starbucks plays within the larger cultural history of the coffee house and also consider how Starbucks has been idyllically described in corporate discourse as a comfortable and discursive “third place” for informal gathering, a term that also prescribes its own radical ethos as a globally recognized customer service platform. Attempting to square Starbucks’ iconography and rhetoric with a new critical methodology, in a series of interdisciplinary case studies, I examine the role Starbucks’ “third place” philosophy plays within larger conversations about urban space and commodity culture, analyze Starbucks advertising, architecture and art, and trace the mythical rise of the Starbucks Siren (and the reiterations and re-imaginings of the Starbucks Siren in art and media). While in corporate rhetoric Starbucks’ “third place” is depicted as an enthralling adventure, full of play, discovery, authenticity, or “romance,” I draw on critical theory to discuss how it operates today as a space of distraction, isolation, and loss

    The Public Performance Of Sanctions In Insolvency Cases: The Dark, Humiliating, And Ridiculous Side Of The Law Of Debt In The Italian Experience. A Historical Overview Of Shaming Practices

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    This study provides a diachronic comparative overview of how the law of debt has been applied by certain institutions in Italy. Specifically, it offers historical and comparative insights into the public performance of sanctions for insolvency through shaming and customary practices in Roman Imperial Law, in the Middle Ages, and in later periods. The first part of the essay focuses on the Roman bonorum cessio culo nudo super lapidem and on the medieval customary institution called pietra della vergogna (stone of shame), which originates from the Roman model. The second part of the essay analyzes the social function of the zecca and the pittima Veneziana during the Republic of Venice, and of the practice of lu soldate a castighe (no translation is possible). The author uses a functionalist approach to apply some arguments and concepts from the current context to this historical analysis of ancient institutions that we would now consider ridiculous. The article shows that the customary norms that play a crucial regulatory role in online interactions today can also be applied to the public square in the past. One of these tools is shaming. As is the case in contemporary online settings, in the public square in historic periods, shaming practices were used to enforce the rules of civility in a given community. Such practices can be seen as virtuous when they are intended for use as a tool to pursue positive change in forces entrenched in the culture, and thus to address social wrongs considered outside the reach of the law, or to address human rights abuses

    Planeswalking: Magic: The Gathering Across Analog and Digital Platforms

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    This dissertation analyzes the relationship between Wizards of the Coast\u27s trading card game Magic: The Gathering and its digital adaptations. I used critical technocultural, ludic discourse analysis, and ludic textual analysis to examine the analog trading card game and digital adaptations. I examined an archive of paratextual media including trade magazines, developer blogs, game reviews, and player guides. I chose Magic for its long history, impact on the analog game industry, and the sheer number of adaptations that have been produced. This analysis begins by introducing a method for describing analog to digital adaptations called Adaptation Mapping. Adaptation mapping describes adaptations as a relationship between how the interface of the game is remediated and the degree to which a game represents the thematic and ludic experiences of the original. Then I examine the narrative framework that allows Magic to tell stories through both its theme and mechanics. Identifying the figure of the Planeswalker as a key component in how narrative functions in Magic, I trace the development of the planeswalker as a player analog to independent original characters under the purview of Wizards of the Coast. The adaptations provide a backdrop for this change and highlights the way that the same mechanical and algorithmic systems can characterize both player and official characters within Magics ecosystem. This shift highlights the way that marketing is approached and influences the design of the game. Finally, I examine how digital adaptations are intwined with ludic platform economy that has emerged through the 2010s. The apparatus that allows for capital to flow through the community is coopted via adaptation and remediated in ways that redirect capital back towards Wizards of the Coast as the platform owner. Analog to digital adaptation is a critical juncture in examining the impact of platformization on play and games

    Practical English Course for Digital Economy

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    Пособие включает шесть тематических разделов: Economics Concepts (Основы экономики), Technology in Market Economy (Технологии в рыночной экономике), E-Business (Электронный бизнес), Digital Marketing (Цифровой маркетинг), Digital Business (Цифровой бизнес), The Future of Business (Бизнес будущего), нацеленных на совершенствование у студентов иноязычной коммуникативной компетенции в сфере профессионального общения, использование ими специфических знаний иностранного языка с учетом профессионального отраслевого дискурса. Содержит систематизированный по блокам глоссарий, ссылки на используемые аудио- и видеоматериалы, список используемых источников

    GAC-MAC-SGA 2023 Sudbury Meeting: Abstracts, Volume 46

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    Machine Learning Algorithm for the Scansion of Old Saxon Poetry

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    Several scholars designed tools to perform the automatic scansion of poetry in many languages, but none of these tools deal with Old Saxon or Old English. This project aims to be a first attempt to create a tool for these languages. We implemented a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) model to perform the automatic scansion of Old Saxon and Old English poems. Since this model uses supervised learning, we manually annotated the Heliand manuscript, and we used the resulting corpus as labeled dataset to train the model. The evaluation of the performance of the algorithm reached a 97% for the accuracy and a 99% of weighted average for precision, recall and F1 Score. In addition, we tested the model with some verses from the Old Saxon Genesis and some from The Battle of Brunanburh, and we observed that the model predicted almost all Old Saxon metrical patterns correctly misclassified the majority of the Old English input verses
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