A Mimetic Strategy to Engage Voluntary Physical Activity In Interactive Entertainment

We describe the design and implementation of a vision based interactive entertainment system that makes use of both involuntary and voluntary control paradigms. Unintentional input to the system from a potential viewer is used to drive attention-getting output and encourage the transition to voluntary interactive behaviour. The iMime system consists of a character animation engine based on the interaction metaphor of a mime performer that simulates non-verbal communication strategies, without spoken dialogue, to capture and hold the attention of a viewer. The system was developed in the context of a project studying care of dementia sufferers. Care for a dementia sufferer can place unreasonable demands on the time and attentional resources of their caregivers or family members. Our study contributes to the eventual development of a system aimed at providing relief to dementia caregivers, while at the same time serving as a source of pleasant interactive entertainment for viewers. The work reported here is also aimed at a more general study of the design of interactive entertainment systems involving a mixture of voluntary and involuntary control.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, ECAG08 worksho

“Going down” and “getting deeper”: Physical and metaphorical location and movement in relation to death and spiritual care in a Scottish hospice

The final version of the article can be accessed at the link below.This paper illustrates how attending to the metaphors people use for particular concepts, and to the context in which they use them, can increase our understanding of the meanings they attach to those concepts. It considers two linked emergent findings from an ethnographic exploration of spiritual care in a Scottish hospice: 1) the relationship between the perceived likelihood of palliative care patients’ deaths and their physical location in and movement between various parts of the hospice, and 2) the use of physical metaphors to describe both the increased probability of particular patients’ deaths (“going down” or “going downhill”), and spiritual care (“getting deeper”). The paper explores these findings and the relationships between them. It discusses how workers in this hospice located death somewhere other than “here,” both physically: in private spaces, and metaphorically: DOWN, which has strong negative associations. Workers also metaphorically located spirituality elsewhere: DEEP, so that “getting deeper” with patients meant that workers metaphorically accompanied them somewhere else. Although DEEP does not have the negative connotations of DOWN, “getting deeper” might mean encountering distressing, or DOWN, emotions. Many workers sought to counter these negatively perceived emotions by “cheering up” patients, rather than “getting deeper” with them.Funded by an ESRC PhD studentshi

Moving-Time and Moving-Ego Metaphors from a Translational and Contrastivelinguistic Perspective

This article is concerned with some cross-linguistic asymmetries in the use of two types of time metaphors, the Moving-Time and the Moving-Ego metaphor. The latter metaphor appears to be far less well-entrenched in languages such as Croatian or Hungarian, i.e. some of its lexicalizations are less natural than their alternatives based on the Moving- Time metaphor, while some others are, unlike their English models, downright unacceptable. It is argued that some of the differences can be related to the status of the fictive motion construction and some restrictions on the choice of verbs in that construction

Using photo elicitation to understand first-year student experiences: Student metaphors of life, university and learning

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Personal Ideals as Metaphors

What is it to have and act on a personal ideal? Someone who aspires to be a philosopher might imaginatively think “I am a philosopher” by way of motivating herself to think hard about a philosophical question. But doing so seems to require her to act on an inaccurate self-description, given that she isn’t yet what she regards herself as being. J. David Velleman develops the thought that action-by-ideal involves a kind of fictional self-conception. My aim is to expand our thinking about personal ideals by developing another way of understanding them. On this view action-by-ideal involves a kind of metaphorical self-conception. I investigate some salient differences between these views with the aim of understanding the different perspectives they take on the rationality of action-by-ideal. Where the fiction view runs into problems of literary coherence, the metaphor view exploits the richness of poetic invention. But action-by-ideal is a complex phenomenon about which there may be no tidy story to be told. This paper is an attempt to clarify and understand more of this messy terrain

Drug Misuse: Taking a Narrative Approach as a Means of Exploring ‘Self-Change’

In this paper I explore the personal narrative of Jennifer; a woman who for the past ten years had been using ‘hard’ drugs. When interviewed Jennifer had been ‘sentenced’ to take part in an enforced treatment programme which aimed to facilitate ‘self-change’. The concept of ‘self-change’ would appear to convey a particular understanding of transitions, and changes in behaviour, rooted in assumptions around motivation, cognition and internal forces. In the research reported here the way in which someone ‘storied’ into a narrative of ‘self-change’ metaphorically represents her progress will be explored

The price of admission: football players' sacrificial conceptions of career and health through metaphors of war, religion, and family

textWith the recent discovery of traumatic brain injuries developing in retired professional football players, this study seeks to explore players’ perceptions of their careers in the sport, and how this may reflect notions of personal health over the long-term. Current and former football players, athletic staff, and other members of the football community were interviewed with the goal of learning about the full trajectory of a football career. Using grounded metaphorical analysis to examine the interview data, our study found the use of metaphor by participants to be integral in players’ descriptions of their careers. Participants likened aspects of their careers to enduring a war, having a religious experience, and being part of a family unit. Long-term, post-career health implications are discussed in relation to players’ conceiving of their experiences through these metaphors, along with limitations of the study and directions for future research.Communication Studie