Experiencing Cinematic VR: Where Theory and Practice Converge in the Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360

Cinematic virtual reality (VR) production has reached enough capacity to support a festival. This paper offers a theoretical framework of VR narrative structure to critically examine one such festival in cinematic VR. The spotlight here is on the fifteen entries in the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival Cinema360. Findings suggest that although the field of cinematic VR has advanced substantially in recent years in terms of narrative design and user experience, there is still a considerable distance for VR storytellers to travel to fully utilize the nature and potential of the developing medium of virtual reality

Experiential media and transforming storytelling: A theoretical analysis

Journalism and media content rests on a foundation of storytelling. Shaping this storytelling is the quality of the medium of content delivery and the nature of public engagement. With the development of digital, networked media, the audience’s role is transforming to be more of an active user who experiences stories as a participant rather than as a passive receiver of content. This article proposes a new model of experiential media based on six primary qualities of the digital environment. These qualities are 1) interactivity, 2) immersion, 3) multi-sensory presentation, 4) algorithmic and data-driven, 5) first-person perspective, and 6) a natural user interface. Augmented reality and virtual reality are among the most-widely discussed experiential media forms, but others include, for instance, advanced ultra-high-definition video. Experiential media bring implications for the nature, production, impact and the future of mediated storytelling

Future touch in industry: exploring sociotechnical imaginaries of tactile (tele)robots

This paper explores sociotechnical imaginaries for industrial robotics. It is motivated by the prospect of promoting human-centred industrial futures. Investigating the tactility of labour through a critical social perspective the research attends to the future of tactile (tele)robots and elaborates on the concepts of pedagogic, collaborative and superhuman touch. These concepts are offered as starting points to foster productive dialogues between social scientists, roboticists, environmentalists, policy makers, industrial leaders and labourers (e.g. union representatives). This paper is framed through literature and ethnographic fieldwork that contextualises and maps the dominant sociotechnical imaginaries for a future touch in industry, identifying the role of a comparative-competitive frame in sustaining a splintering of the imaginary towards utopic and dystopic extremes. Against this, the paper draws on interviews with leading roboticists to chart alternative futures where humans and robots may work together as collaborators, not competitors

Leikitäänkö kampaajaa? Digitaalinen koskettaminen ASMR-roolileikkivideoissa

ASMR on lyhenne sanoista Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Ilmiöllä tarkoitetaan erilaisten aistiärsykkeiden eli triggereiden aikaansaamia, tahdosta riippumattomia, miellyttäviä ja rauhoittavia aistielämyksiä. Joillakin ihmisillä nämä ääni- ja visuaaliset ärsykkeet (lähikuiskaukset, naputtelut, rapistelut ja hitaat käsiliikkeet) aiheuttavat ”kylmien väreiden” kaltaista kihelmöintiä, jonka kuvataan kulkeutuvan pään takaosasta selkärankaa pitkin muualle kehoon. Tässä artikkelissa analysoin YouTubessa viime vuosina suosituiksi muodostuneita ASMR-roolileikkivideoita, joissa vloggaajat ovat tarinallistaneet triggereiden tuottamisen esittäessään esimerkiksi kampaajia, kosmetologeja ja lääkäreitä. Olen kiinnostunut siitä, miten näissä ASMR-roolileikkivideoissa luodaan koskettamisen illuusio. ASMR-videoita on tutkittu terapeuttisina teknologioina sekä affektiteorioihin ja haptiseen mediatutkimukseen tukeutuen. Itse asetan ilmiön leikintutkimuksen viitekehykseen tarkoituksenani osoittaa, että videot on mahdollista nähdä fyysisen leikin digitaalisena ilmenemismuotona. Analysoin videoita niiden lähiluennalla, mutta tutkimuksessani voi nähdä myös piirteitä auto- ja aistietnografisesta lähestymistavasta. Analyysini perusteella digitaalisen kosketuksen voi ASMR-roolileikkivideoiden kohdalla nähdä muodostuvan aistien synestesian, kehollisen tietämisen ja mielikuvituksen yhteisvaikutuksesta.   Let’s play hairdressers? Digital touch in ASMR role play videos ASMR is an acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, which is an autonomous, pleasurable and calming feeling accompanied by a tingling sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and spine. It is caused by specific auditory or visual stimuli, which are called triggers (close whispering, tapping, rustling, and slow hand movements). In this article, I analyse the popular video category of ASMR role plays in YouTube. In these role play videos vloggers are performing triggers for instance as haidressers, cosmetologists, and doctors. I am interested in finding out how they are creating an illusion of touch. ASMR videos have been studied as therapeutic technologies and in the context of affect theories and haptic media studies. By applying play theory to understandings of ASMR role plays, my aim is to point out that they can be seen as a digital manifestation of physical play. My methodological approach consists of close reading of the videos but I have also utilized auto-ethnography as sensory participation. According to my analysis, the digital touch consists of synaesthesia, bodily knowledge, and imagination

Leikitäänkö kampaajaa? Digitaalinen koskettaminen ASMR-roolileikkivideoissa

ASMR on lyhenne sanoista Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Ilmiöllä tarkoitetaan erilaisten aistiärsykkeiden eli triggereiden aikaansaamia, tahdosta riippumattomia, miellyttäviä ja rauhoittavia aistielämyksiä. Joillakin ihmisillä nämä ääni- ja visuaaliset ärsykkeet (lähikuiskaukset, naputtelut, rapistelut ja hitaat käsiliikkeet) aiheuttavat ”kylmien väreiden” kaltaista kihelmöintiä, jonka kuvataan kulkeutuvan pään takaosasta selkärankaa pitkin muualle kehoon. Tässä artikkelissa analysoin YouTubessa viime vuosina suosituiksi muodostuneita ASMR-roolileikkivideoita, joissa vloggaajat ovat tarinallistaneet triggereiden tuottamisen esittäessään esimerkiksi kampaajia, kosmetologeja ja lääkäreitä. Olen kiinnostunut siitä, miten näissä ASMR-roolileikkivideoissa luodaan koskettamisen illuusio.ASMR-videoita on tutkittu terapeuttisina teknologioina sekä affektiteorioihin ja haptiseen mediatutkimukseen tukeutuen. Itse asetan ilmiön leikintutkimuksen viitekehykseen tarkoituksenani osoittaa, että videot on mahdollista nähdä fyysisen leikin digitaalisena ilmenemismuotona. Analysoin videoita niiden lähiluennalla, mutta tutkimuksessani voi nähdä myös piirteitä auto- ja aistietnografisesta lähestymistavasta. Analyysini perusteella digitaalisen kosketuksen voi ASMR-roolileikkivideoiden kohdalla nähdä muodostuvan aistien synestesian, kehollisen tietämisen ja mielikuvituksen yhteisvaikutuksesta.</p

Supporting novice designers design of digital touch

Digitally mediated touch is an emerging and significant area for technology and therefore for design and design education. However, the design of digital touch is a challenge, especially for novice designers, compounded by low awareness and understanding of the sociality of touch and the complexity of communicating felt sensations. This paper presents a qualitative study of a two-part educational intervention on the design of digital touch using a design-based research methodology. Findings are presented and discussed on the design challenges faced by novice designers in relation to touch and digital touch (the focus of part one of the intervention) and the development and piloting of the Designing Digital Touch (DDT) toolkit (the outcome of part two). The paper discusses how the toolkit can be used to foster and support novice designers to respond to the future facing complexity of digital touch design

Smartphone Use and Psychological Well-Being among College Students in China: A Qualitative Assessment

Background: Problematic smartphone use is widespread, and college-age youth faces an especially high risk of its associated consequences. While a promising body of research has emerged in recent years in this area, the domination of quantitative inquiries can be fruitfully and conceptually complemented by perspectives informed through qualitative research. Toward that end, this study aimed to interrogate the myriad behavioral, attitudinal, and psychological tendencies as a side effect of college students’ engagement with the smartphone in their everyday lived experience through in-depth interviews. Methods: We recruited 70 participants from seven college campuses hailing from different geographic regions in China, and conducted semi-structured in-depth virtual interviews via WeChat in November and December 2020. Subjective experiences, personal narratives and individual perceptions in the context of routine interaction with the smartphone were thematically analyzed through a reiterative process in an effort to detect prevailing threads and recurring subthemes. Results: The smartphone has established a pervasive presence in college students’ everyday life. Time-based use characteristics generated a typology of four distinct user groups: hypo-connected antagonists, balanced majority, hyper-connected enthusiasts, and indulgent zealots. Habitual usage falls on predictable patterns matched onto temporal, locale-based and contextual cues and triggers. Students’ dependency relationships with the smartphone have both functional and emotional dimensions, as prominently manifested in occasions of detachment from the device. Self-regulatory effort in monitoring and limiting use is significantly impacted by mental focus and personal goal setting. Perspectives from our qualitative data suggest the need for taking into account a variety of contextual cues and situational factors in dissecting psychological and emotional outcomes of smartphone use and abuse

How Do You Touch an Impossible Thing?

How, and how much, physiotherapists should touch in practice is once again being debated by the profession. COVID-19 and people's enforced social isolation, combined with the growth of virtual technologies, and the profession's own turn away from so-called “passive” therapies, has placed therapeutic touch once again in an uncertain position. The situation is more ambiguous and uncertain because, despite its historical importance to the profession, physiotherapists have never articulated a comprehensive philosophy of touch, taking-for-granted its seeming obviousness as either a bio-physical or inter-subjective phenomenon. But both of these approaches are limited, with one failing to account for the existential and socio-cultural significance of touch, and the other rejecting the reality of the physical body altogether. And both are narrowly humanistic. Since touch occurs between all entities throughout the cosmos, and human touch makes up only an infinitesimally small part of this, physiotherapy's approach to touch seems paradoxically to be at the same time both highly reductive and ontologically vague. Given physiotherapists' much vaunted claim to be experts in therapeutic touch, it would seem timely to theorize how touch operates and when touch becomes therapeutic. In this paper I draw on Gilles Deleuze's machine ontology as a new way to think about touch. Critiquing existing approaches, I argue that machine ontology provides a more robust and inclusive philosophy of touch, pointing to some radical new possibilities for the physical therapies