Integrating passive ubiquitous surfaces into human-computer interaction

Mobile technologies enable people to interact with computers ubiquitously. This dissertation investigates how ordinary, ubiquitous surfaces can be integrated into human-computer interaction to extend the interaction space beyond the edge of the display. It turns out that acoustic and tactile features generated during an interaction can be combined to identify input events, the user, and the surface. In addition, it is shown that a heterogeneous distribution of different surfaces is particularly suitable for realizing versatile interaction modalities. However, privacy concerns must be considered when selecting sensors, and context can be crucial in determining whether and what interaction to perform.Mobile Technologien ermöglichen den Menschen eine allgegenwärtige Interaktion mit Computern. Diese Dissertation untersucht, wie gewöhnliche, allgegenwärtige Oberflächen in die Mensch-Computer-Interaktion integriert werden können, um den Interaktionsraum über den Rand des Displays hinaus zu erweitern. Es stellt sich heraus, dass akustische und taktile Merkmale, die während einer Interaktion erzeugt werden, kombiniert werden können, um Eingabeereignisse, den Benutzer und die Oberfläche zu identifizieren. Darüber hinaus wird gezeigt, dass eine heterogene Verteilung verschiedener Oberflächen besonders geeignet ist, um vielfältige Interaktionsmodalitäten zu realisieren. Bei der Auswahl der Sensoren müssen jedoch Datenschutzaspekte berücksichtigt werden, und der Kontext kann entscheidend dafür sein, ob und welche Interaktion durchgeführt werden soll

Timbral Environments: An Ecological Approach to the Cognition of Timbre

This study formulates an ecological framework that links the environment and human systems, to support further arguments on the influence of timbre in the music appreciation schemata. At the core of the framework is the notion of timbral environments, which is introduced as an epistemological foundation to characterize perceptual cues of internalized representations of music, and to explore how these are expressed in the dynamics of diverse external environments. The proposed notion merges the concepts of macrotimbre (Sandell, 1998) and soundscape (Schafer, 1977) to distinguish between the formulated framework and traditional approaches to timbre, which are mainly concerned with short-term temporal auditory events. The notion of timbral environments enables the focus of timbre research to be shifted from isolated events to socially relevant sounding objects, hence facilitating the identification of connections between semantic descriptors and the physical properties of sounds

'Breaking the glass': preserving social history in virtual environments

New media technologies play an important role in the evolution of our society. Traditional museums and heritage sites have evolved from the ‘cabinets of curiosity’ that focused mainly on the authority of the voice organising content, to the places that offer interactivity as a means to experience historical and cultural events of the past. They attempt to break down the division between visitors and historical artefacts, employing modern technologies that allow the audience to perceive a range of perspectives of the historical event. In this paper, we discuss virtual reconstruction and interactive storytelling techniques as a research methodology and educational and presentation practices for cultural heritage sites. We present the Narrating the Past project as a case study, in order to illustrate recent changes in the preservation of social history and guided tourist trails that aim to make the visitor’s experience more than just an architectural walk through

Augmented Exercise Biking with Virtual Environments for Elderly Users:Considerations on the use of auditory feedback

Virtual reality (VR) has been shown to function well as an assistive technology to physical therapy for elderly users. Elderly users, and more specifically retirement home residents, form a unique user group in this field, due to their characteristics and demands. In a case study, retirement home residents used an audio-visual virtual environment (VE) augmentation for an exercise bike. Besides a visual display, a soundscape was played to the subjects using headphones. The soundscape was not no- ticed wand the headphones were found to be obtrusive. In this paper, we consider and discuss possible approaches to alternative auditory and haptic delivery methods for future studies. These nonvisual displays need to fit the requirements and limitations of the retirement home subjects who are to exercise using the VE-based augmenta- tion from the case study

Creating a common language for soundscape research:Translation and validation of Dutch soundscape attributes

Much of the work into the understanding of our auditory environment, referred to as soundscape research, has emerged from international and interdisciplinary research. This has enabled growth in understanding and increased opportunities for optimising shared environments but has also formed one major obstacle: a lack of a common language to describe soundscapes. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to validate translated soundscape descriptors in Dutch as part of the Soundscape Attributes Translation Project (SATP). For this, an expert panel of seven soundscape researchers from The Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) translated the original eight English attributes into Dutch. Subsequently, following standardised materials and procedures, a sample of 32 Dutch participants completed a listening experiment in which they rated 27 audio files on the eight soundscape attributes. Results show modest evidence indicating that the Dutch translations were applied similarly to the original English attributes, with a slight (but not statistically significant) bias towards Pleasantness and Eventfulness in the Dutch sample. Bayesian analysis supports these findings by showing that the translations for the opposing attributes Uneventful and Annoying fit less well compared to the other attributes. Despite some limitations and while further research is necessary, our findings are promising and suggest that, although not perfect, the Dutch translations of the English soundscape attributes could already be useful for describing thegeneral appraisal of a person’s soundscape in The Netherlands

Digital Sound Studies

The digital turn has created new opportunities for scholars across disciplines to use sound in their scholarship. This volume’s contributors provide a blueprint for making sound central to research, teaching, and dissemination. They show how digital sound studies has the potential to transform silent, text-centric cultures of communication in the humanities into rich, multisensory experiences that are more inclusive of diverse knowledges and abilities. Drawing on multiple disciplines—including rhetoric and composition, performance studies, anthropology, history, and information science—the contributors to Digital Sound Studies bring digital humanities and sound studies into productive conversation while probing the assumptions behind the use of digital tools and technologies in academic life. In so doing, they explore how sonic experience might transform our scholarly networks, writing processes, research methodologies, pedagogies, and knowledges of the archive