Remediating the data : a study on the interactive dimensions in new media

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This thesis analyses the role of interface in altering perception and customizing interaction in new media. It comprehends the correlation of theory and practice while probing into the current debate by means of examples and case studies. The general structure of this research is based on the objectives of interactivity in cultural and social levels. In each level, interactivity is analyzed through function, operation oriented and design-wise aspects of new media. This study focuses on the interactive dimensions in new media and their affects on the user’s perception and engagement within a digitally framed work.Şenova, FundaM.S

Planetary Cinema

The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world

Modern Time: Photography and Temporality

This dissertation explores the fluid relationship of photography to time. Many theorists have noted that photography has a distinctive manner of representing temporality. Roland Barthes, for example, wrote that the photograph has a peculiar capacity to represent the past in the present, and thus to imply the passing of time in general. As a consequence, Barthes argued, all photographs speak of the inevitability of our own death in the future. Moreover, he linked photography\u27s peculiar temporality to its capacity for a certain kind of realism: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time. Barthes\u27s analysis poses a challenge to all commentators on photography - what exactly is photography\u27s relationship to time, and by extension, to reality? This dissertation addresses that two-part question by analyzing in detail a sample of understudied vernacular photographic practices. Rather than provide a comprehensive, and necessarily incomplete, study of every possible way in which photography can relate to time, this study instead focuses on a number of in-depth analyses of specific photographic practices. These practices represent time in at least three distinct ways: as narrative time, device-altered time, and composite time. My study examines the motivations for photography\u27s insistent struggle to reorganize time\u27s passage, to freeze or slow it for a moment, or to give form to time\u27s fluctuating conditions. I suggest that this struggle is both symptomatic of modernity as a general phenomenon and a manifestation of the photographic medium\u27s conditional relationship to reality, a relationship which arguably has been complicated by the use of digital technology. This dissertation examines photography\u27s unique capacity to represent the passage of time with a degree of elasticity, simultaneity, and abstraction. The medium\u27s ability to represent many levels of temporal experience and indexical slippage, I argue, illustrates photography\u27s potential to relate to and reflect the complexities of modern consciousness. This dissertation also exemplifies the need for a new kind of history - one that addresses the multiple identities of the photographic rather than simply the photograph. This work is a contribution to that project

Planetary Cinema

The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world

Mitigating the effect of covariates in face recognition

Current face recognition systems capture faces of cooperative individuals in controlled environment as part of the face recognition process. It is therefore possible to control lighting, pose, background, and quality of images. However, in a real world application, we have to deal with both ideal and imperfect data. Performance of current face recognition systems is affected for such non-ideal and challenging cases. This research focuses on designing algorithms to mitigate the effect of covariates in face recognition.;To address the challenge of facial aging, an age transformation algorithm is proposed that registers two face images and minimizes the aging variations. Unlike the conventional method, the gallery face image is transformed with respect to the probe face image and facial features are extracted from the registered gallery and probe face images. The variations due to disguises cause change in visual perception, alter actual data, make pertinent facial information disappear, mask features to varying degrees, or introduce extraneous artifacts in the face image. To recognize face images with variations due to age progression and disguises, a granular face verification approach is designed which uses dynamic feed-forward neural architecture to extract 2D log polar Gabor phase features at different granularity levels. The granular levels provide non-disjoint spatial information which is combined using the proposed likelihood ratio based Support Vector Machine match score fusion algorithm. The face verification algorithm is validated using five face databases including the Notre Dame face database, FG-Net face database and three disguise face databases.;The information in visible spectrum images is compromised due to improper illumination whereas infrared images provide invariance to illumination and expression. A multispectral face image fusion algorithm is proposed to address the variations in illumination. The Support Vector Machine based image fusion algorithm learns the properties of the multispectral face images at different resolution and granularity levels to determine optimal information and combines them to generate a fused image. Experiments on the Equinox and Notre Dame multispectral face databases show that the proposed algorithm outperforms existing algorithms. We next propose a face mosaicing algorithm to address the challenge due to pose variations. The mosaicing algorithm generates a composite face image during enrollment using the evidence provided by frontal and semiprofile face images of an individual. Face mosaicing obviates the need to store multiple face templates representing multiple poses of a users face image. Experiments conducted on three different databases indicate that face mosaicing offers significant benefits by accounting for the pose variations that are commonly observed in face images.;Finally, the concept of online learning is introduced to address the problem of classifier re-training and update. A learning scheme for Support Vector Machine is designed to train the classifier in online mode. This enables the classifier to update the decision hyperplane in order to account for the newly enrolled subjects. On a heterogeneous near infrared face database, the case study using Principal Component Analysis and C2 feature algorithms shows that the proposed online classifier significantly improves the verification performance both in terms of accuracy and computational time

Evaluation and optimal design of spectral sensitivities for digital color imaging

The quality of an image captured by color imaging system primarily depends on three factors: sensor spectral sensitivity, illumination and scene. While illumination is very important to be known, the sensitivity characteristics is critical to the success of imaging applications, and is necessary to be optimally designed under practical constraints. The ultimate image quality is judged subjectively by human visual system. This dissertation addresses the evaluation and optimal design of spectral sensitivity functions for digital color imaging devices. Color imaging fundamentals and device characterization are discussed in the first place. For the evaluation of spectral sensitivity functions, this dissertation concentrates on the consideration of imaging noise characteristics. Both signal-independent and signal-dependent noises form an imaging noise model and noises will be propagated while signal is processed. A new colorimetric quality metric, unified measure of goodness (UMG), which addresses color accuracy and noise performance simultaneously, is introduced and compared with other available quality metrics. Through comparison, UMG is designated as a primary evaluation metric. On the optimal design of spectral sensitivity functions, three generic approaches, optimization through enumeration evaluation, optimization of parameterized functions, and optimization of additional channel, are analyzed in the case of the filter fabrication process is unknown. Otherwise a hierarchical design approach is introduced, which emphasizes the use of the primary metric but the initial optimization results are refined through the application of multiple secondary metrics. Finally the validity of UMG as a primary metric and the hierarchical approach are experimentally tested and verified

Mnemophrenia: a science fiction film-essay on the future of cinema and artificial memories

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.“What is more real than the thoughts in your mind?”, “Re/structure your memories, re/construct your reality, re/define yourself”. The foundation of my research is about practising theory instead of theorising practice. My project begins with theory, which then leads to the science fiction film Mnemophrenia that constitutes the practical aspect of it. I attempt to demonstrate how theory and practice can be joined to create a fruitful union, each one feeding the other. In my research, I am inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s idea and use the medium as the message in order to depict and explore how cinema can affect human memory and more specifically create artificial memories and thus contribute to the dissolution of any boundaries between reality and fiction. The key research question that Mnemophrenia explores is: what would happen if in a future postmodern society the Bazinian myth of ‘total’ cinema becomes a reality? If ‘total cinema’ is pure realism and cinema can lead to artificial memories, then artificial memories and pure realism become one and films become artificial memories. Mnemophrenia depicts a different kind of human being or species, a schizophrenic ‘cyborg’ changed from within due to the advancement of virtual reality films which signals the end of cinema as we know it today. Mnemophrenia is about the future of cinema and maintains a horizon of hope that could lead to utopia; it does not discard technology as something evil as many previous science fiction films have done. I am interested in depicting through the film and examining in my thesis the possibility of a society where the dissolution of borders between fiction and reality does not lead to horrific consequences for humanity but instead promotes a potential for a new kind of identity that is an amalgam of real and artificial memories.Scholarship from Royal Holloway Universit