Perceiving Mass in Mixed Reality through Pseudo-Haptic Rendering of Newton's Third Law

In mixed reality, real objects can be used to interact with virtual objects. However, unlike in the real world, real objects do not encounter any opposite reaction force when pushing against virtual objects. The lack of reaction force during manipulation prevents users from perceiving the mass of virtual objects. Although this could be addressed by equipping real objects with force-feedback devices, such a solution remains complex and impractical.In this work, we present a technique to produce an illusion of mass without any active force-feedback mechanism. This is achieved by simulating the effects of this reaction force in a purely visual way. A first study demonstrates that our technique indeed allows users to differentiate light virtual objects from heavy virtual objects. In addition, it shows that the illusion is immediately effective, with no prior training. In a second study, we measure the lowest mass difference (JND) that can be perceived with this technique. The effectiveness and ease of implementation of our solution provides an opportunity to enhance mixed reality interaction at no additional cost

Creativity and education : some theories and procedures to enhance the development of creativity within a classroom setting.

Abstract not availabl

Pictorial space in relationship to beliefs and cognitive structures : the Ixion room, the Bardi chapel, the Nymphéas

Ma recherche consiste à examiner l'espace pictural de trois œuvres provenant de trois périodes distinctes de l'histoire de l'art afin de démontrer que l'art participe, d'une part, d'un modèle culturel spécifique et, d'autre part, de données perceptivo-spatiales universellement partagées qui relient entre eux des individus soumis à des expériences historiquement très distinctes. Le corpus se compose de la salle dédiée à Ixion datant de la fin de l'empire romain, vers le premier siècle après Jésus-Christ; des fresques de Giotto exécutées pour la chapelle Bardi au début du XIVe siècle, donc à la fin du Moyen-Âge et au début de la Renaissance; et des Nymphéas de Monet, œuvre commencée à la fin du XIXe et terminée au début du XXe siècle. La méthodologie utilisée dans la présente thèse pourrait être qualifiée d'analyse multiple niveau des éléments suivants de la perception : 1) les catégories de croyances de premier ordre, ou croyances primaires, qui sont sous-jacentes à toutes les autres croyances et jouent un rôle important dans la production de toutes les œuvres d'art. Les croyances primaires comprennent les croyances physiologiques et perceptuelles, et la sous-catégorie des croyances multi-sensorielles; 2) les catégories de croyances de second ordre ou croyances conceptuelles; les croyances philosophiques, spirituelles et religieuses, les croyances scientifiques (relativement au système optique), les croyances mathématiques et les croyances médicales (relativement au corps humain) sont des croyances conceptuelles. Les croyances conceptuelles peuvent englober un domaine de la connaissance, ce qui est le cas pour les cinq croyances qui servent ici d'arrière-plan à l'analyse des trois œuvres d'art choisies. J'avance que la production et la réception des œuvres d'art, et dans ce cas particulier de l'espace pictural, supposent non seulement un rapport multi-sensoriel, mais qu'elles sont également liées à l'acquisition de croyances qui influent sur la formation et la réception des représentations de l'espace pictural qui s'opèrent conjointement avec la navigation du corps humain dans l'espace du réel. Les représentations étudiées ici ont été intentionnellement choisies parce qu'elles étreignent de façon manifeste la structure architecturale qui les soutient, et à cause de leur intégration dans cette structure de soutien aux fins d'étendre la dimension spatiale et les processus par lesquels nous nous situons dans cette dimension. La présente thèse vise à démontrer que perception et conception sont, dans un sens, le miroir l'une de l'autre, un miroir qui existe chez l'artiste et chez le spectateur. C'est la base même de leur cohérence, ou commensurabilité, et le moyen par lequel la signification que nous pouvons attribuer à une œuvre donnée réussit à nous convaincre de son autorité. J'ai cherché à démontrer que la représentation de l'espace pictural n'est pas une simple affaire de conventions, ni une histoire quelconque de progrès, et certainement pas une question de style. Elle repose en fait sur les croyances, ces fragiles mais tenaces éléments qui s'associent à l'occasion à ce que nous considérons comme un savoir convaincant. L'artiste et le spectateur fusionnent sur l'axe de la croyance, et un acte de persuasion devient un acte d'interprétation.\ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : histoire de l'art, peinture, espace pictural, perception, conception, croyances

Digital Alchemy: Matter and Metamorphosis in Contemporary Digital Animation and Interface Design

The recent proliferation of special effects in Hollywood film has ushered in an era of digital transformation. Among scholars, digital technology is hailed as a revolutionary moment in the history of communication and representation. Nevertheless, media scholars and cultural historians have difficulty finding a language adequate to theorizing digital artifacts because they are not just texts to be deciphered. Rather, digital media artifacts also invite critiques about the status of reality because they resurrect ancient problems of embodiment and transcendence.In contrast to scholarly approaches to digital technology, computer engineers, interface designers, and special effects producers have invented a robust set of terms and phrases to describe the practice of digital animation. In order to address this disconnect between producers of new media and scholars of new media, I argue that the process of digital animation borrows extensively from a set of preexisting terms describing materiality that were prominent for centuries prior to the scientific revolution. Specifically, digital animators and interface designers make use of the ancient science, art, and technological craft of alchemy. Both alchemy and digital animation share several fundamental elements: both boast the power of being able to transform one material, substance, or thing into a different material, substance, or thing. Both seek to transcend the body and materiality but in the process, find that this elusive goal (realism and gold) is forever receding onto the horizon.The introduction begins with a literature review of the field of digital media studies. It identifies a gap in the field concerning disparate arguments about new media technology. On the one hand, scholars argue that new technologies like cyberspace and digital technology enable radical new forms of engagement with media on individual, social, and economic levels. At the same time that media scholars assert that our current epoch is marked by a historical rupture, many other researchers claim that new media are increasingly characterized by ancient metaphysical problems like embodiment and transcendence. In subsequent chapters I investigate this disparity

Sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies : the utilisation of waveforms as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and as instruments of physiological influence by industrial, entertainment, and military organisations

This study is a trans-disciplinary and trans-historical investigation into civilian and battlefield contexts in which speaker systems have been utilised by the military-industrial and military-entertainment complexes to apply pressure to mass social groupings and the individuated body. Drawing on authors such as historian/sociologist Michel Foucault, economist Jacques Attali, philosopher Michel Serres, political geographer/urban planner Edward Soja, musician/sonic theorist Steve Goodman, and cultural theorist/urbanist Paul Virilio, this study engages a wide range of texts to orchestrate its arguments. Conducting new strains of viral theory that resonate with architectural, neurological, and political significance, this research provides new and original analysis about the composition of waveformed geography. Ultimately, this study listens to the ways in which the past and current utilisation of sonic, infrasonic, and ultrasonic frequencies as weapons, apparatus for psychological manipulation, and instruments of physiological influence, by industrial, civilian, entertainment, and military organisations, predict future techniques of sociospatialised organisation. In chapter one it is argued that since the inception of wired radio speaker systems into U.S. industrial factories in 1922, the development of sonic strategies based primarily on the scoring of architectonic spatiality, cycles of repetition, and the enveloping dynamics of surround sound can be traced to the sonic torture occurring in Guantanamo Bay during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Exploring the use of surround sound speaker techniques by the FBI during the Waco Siege in Texas, this argument is developed in chapter two. In chapter three it is further contended that the acoustic techniques utilised in the Guantanamo torture cells represent the final modality and the logical conclusion of these strategies that have evolved between civilian and military contexts over the past 80 years. In chapter four, the speaker system instrumentality of the HSS ultrasonic beam - occurring post Guantanamo - comes to symbolise an epistemic shift in the application of waveformed pressure; the dynamics of directional ultrasound technology signalling the orchestration of a new set of frequency-based relations between the transmitter and the receiver, the speaker system and architectural context, and the civilian and war torn environment. The concluding proposition of the study submits that a waveformed cartography - mapping the soundscape's territorialisation by the military-entertainment complex - needs to be composed and arranged so that forms of recording, amplification, and resistance can be made coherent. Given the new set of non-sound politics announced by the HSS, this philosophy of frequency-based mapping will have to re-evaluate the taxonomy and indexical nature of spatial relations. This discipline will be a waveformed psychogeography; a frequency-based modality that heuristically charts the spatial concerns of the neural environment as well as the environs of the material and the built. As a field of research it will have a wide-ranging remit to explore the spatial, psychological, physiological, social, economic, and sexual effects that waveforms have upon our subjectivity. Its methodology - as suggested through the structuring of this study - will be multi-disciplined and multi-channelled. It will create new forms of knowledge about LRADs, iPods, Mosquitos, I ntonarumori , loudhailers, and Sequential Arc Discharge Acoustic Generators - the meta-network of speaker systems through which rhythms and cadences of power are transmitted, connected, and modulated

Auditory group theory with applications to statistical basis methods for structured audio

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-172).Michael Anthony Casey.Ph.D

Mathematical surfaces models between art and reality

In this paper, I want to document the history of the mathematical surfaces models used for the didactics of pure and applied “High Mathematics” and as art pieces. These models were built between the second half of nineteenth century and the 1930s. I want here also to underline several important links that put in correspondence conception and construction of models with scholars, cultural institutes, specific views of research and didactical studies in mathematical sciences and with the world of the figurative arts furthermore. At the same time the singular beauty of form and colour which the models possessed, aroused the admiration of those entirely ignorant of their mathematical attraction

Incorporating Technology: A Phenomenological Approach to the Study of Artefacts and the Popular Resistance to E-reading

This thesis considers the phenomenological experience of e-reading (reading on an electronic screen) as a way-in to discussing wider issues of technology and our encounter with objects in our environments. By considering the resistance shown toward reading on iPads and Kindles in popular and academic discourse as a source of valuable “folk phenomenological” report, this thesis hopes to shed light on both the particular engagement of portable e-reading and the general experience of embodied encounters with artefacts. The first chapter will consider the shortcomings of contemporary definitions of technology and aims to provide its own definition commensurate to the task of describing the intimate and very human encounter with equipment, an encounter which will be described as “technological.” In the second chapter an ontology (begun in the background of the first) will be developed which primarily considers our encounter with things that are as embodied as ourselves. This ontology sees evolution as an epistemological concern, with every evolutionary act occurring as a response to environmental pressures and producing a knowledge of that environment. This knowledge, it will be argued, in light of conclusions drawn from an engagement with Object Oriented Ontology, can be tested only via repeatable successful action with that which might be known. Such evolutionary concerns, it will be further argued, are equally applicable to our artefacts. The third chapter will focus on metaphor and critical theory to consider how e-reading in particular might function as a material metaphor, enabling productive thought. It will conclude with readings of three texts which put the language of all three chapters to work. This thesis draws on several fields, including Critical Theory, Cognitive Neuroscience, Evolutionary Epistemology, and Philosophy, the bringing together of which is intended to be of use to the still emerging Digital Humanities and the work's home discipline of English Studies as it gets used to the substantial alterations in the substrate of its object of study