Beyond input devices : a new conceptual framework for the design of physical-digital objects

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-111).Matthew G. Gorbet.M.S

Digital watermarking methods for data security and authentication

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDCryptology is the study of systems that typically originate from a consideration of the ideal circumstances under which secure information exchange is to take place. It involves the study of cryptographic and other processes that might be introduced for breaking the output of such systems - cryptanalysis. This includes the introduction of formal mathematical methods for the design of a cryptosystem and for estimating its theoretical level of securit

The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact (A philosophical reflection for graphic design)

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact Current discourses within cultural studies are re-iterating the limitations of language to adequately describe the affective domains of corporeality and materiality in the study of cultural artefacts. Within the discourse of graphic design, however, there remains an enduring focus placed upon models of language and communication to understand the meaning of designed materials. Rather than upholding a focus upon language, this thesis undertakes a theoretical investigation to extend the literature available to the discourse of graphic design to better understand how visual materials ‘come to mean’ within the experience of an embodied subject coupled to an affective environment. This thesis proposes an ontology of images that is emergent as a part of what, within the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is describes as a mind-body-world system through which the ‘meaning’ of visual materials should be grounded. This thesis asks not ‘what’ visual materials mean but rather ‘how’ visual materials come to mean in terms of a complex relationship involving the embodied perceptual experience of the maker and the viewer that is immersed within an affective environment, what the thesis terms the multidimensional depth of the image. A phenomenological theory of art is extended to include a range of materials of popular visual culture to frame a study of how form and style come to mean qua the gestures of an embodied experience as coupled to an environment — a meaning that reciprocally emerges through the embodied experience of the work by the viewer. The environmental processes of which an embodied subject’s movements are coupled are brought into focus through enactive conceptions of mind within the cognitive sciences, describing how mind and meaning are emergent within an autopoietic organism-environment system. This provides a framework in which the affective dimensions of matter can be more fully understood as having a cognitive efficacy. Within this context, Material Engagement Theory (an approach within cognitive archaeology) is utilized to include a more focussed discussion of the affective domains of materials, objects, and artefacts and their role in the emergence of mind and meaning.HER

Aesthetic complexity: practice and perception in art & design

My research investigates the aesthetics of visual complexity in the practice and perception of visual art and design. The aim is to understand visual complexity in terms of the relationship between the objective properties of images and subjective properties of perception. I take a computational and empirical approach to this subject, incorporating methods from information theory, computer graphics, complexity theory and experimental psychology. For testing, I create cellular automata programs to generate stimulus images, and borrow other types of visual material from students and professional artists, designers and craftspeople. Visual complexity is measured in two ways: Firstly, an objective measure of complexity is based on the compression of digital image files, which provides an information-based scale of order to randomness. Secondly, psychophysical techniques are employed to measure the subjective complexity of the images and other aesthetic judgements. Research in complex systems theory and experimental aesthetics suggests that we can expect an inverted ‘U’ correlation between the two measures of complexity

Design for rituals of letting go:an embodiment perspective on disposal practices informed by grief therapy

People increasingly live their lives online, accruing large collections of digital possessions, which symbolically represent important relationships, events, and activities. Most HCI research on bereavement focuses on retaining these significant digital possessions to honor the departed. However recent work suggests that significant digital possessions may complicate moving on; they function as both comforting and painful reminders but currently provide inflexible methods for disposal. Little work has investigated the disposal of digital objects as a means of letting go. To better understand this we interviewed 10 psychotherapists who employ rituals of letting go to help patients overcome loss in situations such as a divorce, a breakup, or a stillbirth. Patients disposed of either natural artefacts or symbolic personal possessions through actions such as burning, burying, or placing in a body of water. Therapists noted people increasingly have digital possessions, and that the act of deletion does not offer the same cathartic sense of release as disposal of material artefacts. Based on analysis of this grief therapy, we propose a new conceptual framework for rituals of letting go that highlights temporality, visibility, and force. It provides a vocabulary to talk about disposal. We then offer design implications connecting the rituals of letting go to the disposal of digital things. Based on our interviews and analytic framework, we propose novel technologies that better connect the embodied nature of letting go rituals to the process of digital disposal

FROM CELLULOID REALITIES TO BINARY DREAMSCAPES: CINEMA AND PERCEPTUAL EXPERIENCE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL IMMERSION

Technologies in digital cinema are quickly changing the way contemporary filmmakers create films and how audiences currently perceive them. As we move onward into the digital turn, it becomes ever more apparent that the medium of film has been emancipated from its dependence on the photograph. Directors are no longer required to capture the objectively real as it sits before the photographic lens, but can essentially construct it via groundbreaking advancements in computer-generated imagery, motion capture technology, and digital 3D camera systems and display technologies. Since the origins of film, spectators and filmmakers have assumed an existing relationship between reality and the photographic image. Yet digital film technologies now provide us with hyper-facsimiles of reality that are perceived as photographic, but are often created by way of computer processes. Digital cinema currently allows the viewer to inhabit and interact with cinematic realities in unprecedented ways, and it is this contemporary paradigmatic shift from the analog to the digital that has catalyzed fundamentally new ways of looking at the filmic image. In this paper, I will examine the perceptual complexities of contemporary digital film through the lens of these cinematic technologies by examining their impact on the viewer’s experience

Headphone listening: space, embodiment, materiality

In this thesis, I adopt an empirically driven phenomenological approach to study the perceptual experiences of contemporary headphone users, analysing data collected through interviews with an array of listeners to crystallize novel conceptual models. While existing headphone-listening research has attended more precisely to sociological concerns, the project of the thesis is to engage in greater depth with the perceptual-phenomenological realities of such practices and their philosophical, cultural, and aesthetic consequences, drawing especially from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology of perception to do so. I ask a series of research questions that probe various facets of headphone listening, all of which are constructed in the light of three relationally conceived themes: space, embodiment, and materiality. First (Chapter 2), I investigate the perceived spatial location of headphone sound in relation to the body, interrogating certain issues surrounding the phenomenology of in-head sound localization to theorize the notion of sonic floodings. Second (Chapter 3), I account for the intimacy of listening to mediated voices through headphones, examining how the body of the voice is perceived in spatial terms to conceive of the intercorporeal incorporation of virtual bodies during headphone listening. Third (Chapter 4), I move to the edges of the body, investigating how the materiality of headphone technologies can enter into a listener’s awareness over time as a fleshly extension of the listening body. Fourth (Chapter 5), I query the received portrait of headphone listening as an intrinsically anti-social practice by attending to the interpenetrations of the ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ lifeworlds of the headphone user. The result is an account of headphone listening that aims to challenge, nuance, and extend prevailing scholarly accounts, one structured as an embodied-spatial trajectory that blossoms outwards from the perceived interior of the lived body through the skin towards the wider intersubjective lifeworld

Landscapes of ephemeral embrace : a painter's exploration of immersive virtual space as a medium for transforming perception

The following text has been written to illuminate the research embodied In Ephemere, a fullyimmersive virtual environment which integrates stereoscopic 3D computer-generated images and spatialized 3D sound, with a user interface based on breathing, balance, and gaze. This artwork was begun when I entered the doctoral program at CAiNA (Centre of Advanced Inquiry Into the Interactive Arts) in 1997, and was completed in 1998. The work Ephemere is grounded in a very personal vision, developed over more than 25 years of artistic practice, including, most significantly, painting. Ephemere follows on its predecessor Osmose, and as such, Is a continuation of my efforts to: (I) explore and communicate my sensibility of what it means to be embodied, here now, in the living Rowing world; and (ii) use the medium of immersive virtual space to do so, necessarily subverting its culturally-biased conventions to achieve this goal. The contents of this text are most clearly indicated by its title: Landscapes of Ephemeral Embrace: A Painter's Exploration of the Medium of Immersive Virtual Space for Transforming Perception. And further, by its chapter headings: (I) Context: Rethinking Technology in the "Reign of King Logos ; (II) Defining Terms: Key Concepts and Concerns in the Work; (III) Origins of the Work in Prior Artistic Practice: Emergence of Key Concerns and Strategies; (IV) First Explorations in Immersive Virtual Space: Osmose; (V) Continuing Explorations In Immersive Virtual Space: Ephemere; and (VI) Strategies and Their Implications In the Immersive Experience. In this text, I have focused my discussion on artistic Intent, rather than on whether I have been successful, for this can only be evaluated with the passing of time

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 181

This bibliography lists 223 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in May 1978

Southwest Research Institute assistance to NASA in biomedical areas of the technology utilization program

The activities are reported of the NASA Biomedical Applications Team at Southwest Research Institute between 25 August, 1972 and 15 November, 1973. The program background and methodology are discussed along with the technology applications, and biomedical community impacts