Wisdom as Experience: The Embodiment and Spirit of Métis Wisdom

The storied life experiences of three Métis Elders- Cort, Joseph, and Monica- are explored through this narrative inquiry and illuminate educative possibilities with respect to an integrated and lived notion of wisdom. Their diverse experiences reveal common threads with respect to identity, humility, perspective, and embodiment, which support understandings of how wisdom is relationally experienced and realized in a Métis cultural context. My research wonder primarily attended to the following questions: How is wisdom understood from the perspective of three Métis Elders and what practices or experiences support its embodiment and growth? What are the roles of aesthetic experience and community in supporting Métis wisdom experiences? All narrative accounts were collected through individual semi-structured and conversational style interviews ranging in length from 60-120 minutes. Understandings of the participants’ experiences were supported by a collaborative and relational inquiry process that ventured into the temporal, social, and place dimensions of the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). The stories of the participants fostered rich insights to how experiences might be integrated across time in order to facilitate a grounded and deeply connected self. The findings suggest that wisdom is an embodied experience shared with others, wherein relationship is deepened and the self transcended

In and Out: Senses and Meaning Extension of Mandarin Spatial Terms nei and wai

PACLIC 19 / Taipei, taiwan / December 1-3, 200

Narrative Perspectives and Embodiment in Cinematic Virtual Reality

Along with the technological advancements of virtual reality over the years, has come the emergence of Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR), where immersive 360º degree video approaches the high-quality found in feature film. Extensive research has been done on embodiment and presence in relation to Virtual Reality (VR), however, there is a lack of existing literature on the narrative effects of embodiment and perspective in narrative VR films. Exploring the concept of viewer embodiment and its connection to the cinematic concept of narrative perspective, we conduct a review of literature in relation to CVR and flat screen cinema, selecting five CVR films to conduct an analysis of how cinematic techniques for establishing perspective and embodiment can be translated from flat screen cinema. Considering embodiment and perspective in CVR, we propose a spectrum of embodiment between extreme distancing from and extreme identification with characters in the narrative. Areas for future exploration are considered in light of the lack of research in this area

Virtual reality for safe testing and development in collaborative robotics: challenges and perspectives

Collaborative robots (cobots) could help humans in tasks that are mundane, dangerous or where direct human contact carries risk. Yet, the collaboration between humans and robots is severely limited by the aspects of the safety and comfort of human operators. In this paper, we outline the use of extended reality (XR) as a way to test and develop collaboration with robots. We focus on virtual reality (VR) in simulating collaboration scenarios and the use of cobot digital twins. This is specifically useful in situations that are difficult or even impossible to safely test in real life, such as dangerous scenarios. We describe using XR simulations as a means to evaluate collaboration with robots without putting humans at harm. We show how an XR setting enables combining human behavioral data, subjective self-reports, and biosignals signifying human comfort, stress and cognitive load during collaboration. Several works demonstrate XR can be used to train human operators and provide them with augmented reality (AR) interfaces to enhance their performance with robots. We also provide a first attempt at what could become the basis for a human–robot collaboration testing framework, specifically for designing and testing factors affecting human–robot collaboration. The use of XR has the potential to change the way we design and test cobots, and train cobot operators, in a range of applications: from industry, through healthcare, to space operations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Narration and Focalization : A Cognitivist and an Unnaturalist, Made Strange

Any new narratological theory faces the test of being applicable to much-analyzedclassics of prose fiction and of yielding new insights into narratives that have served as textbook examples of narrative strategies for decades. This essay is a constructed dialogue between imaginary narratologists who are paradigmatic proponents of two schools of thought in postclassical narratology: the cognitive and the unnatural. The two narratologists juxtapose their respective concepts and methodologies in an analysis of William Golding's late modernist classic The Inheritors, especially the narrative dynamics of "alien" Neanderthal focalization versus "naturalizing" Homo sapiens narration. Ultimately, The Inheritors reminds the cognitivist of how language-bound the readerly effects of estrangement and integration in internal focalization can be. Conversely, the same novel serves as an example for the unnaturalist of the paradoxical necessity for perceptual and emotional familiarization in our attempts to understand fundamental alterity. The parameters of cognitive and unnatural narratology may seem divergent at the outset, but in this essay their representatives find a common ground in an estranging reading of the enactive immersion in The Inheritors. Here the extraordinary embodiedness of the Neanderthal focalization is a key to a literary-allegorical reading of the Neanderthal mind as imagined by Golding. This reading, accomplished through a constructed debate between two paradigms, reflects the actual positions of the authors of this essay: Makela and Polvinen are both proponents of an approach that acknowledges the inherent syntheticity and linguistic overdeterminedness of a literary narrative as well as its "natural" enactivist pull toward bodily immersion.Peer reviewe

Women’s Participation in the Burmese Ethnic and Student Oppositional Movement

The official notion of women in Burma is that they are equal to men but happy with their non- political domestic role in society. This notion undermines the work and struggle done by women in the oppositional movement. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to add to the understanding of how women participate in the Burmese ethnic and student oppositional movement. The study used feminist standpoint theory in the theoretical framework to stress the importance of basing knowledge on women’s experiences. Thus, this study aims to tell ‘another story’ beside the often-used male narrative, to understand what power relations and hierarchies women experience within the movement and within the organisations they belong to. As youth and students have had an important role in the Burmese political history, I have mainly interviewed women active in student and youth organisations. My interpretation of women’s experiences in the movement showed that gender hierarchies and conservative notions of gender roles are important factors influencing how women are able to participate in the movement. I also found two intersecting factors which seemed to, together with gender, be especially relevant for women’s participation in the ethnic and student oppositional movement; age and ethno-politics

Kinetic Atmospheres and Immersion Architecture

This presentation extends the author’s earlier work on dance technologies and in/audible choreographies to delve into participatory sensory architecture and augmented virtuality, introducing concepts of the material affects of flows and aural environments, and discussing the design of wearables used in immersive environments (kinetic atmospheres or ‘kimospheres’). Kinetic atmospheres are conceived as formative, not built/constructed in a stable form but responsive to movers or even ‘wearable’ themselves. Basing its investigation of such porous interactive environments for wearable performance in recent installations of the DAP-Lab, as well as acoustic-theatrical installations and contemporary choreographic architectures and objects, the paper explores the impact of audiophonic wearables on movement choreography and role-play within such kimospheres. Finally, it sketches more speculative developments of how bodies and wearables come to affect, and be affected by, kinetic, sonic and Virtual Reality interfaces – in the sense in which the composer Xenakis had envisioned reverberant multimedia architectures and spatial intensities to be live instruments, not static objects or envelopes. Birringer proposes to rework architectural, cybernetic, and hydrogeological theories of the liquid, and shift attention to liquid aurality and virtuality derived also from anthropological concepts of understanding the movement of water, mist, and vapor (immersion, animation, animateriality)

The impact of visual perspective on the formation and retrieval of memories for events

Past events can be recalled either from the perspective of one’s own eyes (i.e. firstperson perspective) or an observer perspective whereby one is able to visualize oneself inside of the mental scene (i.e. third-person perspective). Visual perspective is a central memory characteristic associated with the type of information recalled and phenomenology during retrieval. However, the majority of neuroimaging studies investigating visual perspective either do not manipulate visual perspective or focus only memories experienced from an own eyes perspective. After reviewing current theory and research on the role of visual perspective in memories for events (Chapter 1), Chapter 2 investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics of networks supporting retrieval of autobiographical events from multiple visual perspectives using a multivariate approach (Partial Least Squares Analysis). Results show that own eyes, relative to observer, perspectives engaged a core autobiographical memory retrieval network to a greater extent during later phases of retrieval. Functional connectivity analyses with an anterior hippocampal seed revealed that own eyes perspectives were also related to increased connectivity with a posterior medial network during the initial construction of autobiographical memories from observer perspectives, and stronger within-MTL connectivity during later retrieval periods from own eyes perspectives. Together, results suggest that visual perspective is an important factor in understanding how neocortical systems guide memory retrieval. Having specified neural mechanisms of autobiographical retrieval from multiple visual perspectives, I next turn to how the brain represents memories formed from own eyes and observer perspectives. While events are typically experienced from an own eyes perspective, we are also able to form memories from an observer perspective (e.g. during events with high levels of self-conscious emotion). Further, how bodily selfhood, more salient in own eyes (i.e. embodied) compared to observer (i.e. disembodied) perspectives, contributes to memory processes is not well understood. In Chapter 3, I employ virtual reality (VR) technology to manipulate perspective while creating realistic, tightly controlled memories to investigate how perspective and embodiment combine to influence patterns of neural activity underlying memory retrieval. Here, perspective was manipulated through the use of a head-mounted display unit linked to a 360˚ camera. Following a manipulation to alter sense of embodiment and selflocation, participants formed memories for neutral events from own eyes and observer perspectives, which were later retrieved during functional scanning. Multivariate pattern analysis revealed key differences in the neural representation of own eyes and observer memories in the angular gyrus and insula, regions crucial to establishing a coherent sense of bodily selfhood and the conscious experience of bodily sensations respectively. In Chapter 4, I continue my investigation of visual perspective during memory formation with two behavioral studies. I developed an immersive virtual reality methodology to manipulate visual perspective in realistic settings by projecting a virtual avatar into different virtual environments experienced from either an own eyes or observer perspective. Results demonstrate an increase in own eyes ratings alongside a decrease in observer ratings over time, suggesting that forming memories from an observer perspective diminishes the strength with which perspective is recalled during retrieval. Limitations and implications for all studies are discussed in Chapter 5