Media Presence and Inner Presence: The Sense of Presence in Virtual Reality Technologies

Abstract. Presence is widely accepted as the key concept to be considered in any research involving human interaction with Virtual Reality (VR). Since its original description, the concept of presence has developed over the past decade to be considered by many researchers as the essence of any experience in a virtual environment. The VR generating systems comprise two main parts: a technological component and a psychological experience. The different relevance given to them produced two different but coexisting visions of presence: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion \ud of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). The main result of this approach is the definition of presence as the perceptual illusion of non-mediation produced by means of the disappearance of the medium from the conscious attention of the subject. At the other extreme, there \ud is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity. \ud Given its key role and the rate at which new approaches to understanding and examining presence are appearing, this chapter draws together current research on presence to provide an up to date overview of the most widely accepted approaches to its understanding and measurement

Electronic Dance Music in Narrative Film

As a growing number of filmmakers are moving away from the traditional model of orchestral underscoring in favor of a more contemporary approach to film sound, electronic dance music (EDM) is playing an increasingly important role in current soundtrack practice. With a focus on two specific examples, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998) and Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), this essay discusses the possibilities that such a distinctive aesthetics brings to filmmaking, especially with regard to audiovisual rhythm and sonic integration

From DTV4ALL to HBB4ALL : Accessibility in European Broadcasting

The European Commission has had an active role in promoting research and development activities in media accessibility. Many projects have been funded in the last decade, and two have been directed to piloting accessibility services for broadcasting. While subtitling has always been identified as the access service par excellence, audio description (AD) has been gaining importance lately. Pilar Orero presents two EU projects, DTV4ALL and HBB4ALL, where media accessibility is the focus. Developments and outcomes in AD are analysed, as well as the possibilities offered for its broadcast from analogue to digital. The last part of the chapter is dedicated to the future of AD in the new media scenario, where the Internet and broadcast converge to offer new hybrid possibilities for production, distribution and interaction

Multimodality for Passive Experience: Effects of Visual, Auditory, Vibration and Draught Stimuli on Sense of Presence

Adequate use of multimodal stimuli plays a crucial role in help forming the sense of presence within a virtual environment. While most of the presence research attempts to engage more sensory modalities to induce a higher sense of presence, this paper investigates the relevance of each sensory modality and different combinations on the subjective sense of presence using a specifically designed scenario of a passive experience. We chose a neutral test scenario of “waiting at a train station while a train is passing by” to avoid the potential influence of story narrative on mental presence and replicated realistic multimodal stimuli that are highly relevant to our test setting. All four stimuli -visual, auditory, vibration, and draught -with 16 possibilities of combinations were systematically evaluated with 24 participants. The evaluation was performed on one crucial aspect of presence –“realness” to reflect user presence in general. The perceived realism value was assessed using a scalometer. The findings of main effects indicate that the auditory stimuli had the most significant contribution in creating the sense of presence. The results of interaction effects suggest the impact of draught stimuli is significant in relation to other stimuli -visual and auditory. Also, the gender effects revealed that the sense of presence reported by female participants is influenced by more factors than merely adding more sensory modalities

What does not happen: quantifying embodied engagement using NIMI and self-adaptors

Previous research into the quantification of embodied intellectual and emotional engagement using non-verbal movement parameters has not yielded consistent results across different studies. Our research introduces NIMI (Non-Instrumental Movement Inhibition) as an alternative parameter. We propose that the absence of certain types of possible movements can be a more holistic proxy for cognitive engagement with media (in seated persons) than searching for the presence of other movements. Rather than analyzing total movement as an indicator of engagement, our research team distinguishes between instrumental movements (i.e. physical movement serving a direct purpose in the given situation) and non-instrumental movements, and investigates them in the context of the narrative rhythm of the stimulus. We demonstrate that NIMI occurs by showing viewers’ movement levels entrained (i.e. synchronised) to the repeating narrative rhythm of a timed computer-presented quiz. Finally, we discuss the role of objective metrics of engagement in future context-aware analysis of human behaviour in audience research, interactive media and responsive system and interface design

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Cinema of poverty: Independence and simplicity in an age of abundance and complexity

Over the past 25 years of writing, producing and directing, my aspirations as a creative artist in film have shifted from a paradigm in which the scale and scope of financial and human resources shaped not only the creative intentions of a project, but the very definition of what made something ‘cinematic’, to a new paradigm in which poverty - both in terms of resources and, more philosophically, in terms of artistic expression - has become one of the defining features of my artistic aspiration and my understanding of a new cinema. This development has interacted with parallel developments in technologies of production, distribution and exhibition, of a kind and scale I never envisaged when first embarking on a career in film, and has, for me, led to a kind of creative liberation which I am only now beginning to fully understand. Traditionally, human and financial resources have been considered essential for the production of quality, creative narrative films. In this article, I shall reflect on my own practice to explore how poverty can enhance the creative engagement with the medium and lead to the development of new and innovative approaches to, amongst other things, narrative imagery and, in so doing, explore how poverty can introduce new and original approaches to cinematic story-telling

Audio subtitling and subtitling : a comparison of their emotional effect on blind / partially sighted and sighted users

Audio subtitling (AST) is a media accessibility service that allows for people who are blind, partially sighted or with any reading disability to access written subtitles in their aural form. Despite the existing literature on other media accessibility services such as audio description, the way written subtitles compare to orally delivered subtitles has not been researched. In this study, a group of 42 blind and partially sighted participants and a group of 42 sighted participants watched the same three video clips. Two of them pictured two emotions (sadness and fear) and the third was emotionally neutral. The clips were prepared with subtitles or audio subtitles, according to the target participants. The emotional effect of the clips was measured in two ways: with self-reports, by completing after each clip the SAM questionnaire (Bradley & Lang, 1994); and with psychophysiological measures: electrodermal activity (EDA) and heart rate (HR), that were recorded while participants watched each clip. The analyses of the data obtained in both experiments indicate that self-report measures revealed similar experiences for both blind and sighted participants, differentiating between valence (negative for fear and sadness, but not for neutral) and arousal (deemed higher for fear than for sadness and neutral). Data from EDA and HR measures are less conclusive