Attention and Social Cognition in Virtual Reality:The effect of engagement mode and character eye-gaze

Technical developments in virtual humans are manifest in modern character design. Specifically, eye gaze offers a significant aspect of such design. There is need to consider the contribution of participant control of engagement. In the current study, we manipulated participants’ engagement with an interactive virtual reality narrative called Coffee without Words. Participants sat over coffee opposite a character in a virtual café, where they waited for their bus to be repaired. We manipulated character eye-contact with the participant. For half the participants in each condition, the character made no eye-contact for the duration of the story. For the other half, the character responded to participant eye-gaze by making and holding eye contact in return. To explore how participant engagement interacted with this manipulation, half the participants in each condition were instructed to appraise their experience as an artefact (i.e., drawing attention to technical features), while the other half were introduced to the fictional character, the narrative, and the setting as though they were real. This study allowed us to explore the contributions of character features (interactivity through eye-gaze) and cognition (attention/engagement) to the participants’ perception of realism, feelings of presence, time duration, and the extent to which they engaged with the character and represented their mental states (Theory of Mind). Importantly it does so using a highly controlled yet ecologically valid virtual experience

Stillborn: The Libidinal Economy of Gadgetized Mediation in the Era of Socialization for Consumption; An Explanatory Political Project

This project captures an attempt to politicize one aspect of Western middle class youth’s everyday experience growing up and living in postindustrial consumer society—the replacement of experiential, material, and libidinal gratification with that of ideological satisfaction. The dissertation takes up problematic adolescent gaming as a site to interrogate the ways and means of technologically-backed consumer socialization, and draw out the implications for subject-formation and possibility of self-determination. Developing new ways to conceptualize politics of youth, the project re-reads existing academic research on youth and gaming. Its main goal is to create a theoretical framework that can sustain an understanding of the importance of consumerizing gadget-mediated self-self cultivation across the dimensions of political economy and its strict materiality, psycho-sociality and its relational concreteness, and the realm of the mind in which ideology meets consciousness. Under the guise of critiquing the banality of gaming studies, the project excavates ideas from various critical theory, phenomenological and psychoanalytic traditions to raise political questions of social reproduction and clarify a concretely political path beyond the present circumstances. I am interested in exploring how it is that generation after generation young people born in the compromised consumption-rendered centers of global capital do not revolt against the seemingly repressive institutions shaping their lives. In this question, there is an intergenerational politics, a politics in which the question of youth and their otherness is crashed into the structuration of political economy and social reproduction within it. This is ultimately the theme of my inquiry. The present work is a study of gaming as a site where we should expect to see the manifestations of this kind of intersection, but instead what we see is a single-minded preference for celebrating the gaming industry and securing the ideologically soothing reproduction. I want to address the politics signaled by the changing role of play in advanced consumer economy, where in the site of gaming, through controlled bursts of traumatization and regularization, prediction of subjective experience is commodified into the global capitalistic circuits

Presence 2005: the eighth annual international workshop on presence, 21-23 September, 2005 University College London (Conference proceedings)

OVERVIEW (taken from the CALL FOR PAPERS) Academics and practitioners with an interest in the concept of (tele)presence are invited to submit their work for presentation at PRESENCE 2005 at University College London in London, England, September 21-23, 2005. The eighth in a series of highly successful international workshops, PRESENCE 2005 will provide an open discussion forum to share ideas regarding concepts and theories, measurement techniques, technology, and applications related to presence, the psychological state or subjective perception in which a person fails to accurately and completely acknowledge the role of technology in an experience, including the sense of 'being there' experienced by users of advanced media such as virtual reality. The concept of presence in virtual environments has been around for at least 15 years, and the earlier idea of telepresence at least since Minsky's seminal paper in 1980. Recently there has been a burst of funded research activity in this area for the first time with the European FET Presence Research initiative. What do we really know about presence and its determinants? How can presence be successfully delivered with today's technology? This conference invites papers that are based on empirical results from studies of presence and related issues and/or which contribute to the technology for the delivery of presence. Papers that make substantial advances in theoretical understanding of presence are also welcome. The interest is not solely in virtual environments but in mixed reality environments. Submissions will be reviewed more rigorously than in previous conferences. High quality papers are therefore sought which make substantial contributions to the field. Approximately 20 papers will be selected for two successive special issues for the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. PRESENCE 2005 takes place in London and is hosted by University College London. The conference is organized by ISPR, the International Society for Presence Research and is supported by the European Commission's FET Presence Research Initiative through the Presencia and IST OMNIPRES projects and by University College London

Video Conferencing: Infrastructures, Practices, Aesthetics

The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts

Interaction dynamics and autonomy in cognitive systems

The concept of autonomy is of crucial importance for understanding life and cognition. Whereas cellular and organismic autonomy is based in the self-production of the material infrastructure sustaining the existence of living beings as such, we are interested in how biological autonomy can be expanded into forms of autonomous agency, where autonomy as a form of organization is extended into the behaviour of an agent in interaction with its environment (and not its material self-production). In this thesis, we focus on the development of operational models of sensorimotor agency, exploring the construction of a domain of interactions creating a dynamical interface between agent and environment. We present two main contributions to the study of autonomous agency: First, we contribute to the development of a modelling route for testing, comparing and validating hypotheses about neurocognitive autonomy. Through the design and analysis of specific neurodynamical models embedded in robotic agents, we explore how an agent is constituted in a sensorimotor space as an autonomous entity able to adaptively sustain its own organization. Using two simulation models and different dynamical analysis and measurement of complex patterns in their behaviour, we are able to tackle some theoretical obstacles preventing the understanding of sensorimotor autonomy, and to generate new predictions about the nature of autonomous agency in the neurocognitive domain. Second, we explore the extension of sensorimotor forms of autonomy into the social realm. We analyse two cases from an experimental perspective: the constitution of a collective subject in a sensorimotor social interactive task, and the emergence of an autonomous social identity in a large-scale technologically-mediated social system. Through the analysis of coordination mechanisms and emergent complex patterns, we are able to gather experimental evidence indicating that in some cases social autonomy might emerge based on mechanisms of coordinated sensorimotor activity and interaction, constituting forms of collective autonomous agency

THE MACHINE ANXIETIES OF STEAMPUNK: CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY, NEO-VICTORIAN AESTHETICS, AND FUTURISM

This dissertation examines the steampunk movement as a significant contemporary expression of the human condition. Although its aesthetic inspiration comes from the Victorian past, as re-tooled, re-imagined, and re-energized for the twenty-first century, steampunk’s underlying interest is in a speculative view of the future and a concern for the contemporary individual’s struggle to retain autonomy in a de-centered, deterritorialized world. As such the steampunk movement participates in, and contributes to, an important ongoing philosophical and aesthetic dialog. The project examines the motivations for steampunk’s visual inspiration in the Victorian. Technological and scientific advancements in that period greatly impacted societal traditions and the role of the individual within it. Economic, social, and political changes revolutionized daily life and the individual faced a new self-consciousness as she confronted, and adapted to, these significant changes. Today, similar technological advancements force new tensions between the individual and the world around her. Astounding developments in computing and artificial intelligence, and the concept of the cyborg and other hybrid beings challenge the contemporary individual’s sense of self. By looking to the past, steampunk seeks to recuperate the Victorian individual’s successful navigation of technological change. She does so in order to facilitate our own navigation of current waters. vii The project traces the movement’s modest roots as a literary sub-genre of science fiction, explores its sources in the Victorian, and describes the movement’s rapid evolution to global phenomenon. Today steampunk is fully integrated into contemporary culture as an aesthetic observed in visual, decorative, and fashion arts, comic books, movies, and television. The project explores the current landscape of art and philosophy in order to position the steampunk movement within the larger scope of the contemporary scene. A triad of prevailing philosophical trends—postmodernism, transhumanism, and posthumanism, help to reveal steampunk’s involvement in the contemporary philosophical and aesthetic dialog.https://digitalmaine.com/academic/1015/thumbnail.jp

Expert-in-the-Loop Multilateral Telerobotics for Haptics-Enabled Motor Function and Skills Development

Among medical robotics applications are Robotics-Assisted Mirror Rehabilitation Therapy (RAMRT) and Minimally-Invasive Surgical Training (RAMIST) that extensively rely on motor function development. Haptics-enabled expert-in-the-loop motor function development for such applications is made possible through multilateral telerobotic frameworks. While several studies have validated the benefits of haptic interaction with an expert in motor learning, contradictory results have also been reported. This emphasizes the need for further in-depth studies on the nature of human motor learning through haptic guidance and interaction. The objective of this study was to design and evaluate expert-in-the-loop multilateral telerobotic frameworks with stable and human-safe control loops that enable adaptive “hand-over-hand” haptic guidance for RAMRT and RAMIST. The first prerequisite for such frameworks is active involvement of the patient or trainee, which requires the closed-loop system to remain stable in the presence of an adaptable time-varying dominance factor. To this end, a wave-variable controller is proposed in this study for conventional trilateral teleoperation systems such that system stability is guaranteed in the presence of a time-varying dominance factor and communication delay. Similar to other wave-variable approaches, the controller is initially developed for the Velocity-force Domain (VD) based on the well-known passivity assumption on the human arm in VD. The controller can be applied straightforwardly to the Position-force Domain (PD), eliminating position-error accumulation and position drift, provided that passivity of the human arm in PD is addressed. However, the latter has been ignored in the literature. Therefore, in this study, passivity of the human arm in PD is investigated using mathematical analysis, experimentation as well as user studies involving 12 participants and 48 trials. The results, in conjunction with the proposed wave-variables, can be used to guarantee closed-loop PD stability of the supervised trilateral teleoperation system in its classical format. The classic dual-user teleoperation architecture does not, however, fully satisfy the requirements for properly imparting motor function (skills) in RAMRT (RAMIST). Consequently, the next part of this study focuses on designing novel supervised trilateral frameworks for providing motor learning in RAMRT and RAMIST, each customized according to the requirements of the application. The framework proposed for RAMRT includes the following features: a) therapist-in-the-loop mirror therapy; b) haptic feedback to the therapist from the patient side; c) assist-as-needed therapy realized through an adaptive Guidance Virtual Fixture (GVF); and d) real-time task-independent and patient-specific motor-function assessment. Closed-loop stability of the proposed framework is investigated using a combination of the Circle Criterion and the Small-Gain Theorem. The stability analysis addresses the instabilities caused by: a) communication delays between the therapist and the patient, facilitating haptics-enabled tele- or in-home rehabilitation; and b) the integration of the time-varying nonlinear GVF element into the delayed system. The platform is experimentally evaluated on a trilateral rehabilitation setup consisting of two Quanser rehabilitation robots and one Quanser HD2 robot. The framework proposed for RAMIST includes the following features: a) haptics-enabled expert-in-the-loop surgical training; b) adaptive expertise-oriented training, realized through a Fuzzy Interface System, which actively engages the trainees while providing them with appropriate skills-oriented levels of training; and c) task-independent skills assessment. Closed-loop stability of the architecture is analyzed using the Circle Criterion in the presence and absence of haptic feedback of tool-tissue interactions. In addition to the time-varying elements of the system, the stability analysis approach also addresses communication delays, facilitating tele-surgical training. The platform is implemented on a dual-console surgical setup consisting of the classic da Vinci surgical system (Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA), integrated with the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) motor controllers, and the dV-Trainer master console (Mimic Technology Inc., Seattle, WA). In order to save on the expert\u27s (therapist\u27s) time, dual-console architectures can also be expanded to accommodate simultaneous training (rehabilitation) for multiple trainees (patients). As the first step in doing this, the last part of this thesis focuses on the development of a multi-master/single-slave telerobotic framework, along with controller design and closed-loop stability analysis in the presence of communication delays. Various parts of this study are supported with a number of experimental implementations and evaluations. The outcomes of this research include multilateral telerobotic testbeds for further studies on the nature of human motor learning and retention through haptic guidance and interaction. They also enable investigation of the impact of communication time delays on supervised haptics-enabled motor function improvement through tele-rehabilitation and mentoring

Awakening The Potential of Positive Computing: A Transversal, Heliotropic Design Paradigm for Human Flourishing

Positive Computing literature does not consider the complex implications stemming from the evidence of computing technologies’ harmful effects. Moreover, present approaches to integrating well-being science into the design of interactive systems are built on deficit-oriented models. In response, a transversal, social constructionist paradigm of Positive Computing sensitive to the social complex and views technology as a part ofcivilization as a living, human construction is explored as a means of advancing the Positive Computing domain. The work argues the well-being of civilization needs to be routinely re-secured through the development of a metacognitive, affirmative competency that recognizessocial systems as capable of creating their own realities. To effectuate the change, adoption of an integral awareness of the socio-technical complex and a new, positively oriented model of design for interactive computing technologies are proposed