The digitally 'Hand Made' object

This article will outline the author’s investigations of types of computer interfaces in practical three-dimensional design practice. The paper contains a description of two main projects in glass and ceramic tableware design, using a Microscribe G2L digitising arm as an interface to record three-dimensional spatial\ud design input.\ud \ud The article will provide critical reflections on the results of the investigations and will argue that new approaches in digital design interfaces could have relevance in developing design methods which incorporate more physical ‘human’ expressions in a three-dimensional design practice. The research builds on concepts indentified in traditional craft practice as foundations for constructing new types of creative practices based on the use of digital technologies, as outlined by McCullough (1996)

On the Simultaneous Perception of Sound and Three-Dimensional Objects

Although examples of work investigating the perceptual relationship and possibilities of sound and image are common, relatively litle work has been carried out into multimedia works combining sound and three-dimensional objects. A practice-based investigation into this subject is presented with original artworks and contectual material from sound art, sculpture, moving image and psychology. The project sets out to more examine the perception of multimedia work, specifically through the creation and analysis of artworks combining sound and physical objects. It considers three main areas of study: sound’s ability to draw attention to, or modify, the existing properties of an object; techniques which encourage sound and object to appear cohesively as part of the same work; and a discussion of cognitive effects that may occur as a result of their simulataneous perception. Using the concept of the search space from evolutionary computing as an example, the case is made that multimedia artworksde can present a larger field of creative opportunity than single-media works, due to the enhanced interplay between the two media and the viewer's a priori knowledge. The roles of balance, dynamism and interactivity in multimedia work are also explored. Throughout the thesis examples of original artworks are given which exemplify the issues raised. The main outcome of the study is a proposed framework for categorising and analysing the perception of multimedia artworks, based on increasing semantic separation between the sensory elements. It is claimed that as the relationship between these elements becomes less obvious, more work is demanded of the viewer's imagination in trying to reconcile the gap, leading to active engagement and the possibility of extra imaginary forms which do not exist in the original material. It is proposed that the framework and ideas in this document will be applicable beyond the sound/object focus of this study, and it is hoped they will inform research into multimedia work in other forms

Exploring the role of lived time and co-presence in culturally consumptive mixed reality environments

This thesis considers the role of mixed reality in the culturally consumptive context of a contemporary outdoor sculpture park. It grounds the discussion of an augmented mode of experience by utilising a philosophical framework, derived from Henri Bergson and Francisco Varela, which distinguishes between two different senses of virtuality. The first of these is focussed on technology, whilst the second addresses issues of temporality and the specious present. These senses of virtuality are then applied to the development of a mediated mode of ocular and auditory experience, in an attempt to construct a syncretic experiential archive of subjective artistic encounters, that take place in the context of the park. Consideration of a syncretic mixed reality setting facilitates a need for a mode of design which can accommodate issues of embodiment alongside our sense of lived time. In this sense the thesis pushes against the abstracted and reduced forms of time and space that typically result from their technological representation or mediation. Precedents for understanding this mode of embodied temporal experience are seen in the works of Keiichi Matsuda, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Paul Trillo, and Tacita Dean. Underlying this technologically virtual structure is a more encompassing sense of temporality that likewise conditions our more subjective and ever-evolving durational experience. The thesis claims that our subjective sense of time is itself subject to variance via a myriad of factors affecting perception and cognition. This complex scenario is investigated via a practice-research mode of enquiry and incorporated into the simulated and speculative design outcomes that together constitute the thesis’s more practical dimension. The thesis’s speculative design artefacts are intended to provide a less authoritarian form of cultural commentary and contextualisation and are developed by a mode of selection and actualisation that is facilitated by Dunne and Raby’s adoption of Hancock and Bezold’s ‘cone of futures’. As a part of its enquiry, the thesis develops a novel methodology that combines a cybernetic enquiry system with more speculative cycles of making. This methodology is intended to be positioned as one of the study’s outcomes, and to be applicable in a wider context. The methodological cycles in question look to overcome the various obstacles that present themselves within the study’s technically challenging scenario. This is achieved through the development and adoption of a novel search strategy which is informed by a mode of abductive reasoning. By utilising the process of abduction, a series of artefacts are produced which gradually inculcate the notion that modes of technological virtuality can affect our sense of temporal virtuality in so far as the mediation of embodied experience, via modes of augmentation, can influence, interrupt, and affect our subjective experience of lived time. Ultimately, it is intended that the study’s methodology and its focus on speculatively designed outcomes, might be applied more broadly in the context of artistic research, as well as providing a layered system of enquiry that could be usefully adopted in the context of design for both the cultural and heritage industries

Interdisciplinary Insights for Digital Touch Communication

Communication is increasingly moving beyond ‘ways of seeing’ to ‘ways of feeling’. This Open Access book provides social design insights and implications for HCI research and design exploring digitally mediated touch communication. It offers a socially orientated map to help navigate the complex social landscape of digitally mediated touch for communication: from everyday touch-screens, tangibles, wearables, haptics for virtual reality, to the tactile internet of skin. Drawing on literature reviews, new case-study vignettes, and exemplars of digital touch, the book examines the major social debates provoked by digital touch, and investigates social themes central to the communicative potential and societal consequences of digital touch: · Communication environments, capacities and practices · Norms associations and expectations · Presence, absence and connection · Social imaginaries of digital touch · Digital touch ethics and values The book concludes with a discussion of the significance of social understanding and methods in the context of Interdisciplinary collaborations to explore touch, towards the design of digital touch communication, ‘ways of feeling’, that are useable, appropriate, ethical and socially aware

Felt_space infrastructure: Hyper vigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension

Felt_space infrastructure: Hypervigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension. This thesis evolves perception as a hypothesis to reframe architectural praxis negotiated through agent-situation interaction. The research questions the geometric principles of architectural ordination to originate the ‘felt_space infrastructure’, a relational system of measurement concerned with the role of perception in mediating sensory space and the cognised environment. The methodological model for this research fuses perception and environmental stimuli, into a consistent generative process that penetrates the inner essence of space, to reveal the visceral parameter. These concepts are applied to develop a ‘coefficient of affordance’ typology, ‘hypervigilant’ tool set, and ‘cognitive_tope’ design methodology. Thus, by extending the architectural platform to consider perception as a design parameter, the thesis interprets the ‘inference schema’ as an instructional model to coordinate the acquisition of spatial reality through tensional and counter-tensional feedback dynamics. Three site-responsive case studies are used to advance the thesis. The first case study is descriptive and develops a typology of situated cognition to extend the ‘granularity’ of perceptual sensitisation (i.e. a fine-grained means of perceiving space). The second project is relational and questions how mapping can coordinate perceptual, cognitive and associative attention, as a ‘multi-webbed vector field’ comprised of attractors and deformations within a viewer-centred gravitational space. The third case study is causal, and demonstrates how a transactional-biased schema can generate, amplify and attenuate perceptual misalignment, thus triggering a visceral niche. The significance of the research is that it progresses generative perception as an additional variable for spatial practice, and promotes transactional methodologies to gain enhanced modes of spatial acuity to extend the repertoire of architectural practice

Screen Space Reconfigured

Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical framing, haptics, and layering, this volume takes stock of emerging forms of screen space and spatialities as they move from the margins to the centre of contemporary media practice.Recent years have seen a marked scholarly interest in spatial dimensions and conceptions of moving image culture, with some theorists claiming that a 'spatial turn' has taken place in media studies and screen practices alike. Yet this is the first book-length study dedicated to on-screen spatiality as such.Spanning mainstream cinema, experimental film, video art, mobile screens, and stadium entertainment, the volume includes contributions from such acclaimed authors as Giuliana Bruno and Tom Gunning as well as a younger generation of scholars