Responsive Music Interfaces for Performance

In this project we have developed reactive instruments for performance. Reactive instruments provide feedback for the performer thereby providing a more dynamic experience. This is achieved through the use of haptics and robotics. Haptics provide a feedback system to the control surface. Robotics provides a way to actuate the instruments and their control surfaces. This allows a highly coordinated “dance” between performer and the instrument. An application for this idea is presented as a linear slide interface. Reactive interfaces represent a dynamic way for music to be portrayed in performance

Dynamic privacy management in pervasive sensor networks

This paper describes the design and implementation of a dynamic privacy management system aimed at enabling tangible privacy control and feedback in a pervasive sensor network. Our work began with the development of a potentially invasive sensor network (with high resolution video, audio, and motion tracking capabilities) featuring different interactive applications that created incentive for accepting this network as an extension of people’s daily social space. A user study was then conducted to evaluate several privacy management approaches – an active badge system for both online and on-site control, on/off power switches for physically disabling the hardware, and touch screen input control. Results from a user study indicated that an active badge for on-site privacy control is the most preferable method among all provided options. We present a set of results that yield insight into the privacy/benefit tradeoff from various sensing capabilities in pervasive sensor networks and how privacy settings and user behavior relate in these environments.Things That Think Consortiu

Parasitic mobility for sensate media

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-216).Distributed sensor networks offer many new capabilities for monitoring environments with applicability to medical, industrial, military, anthropological, and experiential fields. By making such systems mobile, we increase the application-space for the distributed sensor network mainly by providing dynamic context-dependent deployment, continual relocatabililty, automatic node recovery, and a larger area of coverage. In existing models, the addition of actuation to sensor network nodes has exacerbated three of the main problems with these types of systems: power usage, node size, and node complexity. This work proposes a solution to these problems in the form of parasitically actuated nodes that gain their mobility and local navigational intelligence by selectively engaging and disengaging from mobile hosts in their environment. This body of work evaluates parasitically actuated sensor networks as a solution to these problems through extensive software simulation and by designing, implementing, and demonstrating a parasitically mobile sensor network.by Matthew Joel Laibowitz.S.M

Creating cohesive video with the narrative-informed use of ubiquitous wearable and imaging sensor networks

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010.Page 232 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 222-231).In today's digital era, elements of anyone's life can be captured, by themselves or others, and be instantly broadcast. With little or no regulation on the proliferation of camera technology and the increasing use of video for social communication, entertainment, and education, we have undoubtedly entered the age of ubiquitous media. A world permeated by connected video devices promises a more democratized approach to mass-media culture, enabling anyone to create and distribute personalized content. While these advancements present a plethora of possibilities, they are not without potential negative effects, particularly with regard to privacy, ownership, and the general decrease in quality associated with minimal barriers to entry. This dissertation presents a first-of-its-kind research platform designed to investigate the world of ubiquitous video devices in order to confront inherent problems and create new media applications. This system takes a novel approach to the creation of user-generated, documentary video by augmenting a network of video cameras integrated into the environment with on-body sensing. The distributed video camera network can record the entire life of anyone within its coverage range and it will be shown that it, almost instantly, records more audio and video than can be viewed without prohibitive human resource cost.(cont.) This drives the need to develop a mechanism to automatically understand the raw audiovisual information in order to create a cohesive video output that is understandable, informative, and/or enjoyable to its human audience. We address this need with the SPINNER system. As humans, we are inherently able to transform disconnected occurrences and ideas into cohesive narratives as a method to understand, remember, and communicate meaning. The design of the SPINNER application and ubiquitous sensor platform is informed by research into narratology, in other words how stories are created from fragmented events. The SPINNER system maps low level sensor data from the wearable sensors to higher level social signal and body language information. This information is used to label the raw video data. The SPINNER system can then build a cohesive narrative by stitching together the appropriately labeled video segments. The results from three test runs are shown, each resulting in one or more automatically edited video piece. The creation of these videos is evaluated through review by their intended audience and by comparing the system to a human trying to perform similar actions. In addition, the mapping of the wearable sensor data to meaningful information is evaluated by comparing the calculated results to those from human observation of the actual video.by Mathew Laibowitz.Ph.D

Length-Independent Voltage Fluctuations in Small Devices

Conductance fluctuations in one-dimensional lines of length L shorter than the phase-coherence length Lφ are not universal but diverge as L-2. Using the Onsager relations and voltage additivity, we show that the voltage fluctuations are independent of the distance between voltage probes. The antisymmetric (Hall-type) contribution to the voltage fluctuations is constant for all values of L. Measurements of the voltage fluctuations and correlation function between different regions in Au and Sb lines confirm these results

Temperature Dependence of the Normal-Metal Aharonov-Bohm Effect

The amplitude of h/e periodic oscillations in the magnetoresistance of very small normal-metal (Au) rings, as well as the harmonic h/2e, have been studied as a function of temperature. The amplitudes depend on the temperature T roughly as T-1/2, as expected from the averaging of conduction channels in the absence of inelastic scattering, but may not be entirely consistent with this model. At the lowest T, the size of the fluctuations in the conductance is about ΔG∼e2/h, as predicted recently

Experiences and challenges in deploying potentially invasive sensor systems for dynamic media applications

This paper describes a series of projects that explore a set of dynamic media applications built upon a potentially invasive sensor system - the Ubiquitous Media Portal, featuring high-resolution video and audio capture with user ID/tracking capabilities that we installed throughout our facility. In addition to sensors, the portals provide a display and loudspeaker to locally display information or manifest phenomena from virtual worlds. During an eight-month long period, we implemented four different applications to explore acceptance by our buildingwide users. Our results provide insight into how different levels of information presentation and perceived user control can influence the user acceptance and engagement with such sensor platforms in ubiquitous deployments.Things That Think ConsortiumNokia Research Cente

Direct Observation of Ensemble Averaging of the Aharonov-Bohm Effect in Normal-Metal Loops

Aharonov-Bohm magnetoconductance oscillations have been measured in series arrays of 1, 3, 10, and 30 submicron-diameter Ag loops. At constant temperature, the amplitude of the h/e oscillations is observed to decrease as the square root of number of loops, while the amplitude of h/2e conductance oscillations, measured in the same samples, is independent of the number of series loops. This is direct confirmation of the ensemble averaging properties of h/e oscillations in multiloop systems. The amplitude of the h/e oscillations is in good agreement with recent calculations

Asymmetry in the Magnetoconductance of Metal Wires and Loops

Universal conductance fluctuations in wires and Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in loops are not symmetric about H=0. The observation of asymmetry in the periodic oscillations is possible when the phase-coherence length of the wave function is comparable to the separation of the voltage probes. In both cases, four-probe measurements yield resistances which depend on lead configuration. The asymmetries appear like Hall voltages, and are consistent with Onsager\u27s relations

Magnetoresistance of Small, Quasi-One-Dimensional, Normal-Metal Rings and Lines

The magnetoresistance of sub-0.4-μm-diam Au and Au60Pd40 rings was measured in a perpendicular magnetic field at temperatures as low as 5 mK in search of simple, periodic resistance oscillations that would be evidence of flux quantization in normal-metal rings. However, instead of simple oscillations, a very complex structure developed in the magnetoresistance at low temperatures. Fourier analysis of all the data did not reveal convincing evidence for flux quantization in the rings. Complex structure similar to that observed in the rings was also found in the magnetoresistance of short, narrow, Au and Au60Pd40 lines. This structure appears to be associated with the small size of the devices