51 research outputs found
Altering One's Body-Perception Through E-Textiles and Haptic Metaphors
Technologies change rapidly our perception of reality, moving from augmented to virtual to magical. While e-textiles are a key component in exergame or space suits, the transformative potential of the internal side of garments to create embodied experiences still remains largely unexplored. This paper is the result from an art-science collaborative project that combines recent neuroscience findings, body-centered design principles and 2D vibrotactile array-based fabrics to alter one's body perception. We describe an iterative design process intertwined with two user studies on the effects on body-perceptions and emotional responses of various vibration patterns within textile that were designed as spatial haptic metaphors. Our results show potential in considering materials (e.g., rocks) as sensations to design for body perceptions (e.g., being heavy, strong) and emotional responses. We discuss these results in terms of sensory effects on body perception and synergetic impact to research on embodiment in virtual environments, human-computer interaction, and e-textile design. The work brings a new perspective to the sensorial design of embodied experiences which is based on “material perception” and haptic metaphors, and highlights potential opportunities opened by haptic clothing to change body-perception
Evaluation of Psychoacoustic Sound Parameters for Sonification
Sonification designers have little theory or experimental evidence to guide the design of data-to-sound mappings. Many mappings use acoustic representations of data values which do not correspond with the listener's perception of how that data value should sound during sonification. This research evaluates data-to-sound mappings that are based on psychoacoustic sensations, in an attempt to move towards using data-to-sound mappings that are aligned with the listener's perception of the data value's auditory connotations. Multiple psychoacoustic parameters were evaluated over two experiments, which were designed in the context of a domain-specific problem - detecting the level of focus of an astronomical image through auditory display. Recommendations for designing sonification systems with psychoacoustic sound parameters are presented based on our results
Investigating Perceptual Congruence Between Data and Display Dimensions in Sonification
The relationships between sounds and their perceived meaning and connotations are complex, making auditory perception an important factor to consider when designing sonification systems. Listeners often have a mental model of how a data variable should sound during sonification and this model is not considered in most data:sound mappings. This can lead to mappings that are difficult to use and can cause confusion. To investigate this issue, we conducted a magnitude estimation experiment to map how roughness, noise and pitch relate to the perceived magnitude of stress, error and danger. These parameters were chosen due to previous findings which suggest perceptual congruency between these auditory sensations and conceptual variables. Results from this experiment show that polarity and scaling preference are dependent on the data:sound mapping. This work provides polarity and scaling values that may be directly utilised by sonification designers to improve auditory displays in areas such as accessible and mobile computing, process-monitoring and biofeedback
Designing a gesture-sound wearable system to motivate physical activity by altering body perception
People, through their bodily actions, engage in sensorimotor loops that connect them to the world and to their own bodies. People's brains integrate the incoming sensory information to form mental representations of their body appearance and capabilities. Technology provides exceptional opportunities to tweak sensorimotor loops and provide people with different experiences of their bodies. We recently showed that real-time sound feedback on one's movement (sonic avatar) can be used for sensory alteration of people's body perception, and in turn provoke enhanced motor behaviour, confidence and motivation for physical activity (PA) in people while increasing their positive emotions towards their own bodies. Here we describe the design process of a wearable prototype that aims to investigate how we can overcome known body-perception-related psychological barriers to PA by employing action-sound loops. The prototype consists of sensors that capture people's bodily actions and a gesture-sound palette that allows different action-sound mappings. Grounded in neuroscientific, clinical and sports psychology studies on body perception and PA, the ultimate design aim is to enhance PA in inactive populations by provoking changes on their bodily experience
From presence to consciousness through virtual reality
Immersive virtual environments can break the deep, everyday connection between where our senses tell us we are and where we are actually located and whom we are with. The concept of 'presence' refers to the phenomenon of behaving and feeling as if we are in the virtual world created by computer displays. In this article, we argue that presence is worthy of study by neuroscientists, and that it might aid the study of perception and consciousness
Biochemical characterization and low-resolution SAXS shape of a novel GH11 exo-1,4-β-xylanase identified in a microbial consortium
Biotechnologies that aim to produce renewable fuels, chemicals, and bioproducts from residual ligno(hemi)cellulosic biomass mostly rely on enzymatic depolymerization of plant cell walls (PCW). This process requires an arsenal of diverse enzymes, including xylanases, which synergistically act on the hemicellulose, reducing the long and complex xylan chains to oligomers and simple sugars. Thus, xylanases play a crucial role in PCW depolymerization. Until recently, the largest xylanase family, glycoside hydrolase family 11 (GH11) has been exclusively represented by endo-catalytic β-1,4- and β-1,3-xylanases. Analysis of a metatranscriptome library from a microbial lignocellulose community resulted in the identification of an unusual exo-acting GH11 β-1,4-xylanase (MetXyn11). Detailed characterization has been performed on recombinant MetXyn11 including determination of its low-resolution small angle Xray scattering (SAXS) molecular envelope in solution. Our results reveal that MetXyn11 is a monomeric globular enzyme that liberates xylobiose from heteroxylans as the only product. MetXyn11 has an optimal activity in a pH range from 6 to 9 and an optimal temperature of 50 oC. The enzyme maintained above 65% of its original activity in the pH range 5 to 6 after being incubated for 72 h at 50 oC. Addition of the enzyme to a commercial enzymatic cocktail (CelicCtec3) promoted a significant increase of enzymatic hydrolysis yields of hydrothermally pretreated sugarcane bagasse (16% after 24 h of hydrolysis)
A review of real-time eeg sonification research
Presented at the 19th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2013) on July 6-9, 2013 in Lodz, Poland.Over the last few decades there has been steady growth in
research that addresses the real-time sonification of electroencephalographic
(EEG) data. Diverse application areas include
medical data screening, Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI), neurofeedback,
affective computing and applications in the arts. The
present paper presents an overview and critical review of the principal
research to date in EEG data sonification. Firstly, we identify
several sub-domains of real-time EEG sonification and discuss
their diverse approaches and goals. Secondly, we describe our
search and inclusion criteria, and then present a synoptic summary
table spanning over fifty different research projects or published
research findings. Thirdly, we analyze sonification approaches to
the various EEG data dimensions such as time-frequency filtering,
signal level, location, before going on to consider higher order
EEG features. Finally, we discuss future application domains
which may benefit from new capabilities in the real-time sonification
of EEG data. We believe that the present critical review may
help to reduce research fragmentation and may aid future collaboration
in this emerging multidisciplinary area
Auditory Presence, Individualized Head-Related Transfer Functions, and Illusory Ego-Motion in Virtual Environments
It is likely that experiences of presence and self-motion elicited by binaurally simulated and reproduced rotating sound fields can be degraded by the artifacts caused by the use of generic Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). In this paper, an HRTF measurement system which allows for fast data collection is discussed. Furthermore, effects of generic vs. individualized HRTFs were investigated in an experiment. Results show a significant increase in presence ratings of individualized binaural stimuli compared to responses to stimuli processed with generic HRTFs. Additionally, differences in intensity and convincingness of illusory self-rotation ratings were found for sub-groups of subjects, formed on the basis of subjects localization performance with the given HRTFs catalogues
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