Academic literature on the topic '190205 Interactive Media'

This thesis is concerned with creating and evaluating interactive art systems that facilitate emergent participant experiences. For the purposes of this research, interactive art is the computer based arts involving physical participation from the audience, while emergence is when a new form or concept appears that was not directly implied by the context from which it arose. This emergent ‘whole’ is more than a simple sum of its parts. The research aims to develop understanding of the nature of emergent experiences that might arise during participant interaction with interactive art systems. It also aims to understand the design issues surrounding the creation of these systems. The approach used is Practice-based, integrating practice, evaluation and theoretical research. Practice used methods from Reflection-in-action and Iterative design to create two interactive art systems: Glass Pond and +-now. Creation of +-now resulted in a novel method for instantiating emergent shapes. Both art works were also evaluated in exploratory studies. In addition, a main study with 30 participants was conducted on participant interaction with +-now. These sessions were video recorded and participants were interviewed about their experience. Recordings were transcribed and analysed using Grounded theory methods. Emergent participant experiences were identified and classified using a taxonomy of emergence in interactive art. This taxonomy draws on theoretical research. The outcomes of this Practice-based research are summarised as follows. Two interactive art systems, where the second work clearly facilitates emergent interaction, were created. Their creation involved the development of a novel method for instantiating emergent shapes and it informed aesthetic and design issues surrounding interactive art systems for emergence. A taxonomy of emergence in interactive art was also created. Other outcomes are the evaluation findings about participant experiences, including different types of emergence experienced and the coding schemes produced during data analysis.

This study is an investigation in and through media arts practice. It set out to develop a novel type of new media artistic praxis built upon concepts drawn from the disciplines of scientific and cultural ecology. The rationale for this research was based upon my observation as a practising new media artist that existing praxis in the new media domain appeared to operate largely without awareness of the ecological implications of those practices. The thesis begins by explaining key concepts of ecology, spanning the arts and the sciences. It then outlines the thinking of contemporary theorists who propose that the problem of ecology is a critical issue for the 21st century, suggesting that our well-documented ecological crisis is indicative of a more general crisis of human subjectivity. It then records an investigation into particular strategies for artistic praxis which might instigate an active engagement with this problem of ecology. The study employed a methodology based in action research to focus upon the development and analysis of three new artistic works, '#14', 'Public Relations' and 'transit_lounge'. These were used to explore diverse theories of ecology and to hone a series of pointers towards Ecosophical arts/new media praxis. This journey constitutes an emergent theory for new media space design. The thesis concludes with a toolkit of tactics and approaches that other arts/new media practitioners might employ to begin working on the problem of ecology.

Sense-making of spatial data on an urban level and large-scale decisions on new infrastructure projects need teamwork from experts with varied backgrounds. Technology can facilitate this collaboration process and magnify the effect of collective intelligence. Therefore, this work explores new useful collaboration interactions and visualizations for map-exploration software with a strong focus on usability. Additionally, for same-time and same-place group work, interactive table-top displays serve as a natural platform. Thus, the second aim of this project is to develop a user-friendly concept for integrating table-top displays with collaborative map-exploration. To achieve these goals, we continuously adapted the user-interface of the map-exploration software RAISE. We adopted a user-centred design approach and a simple iterative interaction design lifecycle model. Alternating between quick prototyping and user-testing phases, new design concepts were assessed and consequently improved or rejected. The necessary data was gathered through continuous dialogue with users and experts, a participatory design workshop, and a final observational study. Adopting a cross-device concept, our final prototype supports sharing information between a user’s personal device and table-top display(s). We found that this allows for a comfortable and practical separation between private and shared workspaces. The tool empowers users to share the current camera-position, data queries, and active layers between devices and with other users. We generalized further findings into a set of recommendations for designing user-friendly tools for collaborative map-exploration. The set includes recommendations regarding the sharing behaviour, the user-interface design, and the idea of playfulness in collaboration.

The usage of the mobile Internet has increased tremendously within the last couple of years, and thereby the vision of accessing information anytime, anywhere has become more realistic and a dominant design principle for providing content. However, this study challenges this paradigm of unlimited and unrestricted access, and explores the question whether constraints and restrictions can positively influence the motivation and enticement of mobile users to engage with location-specific content. Restrictions, such as a particular time or location that gives a user access to content, may be used to foster participation and engagement, as well as to support content production and to enhance the user’s experience. In order to explore this, a Mobile Narrative and a Narrative Map have been created. For the former, the access to individual chapters of the story was restricted. Authors can specify constraints, such as a location or time, which need to be met by the reader if they want to read the story. This concept allows creative writers of the story to exploit the fact that the reader’s context is known, by intensifying the user experience and integrating this knowledge into the writing process. The latter, the Narrative Map, provides users with extracts from stories or information snippets about authors at relevant locations. In both concepts, a feedback channel was also integrated, on which location, time, and size constraints were imposed. In a user-centred design process involving authors and potential readers, those concepts have been implemented, followed by an evaluation comprising four user studies. The results show that restrictions and constraints can indeed lead to more enticing and engaging user experiences, and restricted contribution opportunities can lead to a higher motivation to participate as well as to an improved quality of submissions. These findings are relevant for future developments in the area of mobile narratives and creative writing, as well as for common mobile services that aim for enticing user experiences.

This thesis explores ways that the complex concept of trust functions between users in digital environments who are strangers. Although it can and has been argued that ‘trust’ is central to the functioning of society (Watson 2009), it is difficult to apply a static and complete definition of the term. I argue that trust is neither a fully objective nor subjective state but is formed through interaction. If users are to communicate via the mediation of digital environments, how will trust relationships form? In this thesis, I draw on a recent theory of trust: the enablement of trust. The agenda of trust enablement allows users to reach and maintain trust or distrust on their own terms.

Concerned with formations, the second chapter is devoted to historical scenes in the development of behavioral biology around 1900. The latter discipline systematized knowledge about swarms by relying on physical instead of then popular social models of interaction, e.g. in mass psychology. It developed a genuinely ‘biological gaze’ that was determined to study animal collectives in terms of the ‘systemic’ nature of their inter-individual behavior. Techniques and media for gathering data thus gained a new degree of relevance, replacing the human sensory apparatus, which perceived little more than noise, and traditional systems for recording information (diaries, hand-written observations), which could not deal with the abundance of data.

The literature related to microwave and ultrasound working simultaneously is rather infrequent. The reason is obvious: microwave irradiation is of electromagnetic origin while ultrasound is a mechanical vibration energy. Moreover, the optimal settings for ultrasound propagation throughout a reaction media do not coincide with the conditions required for application of microwaves. Therefore, the challenge is to find a way to best combination of these sources of energy into one apparatus to allow researchers to take advantage of the features of each technology. The oldest paper describing such a combination – microwave and ultrasound is having just 20 years [1] and describe an apparatus which uses a probe system delivering ultrasound through decalin to a vessel holding the reagents dipped in the MW cavity (fig. 1a). Another possibility using a normal MW oven is described by Peng [2] (fig.1b), but this setup is having radiation leakage problems and needs a proper protection. Ragaini et all proposed another type of setup [3] (fig. 1c), not easy to reproduce, but describing calibration and parameters which show an additive increase of thermal energy delivered when MW and US works simultaneous. Insert here uploaded pictures Figure 1. Some MW-US simultaneous setups Few years ago, Cravotto and Cintas [4], disccussed for the first time the potential of using MW and US in sequential or tandem setups. Their paper discuss all possible setups for using mostly glass probe for devlivery of ultrasonic energy or classical setup (fig. 1a). Slowly the concept gain popularity and the paper of Lionelly and Mason [5] prompts to the potential industrial applications, naming the combination of microwave with ultrasound a hybrid technology. The challenge in using this “hybrid technology” is to find a vesatile and reproducible apparatus able to deliver both microwave and ultrasound at a full controlable parameters. In our laboratory we have and use the setup like in the fig. 1a, but the ultrasonic energy is delivered by an ultrasonic cleaning device attached to microwave device (SAIREM Miniflow 200SS). To achieve the above mentioned outcome launched a project to build a device which could work with MW and US in tandem (as Cravotto mentioned [4]) using an US device able to deliver more than a single ultrasonic frequency at a full controlled power. It is our believe that such a device could significantly contribute to MW-US tandem equipment development. Based on our expertise and potential proposed interaction of US with reagents [6] we will investigate the influence (if any) of ultrasound upon MW field. In this paper we will present the earlier results of “Tandem Microwave Ultrasound” energy influence on chemical reagents. References 1. Lagha, A., et al., Analusis, 1999. 27(5): p. 452-457. 2. Peng, Y. and G. Song, Green Chemistry, 2001. 3(6): p. 302-304. 3. Ragaini, V., et al., Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, 2012. 19(4): p. 872-876. 4. Cravotto, G. and P. Cintas, Chemistry - A European Journal, 2007. 13(7): p. 1902-1909. 5. Leonelli, C. and T.J. Mason, Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification, 2010. 49(9): p. 885-900. 6. Vinatoru, M. and T.J. Mason, Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, 2018.