Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Embodied'

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-236). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users. Address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3024513.

The work explores the body and its limitations through the lens of printmaking.The surface of the body acts as a barrier between our internal and external selves exposing the vulnerabilities between mind and body. As fragile and receptive beings, the past builds up and manifests itself through our daily actions and repetitive tendencies. There is a strong desire to control our appearance and physical signs of well-being.

Things, spaces and people collaborate in order to create an immersive experience. This project investigates this collaboration in order to combine them for an embodied way of tell and perceive stories.  Can a immersive experience help to close the gap between information and the person, the event and the story? In the following essay I am going to analyze the components that are part of the experience. I am interested in the connection between perception, memory, atmosphere and objects. Inquire how they are related and what they represent in order to tell stories with them. I try to question the way we perceive and expand the function of telling and receiving stories to the whole body and everything around us. With these new questions, create my project – Johan’s Room – and experiment with them, trying to connect the audience with the story.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the applicability of aspects of Schön’s (1983) theories of reflection-in-action in relation to visual art practice. Schön’s (1983) theories demonstrate that whilst they are written with design disciplines in mind, they do not extend to consider the appropriateness of its use in visual art practice. Scrivener (2000: 10) draws the distinction that whilst Schön’s (1983) use of scientific language in reflection-in-action is considered applicable for problem-solving projects in design, aspects of it are problematic for creative production research projects and recommends focusing reflection on the underlying experience of creative production. This thesis proposes that this and other issues, such as the emphasis on problem solving, and particularly, a reliance on a conversational metaphor, is likewise problematic for visual art practice. This thesis therefore moves to examine what is distinct about the application of reflective methods in visual art practice, in relation to design and research in the arts, through a series of text-based and documentary case studies. Analysis of the case studies suggest that there is an emphasis on embodiment essential to visual art processes, which is experiential in nature rather than problem-solving. A thorough examination of recent theories of embodied mind, which provide empirical evidence from a broad range of knowledge fields for the pervasive role of embodiment in shaping human experience, is presented. The primary research method is a review of two existing sets of theories and a synthesis of aspects of them in an original context, a process offered as an original contribution to knowledge. The context in question is the assessment of the applicability of the resulting synthesis to visual art practice, a domain for which neither theory was written. Knowing-in-action (Schön, 1983) describes the tacit knowing implicit in skillful performance when practice is going well, reflection-inaction (Schön, 1983) takes over, and describes the processes cycled through, only when problems are encountered in practice. Through an analysis of theories of embodied mind, and the documentary cases studies, the conclusion is drawn that in addition to these descriptions there is a rich layer of non-verbal embodied experience shaping action, conceptual meaning and verbal articulations of practice. This thesis therefore suggests modifications to theories of reflective practice in the visual arts, by incorporating theories of embodied mind in the development of additional reflective methods to supplement Schön’s theories (1983). Two methods are proposed as worthy of further study. The first researches Mark Johnson’s (1987) theory of metaphorical projection, which is presented as a means of mapping aspects of visual arts practitioners' verbal articulations of practice, back onto source domains in their embodied experiences of practice. The second explores a recommendation from within theories of embodied mind (Varela, Thompson and Rosch, 1993: 27) that mindfulness training could help develop a mindful, open-ended reflection. Taken together, this thesis proposes that an Embodied Reflective Practice could be developed to the benefit of visual art practitioners.

The ability to localize and categorize objects via imagery is central to many potential applications, including autonomous vehicles, mobile robotics, and surveillance. In this thesis we employ a probabilistic approach to show how utilizing multiple images of the same scene can improve detection. We cast the task of object detection as finding the set of objects that maximize the posterior probability given a model of the categories and a prior for their spatial arrangements. We first present an approach to detection that leverages depth data from binocular stereo by factoring classification into two terms: an independent appearance-based object classifier, and a term for the 3D shape. We overcome the missing data and the limited fidelity of stereo by focusing on the size of the object and the presence of discontinuities. We go on to demonstrate that even with off-the-shelf stereo algorithms we can significantly improve detection on two household objects, mugs and shoes, in the presence of significant background clutter and textural variation. We also present a novel method for object detection, both in 2D and in 3D, from multiple images with known extrinsic camera parameters. We show that by also inferring the 3D position of the objects we can improve object detection by incorporating size priors and reasoning about the 3D geometry of a scene. We also show that integrating information across multiple viewpoints allows us to boost weak classification responses, overcome occlusion, and reduce false positives. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach, over single viewpoint detection, on a dataset containing mugs, bottles, bowls, and shoes in a variety of challenging scenarios.

Personal narrative and literature review was used to explore the historical and current contexts of embodied knowing, embodied inquiry, and embodied teaching. Methods of embodied inquiry from phenomenology, somatics, and transpersonal research are described and compared. Ten common elements of embodied inquiry practices are distilled, including a dialogue between witnessing and felt sense aspects of awareness, as a tool for facilitating embodied understanding and integration. The application of embodied inquiry to teaching is explored, and the proposal that teaching and learning as a participatory embodied inquiry practice facilitates embodied understanding and transformation.

This thesis looks at the way in which drama education constructs opportunities for learning. Constructivism and self-organising systems theory are used to further understand how individuals and societies construct their own learning. Important in this process is the self-conscious experience of the learner. The notion of being ‘in learning’ rather than outside of and observing the learning is central. This consciousness facilitates the creation of meaning, which plays a role in determining the manner in which further participation in learning occurs, hence further learning. This emphasises the process of learning over the product of learning. The function that language and emotion serve in this process also deserves consideration. This perspective upon process has a considerable impact upon the way in which learners make meaning and the way in which they approach learning. Questions surrounding a consciousness of participation bring the senses, the feelings, the emotions and other physical experience to the fore. They require that the learning of the body be experienced. Embodied learning is insufficiently acknowledged and theorised in drama education. Through bringing together constructivism, systems theory, drama education and contemporary performance theory this thesis argues for a greater recognition of the relationship between the body and learning.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2009.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-222).
The graphical user interface has become the de facto metaphor for the majority of our diverse activities using computers, yet the desktop environment provides a one size fits all user interface. This dissertation argues that for the computer to fully realize its potential to significantly extend our intellectual abilities, new interaction techniques must call upon our bodily abilities to manipulate objects, enable collaborative work, and be usable in our everyday physical environment. In this dissertation I introduce a new human-computer interaction concept, embodied media. An embodied media system physically represents digital content such as files, variables, or other program constructs with a collection of self-contained, interactive electronic tokens that can display visual feedback and can be manipulated gesturally by users as a single, coordinated interface. Such a system relies minimally on external sensing infrastructure compared to tabletop or augmented reality systems, and is a more general-purpose platform than most tangible user interfaces. I hypothesized that embodied media interfaces provide advantages for activities that require the user to efficiently arrange and adjust multiple digital content items. Siftables is the first instantiation of an embodied media interface. I built 180 Siftable devices in three design iterations, and developed a programming interface and various applications to explore the possibilities of embodied media.
(cont.) In a survey, outside developers reported that Siftables created new user interface possibilities, and that working with Siftables increased their interest in human-computer interaction and expanded their ideas about the field. I evaluated a content organization application with users, finding that Siftables offered an advantage over the mouse+graphical user interface (GUI) for task completion time that was amplified when participants worked in pairs, and a digital image manipulation application in which participants preferred Siftables to the GUI in terms of enjoyability, expressivity, domain learning, and for exploratory/quick arrangement of items.
by David Jeffrey Merrill.
Ph.D.

Object recognition is a skill we as humans often take for granted. Due to our formidable object learning, recognition and generalisation skills, it is sometimes hard to see the multitude of obstacles that need to be overcome in order to replicate this skill in an artificial system. Object recognition is also one of the classical areas of computer vision, and many ways of approaching the problem have been proposed. Recently, visually capable robots and autonomous vehicles have increased the focus on embodied recognition systems and active visual search. These applications demand that systems can learn and adapt to their surroundings, and arrive at decisions in a reasonable amount of time, while maintaining high object recognition performance. This is especially challenging due to the high dimensionality of image data. In cases where end-to-end learning from pixels to output is needed, mechanisms designed to make inputs tractable are often necessary for less computationally capable embodied systems.Active visual search also means that mechanisms for attention and gaze control are integral to the object recognition procedure. Therefore, the way in which attention mechanisms should be introduced into feature extraction and estimation algorithms must be carefully considered when constructing a recognition system.This thesis describes work done on the components necessary for creating an embodied recognition system, specifically in the areas of decision uncertainty estimation, object segmentation from multiple cues, adaptation of stereo vision to a specific platform and setting, problem-specific feature selection, efficient estimator training and attentional modulation in convolutional neural networks. Contributions include the evaluation of methods and measures for predicting the potential uncertainty reduction that can be obtained from additional views of an object, allowing for adaptive target observations. Also, in order to separate a specific object from other parts of a scene, it is often necessary to combine multiple cues such as colour and depth in order to obtain satisfactory results. Therefore, a method for combining these using channel coding has been evaluated. In order to make use of three-dimensional spatial structure in recognition, a novel stereo vision algorithm extension along with a framework for automatic stereo tuning have also been investigated. Feature selection and efficient discriminant sampling for decision tree-based estimators have also been implemented. Finally, attentional multi-layer modulation of convolutional neural networks for recognition in cluttered scenes has been evaluated. Several of these components have been tested and evaluated on a purpose-built embodied recognition platform known as Eddie the Embodied.
Embodied Visual Object Recognition
FaceTrack

Our understanding of the world comes from our engaged interaction with it. Through embodied interaction we reveal our knowledge and skill; our knowing-in-action. This skill is tacit and typically non-vocalisable. This perspective of Embodied Interaction has long influenced HCI. Through reflection, however, we surface and interrogate this knowledge, changing our actions on-the-go. This reflection is intuitive and dynamic. This reflection is embodied. The existing literature on reflection in HCI has tended to consider a reflection that is separated from the action, emphasising a thoughtful and conceptual consideration. This thesis breaks from this tradition through its embodied perspective; considering purposeful reflection-on-action (after the activity) in physical tasks. Through a consideration of physical tasks, comes an emphasis on tacit knowledge. Yet reflection-on-action does not benefit from any of the tacit richness of the activity under consideration. This body of work explores tools and techniques to bring embodied and tacit knowledge to reflection-on-action, facilitating richer reflective practices. In combination with the already embodied reflection-in-action (during the activity), this thesis explores Designing for Embodied Reflection. Through an aim to support and enhance existing reflective practices, this thesis examines: the specifics of reflection in-the-world; technologies as a tool to assist reflective practice; the tensions of streamlining these tools into existing practice; and the facilitated novel opportunities for reflection. This thesis contributes a novel embodied perspective on reflection to HCI, highlighting the link between reflection and embodied interaction in the social science literature, providing a novel definition and feature set of reflection and using these to conduct an exploration of reflection in-the-wild, in domains emphasising different scales of physicality and reflective· rhythms. These works highlight: the burden of reflection; planning-for-reflection; the materiality of reflection; the opportunities in reflective coaching; the ambiguities of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action; the interplay of social and individual reflection in real-world settings; and the complex relationship between the features of reflection. From this, a series of design considerations for embodied reflection and an updated definition of reflection are presented.

Embodied Conversational Agents (i.e., avatars; ECAs) are appearing in increasingly many everyday contexts, such as e-commerce, occupational training, and airport security. Also common to a typical person's daily life is persuasion. Whether being persuaded or persuading, the ability to change another person's attitude or behavior is a thoroughly researched topic. However, little is known about ECAs' ability to persuade and whether basic persuasion principles from human-human interactions will hold in human-ECA interactions. This work investigates this question. First, a broad review of persuasion literature, which serves as an inventory of manipulations to test in ECA contexts, is presented. This literature review serves an inventory to guide future Persuasive ECA work. The ECA literature is then reviewed. Two preliminary studies exploring the effects of physical attractiveness, voice quality, argument quality, common ground, authority, and facial similarity are presented. Finally, the culminating study testing the effectiveness of ECAs to elicit self-disclosure in automated interviewing is presented and discussed. The findings of that automated interviewing study suggest that ECAs may replace humans in automated interviewing contexts. The findings also suggest that ECAs that are manipulated to look like their interviewees are able to induce greater likeability, establish more rapport, and elicited more self-referencing language than ECAs that do not look like the interviewees.

“In Speculum I wrote that to re-establish a political ethics a dual dialectic is necessary, one for the male subject and another for the female subject (pp223-4). Today I would say that a triple dialectic is necessary: one for the male subject, one for the female subject and one for their relationships as a couple or in a community. The weak and strong point of this quest concerns the issue of subjectivity and objectivity for women.” Pg 39 Irigaray, L (1994) Thinking the Difference: for a peaceful revolution trans Karin Montin, Routledge New York The Feminine Fictions project takes on Irigarays challenge for "A Peaceful Revolution” to find its genesis between men and women through enabling dialectics - an interaction between masculine and feminine subjectivities at the point of difference and within the context of relationship and community. For Irigaray, historically repressed feminine subjectivities must continually be (re)constructed/ transgressed in order for such dialectics to be both possible and empowering. In Feminine Fictions I take up Irigarays engagement in the hope that doing so will re-create bonds of relationship and community for and with women that yield such enabling returns. To do so I use the axes of symmetry and scale that Irigaray identifies - working from the subject to the transcendent, from the cosmic to the divine and from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. Masculine and Feminine appear as continually coalescing co-ordinates rather than limits in these axes, moments of opportunity rather than fixed references points and using subjectivity as a portal for viewing the cultural construction of “objective” experience. I adopt Irigarays mechanisms of mimesis, alterics and transgression (Irigaray 1981 a & b, 1985 a & b, 1986,1987 a&b, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1999,2000) through autobiography (Miller 1991, Benstock 1988, Brodzki & Schenk 1988) to inquire into my own embodied, engaged subjective experiences. I work from that position to cross and re-cross ontological thresholds, and through that continual movement, to articulate feminine subjectivities that arise in dialogue with the Other, amongst community. Feminine Fictions poses a series of questions: What can embodied aesthetic engagement reveal through/for “the feminine” as a site of difference? How does this impact through/on my particular ontological and subjective experiences (and vice versa)? How is this significant for contemporary feminisms? I use written and factured terms – aesthetic practice and performance - to re-member, generate and extend my subjective experience and finally articulate and record that experience of being-in-the-world in response to these concerns (MacDonald: Swindells 1995). The project culminating in an embodiment of the ontological research through an installation and performance event at Fremantle Prison on December 8 2002 involving 55 members of my epistemic community (Babbit: Alcoff & Potter), including my family. The evening provided an opportunity to undertake multiple ‘readings’ of the work and a way to mimetically re-construct my personal inquiry process in collective terms. The organising metaphorical structure of the event, the Stations of the Cross, foregrounded the incarnational aesthetic of embodied difference, ontological construction and transgression central to the project (Bozarth 1997, Irigaray 1986 & 2000). The prison became a laboratory that could be used collectively and personally by each participant to explore their own embodied experiences of being-in-the-world and explore their own ontological orientations and philosophies-in-action. The entire project was then produced into an exegetical theses as a CD ROM in website format to extend the proposal of embodied ontology into cyberspace and contemporary technological constructs (Wiley: Price & Shildrick 1999). The website format also allowing for a labyrinthine structure that can bring together the factured and conceptual work through geographical space into the alteric space of the internet.

The central goal of this thesis is creating and testing technology toproduce embodied interaction experiences. Embodied interaction is thesense that we inhabit a digital space with our minds operating on it asif it were our physical bodies, without conscious thought, but as naturalas reaching out with your ngers and touching the object in front of you.Traditional interaction techniques such as keyboard and mouse get in theway of achieving embodiment. In this thesis, we have created an embodiedperspective of virtual three-dimensional objects oating in front of a user.Users can see the object from a rst-person perspective without a headsupdisplay and can change the perspective of the object by shifting theirpoint of view. The technology and aordances to make this possible in aunobtrusive, practical and ecient way is the subject of this thesis.Using a depth sensor, Microsoft's Kinect [7], we track the user's positionin front of a screen in real-time, thus making it possible to changethe perspectives seen by each of the user's eyes to t their real point ofview, in order to achieve a 3D embodied interaction outside the screen.We combined the rst-person perspective into an embodied sculptingproject that includes a wireless haptic glove to allow the user to feel whentouching the model and a small one-hand remote controller used to rotatethe object around as the user desires when pressing its single button.We have achieved what we call Embodied Perspective, which involves anoutside-screen stereoscopic visualization, which reacts to body interactionas if the visualization was really where the user perceives it, thanks to thedata from the depth sensor. This method does not block the user's viewof their own body, but ts and matches their brain's perception.When applied to virtual sculpting (embodied sculpting), it gives theuser the ability to feel and understand much better their actions; wherethey are touching/sculpting and how they should move to reach wherethey want, since the movements are the same one would perform withtheir body in a real-world sculpting situation.A further study of the viability of this method, not only on singleperson interaction but on group visualization of a single user perspective,is discussed and proposed.

Although embodied knowing is fundamental to our experience, no previous study has detailed its role in a specific spiritual group. This thesis offers a new model of embodied situated cognition, and develops an embodied hermeneutics which uses Focusing in phenomenological research. I apply these tools to the first detailed ethnography of Eco-Paganism to reveal powerful processes of connection which have considerable significance for religious studies and ecopsychology. Chapters 2 and 3 survey the literature on Eco-Paganism and embodied cognition. Chapter 4 uses the latter to synthesise a model of embodied situated cognition which I call the 'enactive process model', because it draws primarily on enactivism (inter alia, Varela et al., 1991), and Gendhn's process philosophy (Gendlin, 1997). Current research shows that key aspects of cognition are situated and embodied (inter alia, Varela et al, 1991), such that we often think with place (inter alia, Preston, 2003). This raises epistemological questions which I address in a discussion of embodied philosophy in Chapter 5. I then explain my embodied hermeneutics methodology, and the practical application of the Focusing Interview technique, in Chapter 6. My fieldwork autoethnography, Chapter 7, provides an intuitive, felt understanding of life on a road protest site, and is followed by ethnographies of urban and protest site Eco-Paganism in Chapters 8 and 9. Chapter 10 discusses six processes which create a sense of connection to the organic environment, which include the felt sense (Gendlin, 1981) and the wilderness effect (Greenway, 1995).

Contemporary understandings of ethics consistently situate them as the result of a focussed rational and intellectual process within a narrow range of academic and religious areas. I challenge this approach, and theorise an embodied approach to ethics as both possible and desirable. I argue that such an approach may be most easily located in the contemporary Pagan approach to environmental ethics, given that the rhetoric of Paganism valorises the body and privileges the natural environment. While I agree that Paganism is indeed a nature religion, I theorise that there are two simultaneous yet contradictory discourses of nature informing Paganism: the animist (privileging nature qua nature) and the esoteric (privileging a symbolic understanding of nature). I assert that my qualitative fieldwork demonstrates that some Pagans have developed an embodied ethic through close relationship with nature. I acknowledge that the development of such a profound relationship requires considerable effort and a great deal of time. I then compare this against quantitative data from an online survey of self-identifying Pagans in order to establish the extent to which such an approach might be representative. The Initial analysis of the online data supports the assertion that my respondents are likely to express positive attitudes to the environment, but are unlikely to participate in activism in relation to a number of specified areas. Deeper analysis compares the data between different groups identified along the animist/esoteric scale, and suggests that those Pagans who are more influenced by the animist discourse are indeed more likely to express environmentally friendly attitudes and to take part in activism. I conclude that such an embodied environmental ethic is possible, although this may be substantially contingent upon lifestyle. I posit that by understanding the diversity of discourses informing Pagan approaches to nature, academics may be able to more accurately interpret the diversity of Pagan approaches, and Pagans themselves may be able to move forward in discussions between their various traditions.

The Body Claim states that a transcendental condition of self-consciousness is that one experience oneself as embodied. The contention of this thesis is that popular arguments in support of the Body Claim are unconvincing. Understanding the Body Claim requires us to have a clear understanding of both self-consciousness and embodied experience. In the first chapter I lay out two different conceptions of selfconsciousness, arguing that the proponent of the Body Claim should think of selfconsciousness as first-person thought. I point out that since arguments for the Body Claim tend to proceed by stating putative transcendental conditions on self-reference, the proponent of the Body Claim must maintain that there is a conceptual connection between self-consciousness and self-reference. In the second chapter I argue against views, originating from Wittgenstein and Anscombe, which reject this connection between self-consciousness and self-reference. In chapter three I show that a well known principle governing the ascription of content, that which Evans calls `Russell's Principle', occupies an ambiguous position with regards to the Body Claim. I argue that Russell's Principle should be rejected. Chapter four distinguishes between two conceptions of embodied experience: bodily-awareness and bodily self-awareness. I argue that there is no such thing as bodily self-awareness and so it cannot be a transcendental condition of self-consciousness. Chapter five looks at, and finds wanting, arguments for the Body Claim that can be found in the work of Strawson. Chapter six argues that it is a transcendental condition of self-consciousness that one enjoy spatial experience. Chapters seven and eight assess two influential arguments that attempt to complete a defence of the Body Claim: the solidity argument and the action argument. I argue that neither argument is convincing. Although the conclusions are primarily negative, much is learned along the way about the nature of both self-consciousness and embodied experience.

Within popular culture we have recently witnessed a proliferation of male dancers. This has been spear-headed by the success of the BBC television program Strictly Come Dancing. The current cultural fascination with dance provides a stark contrast to traditional discourses in England that position dance as a female activity, with men’s participation frequently associated with homophobic stigma. We therefore have a context in which multiple and contradictory discourses on masculinity are available for men to make sense of themselves. This thesis explores how young men negotiate these discourses when learning to dance. The research is based upon an ethnographic study of capoeira and Latin and ballroom dance classes in South West England. The core methods included 1) four years of embodied fieldwork in the form of the researcher learning to dance, 2) writing field-notes and collecting multi-media artefacts, 3) interviewing dancers, and 4) photographing dancers in action. The researcher also drew upon a diverse range of subsidiary methods that included producing a dance wall of collected images and artefacts, cataloguing relevant dance websites and YouTube videos, and extensive use of Facebook for publishing photographs, sharing resources and negotiating ongoing informed consent. The findings of this PhD identify how learning capoeira and Latin and ballroom dance produces embodied, visual and discursive transitions in male dancers’ performances of masculine identities. The analysis focuses on three sets of practices that work to support or problematise the transitions in masculine identities in dance classes. These practices include 1) dancing with women in ballroom dancing, 2) performing awesome moves in capoeira, and 3) men’s experiences of stiff hips. In examining transitions across these three processes the thesis documents the changing possibilities and constraints on embodied masculinities in dance.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-67).
Distributed systems and the emergent properties that can arise out of simple localized interactions have fascinated scientists and artists alike for the last century. They challenge the notions of control and creativity, producing outcomes that can be beautiful, engaging and surprising at the same time. While extensive work has been done using computer simulations of such systems in fields like artificial life and generative art, their physically embodied counterparts are still in their infancy, in part due to the complexity of building and deploying such systems. In this thesis, I will discuss how simple tangible nodes can enable playful and creative experimentation with the concept of emergent behavior. Specifically, I will address how embodied interaction scenarios involving parallel systems can be implemented and how a range of sensing and actuating possibilities can be leveraged to generate novel and engaging experiences for the end users. In particular, the use of sound will be explored as a medium for representation. Finally, I will argue that there is value in making the transition from software simulations to a situated and manipulable instantiation of these concepts, both for the designer of a system and its users.
by David Bouchard.
S.M.

The speaking subject, or the self, in white Western language and literature predominantly functions as a disembodied construct. Two influential constructions of self exemplify this disembodiment. Cogito ergo sum, as it has been developed outside of Descartes' works, claims subjectivity on the basis of thought alone, potentially relegating all other elements of human existence to non-subjectivity. Desidero ergo sum, as psycho-linguistically developed by Lacan, claims subjectivity only through language, which requires explicitly gender-based disavowals of embodiment. While the desidero disrupts the cogito by theorizing the impossibility of any definitive 'knowledge' of self, both constructions of self function dichotomously (mind/body, male/female; etc.) wherein the "first" element defines itself by not being the "second." These constructs empower those who can effectively disembody themselves (e.g., those who can claim masculinity) at the expense of those who are therefore necessarily, psycho-socially marked with embodiment (e.g., those marked with the feminine). In response, this dissertation conjoins Elaine Scarry's "reading" of torture with mostly Irigarayan developments of gender and subjectivity tempered by Monique Wittig's critique of "the mark of gender," to ironically pose sentio ergo sum in order to tease open both the pretense to universality and the oppressive dichotomizing of hegemonic subjectivity. Calling on a wide range of theories in English and French in an effort to bring the highly theoretical, 'disembodied' discourse that surrounds subjectivity 'down to earth,' I consider the ways in which several contemporary writers and theorists work to create new subjectivities by reconfiguring the relationship between language, self, and embodiment. Roland Barthes' specular search, Luce Irigaray's multivalent "lips", and Julia Kristeva's motherly voice offer problematic theoretical resistance to the dichotomizing heterosexual masculinization of all subjectivity. Similarly in fiction Marguerite Duras's "ravishing" of the subject and Monique Wittig's "lesbianization" of the subject offer very different attempts to alter the patriarchally constructed bounds of subjectivity through radical embodiment. Seen together, the works of these writers offer insights into the importance of embodiment for any challenge to the culturally constructed and personally limiting images of "the speaking subject."

Children are increasingly using complex products which makes it essential that these products should be intuitive to use. This research studied the role of Embodiment in intuitive interaction in children. Children were observed playing with Jenga (both the physical version and the app), Monkey Blocks – a gravity defying stacking toy and Osmo – a mixed reality toy. The research resulted in an interaction model that will help designers to design Embodied intuitive products for children. The outcomes build on the ongoing research in intuitive interaction and provide insight into how designers could design embodied intuitive products for children.

This practice-led research both bridges, and offers an extension to, the fields of Applied Theatre, Participatory Community Development and Futures Thinking. Through a series of practical workshops, conducted in Australia and Timor-Leste, the study explored what a structurally transformed world might practically be like. Themes discussed in the reflection on practice include: patterns of time and macrohistories; distancing through role and metaphor; and re-contemplating ancestors’ influence on people's worldviews. Outputs from the project include an Illustrated Exercises Book and the Embodied Futures Framework for stepping through stages of change to help groups understand what transforms tomorrow.

This doctoral dissertation investigates the corporeal basis of global and local coherence. As far as global coherence is concerned, the main argument of this thesis is that the search for global coherence is often guided by means of metaphorical mappings, particularly those having to do with the conceptual metaphor DISCOURSE IS A FORM OF MOTION ALONG A PATH INFLUENCED BY FORCE DYNAMICS. In the case of local coherence, the analysis presented focuses only on a subset of interclausal connections: cause-effect and cause-concession relations, when explicitly marked by means of discourse markers. This thesis successfully assesses the hypothesis that Talmy’s force-dynamic model, along with conceptual metaphor, may account for the semantic content and the type of inferences that said subset of connectives generate during language processing. More broadly, this thesis provides evidence to support the premise that not only the general structure of discourse, but also the coherence relations on which it relies, emerge from our embodied interaction with the world.
Esta tesis estudia la posible influencia que la metáfora conceptual, entendida como un proceso cognitivo, puede ejercer en la producción y comprensión del discurso, en particular en el modo en que las relaciones de coherencia global y local emergen y se sustentan. Mediante un análisis cualitativo, esta tesis muestra que la metáfora conceptual UN DISCURSO ES UNA FORMA DE MOVIMIENTO INFLUENCIADA POR DINÁMICAS DE FUERZA y sus esquemas de imagen subyacentes son recursos estructurales básicos. Dichos elementos dan forma a la organización del discurso, contribuyen a realzar las relaciones de coherencia del texto y facilitan la comprensión lectora al activar inferencias o expectativas que pueden ayudar a predecir el comportamiento del discurso. En el caso de a coherencia local, cuatro estudios experimentales proporciona evidencias empíricas, a través de una análisis comparativo del inglés y del castellano, que apoyan la tesis de que las relaciones de coherencia causales y concesivas tienen una naturaleza corpórea ya que parecen estar basadas en conceptos más concretos: interacciones de fuerza. Además este trabajo también ofrece datos que permiten afirmar que dichos patrones de fuerza no sólo son codificados en términos lingüísticos mediante verbos sino también mediante marcadores del discurso causales y concesivos. Todos estos datos llevan a pensar que los esquemas de imagen y la metáfora conceptual son cruciales en conceptualización de las nociones de causalidad y concesión ya que comprimen nuestra experiencia y la extienden a nociones mucho más abstractas tales como la causalidad y la concesión para hacer estas nociones comprensibles. En definitiva esta tesis proporciona evidencias de que apoyan la premisa de que no sólo la estructura general del texto sino también las relaciones de coherencia local emergen de nuestra interacción corpórea con el mundo que nos rodea.

A great deal of effort has been put into developing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) systems that provide a human-like assistant in the user interface. However, little is known whether improvements to ECA interfaces made by such efforts can ever be significant from the users point of view. I studied user experiences with ECA interfaces and evaluated the ECA style of interaction with respect to user expectation, perception, behavior and performance. I introduce a conceptual framework that offers a holistic view of the design space of ECA systems. I also have created a middleware toolkit that facilitates rapid development of application content across different speech and animation platforms. A series of user studies has been carried out to investigate the similarities and differences between human-computer interaction and human-ECA interaction and between human-ECA interaction and human-human interaction. Results from these studies provide strong evidence that people are consciously aware of the capabilities and limitations of ECAs. Traditional GUI design heuristics should be carefully followed when designing ECA interfaces. Furthermore, the results soundly suggest that designers of ECA interfaces take extra care to accommodate individual differences and preferences. Social norms that guide human-human interaction greatly affect individuals expectation and perception of ECA characteristics. The findings support the argument that drawing from both human-computer interaction and human-human interaction can be significantly advantageous to the design of both effective and affective human-ECA interaction.

By questioning the feeling of uneasiness coming from seeing the real body, I aim to cast a light upon the relation between the body and the objects that are displayed on it. Starting with a doubt that the object would not only change the surface of human, I investigate how the body of human totally embodies its representational object to itself.

The assessment of the direct and indirect requirements for energy is known as embodied energy analysis. For buildings, the direct energy includes that used primarily on site, while the indirect energy includes primarily the energy required for the manufacture of building materials. This thesis is concerned with the completeness and reliability of embodied energy analysis methods. Previous methods tend to address either one of these issues, but not both at the same time. Industry-based methods are incomplete. National statistical methods, while comprehensive, are a ‘black box’ and are subject to errors. A new hybrid embodied energy analysis method is derived to optimise the benefits of previous methods while minimising their flaws. In industry-based studies, known as ‘process analyses’, the energy embodied in a product is traced laboriously upstream by examining the inputs to each preceding process towards raw materials. Process analyses can be significantly incomplete, due to increasing complexity. The other major embodied energy analysis method, ‘input-output analysis’, comprises the use of national statistics. While the input-output framework is comprehensive, many inherent assumptions make the results unreliable. Hybrid analysis methods involve the combination of the two major embodied energy analysis methods discussed above, either based on process analysis or input-output analysis. The intention in both hybrid analysis methods is to reduce errors associated with the two major methods on which they are based. However, the problems inherent to each of the original methods tend to remain, to some degree, in the associated hybrid versions. Process-based hybrid analyses tend to be incomplete, due to the exclusions associated with the process analysis framework. However, input-output-based hybrid analyses tend to be unreliable because the substitution of process analysis data into the input-output framework causes unwanted indirect effects. A key deficiency in previous input-output-based hybrid analysis methods is that the input-output model is a ‘black box’, since important flows of goods and services with respect to the embodied energy of a sector cannot be readily identified. A new input-output-based hybrid analysis method was therefore developed, requiring the decomposition of the input-output model into mutually exclusive components (ie, ‘direct energy paths’). A direct energy path represents a discrete energy requirement, possibly occurring one or more transactions upstream from the process under consideration. For example, the energy required directly to manufacture the steel used in the construction of a building would represent a direct energy path of one non-energy transaction in length. A direct energy path comprises a ‘product quantity’ (for example, the total tonnes of cement used) and a ‘direct energy intensity’ (for example, the energy required directly for cement manufacture, per tonne). The input-output model was decomposed into direct energy paths for the ‘residential building construction’ sector. It was shown that 592 direct energy paths were required to describe 90% of the overall total energy intensity for ‘residential building construction’. By extracting direct energy paths using yet smaller threshold values, they were shown to be mutually exclusive. Consequently, the modification of direct energy paths using process analysis data does not cause unwanted indirect effects. A non-standard individual residential building was then selected to demonstrate the benefits of the new input-output-based hybrid analysis method in cases where the products of a sector may not be similar. Particular direct energy paths were modified with case specific process analysis data. Product quantities and direct energy intensities were derived and used to modify some of the direct energy paths. The intention of this demonstration was to determine whether 90% of the total embodied energy calculated for the building could comprise the process analysis data normally collected for the building. However, it was found that only 51% of the total comprised normally collected process analysis. The integration of process analysis data with 90% of the direct energy paths by value was unsuccessful because: • typically only one of the direct energy path components was modified using process analysis data (ie, either the product quantity or the direct energy intensity); • of the complexity of the paths derived for ‘residential building construction’; and • of the lack of reliable and consistent process analysis data from industry, for both product quantities and direct energy intensities. While the input-output model used was the best available for Australia, many errors were likely to be carried through to the direct energy paths for ‘residential building construction’. Consequently, both the value and relative importance of the direct energy paths for ‘residential building construction’ were generally found to be a poor model for the demonstration building. This was expected. Nevertheless, in the absence of better data from industry, the input-output data is likely to remain the most appropriate for completing the framework of embodied energy analyses of many types of products—even in non-standard cases. ‘Residential building construction’ was one of the 22 most complex Australian economic sectors (ie, comprising those requiring between 592 and 3215 direct energy paths to describe 90% of their total energy intensities). Consequently, for the other 87 non-energy sectors of the Australian economy, the input-output-based hybrid analysis method is likely to produce more reliable results than those calculated for the demonstration building using the direct energy paths for ‘residential building construction’. For more complex sectors than ‘residential building construction’, the new input-output-based hybrid analysis method derived here allows available process analysis data to be integrated with the input-output data in a comprehensive framework. The proportion of the result comprising the more reliable process analysis data can be calculated and used as a measure of the reliability of the result for that product or part of the product being analysed (for example, a building material or component). To ensure that future applications of the new input-output-based hybrid analysis method produce reliable results, new sources of process analysis data are required, including for such processes as services (for example, ‘banking’) and processes involving the transformation of basic materials into complex products (for example, steel and copper into an electric motor). However, even considering the limitations of the demonstration described above, the new input-output-based hybrid analysis method developed achieved the aim of the thesis: to develop a new embodied energy analysis method that allows reliable process analysis data to be integrated into the comprehensive, yet unreliable, input-output framework. Plain language summary Embodied energy analysis comprises the assessment of the direct and indirect energy requirements associated with a process. For example, the construction of a building requires the manufacture of steel structural members, and thus indirectly requires the energy used directly and indirectly in their manufacture. Embodied energy is an important measure of ecological sustainability because energy is used in virtually every human activity and many of these activities are interrelated. This thesis is concerned with the relationship between the completeness of embodied energy analysis methods and their reliability. However, previous industry-based methods, while reliable, are incomplete. Previous national statistical methods, while comprehensive, are a ‘black box’ subject to errors. A new method is derived, involving the decomposition of the comprehensive national statistical model into components that can be modified discretely using the more reliable industry data, and is demonstrated for an individual building. The demonstration failed to integrate enough industry data into the national statistical model, due to the unexpected complexity of the national statistical data and the lack of available industry data regarding energy and non-energy product requirements. These unique findings highlight the flaws in previous methods. Reliable process analysis and input-output data are required, particularly for those processes that were unable to be examined in the demonstration of the new embodied energy analysis method. This includes the energy requirements of services sectors, such as banking, and processes involving the transformation of basic materials into complex products, such as refrigerators. The application of the new method to less complex products, such as individual building materials or components, is likely to be more successful than to the residential building demonstration.

This thesis offers a critical interrogation of the relationship between and co-production of bodies, texts and spaces. It introduces and develops the concept of the embodied imagination through the philosophy of Spinoza and recent Spinozist thinkers as a way of informing a materialist account of the production of experience. The embodied imagination, as material and affective, can supplement a Foucauldian account of subjectivation through its ability to offer an account of experience ‘after the subject’ – of experience as the surface effects of the movement of affect through and across bodies, texts and spaces that are productive of transsubjective social imaginaries. This can contribute to a fuller account of subject production and to a formulation of embodied politics based on a political analytic of feeling. These conceptual arguments are mobilised through exemplars from ethnographic fieldwork based on the geographical concerns of landscape, embodied practice and place imaginaries. In particular, I point to specific outdoor practices, techniques and regimes that, in their imbrication in certain imaginaries, contribute to a sense of place and belonging. Through a ‘thoroughly materialist’ approach to these concerns, bodies’ involvement in material relations with other bodies and with the world are shown to be central to experience-production. I argue too that this approach can expose the relations of power that produce the very materialities of bodies, and as such can shed light on the politics of the nonrepresentational and its centrality to the production of embodied subjectivities. In doing so, a postfoundational sociology of embodied experience is formulated that operates according to a politics of radical contingency. This postfoundational perspective foregrounds an ontology of the encounter over presence: an ontogenetic account of the emergence of bodies, texts and spaces from their material imbrication in a world charged with affective resonance.

Psychological moral contagion - the belief that negative and positive moral states can be transferred to objects via touch - is anecdotally widespread across different populations but, to date, has received little empirical examination. Six experiments were conducted to test people's moral contagion beliefs, specifically in the context of verbal and nonverbal measures. Experiment 1 tested whether participants would show avoidant behaviour to an alleged interaction partner based on the moral status of a donor whose organ this partner received. Results, measured as distance between chairs the participants was asked to set up, were inconclusive. Experiment 2 to 5 tested whether physical contact with an object would lead to cleansing desires based on the moral status of the previous owner of the object. Cleansing desires were measured by rating desirability of cleaning products. Instead of an increase in cleansing desires, the moral status of the owner seemed to generally influence desirability of both cleaning and non- cleaning products negatively: touching an item owned by an evil person made products less desirable compared to touching an item owned by a good person. An attempt to explain this effect by controlling for tendency to associate states of moral and physical states of purity and pollution with a Brief Implicit Association Test (Experiment 4) proved inconclusive. Experiment 5 offers support for the possibility that individual differences exist in how moral contagion is experienced. In Experiment 6 we show that participants asked to touch a jumper that previously belonged to a morally evil person subsequently choose a cleaning product over a pencil as reward on an unrelated task. Such a preference does not occur amongst participants who touched a jumper belonging to a morally good person. Further controls rule out the possibility that this effect is driven by pure association or by the participants' willingness to comply.

Being able to generate predictions about what is going to happen next while observing other people’s actions plays a crucial role in our daily lives. Different theoretical explanations for the underlying processes of humans’ action prediction abilities have been suggested. Whereas an embodied account posits that predictive gaze relies on embodied simulations in the observer’s motor system, other accounts do not assume a causal role of the motor system for action prediction. The general aim of this thesis was to augment current knowledge about the functional mechanisms behind humans’ action prediction abilities. In particular, the present thesis outlines and tests an embodied account of action prediction. The second aim of this thesis was to extend prior action prediction studies by exploring infants’ online gaze during observation of social interactions. The thesis reports 3 eye-tracking studies that were designed to measure adults’ and infants’ predictive eye movements during observation of different manual and social actions. The first two studies used point-light displays of manual reaching actions as stimuli to isolate human motion information. Additionally, Study II used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to directly modify motor cortex activity. Study I showed that kinematic information from biological motion can be used to anticipate the goal of other people’s point-light actions and that the presence of biological motion is sufficient for anticipation to occur. Study II demonstrated that TMS-induced temporary lesions in the primary motor cortex selectively affected observers’ gaze latencies. Study III examined 12-month-olds’ online gaze during observation of a give-and-take interaction between two individuals. The third study showed that already at one year of age infants shift their gaze from a passing hand to a receiving hand faster when the receiving hand forms a give-me gesture compared to an inverted hand shape. The reported results from this thesis make two major contributions. First, Studies I and II provide evidence for an embodied account of action prediction by demonstrating a direct connection between anticipatory eye movements and motor cortex activity. These findings support the interpretation that predictive eye movements are driven by a recruitment of the observer’s own motor system. Second, Study III implicates that properties of social action goals influence infants’ online gaze during action observation. It further suggests that at one year of age infants begin to show sensitivity to social goals within the context of give-and-take interactions while observing from a third-party perspective.

Vad menar vi egentligen när vi säger att vi har det i oss eller att vi ska lära oss med alla våra sinnen och att elever ska utveckla hela sin förmåga? Denna studie är en begreppsanalys av det som man på engelska benämner embodied. Den undersöker detta i en svensk utbildningskontext och försöker finna motsvarande begrepp på svenska. Den belyser hur kroppsligt kunnande/lärande beskrivs inom tre olika utbildningsvetenskapliga områden. Studien består dels av en semantisk undersökning och dels av en kontextuell exploration. Den semantiska undersökningen innehåller en hermeneutisk begreppsanalys enligt Koort (1975) och en etymologisk granskning. Den hermeneutiska explorationen undersöker begreppet embodied först inom praktisk kunskap, sedan inom kognitiva lärandeteorier och slutligen relateras embodied till ett somatiskt kunskapsfält med kroppsliga/body-mind praktiker, på engelska kallat somatics.

Archaeology is a field which has been impacted greatly by digital technology; the new technological instruments are developing both academic research and public mediation. Digital archaeology has been available at the museum for some time, but immersive technologies are recent introductions, which offer new experiences for museum visitors. Even though digital archaeology/virtual heritage have been studied for their technological virtues, the learning opportunities presented to the museum visitor has not yet been examined from a visitor’s perspective. In this dissertation, the visitor experience is the basis of analysis for determining how we can critically assess digital exhibitions using immersive technologies. This study examines if and how critical museology can be successfully applied to immersive digital displays; a detailed analysis of two case studies using VR (high immersion) and AR (low immersion) show that digital experiences are fully capable of communicating cultural content and that these multi-sensory technologies can successfully engage users in the creation of knowledge. The extent of sensory stimuli affecting the visitor is not accounted for in current critical museology, therefore the analysis of this study suggests a number of suggestions for future designs of digital displays using immersive technologies.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 87-93).
Embodied theories of language propose that the way we communicate verbally is grounded in our body. Nevertheless, the way a second language is conventionally taught does not capitalize on embodied modalities. The tracking and immersive capabilities of virtual reality systems can enable a change in the way students learn language by engaging them in kinesthetic activities that explicitly use body movement to encode knowledge. The body can also be used implicitly to alter a student's perception of themselves in order to enhance the way they approach learning in immersive environments. In this work, we seek to explore the potential of both explicit and implicit embodied language learning using virtual reality as a platform. For the purpose of this thesis we focus on vocabulary acquisition to assess the potential impact these methodologies can have on language education. Two systems were developed that afford explicit (Words in Motion) and implicit (Inner Child) embodied learning. Both systems were evaluated separately during controlled experiments with 6o participants each. Explicit embodied learners displayed enhanced retention positively correlated with performing actions in the Words in Motion platform. Our findings from the implicit embodied study highlight the importance of having a body in virtual reality. Inner Child successfully increased word retention when inducing a subjective age reduction that correlated with the feeling of ownership of a virtual child avatar. These results support the hypothesis that virtual reality can deeply impact language learning by leveraging the body explicitly and implicitly.
by Christian David Vázquez Machado.
S.M.

Embodied Conversational Agents (ECA) seek to provide a more natural means of interaction for a user through conversation. ECA build on the dialogue abilities of spoken dialogue systems with the provision of a physical or virtual avatar. The rationale for this Thesis is that an ECA should be able to support a form of conversation capable of understanding both the content and affect of the dialogue and providing a meaningful response. The aim is to examine the cognitive aspects of ECA attempting such conversational dialogue in order to augment the abilities of dialogue management. The focus is on the provision of cognitive functions, outside of dialogue control, for managing the relationship with the user including the user’s emotional state. This will include a definition of conversation and an examination of the cognitive mechanisms that underpin meaningful conversation. The scope of this Thesis considers the development of a Companion ECA, the ‘How Was Your Day’ (HWYD) Companion, which enters into an open conversation with the user about the events of their day at work. The HWYD Companion attempts to positively influence the user’s attitude to these events. The main focus of this Thesis is on the Affective Strategy Module (ASM) which will attend to the information covering these events and the user’s emotional state in order to generate a plan for a narrative response. Within this narrative response the ASM will embed a means of influence acting upon the user’s attitude to the events. The HYWD Companion has contributed to the work on ECA through the provision of a system engaging in conversational dialogue including the affective aspects of such dialogue. This supports open conversation with longer utterances than typical task-oriented dialogue systems and can handle user interruptions. The main work of this Thesis provides a major component of this overall contribution and, in addition, provides a specific contribution of its own with the provision of narrative persuasion.

Embodied Music Cognition is a recently developed theoretical and empirical framework which in the last eight years has been redefining the role of the body in music perception. However, to date there have been very few attempts to research embodied musical experiences in early childhood. The research reported in this thesis investigated 4- and 5-year-olds’ self-regulatory sensorimotor processes in response to music. Two video-based observation studies were conducted. The first, exploratory in nature, aimed to identify levels of musical self-regulation in children’s actions while ‘playing’ in a motion-based interactive environment (Sound=Space). The interactive element of this system provided an experiential platform for the young ‘players’ to explore and develop the ability to recognise themselves as controlling musical events, and to continuously adapt their behaviour according to expected auditory outcomes. Results showed that low-level experiences of musical self-regulation were associated with more random trajectories in space, often performed at a faster pace (e.g. running), while a higher degree of control corresponded to more organised spatial pathways usually involving slower actions and repetition. The second study focused on sensorimotor synchronisation. It aimed to identify children’s free and individual movement choices in response to rhythmic music with a salient and steady beat presented at different tempi. It also intended to find the similarities and differences between participants’ repertoire and their adjustments to tempo changes. The most prominent findings indicate that children’s movements exhibited a resilient periodicity which was not synchronised to the beat. Even though a great variety of body actions (mostly non-gestural) was found across the group, each child tended to use a more restricted repertoire and one specific dominant action that would be executed throughout the different tempi. Common features were also found in children’s performance, such as, the spatial preference for up/down directions and for movements done in place (e.g. vertical jump). The results of both studies highlight the great deal of variability in the way preschoolers regulate their own sensorimotor behaviour when interacting with music. This variety of responses can be interpreted as underlining the importance of the physical nature of the cognitive agent in the perception of music. If this is indeed the case, then it will be crucial to create and develop embodied music learning activities in early years education that encourage each child to self-monitor their own sensorimotor processes and, thus, to shape their experiences of linking sound and movement in a meaningful and fulfilling way.

In this thesis I propose that emotions and rationality are integrated, and jointly constitute our moral agency. I argue against the influential ‘sentimentalist’ claim that emotions are the only constituents of the moral reasons for which we act, by showing that emotions are inextricably bound up with our sensory and conceptual capacities. In contrast, I propose we act for moral reasons when we act in light of the narratives we create and understand. Narrative understanding here is the capacity to inhabit a chain of events. It is embodied and action-­‐ orientated, and is co-­‐constituted through our emotional, conceptual and sensory capacities.

For decades, the application of technology to percussion curricula has been substantially hindered by the limitations of conventional input devices. With the need for specialized percussion instruction at an all-time high, investigation of this domain can open the doors to an entirely new educational approach for percussion.

This research frames the foundation of an embodied approach to percussion instruction manifested in a system called Percussive. Through the use of body-scale interactions, percussion students can connect with pedagogical tools at the most fundamental levelâ leveraging muscle memory, kinesthetics, and embodiment to present engaging and dynamic instructional sessions.

The major contribution of this work is the exploration of how a system which uses motion-sensing to replicate the experiential qualities of drumming can be applied to existing pedagogues. Techniques for building a system which recognizes drumming input are discussed, as well as the systemâ s application to a successful contemporary instructional model. In addition to the specific results that are presented, it is felt that the collective wisdom provided by the discussion of the methodology throughout this thesis provides valuable insight for others in the same area of research.

Master of Science

With the rise of big data, it is becoming increasingly important to educate students about data analytics. In particular, students without a strong mathematical background usually have an unenthusiastic attitude towards high-dimensional data and find it challenging to understand relevant complex analytical methods, such as dimension reduction. In this thesis, we present an embodied approach for visual analytics designed to teach students exploring alternative 2D projections of high dimensional data points using weighted multidimensional scaling. We proposed a novel application, Be the Data, to explore the possibilities of using human's embodied resources to learn from high dimensional data. In our system, each student embodies a data point and the position of students in a physical space represents a 2D projection of the high-dimensional data. Students physically moves in a room with respect to others to interact with alternative projections and receive visual feedback. We conducted educational workshops with students inexperienced in relevant data analytical methods. Our findings indicate that the students were able to learn about high-dimensional data and data analysis process despite their low level of knowledge about the complex analytical methods. We also applied the same techniques into social meetings to explain social gatherings and facilitate interactions.
Master of Science

Motivated by studies of dress and the importance that it has on identity formation and expression of self, this research tries to answer the question of how can an interactive tool create greater means for self-expression of the dressed body through the design of textiles? The goal of pursuing the question is to ultimately promote a more sustainable fashion culture that relies on the creation of long-lasting products. Employing Research through Design as the main methodology, this research went through a series of sequential design experiments – namely workshops and prototypes – with the ambition of generating knowledge in the context of the design space, and in order to inform the design of the interactive tool proposed by the research question. The main research findings suggest that the direct engagement with the painting of textiles through ruled self-reflection tasks, in collaboration with a machine, provides great means for the creation of long-lasting products – showing, therefore, a fruitful path towards fashion sustainability. In addition to the conception and building of a final artifact, this research resulted in a set of guidelines that aims at advising the creation of other future artifacts.