Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [137]-146). / Machine Therapy is a new practice combining art, design, psychoanalysis, and engineering work in ways that access and reveal the vital, though often unnoticed, relevance of people's interactions and relationships with machines. Machine Therapy will be illustrated through the construction of several systems including re-appropriated domestic devices such as Blendie, wearble apparatuses such as ScreamBody, and body-signal-based companion machines - Umo, Amo, and Omo - that function through visceral interactions including breathing and non-verbal sounds. These systems will be used to explore themes of human-machine relations in terms of visceral, cathartic, and reflexive expressions and communications. This work incorporates elements from my technical research in digital signal processing, machine learning, mechanical engineering, and sensor design. Combining these areas of research and practice, I have been able to help manifest new objects and relationships that are unique in some aspects while maintaining quotidian familiarity in other aspects. These apparatuses enable unusual explorations of what we interact with when we interact with machines. I hypothesize that the answer will turn out to be much more than the machine itself, and will include our sense of self, agency in the interpersonal and political world, and our shared psychological, emotional, cultural, and perceptual approaches to the world. The importance of the parapractic elements and also the therapeutic properties of the Machine Therapy machines will be evaluated in studies of participants' interactive engagements with the machines as well as their affective responses to the machines. / Kelly Dobson. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-62). / Tangible user interfaces give physical form to digital information, bridging the gap between the digital world of bits and the physical world of atoms. They offer many advantages over traditional graphical user interfaces, including two-handed manipulation, simplified multi-user collaboration, and the use of natural human spatial and tactile abilities. In the majority of existing tangible interfaces, different modalities are used for input and output; while the user provides input through the manipulation of physical objects, the computer produces only graphical output. This can lead to inconsistencies between the digital and physical representations of the same object. The goal of this thesis is to address this limitation by adding computer-controlled actuation to tangible interfaces. Actuation allows the computer to manipulate graspable objects the same way that a human user can. By developing and evaluating a variety of applications that use actuation, we demonstrate how it can best be employed in tangible interfaces. / by Daniel Maynes-Aminzade. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-82). / Brygg Anders Ullmer. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Shape-shifting materials have been part of sci-fi literature for decades. But if tomorrow we invent them, how are we going to communicate to them what shape we want them to morph into? If we look at our history, for thousands of years humans have been using the dexterity of their hands as primary means to alter the topology of their surroundings. While direct manipulation, as a primary method for form giving, allows for high precision deformation, the scope of interaction is limited to the scale of the hand. In order to extend the scope of manipulation beyond the hand scale, tools were invented to reach further and to augment the capabilities of our hands. In this thesis, I propose "Amphorm", a perceptually equivalent example of Radical Atoms, our vision on the interaction techniques for future, highly malleable, shape-shifting materials. "Amphorm" is a cylindrical kinetic sculpture that resembles a vase. Since "Amphorm" is a dual citizen between the digital and the physical world, its shape can be altered in both worlds. I describe novel interaction techniques for rapid shape deformation both in the physical world through free hand gestures and in the digital world through a Graphical User Interface. Additionally I explore how the physical world could be synchronized with the digital world and how tools from both worlds can jointly alter dual-citizens. / by Dávid Lakatos. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-63). / This thesis presents Place Pulse, a tool capable of conducting large crowdsourced visual preference surveys. The data collected with Place Pulse was used to create quantitative measures of the perceptions people hold of urban environments. From this data, novel algorithms identified locations associated with positive and negative perceptions of safety, social class and uniqueness. The high throughput of the tool addressed two important methodological questions: the number of responses required to obtain robust results in a comparative study, and the number of images required to get a statistically significant evaluative map of a large city. In closing, the validated dataset was used to correlate perceptions of safety and social class to rates of both violent crime and high school graduation. / Mark Philip Salesses. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61). / by Gregory Alan Kimberly. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94). / A parametric array exploits the nonlinearity of the propagation medium to emit or detect acoustic waves in a spatially versatile manner, permitting concise, narrow directivity patterns otherwise possible only with physically very large transducer geometries. This thesis explores the use of the parametric array as an audible sound source, permitting audible sound to be generated with very high directivity compared to traditional loudspeakers of comparable size. The thesis begins with a review of basic underlying mathematics and relevant approximate solutions of nonlinear acoustic systems. Then, these solutions are used to construct suitable methods of ultrasonic synthesis for low-distortion audio reproduction. Geometrical modelling methods for predicting the acoustic distribution are presented and evaluated, and practical applications are explored experimentally. Issues of risk associated with ultrasonic exposure are presented, and the feasibility of a phased-array system for beam control is explored. / F. Joseph Pompei. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [79]-[80]). / by David Michael Waxman. / M.S.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-114). / Words mean different things to different people, and capturing these differences is often a subtle art. These differences are often "a matter of perspective," and perspective can be taken to be the set of beliefs held by a person as a result of their background, culture, tastes, and experience. Understanding perspective is often pivotal in resolving disputes, and such an understanding is useful for estimating the opinions a person would have on a matter, making recommendations to the person, and even understanding the language the person uses. Traditionally, perspectives are studied through the use of questionnaires and surveys that rarely leave people feeling like their opinions have been properly represented. In this paper, I propose a system for discovering distinct communities of people with coherent belief patterns, while providing a means to characterize those patterns. This system utilizes data on how people agree or disagree on assertions that they themselves have expressed. This system, called PerspectiveSpace, is an approach whereby elementary linear operations are used to perform calculations on user models and microtheories. PerspectiveSpace has applications ranging from discovering subcultures in a larger society to building community-driven web sites that adapt to individual perspectives, and three such applications are illustrated here. The first is the detection and amelioration of abusive user activity on a web site with community-generated content. The second is SlantExplorer, which is a tool that highlights and analyzes the perspectives underlying a document. The third is 2-wit, a novel movie recommender based on the perspectives people have about movies rather than simply the ratings they give them. / by Jason Bernardino Alonso. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-211). / The idea of an Artificial Sensate Skin device that mimics the characteristics and functions of its analogous living tissue whether human or animal is not new. Yet, most of the current related work has been focused in the development of either materials, flexible electronics or ultra-dense sensing matrices and Wide Area Sensor Networks. The current work describes the design and implementation of a new type of Artificial Sensate Skin. This Artificial Sensate Skin is implemented as a low-power, highly scalable and mechanically flexible Wired Sensor Network. This Skin is composed of one or many Skin Patches which in turn are composed of one or many Skin Nodes. Each node is able to measure Strain, Pressure, Ambient Light, Pressure, Sound and Mechanoreception. Each Skin Patch can either work as a stand-alone device or as a data extraction device if this is attached to a Personal Computer through a different type of device referred to as Brains. Each Skin Node and therefore each Skin Patch :is Dynamically Adaptable meaning that they can adapt to external stimuli by either modifying their behavior or by completely changing their code. / (cont.) Construction of a sensate skin in such a modular fashion promises intrinsic scalability, where peer-to-peer connections between neighbors can reduce local data, which can then be sent to the brain by the high-speed common backbone. The current project also involves the design and implementation of the software components needed; these include a PC Graphical User Interface, application software and the firmware required by the embedded microcontrollers. Results show that needed resources like bandwidth are greatly minimized because of the addition of embedded processing power. Results also indicate that the platform can be used as a scalable smart material to cover interactive surfaces, or simply to extract a rich set of dense multi-modal sensor data. / by Gerardo Barroeta Pérez. / S.M.