published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

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This thesis is concerned with the solutions to several issues, including the problems of joint localisation, motion de-noising/smoothing, and soft tissue artefacts correction, in skeletal motion reconstruction for motion analysis, using marker-based optical motion capture technologies. We propose a very efficient joint localisation method, which only needs to optimise over three parameters, regardless of the total numbers of markers and frames. A framework powered by this joint localisation solution is also developed, which can automatically find all the joints in an articulated body structure, and significantly reduce the total number of markers needed in a typical motion capture session, by implementing a solvability propagation process. This framework is also configured to operate in a hybrid scheme, which can automatically switch between the primary joint estimator and a slower solution having fewer conditions regarding the required number of markers on a given body segment. This makes the framework workable even for extreme scenarios in which there are fewer than three markers on any body segment. A non-linear optimisation method for 3D trajectory smoothing is also proposed for de-noising the estimated joint paths. By immobilising a series of characteristic points in the trajectory, this method is able to effectively preserve detailed information for vigorous motion sequences. Various other smoothing techniques in the literature are also discussed and compared, concluding that a size-3 weighted average filter implemented in an automatic manner is a good real-time solution for low intensity activities. The effects of skin deformation on marker position data, known as soft tissue artefacts, are learned via a behavioural study on the human upper-body, with specific emphasis on combined limb actions. Based on the experimental findings, mathematical models are proposed to characterise the development of different types of artefacts, including translational, rotational, and transverse. We also theoretically demonstrate the feasibility of using a Kalman filter to correct the soft tissue artefacts, using the mathematical models.

Thesis. 1976. M.Arch--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Bibliography: leaves 27-28. / M.Arch

楊曉慧. / "2003年7月". / 論文(哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2003. / 附參考文獻. / 附中英文摘要. / "2003 nian 7 yue". / The quotation marks for cyborg and feminine on abstract are 「」 respectively. / Yang Xiaohui. / Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2003. / Fu can kao wen xian. / Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao. / 大綱： / 引言 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一章： --- 從女性主義到後女性主義 / 女性主義到後女性主義的發展 --- p.10 / Chapter 1.1 --- 第一波女性主義的出現與影響 --- p.11 / Chapter 1.2 --- 第二波女性主義對語言建構「女性」角色的評論 --- p.19 / Chapter 1.3 --- 意識形態與「女性」角色的形成 --- p.25 / Chapter 1.4 --- 女性主義至後女性主義 --- p.27 / Chapter 第二章： --- 從後女性主義到電子女性主義提倡的「有機機械人」 / 後女性主義與「身體」 --- p.32 / Chapter 2.1 --- Judith Butler的裝扮「身體」與電子女性主義的「有機機械人」 --- p.35 / Chapter 2.2 --- Donna Haraway的「有機機械人」 --- p.42 / Chapter 2.3 --- Anne Balsamo對「有機機械人」的批判 --- p.48 / Chapter 2.4 --- 「有機機械人」理論的發展 --- p.50 / Chapter 第三章： --- 科幻電影《異形》系列與《2019》中的「有機機械人」 / 電影與公式化的「女性」角色 --- p.57 / Chapter 3.1 --- 傳統兩性形象的公式與再現理論 --- p.59 / Chapter 3.2 --- 科幻電影與「女性」角色 --- p.73 / 科幻電影《異形》系列(2019) --- p.81 / Chapter 3.3 --- 《異形》系列（Alien) Series --- p.84 / Chapter 3.4 --- 《2019》（Blade Runner) --- p.103 / Chapter 第四章： --- 「有機機械人」對「女性」角色的衝擊 / 科幻與現實 --- p.124 / Chapter 4.1 --- 有關複製/改造的理論與實踐 --- p.126 / Chapter 4.2 --- 混雜和強化的「有機機械人」 --- p.128 / Chapter 4.3 --- 對「有機機械人」的批判 --- p.130 / Chapter 4.4 --- 「有機機械人」的成就 --- p.134 / 總結

This PhD explores questions of cinematic affect and its relationship to mimetic experience. Through an examination of cinematic materiality, it argues that film must be inscribed across the sensorium if it is to arouse affective experience for the spectator. Drawing on Miriam Hansen’s readings of Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, the thesis argues that cinematic affect can most productively be understood in film as a process of mimetic innervation. The thesis is comprised of seven published essays and an overarching chapter. The introductory chapter, ‘A Paradigm Shift in Film Studies’, situates the published essays in the context of recent debates about embodied spectatorship and affect, arguing the need for a revision of key paradigms of film theory. The first series of essays argues the centrality of embodied affect to cinema spectatorship, and proposes a nexus between mimetic visuality, affect and mise-en- scène, linking the analysis of mise-en-scène to Kracauer’s discussions of cinematic materiality. The essays extend this nexus to rethink genre through the lens of affective mimetic experience, arguing that both genre and visual style work mimetically. The arguments are explored through studies of the work of Mizoguchi Kenji, Theodorus Angelopoulos and Lee Myung-Se. The second series examines spectatorship in documentary cinema, raising questions about historiography, embodied knowledge, inter-cultural dialogue, and the affective elements of cultural specificity. The essays interrogate the universalist claims of conventional documentary form, and its assumptions of a disembodied spectator. They contest the assumed opposition in documentary theory between affect and signification and draw affect and mimetic experience into the core conceptualisation of documentary film. The studies explore an Australian television documentary series, an Indonesian political docudrama and three hybrid documentaries—two Indian and one French. Through these studies, the thesis argues that affective embodied mimetic experience is at the core of cinema spectatorship. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Karen Jennings (1993) and Peter Krausz (2003) in their works, written ten years apart, note the changing ways in which the academic world and the media have dealt with representations of Indigenous identity. It was hoped that the latter work would have been discussing the way in which things have already changed. The fact that it does not, initiates the questions addressed in this thesis: whether Australian cinema explores Indigenous issues in sufficient depth and with cultural resonance. Can a study of cinematic representations lead to a better understanding of Aboriginal identity? In representing Aboriginality on screen does the cinema present a representational complex for Indigenous Australia, which is constructed on their behalf by the cinema itself? In this thesis these questions are theoretically framed within a semiotic methodology, which is applied to the examination of the complexities of representation. This is done through an analysis of the connotations and stereotyping of Indigenous identity in filmic narratives; and the operation of narrative closure and myth making systems through historical time periods; and dualisms in the filmic narratives such as primitive/civilised, us/them, self/other; and the presence of Aboriginality as an absent signifier. The four films chosen for comparative analysis are Jedda, Night Cries, Walkabout and Rabbit Proof Fence. These films span a period of fifty years, which allows for an explication of the changes that have occurred over the passing of time in their visual representations of Aboriginal identity. Hence social and cultural filmic identity representations are juxtaposed with the historical and political discourses prevalent at the time of their production. Through such a detailed analysis of the four film texts, the dominant social discourses of Australia are analysed in relation to their operation as representational frameworks for Indigenous Australians.

This dissertation explores screenwriting as a writing genre. Accompanying the dissertation, in a separate binding, is my feature film screenplay, Jungles of Sandakan, a spec script, written with the speculation of selling for production. The screenplay represents an experience of writing. From the writer’s position, the dissertation articulates a feminine voice, reflective of the writer who experiences the writing of the feature film script, rather than being an exposé on gender, or feminist-specific issues regarding the experience. As such, it is one kind of research. Nonetheless, the research attempts to explore the complexities of writing in relation to the problems that exist in the film world that prevent, or annihilate, and yet enable and require, the very experience of writing. Screenplays are the lifeblood of the picture business, writes Paul Lazarus, in Working In Film; The Marketplace in the ‘90s. Lazarus, a film producer and observer of the American film industry, paints the script as the endemic life force of the film business. Without the script, it is implied, there is no film production. This gives an impression of privilege in relation to the script, and writing. In the grand scheme of things in the picture business though, this is not the case, as anxieties about the script often render writing inconsequential in the context of film production, thus reducing the script’s privilege and placing its significance in uncertain terrain, quite often to the point of oblivion. The writer is often voiceless, and often expected, or required, by the production hierarchy, to remain impartial to her work, or relinquish ownership of her work altogether. For an industry that seemingly depends initially on writing for its own existence, the anxieties displayed towards the script, even though it is merely the blueprint of a film production, as well as the writer, appear very problematic The fiction/drama screenplay, as a storytelling device, has fundamental significance pertaining to history, national identity, issues of gender, sexuality, race relations, social, cultural and political dynamics, views and representations of self and of other(s), ethnicity, religion, multiculturalism and so on, a plethora of issues that inform the writing, the script, as represented by characters, and story. / Doctor of Creative Arts

What is unique to the experience of cinema that has ensured its ongoing popularity across generations of filmgoers? As both a theoretical construct and a real world practice, cinematic experience is necessarily implicated in systems of social and cultural stratification, and thus subject to the drive for symbolic distinction amongst classes. As such, practical logics grounded in specific cultural arbitraries hinder illumination of the complexities of film going, perpetuating epistemological errors based in social ignorance and therefore denying a new understanding of cinematic experience in its embodied state. By uncovering the key theoretical and methodological fallacies informing scholastic knowledge production within the discipline of film studies, the sociological program of Pierre Bourdieu allows for the systematic mapping of cinematic experience as an economy of exchange � an economy engaging specialised categories of patron recognition and appreciation in order to offer an experience of recognised social value. Whilst subject to a range of both theoretical and methodological criticisms, ultimately the deficiencies of Bourdieu�s program are outweighed by the benefits of reflexive sociology in developing the autonomy of the field of film studies, allowing for future film study fully cognizant of the mechanisms of symbolic violence and thus academic knowledge production more attentive to the destructive logic of the open market.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.