Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, June 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-112). / The Center for Reflective Community Practice in MIT's Department of Urban studies is involved in projects helping community organizers working on social change. In order to foster reflection, they are currently utilizing what they refer to as "Critical Moments Reflection". This method entails the identification and naming of key shifts or turning points (critical moments) in the process of the community organizers' work. To drive learning through reflection, they use stories relevant to the turning points, they then analyze those moments using a pre-specified genre of poignant questions. I have created an application, the CMReflector, that aids in the process of Critical Moments Reflection. It will facilitate the process of documentation by utilizing some of the rich computational tools that we now have access to. Since the learning that people acquire through their work stays largely under the surface, there is need to systematically examine the lessons learned and articulate the knowledge and questions that have come out of such work. The application provides an organizational structure and taxonomy around which to compile tacit knowledge and its representation, allowing for exploration of such knowledge in a richer fashion. In order to leverage the use of archived materials, tools such as TalkTV (an application that re-sequeces television content) have been used to augment my application allowing for a "low floor" entry to multiple media editing by the users. It is envisaged that these tools aid in bringing forth the intrinsic "ifs" and "thens," as well as generating the potential for serendipitous learning experiences. All this is very useful in bringing some form of rigor into the practice of reflective inquiry. / by Luke Odhiambo Ouko. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 448-458). / The marriage of dance and interactive image has been a persistent dream over the past decades, but reality has fallen far short of potential for both technical and conceptual reasons. This thesis proposes a new approach to the problem and lays out the theoretical, technical and aesthetic framework for the innovative art form of digitally augmented human movement. I will use as example works a series of installations, digital projections and compositions each of which contains a choreographic component - either through collaboration with a choreographer directly or by the creation of artworks that automatically organize and understand purely virtual movement. These works lead up to two unprecedented collaborations with two of the greatest choreographers working today; new pieces that combine dance and interactive projected light using real-time motion capture live on stage. The existing field of"dance technology" is one with many problems. This is a domain with many practitioners, few techniques and almost no theory; a field that is generating "experimental" productions with every passing week, has literally hundreds of citable pieces and no canonical works; a field that is oddly disconnected from modern dance's history, pulled between the practical realities of the body and those of computer art, and has no influence on the prevailing digital art paradigms that it consumes. / (cont.) This thesis will seek to address each of these problems: by providing techniques and a basis for "practical theory"; by building artworks with resources and people that have never previously been brought together, in theaters and in front of audiences previously inaccessible to the field; and by proving through demonstration that a profitable and important dialogue between digital art and the pioneers of modern dance can in fact occur. The methodological perspective of this thesis is that of biologically inspired, agent-based artificial intelligence, taken to a high degree of technical depth. The representations, algorithms and techniques behind such agent architectures are extended and pushed into new territory for both interactive art and artificial intelligence. In particular, this thesis ill focus on the control structures and the rendering of the extended agents' bodies, the tools for creating complex agent-based artworks in intense collaborative situations, and the creation of agent structures that can span live image and interactive sound production. Each of these parts becomes an element of what it means to "choreograph" an extended agent for live performance. / Marc Downie. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 50). / Clotho is a collaborative field-reporting tool that provides an environment for gathering stories about a subject or event in a meaningful structure. The relationships between stories constitute the backbone of the structure. Because the main use of the tool is geared towards capturing immediacy, the focus is on mobile devices such as wireless-enabled PDAs. We present the implementation of the tool based on Java and JXME, an open peer-to-peer architecture for mobile devices. An evaluation of the tool and its results are examined. Keywords: collaborative, linking, mobile, pda, field-reporting, news, peer-to-peer. / S.M.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65). / Kyratso Karahalios. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007. / 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. 139-146). / This thesis presents the Object Schema Model (OSM) for grounded language interaction. Dynamic representations of objects are used as the central point of coordination between actions, sensations, planning, and language use. Objects are modeled as object schemas -- sets of multimodal, object-directed behavior processes -- each of which can make predictions, take actions, and collate sensations, in the modalities of touch, vision, and motor control. This process-centered view allows the system to respond continuously to real-world activity, while still viewing objects as stabilized representations for planning and speech interaction. The model can be described from four perspectives, each organizing and manipulating behavior processes in a different way. The first perspective views behavior processes like thread objects, running concurrently to carry out their respective functions. The second perspective organizes the behavior processes into object schemas. The third perspective organizes the behavior processes into plan hierarchies to coordinate actions. The fourth perspective creates new behavior processes in response to language input. / (cont.) Results from interactions with objects are used to update the object schemas, which then influence subsequent plans and actions. A continuous planning algorithm examines the current object schemas to choose between candidate processes according to a set of primary motivations, such as responding to collisions, exploring objects, and interacting with the human. An instance of the model has been implemented using a physical robotic manipulator. The implemented system is able to interpret basic speech acts that relate to perception of, and actions upon, objects in the robot's physical environment. / by Kai-yuh Hsiao. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-61). / Social awareness in the workspace has been a classical architectural problem that has been tackled in various ways-ranging from architectural ways, such as the design of building atria, to technological ways, like connecting of two remote spaces using two-way audio-video tunnels. Any attempt at enhancing social awareness is fundamentally at odds with high levels of user privacy. In this document, we shall discuss a novel sensor network based approach to enhancing the social awareness of people while maintaining low levels of privacy invasiveness. We use a grid of motion sensors to collect anonymous information about activity in various locations of our prototypical workspace. The real time and historical components of the data are then visualized in six different ways. These visualizations are meant to be deployed as glanceable displays in public areas and personal workspaces to allow people to gain an almost subconscious awareness of the space around them. The system developed is evaluated through one on one critique interviews with users drawn randomly from the prototypical workspace. Finally the results of the evaluation are discussed and future directions for the research are outlined. / by Ishwinder Kaur. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-86). / This thesis introduces HandSCAPE, a computational measuring system that provides designers and workers with a fluid means of bridging physical measuring and three dimensional computer modeling. Using embedded orientation awareness and wireless communication, the HandSCAPE system first captures vector measurements using a digitally augmented tape measure, and then displays in real time the resulting dimensions in three dimensional computer graphics. With efficiency of human-scale interaction using a tangible user interface, prototype systems are applied for specific on-site space planning, packing configuration, and archaeological field excavation in order to give users in the field immediate access to computational information. Underlying technology for custom orientation sensing and simulating three-dimensional graphics, as well as a concept of digitally constructed physical space are described. The success of the second generation of the system is also equipped with configurable parameters to increase the usability. / by Jae-Chol Lee. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-139). / Creative Digital sound manipulation is a powerful means of personal expression. However, it remains explored by only a small number of engineers, mathematicians, and avant-garde musicians and composers. Others find the interfaces both obtuse and focused more on how the sounds are manipulated than what expressivity the manipulations offer. Yet digital sound manipulation can be accessible to everybody. It can even be a powerful way for people to explore, design, and create while learning about mathematics, dataflow, networks, and computer programming. SoundBlocks and SoundScratch are two different environments in which children can manipulate digital sound. SoundBlocks is a tangible programming language for describing dataflow with adaptive, context-aware primitives and real-time sensing. SoundScratch is a set of sound primitives that extend the media-rich capabilities of the children's programming language called Scratch. Both environments have been created and developed as a way to explore how it might be possible to construct an environment in which youth design their own sounds. Children ages 10-15 years old have explored the environments and participated n user studies. Music educators have observed these studies, and their observations are summarized. / by John Harrison. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-127). / This thesis presents a methodology and framework for designing systems that apply real-time simulation of computational models throughout the modeling and parameter modification stages of problem solving for graph based problems. An interactive problem solving technique is presented where the lines between problem modeling and simulation are blurred, enhancing the outcome of traditional problem solving. To demonstrate the versatility of the framework and methodology, two applications not normally thought of as graph problems - a circuit design application and an airport passenger flow application - are developed and tested. Three user studies test various parts of the framework, as well as the overall concept of real-time simulation on an interactive workbench. The first study provides quantitative support for the efficacy of the interaction technique chosen for manipulating graph structures. The second provides observational results of using the circuit design application to teach physics. The third addresses whether blurred lines of modeling and analysis enhance problem solving. / by Daniel Chak. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 75-77). / Current employment technology typically relies on the concept of a CV or resume -a highly precise and constructed document. The creation of this document requires intricate knowledge of a process that is often opaque to those living in developed nations, who rely on training and experience to write compelling CV's. For those living in developing countries, this process is more difficult, and for those that have no internet access or are illiterate, creating a first-world resume is nearly impossible. That said, when firstworld organizations in developing countries bring with them their expectations of hiring which may or may not fit with the natives of that country. We propose a system, "Konbit," that creates a cultural and technological bridge between those with skills in developing countries and those with first-world expectations of potential employees. This platform allows literate or illiterate workers to describe their skills and life experiences as story-like messages in their native language, requires no technological upgrades from these workers, and transforms and offers this data as deep, humanized characterizations of potential employees. Non-profit organizations (NGOs) and government organizations (GOs) can search this data in a technologically modern format, viewing an automatically constructed resume for each caller. While other systems attempt to create miniature CV's via SMS-based messaging, these systems are not accessible by the illiterate and impose western CV-based culture onto applicants, resulting in low-fidelity representations given that SMS text messages are by nature short and inappropriate for extensive data input. Given the focus on the most is connected workers, Konbit deployed and received data from over 10,000 people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where the literacy rate, at the time of writing, was around 50% and the unemployment rate was more than 80%. This system was also beta-tested with 30 Haitian-Americans in Miami, Florida. The implications of the thesis will be relevant to any area - developed or developing - that is affected by illiteracy, poor training, or cultural gaps between workers and employers, and may serve as a more effective tool for employee characterization and interviewing in all job sectors. / by Greg Elliott. / S.M.