In this research, I unthread the role of the body in sculpture by applying a model of thinking through the body to generate alternative ways of thinking about and working with the body sculpturally. Breaking away from a dominance of the figure over the body in sculptural practice, I deconstruct the figure through a consideration of the senses and the relationship between interior and exterior spaces of the body. Looking neither inwards towards a hidden core, nor outwards from the subconscious, I instead look orthogonally across the skin as a way to overcome the figure, using the surface of the body as a mode for both looking and thinking. To achieve this, I start by undertaking a re-­‐description of skin based upon an interaction between artist, object, space, and viewer rather than as something that divides or contains these elements, assuming an equality and equilibrium of the body between maker and viewer. Moving beyond a bi-­‐directional model, I propose a multi-­‐directional and pervasive model of skin as a space in which body and world mingle. I explore this mingling through a reconsideration of tactility in sculpture, drawing on the active body in both making and interpreting sculpture to address processes of imaginative touch and proprioceptive sensation in sculptural practice. I argue that imaginative touch is a key aspect in engaging the body of the viewer that can be manipulated by the way in which materials are handled, generating proprioceptive sensation. This project re-­‐describes tactility within sculpture as something ultimately more complex than the touching of artworks, as a process intertwined with the visual. Mapping out the projection of the tactile body, this research follows the tracing process of the body rather than the trace of the body itself, exploring touch as revealing the way in which we perceive sculpture.

The advent of electronics and digital technologies in the last century has brought some significant changes in how we use and behave around doors. In this development, progress seems to imply a use of automation or shying away from physical interaction, and consequently a subtle yet potentially rich channel of information. Open Sesame aims to explore and reason around an opportunity and complementary perspective of leveraging digital technology to enrich the use of our haptic sense in future doors. The project poses an example situated in an office environment and builds on methods of hardware sketching to design a set of haptic door behaviours that reflect the state of a space. The resulting perspective attempts to make digital information about a room accessible for the user at a glance whilst reimagining the role of the door as a more active representative of the rooms it connects.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61).

This thesis deals with the development of novel haptic array system that can render distributed pressure pattern. The haptic devices are force feedback interfaces, which are widely seen from consumer products to tele-surgical systems, such as vibration feedback in game console, mobile phones, virtual reality applications, and daVinci robots in minimally invasive surgery. Telemedicine and computer-enabled medical training system are modern medical infrastructures where the former provides health care services to people especially in rural and remote places while the latter is meant for training the next generation of doctors and medical students. In telemedicine, a patient at a remote location consults the physician at a distant place through the telecommunication media whereas in computer enabled medical training system, physician and medical students interact with the virtual patient. The experience of physical presence of the remote patient in telemedicine and immersive interaction with virtual patient on the computer-enabled training system can be attained through haptic devices. In this work we focus on palpation simulation in telemedicine and medical training systems. Palpation is a primary diagnostic method which involves multi-finger, multi-contact interaction between the patient and physician. During palpation, a distributed pressure pattern rather than point load is perceived by the physician. The commercially available haptic devices are single and five point devices, which lack the face validity in rendering distributed pressure pattern; there are only a few works reported in literatures that deal with palpation simulation. There is a strong need of a haptic device which provide distributed force pattern with multipoint feedback which can be applied for palpation simulation in telemedicine and medical training purposes. The haptic device should be a multipoint device to simulate palpation process, an array device to render distributed force pattern, light weight to move from one place to another and finally it has to cover hand portion of physician. We are proposing a novel under-actuated haptic array device, called taut cable haptic array system (TCHAS), which in general is a m x n system, consist of m+n actuators to obtain m.nhaptels, that are multiple end effectors. A prototype of 3 x 3 TCHAS is developed during this work and detailed study on its characterisation is explored. The performance of device is validated with elaborate user study and it establishes that the device has promising capability in rendering distributed spatio-temporal pressure pattern.

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Interactive dissection simulation is an important research topic in the virtual reality (VR) community. There are many efforts on this topic; however, most of them focus on building a realistic simulation system regardless of the cost, and they often require expensive workstations and specialized haptic devices which prevent broader adoption. We show how to build a realistic dissection simulation at an affordable cost, which opens up applications in elementary education for virtual dissections which are currently not feasible. In this thesis, we present a fast and robust haptic system for interactive dissection simulations of finite elements based deformable objects which supports two type of haptic interactions: point contacts and cuts. We design a semi-progressive virtual dissection scheme of deformable objects in a real-time application. The quality and performance of visual/haptic feedback is demonstrated on a low-end commercial desktop PC with a haptic device.

Most interactions with physical objects are based on three senses: Sight, hearing and touch. Although we highly rely on visual communication nowadays, haptic feedback is not only involved in every single interaction, but plays a significant role in how we perceive our surroundings. One major reason why there are only few applications available incorporating active haptic technology is the complex design process, which requires a profound understanding of electronics, coding, physiology and psychology. Unfortunately there is currently little support and guidance available to get you started and help you during the process. In this thesis I explored the opportunities of haptic feedback and how we can ease access to the field for designers. The outcome is called hapticlabs.io and consists of two parts: A prototyping kit which allows you to design, evaluate, and integrate haptic feedback without requiring any expertise in coding or electronics. A knowledge base which provides condensed and easy to understand background information, opportunity areas showcasing capabilities, as well as a collection of design principles guiding you through the process. Hapticlabs.io provides an ecosystem to democratise haptic design. It simplifies the process of modulating the feedback, creating functional prototypes and taking full potential of the capabilities.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

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No description available.