No description available.

Based on the principle of sequential lessons for teaching orienteering, the program is a center that teaches navigation to people who are blind, located in the remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Through the use of materials, light, and this program of sequential patterns, the architecture focuses on heightening the working senses of the occupants using the progression throughout the building. This connection of the body and mind to architecture creates an awareness of space, unifying a perception of place, while bridging the old life to the new. / Master of Architecture

This is a study of the body and architecture, the way in which the two experience one another, the way in which one can inform the other. This thesis was centered around the consideration of the senses not as separate inputs, but as one harmonious quality of perception. The project began as an attempt to explore how the non-visual senses could inform the architectural gestation and developed into an exercise using the visual medium of drawings to illicit qualities beyond sight alone. The attempt to capture material quality through abstraction was likened to the search for the divine through our carnal existence on earth. The results attempted to express sensual qualities through a mixture of different media and their layering to demonstrate the development of the whole through the gestation and gradual realization of its fragments. A site in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia was chosen for its relationship to the tidal water of the Potomac River and the opportunities its previous life as a shipyard presented, as half of the site was excavated into the shoreline. The proposal of a spiritual home, a Cistercian monastery on a site that straddles land and water fit ideally with the theme of addressing materiality and abstract representation, the phsycial and spiritual, and the mind and body. Both the site and the program provided a fruitful counterpoint with which the thesis developed. / Master of Architecture

We live in a world full of stimuli. We can see, smell, feel, taste and hear because stimuli surrounds us. However, when we are conceived in the womb of our mothers we are formed with no senses. During that time we are totally isolated from our environment. Interestingly enough senses start to develop only after 8 weeks of fetal development, being touch the first one to mature. Smell, taste, hearing and sight appear later on. Humans connect to their surroundings through senses, and as these senses start developing in our bodies our brain starts applying them to perceive our environment. Through our senses we are able to interact with our environment and we are able to learn, pass on knowledge, and form, create and treasure memories. It is because of our senses that we can enjoy the beautiful colors of autumn, the balmy breeze of late summer days, or the avian symphony of spring. Each sense is like a link through which we connect our inner self with the outside world and allows us to uniquely experience each setting. However, when one or more of the senses is missing, those links are broken and the outside world is perceived very differently from individual to individual. Experiencing the built environment is no different. Since buildings are usually designed with a fully sensory individual in mind sensory-impaired populations typically find it difficult to navigate or make use of the spaces the building offers. The following pages of this thesis demonstrate the universal access system as a tool for those who lack one or more of the senses in order for them to fully enjoy and use the spaces in the same way any fully sensorial person can. Another important aspect which is explored architectonically is the aspect of social inequalities, which many handicapped individuals face on regular basis as users of a building. / Master of Architecture / This thesis explores the concept of inclusive architectural design. This is a concept in which buildings are designed in ways where all people can utilize and experience the spaces inside and outside of the building in the same way, regardless of physical condition. A design paradigm is presented as an approach at solving the social injustice against physically challenged populations present in today’s architecture, using a public library as a case study. It is also demonstrated that architectural inclusivity can be achieved with simple and minor changes to the design. No expensive or technologically sophisticated additions are required. However, having all users in mind, disabled and not disabled, during the design process is paramount. This can translate into aesthetic and building shape tradeoffs, for the benefit of all. Readers of these pages will be able to examine the design process for such a building and the resulting library for all.

A lexicon describing the sensory perception of carbonated water was developed. Temporal aspects and differing ingestion conditions were investigated for Bite and Burn sensation using time-intensity (T-I). Four CO₂ levels (0, 1.7, 2.8, and 4.6 volumes) at 3°C and 10°C were tested. Trained panelists used a 16-pt category scale for evaluation in the first study. One swallow (15 ml) and four continuous swallows were evaluated by trained subjects using T-I in the subsequent studies. Lexicon included: salty, sour, bitter, cooling, astringency, bubbly, bubble size, bubble sound, gas expansion feeling, bite, burn, and numbing. Descriptor ratings, except cooling, increased as CO₂ level increased. Bubble size and bubble sound were rated higher for 10°C. Cooling, bite, burn, and numbing were rated higher for 3°C . Descriptors were divided into cooling, taste (salty, sour, bitter, astringency), trigeminal (bite, burn, and numbing), and mechanoreception descriptors (bubbly, bubble size, bubble sound, gas expansion feeling) based on PCA. Average temporal curves for Bite and Burn demonstrated that Burn sensation (steep linear rise and long-lived exponential decay slope) was similar to previously investigated irritants while Bite (steep linear rise and decay slopes, and relatively short duration) was unlike other irritants. Sensations were qualitatively and quantitatively different. Intensity and duration of Bite and Burn were concentration dependent. Cold temperature enhanced perception. Possible psychological habituation or desensitization was observed. Most T-I parameters were correlated for both Bite and Burn. These included CO₂ level dependent and CO₂ level independent parameters. Considerable subject variability was found. Increased exposure to CO₂ solution and increased cooling with ingestion of four continuous swallows was compared to one swallow. T-I curves for Bite (four swallows) were of higher intensity, longer duration, and developed maximum intensity plateaus. Those for Burn exhibited higher maximum intensities. At four swallows, T-I parameter correlations were strengthened, subject variability reduced and replication reproducibility improved by ease of rating afforded subjects by higher intensity sensations. Increased oral CO₂ perception with higher CO₂ levels and enhancement by cold temperature was reconfirmed. Beginnings of maximum intensity, Duration, and reaction time perceptual terminal thresholds were seen for the highest 3°C, CO₂ level. High CO₂ concentration, cold temperature, and exposure time induced these effects. / Graduation date: 1993

The importance of touch-related sensations as a kinesthetic perceptual system through the observation of the subject/object phenomenon is explored through defining aspects of movement learning experiences associated with dance training.

In this paper, I will cover the process of connecting my honors thesis film, Lavanda, with the five senses. I will mainly focus on how the sense of smell can be represented in film along with visual and aural elements. Also, I will present the challenges that arouse while trying to represent taste and touch. Ultimately, I will evaluate the representation of each sense in Lavanda and how a film has the potential to encourage the use of other senses besides seeing and hearing while watching a film.

This dissertation examines the impact of electronic sound technology on theories and practices of listening in Paris since 1945. It focusses on experimental work, carried out by musicians and medical professionals and designed with the express purpose of transforming the minds, bodies, and experiences of listening subjects in order to produce “experimental listeners.” Why did the senses become a target of manipulation at this particular moment, and how was technology used and abused for these ends? What kinds of changes to human beings, permanent or otherwise, was sound technology imagined to produce? And on what grounds were such experimental activities legitimized? To answer these questions in high definition, the story follows two main protagonists: otolaryngologist Alfred Tomatis and composer Pierre Schaeffer. Chapter 1 provides a launch pad into the world of Tomatis’s unconventional listening therapy by focusing on the invention in 1953 of the Electronic Ear, a device that could be described as an experiment in sensory prosthetics. Chapter 2 looks at Schaeffer’s experimental research into listening—through his “sound objects”—where his ultimate goal was to establish an entirely new musical culture based upon a new sensibility of sound awoken by the novel sound technologies of his day. The third chapter dissects Tomatis’s unlikely “postmortem” analysis of Enrico Caruso’s ears. Under the microscope in Chapter 4 is Schaeffer’s practical relationship with his public and his theoretical understanding of the mass media. Combining musicology with the history of the senses, science studies, and sound studies, and drawing on archival research, I excavate the material and epistemological resources mobilized by these experimenters to make malleable the sense of sound: not only resources broadly understood as “scientific” (mainstream medicine, cybernetics, information theory, acoustics) but also those often considered less so (psychoanalysis, alternative medicine, mysticism, and a panoply of spiritual beliefs). The project scrutinizes attempts to transform lived experience using electronic sound production technology; more broadly, it explores the meaning of the technological itself and its capacity to contain strange hybrid machines caught between fact and fiction, science and magic, human and non-human, matter and spirit, and certainty and wonder.

Signals for each of the five tastes have previously been shown to be processed by distinct labeled lines from taste receptor cells (TRCs) on the tongue to the ganglion neurons that innervate them. Furthermore, different tastes have been shown to be represented by distinct neurons in the taste cortex. We recorded calcium activity using fiber photometry from genetically defined populations in the mouse rostral nucleus of the solitary tract (rNST), the first brain station receiving taste signals from the tongue. We found that Somatostatin- (Sst) expressing cells respond exclusively to bitter chemicals while Calretinin- (Calb2) expressing cells respond exclusively to sweet chemicals. Immunostaining and viral strategies demonstrated that Sst and Calb2 mark distinct neuronal populations in the rNST. We then showed that optogenetic activation of Sst and Calb2 cells elicits prototypical bitter and sweet behaviors, respectively and demonstrate that ablation of these cells strongly impairs aversion to bitter tastants and attraction to sweet tastants, respectively. These findings reveal how taste information is propagated into the brain.

Sensory substitution devices (SSDs) systematically turn visual dimensions into patterns of tactile or auditory stimulation. After training, a user of these devices learns to translate these audio or tactile sensations back into a mental visual picture. Most previous SSDs translate greyscale images using intuitive cross-sensory mappings to help users learn the devices. However more recent SSDs have started to incorporate additional colour dimensions such as saturation and hue. Chapter two examines how previous SSDs have translated the complexities of colour into hearing or touch. The chapter explores if colour is useful for SSD users, how SSD and veridical colour perception differ and how optimal cross-sensory mappings might be considered. After long-term training, some blind users of SSDs report visual sensations from tactile or auditory stimulation. A related phenomena is that of synaesthesia, a condition where stimulation of one modality (i.e. touch) produces an automatic, consistent and vivid sensation in another modality (i.e. vision). Tactile-visual synaesthesia is an extremely rare variant that can shed light on how the tactile-visual system is altered when touch can elicit visual sensations. Chapter three reports a series of investigations on the tactile discrimination abilities and phenomenology of tactile-vision synaesthetes, alongside questionnaire data from synaesthetes unavailable for testing. Chapter four introduces a new SSD to test if the presentation of colour information in sensory substitution affects object and colour discrimination. Chapter five presents experiments on intuitive auditory-colour mappings across a wide variety of sounds. These findings are used to predict the reported colour hallucinations resulting from LSD use while listening to these sounds. Chapter six uses a new sensory substitution device designed to test the utility of these intuitive sound-colour links for visual processing. These findings are discussed with reference to how cross-sensory links, LSD and synaesthesia can inform optimal SSD design for visual processing.