Suchergebnisse

One of the strengths of virtual reality (VR) is to provide a highly realistic user experience. How would VR's power of realism affect political decision-making, for example, when experienced by citizens before they cast their vote on an issue? We set out to empirically assess if and how voting information presented in VR would influence people's voting behavior, compared to the traditional text presentation format. In a 2 (format: text vs. VR) × 2 (argumentation: pro vs. con) between-subject factorial experiment, we assessed participants' voting behavior on a fictitious popular initiative. We first asked all participants (N = 179) to cast their vote based on a brief text, inspired by the traditional Swiss voting booklet (baseline). We then randomly assigned participants to one of four experimental conditions containing the same pro or con arguments concerning the voting issue. Participants could then adjust their previously-cast vote. This was followed by retrospective interviews (N = 32) to gain deeper insights into the decision-making process of the participants. Our study shows that the presentation format has a reinforcing effect, that is, leading to more YES votes for the VR group, and fewer YES votes for the text group. Irrespective of the pro or con arguments, participants show an overall increase in YES votes in VR, which is not the case for the text group. We identified six factors that may have led to this positive change with VR: (1) the affirmative power of images, (2) the vividness of immersive images, (3) first-person storytelling and storyliving, (4) the greater affordances of VR for engagement through interaction, (5) the design of the VR environment, and (6) the novelty of the VR technology.

The works of Harun Farocki (1944-2014) confronted in many ways with all the transformations of image production devices and also with AR and VR. In particular, in the installation Serious Games (2009-2010) Farocki confronts some of the issues that most characterized his artistic activity: the transformation of wars, the modification of the function of images in the perception of the war, the role of «operational images». Farocki uses the images themselves as a way to make the modification of our aesthetic relationship with images and their political function perceptible and comprehensible. The four videos that make up the installation Serious Games (exhibited in many museums including: MoMA New York, Ryerson Image Center Toronto, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, Jeu de Paume Paris) were shot entirely inside some training centers for U.S. Army soldiers in which "serious games" are widely used both for the training of fighters (Virtual Battle Space 2 by Bohemia Interactive), and for the immersion therapy of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders: through AR and VR devices they can try to overcome the shocks suffered (in particular the Virtual Iraq program of clinical psychologist Albert Rizzo). The essay aims to analyze Farocki's installation focusing on the aesthetic and political issues related to the use of AR and VR technologies with particular reference to training and therapies for P.T.S.D. ; L'opera di Harun Farocki (1944-2014) si è confrontata in diversi modi con tutte le trasformazioni dei dispositivi di produzione delle immagini e anche con la AR e la VR. In particolare nell'installazione Serious Games (2009-2010) Farocki si confronta con alcune delle questioni che più hanno caratterizzato la sua attività artistica: la trasformazione delle guerre, la modificazione della funzione delle immagini nella percezione dell'evento bellico, il ruolo delle operative images. Farocki impiega le immagini stesse come via per rendere percepibile e comprensibile la modificazione del nostro rapporto estetico con le immagini e della loro funzione politica. I quattro video di cui si compone l'installazione Serious Games (esposti in numerosi musei tra cui: MoMA New York, Ryerson Image Centre Toronto, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlino, Jeu de Paume Parigi) sono stati interamente girati all'interno di alcuni centri di addestramento per soldati dell'esercito U.SA. in cui si fa ampio uso di serious games sia per il training dei combattenti (Virtual Battle Space 2 della Bohemia Interactive), sia per la immersion therapy di pazienti affetti da disturbi post traumatici da stress e che proprio attraverso dispositivi AR e VR possono tentare di superare gli choc subiti (in particolare il programma Virtual Iraq dello psicologo clinico Albert Rizzo). Il saggio si propone di analizzare l'installazione di Farocki con l'obiettivo di mettere a fuoco le questioni estetiche e politiche connesse all'impiego delle tecnologie AR e VR con particolare riferimento all'addestramento in guerra e alle terapie per pazienti P.T.S.D.

Dimensionen der Realität -- Künstliche Welten im historischen Überblick -- Wie wir die Welt wahrnehmen -- Gesundheitliche und soziale Aspekte -- Interaktion -- Benutzungsoberfläche -- Fortbewegung -- Erfassung des Nutzers -- Tracking -- Ausgabesysteme -- Filmische virtuelle Realität -- Soziale virtuelle Realität -- Immersives Lernen -- VR-Spiele -- Standortbezogene virtuelle Realität -- Immersive Entwicklung -- Forschungsgegenstand und tool.

Desire indicates phenomena that are implicated in a productive ambiguity. These phenomena associate basic elements of human coexistence, while also referencing complex social processes and institutions. With today's new media we experience an assemblage of desire that maps out new relationships to the social body, to sexuality and gender questions, to ownership, and to the production, perception, and appropriation of moving images. This book brings together a broad spectrum of international positions relating to the time-based, immersive arts presented at the third B3 - the Biennial of the Moving Image Frankfurt/Main 2017 - which focuses on desire in the contemporary world. An extensive essay by Marc Ries develops a theoretical framework relating the moving image to desire. Contributions by Candice Breitz, Douglas Gordon, Johan Grimonprez, Jonas Mekas, Larissa Sansour, Igor Simic, and Frederico Solmi. Desire/Begehren benennt Phänomene, die in eine produktive Ambivalenz eingeschrieben sind. Sie assoziieren Grundelemente menschlichen Zusammenlebens, verweisen aber zugleich auf komplexe gesellschaftliche Prozesse und Institutionen. Mit den gegenwärtigen Medien erleben und erfahren wir ein Gefüge des Begehrens, das neue Verhältnisse zum sozialen Körper, zur Sexualität und Geschlechterfrage, zum Eigentum und auch zur Produktion, Wahrnehmung und Aneignung von Bewegtbildern entwirft. Der Band versammelt ein Spektrum an internationalen Positionen zeitbasierter und immersiver Künste der dritten B3 - Biennale des Bewegten Bildes Frankfurt/Main 2017 - zum Begehren in der Gegenwart. Ein umfassender Essay von Marc Ries entwickelt einen theoretischen Rahmen der Beziehung des bewegten Bildes zum Begehren. Beiträge von Candice Breitz, Douglas Gordon, Johan Grimonprez, Jonas Mekas, Larissa Sansour, Igor Simic und Frederico Solmi

The interplay of physical reality and digital media technologies is getting enhanced by new interfaces. The age of hyper-reality turns into the age of hyper-aesthetics and immersive image technologies – like mixed reality – enable a completely novel form of interaction and user relation with the virtual image structures, the different screen technologies, and embedded physical artefacts for interaction. »Mixed Reality Images« contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of mixed reality images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of mixed reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science.

The interplay of physical reality and digital media technologies is getting enhanced by new interfaces. The age of hyper-reality turns into the age of hyper-aesthetics and immersive image technologies - like mixed reality - enable a completely novel form of interaction and user relation with the virtual image structures, the different screen technologies, and embedded physical artefacts for interaction. "Mixed Reality Images" contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of mixed reality images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of mixed reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science.

This research work was partially funded by the Strategic Educational Pathways Scholarship Scheme (STEPS-Malta) and by European Union - European Social Fund (ESF 1.25). ; Bandwidth-limited channels demand the transmission of the per-pixel depth maps with the texture data to provide immersive 3D video services that allow arbitrary 3D viewpoint reconstruction. This auxiliary depth data offers geometric information, which together with the multi-view and epipolar geometries, can be exploited during 3D video coding to calculate geometric positions for the search areas of disparity estimation. These positions represent a more accurate estimate match to compensate the current macro-block from than those provided by the median adopted by the H.264/MVC standard. The result is smaller search areas that reduce the encoder's computational requirement. In this work, we exploit this fact together with the largest depth variation within the macro-block to encode, to calculate and adaptively adjust these areas along the epipolar lines. The proposed solution achieves a speedup gain of up-to 32 times over the original disparity estimation, with negligible influence on the rate-distortion performance of 3D video coding. This highly reduces the computational cost of the H.264/MVC encoder and eases its need to be implemented on highly expensive systems that are otherwise necessary to meets the stringent latency requirement of broadcast transmissions. Moreover, it provides similar coding efficiencies required for such scenarios. ; peer-reviewed

From the architectural spectacle of the medieval cathedral and the romantic sublime of the nineteenth-century panorama to the techno-fetishism of today's London Science Museum, humans have gained a deeper understanding of the natural world through highly illusionistic representations that engender new modes of seeing, listening, and thinking. What unites and defines many of these wondrous spaces is an immersive view-an invitation to step inside the virtual world of the image and become a part of its universe, if only for a short time.Since their inception, museums of science and natural histor

This paper contributes to the introductory study on the sociocultural impact of
immersive technology or ImT, in the form of 360 video capture and virtual reality
projection. A young technology in the field of visual language, ImT challenges the
supremacy of the frame in cinematic mediums—TV, video, film—and, in effect, introduces
new notions in visual grammar of the multimodality of moving images, aka the kineikonic
mode of media theorist Andrew Burn (2013). Using the dialogic system of Mikhail Bakhtin,
this paper situates the place of immersive technology in the historiography of visual
language, from the proscenium of the classical theater to cinema, and to virtual
reality. In doing so, this study is able to demonstrate how immersive technology becomes
the newest expression of mankind's linguistic resolve to transcend its physical
limitations in the field of communication, information production and consumption,
knowledge transfer, and dissemination of cultures.

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of 'Dialogues' as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with 'others', which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, "dialogue" as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title 'translated' into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences.

This article explores the potential of new, immersive realities to convey the complex experiences of gender dysphoria and body dissatisfaction, using the innovative and multi-award-winning experience Body of Mine as a case study. Recognizing a gap in understanding and empathy towards gender-queer communities, Body of Mine employs an innovative full-body tracking solution to place users into the body of someone else, combined with first-person documentary interviews and interactive elements aimed at fostering a deeper connection and insight into the transgender experience. Initial feedback from users indicates a heightened awareness and emotional connection to the challenges faced by individuals with gender dysphoria, as well as an increase in self-body positivity, based on a study conducted in collaboration with the University of Tübingen's Department of Psychology. This project underscores the power of immersive storytelling in fostering embodied understanding, while also acknowledging the ethical complexities and voyeuristic risks when sharing narratives from vulnerable communities, and explores innovative methods for tackling social issues through emerging technology. It concludes by contemplating the implications of immersive technologies for the concept of identity in a world that increasingly transcends the physical body, suggesting a future where the notion of self is not confined to physical form but is fluid, multifaceted, and continually redefined within boundless digital horizons.

Tesis por compendio ; [ES] El uso de la realidad virtual (RV) se ha incrementado notablemente en la comunidad científica para la investigación del comportamiento humano. En particular, la RV inmersiva ha crecido debido a la democratización de las gafas de realidad virtual o head mounted displays (HMD), que ofrecen un alto rendimiento con una inversión económica. Uno de los campos que ha emergido con fuerza en la última década es el Affective Computing, que combina psicofisiología, informática, ingeniería biomédica e inteligencia artificial, desarrollando sistemas que puedan reconocer emociones automáticamente. Su progreso es especialmente importante en el campo de la investigación del comportamiento humano, debido al papel fundamental que las emociones juegan en muchos procesos psicológicos como la percepción, la toma de decisiones, la creatividad, la memoria y la interacción social. Muchos estudios se han centrado en intentar obtener una metodología fiable para evocar y automáticamente identificar estados emocionales, usando medidas fisiológicas objetivas y métodos de aprendizaje automático. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los estudios previos utilizan imágenes, audios o vídeos para generar los estados emocionales y, hasta donde llega nuestro conocimiento, ninguno de ellos ha desarrollado un sistema de reconocimiento emocional usando RV inmersiva. Aunque algunos trabajos anteriores sí analizan las respuestas fisiológicas en RV inmersivas, estos no presentan modelos de aprendizaje automático para procesamiento y clasificación automática de bioseñales. Además, un concepto crucial cuando se usa la RV en investigación del comportamiento humano es la validez: la capacidad de evocar respuestas similares en un entorno virtual a las evocadas por el espacio físico. Aunque algunos estudios previos han usado dimensiones psicológicas y cognitivas para comparar respuestas entre entornos reales y virtuales, las investigaciones que analizan respuestas fisiológicas o comportamentales están mucho menos extendidas. Según nuestros ...

An event or experience can induce different emotional responses between individuals, including strong variability based on task parameters or environmental context. Physiological correlates of emotional reactivity, as well as related constructs of stress and anxiety, have been found across many physiological metrics, including heart rate and brain activity. However, the interdependances and interactions across contexts and between physiological systems are not well understood. Here, we recruited military and law enforcement to complete two experimental sessions across two different days. In the laboratory session, participants viewed high-arousal negative images while brain activity electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from the scalp, and functional connectivity was computed during the task and used as a predictor of emotional response during the other experimental session. In an immersive simulation session, participants performed a shoot-don't-shoot scenario while heart rate electrocardiography (ECG) was recorded. Our analysis examined the relationship between the sessions, including behavioral responses (emotional intensity ratings, task performance, and self-report anxiety) and physiology from different modalities [brain connectivity and heart rate variability (HRV)]. Results replicated previous research and found that behavioral performance was modulated within-session based on varying levels of emotional intensity in the laboratory session (t((24)) = 4.062, p < 0.0005) and stress level in the simulation session (Z = 2.45, corrected p-value = 0.0142). Both behavior and physiology demonstrated cross-session relationships. Behaviorally, higher intensity ratings in the laboratory was related to higher self-report anxiety in the immersive simulation during low-stress (r = 0.465, N = 25, p = 0.019) and high-stress (r = 0.400, N = 25, p = 0.047) conditions. Physiologically, brain connectivity in the theta band during the laboratory session significantly predicted low-frequency HRV in the simulation session ...