The Machine as an Extension of the Body: When Identity, Immersion and Interactive Design Serve as Both Resource and Limitation for the Disabled

This research explores how the technological affordances of emerging social virtual environments and VR platforms where individuals from an online disability community are represented in avatar form, correspond to these users’ development of embodied identity, ability, and access to work and social communities. The visual attributes of these avatars, which can realistically reflect the user’s physical self or divert from human form entirely, raise interesting questions regarding the role identity plays in the workplace, be it gender, race, age, weight, or visible disability. Additionally, the technology itself becomes fundamental to identity as the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), motion capture, and speech-to-text/text-to-speech technologies create digital capabilities that become part of an individual’s identity. This raises further questions about how virtual world technologies can both increase and potentially create barriers to accessibility for individuals who find freedom in their technologically embodied surrogates.

Download Full-text

The costume of MoCap: A spatial collision of velcro, avatar and Oskar Schlemmer

Scene ◽

10.1386/scene.2.1-2.221_1 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 221-232

Author(s):

Matt Delbridge

Keyword(s):

Motion Capture ◽

The Body ◽

Human Form ◽

Mathematical Properties ◽

Victor Turner ◽

Spatial Discourse ◽

Screen Space ◽

Contemporary Practice ◽

A Performance

The rationale that governs motion of the organic in the cubical leans towards a transformation of the body in space, emphasizes its mathematical properties and highlights the potential to measure and plot movement – this is the work of a Motion Capture (MoCap) system. The translation in the MoCap studio from physical to virtual is facilitated by the MoCap suit, a device that determines the abstract cubical representation that drives first the neutral, and then the characterized avatar in screen space. The enabling nature of the suit, as apparatus, is a spatial phenomenon informed by Schlemmer’s abstract ‘native’ costume and his vision of the Tanzermensch as the most appropriate form to occupy cubical space. The MoCap suit is similarly native. It bridges the physical and virtual, provides a Victor Turner like threshold and connection between environments, enacting a spatial discourse facilitated by costume. This collision of Velcro, Avatar and Oskar Schlemmer allows a performance of space, binding historical modernity to contemporary practice. This performance of activated space is captured by a costume that endures, in Dorita Hannah’s words, despite the human form.

Download Full-text

Virtualizing Dance

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199981601.013.13 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 262-282 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kim Vincs

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Motion Capture ◽

Three Dimensional ◽

The Body ◽

Contemporary Dance ◽

Game Engine ◽

Dance Movement ◽

Virtual Force ◽

Fundamental Shift ◽

At Will

The central project of contemporary dance has been to create a spatiotemporal poetics of the body based on its relationship to gravity. Virtual reality technologies enable a much more radical deconstruction of the conventional dancing body; in three-dimensional computer-generated space, the laws of physics can literally be coded into being, and Susanne Langer’s notion of “virtual force” becomes negotiable by dancers on an entirely new scale. Dancers can float free of gravity or change their physical morphology seemingly at will. Game-engine technology enables “virtual choreography” in digitally generated worlds; motion capture technology is central to transferring dance movement into CG interactive environments. Drawing on work by dance technology artists and research centers around the world, this chapter argues that the poetic affordances of motion capture provide a fundamental shift in conceptualizing dance movement that expands dance’s ability to critically and artistically engage with virtual environments, and therefore with an increasingly virtualized cultural imagination.

Download Full-text

A Collaborative Pointing Experiment for Analyzing Bodily Communication in a Virtual Immersive Environment

International Journal of Software Science and Computational Intelligence ◽

10.4018/jssci.2012070101 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 1-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Divesh Lala ◽

Toyoaki Nishida

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Motion Capture ◽

Virtual World ◽

Experimental System ◽

Collaborative Virtual Environments ◽

Collaborative Task ◽

Markerless Motion Capture ◽

Immersive Environment ◽

Pointing Gesture ◽

Body Expression

Virtual environments are a medium in which humans can effectively interact; however, until recently, research on body expression in these worlds has been sparse. This has changed with the recent development of markerless motion capture. This paper is a first step toward using this technology as part of an investigation into a collaborative task in the virtual world. In this task, participants used a pointing gesture as a means to both complete the task and communicate with their partner. The results gained from the experiment were inconclusive, but did show that the effectiveness of the experiment depends largely on the algorithm used to detect gesture and thereby influence the virtual world. Additionally, the benefits of the experimental system are shown. This research shows the potential of examining body expression in collaborative virtual environments.

Download Full-text

Making Up 3D Bodies

Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ◽

10.1145/3468779 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 1-9

Author(s):

Kiona Hagen Niehaus ◽

Rebecca Fiebrink

Keyword(s):

Software Tool ◽

The Body ◽

Design Parameters ◽

Artistic Practice ◽

Human Form ◽

Modeling Systems ◽

Exploratory Approach ◽

Disability Status ◽

High Level ◽

The Impact

This paper describes the process of developing a software tool for digital artistic exploration of 3D human figures. Previously available software for modeling mesh-based 3D human figures restricts user output based on normative assumptions about the form that a body might take, particularly in terms of gender, race, and disability status, which are reinforced by ubiquitous use of range-limited sliders mapped to singular high-level design parameters. CreatorCustom, the software prototype created during this research, is designed to foreground an exploratory approach to modeling 3D human bodies, treating the digital body as a sculptural landscape rather than a presupposed form for rote technical representation. Building on prior research into serendipity in Human-Computer Interaction and 3D modeling systems for users at various levels of proficiency, among other areas, this research comprises two qualitative studies and investigation of the impact on the first author's artistic practice. Study 1 uses interviews and practice sessions to explore the practices of six queer artists working with the body and the language, materials, and actions they use in their practice; these then informed the design of the software tool. Study 2 investigates the usability, creativity support, and bodily implications of the software when used by thirteen artists in a workshop. These studies reveal the importance of exploration and unexpectedness in artistic practice, and a desire for experimental digital approaches to the human form.

Download Full-text

Blind in a virtual world: Using sensory substitution for generically increasing the accessibility of graphical virtual environments

2015 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) ◽

10.1109/vr.2015.7223381 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Shachar Maidenbaum ◽

Sami Abboud ◽

Galit Buchs ◽

Amir Amedi

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Virtual World ◽

Sensory Substitution

Download Full-text

The Cyber-Physical Disruption

The Internet in Everything ◽

10.12987/yale/9780300233070.003.0002 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 25-56

Author(s):

Laura DeNardis

Keyword(s):

Internet Of Things ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Smart Cities ◽

Physical World ◽

The Body ◽

Cyberphysical Systems ◽

Medical Monitoring ◽

Everyday Objects ◽

Industrial Internet ◽

Technological Affordances

This chapter examines four emerging areas of technological innovation in which digital technologies are becoming embedded into the physical world. The digitization of everyday objects includes consumer Internet of things and connected objects in smart cities. The Internet of self encompasses cyberphysical systems entangled with the body, such as wearable technologies, implantable chips, biometric identification devices, and digital medical monitoring and delivery systems. The industrial Internet of things, sometimes called the “fourth industrial revolution,” involves restructurings of industries and labor around cyber-physical systems. Finally, emergent embedded systems include those embedded objects that are born digital, such as robotics, 3D printing, and arguably augmented reality systems. Understanding these heterogeneous technical architectures, and the technological affordances and characteristics they all share, is necessary for understanding emerging governance debates.

Download Full-text

Vile Sovereigns in Bioethical Debate

Disability Studies Quarterly ◽

10.18061/dsq.v33i4.3870 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Melinda Hall

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Michel Foucault ◽

Human Enhancement ◽

Reproductive Technology ◽

The Body ◽

Worth Living ◽

Lecture Series ◽

The Disabled ◽

Bioethical Debate ◽

Do So

In this paper, I critically assess transhumanist philosophy and its influence in bioethics by turning to resources in the work of Michel Foucault. I begin by outlining transhumanism and drawing out some of the primary goals of transhumanist philosophy. In order to do so, I focus on the work of Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, two prominent contributors to this thinking. I then move to explicate Foucault’s work, in the early iterations of the Abnormal lecture series, on the concept of vile sovereignty. Foucault used the concept of vile sovereignty to critique psychiatric witnesses that had been utilized in mid twentieth-century French courts of law. Turning back to transhumanism, I analyze transhumanist discourse on the basis of Foucault’s vile sovereignty. Transhumanists promote human enhancement in a way that rejects the body—especially the disabled body—and pose the question of what lives are worth living, as well as attempt to answer it. I conclude that because of the undeserved influence and ableism of transhumanism, it is important for feminist philosophers, philosophers of disability, and other disability scholars, who collide at the nexus of bioethical debate (especially with regard to reproductive technology and the body), to work together to intervene upon transhumanist discourse.   Keywords: bioethics; enhancement; Foucault; transhumanism; ableism

Download Full-text

The Flâneuse in the Virtual City: Exploring "Lost Angeles"

PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research ◽

10.33011/partake.v2i1.393 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Zena Bibler

Keyword(s):

Virtual World ◽

The Body ◽

Virtual Space ◽

Primary Mode ◽

Virtual City ◽

Kinesthetic Information ◽

The City

In this essay, I contemplate the role of video gamer as flâneur in Lost Angeles, a three-hour video work by Lee Tusman that captures the wanderings of gamer Derm McGuigan within the virtual world of Los Santos. With the help of Lena Hammergren’s “The re-turn of the flâneuse” I will consider how the video, originally conceived of as a project of “virtual flânerie,” might fall more accurately under the domain of the flâneuse, who uses the kinesthetic as a way to enter previously inaccessible spaces. As McGuigan moves his avatar through Los Santos, he integrates stimuli from the game with his own physical memories, indexing a series of other places and times as he goes. Lost Angeles also complicates the concept of the flâneuse through the presence of the avatar, who serves as the primary mode of navigation, but also offers kinesthetic information to the player. These relationships become more intricately entangled with the entrance of an additional set of spectators that watch McGuigan and his avatar via a live stream. Through this aggregation of wanderers, the flâneuse becomes unstable and multiplies, producing numerous other embodied relationships with the city of Los Santos and the body of the avatar [Which begs the question: Who and where is the flâneuse?] In this essay, I hope to demonstrate how, the proposal of Lost Angeles (to broadcast the wanderings of an expert gamer in a virtual space) collides with the structure of Grand Theft Auto (which invites the player into an ambiguous inside-and-outside location within Los Santos) and produces not one flâneur, but numerous flâneuses who traverse the virtual city via kinesthetic association with the avatar’s movements.

Download Full-text