Frank, Matt and Laura
Making “sense”
The human body is an integral mechanism that incorporates various devices to aid its transgression through the world around it, and on a basic level kind of like a machine ie it receives input, processes this input and then reacts accordingly. To interact with our 3 dimensional world we use a combination of five senses called the sensoric system. This consists of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell which work because of various ‘tools’ which we call organs. These all interact with and are dictated by the nervous system and are then consciously and unconsciously processed by our brain in the end.
• On an interesting note upon investigating what the definition of a ‘sense’ was, we discovered what could be deemed a legitimate sixth sense:
Our sense of gravity (balance) provides information to the brain about ones environment i.e. which way is up. It has a sense organ to acquire input being fluid in the ear.
Different parts of the brain are used for processing these different senses but they all work together to give us an ‘image’ of the world around us as we know it.
OUR INTERESTS
The senses we want to investigate are touch, smell, and their link to emotion. We believe that emotion in itself is a sense as it differentiates the way that physical input through our organs is perceived and cannot be omitted from this form of research.
Touch
Touch or haptic perception is an important means of feedback. The apparatus of touch differs from that of sight and hearing as it is not localized. The skin contains three types of sensory receptors: thermoreceptors which respond to heat and cold, noiceptors respond to which intense pressure, heat and pain, and mechanoreceptors which respond to pressure. Only the last one is of interest to us.
There are two kinds of mechanoreceptors, which respond to different types of pressure. Rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors respond to immediate pressureas the skin is indented. They also react more quickly to increased pressure. However, they stop responding if continuous pressure is applied. Slowly adapting mechanoreceptors respond to continuously applied pressure.
Another aspect of haptic perception is kinesthesis: awareness of the position of the body and the limbs. This is an important aspect as it affects both comfort and performance. For a touch typist, for example, awareness of the relative positions of the fingers and feedback from the keyboard are very important.
Emotions
This is an expert from Wikipedia:
One can also be emotionally touched. In this metaphorical sence it refers to some action or object action or object that evokes a sad or joyful emotion. For example, to say "I was touched by you letter" would imply the reader felt joy or sadness when reading it.
Movement
Speed and accuracy of movement are important considerations in the design of interactive systems, primarily in terms of time taken to move to a particular target on a screen. This affects the type of the target being designed. Hence targets should be designed so that they are as large as possible and the distance to be moved as small as possible
Smell
Odorants are volatile chemical compounds that are carried by inhaled air to the Regio olfactoria (olfactory epithelium) located in the roof of the two nasal cavities of the human nose, just below and between the eyes.
The odorant must possess certain molecular properties in order to provide sensory properties. It must have some water solubility, a sufficiently high vapor pressure, low polarity, some ability to dissolve in fat (lipophilicity), and surface activity. And to date, no known odorant possesses a molecular weight greater than 294.1
The olfactory sense is able to distinguish among a practically infinite number of chemical compounds at very low concentrations.2
The olfactory region of each of the two nasal passages in humans is a small area of about 2.5 square centimeters containing in total approximately 50 million primary sensory receptor cells.
In Art
Relating art to touch could be directly expressed by sculpture and also any visual representation as it can also be touched. More importantly art ‘touches’ us in a way that the tangible experience cannot replicate.
Certain films like AI and Bladerunner are instrumental in depicting emotional states that can be theoretically evoked by “machines’… emotions, memories and associated feelings and interestingly the ability to ‘miss’ something, yearn for it.
LETS EXPERIMENT
We spent a LOT of time trying to find a real live synesthete, and once we found one we wasted even more time trying to capture them in our special synethete-catching, highly modified bug nets… but had no luck. Idealy we could poke and probe them and get to the core of this “synesthesia” in a medical sense but we have been forced to come up with other scenarios.
The main thing we discussed and were fascinated by were the differences between a mechanical version of us humans, or more to the point a robot, and our human experience.
In a direct sense, more to the point we were proposing looking at the differences between each specific input organ/device and how it interacted with its environment.
• In the case of touch, it is interesting how if we go to pickup an egg, our fingers receive input about its structure and our brain “Knows” not to apply too much pressure to break its surface.
If a robot was to pick up an egg it would have to be programmed with distinct parameters in order to be able to pick up an egg “successfully”, i.e. not break it.
…but we will experiment with our ideas more…
The human body is an integral mechanism that incorporates various devices to aid its transgression through the world around it, and on a basic level kind of like a machine ie it receives input, processes this input and then reacts accordingly. To interact with our 3 dimensional world we use a combination of five senses called the sensoric system. This consists of vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell which work because of various ‘tools’ which we call organs. These all interact with and are dictated by the nervous system and are then consciously and unconsciously processed by our brain in the end.
• On an interesting note upon investigating what the definition of a ‘sense’ was, we discovered what could be deemed a legitimate sixth sense:
Our sense of gravity (balance) provides information to the brain about ones environment i.e. which way is up. It has a sense organ to acquire input being fluid in the ear.
Different parts of the brain are used for processing these different senses but they all work together to give us an ‘image’ of the world around us as we know it.
OUR INTERESTS
The senses we want to investigate are touch, smell, and their link to emotion. We believe that emotion in itself is a sense as it differentiates the way that physical input through our organs is perceived and cannot be omitted from this form of research.
Touch
Touch or haptic perception is an important means of feedback. The apparatus of touch differs from that of sight and hearing as it is not localized. The skin contains three types of sensory receptors: thermoreceptors which respond to heat and cold, noiceptors respond to which intense pressure, heat and pain, and mechanoreceptors which respond to pressure. Only the last one is of interest to us.
There are two kinds of mechanoreceptors, which respond to different types of pressure. Rapidly adapting mechanoreceptors respond to immediate pressureas the skin is indented. They also react more quickly to increased pressure. However, they stop responding if continuous pressure is applied. Slowly adapting mechanoreceptors respond to continuously applied pressure.
Another aspect of haptic perception is kinesthesis: awareness of the position of the body and the limbs. This is an important aspect as it affects both comfort and performance. For a touch typist, for example, awareness of the relative positions of the fingers and feedback from the keyboard are very important.
Emotions
This is an expert from Wikipedia:
One can also be emotionally touched. In this metaphorical sence it refers to some action or object action or object that evokes a sad or joyful emotion. For example, to say "I was touched by you letter" would imply the reader felt joy or sadness when reading it.
Movement
Speed and accuracy of movement are important considerations in the design of interactive systems, primarily in terms of time taken to move to a particular target on a screen. This affects the type of the target being designed. Hence targets should be designed so that they are as large as possible and the distance to be moved as small as possible
Smell
Odorants are volatile chemical compounds that are carried by inhaled air to the Regio olfactoria (olfactory epithelium) located in the roof of the two nasal cavities of the human nose, just below and between the eyes.
The odorant must possess certain molecular properties in order to provide sensory properties. It must have some water solubility, a sufficiently high vapor pressure, low polarity, some ability to dissolve in fat (lipophilicity), and surface activity. And to date, no known odorant possesses a molecular weight greater than 294.1
The olfactory sense is able to distinguish among a practically infinite number of chemical compounds at very low concentrations.2
The olfactory region of each of the two nasal passages in humans is a small area of about 2.5 square centimeters containing in total approximately 50 million primary sensory receptor cells.
In Art
Relating art to touch could be directly expressed by sculpture and also any visual representation as it can also be touched. More importantly art ‘touches’ us in a way that the tangible experience cannot replicate.
Certain films like AI and Bladerunner are instrumental in depicting emotional states that can be theoretically evoked by “machines’… emotions, memories and associated feelings and interestingly the ability to ‘miss’ something, yearn for it.
LETS EXPERIMENT
We spent a LOT of time trying to find a real live synesthete, and once we found one we wasted even more time trying to capture them in our special synethete-catching, highly modified bug nets… but had no luck. Idealy we could poke and probe them and get to the core of this “synesthesia” in a medical sense but we have been forced to come up with other scenarios.
The main thing we discussed and were fascinated by were the differences between a mechanical version of us humans, or more to the point a robot, and our human experience.
In a direct sense, more to the point we were proposing looking at the differences between each specific input organ/device and how it interacted with its environment.
• In the case of touch, it is interesting how if we go to pickup an egg, our fingers receive input about its structure and our brain “Knows” not to apply too much pressure to break its surface.
If a robot was to pick up an egg it would have to be programmed with distinct parameters in order to be able to pick up an egg “successfully”, i.e. not break it.
…but we will experiment with our ideas more…
posted by Malte Wagenfeld at 8:24 PM
2 Comments:
OK
Part 1, 'How the senses work' was well done. Some interesting material but you do need to always acknowledge the source of your information; you only did this for one of the sources. It is also better to try to rewrite / interpret the information to suit your specific investigation.
You had a strong idea for part 2 but didn't really take it far enough. Remember each of you should have spent about 15 - 20 hours on this dividing your efforts amongst the various tasks; this certainly didn't happen. There is such rich territory for exploration in your topic.
Like wise part 3 is very undercooked - at the least give and explore some examples in sculpture etc.
Part 4 wasn't really attempted.
5.5/10
Malte
I should have added that your class presentation was strong; especially some of the discussions your ideas created. So your thinking and ideas are right on target you just need to develop them more - turn them into something! The potential for some really fantastic stuff is there!
Malte
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