Mediated Reality Research Articles

‘The Public Gets what the Public Wants’: England Football Fans, ‘Truth’ Claims and Mediated Realities

For at least two decades prior to the 2002 World Cup Finals there had been a widespread tendency for England fans to be castigated by the full spectrum of media vehicles as the embodiment of an unrepentant nationalistic ‘Englishness’. These supporters have systematically been negatively associated with aggressive masculinity, drunkenness, open displays of nationalism, xenophobia and racism. Rather than assessing the extent to which these representations distort ‘the truth’ about ‘England fans’, drawing on popular cultural theory this article is concerned with the ways in which ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980), deployed in contingent and situation-specific ways, have been constituted through an interplay between media reporting and wider cultural practice. The article utilizes media content analysis, interview material and participant observations collected before, during and after England’s games against Germany in Charleroi on 17 June 2000, in Munich on 1 September 2001 and during the finals of the 2002 World Cup staged in Japan and Korea. This material is underpinned by the researcher’s ongoing ethnographies among supporters of the England national team.

An EyeTap video-based featureless projective motion estimation assisted by gyroscopic tracking for wearable computer mediated reality

In this paper we present a computationally economical method of recovering the projective motion of head mounted cameras or EyeTap devices, for use in wearable computer-mediated reality. The tracking system combines featureless vision and inertial methods in a closed loop system to achieve accurate robust head tracking using inexpensive sensors. The combination of inertial and vision techniques provides the high accuracy visual registration needed for fitting computer graphics onto real images and the robustness to large interframe camera motion due to fast head rotations. Operating on a 1.2 GHz Pentium III wearable computer with graphics accelerated hardware, the system is able to register live video images with less than 2 pixels of error (0.3 degrees) at 12 frames per second. Fast image registration is achieved by offloading computer vision computation onto the graphics hardware, which is readily available on many wearable computer systems. As an application of this tracking approach, we present a system which allows wearable computer users to share views of their current environments that have been stabilised to another viewer's head position.

Introduction to Mediated Reality

Personal Cybernetics and Humanistic Intelligence are new and rapidly growing fields of research in the area of human-computer interaction. These areas of research involve personal wearable imaging devices with intelligence that arises from the existence of a human user in the feedback loop of a computational process, in which the human user and the computational process are inextricably intertwined. Unlike the typical goal of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is to emulate human intelligence with computers, Humanistic Intelligence (HI) creates a close synergy in which Intelligent Signal Processing is used to harness the processing power of the human brain. HI gives rise to a symbiosis between human and computer in which each uses the other within a closely coupled signal processing feedback loop. The computer performs basic low-level signal processing functions, using data obtained from a first person perspective (wearable camera, microphones, miniature wearable radar, biosensors, etc.), while the human performs high-level cognitive tasks, providing a computationally “mediated reality.” Personal Cybernetics and HI form a basis for augmenting, deliberately diminishing, or otherwise mediating the visual perception of reality. Although the visual modality is most often used in mediated reality systems based on current technology, other modalities such as touch, taste, and olfaction may be mediated as well. In the visual domain, a system that can augment, diminish, or otherwise alter the visual perception of reality is called a “Reality Mediator” (RM). By way of explanation, “virtual reality” creates a completely computer-generated environment, “augmented reality” uses an existing, real-life environment, and adds computer-generated information (virtual objects) thereto, “diminished reality” filters the environment (i.e., it alters real objects, replaces them with virtual ones, or renders them imperceptible), and mediated reality combines augmented and dimin

Mediated Reality Through Glasses or Binoculars? Exploring Use Models of Wearable Computing in the Context of Aircraft Maintenance

Aircraft maintenance is often considered a typical application for specialized wearable computer systems, designed and used for a specific purpose only. From the findings of an interpretive case study conducted at Scandinavian Airlines Systems, the largest commercial airline in Scandinavia, there is evidence to question the potential usefulness of such a system. Instead, in this article, aircraft maintenance is used to explore the potentialities of different use models of wearable computing (i.e., the way the system is designed, used, and understood, and which should also make sense in other environments). The use models are (a) a vertical model addressed by a binoculars-analogy, where the system is designed and used for a specific purpose; and (b) a horizontal model, approached by perceiving wearable computers as eyeglasses, where the system is used throughout the day for a number of activities. Problems with both models suggest an alternative use model, which is presented as the embodied use model, drawing on the notion of embodiment introduced by Ihde (1990).

Cultura e ideologia: a mídia revelando estereótipos raciais de gênero

Nesse artigo, analisamos duas formas simbólicas brasileiras (comerciais de televisão) tendo como enquadre teórico uma metodologia crítica baseada em alguns elementos teóricos dos Estudos Culturais. O ponto de partida é o conceito de minoria e maioria, e seu caráter nômico e anômico. Assumimos que as formas simbólicas podem ser entendidas como portadoras de ideologia, e para entender a ideologia subjacente a elas nós temos que desconstruir a unidade da mensagem e expor sua "naturalidade". Nesse processo, aspectos relacionados às relações de dominação de gênero e raça foram desveladas, indicando que a discriminação em direção às minorias ainda é parte da nossa realidade mediada.

EyeTap Devices for Augmented, Deliberately Diminished, or Otherwise Altered Visual Perception of Rigid Planar Patches of Real-World Scenes

Diminished reality is as important as augmented reality, and both are possible with a device called the Reality Mediator. Over the past two decades, we have designed, built, worn, and tested many different embodiments of this device in the context of wearable computing. Incorporated into the Reality Mediator is an “EyeTap” system, which is a device that quantifies and resynthesizes light that would otherwise pass through one or both lenses of the eye(s) of a wearer. The functional principles of EyeTap devices are discussed, in detail. The EyeTap diverts into a spatial measurement system at least a portion of light that would otherwise pass through the center of projection of at least one lens of an eye of a wearer. The Reality Mediator has at least one mode of operation in which it reconstructs these rays of light, under the control of a wearable computer system. The computer system then uses new results in algebraic projective geometry and comparametric equations to perform head tracking, as well as to track motion of rigid planar patches present in the scene. We describe how our tracking algorithm allows an EyeTap to alter the light from a particular portion of the scene to give rise to a computer-controlled, selectively mediated reality. An important difference between mediated reality and augmented reality includes the ability to not just augment but also deliberately diminish or otherwise alter the visual perception of reality. For example, diminished reality allows additional information to be inserted without causing the user to experience information overload. Our tracking algorithm also takes into account the effects of automatic gain control, by performing motion estimation in both spatial as well as tonal motion coordinates.

Mediated Reality Bites: Comparing Direct and Indirect Experience as Sources of Perceptions Across Two Communities in China

Mediated Reality Bites: Comparing Direct and Indirect Experience as Sources of Perceptions Across Two Communities in China

The rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton: crisis management discourse

Introduction The Historical First Lady Politics and Mediated Realities Mitigating Factors in Mediated Realities Crisis Management Rhetoric Crisis Management Styles of First Couples Crisis Management Discourse of Hillary Rodham Clinton: Mini-Scandals to Whitewater Crisis Management Discourse of Hillary Rodham Clinton: Travelgate to Impeachment The Rhetorical Evolution of Hillary Rodham Clinton Rhetorical Strategies of Hillary Rodham Clinton Conclusion Bibliography

The Novels of Salman Rushdie: Mediated Reality as Fantasy

The Novels of Salman Rushdie: Mediated Reality as Fantasy

Coalesce or collide? Ethics, technology, and TV journalism 1991

By strict definition, television journalism, like every form of journalism, has always been “unreal”; some form of constructed mediated reality.1 But now, television journalism is coming to a crossroads—one where ethics and technology will meet squarely at right angles if not head‐on. And it is reality, even the constructed mediated kind, that will be at risk. In a few years, television journalism at the network and local levels will have the capability, through television's emerging conversion from analog to digital technology, to easily manipulate video and audio in utterly fundamental ways. It will be simple to completely re‐shape, even to create, reality. The question won't be: “Is it live or is it Memorex?2 rather, it will be something like: “Is it real or is it digitex?3This article explores this new technology and the concomitant merger of form and substance in television journalism; it presents several hypothetical examples of this kind of unethical behavior and the motivations behind them; and,...

Video and the Representation of Mediated Reality: Uses, Cautions, and Consequences

Video and the Representation of Mediated Reality: Uses, Cautions, and Consequences

Mediated Political Realities. By Dan Nimmo and James Combs. (New York: Longman, 1983. Pp. xv + 240. $25.00, cloth; $10.95, paper.)

Mediated Political Realities. By Dan Nimmo and James Combs. (New York: Longman, 1983. Pp. xv + 240. $25.00, cloth; $10.95, paper.)