{"id":150,"date":"2010-10-25T12:57:29","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T12:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/physcomp\/?p=150"},"modified":"2011-02-06T02:19:12","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T02:19:12","slug":"reading-response-visual-intelligence-donald-d-hoffman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/archives\/150","title":{"rendered":"“Visual Intelligence” – Donald D. Hoffman"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/physcomp\/readings\/Visual_intelligence.pdf<\/p>\n

Hoffman argues that we create everything we see, hear, feel, smell, taste, etc. He says the we easily believe this in the case of seeing, because of the extensive research done on varying visual perception, but that we consider touch to have a \u00a0 more concrete connection to a common reality.<\/p>\n

He talks about phantom limbs and the phantom limb maps on other parts of our bodies. Research by Vilyanur S. Ramachandran during the 80’s revealed that the sensations of the hand were mapped directly and in an interesting proportion to two parts of the arm. Research in the 30’s by Wilder Penfield revealed that the somatosensory cortex was responsible for receiving and mapping sensation, and has a similar map of points corresponding to the sensations of the body. In 1994 Tony T. Yang and his colleagues showed that when somebody looses a limb that area of the somatosensory cortex is filled in by the limbs that surround it on the map. According to the studies the people feel sensation usually corresponding to that area in the limbs that fill it in and in the phantom limb simultaneously.<\/p>\n

image from the reading that I love: the somatosensory cortex and the corresponding body parts\u00a0;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hoffman suggests that this is all great for the future of virtual reality, when the endless sensations of touch are simulated and explored in training applications. Because we rely on touch feedback in a stronger way than the visual and audio elements to prove a shared “reality”, or to test the ‘real’, he believes that harnessing it in virtual reality will make a more convincing experience.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the reason we doubt the visual and auditory perception is because we so fluently and comfortably manipulate it. I believe that at one point, for example, a photograph was solid and compelling proof of what it represented. Today seeing a photograph references that history, but incorporates the element of expression. We know how easy it is to manipulate them, and we are as interested in the creative process of its production as in its representation of the subject. In the future when touch feedback and expression are manipulated easily and used more commonly, will we become less trusting of what these sensations represent?<\/p>\n

In his lecture in our applications class, Jaron Lanier talked about some research he was doing in virtual reality. One day when he was using a human avatar, his hand was accidentally very large in the virtual reality world. He was surprised to see that it was still easy and intuitive for him to control it. Since then he has been experimenting with how far you can transform the human form and still have the body part-mind associations be intuitive. Examples he gave are being able to quickly learn to control the extra arms of a lobster avatar by using the muscles on your back where that arm would be, or kids quickly learning how to navigate the world as an abstract form. Like Hoffman he is excited about applying this to education. He envisions children dancing around as molecules, bonding with other molecules, to learn about molecular structures. By harnessing their vanity and making them the subject they are studying this virtual experience will enhance and accelerate the learning.<\/p>\n

He calls the ability to attribute the physical-mental connotations to new forms “homuncular flexibility” and attributes this mental ability to our evolutionary past. He suggests that it is a remnant of some functional and necessary ability of the past. When I was looking through his book to find these examples, I ended up in the chapter that discusses research of Ramachandran at the Salk institute about universal metaphors as examples of mental patterns originating from the needs of our ancestors, now outdated but being applied to or represented in new ways. It is interesting because I’m used to attributing patterns to evolutionary needs, but I forget to consider that they could just be side-effects or applications of other (possibly outdated) evolutionary developments.<\/p>\n

Jaron Lanier VR article:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.mynucleus.org\/story\/2010\/10\/24\/jaron_lanier_dancing_about_chemistr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/physcomp\/readings\/Visual_intelligence.pdf Hoffman argues that we create everything we see, hear, feel, smell, taste, etc. He says the we easily believe this in the case of seeing, because of the extensive research done on varying visual perception, but that we consider touch to have a \u00a0 more concrete connection to a common reality. He talks about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,24,15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes","category-physical-computing","category-reading-responses","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mariarabinovich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}