Sensing And Making Sense

Through a genealogy of photosensitive elements in media devices and artworks, this book investigates three dichotomies that impoverish debates and proposals in media art: material/immaterial, organic/machinic, and theory/practice. It combines historical and analytical approaches, through new materialism, media archaeology, cultural techniques and second-order cybernetics. Known media stories are reframed from an alternative perspective, elucidating photosensitivity as a metonymy to provide guidelines to art students, artists, curators and theoreticians - especially those who are committed to critical views of scientific and technological knowledge in aesthetic experimentations.

People are using the future to search for better ways to achieve sustainability, inclusiveness, prosperity, well-being and peace. In addition, the way the future is understood and used is changing in almost all domains, from social science to daily life. This book presents the results of significant research undertaken by UNESCO with a number of partners to detect and define the theory and practice of anticipation around the world today. It uses the concept of ‘Futures Literacy’ as a tool to define the understanding of anticipatory systems and processes – also known as the Discipline of Anticipation. This innovative title explores: • new topics such as Futures Literacy and the Discipline of Anticipation; • the evidence collected from over 30 Futures Literacy Laboratories and presented in 14 full case studies; • the need and opportunity for significant innovation in human decision-making systems. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, policy-makers and students, as well as activists working on sustainability issues and innovation, future studies and anticipation studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351047999, has been made available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license.

Make the most of the common architectures used for deriving meaningful data from sensors. This book provides you with the tools to understand how sensor data is converted into actionable knowledge and provides tips for in-depth work in this field. Making Sense of Sensors starts with an overview of the general pipeline to extract meaningful data from sensors. It then dives deeper into some commonly used sensors and algorithms designed for knowledge extraction. Practical examples and pointers to more information are used to outline the key aspects of Multimodal recognition. The book concludes with a discussion on relationship extraction, knowledge representation, and management. In today’s world we are surrounded by sensors collecting various types of data about us and our environments. These sensors are the primary input devices for wearable computers, IoT, and other mobile devices. The information is presented in way that allows readers to associate the examples with their daily lives for better understanding of the concepts. What You'll Learn Look at the general architecture for sensor based data Understand how data from common domains such as inertial, visual and audio is processed Master multi-modal recognition using multiple heterogeneous sensors Transition from recognition to knowledge through relationship understanding between entities Leverage different methods and tools for knowledge representation and management Who This Book Is For New college graduates and professionals interested in acquiring knowledge and the skills to develop innovative solutions around today's sensor-rich devices.

Ways of Sensing is a stimulating exploration of the cultural, historical and political dimensions of the world of the senses. The book spans a wide range of settings and makes comparisons between different cultures and epochs, revealing the power and diversity of sensory expressions across time and space. The chapters reflect on topics such as the tactile appeal of medieval art, the healing power of Navajo sand paintings, the aesthetic blight of the modern hospital, the role of the senses in the courtroom, and the branding of sensations in the marketplace. Howes and Classen consider how political issues such as nationalism, gender equality and the treatment of minority groups are shaped by sensory practices and metaphors. They also reveal how the phenomenon of synaesthesia, or mingling of the senses, can be seen as not simply a neurological condition but a vital cultural mode of creating social and cosmic interconnections. Written by leading scholars in the field, Ways of Sensing provides readers with a valuable and engaging introduction to the life of the senses in society.

Our bodies are archives of sensory knowledge that shape how we understand the world. If our environment changes at an unsettling pace, how will we make sense of a world that is no longer familiar? One of Canada's premier historians tackles this question by exploring situations in the recent past where state-driven megaprojects and regulatory and technological changes forced ordinary people to cope with transformations that were so radical that they no longer recognized their home and workplaces or, by implication, who they were. In concert with a ground-breaking, creative, and analytical website, megaprojects.uwo.ca, this timely study offers a prescient perspective on how humans make sense of a rapidly changing world.

" ... Is the first book to survey the intersection between design, the body, science and the senses, from the utopian pods and head gear of the 1960s, to the high-tech prostheses, wearable computing, implants, and interfaces between computers and humans of the past decade ..."--Introduction, p. 6.

Making Sense of the Senses provides an easily understandable and engaging overview of the senses. The book allows readers insights into how humans and other animals perceive the world, reflecting a level of knowledge similar to that acquired by studying neuroscience at an undergraduate level. In order to offer an accessible introduction to the science, it uses relatable examples to uncover the history, evolution, and biological principles of the way we see, smell, hear, taste, touch and more.Rather than only focusing on the five primary senses you can see on the cover, Making Sense of the Senses dives deep into the various methods through which life across the planet surveys the world, and guides the reader through the lesser-known methods through which we humans interpret our surroundings. In this way, we come across some amazing abilities that we often forget we possess.Humans are nevertheless rather average creatures compared to many sensory specialists. So when we compare our relatively modest capabilities to those of other species across the animal kingdom, we are forced to yield our anthropocentric sense of supremacy. This book will introduce how biological life developed the capacity to detect magnetic fields, radioactivity, and many more phenomena that until recently were inaccessible to humans.By contextualising and comparing how the senses operate, this book covers the sensory systems in a way no popular science book has previously done. If you are starting your career in neuroscience, or simply want to learn more about the ways our biology guides us through life, Making Sense of the Senses will change the way you think about our perception of the world.