An overview of the self-organizing map algorithm, on which the papers in this issue are based, is presented in this article.

The Self-Organizing Map

By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

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The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason

Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension.

The uncanny valley hypothesis, proposed already in the 1970s, suggests that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters will trigger a profound sense of unease. This hypothesis has become widely acknowledged both in the popular media and scientific research. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for the hypothesis has remained inconsistent. In the present article, we reinterpret the original uncanny valley hypothesis and review empirical evidence for different theoretically motivated uncanny valley hypotheses. The uncanny valley could be understood as the naive claim that any kind of human-likeness manipulation will lead to experienced negative affinity at close-to-realistic levels. More recent hypotheses have suggested that the uncanny valley would be caused by artificial–human categorization difficulty or by a perceptual mismatch between artificial and human features. Original formulation also suggested that movement would modulate the uncanny valley. The reviewed empirical literature failed to provide consistent support for the naive uncanny valley hypothesis or the modulatory effects of movement. Results on the categorization difficulty hypothesis were still too scarce to allow drawing firm conclusions. In contrast, good support was found for the perceptual mismatch hypothesis. Taken together, the present review findings suggest that the uncanny valley exists only under specific conditions. More research is still needed to pinpoint the exact conditions under which the uncanny valley phenomenon manifests itself.

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A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness.

Simulation of Room Acoustics with a 3-D Finite Difference Mesh

We present a general methodology to produce synchronized soundtracks for animations. A sound world is modeled by associating a characteristic sound for each object in a scene. These sounds can be generated from a behavioral or physically-based simulation. Collision sounds can be computed from vibrational response of elastic bodies to the collision impulse. Alternatively, stereotypic recorded sound effects can be associated with each interaction of objects. Sounds may also be generated procedurally, The sound world is described with a sound event file, and is rendered in two passes. First the propagation paths from 3D objects to each microphone are analyzed and used to calculate sound transformations according to the acoustic environment. These effects are convolutions, encoded into two essential parameters, delay and attenuation of each sound. Timeciependency of these two parameters is represented with key frames, thus being completely independent of the original 3D animation script. In the second pass the sounds associated with objects are instantiated, modulated by interpolated key parameters, and summed up to the final soundtrack. The advantage of a modular architecture is that the same methods can be used for all types of animations, keyframed, physically-based and behavioral. We also discuss the differences of sound and light, and the remarkable similarities in their rendering processes. CR

Sound rendering

We survey sound rendering techniques by comparing them to visual image rendering and describe several approaches for performing sound rendering in virtual auditory environments.

Creating interactive virtual auditory environments

In this paper, we introduce and analyze four gesture-controlled musical instruments. We briefly discuss the test platform designed to allow for rapid experimentation of new interfaces and control mappings. We describe our design experiences and discuss the effects of system features such as latency, resolution and lack of tactile feedback. The instruments use virtual reality hardware and computer vision for user input, and three-dimensional stereo vision as well as simple desktop displays for providing visual feedback. The instrument sounds are synthesized in real-time using physical sound modeling.

Tapio Takala

Papers

A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness.

Simulation of Room Acoustics with a 3-D Finite Difference Mesh

Sound rendering

Creating interactive virtual auditory environments

Experiments with virtual reality instruments