Identifying human restrictions
The mental apparatus that translates sensations of the physical world, as detected by the body's sensory systems, into internal representations in the mind is known as the human perceptual system. Contained within this are five sub-systems that represent each of the human senses; sound, sight, smell, touch and taste. The dominant senses are the auditory and the visual perception systems. The following project identifies the possibility of another sub-system that does not yet exist in reality, the possibility of a sixth sense, the possibility of immersive brain interaction.
Human information uptake is limited by both input methodology and the storage capacity of long-term memory. Information that is augmented through various media interactivity results in an improved information intake performance, although the speed and reliability of this information remaining permanently in long-term memory is unreliable. Tools and machines help increase human capability including their skills and knowledge. This project investigates how virtual reality and other technologies can be applied as an aid and training tool to achieving direct immersive brain interaction, where information is directly inserted and stored in a human brain.
Contained within this project are descriptions that identify the possibilities of controlling and exploiting properties of the human perceptual system to transfer information directly into the human brain. Aspects of the perceptual system that play the most dominant roles in the transfer of information from computers to humans are discovered and discussed and the design of computer systems and how they can be adapted to help humans learn faster is also discussed using a semiotic approach.
Introducing new media and semiology
Media has been around decades and although authors disagree in their preference for using media in the singular or the plural form, it is agreed that media is a term used to denote publishing a form of media to portray a specific message to a mass audience. Everyone is surrounded in environments saturated with media experiences. They often encounter many types of media several times a day. This does not necessarily mean the television or newspapers, but also every day objects including signs, traffic lights and even clothes. Media has been revolutionised from initially being a scribal culture, print media, electronic media, mass media, digital media, to more recently, involving virtual reality.
The growth of mass media in the 20th century was driven by technology. Now, in the 21st century, digital media technologies are revolutionising our sensory and cognitive experience of being present in the world. Part of this process acquires new emerging visual, aural, linguistic and literary codes and signifiers that require new human hermeneutic responses. New media is often thought of as a meaning between the real world and humans, where images are produced to give meaning to messages that are being conveyed. However, new media not only represents various channels of communication; it actually structures the reality for which they describe.
Relevant technologies will be researched and discussed in context to immersive brain interaction and virtual reality environments. Using a semiotic analysis, the project looks at electroencephalography, transient memory and a virtual reality caves. Semiotics is one of the approaches to media education and new media literacy. It is to do with the science of signs, a type of scientific inquiry that studies virtually everything we do as humans, and includes the study of how meaning is made and understood.
New Media Representation