Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu
From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Sensory Modalities (was Re: Musical Virtual Worlds)
Message-ID: <11370@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 19 Nov 90 01:29:50 GMT
References: <1990Nov13.213038.27046@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Rochester
Lines: 64
Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu


In article <11156@milton.u.washington.edu> eliot@phoenix.princeton.edu (Eliot Ha
ndelman) writes:

   The concept that we're "visually oriented" is shallow and, I think, probably
   incorrect: consult any textbook of auditory disorders (Sacks has come out
   with one called "Hearing voices.") Visual orientations are, to me, essentiall
y
   distance-preserving modalites of selfhood which express an unwillingness
   to jeopardize one's detachment from the world

It's unclear to me what this means -- could you elaborate?

   -- a detachment which usenet,
   a visual medium, promotes, hence its peculiar psychology.

I disagree.  Usenet is *not* a visual medium -- it is a symbolic
medium.  This is an important distinction -- it's the difference
between the experience of watching a movie and the experience of
reading a book.  Visual virtual reality, like every other form of
human communication (from physical contact to e-mail) would have it's
own psychological peculiarities and pathologies, but these would
likely be very different from those of Usenet.

   Not to undermine
   seeing, of course: but the blind do have it easier than the deaf.

Is this true in all domains?  My (admittedly non-expert) guess would
be that the blind would have a more difficult time of getting around
in the world, as well as visualizing complex spatial/geometric
relations, while the deaf might have more problems in communications
and social interactions.

   The deaf,
   unless regimented into an appropriate educational proghram early on, may
   have a highly underdeveloped sense of time and of selfhood.

Could you elaborate?  Why don't visual perceptions of motion/change
also give the individual an idea of temporal relations?  My intuition
would be that the blind would more difficulty than the deaf in
separating their concept of themselves from that of the world.

Bringing this discussion back to VR, I think that the focus of VR has
been on the visual modality because vision is a more information-rich
domain than sound.  Sound is a one-dimensional medium while vision is
two-dimensional (two-and-a-half-dimensional for stereo vision).  To
put this in more psychological terms -- you can extract much more
detailed spatial information about your world by looking around with
your ears plugged than you can by listening with your eyes closed.

On the other hand, combining sounds and/or music with visual images
does have a great deal of potential -- especially in terms of
aesthetics and entertainment.  Some music videos, for example, show
how the most basic audio/visual technology can be used to create
effective combinations of images and music (regardless of whether you
happen to like MTV :-).  It's up to virtual reality to explore the
potential of adding the element of interactivity to the experience of
audio/visual sensations...
--
_______________________________________________________________________________

Brian Yamauchi                          University of Rochester
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu               Computer Science Department
_______________________________________________________________________________