Rendering and Affect A look into emotive invariants through NPR

J.J. Gibson  “Ecological Psychology”  Theory of Affordances  Some affordances are biological, others are environmental  Perception is not mediated by memory (Medin 2001)

Invariants  They can reflect the stable properties of entities and properties of behaviors over time.  They can apply across a range of abstraction levels  They can be restricted in some way by the context (culture, task or environment)

Latent Knowledge  Knowledge we access unconsciously  Hardwired knowledge  Affects automated judgments  Not available to introspection

Why use non photorealistic rendering to explore these phenomena?  NPR gives psychologists more freedom represent structural information allowing them to discover invariants  NPR can be stylized in order to elicit affective responses   “NPR can effectively render objects and images in non- realistic styles without influencing primary feature binding processes necessary for basic object identification” (Halper 2004)

Evidence of cross-modal invariants TaketeUloomo (Davis 1961)

Invariants in motion   Brownian Motion Brownian Motion   Heider-Simmel experiments Heider-Simmel experiments

Interacting Cognitive Subsystems  A cognitive model of human information processing  Cognitition is an activity distributed between 9 subsystems  Distinguishes between propositional and implicational meaning  Propositional (Semantic network)  Implicational (Holistic, Affective, Ideational)

Sensory Subsystems: VISvisual ACacoustic BSproprioceptive Structural Subsystems: OBJobject (mental imagery) MPLmorphonolexical Meaning Subsystems PROPpropositional IMPLICimplicational Effector Subsystems: ARTarticulatory LIMmotion of limbs, eyes, etc.

Assessment of Safety and Danger Sharp Objects represent danger Smooth Objects represent safety

Assessment of Safety and Danger

Assessment of Strength and Weakness  Used silhouette thickness & line stylization as the independent variables  Hypothesized thicker silhouette would be mapped to an attribution of strength

Goal Directed Interaction Exploration

Goal Directed Interaction Way finding

Applications  CAD/CAM mechanical drawings and architecture  Computer Games  User Interfaces  Virtual Environments

References Davis, R. The fitness of names to drawings. British Journal of Psychology. 52: Duke D.J., Barnard P.J. et al. Rendering and Affect. Computer Graphics Forum. 22(3): 359 – Halper N., Mellin, D.J., et al. Implicational rendering: Drawing on latent human knowledge. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception Medin D.L., Ross B. H., Markman A. B. Cognitive Psychology. Harcourt Publishers 2001.