Computing point-of-view : modeling and simulating judgments of taste

People have rich points-of-view that afford them the ability to judge the aesthetics of people, things, and everyday happenstance; yet viewpoint has an ineffable quality that is hard to articulate in words, let alone capture in computer models. Inspired by cultural theories of taste and identity, this thesis explores end-to-end computational modeling of people's tastes-from model acquisition, to generalization, to application- under various realms. Five aesthetical realms are considered-cultural taste, attitudes, ways of perceiving, taste for food, and sense-of-humor. A person's model is acquired by reading her personal texts, such as a weblog diary, a social network profile, or emails. To generalize a person model, methods such as spreading activation, analogy, and imprimer supplementation are applied to semantic resources and search spaces mined from cultural corpora. Once a generalized model is achieved, a person's tastes are brought to life through perspective-based applications, which afford the exploration of someone else's perspective through interactivity and play. The thesis describes model acquisition systems implemented for each of the five aesthetical realms.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Liu, Xinyu Hugo, 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Pattie Maes.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36158

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36158