Kanarick - AIDE locative/temporal automation
http://library.mit.edu/item/000669591
This thesis asked whether and how a computer assistant system might be able to streamline the graphical visual display of information. It surveyed prior theories of time-based data display, and implemented a basic example-based expert system coupled with an interactive data computer display environment.

Though I was skeptical that the resulting software would be particularly helpful, the literature review was informative. The overarching challenge in this problem is to provide evidence for a story given existing data; since the computer cannot generally simply be told what the story is that the data should be made to fit, it cannot generally be able to find the proper method of laying out the data. A designer armed with the theoretical tools outlined herein, however, would be much more able to do so.


Larkin - Statements by Aromas
http://library.mit.edu/item/000408529
This fascinating set of experiments shows the challenges, frustrations, and ultimately powerful experiences that arise from using the sense of smell as a medium in artistic endeavor. The author seems frustrated in the attempt to specifically pair visuals with olfactory sensations in varied multimedia installations, but is able to have compose "smell poems" with great success.

The distinction seems to be that the multimedia installations try unsuccessfully to separate smells in space, whereas the poems distinguish smells through time. Much as with sound, the air as a medium allows individual sources of sensation to blur together spatially. Air currents, though, are as adept at washing away sound and smell through time as at deindividuating them in space.

Smells, he finds, are powerful: he attempts to perform lone actions that involve smell. The effects of these actions would only be visible then, in their temporal aftermath.


Kouros - Ruinscape
http://library.mit.edu/item/000539934
This marvelous thesis compares the ruins of ancient architecture to those of ancient poetry: focusing on the mark and the possibilities it leaves to our imagination, he compares the objects of spacial and linguistic demarcation. He finds similarities between the semiotic assumptions we make in reconstructing the unweathered state of both.

His rich philosophical discussion is paired powerfully with imagery of both aged poetry and architecture; his construction and explication of the "fragment" as a psychological concept is enlightening.