sex/vision research
it all started with video games....
[a story, for hirstory's sake.]
scene 1: sitting around, with a group of fellow programmers, half women,
playing various nintendo 64 video games. the boys were outperforming
the girls over and over again. certainly, my intuition would say that
it was socialization. most of the writing
on video games suggests that it is. yet, there was something different
about this situation. the women knew how the program worked, they knew
their required tasks, they knew what was happening and yet their performance
did not indicate that. they reacted miserably to certain tasks,
particularly those requiring depth. i found it peculiar and started
thinking.
scene 2: amsterdam, working at the gender clinic. transsexuals keep
telling me anecdotal stories of how their vision changes as they start
testosterone/estrogen treatments. i hear comments of changes in color
hue detection, night vision, bumping into objects & feeling as though
they are relearning how to see depth. there was work
undergoing, trying to figure out how hormone differences impact
spatial relations, but this was different and it boggled my mind. the
result of this work was an anecdotal based paper.
scene 3: a research project started. alongside leslie
welch, i have been analyzing how different depth cues work in relation
to one another and to the individual. as a result, i realized that i
was still too far in over my head. we ran two separate experiments and
determined that much of the research that we were depending on to be
accurate was not.
scene 4: although we didn't achieve all of our desired goals, i decided
that it was time to graduate. as such, i wrapped up the project, recorded
everything that i learned and all that needed to be done to continue
down this path of research. there's a lot more to do in this area but
i need to refocus. if anyone is interested in this area of research
and would like to talk about how to get started, what needs to be done,
what i learned, etc., please email
me!