Documenting the making process

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis documents the construction of a performance project, At Last Sight, which was made with a group of undergraduates at University College Chester. The leader of that project is the same person as the writer of this thesis; this locates the act of writing as something embedded within the process of performance making. The writing forms an address to the unreliability of objective observational analysis. It does so through a resistance to those attempts at impartiality and detachment that might usually be expected in an academic investigation. In this case partiality and involvement are more than central to the investigative process, they form the very structure of enquiry. The body of this work was written at the same time as At Last Sight was being constructed, and the ideas encountered herein possess many of the rhythms of performance making. Space is both somewhere performance is made and an integral aspect of the made work. In a similar way the following chapters amount to more than the site where work has been recorded. In tracing the footprints that led to At Last Sight the thesis reveals itself as an element of that which is being traced. Where At Last Sight revealed the performers as the to-be-watched and also as the watchers, the study functions as the to-be-read and also as the reading. In this way the documentation becomes the documented. This notion of integration between the subject and its study runs through the thesis. Approaching performance analysis as something `other' creates a gap between it and its subject that can deny the best attempts to bring the two together. Approached in a less compartmentalised way the analysis is allowed to form an indivisible correspondence with the analysed. When the division between the act and the analysis is dissolved the documentation is able to exist as both fixed object and time-based event. Something of the fluidity of process is acknowledged and articulated in each of the sections presented

DEVELOPING AND USING A LOGIC MODEL FOR EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT OF UNIVERSITY STUDENT AFFAIRS PROGRAMMING: A CASE STUDY

This dissertation addresses theory and practice of evaluation and assessment in university student affairs, by applying logic modeling / program theory to a case study. I intend to add knowledge to ongoing dialogue among evaluation scholars and practitioners on student affairs program planning and improvement as integral considerations that serve mission and vision at the contemporary university. Insights on the following research questions can help determine theoretical justifications and forge an inventory of effective evaluation and assessment techniques in student affairs. 1.How can logic modeling be used to analyze evaluations of student affairs programs and an overall assessment campaign?2.How might evaluators and planners have enlisted a logic model such as the one developed in this study to enhance the effectiveness of the assessment campaign at the profiled university student affairs unit? These questions involve general principles and particular applications of my arguments in favor of using a logic model to analyze a comprehensive assessment campaign, as conducted by a designated student affairs assessment team. Although sets of workable techniques at one university may not generalize to another campus culture, findings will reveal how one institution of higher education (IHE) has behaved and responded to new challenges and inputs - in this case, greater emphasis on evaluation and assessment to address issues of accountability and credibility for student affairs. Using logic modeling as the primary heuristic, this study analyzes what the university system depicted in case study has accomplished and might have accomplished. I also invite readers to join my speculation how using and perhaps customizing this logic model could guide the unit's next steps in ongoing assessment. If a logic model works retrospectively, then perhaps it might function proactively. My hope is that readers find descriptions and lessons to compare and contrast to their own evaluative practices, adding to the knowledge base and possible consensus about current practices for university student affairs assessment campaigns

The contemporary visualization and modelling technologies and techniques for the design of the green roofs

The contemporary design solutions are merging the boundaries between real and virtual world. The Landscape architecture like the other interdisciplinary field stepped in a contemporary technologies area focused on that, beside the good execution of works, designer solutions has to be more realistic and “touchable”. The opportunities provided by Virtual Reality are certainly not negligible, it is common knowledge that the designs in the world are already presented in this way so the Virtual Reality increasingly used. Following the example of the application of virtual reality in landscape architecture, this paper deals with proposals for the use of virtual reality in landscape architecture so that designers, clients and users would have a virtual sense of scope e.g. rooftop garden, urban areas, parks, roads, etc. It is a programming language that creates a series of images creating a whole, so certain parts can be controlled or even modified in VR. Virtual reality today requires a specific gadget, such as Occulus, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR and similar. The aim of this paper is to acquire new theoretical and practical knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of virtual reality, the ability to display using virtual reality methods, and to present through a brief overview the plant species used in the design and construction of an intensive roof garden in a Mediterranean climate, the basic characteristics of roofing gardens as well as the benefits they carry. Virtual and augmented reality as technology is a very powerful tool for landscape architects, when modeling roof gardens, parks, and urban areas. One of the most popular technologies used by landscape architects is Google Tilt Brush, which enables fast modeling. The Google Tilt Brush VR app allows modeling in three-dimensional virtual space using a palette to work with the use of a three-dimensional brush. The terms of two "programmed" realities - virtual reality and augmented reality - are often confused. One thing they have in common, though, is VRML - Virtual Reality Modeling Language. In this paper are shown the ways on which this issue can be solved and by the way, get closer the term of Virtual Reality (VR), also all the opportunities which the Virtual reality offered us. As well, in this paper are shown the conditions of Mediterranean climate, the conceptual solution and the plant species which will be used by execution of intensive green roof on the motel “Marković”

Тhe benefits of an additional practice in descriptive geometry course: non obligatory workshop at the Faculty of civil engineering in Belgrade

At the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade, in the Descriptive geometry (DG) course, non-obligatory workshops named “facultative task” are held for the three generations of freshman students with the aim to give students the opportunity to get higher final grade on the exam. The content of this workshop was a creative task, performed by a group of three students, offering free choice of a topic, i.e. the geometric structure associated with some real or imagery architectural/art-work object. After the workshops a questionnaire (composed by the professors at the course) is given to the students, in order to get their response on teaching/learning materials for the DG course and the workshop. During the workshop students performed one of the common tests for testing spatial abilities, named “paper folding". Based on the results of the questionnairethe investigation of the linkages between:students’ final achievements and spatial abilities, as well as students’ expectations of their performance on the exam, and how the students’ capacity to correctly estimate their grades were associated with expected and final grades, is provided. The goal was to give an evidence that a creative work, performed by a small group of students and self-assessment of their performances are a good way of helping students to maintain motivation and to accomplish their achievement. The final conclusion is addressed to the benefits of additional workshops employment in the course, which confirmhigherfinal scores-grades, achievement of creative results (facultative tasks) and confirmation of DG knowledge adaption

Computational Methods in Science and Engineering : Proceedings of the Workshop SimLabs@KIT, November 29 - 30, 2010, Karlsruhe, Germany

In this proceedings volume we provide a compilation of article contributions equally covering applications from different research fields and ranging from capacity up to capability computing. Besides classical computing aspects such as parallelization, the focus of these proceedings is on multi-scale approaches and methods for tackling algorithm and data complexity. Also practical aspects regarding the usage of the HPC infrastructure and available tools and software at the SCC are presented

At the nexus between theatre and education : a study of theatre artists' teaching practices

In Singapore, there is an increasing presence of theatre artists as educators across varied sectors of the educational institutions. However despite their active engagement with education, research on what and how they do their teaching is limited. This thesis sets out to investigate the theatre artists’ teaching practices in education settings. The literature reviewed as part of this inquiry point to an identifiable system of pedagogy in the theatre artists’ teaching practices. As such, one of the key strands of this research is to identify and name what is distinctive about theatre artists’ teaching practices. But more than just identifying characteristics, I am interested in understanding if there is an overarching philosophy that guides these practices. To that end, I conceptualised a framework, which examines the theatre artists’ teaching practices as inhabiting a nested nexus of two distinguishably separate fields: Theatre and Education. Each with its own variegated influences and systems of knowledge and values that govern practices. Working with an overarching Bourdieusean theoretical framework, in particular habitus and field, as well as invoking Lyotard’s notion of differend, the study relies on interdisciplinary theories to aid explication of key concepts related to the study. The study also employs a melding of ethnographic case study and reflective practitioner as its methodology. Additionally, it works with “critiquing across difference” (Lather 2008) as a means to challenge and destabilise the reflective practitioner lens. This is achieved by structuring the research into two phases. Phase I involves researching in England. Working with four theatre artists, I examine how each assumes their position as educators in various education settings both within and beyond the school environment. The opportunity gained from this experience informed Phase II research in Singapore, the main focus of this inquiry. The findings suggest that to understand theatre artists’ teaching practices require an examination of contexts influencing their teaching acts. This includes their layered histories of both artistic and teaching experiences as well as the relationship they have with the school culture and the objectives and needs of their teaching projects. Additionally, in examining their teaching moments, the study discovers a pattern of doing the same approaches or strategies, differently. Working from the data, an overarching world view guiding the construction of their teaching practices is eventually proposed

Engendering Genre: The Contemporary Russian Buddy Film

My dissertation situates itself at the intersection of several fields: Soviet cultural studies, film genre theory, and masculinity studies. It investigates the articulation of genre categories in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema industries, with a specific focus on the cultural context within which the buddy film emerges in late Soviet culture. This genre is unique within contemporary Russian cinema for providing a visual and narrative structure within which the masculine crisis—a topic widely written about by Russian sociologists and gender scholars—becomes visible. This masculine crisis is more often than not masked by compensatory, hyper-macho images in other genres (e.g., war films, gangster films, historical epics). The buddy film, by contrast, exhibits a type of masculinity rarely glimpsed on screen; these characters are the disillusioned, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised men of late- and post-Soviet society. My argument is grounded in a thorough examination of male-centered Russian buddy films from 1970 until the present day—specifically, I look at such films as A. Smirnov's Belorusskii vokzal (1970), P. Lungin's Taksi-bliuz (1990), V. Abdrashitov's Vremia tantsora (1997), A. Rogozhkin's Kukushka (2002), V. Todorovskii's Liubovnik (2002), and A. Muradov's Pravda o shchelpakh (2003). I also dedicate the final chapter to a consideration of several notable exceptions to the standard male buddy film: V. Todorovskii's Strana glukhikh (1998), S. Bodrov Jr.'s Sestry (2001), F. Popov's Kavkazkaia ruletka (2002), and M. Liubakova's Zhestokost' (2007) in which two women substitute for the typical male pair.I draw on the work of Althusserian film genre theorist Rick Altman, who seeks out the source of genre components in social practice. Altman insists on acknowledging the historicism and subjectivity in the study of genre. Relying on such considerations of genre, my dissertation treats the buddy film from several perspectives: it looks at the genre's antecedents from the Stalinist and Thaw periods, it tracks changes in the genre as cultural and ideological imperatives shift over the past seventy years, and it considers how gender representations adapt to these cultural and ideological transformations

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Optimal operation of dams/reservoirs emphasizing potential environmental and climate change impacts

Mahdi studied the potential ecological and climate change impacts on management of dams. He developed several new optimization frameworks in which benefits of dams are maximized, while above impacts are mitigated. Governments and consulting engineers can use the proposed frameworks for managing dams considering environmental challenges in river basins