5,633 research outputs found

    The scale of sense : spatial extent and multimodal urban design

    Get PDF
    This paper is derived from the work of the UK AHRC/EPSRC 'Designing for the 21st Century' research project Multimodal Representation of Urban Space. This research group seeks to establish a new form of notation for urban design which pays attention to our entire sensory experience of place. This paper addresses one of the most important aspects of this endeavour: scale. Scale is of course a familiar abstraction to all architects and urban designers, allowing for representations tailored to different levels of detail and allowing drawings to be translated into build structures. Scale is also a factor in human experience: the spatial extent of each of our senses is different. Many forms of architectonic representation are founded upon the extension of the visual modality, and designs are accordingly tuned towards this sense. We can all speak from our own experience, however, that urban environments are a feast for all the senses. The visceral quality of walking down a wide tree-lined boulevard differs greatly from the subterranean crowds of the subway, or the meandering pause invited by the city square. Similarly, our experience of hearing and listening is more than just a passive observation by virtue of our own power of voice and the feedback created by our percussive movements across a surface or through a medium. Taste and smell are also excited by the urban environment, the social importance of food preparation and the associations between smell and public health are issues of sensory experience. The tactile experience of space, felt with the entire body as well as our more sensitive hands, allowing for direct manipulation and interactions as well as sensations of mass, heat, proximity and texture. Our project team shall present a series of tools for designers which explore the variety of sensory modalities and their associated scales. This suite of notations and analytical frameworks turn our attention to the sensory experience of places, and offers a method and pattern book for more holistic multi-sensory and multi-modal urban design

    Intertextual Illuminations: “The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall” by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Malcolm Lowry’s “Through the Panama”

    Get PDF
    The article offers a reading of “Through the Panama” by Malcom Lowry in light of an intertext connected with Polish literature. Lowry mentions a short story “The Lighthouse Keeper of Aspinwall” by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, the Nobel prize winner for the whole of his literary output. What Lowry stresses in his intertextual allusion is the perilous illumination that the eponymous lighthouse keeper experiences. The article contends that the condition of the lighthouse keeper anticipates that of the Lowry protagonist who in “Through the Panama” fears death by his own book, or, to take Lowry’s other phrase, being “Joyced in his own petard.” Basing her analysis on Mieke Bal’s idea of a participatory exhibition where the viewer decides how to approach a video installation, and can do so by engaging with a single detail, Filipczak treats Lowry’s text as a multimodal work where such a detail may give rise to a reassessment of the reading experience. Since the allusion to the Polish text has only elicited fragmentary responses among the Lowry critics, Filipczak decides to fill in the gap by providing her interpretation of the lighthouse keeper’s perilous illumination mentioned by Lowry in the margins of his work, and by analyzing it in the context of major Romantic texts, notably the epic poem Master Thaddeus by Adam Mickiewicz whose words trigger the lighthouse keeper’s experience, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose text is quoted in the margins of “Through the Panama.” This choice allows to throw a different light on Lowry’s work which is also inhabited by echoes of futurist attitude to the machine and the Kafkaesque fear of being locked in one of the many locks of the canal “as if in experience.

    On staying grounded and avoiding Quixotic dead ends

    Get PDF
    The 15 articles in this special issue on The Representation of Concepts illustrate the rich variety of theoretical positions and supporting research that characterize the area. Although much agreement exists among contributors, much disagreement exists as well, especially about the roles of grounding and abstraction in conceptual processing. I first review theoretical approaches raised in these articles that I believe are Quixotic dead ends, namely, approaches that are principled and inspired but likely to fail. In the process, I review various theories of amodal symbols, their distortions of grounded theories, and fallacies in the evidence used to support them. Incorporating further contributions across articles, I then sketch a theoretical approach that I believe is likely to be successful, which includes grounding, abstraction, flexibility, explaining classic conceptual phenomena, and making contact with real-world situations. This account further proposes that (1) a key element of grounding is neural reuse, (2) abstraction takes the forms of multimodal compression, distilled abstraction, and distributed linguistic representation (but not amodal symbols), and (3) flexible context-dependent representations are a hallmark of conceptual processing

    Location Planning of Urban Distribution Center under Uncertainty: A Case Study of Yogyakarta Special Region Province, Indonesia

    Get PDF
    Purpose: The paper aims at proposing a framework of hybrid spatial-fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making and demonstrating application of the framework to evaluate and select the appropriate location for Urban Distribution Center in Yogyakarta Special Region Province, Indonesia. The study has been inspired by the need to evaluate the Urban Distribution Center initiative, i.e., Jogja Inland Port by local government that has been hampered due to lack of participating companies. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed framework consists of two steps of analysis. First, spatial analysis to generate alternative locations using weighted Geographical Information System data; second, fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making to select the best location. Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution was applied to deal with multi-criteria, multiple stakeholders, and uncertainty. Accessibility, security, connectivity of multi-modal transport, costs, environmental impact, proximity to customers, proximity to suppliers, resource availability, expansion possibility, service quality, are taken as the decision criteria. Local government of Yogyakarta province, practitioners, and logistic expert, are involved as representative participants in evaluating the Urban Distribution Center location of Yogyakarta Special Region Province. Findings: The proposed framework has indicated that the Jogja Inland Port is not the best alternative. A joint warehouse managed by a group of private companies located in Berbah (Sleman district) appears to be the best alternative location for Urban Distribution Center. Consistent results are also found by using other approaches (Intuitionistic Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution and Set Pair Analysis). Research limitations/implications: In addition to the government, expert, and practitioners that involved in this study, future research could engage local residents as decision makers to refine the results, as various stakeholders may come up with different preferences. Practical implications: From a practical point of view, the application of combined approach (integrating spatial analysis using weighted Geographical Information System data and fuzzy multi-criteria decision making) is a promising approach in dealing with Urban Distribution Center location problem which is characterized by multi-criteria, multiple stakeholders, spatial-related issues, and uncertainty. Social implications: The unsuccessful establishment of Jogja Inland Port implies that Urban Distribution Center location problem is a complex system, involving multifaceted factors that should be considered simultaneously. Originality/value: The research proposes a framework to evaluate and select the appropriate location for Urban Distribution Center through combined approach of weighted Geographical Information System data and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making which involves relevant stakeholders.Peer Reviewe

    The Influence of Social Priming on Speech Perception

    Get PDF
    Speech perception relies on auditory, visual, and motor cues and has been historically difficult to model, partially due to this multimodality. One of the current models is the Fuzzy Logic Model of Perception (FLMP), which suggests that if one of these types of speech mode is altered, the perception of that speech signal should be altered in a quantifiable and predictable way. The current study uses social priming to activate the schema of blindness in order to reduce reliance of visual cues of syllables with a visually identical pair. According to the FLMP, by lowering reliance on visual cues, visual confusion should also be reduced, allowing the visually confusable syllables to be identified more quickly. Although no main effect of priming was discovered, some individual syllables showed the expected facilitation while others showed inhibition. These results suggest that there is an effect of social priming on speech perception, despite the opposing reactions between syllables. Further research should use a similar kind of social priming to determine which syllables have more acoustically salient features and which have more visually salient features

    Introduction: Why do historical (im)politeness research?

    Get PDF
    • 

    corecore