An introduction to STRIKE : STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment

Knowledge forms a critical part of the income generation of the system and the complex environment in which actors participate in the creation of knowledge assets merits robust, eclectic consideration. STRIKE - STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment affords an unobtrusive and systematic framework to observe, record, evaluate and articulate concrete and abstract elements of a setting, across internal and external dimensions. Inter-relationships between actor and environment are preserved. STRIKE is supported by underlying techniques to enrich data and enhance the authenticity of its representation. Adoption of photography and videography tools provides illustrative and interpretive benefits and facilitates researcher reflexivity. This structured approach to data analysis and evaluation mitigates criticisms of methodological rigour in observational research and affords standardisation potential, germane for application in a verification or longitudinal capacity. Advancing exploratory validation studies, the method is employed to evaluate the knowledge environments of two enterprises in the UK creative sector. These occupy a critical role in fostering entrepreneurial innovation alongside participant self-efficacy. Access Space in Sheffield and the Bristol Hackspace are committed to open software, open knowledge and open participation; sharing peer learning, creativity and socio-technical aims to address broadly similar community needs. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Meaning, the knowledge management perspective is abstracted from the STRIKE assessment. It is argued that the tiered analytical approach which considers a breadth of dimensions enhances representation and interpretation of the knowledge environment and presents a diagnostic and prescriptive capability to actualise change. The paper concludes by evaluating framework effectiveness, findings application and future direction

Remembering today tomorrow: exploring the human-centred design of digital mementos

This paper describes two-part research exploring the context for and human-centred design of ‘digital mementos’, as an example of technology for reflection on personal experience(in this case, autobiographical memories). Field studies into families’ use of physical and digital objects for remembering provided a rich understanding of associated user needs and human values, and suggested properties for ‘digital mementos’ such as being ‘not like work’, discoverable and fun. In a subsequent design study, artefacts were devised to express these features and develop the understanding of needs and values further via discussion with groups of potential ‘users’. ‘Critical artefacts’(the products of Critical Design)were used to enable participants to envisage broader possibilities for social practices and applications of technology in the context of personal remembering, and thus to engage in the design of novel devices and systems relevant to their lives. Reflection was a common theme in the work, being what the digital mementos were designed to afford and the mechanism by which the design activity progressed. Ideas for digital mementos formed the output of this research and expressed the designer’s and researcher’s understanding of participants’ practices and needs, and the human values that underlie them and, in doing so, suggest devices and systems that go beyond usability to support a broader conception of human activity

Experimental and Creative Approaches to Collecting and Distributing New Media Art within Regional Arts Organisations

This article is an overview of preliminary research undertaken for the creation of a framework for collecting and distributing new media art within regional art galleries in the U.K. From the 1960s, artists have experimented using computers and software as production tools to create artworks ranging from static, algorithmic drawings on paper to installations with complex, interactive and process-oriented behaviours. The art-form has evolved into multiple strands of production, presentation and distribution. But are we, as collectors, researchers, artists and enthusiasts facing an uncertain future concerning the integration of new media art into institutional cultural organisations? Recently, concerns have been raised by curators regarding the importance of learning how to collect new media art if there is to be any hope of preserving the artworks as well as their histories. Traditional collections management approaches must evolve to take into account the variable characteristics of new media artworks. As I will discuss in this article, although regarded as a barrier to collecting new media artworks, artists and curators at individual institutions have recently taken steps to tackle curatorial and collections management activities concerning the often unpredictable and unstable behaviours of new media artworks by collaboration and experimentation. This method has proved successful with some mainstream, university and municipal galleries prior to acquiring or commissioning new artworks into their collections. This paper purports that by collaboration, experimentation and the sharing of knowledge and resources, these concerns may be conquered to preserve and make new media art accessible for future generations to enjoy and not to lament over its disappearance

Dynamics of Affordances and Implications for Design

Affordance is an important concept in HCI. There are various interpretations of affordances but it has been difficult to use this concept for design purposes. Often the treatment of affordances in the current HCI literature has been as a one-to-one relationship between a user and an artefact. According to our views, affordance is a dynamic, always emerging relationship between a human and his environment. We believe that the social and cultural contexts within which an artefact is situated affect the way in which the artefact is used. Using a Structuration Theory approach, we argue that affordances need also be treated at a much broader level, encompassing social and cultural aspects. We suggest that affordances should be seen at three levels: single user, organizational (or work group) and societal. Focusing on the organizational level affordances, we provide details of several important factors that affect the emergence of affordances

Audiovisual coherence and physical presence: I am there, therefore I am [?]

The following is an attempt at both documentation and discussion of my personal audiovisual practice to date; in particular my attempts over the past four years to bring a complex, largely algorithmic, fixed-media method into a live, improvisatory performance context

Cartographies of the creative process: Use of mind mapping in contexts of artistic education

This text approaches the use of mind maps as an integrated instrument in creative processes undertaken in two artistic education contexts with different characteristics: the Arts and Technologies Workshop III course of the degree in Visual Arts and Technologies and the Arts and Physical Education course in the Master in Teaching in the 1 st Cycle of Basic Education and in the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education (in both the variants of Portuguese, History and Geography of Portugal or Maths and Sciences). Developed processes, results, and associated assessment are presented.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Section introduction: Dialogic education and digital technology

The chapters in this section of the book focus specifically on dialogic education and digital technology. To frame this chapter, it is important to understand why there should be mutual interest among those who are interested in the role of dialogic approaches, and the role of digital technologies in learning. At weakest such shared theorising is important simply because technology is increasingly available (indeed, pervasive) in our everyday lives and classrooms. In this view, technologies are more or less neutral actors to be leveraged as we wish; we should thus understand how to develop dialogic approaches in this emerging context. However, while of course rapid technological change creates an imperative to understand the impact of that change, this narrow perspective is a view that sociocultural researchers and those interested in dialogic approaches would reject. A somewhat stronger claim, then, and one that is made explicitly by Major and Warwick (this section) is that those who are interested in dialogic approaches to learning should be interested in digital technologies with respect to the affordances or possibilities for action that those technologies create for dialogue. A corollary, then, is that those interested in digital technologies should be interested in how they might develop and research tools that create or embody such affordances for dialogue and learning. Within this context, digital tools can be seen as affording opportunity to, for example, make learning visible to students and teachers as an artefact for reflection and improvement, creating sharing space to scrutinise ideas, and showing how ideas evolve over time. Moreover, as Major and Warwick note, we care not only about the action possibilities, but also the enacted affordances for dialogue – i.e., the specific ways in which the action possibilities are implicated in promotion of dialogic interaction for learning, and indeed, as Rasmussen et al note, the ways that new tools provide both new affordances (or possibilities) and obstacles. However, a stronger claim again is that we should be interested in the relationships between dialogic approaches to learning, and digital technologies for learning, because dialogue is both shaped by digital technologies, and helps to shape both the use and emergence of those technologies. That is, to use the language of Major and Warwick, in addition to technology creating affordances for dialogue, dialogue also creates affordances for particular uses of technology; the two are thus in mutually constitutive interaction. Put another way, Kumpulainen, Rajala, and Kajamaa (this section) distinguish material-dialogic spaces in which the focus is (1) about artefacts of digital technologies – i.e., dialogue centred on digital technology; (2) around digital technologies – i.e., dialogue that is in the context of these technologies, a context which is expanded by the very use of those digital technologies, through their affordances for dialogue; and (3) with or through digital technologies, which might be characterised in terms of meaning that is mutually constituted in and through the dialogue and materiality of the digital technologies. Each of these perspectives can be seen in the chapters in this section of the handbook, each with important implications for how we understand and foster dialogue approaches, and digital technologies, for learning

E-methods in literary production: integrating e-learning in creative writing

This paper discusses the integration of e-learning in creative writing. The online approach to the teaching of creative writing takes into account today’s Malaysian youth and their fascination with computer technology. It is this appeal of innovation in electronics and knowledge that leads an educator to design an on-line approach to a creative writing course. The theoretical construct used to support the discussion is Anderson’s theory that on-line learning is knowledge-, community-, assessment-, and learner-centered. The writer, who is also the course developer, analyses a poetry-writing activity, which students undertake, and the e-portfolio used in the course. To analyze the processes involved in this creative writing exercise Macherey’s (1978) Theory of Literary Production is adapted and utilized. This theory, which regards literary production as a process imitating that of a production line, provides the methodology and conceptual framework for analyzing the raw materials collected by the students and their transformation during the writing process. This paper thus addresses the benefits of e-learning in a creative writing context

The un-designability of the virtual. Design from problem-solving to problem-finding.

Drawing on Gilles Deleuze (1991) this chapter investigates the virtual as what problematizes the possible by inserting contingency in the process of emergence of the new. The tension between the virtual as what is uniquely placed to engender true innovation, and its aleatory and unforeseeable nature mirrors the tension existing in design between form-making and the need to acknowledge contingency. In embracing the un-designability of the virtual, design is called to take contingency and material variability as forces impinging on the process of emergence of the new. The chapter puts forward a new model for design research that shifts from problem-solving to problem-finding and is predicated on the undesigned at the core of design itself. This points to a further shift: the role of designer from creator to facilitator, teasing form out of the formless, engaged with the manifold forces expressed through material variation

Red-Teaming NLW: A Top Ten List of Criticisms About Non-Lethal Weapons

Critics of non-lethal weapons (NL W) have asserted numerous complaints about the concepts, the Department of Defense research and development efforts, and the pace of innovation in the field. These critiques challenge the cost of the programs, their consistency with international law, the adverse public reaction to some of the devices, and the dangers of proliferation, among other points. This article summarizes the various assessments, in form of a top ten list of criticisms, and evaluates their weight. The author concludes that some of these points of objection have merit, but overall, the NLW enterprise is worthy of continuation and even expansion, to meet more fully its ambitious goals