Tracing the Compositional Process. Sound art that rewrites its own past: formation, praxis and a computer framework

The domain of this thesis is electroacoustic computer-based music and sound art. It investigates a facet of composition which is often neglected or ill-defined: the process of composing itself and its embedding in time. Previous research mostly focused on instrumental composition or, when electronic music was included, the computer was treated as a tool which would eventually be subtracted from the equation. The aim was either to explain a resultant piece of music by reconstructing the intention of the composer, or to explain human creativity by building a model of the mind. Our aim instead is to understand composition as an irreducible unfolding of material traces which takes place in its own temporality. This understanding is formalised as a software framework that traces creation time as a version graph of transactions. The instantiation and manipulation of any musical structure implemented within this framework is thereby automatically stored in a database. Not only can it be queried ex post by an external researcher—providing a new quality for the empirical analysis of the activity of composing—but it is an integral part of the composition environment. Therefore it can recursively become a source for the ongoing composition and introduce new ways of aesthetic expression. The framework aims to unify creation and performance time, fixed and generative composition, human and algorithmic “writing”, a writing that includes indeterminate elements which condense as concurrent vertices in the version graph. The second major contribution is a critical epistemological discourse on the question of ob- servability and the function of observation. Our goal is to explore a new direction of artistic research which is characterised by a mixed methodology of theoretical writing, technological development and artistic practice. The form of the thesis is an exercise in becoming process-like itself, wherein the epistemic thing is generated by translating the gaps between these three levels. This is my idea of the new aesthetics: That through the operation of a re-entry one may establish a sort of process “form”, yielding works which go beyond a categorical either “sound-in-itself” or “conceptualism”. Exemplary processes are revealed by deconstructing a series of existing pieces, as well as through the successful application of the new framework in the creation of new pieces

English reading comprehension of Thai undergraduates : L1/L2 usage, texts, strategies and problems

English Ianguage has been taught as a foreign language in Thailand for more than a century and now occupies an important place at all levels of the Thai education system. This study investigates the influence that the Thai language has on intermediate level undergraduate sludents while they are engaged in individual unaided reading of a variety of English texts and determines what aspects of reading texts caused problems. It aims to compare how often and for what purposes students resort to Thai with texts about culturally familiar texts and culturally unfamiliar texts, as well with different genres and question types. The subjects are 20 second year teacher trainee students majoring in English al Udon Thani Rajabhat University. Student responses to the texts, retrospective interviews, and a questionnaire were used as quantitative and qualitative dota. For qantitative data, the SPSS program was used to analyse the frequency of using the first language, the relationship between scores, texts and question types, as well as that between strategies, scores, question types und problems. The use of content analysis witn qualitalive data from responses to tasks and the interviews produced the means whereby student strategies and problems could be categorised and findings in the qualitative data extended

Views and concerns and interrelationships : Lessons learned from developing the multi-View software engineering environment PIROL

Software-Entwicklungsumgebungen sind komplexe Systeme mit besonderen Anforderungen an Modularität und Anpaßbarkeit. Diese Arbeit beschreibt die Entwicklung der Umgebung PIROL. Die Beschreibung ist dabei in eine Abfolge der folgenden 12 Themen gegliedert. (1) Metamodellierung ist das Grundkonzept, nach dem PIROL seine Daten gemäß einem objektorientierten Datenmodell zerlegt, so daß beliebige Werkzeuge auch auf die Daten anderer Werkzeuge auf sinnvolle Art und Weise zuzugreifen können. (2) Das Metamodell wird zur persistenten Speicherung der Daten auf Konzepte des Repositories H-PCTE abgebildet. (3) Die Granularität eines Metamodells ist für die Effektivität und Effizienz des Gesamtsystems entscheidend. PIROL unterstützt hybride Modellierung als Kompromiß beider Extreme. (4) Durch Methoden des Metamodells wird Verhaltensmodellierung für verschiedenste Aufgaben unterstützt. (5) Ausnahmebehandlung wird systematisch unterstützt. (6) Verschiedene Mechanismen zur Wahrung der Datenintegrität sind enthalten. (7) Das System wurde nach einer Client-Server Architektur entwickelt, deren zentrale Komponente eine "Workbench" ist, die die Repository-Sprache Lua/P ausführt. (8) Steuerungsintegration erlaubt durch verteilte Steuerflüsse das enge Zusammenspiel lose gekoppelter Komponenten. (9) Die koordinierte Zusammenarbeit mehrerer Benutzer wird unterstützt. (10) Die logische Unabhängigkeit von Werkzeugen wird durch das neue Konzept der Dynamic View Connectors erreicht. (11) Allgemeine Dienste sind in der Umgebung einheitlich verfügbar. (12) Das System unterstützt die Weiterentwicklung. All diese Themengebiete sind sehr eng miteinander verzahnt und die Darstellung ist zu großem Teil der gegenseitigen Beeinflussung gewidmet. Es wird gezeigt, wie eine Großzahl der Entwurfsentscheidungen genau aus diesen Beeinflussungen motiviert sind. Die Beschreibung folgt damit dem Konzept der "Concern Interaction Matrix", das hier zur Bewältigung von Komplexität vorgeschlagen wird. Dabei werden Charakteristika einzelner Anliegen und einzelner Zusammenhänge herausgearbeitet. Die Beschreibung PIROLs wird durch die Liste der integrierten Werkzeuge, Ansätze von Laufzeit-Messungen und einige Betrachtungen zur Beurteilung abgerundet. Abschließend werden verschiedene Konzepte rund um den Begriff "Sichten" erörtert. Sichten sind ein zentrale Anliegen von PIROL. Außerdem generalisiert die Diskussion über die mehrdimensionale Darstellung des Hauptteiles. Es werden Begrifflichkeit, Konzepte und Techniken für Sichten in der Softwaretechnik vorgestellt und diskutiert. Dabei wird die Brücke geschlagen von Sichten in objektorientierten Datenbanken, über aspekt-orientierte Softwareentwicklung bis hin zum allgemeinen "Concern Modeling", zu dem die o.g. Methode einen Beitrag leisten soll. Sichten werden dabei als ein zentrales Konzept der Softwaretechnik neben Abstraktion und Zerlegung beurteilt. Dynamic View Connectors sind ein wesentlicher Beitrag von PIROL, durch den Datenbanksichten und aspektorientierte Programmierung zusammengeführt werden. Zwar ist der Sichten-Begriff längst nicht so scharf definiert, wie die Begriffe Abstraktion und Zerlegung, aber gerade die Überlappungen und Diskrepanzen, die durch Sichten abgebildet werden können, machen dies Konzept zu einem starken Strukturierungsprinzip, das zwar einigen Aufwand zur Behandlung von Inkonsistenzen erfordert, aber andererseits hilft, komplexe Systeme handhabbar und wartbar zu gestalten.Software engineering environments are complex systems with special requirements regarding modularity and adaptability. This thesis describes the development of the environment PIROL. The description is structured as a sequence of the following 12 concerns: (1) Meta modeling is the basic concept by which PIROL decomposes its data in accordance to an object-oriented data model. This allows arbitrary tools to access data of other tools in a meaningful way. (2) For persistent storage the model is mapped to the concepts of the repository H-PCTE. (3) The granularity of a meta model determines effectiveness and efficiency of the system. PIROL supports hybrid modeling as a compromise between extremes. (4) By methods of the meta model behavior modeling is supported for a wide range of tasks. (5) Exception handling is supported systematically. (6) Several mechanisms for preserving data integrity are integrated. (7) The system follows a client-server architecture. As its, central component the "workbench" executes the repository language LuaP. (8) Control integration allows for close cooperation of loosely coupled components by means of distributed control flows. (9) The coordinated cooperation of multiple users is supported. (10) Logical independence of tools is achieved by the novel concept of Dynamic View Connectors. (11) Common services are available throughout the environment in a uniform way. (12) The system is prepared for evolution. All these concerns are tightly interlocked. A considerable share of the presentation is dedicated to such mutual interactions. Is is shown, how a large number of design decisions is motivated exactly by these interactions. The description follows the concept of a "Concern Interaction Matrix" which is proposed for managing complexity. Characteristics of concerns and their interactions are elaborated. The description of PIROL is completed by a list of integrated tools, initial performance measurements and evaluation. Finally, several concepts relating to the notion of "views" are discussed. Views are a central concern of PIROL. Furthermore, the discussion generalizes over the multi-dimensional presentation in the body of this thesis. Notions, concepts and techniques for views in software engineering are presented and discussed. This discussion connects views in object-oriented databases, aspect-oriented software development and general "concern modeling", to which the method of "Concern Interaction Matrices" contributes. Views are regarded as a central concept of software engineering at the same level as abstraction and decomposition. Dynamic View Connectors are a significant contribution of PIROL that combines database views and aspect-oriented programming. The notion of "views" is defined with far less precision than abstraction and decomposition, but indeed by the overlap and mismatches, which can be captured by views, this concept is a strong principle for structuring software and information. Effort is needed for handling inconsistencies as they may arise, but after all, views are a suitable means for managing the complexity of systems and for designing these systems for evolution

Pharo by Example

Pharo is a modern, open source, fully-featured implementation of the Smalltalk programming language and environment. Pharo is derived from Squeak1, a re-implementation of the classic Smalltalk-80 system. Whereas Squeak was developed mainly as a platform for developing experimental educational software, Pharo strives to offer a lean, open-source platform for professional software development, and a robust and stable platform for research and development into dynamic languages and environments. Pharo serves as the reference implementation for the Seaside web development framework