3,238 research outputs found

    Within the Space of Drawing: Lines and the Locus of Creation in Architectural Design

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    This paper considers the practice of drawing lines in the context of architectural design. The core argument is that drawing lines generates the conditions for creative thought. Moreover, this initial claim is discussed in the context of the creative process in architectural design, as lines play an indispensable role in the locus of creation. First, the so-called “representational paradigm” about hand drawing is critically discussed, leading to the exposition of a new philosophical account regarding drawing. This new position consists of three theses: (I) it regards the drawing surface as a topos or “space of drawing”; (II) it regards drawings as situated figurations; (III) and it regards lines as processes. Jointly, these three theses form the “performative paradigm”, casting each aspect of the drawing process in terms of an unfolding dynamic in which inhabitative imagination and aesthetic sensibility play decisive roles. Lastly, these conclusions are formalized in a design model

    Breaking Virtual Barriers : Investigating Virtual Reality for Enhanced Educational Engagement

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    Virtual reality (VR) is an innovative technology that has regained popularity in recent years. In the field of education, VR has been introduced as a tool to enhance learning experiences. This thesis presents an exploration of how VR is used from the context of educators and learners. The research employed a mixed-methods approach, including surveying and interviewing educators, and conducting empirical studies to examine engagement, usability, and user behaviour within VR. The results revealed educators are interested in using VR for a wide range of scenarios, including thought exercises, virtual field trips, and simulations. However, they face several barriers to incorporating VR into their practice, such as cost, lack of training, and technical challenges. A subsequent study found that virtual reality can no longer be assumed to be more engaging than desktop equivalents. This empirical study showed that engagement levels were similar in both VR and non-VR environments, suggesting that the novelty effect of VR may be less pronounced than previously assumed. A study against a VR mind mapping artifact, VERITAS, demonstrated that complex interactions are possible on low-cost VR devices, making VR accessible to educators and students. The analysis of user behaviour within this VR artifact showed that quantifiable strategies emerge, contributing to the understanding of how to design for collaborative VR experiences. This thesis provides insights into how the end-users in the education space perceive and use VR. The findings suggest that while educators are interested in using VR, they face barriers to adoption. The research highlights the need to design VR experiences, with understanding of existing pedagogy, that are engaging with careful thought applied to complex interactions, particularly for collaborative experiences. This research contributes to the understanding of the potential of VR in education and provides recommendations for educators and designers to enhance learning experiences using VR

    Fictocritical Cyberfeminism: A Paralogical Model for Post-Internet Communication

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    This dissertation positions the understudied and experimental writing practice of fictocriticism as an analog for the convergent and indeterminate nature of “post-Internet” communication as well a cyberfeminist technology for interfering and in-tervening in metanarratives of technoscience and technocapitalism that structure contemporary media. Significant theoretical valences are established between twen-tieth century literary works of fictocriticism and the hybrid and ephemeral modes of writing endemic to emergent, twenty-first century forms of networked communica-tion such as social media. Through a critical theoretical understanding of paralogy, or that countercultural logic of deploying language outside legitimate discourses, in-volving various tactics of multivocity, mimesis and metagraphy, fictocriticism is ex-plored as a self-referencing linguistic machine which exists intentionally to occupy those liminal territories “somewhere in among/between criticism, autobiography and fiction” (Hunter qtd. in Kerr 1996). Additionally, as a writing practice that orig-inated in Canada and yet remains marginal to national and international literary scholarship, this dissertation elevates the origins and ongoing relevance of fictocriti-cism by mapping its shared aims and concerns onto proximal discourses of post-structuralism, cyberfeminism, network ecology, media art, the avant-garde, glitch feminism, and radical self-authorship in online environments. Theorized in such a matrix, I argue that fictocriticism represents a capacious framework for writing and reading media that embodies the self-reflexive politics of second-order cybernetic theory while disrupting the rhetoric of technoscientific and neoliberal economic forc-es with speech acts of calculated incoherence. Additionally, through the inclusion of my own fictocritical writing as works of research-creation that interpolate the more traditional chapters and subchapters, I theorize and demonstrate praxis of this dis-tinctively indeterminate form of criticism to empirically and meaningfully juxtapose different modes of knowing and speaking about entangled matters of language, bod-ies, and technologies. In its conclusion, this dissertation contends that the “creative paranoia” engendered by fictocritical cyberfeminism in both print and digital media environments offers a pathway towards a more paralogical media literacy that can transform the terms and expectations of our future media ecology

    To make the dominoes fall: A relational-processual approach to societal accountability in the Italian and Spanish anti-corruption arenas

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    In che modo le organizzazioni della società civile (OSC) contribuiscono alla lotta contro la corruzione? Come possono responsabilizzare i rappresentanti politici? La presente tesi si propone di rispondere a queste a queste domande di ricerca, unendo gli studi sulla lotta alla corruzione a quelli sui movimenti sociali e concentrandosi sul concetto di societal accountability, cioè sui meccanismi di controllo e di sanzione dei rappresentanti pubblici. Negli ultimi anni, gli studiosi della corruzione hanno enfatizzato sempre più il ruolo della società civile come antidoto contro la corruzione, a complemento dei meccanismi di accountability statali ed elettorali. Tuttavia, gli studi empirici sugli effetti anticorruzione degli interventi civici non hanno ancora prodotto risultati coerenti. Questo non dovrebbe sorprendere. Se misurare la corruzione è un compito arduo, valutare se e quanto gli scambi corruttivi vengano impediti grazie alle iniziative della società civile sembra virtualmente impossibile. Per questo motivo, il presente lavoro fa un passo indietro e problematizza lo studio della societal accountability, affrontandola non come un insieme predefinito di meccanismi o pratiche messe in atto da attori civici anticorruzione, ma come il risultato di interazioni sostenute e conflittuali tra più attori, civici e non. Per fare ciò, lo studio si ispira alle teorie dei movimenti sociali e concettualizza la societal accountability come un insieme di conseguenze dell’azione collettiva. Pertanto, questo lavoro mira a capire come e in quali condizioni le iniziative anticorruzione dal basso raggiungano risultati di accountability, quali il passaggio di nuove norme, il miglioramento dell’answerability istituzionale e potenziale sanzionatorio. Con questo obiettivo, la tesi si basa sulle evidenze esistenti negli studi sulla corruzione e sull'accountability e contribuisce ai dibattiti in corso sulle conseguenze dell'azione collettiva. Il quadro teorico si concentra sul concetto di influenza, aderendo a un approccio processuale-relazionale. L'influenza è intesa come un'istanza di causalità relazionale, una forma di potere posizionale che consente a più attori di esercitare un controllo sulle conseguenze dell’azione collettiva. Facendo da ponte tra l'approccio strategico-interazionale e i modelli di mediazione, l'analisi chiarisce le strategie seguite dalle OSC nella ricerca di posizioni di influenza, così come i meccanismi attraverso i quali i modelli relazionali producono cambiamento sociale. Il quadro analitico è applicato alle arene anticorruzione in Italia e in Spagna e si restringe a tre specifiche aree di intervento: l'introduzione di leggi sulla trasparenza, l'approvazione di leggi per la protezione dei whistleblower e lo sviluppo di progetti di monitoraggio civico. Il materiale empirico comprende 37 interviste qualitative semi-strutturate, documenti e dati network. Nel complesso, le evidenze raccolte contribuiscono alla letteratura sulla lotta alla corruzione, dimostrando che le OSC contribuiscono, direttamente e indirettamente, alla lotta contro la corruzione ottenendo cambiamenti nelle politiche, aumentando l’answerability del sistema e innescando sanzioni formali e informali quando necessario. Tuttavia, l’analisi comparata dei casi italiano e spagnolo evidenziano differenze rilevanti. In particolare, l'indagine empirica contribuisce agli attuali dibattiti sullo studio della società della social accountability, dimostrando che l'integrazione con le élite politiche può aumentare la probabilità di ottenere di ottenere un cambiamento delle politiche, mentre l'integrazione orizzontale tra gli attori civici può aumentare il loro potenziale sanzionatorio. In definitiva, questo lavoro dimostra come gli approcci processuali-relazionali possano integrare modelli strategici e di mediazione per comprendere meglio il modo in cui gli attori collettivi influenzano il cambiamento politico e sociale. Le osservazioni conclusive sostengono che le interazioni e le relazioni costruite dagli attori nel corso del tempo e in diverse arene fungono da canali di mediazione a livello micro, meso e macro. Complessivamente, ciò dimostra che i singoli attori, i modelli di relazione nelle e tra le arene e le idee sulle relazioni mediano tra le strategie dei attori collettivi, aumentando o limitando così la loro influenza sulla lotta alla corruzione.How do civil society organizations (CSOs) contribute to the struggle against public corruption? How can they hold their political representatives accountable? This thesis aims to answer these wide-ranging research questions, bridging anti-corruption and social movement studies by focusing on societal accountability, i.e., grassroots mechanisms for controlling and sanctioning powerholders. Over the last few years, corruption scholars have increasingly emphasized the role of civil society as an antidote against corruption, complementing state and electoral accountability mechanisms. However, empirical studies on the anti-corruption effects of civic interventions have yet to yield consistent results. This should hardly come as a surprise. If measuring corruption is a challenging task, assessing the extent to which corrupt deals are prevented due to civil society initiatives appears virtually impossible. Hence, this work takes a step back and problematizes the study of societal accountability, approaching it not as a pre-given set of mechanisms or practices deployed by anti-corruption civic actors but as the result of sustained and contentious interactions between multiple players. To do so, the study draws on social movement theories and conceptualizes societal accountability as a set of consequences of collective action efforts. Therefore, this work aims to understand how and under what conditions bottom-up anti-corruption initiatives achieve accountability results such as legal claim attainments, answerability, and sanctioning potential. With this goal in mind, the thesis builds upon existing evidence from corruption and accountability studies and contributes to ongoing debates on the consequences of collective action. The theoretical framework focuses on the concept of influence, subscribing to a processual-relational approach. It understands influence as a relationally emergent instance of causality, a form of positional power that enables multiple players to exert control over the consequences of collective struggles. By bridging the strategic-interaction approach and mediation models; the analysis elucidates the strategies followed by CSOs in seeking positions of influence, as well as the mechanisms through which relational patterns produce social change. The analytical framework is applied to the anti-corruption arenas in Italy and Spain and is narrowed down by focusing on three specific campaigns in each country: introducing transparency laws, passing whistleblowers' protection acts, and developing civic monitoring projects. The empirical material comprises 37 semi-structured qualitative interviews, documents, and network data retrieved through Action Organization Analysis. The corpus of data is analyzed by combining thematic analysis, frame analysis, and a theory-building process tracing through a qualitative network approach. Overall, the evidence collected contributes to the literature on anti-corruption, demonstrating that CSOs, directly and indirectly, contribute to the anti-corruption struggle by achieving policy change, increasing the system's answerability, and triggering formal and informal sanctions when necessary. However, the Italian and Spanish cases' comparative accounts highlight relevant differences. In particular, the empirical investigation contributes to current debates on the study of societal accountability, showing that integration with political elites may increase the likelihood of obtaining policy change, whereas horizontal integration among civic actors may enhance their sanctioning potential. Ultimately, this work shows how processual-relational approaches can help integrate strategic and mediation models to understand better how change-oriented collective actors influence political and social change. The concluding remarks maintain that the interactions and relations built by players over time and across different arenas serve as mediation channels at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels. Overall, this demonstrates that individual players, patterns of relations in and across arenas, and ideas about relationships mediate between players' strategies, resources, or frames and their contextual conditions, thereby increasing or constraining their influence over the anti-corruption struggl

    Developing a Governance Framework for a Commercially Successful, Inclusive, and Safe Metaverse

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    This study aimed to fill a significant gap in the literature on empirical research on the governance structure of the Metaverse. The purpose of this study was to describe Metaverse strategy and innovation management experts’ views on how business leaders and policymakers may collaborate on shaping a governance structure for the Metaverse. This study used a multiple case study design to collect data from a purposeful sample of eight Metaverse experts using a semistructured interview format. This study was framed by three key concepts: Rogers’s concept of diffusion of innovations, Ball’s concept of the Metaverse, and Fernandez and Hiu’s concept of privacy, ethics, and governance in the Metaverse. Twelve themes emerged from the analysis of the data: (a) the Metaverse as disruptors across all industries, (b) human adoption and collaboration as drivers of future business innovation in the Metaverse, (c) the challenge of interoperability across public and private platforms, (d) global network of stakeholders that fosters a holistic and innovative approach to data governance, (e) governance framework that creates value for the consumer, (f) centralized and decentralized options for governance, (g), advantages and challenges of user control over personal data, (h) collaborative policies as regulators of human behavior in the Metaverse, (i) multi-stakeholder generated Metaverse security and privacy policy, (j) policies that regulate user-generated content, (k) incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion principles for organizations operating in the Metaverse, and (l) accessibility to all consumers. This study’s result may drive positive social change by presenting practical information on developing a governance framework to regulate the Metaverse

    A philosophical discussion of the implications and limitations of using Virtual Reality Technology (VR) as an “Empathy Machine”

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    This thesis engages in a philosophical discussion on “empathy”, “virtuality”, and the use of virtual reality (VR) technology as an “empathy machine”. Here, I define empathy as the intentional activity (or skill) of recreating aspects of another subject’s emotional experience in one’s imagination to reflectively and “experientially” understand what another is feeling. As opposed to isomorphically appropriating another’s feelings to oneself, I identify empathy as third-personally “feeling with” others. After exploring the narrow and pluralistic approaches to understanding empathy, I argue that there are compelling pragmatic reasons for adopting the pluralistic approach, the proponents of which prefer to highlight varieties of empathy instead of a sole conceptualisation of “empathy proper”. As for virtuality, I subscribe to a third view that can be located between “virtual realism” and “virtual irrealism”, in that I understand virtuality as a sui generis mode of technological actualisation, where psychophysiological illusions, of virtual presence and embodiment, coexist with veridical elements, such as virtual social objects, without causing a defect in users’ rational judgment. My main contention in this research is that VR’s multisensory affordances can be instrumentally utilised as a complementary extension (but never as a replacement) for offsetting some of the limitations in attaining interpersonal empathy through imaginative perspective-taking alone. After discussing this contention in more depth, I then attempt to address some of the recurrent challenges and criticism raised against VR’s use as an empathy machine. Finally, I highlight some of the limitations in VR technology’s capability to capture and transmit a full representation of others’ lived experiences

    Mooring the global archive: a Japanese ship and its migrant histories

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    Martin Dusinberre follows the Yamashiro-maru steamship across Asian and Pacific waters in an innovative history of Japan's engagement with the outside world in the late-nineteenth century. His compelling in-depth analysis reconstructs the lives of some of the thousands of male and female migrants who left Japan for work in Hawai'i, Southeast Asia and Australia. These stories bring together transpacific historiographies of settler colonialism, labour history and resource extraction in new ways. Drawing on an unconventional and deeply material archive, from gravestones to government files, paintings to song, and from digitized records to the very earth itself, Dusinberre addresses key questions of method and authorial positionality in the writing of global history. This engaging investigation into archival practice asks, what is the global archive, where is it cited, and who are 'we' as we cite it? This title is also available as Open Access

    Blending the Material and Digital World for Hybrid Interfaces

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    The development of digital technologies in the 21st century is progressing continuously and new device classes such as tablets, smartphones or smartwatches are finding their way into our everyday lives. However, this development also poses problems, as these prevailing touch and gestural interfaces often lack tangibility, take little account of haptic qualities and therefore require full attention from their users. Compared to traditional tools and analog interfaces, the human skills to experience and manipulate material in its natural environment and context remain unexploited. To combine the best of both, a key question is how it is possible to blend the material world and digital world to design and realize novel hybrid interfaces in a meaningful way. Research on Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) investigates the coupling between physical objects and virtual data. In contrast, hybrid interfaces, which specifically aim to digitally enrich analog artifacts of everyday work, have not yet been sufficiently researched and systematically discussed. Therefore, this doctoral thesis rethinks how user interfaces can provide useful digital functionality while maintaining their physical properties and familiar patterns of use in the real world. However, the development of such hybrid interfaces raises overarching research questions about the design: Which kind of physical interfaces are worth exploring? What type of digital enhancement will improve existing interfaces? How can hybrid interfaces retain their physical properties while enabling new digital functions? What are suitable methods to explore different design? And how to support technology-enthusiast users in prototyping? For a systematic investigation, the thesis builds on a design-oriented, exploratory and iterative development process using digital fabrication methods and novel materials. As a main contribution, four specific research projects are presented that apply and discuss different visual and interactive augmentation principles along real-world applications. The applications range from digitally-enhanced paper, interactive cords over visual watch strap extensions to novel prototyping tools for smart garments. While almost all of them integrate visual feedback and haptic input, none of them are built on rigid, rectangular pixel screens or use standard input modalities, as they all aim to reveal new design approaches. The dissertation shows how valuable it can be to rethink familiar, analog applications while thoughtfully extending them digitally. Finally, this thesis’ extensive work of engineering versatile research platforms is accompanied by overarching conceptual work, user evaluations and technical experiments, as well as literature reviews.Die Durchdringung digitaler Technologien im 21. Jahrhundert schreitet stetig voran und neue Geräteklassen wie Tablets, Smartphones oder Smartwatches erobern unseren Alltag. Diese Entwicklung birgt aber auch Probleme, denn die vorherrschenden berührungsempfindlichen Oberflächen berücksichtigen kaum haptische Qualitäten und erfordern daher die volle Aufmerksamkeit ihrer Nutzer:innen. Im Vergleich zu traditionellen Werkzeugen und analogen Schnittstellen bleiben die menschlichen Fähigkeiten ungenutzt, die Umwelt mit allen Sinnen zu begreifen und wahrzunehmen. Um das Beste aus beiden Welten zu vereinen, stellt sich daher die Frage, wie neuartige hybride Schnittstellen sinnvoll gestaltet und realisiert werden können, um die materielle und die digitale Welt zu verschmelzen. In der Forschung zu Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) wird die Verbindung zwischen physischen Objekten und virtuellen Daten untersucht. Noch nicht ausreichend erforscht wurden hingegen hybride Schnittstellen, die speziell darauf abzielen, physische Gegenstände des Alltags digital zu erweitern und anhand geeigneter Designparameter und Entwurfsräume systematisch zu untersuchen. In dieser Dissertation wird daher untersucht, wie Materialität und Digitalität nahtlos ineinander übergehen können. Es soll erforscht werden, wie künftige Benutzungsschnittstellen nützliche digitale Funktionen bereitstellen können, ohne ihre physischen Eigenschaften und vertrauten Nutzungsmuster in der realen Welt zu verlieren. Die Entwicklung solcher hybriden Ansätze wirft jedoch übergreifende Forschungsfragen zum Design auf: Welche Arten von physischen Schnittstellen sind es wert, betrachtet zu werden? Welche Art von digitaler Erweiterung verbessert das Bestehende? Wie können hybride Konzepte ihre physischen Eigenschaften beibehalten und gleichzeitig neue digitale Funktionen ermöglichen? Was sind geeignete Methoden, um verschiedene Designs zu erforschen? Wie kann man Technologiebegeisterte bei der Erstellung von Prototypen unterstützen? Für eine systematische Untersuchung stützt sich die Arbeit auf einen designorientierten, explorativen und iterativen Entwicklungsprozess unter Verwendung digitaler Fabrikationsmethoden und neuartiger Materialien. Im Hauptteil werden vier Forschungsprojekte vorgestellt, die verschiedene visuelle und interaktive Prinzipien entlang realer Anwendungen diskutieren. Die Szenarien reichen von digital angereichertem Papier, interaktiven Kordeln über visuelle Erweiterungen von Uhrarmbändern bis hin zu neuartigen Prototyping-Tools für intelligente Kleidungsstücke. Um neue Designansätze aufzuzeigen, integrieren nahezu alle visuelles Feedback und haptische Eingaben, um Alternativen zu Standard-Eingabemodalitäten auf starren Pixelbildschirmen zu schaffen. Die Dissertation hat gezeigt, wie wertvoll es sein kann, bekannte, analoge Anwendungen zu überdenken und sie dabei gleichzeitig mit Bedacht digital zu erweitern. Dabei umfasst die vorliegende Arbeit sowohl realisierte technische Forschungsplattformen als auch übergreifende konzeptionelle Arbeiten, Nutzerstudien und technische Experimente sowie die Analyse existierender Forschungsarbeiten
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