The Ethics of Obstruction

This work engages the film The Five Obstructions (2003) as a configuration for multimodal composition. It explores a theory of general composition as a matter of confronting obstructions or creative constraints as a process of collaborative revision and pedagogy. Writing in this context constitutes ethical responses to the shifting constraints of communication and signification. The obstructions performed by the film as a series of revisions offer sources of proliferating rhetorical invention and play grounded on negotiated fields of operations. The first two chapters explore the relations between image and ethics in a pedagogy of revision, while the third considers the position of creative freedom as its own compositional obstruction. The fourth chapter looks to psychoanalysis as a model for an interruptive or hesitant relationship that accounts for an ethical exchange between teacher and student. The final chapter proposes configurations for how obstructions and revision function as a compositional approach, and offers a general lens in which to attend to assignments. All five chapters are written alongside the five obstructions from the film and embody the ethical practice of composition discussed in the project

Darwinian Domain-Generality: The Role of Evolutionary Psychology in the Modularity Debate

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) tends to be associated with a Massively Modular (MM) cognitive architecture. I argue that EP favors a non-MM cognitive architecture. The main point of dispute is whether central cognition, such as abstract reasoning, exhibits domain-general properties. Partisans of EP argue that domain-specific modules govern central cognition, for it is unclear how the cognitive mind could have evolved domain-generality. In response, I defend a distinction between exogenous and endogenous selection pressures, according to which exogenous pressures tend to select for domain-specificity, whereas the latter, endogenous pressures, select in favor of domain-generality. I draw on models from brain network theory to motivate this distinction, and also to establish that a domain-general, non-MM cognitive architecture is the more parsimonious adaptive solution to endogenous pressures

Contagion and learning in business networks

The purpose of this study is to examine network learning through the application of contagion theories. The transmission of knowledge, sharing of resources, and facilitation of learning through contagion has interested both business-to-business and economic geography researchers. This study responds to calls in both research traditions for research into knowledge and learning at the level of an interfirm network. More specifically, it focuses on developing an understanding of how the contagion of knowledge and ideas and the co-ordination of activities within a network tales place. We achieve this by drawing upon research in both network relationships dynamics and learning processes to investigate the causal mechanisms that drive contagion. We focus on two types of contagion: contagion by cohesion (i.e. the presences and closeness of direct contact with others in the network), and contagion by structural equivalence (i.e. where influence is related to the structural patterns of relationships in the network). We also identify two key mechanisms that act as a barrier to such contagion: isolation and immunity. We explore the implications of these findings for network learning opportunities, specifically learning-by-doing, learning-by-using, and learning-by-interacting

Material agency and performative dynamics in the practices of media art

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel UniversityThis dissertation identifies a strategy of artistic inquiry within contemporary media art practice. It applies the concept of material that acts in an agential capacity, generating performative acts. It argues that the emergent potentials of materials and their interconnectedness with the compositional layers of a work can facilitate modes of effecting change in the artistic system. Through the theoretical investigation of the production processes of physical structures and environments, the thesis focuses on the compositional dynamics within which materials actively perform. It examines how Lars Spuybroek’s architectural design method of Material Machines (2004), and both the tactile potential as well as tactical uses of materials as generators to the formtaking process, might describe an open and active artistic strategy for employing the experimental capacities of such materialization processes. Building on philosophical and conceptual arguments that trace concepts of agency (Bruno Latour’s Actant-Network theory) and enactment (Karen Barad’s concept of intra-acting), the thesis introduces the two installation works ANI_MATE (described as a performative pneumatic stage machine) and ON TRACK (described as a mechanic-robotic installation). These apply the introduced artistic strategies. The analyses of these two artworks traces the particular capacities of the materials involved (respectively, their elasticity or viscosity) to negotiate forces of physical movement, which effect the system to transiently or irreversibly transform. ANI_MATE is a machine that is artist-operated and that explores the relationship between liveanimation procedures and the transformability and flexibility of its material environment. In contrast, ON TRACK’s performative machine ecology removes human agency. The machines act autonomously, giving rise to chance in the artistic system and allowing agency to emerge from the dynamic interconnectivity between materials, parts, and processes, eventually producing an entropic scenario of spilling resources. The thesis concludes that, in the context of a post digital paradigm in-development, such artistic practice offers a new strategy for an emergent aesthetics within contemporary physical-digital performance