Dialogic coding: a performance practice for co-creative computer improvisation

This research project explores Dialogic Coding – a performance practice situated within the field of live computer music which works towards a dialogic relationship with the computer as a programmable musical instrument. The writing articulates a Practice-as-Research (PaR) inquiry that places my practice within specific contextual, analytical and philosophical frameworks. The point of departure is the assumption that following the concept of dialogue a more reflexive way of performing music with a computer becomes possible. This approach may produce innovative results through transformations of musical ideas, embodied interactions as well as the performer's self-concept within a situation of improvised group performance. Dialogic Coding employs the concept of nontriviality to create an independent but at the same time programmable musical agent – the apparatus – which so becomes a co-creator of the improvised music. As a context for Dialogic Coding practice serve other dialogic forms of music making such as free improvised music as well as dynamic performances of programming found in live coding practice. A dialogic approach in music performance is based on listening and the ability to speak one's voice in response to the situation. Here, listening is understood beyond the auditory domain on the level of abstract thinking and physical interaction (interface affordance). This research presents a first-hand account of a computer performance praxis and thus makes a contribution to academic knowledge. For this it makes some implicit or tacit 'knowings' contained in the practice accessible for an outside community through this writing. Dialogic Coding practice was developed through participating in free improvised music 'sessions' with other musicians as well as composing pieces in program code with which I then performed live (solo and group). This writing contextualizes the developed practice in a historic lineage, discusses it within the conceptual framework of dialogism and delineated how a dialogic approach fosters creativity, learning, surprise and flow. As a conclusion I summarise the ethical dimension of Dialogic Coding as a form of human-computer interaction (HCI)

Modes of Interaction in Computational Architecture

This thesis is an enquiry into the importance and influence of interaction in architecture, the importance of which is observed through different modes of interaction occurring in various aspects of architectural discourse and practice. Interaction is primarily observed through the different use of software within architectural practice and in the construction of buildings, façades and systems. In turn, the kind of influences software has on architecture is one of the underlying questions of this thesis. Four qualities: Concept, Materiality, Digitization and Interactivity, are proposed as a theoretical base for the analysis and assessment of different aspects of computational architecture. These four qualities permeate and connect the diverse areas of research discussed, including architecture, cybernetics, computer science, interaction design and new media studies, which in combination provide the theoretical background. The modalities of computational architecture analysed here are, digital interior spaces, digitized design processes and communicational exterior environments. The analysis is conducted through case studies: The Fun Palace, Generator Project, Water Pavilion, Tower of Winds, Institute du Monde Arabe, The KPN building, Aegis Hyposurface, BIX Façade, Galleria Department Store, Dexia Tower, and also E:cue, Microstation, Auto-Cad, Rhino, Top Solid and GenerativeComponents software. These are important for discussion because they present different architectural concepts and thoughts about interactivity within architecture. The analytical processes used in the research distinguished and refined, eight modes of interaction: (1) interaction as a participatory process; (2) cybernetic mutualism; (3) thematic interaction; (4) human-computer interaction during architectural design production; (5) interaction during digital fabrication; (6) parametric interaction; (7) kinetic interaction with dynamic architectural forms; and (8) interaction with façades. Out of these, cybernetic mutualism is the mode of interaction proposed by this thesis

The Irresistible Animacy of Lively Artefacts

This thesis explores the perception of ‘liveliness’, or ‘animacy’, in robotically driven artefacts. This perception is irresistible, pervasive, aesthetically potent and poorly understood. I argue that the Cartesian rationalist tendencies of robotic and artificial intelligence research cultures, and associated cognitivist theories of mind, fail to acknowledge the perceptual and instinctual emotional affects that lively artefacts elicit. The thesis examines how we see artefacts with particular qualities of motion to be alive, and asks what notions of cognition can explain these perceptions. ‘Irresistible Animacy’ is our human tendency to be drawn to the primitive and strangely thrilling nature of experiencing lively artefacts. I have two research methodologies; one is interdisciplinary scholarship and the other is my artistic practice of building lively artefacts. I have developed an approach that draws on first-order cybernetics’ central animating principle of feedback-control, and second-order cybernetics’ concerns with cognition. The foundations of this approach are based upon practices of machine making to embody and perform animate behaviour, both as scientific and artistic pursuits. These have inspired embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended notions of cognition. I have developed an understanding using a theoretical framework, drawing upon literature on visual perception, behavioural and social psychology, puppetry, animation, cybernetics, robotics, interaction and aesthetics. I take as a starting point, the understanding that the visual cortex of the vertebrate eye includes active feature-detection for animate agents in our environment, and actively constructs the causal and social structure of this environment. I suggest perceptual ambiguity is at the centre of all animated art forms. Ambiguity encourages natural curiosity and interactive participation. It also elicits complex visceral qualities of presence and the uncanny. In the making of my own Lively Artefacts, I demonstrate a series of different approaches including the use of abstraction, artificial life algorithms, and reactive techniques

Glossarium BITri 2016 : Interdisciplinary Elucidation of Concepts, Metaphors, Theories and Problems Concerning Information

222 p.Terms included in this glossary recap some of the main concepts, theories, problems and metaphors concerning INFORMATION in all spheres of knowledge. This is the first edition of an ambitious enterprise covering at its completion all relevant notions relating to INFORMATION in any scientific context. As such, this glossariumBITri is part of the broader project BITrum, which is committed to the mutual understanding of all disciplines devoted to information across fields of knowledge and practic

Memory as Concept and Design in Digital Recording Devices

This thesis focuses on scientists and technologies brought together around the desire to improve fallible human memory. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork, it considers interdisciplinary collaborations among experts who design recording and archiving technologies that seek to maintain, extend, and commemorate life. How are everyday experiences translated as information, and for what purpose? How are our habits of drinking tea, talking on the phone, driving to work, and reminiscing with old photographs, turned into something that can be stored, analyzed and acted upon? How might information be used in real time to supplement the living in a recursive feedback loop? By addressing these questions, I reveal how these memory banks are inherently tied to logics of capital, of stock and storage, and to logics of the technological where, when it comes to memory, more is more. The first sections that make up this dissertation shift in scale from the micro to the macro: from historical national endeavors that turned ordinary citizens into a sensors and collectors of the mundane, to contemporary computational projects designed to store, organize and retrieve vast amounts of information. The second half of this dissertation focuses on two extreme cases of lifelogging that make use of prototypical recording technologies: Gordon Bell, who is on a quest to record his life for the sake of increased objectivity, productivity, and digital posterity, and Mrs. B, a woman who suffers from amnesia and records her life in the hopes of leading a normal life in which she can share the past with loved ones. Through these case studies, I show how new recording technologies are both a symptom of, and a cure for, anxieties about time. By focusing on the design of new objects and by addressing contemporary debates on the intentions that govern the making of recording machines, I examine how technologies take shape, and how they inform understandings of memory and the self as well as notions of human disability and enhancement. In short, I show that the past, as well as the present and the future, are always discursively, practically, and technologically informed

Architecture and space for thought

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 21/11/1988.This thesis is concerned with the description of individual experiences of (architectural) space in a social milieu. Architecture, while considered to be primarily concerned with space as its medium, has a very impoverished (or occasionally, very contorted) verbal language in which to discuss space. The author, as a beginner teacher, noted this in attempts to explore spatial experience with students of architecture, and resolved with their help to generate an appropriate verbal vehicle. The main body of the thesis relates this attempt and accounts for its failure. The Thesis, thus, follows three intertwined streams. 1) A scientific investigation into means for the description of human experience of (architectural) space, using methods developed from Kelly's Personal Construct Theory Repertory Grids. 2) A partially developed spatial analytic language, my personal response to 1) above, which is to be seen as the start of a new research programme that may last many years (the future of which is outlined). 3) An account of a personal learning experience both from, around and through each of these. These streams are organised into three parts. Part 1: Background Studies - into work in associated areas and fields, with an assessment of their relevance to the undertaking presented here. Part 2: The Experiments - attempting (and failing) to create a language, and the transition from verbal to visual, with critical arguments and observations. Part 3: A New Beginning - learning from the failure of Part 2, and the argument for and commencement of a new research programme

The work of art in the age of global culture : theory and practice

This Thesis looks at two films by Wim Wenders with a view of examining how they represent the 'global city.' This thesis is not an examination of the films representation of 'the city' per se, but a consideration of the process of engagement between the films and the individual. The objective is to examine how viewers of the films engage with the cinematic process so as to enhance their awareness of and participation in the formation of the global city. By considering the role the films play in this process. I speculate on the continuing role of the work of art in the age of global culture. The scope of this Thesis is provided by two films about Berlin by Wenders. The Thesis explicates how these films aid their viewer to participate in the global city. The Thesis extrapolates three different levels of abstraction in its analysis: 1) at an empirical level by analysing the films; 2) at an historical and social level by analysing the city and citizenship; and 3) at a cultural level by analysing the role art can play in society today.Australian Research Council, University of Technology Sydney, University of Amsterdampeer-reviewe

Sequence-learning in a self-referential closed-loop behavioural system

This thesis focuses on the problem of "autonomous agents". It is assumed that such agents want to be in a desired state which can be assessed by the agent itself when it observes the consequences of its own actions. Therefore the feedback from the motor output via the environment to the sensor input is an essential component of such a system. As a consequence an agent is defined in this thesis as a self-referential system which operates within a closed sensor- mot or-sensor feedback loop. The generic situation is that the agent is always prone to unpredictable disturbances which arrive from the outside, i.e. from its environment. These disturbances cause a deviation from the desired state (for example the organism is attacked unexpectedly or the temperature in the environment changes, ...). The simplest mechanism for managing such disturbances in an organism is to employ a reflex loop which essentially establishes reactive behaviour. Reflex loops are directly related to closed loop feedback controllers. Thus, they are robust and they do not need a built-in model of the control situation. However, reflexes have one main disadvantage, namely that they always occur "too late"; i.e., only after a (for example, unpleasant) reflex eliciting sensor event has occurred. This defines an objective problem for the organism. This thesis provides a solution to this problem which is called Isotropic Sequence Order (ISO-) learning. The problem is solved by correlating the primary reflex and a predictive sensor input: the result is that the system learns the temporal relation between the primary reflex and the earlier sensor input and creates a new predictive reflex. This (new) predictive reflex does not have the disadvantage of the primary reflex, namely of always being too late. As a consequence the agent is able to maintain its desired input-state all the time. In terms of engineering this means that ISO learning solves the inverse controller problem for the reflex, which is mathematically proven in this thesis. Summarising, this means that the organism starts as a reactive system and learning turns the system into a pro-active system. It will be demonstrated by a real robot experiment that ISO learning can successfully learn to solve the classical obstacle avoidance task without external intervention (like rewards). In this experiment the robot has to correlate a reflex (retraction after collision) with signals of range finders (turn before the collision). After successful learning the robot generates a turning reaction before it bumps into an obstacle. Additionally it will be shown that the learning goal of "reflex avoidance" can also, paradoxically, be used to solve an attraction task

Comments on the cybernetics of stability and regulation in social systems

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The methods and principles of cybernetics are applied to a discussion of stability and regulation in social systems taking a global viewpoint. The fundamental but still classical notion of stability as applied to homeostatic and ultrastable systems is discussed, with a particular reference to a specific well-studied example of a closed social group (the Tsembaga studied by Roy Rappaport in New Guinea). The discussion extends to the problem of evolution in large systems and the question of regulating evolution is addressed without special qualifications. A more comprehensive idea of stability is introduced as the argument turns to the problem of evolution for viability in general. Concepts pertaining to the problem of evolution are exemplified by a computer simulation model of an abstractly defined ecosystem in which various dynamic processes occur allowing the study of adaptive and evolutionary behaviour. In particular, the role of coalition formation and cooperative behaviour is stressed as a key factor in the evolution of complexity. The model consists of a population of several species of dimensionless automata inhabiting a geometrically defined environment in which a commodity essential for metabolic requirements (food) appears. Automata can sense properties of their environment, move about it, compete for food, reproduce or combine into coalitions thus forming new and more complex species. Each species is associated with a specific genotype from which the species’ behavioural characteristics (its phenotype) are derived. Complexity and survival efficiency of species increases through coalition formation, an event which occurs when automata are faced with an “undecidable” situation that is resolvable only by forming a new and more complex organization. Exogenous manipulation of the food distribution pattern and other critical factors produces different environmental conditions resulting in different behaviour patterns of automata and in different evolutionary “pathways.” Eve-1, the computer program developed to implement this model, accepts a high-level command language which allows for the setting of parameters, definition of initial configurations, and control of output formats. Results of simulation are produced graphically and include various pertinent tables. The program was given a modular hierarchical structure which allows easy generation of new versions incorporating different sets of rules. The model strives to capture the essence of the evolution of complexity viewed as a general process rather than to describe the evolution of a particular “real” system. In this respect it is not context-specific, and the behaviours which are observable in different runs can receive various interpretation depending on specific identifications. Of these, biological, ecological, and sociological interpretations are the most obvious and the latter, in particular, is stressed.J. M. Kaplan Fund in New Yor

Beyond Participatory Design for Service Robotics

The spread of technologies as Cloud and Distributed Computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning techniques comes with highly disruptive innovation potential and consequent design imperatives. High connectivity of devices and machines is shaping not only sensing and monitoring capabilities, but also describing ever more ubiquitous and diffuse computing capabilities, affecting decision-making with a wide range of assisting tools and methods. With the scaling potential of moving beyond its contemporary application such as industrial facilities monitoring, precision farming and agriculture, healthcare and risk management scenarios, RaaS is bound to involve an increasingly fluid and diverse range of users, shaping new socio-technical systems where practices, habits and relationships will evolve in respect to its adoption. On these premises, applied research at Polytechnic Interdepartmental Centre for Service Robotics in Turin, Italy, focuses on the development of a service robotics platform able to operate on the local scale and capable of adapting to evolving scenarios