On the primacy and irreducible nature of first-person versus third-person information

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FiCoS: A fine-grained and coarse-grained GPU-powered deterministic simulator for biochemical networks.

Mathematical models of biochemical networks can largely facilitate the comprehension of the mechanisms at the basis of cellular processes, as well as the formulation of hypotheses that can be tested by means of targeted laboratory experiments. However, two issues might hamper the achievement of fruitful outcomes. On the one hand, detailed mechanistic models can involve hundreds or thousands of molecular species and their intermediate complexes, as well as hundreds or thousands of chemical reactions, a situation generally occurring in rule-based modeling. On the other hand, the computational analysis of a model typically requires the execution of a large number of simulations for its calibration, or to test the effect of perturbations. As a consequence, the computational capabilities of modern Central Processing Units can be easily overtaken, possibly making the modeling of biochemical networks a worthless or ineffective effort. To the aim of overcoming the limitations of the current state-of-the-art simulation approaches, we present in this paper FiCoS, a novel "black-box" deterministic simulator that effectively realizes both a fine-grained and a coarse-grained parallelization on Graphics Processing Units. In particular, FiCoS exploits two different integration methods, namely, the Dormand-Prince and the Radau IIA, to efficiently solve both non-stiff and stiff systems of coupled Ordinary Differential Equations. We tested the performance of FiCoS against different deterministic simulators, by considering models of increasing size and by running analyses with increasing computational demands. FiCoS was able to dramatically speedup the computations up to 855×, showing to be a promising solution for the simulation and analysis of large-scale models of complex biological processes

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Medicated bodies: Mental distress, social media and affect

Social media are increasingly being recruited into care practices in mental health. This paper analyses how a major new mental health social media site (www.elefriends.org.uk) is used when trying to manage the impact of psychiatric medication on the body. Drawing on Henri Bergson's concept of affection, analysis shows that Elefriends is used at particular moments of reconfiguration (e.g. change in dosage and/or medication), periods of self-experimentation (when people tailor their regimen by altering prescriptions or ceasing medication) and when dealing with a present bodily concern (showing how members have a direct, immediate relationship with the site). In addition, analysis illustrates how users face having to structure their communication to try to avoid 'triggering' distress in others. The paper concludes by pointing to the need to focus on the multiple emerging relationships between bodies and social media in mental health due to the ways the latter are becoming increasingly prominent technologies through which to experience the body when distressed

Aesthetic separation and the reflection of life in art.

417 p.This thesis aims to define the practice of art, which is understood as the creation and appreciation of artworks, in terms of separation. It further attempts to determine how the concept of separation can be used to relate biological and cognitive aspects of human life with the aesthetic experience and understanding of artworks. It accomplishes this by establishing correlations between biological and artistic functionality, while exploring how separation limits a purely biological conception of artistic practice. The theoretical research focuses on important aesthetic theories of the past two centuries, and recent studies into human cognition. The practical research incorporates two social, postconceptual art projects that implicate the theoretical research. The results demonstrate two principal separations that define artworks and people in relation to tradition and society respectively. The first involves an internal division of object and subject, or material and form. The second distinguishes internal from external, integral from relational, or the individual from the group. The oppositions that are generated by these separations play vital roles in the reflexive identification of self¿the foundation of aesthetic theory¿and the recognition of human products as artworks. Nonetheless, this thesis finds that the distinct sources of internal and external meaning during aesthetic experience impede a direct correlation between artistic cause and biological effect, and vice versa. Artworks do reflect human life, but their capacity to produce meaning is influenced by social and conceptual relations that escape biological determinism. The practice of art distinguishes its autonomy and tradition on its own terms.-Esta tesis tiene como objetivo definir la práctica del arte, que se entiende entendida como la creación y apreciación de las obras de arte, en términos de separación. Además, intenta determinar cómo se puede usar el concepto de separación para relacionar los aspectos biológicos y cognitivos de la vida humana con la experiencia estética y la comprensión de las obras de arte. Propone establecer correlaciones directas entre la funcionalidad biológica y artística, mientras demuestra cómo la separación inherente en la práctica artística limita una concepción puramente biológica. La investigación teórica se centra en importantes teorías estéticas de los últimos doscientos años y en estudios recientes sobre la cognición humana. La investigación práctica incorpora dos proyectos de arte social postconceptual que implican la investigación teórica. Los resultados muestran dos tipos de separaciones principales que las cuales definen las obras de arte y las personas en relación con la tradición y la sociedad, respectivamente. La primera implica una división interna de objeto y sujeto, o material y forma. La segunda distingue el interior del exterior, lo integral de lo relacional, o lo individual del grupo. Las oposiciones que generan estas divisiones desempeñan papeles vitales en la identificación reflexiva del yo¿la base de la teoría estética¿y el reconocimiento de los productos humanos como obras de arte. No obstante, esta tesis encuentra que las distintas fuentes de significado interno y externo durante la experiencia estética impiden una correlación directa entre la causa artística y el efecto biológico, y viceversa. Las obras de arte reflejan la vida humana, pero su capacidad para producir significado está influenciada por las relaciones sociales y conceptuales que escapan al determinismo biológico. La práctica del arte distingue su autonomía y tradición en sus propios términos

A transdisciplinary study of embodiment in HCI, AI and New Media.

The aim of this thesis is to report on a transdisciplinary approach, regarding the complexity of thinking about human embodiment in relation to machine embodiment. A practical dimension of this thesis is to elicit some principles for the design and evaluation of virtual embodiment. The transdisciplinary approach suggests, firstly, that a single discipline or reality is, on its own, not sufficient to explain the complexity and dynamism of the embodied interaction between the human and machine. Secondly, the thesis argues for thinking of transdisciplinary research as a process of individuation, becoming or transduction, that is, as a process of mediation between heterogeneous approaches rather than perceiving research as a stabilized cognitive schema designed to accumulate new outcomes to the already-there reality. Arguing for going beyond the individualized approaches to embodiment, this thesis analyzes three cases where the problems that appear in one case are resolved through the analysis of the following one. Consisting of three phases, this research moves from objective scientific ¿reality¿ to more phenomenological, subjective and complex realities. The first study employs a critical review of embodied conversational agents in human¿computer interaction (HCI) in a learning context using a comparative meta-analysis. Meta-analysis was applied because most of the studies for evaluating embodiment are experimental. A learning context was selected because the number of studies is suitable for meta-analysis and the findings could be generalized to other contexts. The analysis reveals that there is no ¿persona effect¿, that is, the expected positive effect of virtual embodiment on the participant¿s affective, perceptive and cognitive measures. On the contrary, it shows the reduction of virtual embodiment to image and a lack of consideration for the participant¿s embodiment and interaction, in addition to theoretical and methodological shortcomings. The second phase solves these problems by focusing on Mark Hansen¿s phenomenological account of embodiment in new media. The investigation shows that Hansen improves on the HCI account by focusing on the participant¿s dynamic interaction with new media. Nevertheless, his views of embodied perception and affection are underpinned by a subjective patriarchal account leading to object/subject and body/work polarizations. The final phase resolves this polarization by analyzing the controversial work of Alan Turing on intelligent machinery. The research provides a different reading of the Turing Machine based on Simondon¿s concept of individuation, repositioning its materiality from the abstract non-existent to the actual-virtual realm and investigating the reasons for its abstraction. It relates the emergence of multiple human¿machine encounters in Turing¿s work to the complex counter-becoming of what it describes as ¿the Turing Machine compound¿.Ministry of Higher Education in the Sultanate of Oma

Numerical Linear Algebra applications in Archaeology: the seriation and the photometric stereo problems

The aim of this thesis is to explore the application of Numerical Linear Algebra to Archaeology. An ordering problem called the seriation problem, used for dating findings and/or artifacts deposits, is analysed in terms of graph theory. In particular, a Matlab implementation of an algorithm for spectral seriation, based on the use of the Fiedler vector of the Laplacian matrix associated with the problem, is presented. We consider bipartite graphs for describing the seriation problem, since the interrelationship between the units (i.e. archaeological sites) to be reordered, can be described in terms of these graphs. In our archaeological metaphor of seriation, the two disjoint nodes sets into which the vertices of a bipartite graph can be divided, represent the excavation sites and the artifacts found inside them. Since it is a difficult task to determine the closest bipartite network to a given one, we describe how a starting network can be approximated by a bipartite one by solving a sequence of fairly simple optimization problems. Another numerical problem related to Archaeology is the 3D reconstruction of the shape of an object from a set of digital pictures. In particular, the Photometric Stereo (PS) photographic technique is considered

Naturalism and Process Ontology for Rhetorical Theory and Methodology: Reconsidering the Ideological Tautology

Rhetorical Theory and Criticism primarily features modes of close reading that reconstructs the meaning of a text by constructing meaning through contingent textual moments within a theoretical perspective, typically ideological criticism. The dominant mode of ideological critique projects ideology as an anterior and universal cause; this projection strips individual and group agency from within various systems by totalizing them under one system. I strive to answer how we can preserve descriptive acuity while opening and exploiting contingent gaps to make scholarship more efficacious for social justice. Chapter one explores the inevitability of infinite regress in response to problems of vagueness endemic to the philosophical enterprise. Chapter two explores Bergson’s Retrospective Illusion: strict modes of ontological necessity in a transcendental reasoning pattern produce tautological ontologies in which an effect becomes projected backwards as universal but, ultimately, illusory cause. Chapter three maps out Bergson’s solution to the “Retrospective Illusion” and names it the “Prospective Illusion.” In short, chains of sufficient reasoning are projected out towards tendencies in becoming such that universals are always in construction and never fully actual. Ontologies founded upon spatial necessity are replaced by a process ontology closely attuned to scientific process that folds space and time topologically into tendential becoming. Chapter four applies both illusions to rhetorical theory in its ideological and new materialist modes to argue for the usefulness of both models in breaking rhetorical theory out of its tacit methodological reliance upon reconstructive close reading and by re-evaluating some of rhetorical theory’s ontological assumptions. The project concludes with prospective directions in methodology