17 research outputs found
Conceptual Modeling Applied to Data Semantics
In software system design, one of the purposes of diagrammatic modeling is to
explain something (e.g., data tables) to others. Very often, syntax of diagrams
is specified while the intended meaning of diagrammatic constructs remains
intuitive and approximate. Conceptual modeling has been developed to capture
concepts and their interactions with each other in the intended domain and to
represent structural and behavioral features of the modeled system. This paper
is a venture into diagrammatic approaches to the semantics of modeling
notations, with a focus on data and graph semantics. The first decade of the
new millennium has seen several new world-changing businesses spring to life
(e.g., Google and Twitter), that have put connected data at the center of their
trade. Harnessing such data requires significant effort and expertise, and it
quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. One solution involves building
graph-based data models, which is a challenging problem. In many applications,
the utilized software is managing not just objects as well as isolated and
discrete data items but also the connections between them. Data semantics is a
key ingredient to construct a model that explicitly describes the relationships
between data objects. In this paper, we claim that current ad hoc graphs that
attempt to provide semantics to data structures (e.g., relational tables and
tabular SQL) are problematic. These graphs mix static abstract concepts with
dynamic specification of objects (particulars). Such a claim is supported by
analysis that applies the thinging machine (TM) model to provide diagrammatic
representations of data (e.g., Neo4J graphs). The study s results show that to
take advantage of graph algorithms and simultaneously achieve appropriate data
semantics, the data graphs should be developed as simplified forms of TM.Comment: 12 pages, 27 figure
Ontology for Conceptual Modeling: Reality of What Thinging Machines Talk About, e.g., Information
In conceptual modeling (CM) as a subdiscipline of software engineering, current proposed ontologies (categorical analysis of entities) are typically established through whole adoption of philosophical theories (e.g. Bungeâs). In this paper, we pursue an interdisciplinary research approach to develop a diagrammatic-based ontological foundation for CM using philosophical ontology as a secondary source. It is an endeavor to escape an offshore procurement of ontology from philosophy and implant it in CM. In such an effort, the CM diagrammatic language plays an important role in contrast to dogmatic philosophical languagesâ obsession with abstract entities. Specifically, this paper is about developing a descriptive (in contrast to formal) ontology that a modeler accepts as a supplementary account of reality when using thinging machines (TMs; i.e. a reality that uncovers the ontology of things that TM modeling discusses or âtalks about,â akin to the ontology of natural language). Although existence is a well-established notion, we defend subsistence (Stoic term) as a supplementary mode of reality (e.g. reflection of event). The aim here is aligned toward developing CM notions and processes that are firm enough. Classical analysis of being per se (e.g. identity, substance, classes, objects) is de-emphasized in this work; nevertheless, philosophical concepts form an acknowledged authority to compare to. As a case study, such a methodology is applied to the notion of information that provides a common-sense understanding of the world. This application would enhance understanding of the TM methodology and clarify some of the issues that shed light on the question of the nature of information as an important concept in software engineering. Information is defined as about events; that is, it is about existing things. It is viewed as having a subsisting nature that exists only through being âcarried onâ by other things. The results seem to indicate a promising approach to define information and understand its nature
The mobility of facts
This thesis investigates the reductive abstraction of the digital and the physical immediacy of the sculptural, commonly perceived as an antagonistic relationship. Through a practical dialogue between virtual and tangible media I ask: what can digital technology tell us about the nature of sculpture as a contemporary art form? My practical experiments adapted a flexible methodology of digitising found objects through 3D scanning, digital modelling and CAD drawing; transforming them via a mix of contemporary software; and then reconstituting them as physical objects through 3D printing, analogue casting and hand tooling. This approach allowed the characteristics of tangible materials and processes to feedback against the affordances and constraints of digital operations. The research demonstrates that this feedback occurs in ways that are generative rather than antagonistic. By strategically deploying digital media to develop autonomous sculpture, I reconnect haptic perception with critical reflection upon that experience driven by analyses of current understandings of how digital mediation works.
The first part of the written component involves a theoretical enquiry into the means applied to production. Drawing upon recent art historical, anthropological and philosophical arguments, I question tropes of digital immateriality, computational thinking, and the âfixed facticityâ of sculpture. The second part provides an account of new insights brought to light by the struggle to realise these artworks in physical matter and arrive at a cogent understanding of what is made present as a consequence of digital mediation in the finished works.
My research shows how digital technology can emphasise rather than undermine what is particular to sculpture. It emerges that sculpture must rely on a tension between its tangible form and abstract mediation if it is to suspend reification. On the other hand, these sculptures problematize the tendency of digital technologies to efface aspects of their very real materiality. They could be seen as paradigmatic of our contradictory relations to objects in a world where the limits of what we think of as reality have become less clear. This research proposes that it is the sensuousness of the embodied encounter that makes the abstract anomalies of digital operations so incongruous. By calling attention to themselves as made things â digital artifices â the artworks produced in this research generate moments of ambivalence that oscillate between presentation and representation, cognition and recognition, when consciousness might take itself as its object. As concrete abstractions, they encapsulate how digital mediation alters the material fabric of the world
The Old/New Observatory: An Artistic and Curatorial Enquiry
My project explores the history and contemporary significance of the observatory through curatorial and artistic
research, principally commissions for a thematic exhibition and an artist book. The key question guiding my
research asked: What could an observatory be in the 21st century, in particular, one sited within a public gallery or
imagined through an artist book? This research question was investigated via archive-based enquiry into the historic
Liverpool Observatory, the co-curation of an observatory themed exhibition at FACT (Foundation for Art and
Creative Technology), Liverpool, and the production an artist book.
The key objective of my project was to establish a practice-based enquiry, employing both curatorial and artistic
modes of investigation, into the observatory and associated contexts of observational technoscience. By researching
these subjects, moving from a situated analysis of Liverpool Observatory to the observatoryâs contemporary global
significance, my project makes evident that the observatory, and specialised observational techniques and
instruments more broadly, have become increasingly prevalent part of everyday life across the earth, and demand
artistic engagement and reimagining. Furthermore, the project posits the observatory as an important touchstone
and unique microcosm for our contemporary technologically mediated condition. Through practice-based research
I demonstrate how the observatoryâs history is one of continual change and proliferation, shifting from assemblages
of instruments primarily contained within a specific site, toward an exploded form, ever more distributed,
networked, and enmeshed with human sensesand nature. My research, particularly through commissioned artwork
and the artist book, focuses in on the degree to which the observatory and observational technoscience is now
embodied at societal, community, and individual levels.
I argue that developing and manifesting an âold/newâ observatory within a public art gallery, of the kind produced
at FACT, entitled The New Observatory, functions as a useful method to simultaneously subvert and reflect upon the
historic precedents and contemporary conditions of observation. The project explores how locally embedded and
situated research, employing the tools of archival research, media archaeology, and the framework of new
materialism, can bring forth what may be called anachronisms of the contemporary. The New Observatory exhibitionâs
inherent fixity compared to the contemporary distributed character of observation is anachronistic, a contemporary
chronological inconsistency, but this renders it with a peculiarly timely and subversive agency. Equally, the artist
book I produced, inspired by study of observational notebooks and composed of a narrative drawn from historical
and modern observational science, traditionally printed and bound, is an analogous act of contemporary
anachronism. Accordingly, the project across book and exhibition, proffers itself as a method or case study for how
alternative and anachronistic, yet nonetheless contemporary, observatories and analogous observational practices,
may be brought forth and developed, through interactions between historical observatories and artistic practice in
collaboration with socio-technical communities.
I propose the subject and history of observation as a key bridge between the arts and sciences, through an enquiry
employing artistic and curatorial methods. In particular I utilise the public gallery and the medium of the artist
book, to examine how the gallery and artist publishing poses unique affinities with the observatory and processes
of observational inscription, rendering them useful methods to engage one another. Furthermore, the book and
commissions in the exhibition, investigates how observational inscription, measurements, and data, are real in
themselves, constitute phenomena in their own terms, and are not simply defined by that which they represent, value,
or sense.
The results and practices employed in my project suggests that a practice-based enquiry of the observatory is aided
by a transdisciplinary theoretical framework, which combines new materialism with the history and philosophy of
science and technology. In turn, I articulate how this theoretical framework supports a practice-based study of the
observatory, and how collectively they offer a useful means to explore a fundamental challenge at the heart of new
materialist and posthumanist philosophy; how to move beyond singular subject-object relations and
anthropocentric viewpoints. Finally, I demonstrate how the dual practices of artist and curator may cross fertilise
one another, and aforementioned theoretical frameworks, which in turn catalyse the spaces of the gallery, the book,
and the observatory, with a lively materiality
Alternative timelines: Counterfactuals as an approach to design pedagogy
Counterfactual histories modify the outcome of a historical event and then extrapolate an alternative version of history. In literature, imaginaries based on a counterfactual history can offer thought-provoking insights on contemporary life:  Itâs America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan. (Dick, 1992)  The Man in the High Castle describes the consequences of one popular starting point for counterfactual histories, Germany winning World War II. Historians tend to focus on military "decision points" at which events could have taken another path (Bernstein, 2000), or they imagine the absence of powerful individuals to speculate on how things might have been different. Since history is âoften written by the victors, it tends to âcrush the unfulfilled potential of the pastâ, as Walter Benjamin so aptly put it. By giving a voice to the âlosersâ of history, the counterfactual approach allows for a reversal of perspectivesâ (Deluermoz & SingaravĂ©lou, 2021). A counterfactual approach offers much potential as a methodology for practice-based design research and pedagogy â designers typically design for the world as it is rather than as it could be (Dunne & Raby, 2013). Design happens within entrenched systems whose foundations in many cases were laid centuries ago. Systems of economy, infrastructure and popular culture inform and constrain design methods, motivations and approaches to the evaluation of designed artefacts. Technological advances are applied via these rules, facilitating the iterative development of products and providing a neat lineage from the past and, more importantly, into the future (Auger et al, 2017). This version of design is increasingly being revealed as fundamentally flawed â highly successful in placating shareholders, it is not fit for purpose where ethical or environmental issues are concerned.  Counterfactuals provide an almost surreptitious method of combining design theory with practice. Through a rigorous analysis of history, the designer identifies key elements that are problematic when viewed through a contemporary lens. The approach can expose dominant structures of power and the influence these have on design culture and metrics: for example, the influence of legacy systems and how they limit the imagination and reveal the hidden or unexpected historical events that influenced the timeline. In A New Scottish Enlightenment, Mohammed J. Ali proposes a different outcome to the 1979 Scottish independence referendum (Debatty, 2014). A âyesâ vote leads to the creation of a new Scottish government, whose ultimate goal is the delivery of energy independence and a future free from fossil fuels. The project was exhibited shortly before the 2014 referendum. This starting point (a yes or no vote) resonates because it vividly presents a life that could have been. It makes us think about the power of our vote and the potential implications of a âbad choiceâ. The second aspect that gives the project wider relevance is the agenda used to drive extrapolation from its fictional starting point â a simple paradigm shift on energy generation and distribution. By defining energy independence as a national goal, it becomes possible to outline the ways this might happen. Important earlier examples of a counterfactual approach to design include Pohflepp and Chambers (Auger, 2012; Dunne & Raby, 2013).  Here is a rough summary of a counterfactual design methodology:  1.   The approach begins with the choice of subject â what is to be designed and the creation of a detailed and diverse timeline of its history. 2.   The identification of key moments that have led to the state of things; in particular the elements that could be critiqued from alternative value systems. 3.   The creation of a counterfactual timeline based on numerous possibilities â this is the key difference in method between historiography and design. The approach facilitates the creation of new value systems, motivations, rules and constraints that can be applied in practice. 4.   The design of things along the new timeline; it can be furnished at key moments with artefacts informed by the alternative rules.  A recent Masterâs project at the Ăcole normale supĂ©rieure Paris-Saclay followed this brief. Themes included rethinking approaches to aging based on the elimination of the royalist doctrines of 18th century France; a counterfactual history of agriculture with the tool acting as intermediary between the person working and their environment; and the archive â an examination of the modalities for a deployment of queer, feminist and trans-feminist archive design forms in everyday life. With its focus on underrepresented groups and unrealised possibilities, this last concept resonates with a broader discourse about decolonising design. What alternative value systems and approaches to design might have emerged if 20th-century design history had not been defined by the works of Morris, Dreyfus, Bel Geddes, Gropius, Rams, Starck, Ives, Dyson, and the rest?  Taking up Benjaminâs point about âthe unfulfilled potential of the pastâ, the most vital use of counterfactuals in design is to allow different voices to emerge that were drowned out by dominant or âstandardâ narrative(s). Recognising alternative histories can open up valuable future paths and create space for new possibilities and imaginaries to flourish. Works Cited  Auger, James (2012). Why Robot? Speculative design, the domestication of technology and the considered future. PhD thesis, Royal College of Art, London.  Auger, James, Hanna, Julian and Encinas, Enrique (2017). Reconstrained Design. Nordes, Oslo, 2-4 June 2017. ISSN 1604-9705.  Bernstein, R. B. (2000). Review of Ferguson, Niall, ed., Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. H-Law, H-Net Reviews. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3721  Chambers, James (2010). Artificial Defence Mechanisms. https://jameschambers.co.uk/artificial-defense-mechanisms  Debatty, RĂ©gine (2014). A New Scottish Enlightenment. We Make Money Not Art. https://we-make-money-not-art.com/a_new_scottish_enlightenment/  Deluermoz, Quentin & Pierre SingaravĂ©lou (2021). A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been. Yale University Press.  Dick, Phillip K. (1992). The Man in the High Castle. Vintage.  Dunne, Anthony & Fiona Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.  Pohflepp, Sascha (2009). The Golden Institute. http://cargocollective.com/saschapohflepp/Work/The-Golden-Institut
Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa
Embodiment and the Arts: Views from South Africa presents a diversity of views on the nature and status of the body in relation to acting, advertisements, designs, films, installations, music, photographs, performance, typography, and video works. Applying the methodologies of phenomenology, hermeneutic phenomenology, embodied perception, ecological psychology, and sense-based research, the authors place the body at the centre of their analyses. The cornerstone of the research presented here is the view that aesthetic experience is active and engaged rather than passive and disinterested. This novel volume offers a rich and diverse range of applications of the paradigm of embodiment to the arts in South Africa.Publishe