Perceptions of Selves: Beyond the Skin Bag - Analyzing self-representation and ethos in creative digital artefacts

As technological innovations reach new heights, questions regarding how we act, see, and live with machines reveal themselves. What was once viewed as mere tools have become something we perceive as part of our social world. Technological actants now hold the power of persuasion, the power to be perceived as a self. This constitutes new perspectives regarding how we relate to those with self-representational qualities. Relations between actants in social settings boil down to discourse, where this study manifests itself. The point of entry is, paradoxically, taking root in ancient theories of rhetoric. Because self-representation in digital artefacts must necessarily be produced, it becomes a text with the potential for analysis. In its broadest possible meaning, text is a modal manifestation of existence, a textual manifestation of self. The representations are always mediated, and that mediation opens up questions about authenticity, agency, and ethos. The artefacts I propose in this thesis exist in a way that changes shape in the perception of those who perceive it. When artefacts are imbued with some form of life, uniqueness, personality and ethos, approaches and attentions must change. That is dependent on the relations we allow and instil in them. We now have different relations than before, which means that the concept of ethos must be seen anew. This thesis is a philosophical and rhetorical exploration of how ethos and self-representation can be renewed to encompass more ways of being. Through perspectives inspired by Posthumanism and Actor-Network Theory, I explore themes relating to self-representation and ethos to conceptualize an updated framework that, in essence, “de-anthropocentrize” our field of view. This thesis does not aim to be either final or limiting, but a starting point in opening a conversation about the rhetorical impact we encounter every day through humans and otherwise.Mastergradsoppgave i digital kulturDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

'Chinese Architecture' + 'Western Architecture': A False Dichotomy

For some time, even if this is not expressed explicitly, 'Chinese architecture' and 'western architecture' are conceived and perceived as two homogeneous totalities, in opposition to one another. In consequence, the fast transformation of Chinese cities in the last three decades is often accounted for in terms of the influence of 'western architecture' upon 'Chinese architecture'. Indeed, the urban growth in this period has involved architectural expertise, products, technologies and designs from Europe and the USA. To some people, what is seen as 'new' is 'western', and hence, the transformation is a process of 'westernisation'. However, this is precisely what the thesis argues against. It argues that to use the category of the 'Chinese' and the 'Western' to explain the products of architecture and urbanism in last thirty years China is neither useful nor appropriate. This thesis concerns the issue of 'conceptual translation' of architectural discourse from Europe and the USA into the context of China, as an opposition to 'linguistic translation' which concerns literal meanings of terms. Its examination focuses on the category that the concept 'western modern' indicates in Chinese architecture, and relates its operation and construction to the importation history of European and American architecture throughout the twentieth century, as well as pedagogy of architectural training, regularisation of design principles and methods, identification of architectural profession. practice of the architects' offices, organisation of design competition, and management of the city, mode of marketing and purchase in the real estate market, state politics and cultural interpretations. The analysis reveals that while waves of importation have sustained the formation of architecture as a modern practice in China from the early twentieth century up to now, they have not arrived as symmetrical reflection of what they are in the 'original' context. A difference, in comparison to European and American architecture, can be characterised by the absence of a coherent 'modernism' and the continuity of the modified 'Beaux-Arts' practice in Chinese architecture. Therefore, the assumption of 'westernisation' is wrong in its first place, as there is no such distinction that could be made between the 'Chinese' and the 'Western'

Fine-Grained Linguistic Soft Constraints on Statistical Natural Language Processing Models

This dissertation focuses on effective combination of data-driven natural language processing (NLP) approaches with linguistic knowledge sources that are based on manual text annotation or word grouping according to semantic commonalities. I gainfully apply fine-grained linguistic soft constraints -- of syntactic or semantic nature -- on statistical NLP models, evaluated in end-to-end state-of-the-art statistical machine translation (SMT) systems. The introduction of semantic soft constraints involves intrinsic evaluation on word-pair similarity ranking tasks, extension from words to phrases, application in a novel distributional paraphrase generation technique, and an introduction of a generalized framework of which these soft semantic and syntactic constraints can be viewed as instances, and in which they can be potentially combined. Fine granularity is key in the successful combination of these soft constraints, in many cases. I show how to softly constrain SMT models by adding fine-grained weighted features, each preferring translation of only a specific syntactic constituent. Previous attempts using coarse-grained features yielded negative results. I also show how to softly constrain corpus-based semantic models of words (“distributional profiles”) to effectively create word-sense-aware models, by using semantic word grouping information found in a manually compiled thesaurus. Previous attempts, using hard constraints and resulting in aggregated, coarse-grained models, yielded lower gains. A novel paraphrase generation technique incorporating these soft semantic constraints is then also evaluated in a SMT system. This paraphrasing technique is based on the Distributional Hypothesis. The main advantage of this novel technique over current “pivoting” techniques for paraphrasing is the independence from parallel texts, which are a limited resource. The evaluation is done by augmenting translation models with paraphrase-based translation rules, where fine-grained scoring of paraphrase-based rules yields significantly higher gains. The model augmentation includes a novel semantic reinforcement component: In many cases there are alternative paths of generating a paraphrase-based translation rule. Each of these paths reinforces a dedicated score for the “goodness” of the new translation rule. This augmented score is then used as a soft constraint, in a weighted log-linear feature, letting the translation model learn how much to “trust” the paraphrase-based translation rules. The work reported here is the first to use distributional semantic similarity measures to improve performance of an end-to-end phrase-based SMT system. The unified framework for statistical NLP models with soft linguistic constraints enables, in principle, the combination of both semantic and syntactic constraints -- and potentially other constraints, too -- in a single SMT model

Translating practice

Translatability and translation, the possibility and act of conveying some thing between people, objects, languages, cultures, times, spaces and media, have become increasingly important elements of creative practice and works of art. My research explores this proposition. To contextualise this concept of translation as an artistic and critical method mediating the relationship of the seeable to the sayable I retrace an under-mined vein of translation that grew from the Enlightenment, the Early (Jena) Romantic response to it and its subsequent development through Walter Benjamin to other modern theorists. I suggest that this tradition of translation has developed into a creative method that assumes a pre-existent given from which it evolves in order to destabilise, re-appropriate and make-new. The thesis argues that art has come to occupy the space of translation and proposes that an interpretative mode is ultimately antithetical to a form of thought engaged with in the creative process. This relies on the understanding of a qualitative distinction between acts of translation as presentational and of interpretation as representational. The distinction is not clear-cut since these two forms of mediation operate on a continuum. The probable root of “interpret” in English is “between prices” and derives from trade. This etymology stresses the transactional, hermeneutic role of the interpreter as a responsive agent that negotiates between distinct value systems to ensure equivalence during the process of exchange. While Interpretation operates primarily within the symbolic aspect of language translation retains a relationship to metaphor, which acknowledges that during transfer something becomes something that it literally is not. It must therefore also account for Aporia, or what fails to cross over and for a-signifying, singular aspects that affect or alter the symbolic during this process. In contrast to interpretation, translation’s relation to subjectivity, its resistance to schematisation and reduction to the accurate, objective and rational transfer of information provides a prophylaxis of doubt and generates heterogeneity. The thesis triangulates my practices as artist, translator and critic using translation to destabilise and re-calibrate the relationship of theory to practice. In relation to theory, rather than use this to explain, interpret, or categorize art, it advocates the translational practice of placing in parallel so that lines of thought may be drawn from one to the other, responding to and setting up points of intersection, divergence and congruence to encourage a non-hierarchical associative-dissociative dismantling. Translation informs the research method, structure and content of the thesis, which occupies an inter-theoretical, inter-disciplinary or matrixial space. As such, it is edified through a process that derives from and displays the translational method and diverse sources that constitute it. Four case studies bring together practices employing a translational method from different periods, cultures, creative practices and theoretical sources: Bernard Leach and Ezra Pound’s modernist projects; Jorge Luis Borges’ theory of translation and Briony Fer’s re-presentation of Eva Hesse’s studio work; the Brazilian poets Haroldo and Agosto De Campos’ theory of Cannibalistic translation and painter Adriana Varejao’s work with tiles; and ceramicist Alison Britton in light of Donald Winnicott’s concept of transitional spaces

Multisensory processing, affect and multimodal manipulation: A cognitive-semiotic empirical study of travel documentaries

Multisensory processing represents the mirror image of multimodal meaning-making, in that interpreting multimodal discourse predominantly requires multisensory processing, even when different modes rely on the same sensory channels (Khateb et al., 2002), for example images and text in a book (Gibbons, 2012, p. 40). Remley (2017) makes a similar point when discussing the neuroscience of multimodal persuasive messages, when he asserts that “[t]he term ‘multisensory integration’ is the biological equivalent of the term ‘multimodal’ in rhetoric” (p. 9). An understanding of multisensory processing can therefore be (and presumably is) exploited at the stage of text-production as a resource for manipulative multimodal discourses, with all the ideological consequences that entails. The concept of manipulation has been a matter of discussion in critical discourse studies (CDS) and pragmatics for more than a decade. Agreement on how to define and analyse the latter has yet to be reached, although most scholars seem to agree that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) can provide a useful entry point thanks to its theorisation of variable contexts and individual cognitive environments (de Saussure, 2005; Maillat, 2013; Maillat and Oswald, 2009; Oswald, 2014). Moreover, the concept of epistemic vigilance (Sperber et al., 2010) has been used to investigate the cognitive barriers that need to be bypassed in order for manipulation to work (Hart, 2013; Mazzarella, 2015). Finally, Sorlin (2017: 133) recently highlighted the need to focus not only on the cognitive aspects influencing manipulation, but also on “the psychological aspect of manipulation that often consists in exploiting the target's weaknesses”, thus pointing towards the dimension of affect as a further explanatory force. This paper begins with an overview of the concepts of manipulation and epistemic vigilance, before discussing insights from the field of multisensory processing in the neurosciences. Then, drawing on some principles from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) and looking at some data from travel documentary programmes and their viewers, examples are offered of how manipulation is attempted and achieved through this specific multimodal genre in individual case studies. The focus of the analysis will be on bottom-up (i.e. text-driven) processes and the interpretation/reaction of an audience. The research draws on a novel methodological approach (Castaldi, 2021) that integrates Audience Research (e.g., Schrøder et al., 2003) and Social Semiotics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; van Leeuwen, 1999; Machin and Mayr, 2012) in order to analyse media interactions in their individuality. Results suggest that the affective dimension, predominantly attended to through sonic and visual modes, plays a key role for multimodal manipulation to successfully occur

How sketches work: a cognitive theory for improved system design

Evidence is presented that in the early stages of design or composition the mental processes used by artists for visual invention require a different type of support from those used for visualising a nearly complete object. Most research into machine visualisation has as its goal the production of realistic images which simulate the light pattern presented to the retina by real objects. In contrast sketch attributes preserve the results of cognitive processing which can be used interactively to amplify visual thought. The traditional attributes of sketches include many types of indeterminacy which may reflect the artist's need to be "vague". Drawing on contemporary theories of visual cognition and neuroscience this study discusses in detail the evidence for the following functions which are better served by rough sketches than by the very realistic imagery favoured in machine visualising systems. 1. Sketches are intermediate representational types which facilitate the mental translation between descriptive and depictive modes of representing visual thought. 2. Sketch attributes exploit automatic processes of perceptual retrieval and object recognition to improve the availability of tacit knowledge for visual invention. 3. Sketches are percept-image hybrids. The incomplete physical attributes of sketches elicit and stabilise a stream of super-imposed mental images which amplify inventive thought. 4. By segregating and isolating meaningful components of visual experience, sketches may assist the user to attend selectively to a limited part of a visual task, freeing otherwise over-loaded cognitive resources for visual thought. 5. Sequences of sketches and sketching acts support the short term episodic memory for cognitive actions. This assists creativity, providing voluntary control over highly practised mental processes which can otherwise become stereotyped. An attempt is made to unite the five hypothetical functions. Drawing on the Baddeley and Hitch model of working memory, it is speculated that the five functions may be related to a limited capacity monitoring mechanism which makes tacit visual knowledge explicitly available for conscious control and manipulation. It is suggested that the resources available to the human brain for imagining nonexistent objects are a cultural adaptation of visual mechanisms which evolved in early hominids for responding to confusing or incomplete stimuli from immediately present objects and events. Sketches are cultural inventions which artificially mimic aspects of such stimuli in order to capture these shared resources for the different purpose of imagining objects which do not yet exist. Finally the implications of the theory for the design of improved machine systems is discussed. The untidy attributes of traditional sketches are revealed to include cultural inventions which serve subtle cognitive functions. However traditional media have many short-comings which it should be possible to correct with new technology. Existing machine systems for sketching tend to imitate nonselectively the media bound properties of sketches without regard to the functions they serve. This may prove to be a mistake. It is concluded that new system designs are needed in which meaningfully structured data and specialised imagery amplify without interference or replacement the impressive but limited creative resources of the visual brain

Skyscraping Frontiers

As a space of extremes, the skyscraper has been continually constructed as an urban frontier in American cultural productions. Like its counterpart of the American wilderness, this vertical frontier serves as a privileged site for both subversion and excessive control. Beyond common metaphoric readings, this study models the skyscraper not only as a Foucauldian heterotopia, but also as a complex network of human and nonhuman actors while retracing its development from its initial assemblage during the 19th century to its steady evolution into a smart structure from the mid-20th century onward. It takes a close look at US-American literary and filmic fictions and the ways in which they sought to make sense of this extraordinary structure throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries. More traditional poststructuralist spatial theories are connected with concepts and methods of Actor-Network Theory in a compelling account of the skyscraper’s evolution as reflected in fictional media from early 20th-century short stories via a range of action, disaster and horror films to selected city novels of the 1990s and 2000s