Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Mixed Tree and Spatial Representation of Dissimilarity Judgments

Whereas previous research has shown that either tree or spatial representations of dissimilarity judgments may be appropriate, focussing on the comparative fit at the aggregate level, we investigate whether there is heterogeneity among subjects in the extent to which their dissimilarity judgments are better represented by ultrametric tree or spatial multidimensional scaling models. We develop a mixture model for the analysis of dissimilarity data, that is formulated in a stochastic context, and entails a representation and a measurement model component. The latter involves distributional assumptions on the measurement error, and enables estimation by maximum likelihood. The representation component allows dissimilarity judgments to be represented either by a tree structure or by a spatial configuration, or a mixture of both. In order to investigate the appropriateness of tree versus spatial representations, the model is applied to twenty empirical data sets. We compare the fit of our model with that of aggregate tree and spatial models, as well as with mixtures of pure trees and mixtures of pure spaces, respectively. We formulate some empirical generalizations on the relative importance of tree versus spatial structures in representing dissimilarity judgments at the individual level.Multidimensional scaling;tree models;mixture models;dissimilarity judgments

Knowledge-based support in Non-Destructive Testing for health monitoring of aircraft structures

Maintenance manuals include general methods and procedures for industrial maintenance and they contain information about principles of maintenance methods. Particularly, Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) methods are important for the detection of aeronautical defects and they can be used for various kinds of material and in different environments. Conventional non-destructive evaluation inspections are done at periodic maintenance checks. Usually, the list of tools used in a maintenance program is simply located in the introduction of manuals, without any precision as regards to their characteristics, except for a short description of the manufacturer and tasks in which they are employed. Improving the identification concepts of the maintenance tools is needed to manage the set of equipments and establish a system of equivalence: it is necessary to have a consistent maintenance conceptualization, flexible enough to fit all current equipment, but also all those likely to be added/used in the future. Our contribution is related to the formal specification of the system of functional equivalences that can facilitate the maintenance activities with means to determine whether a tool can be substituted for another by observing their key parameters in the identified characteristics. Reasoning mechanisms of conceptual graphs constitute the baseline elements to measure the fit or unfit between an equipment model and a maintenance activity model. Graph operations are used for processing answers to a query and this graph-based approach to the search method is in-line with the logical view of information retrieval. The methodology described supports knowledge formalization and capitalization of experienced NDT practitioners. As a result, it enables the selection of a NDT technique and outlines its capabilities with acceptable alternatives

Improving Distributed Representations of Tweets - Present and Future

Unsupervised representation learning for tweets is an important research field which helps in solving several business applications such as sentiment analysis, hashtag prediction, paraphrase detection and microblog ranking. A good tweet representation learning model must handle the idiosyncratic nature of tweets which poses several challenges such as short length, informal words, unusual grammar and misspellings. However, there is a lack of prior work which surveys the representation learning models with a focus on tweets. In this work, we organize the models based on its objective function which aids the understanding of the literature. We also provide interesting future directions, which we believe are fruitful in advancing this field by building high-quality tweet representation learning models.Comment: To be presented in Student Research Workshop (SRW) at ACL 201