The Relationship between the Visual and the Verbal within a Comedic Moment: After the laughter

This research looks at comedy and question what its function is. It identifies the gag as a specific moment that solicits laughter and examines what is expressed within and through a gag and whether a gag can trigger a change in our thinking. What are the structures, functions and outcomes of a gag? The project approaches these questions through an examination of the relationship between the visual and the verbal within the gag. This examination involves two very different types of comedy, silent and stand-up, and considers specific gags from both. The methods used for this examination take the form of both a body of visual artwork and a written thesis. The visual work consists of photographs, videos and text pieces. It is within the video works that the relationship between the visual and the verbal is most readily seen and this is due to the mimetic techniques used to make the work. The videos are a series of re-enactments of silent and stand-up moments and involve my re-performance to camera of selected gags. I have removed certain elements from the gag while emphasizing others through mimicry. In doing so I hope to make the viewer of the relationship between language and gesture within a gag. The writing begins with an examination of what it is that constitutes a gag. The relationship between gag and narrative is looked at first, then the relationship between the comic performer and the audience, and finally the ways in which the comic performer manipulates the medium that is used to create the gag. Following this comes a close reading of three comic performers’ work: Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., Richard Pryor’s Live in Concert and Jo Brand’s Barely Live. The gags in each work are examined in order to see how the relationship between the visual and the verbal is used to solicit laughter and then further examined in order to discover what effect the gag has on its audience. How do language and gesture work together to challenge the audience's thinking? The methods used in both the practical work and the writing are empirical in natures. The source material is examined closely: gags are unpicked and put back together again. This approach allows the research to tease out some propositions surrounding the relationship between the visual and the verbal

Distinguishing Emergent and Sequential Processes by Learning Emergent Second-Order Features

abstract: Emergent processes can roughly be defined as processes that self-arise from interactions without a centralized control. People have many robust misconceptions in explaining emergent process concepts such as natural selection and diffusion. This is because they lack a proper categorical representation of emergent processes and often misclassify these processes into the sequential processes category that they are more familiar with. The two kinds of processes can be distinguished by their second-order features that describe how one interaction relates to another interaction. This study investigated if teaching emergent second-order features can help people more correctly categorize new processes, it also compared different instructional methods in teaching emergent second-order features. The prediction was that learning emergent features should help more than learning sequential features because what most people lack is the representation of emergent processes. Results confirmed this by showing participants who generated emergent features and got correct features as feedback were better at distinguishing two kinds of processes compared to participants who rewrote second-order sequential features. Another finding was that participants who generated emergent features followed by reading correct features as feedback did better in distinguishing the processes than participants who only attempted to generate the emergent features without feedback. Finally, switching the order of instruction by teaching emergent features and then asking participants to explain the difference between emergent and sequential features resulted in equivalent learning gain as the experimental group that received feedback. These results proved teaching emergent second-order features helps people categorize processes and demonstrated the most efficient way to teach them.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Psychology 201

Time and Space in Video Games: A Cognitive-Formalist Approach

Video games are temporal artifacts: They change with time as players interact with them in accordance with rules. In this study, the author investigates the formal aspects of video games that determine how these changes are produced and sequenced. Theories of time perception drawn from the cognitive sciences lay the groundwork for an in-depth analysis of these features, making for a comprehensive account of time in this novel medium. This book-length study dedicated to time perception and video games is an indispensable resource for game scholars and game developers alike. Its reader-friendly style makes it readily accessible to the interested layperson

Independent, Mainstream and In Between: How and Why Indie Films Have Become Their Own Genre

Indie film is a term many film critics and audience members use, but do most people know what that word is really labeling? This paper unravels what is meant by the term indie film, how it is defined and how it can be classified in today\u27s film industry as its own genre. Through an analysis of a number of recent indie and Hollywood films, this paper illustrates that indie films can be categorized by their un-Hollywood mechanical and narrative styles. Furthermore, in an examination of the history of the American film industry, it shows that today\u27s industry has reached a muddled state where determining the financial situation of a film is difficult, making room for a new definition of the term independent. Although, indies are made by both large studio corporations and tiny production companies, viewers still recognize them as indies. They do not divide them by their finances, and in fact expect a certain style from them no matter how much they are made for. All of this allows indie films of today to be classified into their own genre - The Indie

Recollect: home video and the autobiographical self

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2015This research looks at home video footage and family photographs as part of the visual portrait of a curated record of the autobiographical self. The research includes a written thesis exploring the theoretical concerns and provides a reflexive analysis of the creative component of the PhD, which is a 60-minute documentary film. The research, both creative and written, assesses how autobiographical memory is informed and shaped by home video recordings, and how new digital formats have allowed home video to collapse the boundaries between the personal and the public. It also explores how personal narratives speak to the wider socio-political and cultural concerns of a particular time. These ‘collapses’ between boundaries provide a playful, pluralistic approach to a history of the self. The many paradigms that coexist within the work – the past and the present, time and space, previously accepted narratives and newly formed ones – do not exist as binary to each other, but rather exist in conversation with each other and serves to explore the ever elastic subject/object dichotomy. The autobiographical film is titled Fraternal, with the tagline ‘The future isn’t like it used to be’. It tells the emotional story of the relationships between myself and my twin, and our parents – the hellos and goodbyes, arrivals and departures, beginnings and endings that happen within family ties. The film is set against the backdrop of the political situation in southern Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. It is cut predominantly from personal home video footage: a mixture of Super 8mm, Hi8 and DV footage shot largely between 1984 and 1994 in Zimbabwe and South Afric

Recollect: home video and the autobiographical self

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2015This research looks at home video footage and family photographs as part of the visual portrait of a curated record of the autobiographical self. The research includes a written thesis exploring the theoretical concerns and provides a reflexive analysis of the creative component of the PhD, which is a 60-minute documentary film. The research, both creative and written, assesses how autobiographical memory is informed and shaped by home video recordings, and how new digital formats have allowed home video to collapse the boundaries between the personal and the public. It also explores how personal narratives speak to the wider socio-political and cultural concerns of a particular time. These ‘collapses’ between boundaries provide a playful, pluralistic approach to a history of the self. The many paradigms that coexist within the work – the past and the present, time and space, previously accepted narratives and newly formed ones – do not exist as binary to each other, but rather exist in conversation with each other and serves to explore the ever elastic subject/object dichotomy. The autobiographical film is titled Fraternal, with the tagline ‘The future isn’t like it used to be’. It tells the emotional story of the relationships between myself and my twin, and our parents – the hellos and goodbyes, arrivals and departures, beginnings and endings that happen within family ties. The film is set against the backdrop of the political situation in southern Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. It is cut predominantly from personal home video footage: a mixture of Super 8mm, Hi8 and DV footage shot largely between 1984 and 1994 in Zimbabwe and South Afric

Speaking of change: a conversation analysis of organizational change in a business meeting

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2014Current theories of communication in human organizations conceptualize them as entities that are created, maintained, and changed in the everyday discourse among the individuals who comprise them. In arguing this general perspective, however, these theories do not come to grips with how the processes of creating, maintaining, and changing are actually implemented in the actual day-to-day talk that occurs in organizations. This study utilized an abstract characterization of episodic and continuous change in organizations to inform a single-case, conversation analytic investigation of the talk-in-interaction in a recording of business meeting in a small company. The analysis revealed that features of both episodic and continuous change were evident or "hearable" in the talk, in particular the active restructuring of the organizational chart for one division of the company. These changes were evident both in the explicit discussion, as well as in key internal features of the talk such as shifts in the organization of turntaking. The analysis makes evident that current theorizing in organizational communication in general, and in organizational change in particular, needs to be amended in order to more directly link abstract generalizations about change to the details of how it is achieved in everyday talk

How to tell stories using visualization: strategies towards narrative visualization

Os benefícios da utilização das narrativas são desde há muito conhecidos e o seu potencial para simplificar conceitos, transmitir valores culturais e experiências, criar ligações emocionais e capacidade para ajudar a reter a informação tem sido explorado em diferentes áreas. As narrativas não são só a principal forma como as pessoas obtêm o sentido do mundo, mas também a forma mais fácil que encontrámos para partilhar informações complexas. Devido ao seu potencial, as narrativas foram recentemente abordadas na área da Visualização de Informação e do Conhecimento, muitas vezes apelidada de Visualização Narrativa. Esta questão é particularmente importante para os media, uma das áreas que tem impulsionado a investigação em Visualização Narrativa. A necessidade de incorporar histórias nas visualizações surge da necessidade de partilhar dados complexos de um modo envolvente. Hoje em dia somos confrontados com a elevada quantidade de informação disponível, um desafio difícil de resolver. Os avanços da tecnologia permitiram ir além das formas tradicionais de narrativa e de representação de dados, dando-nos meios mais atraentes e sofisticados para contar histórias. Nesta tese, exploro os benefícios da introdução de narrativas nas visualizações. Adicionalmente também exploro formas de combinar histórias com a visualizações e métodos eficientes para representar e dar sentido aos dados de uma forma que permite que as pessoas se relacionem com a informação. Esta investigação está bastante próxima da área do jornalismo, no entanto estas técnicas podem ser aplicadas em diferente áreas (educação, visualização científica, etc.). Para explorar ainda mais este tema foi adotada um avaliação que utiliza diferentes metodologias como a tipologia, vários casos de estudo, um estudo com grupos de foco, e ainda estudos de design e análise de técnicas.The benefits of storytelling are long-known and its potential to simplify concepts, convey cultural values and experiences, create emotional connection, and capacity to help retain information has been explored in di erent areas, such as journalism, education, marketing, and others. Narratives not only have been the main way people make sense of the world, but also the easiest way humans found out to share complex information. Due to its potential narratives have also recently been approached in the area of Information and Knowledge Visualization, several times being referred to as Narrative Visualization. This matter is also particularly important for news media, one of the areas that has been pushing the research on Narrative Visualization. The necessity to incorporate storytelling in visualizations arises from the need to share complex data in a way that is engaging. Nowadays we also have the challenge of the high amount of information available, which can be hard to cope with. Advances in technology have enabled us to go beyond the traditional forms of storytelling and representing data, giving us more attractive and sophisticated means to tell stories. In this dissertation, I explore the benefits of infusing visualizations with narratives. In addition I also present ways of combining storytelling with visualization and e cient methods to represent and make sense of data in a way that allows people to relate with the information. This research is closely related to journalism, but these techniques can be applied to completely di erent areas (education, scientific visualization, etc.). To further explore this topic a mixedmethod evaluation that consists of a typology, several case studies and a focus group study was chosen, as well as design studies and techniques review. This dissertation is intended to contribute to the evolving understanding of the field of narrative visualization

Autism, Visual Thinking, and Independence

This project was to design a product that could assist a group of people who live with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The product was a personal organizer application designed to help people with ASD to manage themselves without the need for help from caregiver. This project reveals the difficulties faced by people with ASD, why they need a product such as personal organizer when they grow up, and why the current market of products aimed at people with ASD is flawed. This project contains research from past studies of ASD, new knowledge from participants, their caregivers, and experiments conducted to build an application for the iPad. An application built to make daily life a bit easier for young adults living with the disorder