19 research outputs found
Picturing 9/11: trauma, technics, mediation
The September 11 attacks employed violence as a means of picture-making on a horrifically unprecedented scale. Furthermore, â9/11â crystallised the intersection of trauma discourse and visual culture at both popular and academic levels. Questions surrounding the role of visual images and processes of mediation within trauma theory are thus important in understanding an event which was fundamentally mediated and intensely visual.
The concept of âvirtual traumaâ raises the possibility that mediation can become the site or source of trauma, as well as a mode of its transmission or representation. This thesis explores the ways in which the confusion of presence and absence named by the figure of virtuality operates in the register of visuality and visibility, both literal and figurative, in specific representations of 9/11 by Don DeLillo, FrĂ©dĂ©ric Beigbeder, Paul Greengrass and Luc Tuymans. These are read as responses to the problem of how to represent an event which was already its own representation. It therefore seeks to situate 9/11 within a history of technics as the enframing of a particular relationship between subject and object through representation, as proposed by Heidegger and developed by others including Derrida and Samuel Weber.
Through detailed analyses of these works and their popular and academic reception, I highlight the ways in which they both employ and problematise structures of visibility, presence and mediation. Such representations offer an account of the tension between securing and âunsecuringâ of the subject or beholder which is, in Weberâs reading of Heidegger, the result of representational thinking. The thesis thus moves discussion of the impact of 9/11 into the wider context of debates over visuality and subjectification in contemporary media cultures
Convivial Making: Power in Public Library Creative Places
In 2011, public libraries began to provide access to collaborative creative places, frequently called âmakerspaces.â The professional literature portrays these as beneficial for communities and individuals through their support of creativity, innovation, learning, and access to high-tech tools such as 3D printers. As in longstanding âlibrary faithâ narratives, which pin the libraryâs existence to widely held values, makerspace rhetoric describes access to tools and skills as instrumental for a stronger economy or democracy, social justice, and/or individual happiness. The rhetoric generally frames these places as empowering. Yet the concept of power has been neither well-theorized within the library makerspace literature nor explored in previous studies. This study fills the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of power, as described by the stakeholders, including staff, trustees, and users of the library. Potentially, library creative places could be what Ivan Illich calls convivial tools: tools that manifest social relations involving equitable distributions of power and decision-making. A convivial tool ensures that users may decide to which end they would like to apply the tool, and thus are constitutive of human capabilities and social justice. However, the characterization of library makerspaces in the literature evokes a technologically deterministic entrepreneurialism that marginalizes many types of making, and reduces the power of individuals to choose the ends to which they put this tool. This multi-site ethnographic study seeks to unravel the currents of power within three public library creative places. Through participant observation, document analysis, and interviews, the study traces the mechanisms and processes by which power is distributed, as enacted by institutional practicesâthe spaces, policies, tools, and programsâor through individual practices. The study finds seven key tensions that coalesce around the concept of conviviality, and also reveals seven capabilities of convivial tools that the users and providers of these spaces identify as crucial to their successful and satisfying implementation. As a user-centered exploration of the interactions of power in a public institution, this study can benefit a range of organizations that aim to further inclusion, equity, and social justice
Neural architecture for echo suppression during sound source localization based on spiking neural cell models
Zusammenfassung
Diese Arbeit untersucht die biologischen Ursachen des psycho-akustischen
PrÀzedenz Effektes, der Menschen in die Lage versetzt, akustische Echos wÀhrend
der Lokalisation von Schallquellen zu unterdrĂŒcken. Sie enthĂ€lt ein Modell zur
Echo-UnterdrĂŒckung wĂ€hrend der Schallquellenlokalisation, welches in technischen
Systemen zur Mensch-Maschine Interaktion eingesetzt werden kann.
Die Grundlagen dieses Modells wurden aus eigenen elektrophysiologischen
Experimenten an der Mongolischen WĂŒstenrennmaus gewonnen. Die dabei erstmalig an
der WĂŒstenrennmaus erzielten Ergebnisse, zeigen ein besonderes Verhalten
spezifischer Zellen im Dorsalen Kern des Lateral Lemniscus, einer dedizierten
Region des auditorischen Hirnstammes. Die dort sichtbare Langzeithemmung scheint
die Grundlage fĂŒr die EchounterdrĂŒckung in höheren auditorischen Zentren zu
sein. Das entwickelte Model war in der Lage dieses Verhalten nachzubilden, und
legt die Vermutung nahe, dass eine starke und zeitlich prÀzise Hyperpolarisation
der zugrundeliegende physiologische Mechanismus dieses Verhaltens ist.
Die entwickelte Neuronale Modellarchitektur modelliert das Innenohr und fĂŒnf
wesentliche Kerne des auditorischen Hirnstammes in ihrer Verbindungsstruktur und
internen Dynamik. Sie stellt einen neuen Typus neuronaler Modellierung dar, der
als Spike-Interaktionsmodell (SIM) bezeichnet wird. SIM nutzen die prÀzise
rĂ€umlich-zeitliche Interaktion einzelner Aktionspotentiale (Spikes) fĂŒr die
Kodierung und Verarbeitung neuronaler Informationen. Die Basis dafĂŒr bilden
Integrate-and-Fire Neuronenmodelle sowie Hebb'sche Synapsen, welche um speziell
entwickelte dynamische Kernfunktionen erweitert wurden. Das Modell ist in der
Lage, Zeitdifferenzen von 10 mykrosekunden zu detektieren und basiert auf den
Prinzipien der zeitlichen und rÀumlichen Koinzidenz sowie der prÀzisen lokalen
Inhibition.
Es besteht ausschlieĂlich aus Elementen einer eigens entwickelten Neuronalen
Basisbibliothek (NBL) die speziell fĂŒr die Modellierung verschiedenster Spike-
Interaktionsmodelle entworfen wurde. Diese Bibliothek erweitert die kommerziell
verfĂŒgbare dynamische Simulationsumgebung von MATLAB/SIMULINK um verschiedene
Modelle von Neuronen und Synapsen, welche die intrinsischen dynamischen
Eigenschaften von Nervenzellen nachbilden. Die Nutzung dieser Bibliothek
versetzt sowohl den Ingenieur als auch den Biologen in die Lage, eigene,
biologisch plausible, Modelle der neuronalen Informationsverarbeitung ohne
detaillierte Programmierkenntnisse zu entwickeln. Die grafische OberflÀche
ermöglicht strukturelle sowie parametrische Modifikationen und ist in der Lage,
den Zeitverlauf mikroskopischer Zellpotentiale aber auch makroskopischer
Spikemuster wÀhrend und nach der Simulation darzustellen.
Zwei grundlegende Elemente der Neuronalen Basisbibliothek wurden zur
Implementierung als spezielle analog-digitale Schaltungen vorbereitet.
Erste Silizium Implementierungen durch das Team des DFG Graduiertenkollegs GRK
164 konnten die Möglichkeit einer vollparallelen on line Verarbeitung von
Schallsignalen nachweisen. Durch Zuhilfenahme des im GRK entwickelten
automatisierten Layout Generators wird es möglich, spezielle Prozessoren zur
Anwendung biologischer Verarbeitungsprinzipien in technischen Systemen zu
entwickeln. Diese Prozessoren unterscheiden sich grundlegend von den klassischen
von Neumann Prozessoren indem sie rÀumlich und zeitlich verteilte Spikemuster,
anstatt sequentieller binÀrer Werte zur InformationsreprÀsentation nutzen. Sie
erweitern das digitale Kodierungsprinzip durch die Dimensionen des Raumes (2
dimensionale Nachbarschaft) der Zeit (Frequenz, Phase und Amplitude) sowie der
zeitlichen Dynamik analoger PotentialverlÀufe.
Diese Dissertation besteht aus sieben Kapiteln, welche den verschiedenen
Bereichen der Computational Neuroscience gewidmet sind.
Kapitel 1 beschreibt die Motivation dieser Arbeit welche aus der Absicht rĂŒhren,
biologische Prinzipien der Schallverarbeitung zu erforschen und fĂŒr technische
Systeme wÀhrend der Interaktion mit dem Menschen nutzbar zu machen. ZusÀtzlich
werden fĂŒnf GrĂŒnde fĂŒr die Nutzung von Spike-Interaktionsmodellen angefĂŒhrt
sowie deren neuartiger Charakter beschrieben.
Kapitel 2 fĂŒhrt die biologischen Prinzipien der Schallquellenlokalisation und
den psychoakustischen PrÀzedenz Effekt ein. Aktuelle Hypothesen zur Entstehung
dieses Effektes werden anhand ausgewÀhlter experimenteller Ergebnisse
verschiedener Forschungsgruppen diskutiert.
Kapitel 3 beschreibt die entwickelte Neuronale Basisbibliothek und fĂŒhrt die
einzelnen neuronalen Simulationselemente ein. Es erklÀrt die zugrundeliegenden
mathematischen Funktionen der dynamischen Komponenten und beschreibt deren
generelle Einsetzbarkeit zur dynamischen Simulation spikebasierter Neuronaler
Netzwerke.
Kapitel 4 enthÀlt ein speziell entworfenes Modell des auditorischen Hirnstammes
beginnend mit den Filterkaskaden zur Simulation des Innenohres, sich fortsetzend
ĂŒber mehr als 200 Zellen und 400 Synapsen in 5 auditorischen Kernen bis zum
Richtungssensor im Bereich des auditorischen Mittelhirns. Es stellt die
verwendeten Strukturen und Parameter vor und enthÀlt grundlegende Hinweise zur
Nutzung der Simulationsumgebung.
Kapitel 5 besteht aus drei Abschnitten, wobei der erste Abschnitt die
Experimentalbedingungen und Ergebnisse der eigens durchgefĂŒhrten Tierversuche
beschreibt. Der zweite Abschnitt stellt die Ergebnisse von 104 Modellversuchen
zur Simulationen psycho-akustischer Effekte dar, welche u.a. die FĂ€higkeit des
Modells zur Nachbildung des PrĂ€zedenz Effektes testen. SchlieĂlich beschreibt
der letzte Abschnitt die Ergebnisse der 54 unter realen Umweltbedingungen
durchgefĂŒhrten Experimente. Dabei kamen Signale zur Anwendung, welche in
normalen sowie besonders stark verhallten RĂ€umen aufgezeichnet wurden.
Kapitel 6 vergleicht diese Ergebnisse mit anderen biologisch motivierten und
technischen Verfahren zur EchounterdrĂŒckung und Schallquellenlokalisation und
fĂŒhrt den aktuellen Status der Hardwareimplementierung ein.
Kapitel 7 enthĂ€lt schlieĂlich eine kurze Zusammenfassung und einen Ausblick auf
weitere Forschungsobjekte und geplante AktivitÀten.
Diese Arbeit möchte zur Entwicklung der Computational Neuroscience beitragen,
indem sie versucht, in einem speziellen Anwendungsfeld die LĂŒcke zwischen
biologischen Erkenntnissen, rechentechnischen Modellen und Hardware Engineering
zu schlieĂen. Sie empfiehlt ein neues rĂ€umlich-zeitliches Paradigma der
dynamischen Informationsverarbeitung zur ErschlieĂung biologischer Prinzipien
der Informationsverarbeitung fĂŒr technische Anwendungen.This thesis investigates the biological background of the psycho-acoustical precedence effect, enabling humans to suppress echoes during the localization of sound sources. It provides a technically feasible and biologically plausible model for sound source localization under echoic conditions, ready to be used by technical systems during man-machine interactions.
The model is based upon own electro-physiological experiments in the mongolian gerbil. The first time in gerbils obtained results reveal a special behavior of specific cells of the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (DNLL) - a distinct region in the auditory brainstem. The explored persistent inhibition effect of these cells seems to account for the base of echo suppression at higher auditory centers. The developed model proved capable to duplicate this behavior and suggests, that a strong and timely precise hyperpolarization is the basic mechanism behind this cell behavior. The developed neural architecture models the inner ear as well as five major nuclei of the auditory brainstem in their connectivity and intrinsic dynamics. It represents a new type of neural modeling described as Spike Interaction Models (SIM). SIM use the precise spatio-temporal interaction of single spike events for coding and processing of neural information. Their basic elements are Integrate-and-Fire Neurons and Hebbian synapses, which have been extended by specially designed dynamic transfer functions. The model is capable to detect time differences as small as 10 mircrosecondes and employs the principles of coincidence detection and precise local inhibition for auditory processing. It consists exclusively of elements of a specifically designed Neural Base Library (NBL), which has been developed for multi purpose modeling of Spike Interaction Models. This library extends the commercially available dynamic simulation environment of MATLAB/SIMULINK by different models of neurons and synapses simulating the intrinsic dynamic properties of neural cells. The usage of this library enables engineers as well as biologists to design their own, biologically plausible models of neural information processing without the need for detailed programming skills. Its graphical interface provides access to structural as well as parametric changes and is capable to display the time course of microscopic cell parameters as well as macroscopic firing pattern during simulations and thereafter. Two basic elements of the Neural Base Library have been prepared for implementation by specialized mixed analog-digital circuitry. First silicon implementations were realized by the team of the DFG Graduiertenkolleg GRK 164 and proved the possibility of fully parallel on line processing of sounds. By using the automated layout processor under development in the Graduiertenkolleg, it will be possible to design specific processors in order to apply theprinciples of distributed biological information processing to technical systems. These processors differ from classical von Neumann processors by the use of spatio temporal spike pattern instead of sequential binary values. They will extend the digital coding principle by the dimensions of space (spatial neighborhood), time (frequency, phase and amplitude) as well as the dynamics of analog potentials and introduce a new type of information processing.
This thesis consists of seven chapters, dedicated to the different areas of computational neuroscience.
Chapter 1: provides the motivation of this study arising from the attempt to investigate the biological principles of sound processing and make them available to technical systems interacting with humans under real world conditions. Furthermore, five reasons to use spike interaction models are given and their novel characteristics are discussed.
Chapter 2: introduces the biological principles of sound source localization and the precedence effect. Current hypothesis on echo suppression and the underlying principles of the precedence effect are discussed by reference to a small selection of physiological and psycho-acoustical experiments.
Chapter 3: describes the developed neural base library and introduces each of the designed neural simulation elements. It also explains the developed mathematical functions of the dynamic compartments and describes their general usage for dynamic simulation of spiking neural networks.
Chapter 4: introduces the developed specific model of the auditory brainstem, starting from the filtering cascade in the inner ear via more than 200 cells and 400 synapses in five auditory regions up to the directional sensor at the level of the auditory midbrain. It displays the employed parameter sets and contains basic hints for the set up and configuration of the simulation environment.
Chapter 5: consists of three sections, whereas the first one describes the set up and results of the own electro-physiological experiments. The second describes the results of 104 model simulations, performed to test the
models ability to duplicate psycho-acoustical effects like the precedence effect. Finally, the last section of this chapter contains the results of 54 real world experiments using natural sound signals, recorded under normal as well as highly reverberating conditions.
Chapter 6: compares the achieved results to other biologically motivated and technical models for echo suppression and sound source localization and introduces the current status of silicon implementation.
Chapter 7: finally provides a short summary and an outlook toward future research subjects and areas of investigation.
This thesis aims to contribute to the field of computational neuroscience by bridging the gap between biological
investigation, computational modeling and silicon engineering in a specific field of application. It suggests a new spatio-temporal paradigm of information processing in order to access the capabilities of biological systems for technical applications
You Can\u27t Get There from Here: Movement SF and the Picaresque
This dissertation examines the crisis of authenticity in postmodern culture and argues that contemporary science fiction, specifically the subgenre of Movement SF, has evolved a unique answer to this crisis by adopting, perhaps spontaneously, the picaresque narrative structure. Postmodern fiction has a tenuous relationship with the issue of authenticity, such that the average postmodern subject is utterly without true authenticity at all, alternately victim to the socioeconomic conditions of his or her culture and to the elision of the self as a result of the homogenizing effects of advertising, television, etc. Postmodern SF also carries this bleak perception of the possibility of agency; William Gibson\u27s Sprawl and Bridge trilogies are rife with negations of human agency at the metaphorical hands of various aspects and incarnations of what Fredric Jameson terms the technological sublime. This dissertation puts forth the argument that a group of post-Eighties SF texts all participate in a spontaneous revival of the picaresque mode, using the picaresque journey and related motifs to re-authenticate subjects whose identity and agency are being erased by powerful social and economic forces exterior to and normally imperceptible by the individual. This dissertation is organized around three loosely connected parts. Part 1 attempts to define Movement SF by separating the various, often confusing marketing labels (such as cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, etc.) and extracting a cluster of core characteristics that have shaped the genre since its inception in the early 80s. Part 1 further examines how these core characteristics (or premises) of Movement SF provide fertile ground for picaresque narrative strategies. Part 2 describes in detail the picaresque as it appears in Movement SF, examining worldbuilding strategies, the persistence and evolution of tropes and motifs common to the traditional picaresque, and the generation of new tropes and motifs unique to Movement picaresques. Part 3 examines the spatial tactics used in Movement picaresque narratives to enable picaresque marginality in totalized, globalized environments. Furthermore, Part 3 examines the use of psychological plurality as an internal tactic to escape closed environments
Patchwork Nation: Collage, Music, and American Identity.
Collage has emerged as the quintessential art form of the twentieth century through its sustained impact across the arts and through its embodiment of cross-cultural social movements. Drawing on interdisciplinary models that engage with collageâs formal, semiotic, and cultural properties, this dissertation proposes a theory of musical collage, and applies this theory specifically to the construction and iteration of American musical nationalism across the twentieth century. Collage captures this dynamic and contentious process by exposing the seams, thus preserving a tension between the whole and its diverse constituent parts. Furthermore, because collage is polysemic, it can resist narrative/ counternarrative and other binary approaches and better attend to the complex power structures that shape American musicâs diversities.
Balancing a top-down theoretical approach with a bottom-up study of collage as cultural practice, the dissertation comprises five case studies that showcase a diverse array of methodologies, musical genres, and cultural debates. Chapter One illuminates how collage underpins theories of nationalism, and how these theories shaped the reception of Edward MacDowellâs, George Antheilâs, and Charles Ivesâs divergent strategies for creating a nascent American art music. Turning to the Broadway stage, Chapter Two examines how Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, and George Balanchine collaboratively staked their own claim of musical nationalism by combining ballet, classical music, jazz, and musical theater in On Your Toes (1936). Chapter Three uses Harry Smithâs Anthology of American Folk Music (1952) to trace the shifting values of folk music in American identity, from the original 1920s commercial recordings Smith used through the Smithsonianâs 1997 reissue of the Anthology. Addressing how collage continues to operate today, Chapter Four examines how collage negotiates between individual, subcultural, and national experiences of AIDS and 9/11 in two musical memorials: John Coriglianoâs Symphony No. 1 (1991) and John Adamsâs On the Transmigration of Souls (2002). Finally, Chapter Five demonstrates how multiple collages, including YouTube mashups, hip hop songs, official playlists, and a star-studded Inaugural concert continually reconstructed Barack Obamaâs image to navigate crucial social and political issues. To conclude, I reflect on the analytical benefits and challenges posed by the malleable nature of collage.PHDMusic: MusicologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100005/1/danblim_1.pd
The impact of ecological thought on architectural theory.
This thesis looks at the idea of ecology and its relationship to, and influence on, architectural thought. Ecological thinking emerged as a subset of biology in the second half of the nineteenth century and developed as a philosophical idea and a political outlook. As an idea that stands in the hinterland between science and society, it has not been particularly stable; sometimes it is fashionable, at other times it has disappeared from consciousness. This thesis looks at the long history of ecology, paying particular attention to the periods when it was a popular idea and it had an impact on the imagination and outlook of architects. The first of these periods is in the decades from Darwin's publication of his theory of evolution through to the run-up to the First World War, prior to the emergence of the Modern Movement. The second period is brief, from the late â60s through to the early '70s, and is popularly referred to as the Age of Ecology. Finally, there is the period from 2000 to the present. The final section of the study looks at the impact of ecological thought on architectural ideas and buildings today, when there is a high level of concern about the environment. Through historical interpretation, the study identifies some of the core themes of ecological thought and looks at their relationship to the design of the built environment. It traces the recurring themes of naturalism, vitalism and materialism, which are emerging as significant influences on today's architecture. The thesis includes research interviews with some of the leading architectural thinkers and historians of our time in order to situate the discussion of ecology in the broader discourse on the purpose and nature of architecture and the future of the discipline and the profession
Taming uncertainty? Performance, personalisation and practices of patient safety in an Australian mental health service
The patients implied by the term patient safety are most commonly lying on an
operating table or in a hospital bed. They are cast as potential victims of harm resulting
from their encounters with a health service, harm which is often attributed to
malfunctioning systems or toxic cultures of care. Mental health patients and
professionals, and the particularities of the illnesses and interventions which structure
their encounters, have often been ignored in this discourse. This study is about what
patient safety means from the perspective of professionals in a mental health context,
where: risk type and severity are contested and unpredictable; patients are often viewed
as a threat to their own safety; and the professional role in keeping patients safe extends
to interest in their social and economic circumstances. Emphasis in patient safety
research is often given to the causes and consequences of error and harm, but this
research brings the day-to-day unfolding of professional work to the fore. This shift in
perspective allows for a detailed examination of the strategies staff members use to enact
safety, and a concomitant exploration of the degree to which policies and rules penetrate
practice. This has been accomplished through the ethnographically-informed design of
an inquiry into understandings and enactments of safe care among a multidisciplinary
range of staff in a community mental health team and an acute inpatient psychiatric unit
in New South Wales, Australia. In the course of daily work, these professionals are found
to negotiate a tension between two versions of patient safety. In the fluidity of everyday
practice, the safe patient is only ever a transient, fragile phenomenon anchored to a
particular time, place, and relationship between clinician and patient. However, the
expectation of policymakers, Coroners, and members of the public is that the mental
health service should act as guarantor of safety. Theoretical frameworks of socio-material
ontology are used to tease out the implications of these sometimes contradictory
demands, and to explore the possibility of a patient safety which prioritises therapeutic
impact on the patient rather than only the management of their risk
Re-presenting Geopolitics: ethnography, social movement activism, and nonviolent geographies
This thesis starts from the premise that Geopolitics is performative, an iterative discourse âof visualising global spaceâŠreproduced in the governing principles of geographic thought and through the practices of statecraftâ (Agnew 1998:11). During the last decade, two dominant discourses have shaped the contemporary geopolitical imagination â the âwar on terrorâ and âclimate changeâ. These have steered conceptualisations of security and insecurity - performative iterations of who, where, and what poses a threat. The resulting geopolitical picture of the world has enabled the legitimisation of human and geographical domination â an acceptance of geographical norms that enable the continuation of uneven geographies.
The research is concerned with the performative spaces of alternative geopolitics; spaces that emerge where nonviolent social movement activism and geopolitics intersect and the sites through which these are practiced and mediated. The motivations are twofold. The first is a desire to intervene in a critical geopolitical discourse that remains biased toward engagement with violent geographies. The second is to take seriously âgeopolitics from belowâ, alternative geographical imaginations. I address the first of these through research that is concerned primarily with the spacing of nonviolence â the performed and performative spaces of nonviolent geographies shaped through a politics of the act. The second is approached through substantial empirical engagement with social movement activists and sites of contention and creation in opposition to dominant environmental geopolitics.
âMilitantâ ethnographic research took place over six months in 2009. It traced the journeys of two groups as they organised for, and took part in, large counter-summit mobilisations. The first was a UK based social movement, the Camp for Climate Action (UK). The second was an intercontinental caravan, the Trade to Climate Caravan. Both groups shared a common aim â to converge on the 16th of December in a mass demonstration of nonviolent confrontation; the âPeopleâs Assemblyâ, to contest dominant discourses being performed inside the intergovernmental United Nations Conference of the Parties 15. Social movement groups from around the world would present alternative narratives of insecurity and offer âalternative solutionsâ garnered through non-hierarchical forms of decision-making. The research followed the route each group took to the Peopleâs Assembly and the articulations (narrative and practices) of nonviolent action.University of Exete