Sample-level sound synthesis with recurrent neural networks and conceptors

Conceptors are a recent development in the field of reservoir computing; they can be used to influence the dynamics of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), enabling generation of arbitrary patterns based on training data. Conceptors allow interpolation and extrapolation between patterns, and also provide a system of boolean logic for combining patterns together. Generation and manipulation of arbitrary patterns using conceptors has significant potential as a sound synthesis method for applications in computer music but has yet to be explored. Conceptors are untested with the generation of multi-timbre audio patterns, and little testing has been done on scalability to longer patterns required for audio. A novel method of sound synthesis based on conceptors is introduced. Conceptular Synthesis is based on granular synthesis; sets of conceptors are trained to recall varying patterns from a single RNN, then a runtime mechanism switches between them, generating short patterns which are recombined into a longer sound. The quality of sound resynthesis using this technique is experimentally evaluated. Conceptor models are shown to resynthesise audio with a comparable quality to a close equivalent technique using echo state networks with stored patterns and output feedback. Conceptor models are also shown to excel in their malleability and potential for creative sound manipulation, in comparison to echo state network models which tend to fail when the same manipulations are applied. Examples are given demonstrating creative sonic possibilities, by exploiting conceptor pattern morphing, boolean conceptor logic and manipulation of RNN dynamics. Limitations of conceptor models are revealed with regards to reproduction quality, and pragmatic limitations are also shown, where rises in computation and memory requirements preclude the use of these models for training with longer sound samples. The techniques presented here represent an initial exploration of the sound synthesis potential of conceptors, demonstrating possible creative applications in sound design; future possibilities and research questions are outlined

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

The Piratical Ethos: Textual Activity and Intellectual Property in Digital Environments

The Piratical Ethos: Textual Activity and Intellectual Property in Digital Environments examines the definition, function, and application of intellectual property in contexts of electronically mediated social production. With a focus on immaterial production - or the forms of coordinated social activity employed to produce knowledge and information in the networked information economy - this project ultimately aims to demonstrate how current intellectual property paradigms must be rearticulated for an age of digital (re)production. By considering the themes of Piracy , Intellectual Property , and Distributed Social Production this dissertation provides an overview of the current state of peer production and intellectual property in the Humanities and Writing Studies. Next, this project develops and implements a communicational-mediational research methodology to theorize how both discursive and material data lend themselves to a more nuanced understanding of the ways that technologies of communication and coordination effect attitudes toward intellectual property. After establishing both a methodology and an interdisciplinary grounding for the themes of the work, this dissertation presents a grounded theoretic analysis of piratical discourse to reveal what I call the piratical ethos , or the guiding attitudes of individuals actively contesting intellectual property in piratical acts of distributed social production. Congruently, this work also investigates the material dynamics of piratical activity by analyzing the cultural-historical activity systems wherein piratical subjectivity emerges, emphasizing the agenic capacity of interfacial technologies at the scales of user and system. Exploring the attitudes of piratical subjects and the technological genres that mediate piratical activity, I contend that the conclusions drawn from The Piratical Ethos can assist Writing Studies researchers with developing novel methodologies to study the intersections of intellectual property and distributed social production in digital worlds

User-Driven Change enabled by Malleable Information Technology

Malleable technologies promise almost infinite applications for organizations. Users can utilize the generic functionalities of such technologies to support personal tasks or combine and adapt them to create custom artefacts and, hence, shape organizational routines. Although users have a crucial part in the transition from generic potentials to effective use of malleable technologies, we know little about processes and factors that facilitate users in this endeavor and how created artefacts evolve over time. This dissertation presents three studies, which target these research gaps. The studies draw on affordance theory, cognitive load theory, routine theory and momentum of change and apply qualitative and quantitative methods to the case of a malleable technology implementation project in an organization. The results suggest that users perceive and actualize afforded potentials of malleable technologies through different processes, which depend on user characteristics and local environmental factors. Moreover, the longitudinal observations show that users often perform a series of changes, when they form custom artefacts from malleable technologies. The intensity of these changes can be described as momentum that depends on factors like the existing artefact or the embeddedness of the related routine. Overall, the dissertation findings open the black box of user-driven change under malleable technology and help to explain variations in the created momentum of change

Totalizing institutions, critique and resistance

Drawing on Deleuze’s ‘Postscript on Control Societies’, our initial focus in this article will be on the role of institutions within societies of control, an analysis which brings Deleuze into the orbit of Ervin Goffman’s famous ethnographic work on total institutions. This cross-comparative analysis of Deleuze and Goffman (also montaged with Foucault’s important work on disciplinary institutions) will allow us to show how institutions of control function by sequencing dividuals across institutional domains in a continual process of totalization. Inspired by James Williams’s recent work on the ‘process philosophy of signs’, we then argue that a critique of totalizing institutions can be positively articulated as a process oriented challenge to algorithmic technologies and as a counter-sequencing of institutional control. We conclude with some reflections upon the emergent modes of resistance that challenge both institutional and technological control and we will proffer criteria for assessing such practices in relation to the two-sided nature of critique they enact, both processual and counter-sequential

Entrepreneurial design of a digital health business

Software startups are an important source of innovation and wealth creation. Startups must develop and release software quickly to gain early cash flow and legitimacy for firm survival. They must search and identify a suitable market in a tight time frame. A ambiguity in the quality of the novel software designed can further intensify uncertainty for startups. Also, the entrepreneur-investor relationship is a critical conduit for financial and social resources, yet the investors’ influence on software design is understudied. This leads to the following research question: How does the entrepreneurial context in which the startup operates affect software design process and product in the early years? Given the exploratory nature of the research question, I drew on an eighteen-month, participant-observation case study of a three-year-old, digital healthcare startup, HealthCom. HealthCom designed a software to facilitate knowledge transfer between nurses and patients. I leveraged the attention-based view (ABV) as an organizing framework for analysis. By looking at how the environmental context influences the designers’ attention and actions, researchers can begin to understand the rationale behind design decisions. The findings illustrate how the attention of the designers were directed by financial-focused and quality-focused attention drivers. Financial-focused attention drivers originated from players (e.g. clients and investors) that intensified pressures for funding and led to the reframing of software as an enabler of funding. This contradicted quality-focused design alternatives grounded in user requirements and software design rules. It underlined the move from attention to designs that accommodated user requirements towards those that captured emerging business opportunities. Designers had to balance the tensions between financial and quality-focused design decisions that could lead to inhibition of future growth, compromises in quality or over-optimization of quality. Designers simplified and coupled requirements throughout the design process and postponed investments of design resources to meet client-imposed deadlines. The design product became disposable, quick to build, limited in adaptability, spartan, and vulnerable, and it enabled the startup to capture the business opportunities amidst time constraints, financial pressures, and high uncertainty.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM

Performance Improvement of Multithreaded Java Applications Execution on Multiprocessor Systems

El disseny del llenguatge Java, que inclou aspectes importants com són la seva portabilitat i neutralitat envers l'arquitectura, les seves capacitats multithreading, la seva familiaritat (degut a la seva semblança amb C/C++), la seva robustesa, les seves capacitats en seguretat i la seva naturalesa distribuïda, fan que sigui un llenguatge potencialment interessant per ser utilitzat en entorns paral·lels com són els entorns de computació d'altes prestacions (HPC), on les aplicacions poden treure profit del suport que ofereix Java a l'execució multithreaded per realitzar càlculs en paral·lel, o en entorns e-business, on els servidors Java multithreaded (que segueixen l'especificació J2EE) poden treure profit de les capacitats multithreading de Java per atendre de manera concurrent un gran nombre de peticions.No obstant, l'ús de Java per la programació paral·lela ha d'enfrontar-se a una sèrie de problemes que fàcilment poden neutralitzar el guany obtingut amb l'execució en paral·lel. El primer problema és el gran overhead provocat pel suport de threads de la JVM quan s'utilitzen threads per executar feina de gra fi, quan es crea un gran nombre de threads per suportar l'execució d'una aplicació o quan els threads interaccionen estretament mitjançant mecanismes de sincronització. El segon problema és la degradació en el rendiment produïda quan aquestes aplicacions multithreaded s'executen en sistemes paral·lels multiprogramats. La principal causa d'aquest problemes és la manca de comunicació entre l'entorn d'execució i les aplicacions, la qual pot induir a les aplicacions a fer un ús descoordinat dels recursos disponibles.Aquesta tesi contribueix amb la definició d'un entorn per analitzar i comprendre el comportament de les aplicacions Java multithreaded. La contribució principal d'aquest entorn és que la informació de tots els nivells involucrats en l'execució (aplicació, servidor d'aplicacions, JVM i sistema operatiu) està correlada. Aquest fet és molt important per entendre com aquest tipus d'aplicacions es comporten quan s'executen en entorns que inclouen servidors i màquines virtuals, donat que l'origen dels problemes de rendiment es pot trobar en qualsevol d'aquests nivells o en la seva interacció.Addicionalment, i basat en el coneixement adquirit mitjançant l'entorn d'anàlisis proposat, aquesta tesi contribueix amb mecanismes i polítiques de planificació orientats cap a l'execució eficient d'aplicacions Java multithreaded en sistemes multiprocessador considerant les interaccions i la coordinació dels mecanismes i les polítiques de planificació en els diferents nivells involucrats en l'execució. La idea bàsica consisteix en permetre la cooperació entre les aplicacions i l'entorn d'execució en la gestió de recursos establint una comunicació bi-direccional entre les aplicacions i el sistema. Per una banda, les aplicacions demanen a l'entorn d'execució la quantitat de recursos que necessiten. Per altra banda, l'entorn d'execució pot ser inquirit en qualsevol moment per les aplicacions ser informades sobre la seva assignació de recursos. Aquesta tesi proposa que les aplicacions utilitzin la informació proporcionada per l'entorn d'execució per adaptar el seu comportament a la quantitat de recursos que tenen assignats (aplicacions auto-adaptables). Aquesta adaptació s'assoleix en aquesta tesi per entorns HPC per mitjà de la mal·leabilitat de les aplicacions, i per entorns e-business amb una proposta de control de congestió que fa control d'admissió basat en la diferenciació de connexions SSL per prevenir la degradació del rendiment i mantenir la Qualitat de Servei (QoS).Els resultats de l'avaluació demostren que subministrar recursos de manera dinàmica a les aplicacions auto-adaptables en funció de la seva demanda millora el rendiment de les aplicacions Java multithreaded tant en entorns HPC com en entorns e-business. Mentre disposar d'aplicacions auto-adaptables evita la degradació del rendiment, el subministrament dinàmic de recursos permet satisfer els requeriments de les aplicacions en funció de la seva demanda i adaptar-se a la variabilitat de les seves necessitats de recursos. D'aquesta manera s'aconsegueix una millor utilització dels recursos donat que els recursos que no utilitza una aplicació determinada poden ser distribuïts entre les altres aplicacions.The design of the Java language, which includes important aspects such as its portability and architecture neutrality, its multithreading facilities, its familiarity (due to its resemblance with C/C++), its robustness, its security capabilities and its distributed nature, makes it a potentially interesting language to be used in parallel environments such as high performance computing (HPC) environments, where applications can benefit from the Java multithreading support for performing parallel calculations, or e-business environments, where multithreaded Java application servers (i.e. following the J2EE specification) can take profit of Java multithreading facilities to handle concurrently a large number of requests.However, the use of Java for parallel programming has to face a number of problems that can easily offset the gain due to parallel execution. The first problem is the large overhead incurred by the threading support available in the JVM when threads are used to execute fine-grained work, when a large number of threads are created to support the execution of the application or when threads closely interact through synchronization mechanisms. The second problem is the performance degradation occurred when these multithreaded applications are executed in multiprogrammed parallel systems. The main issue that causes these problems is the lack of communication between the execution environment and the applications, which can cause these applications to make an uncoordinated use of the available resources.This thesis contributes with the definition of an environment to analyze and understand the behavior of multithreaded Java applications. The main contribution of this environment is that all levels in the execution (application, application server, JVM and operating system) are correlated. This is very important to understand how this kind of applications behaves when executed on environments that include servers and virtual machines, because the origin of performance problems can reside in any of these levels or in their interaction.In addition, and based on the understanding gathered using the proposed analysis environment, this thesis contributes with scheduling mechanisms and policies oriented towards the efficient execution of multithreaded Java applications on multiprocessor systems considering the interactions and coordination between scheduling mechanisms and policies at the different levels involved in the execution. The basis idea consists of allowing the cooperation between the applications and the execution environment in the resource management by establishing a bi-directional communication path between the applications and the underlying system. On one side, the applications request to the execution environment the amount of resources they need. On the other side, the execution environment can be requested at any time by the applications to inform them about their resource assignments. This thesis proposes that applications use the information provided by the execution environment to adapt their behavior to the amount of resources allocated to them (self-adaptive applications). This adaptation is accomplished in this thesis for HPC environments through the malleability of the applications, and for e-business environments with an overload control approach that performs admission control based on SSL connections differentiation for preventing throughput degradation and maintaining Quality of Service (QoS).The evaluation results demonstrate that providing resources dynamically to self-adaptive applications on demand improves the performance of multithreaded Java applications as in HPC environments as in e-business environments. While having self-adaptive applications avoids performance degradation, dynamic provision of resources allows meeting the requirements of the applications on demand and adapting to their changing resource needs. In this way, better resource utilization is achieved because the resources not used by some application may be distributed among other applications

PRESERVING THE VERNACULAR POSTINDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPE: BIG DATA GEOSPATIAL APPROACHES TO HERITAGE MANAGEMENT AND INTERPRETATION

Redundant historical industrial sites, or postindustrial landscapes, face numerous preservation challenges. Functionally obsolete, and often derelict and decaying, these cultural landscapes often retain only a fraction of their original infrastructure. With their historical interconnections made indistinct by their physical separation and obscured by the passage of time, surviving remnants are isolated and disjunct, confounding both their legibility and their consideration for formal historic preservation. Nevertheless, they persist. This dissertation presents a theoretical understanding of the nature of postindustrial landscape preservation, and argues that the material persistence of its historical constituents is the result of previously overlooked processes of informal material conservation, here termed vernacular preservation. Further, this dissertation examines ways that heritage professionals can manage and interpret these vast, complex, and shattered landscapes, using 21st-century digital and spatial tools. Confronted by ongoing depopulation and divestment, and constrained by limited financial capacity to reverse the trend of blight and property loss, communities and individuals concerned with the preservation of vernacular postindustrial landscapes face many unique management and interpretation challenges. The successful heritagization of the postindustrial landscape depends on its comprehension, and communication, as a historically complex network of systems, and I argue that utilizing advanced digital and spatial tool such as historical GIS and procedural modeling can aid communities and heritage professionals in managing, preserving, and interpreting these landscapes. This dissertation presents heritage management and interpretation strategies that emphasize the historical, but now largely missing, spatial and temporal contexts of today’s postindustrial landscape in Michigan’s Copper Country. A series of case studies illustrates the demonstrated and potential value of using a big-data, longitudinally-linked digital infrastructure, or Historical GIS (HGIS), known as the Copper Country Historical Spatial Data Infrastructure (CC-HSDI), for heritage management and interpretation. These studies support the public education and conservation goals of the communities in this nationally-significant mining region through providing accessible, engaging, and meaningful historical spatiotemporal context, and by helping to promote and encourage the ongoing management and preservation of this ever-evolving postindustrial landscape

Evaluation of the Role of Functional Constraints on the Integrity of an Ultraconserved Region in the Genus Drosophila

Why gene order is conserved over long evolutionary timespans remains elusive. A common interpretation is that gene order conservation might reflect the existence of functional constraints that are important for organismal performance. Alteration of the integrity of genomic regions, and therefore of those constraints, would result in detrimental effects. This notion seems especially plausible in those genomes that can easily accommodate gene reshuffling via chromosomal inversions since genomic regions free of constraints are likely to have been disrupted in one or more lineages. Nevertheless, no empirical test has been performed to this notion. Here, we disrupt one of the largest conserved genomic regions of the Drosophila genome by chromosome engineering and examine the phenotypic consequences derived from such disruption. The targeted region exhibits multiple patterns of functional enrichment suggestive of the presence of constraints. The carriers of the disrupted collinear block show no defects in their viability, fertility, and parameters of general homeostasis, although their odorant perception is altered. This change in odorant perception does not correlate with modifications of the level of expression and sex bias of the genes within the genomic region disrupted. Our results indicate that even in highly rearranged genomes, like those of Diptera, unusually high levels of gene order conservation cannot be systematically attributed to functional constraints, which raises the possibility that other mechanisms can be in place and therefore the underpinnings of the maintenance of gene organization might be more diverse than previously thought