Enter the movement: Generating stimulus from sceneography and proposing \u27De-sign\u27 as a tool for choreographic invention

The purpose of this study was to provide the notion of ‘de-sign’ as a proposed aid for movement composition and is the core framework of my research, which is aimed at empowering the dancer/choreographer with a multi-disciplinary aesthetic and a focus for dialectic discussion and experimentation with all material enclosed within the scenographic. De-sign is a method for decoding scenography (as a deconstruction tool to extract the components of composition classified as elements and principles). The play on words is a deliberate acknowledgement of the ‘design’ in the scenographic environment which, in this study, takes into account that all forms of designed theatrical components can be ‘de-constructed’ and re-designed with and for the choreography. The overall aim of the research is to examine the application of scenography for extending dance-making practice through the catalyst of de-sign. To this end, I created three inter-disciplinary installations/performances/scenographies as a way to analyse the ‘space’ and everything within it for movement composition (See Figures: 7., 8. and 9.). The creation of the spaces was a way of compressing the choreographic experiment by supplying a prepared environment as an example space for creative encounters. It is worth noting that it was never the focus of the research to investigate the relationship between the dancer/choreographers with the sound, lighting and stage designers. In any performance environment there is a dialogue between these people but the point of this study was how I might facilitate the relationship between the scenographic material and the dancers for the making of choreography. The dancer/choreographer operates in a ‘de-sign’ paradigm and uses a relatively simple list of structured principles to analyse the environment and employ these principles as triggers for invention to develop choreographic ideas. In de-signing of the given installation’s scenography, the dancers were asked to extend their ideas from the details as well as from the more prominent information and signs into which they would normally probe. in order to find unity, in their engagement with the whole. My research practice consisted of setting up scenographic environments as practical incubators for the immersive experience of the dancer/choreographer and thereby testing de-sign’s capacity for creative compositional movement growth

Modeling, Simulation, and Realization of Cognitive Technical Systems

This thesis presents a novel approach for the modeling, simulation, and realization of Cognitive Technical Systems. In contrast to other approaches, in this thesis, the structure and dynamic of the real world is initially formalized my means of an intermediate level instead of implementing a technical model directly. Furthermore, human cognition is investigated in an integrated manner and based on experiments with a mobile robot, as an example for a complex technical system. The formal description of human interaction and cognition is realized by Situation-Operator-Modeling (SOM), which can be implemented technically by patterns of high-level Petri Nets. With the state space of a SOM-based Petri Net, Human-Machine-Interaction can be analyzed, e.g., in order to detect human errors automatically. Furthermore, several cognitive functions, like planning, execution, perception, and learning, can be simulated. The different cognitive functions and related representations, which are all based on the same methodical background, are combined within an integrated cognitive architecture. Only the interplay among several functions and a novel kind of knowledge structuring, which contributes significantly to reduce the complexity of the real world, enable the realization of human-like behavior for technical systems. The system's capability to establish and to refine goal-directed behavior from interaction with the environment, also if no system-specific initial knowledge is available, is demonstrated by experiments with a mobile robot interacting within a dynamic office environment. An additional value of this thesis for further research is especially given by the proposed generic approach for modeling, simulation, and analysis of Human-Machine-Interaction. Moreover, the formal description and implementation of the cognitive functions, the developed knowledge structuring, and the cognitive architecture may be applied to arbitrary kind of technical systems.'Modellbildung, Simulation und Realisierung von Kognitiven Technischen Systemen' In dieser Arbeit wird ein neuartiger Ansatz zur Modellbildung, Simulation und Realisierung von Kognitiven Technischen Systemen präsentiert. Gegenüber bestehenden Ansätzen setzt sich diese Arbeit insbesondere dadurch ab, dass die Struktur und Dynamik der realen Welt zuerst über eine methodische Zwischenebene formal beschrieben und erst danach technisch implementiert wird. Zudem wird menschliche Kognition ganzheitlich untersucht und direkt mit Hilfe von Experimenten mit einem mobilen Roboter, als Beispiel für ein komplexes technisches System, erprobt und entwickelt. Die formale Beschreibung von menschlicher Interaktion und Kognition erfolgt über Situations-Operator-Modellbildung (SOM), welche über spezielle Muster höherer Petrinetze technisch implementiert werden kann. Durch den Zustandsraum eines SOM-basierten Petrinetzes ist es möglich, Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion zu analysieren, um beispielsweise menschliche Fehler automatisiert zu erfassen. Zudem können verschiedene kognitive Funktionen, wie Planen, Handeln, Wahrnehmung und Lernen simuliert werden. Die verschiedenen kognitiven Funktionen und entsprechenden Repräsentationen, welche auf der gleichen methodischen Grundlage basieren, werden in einer kognitiven Architektur zusammengeführt. Erst das Zusammenspiel verschiedener Funktionen und ein neuartiger Ansatz zur Wissensstrukturierung, wodurch insbesondere die Komplexität der realen Welt reduziert wird, ermöglicht die Realisierung menschenähnlichen Verhaltens für technische Systeme. Durch Experimente mit einem mobilen Roboter, der in einer dynamischen Büroumgebung interagiert, kann gezeigt werden, dass das vorgestellte System ohne anwendungsspezifisches Vorwissen in der Lage ist, zielführendes Verhalten aus der Interaktion mit der Umgebung zu erhalten und zu verbessern. Ein Mehrwert aus dieser Arbeit für weiterführende Forschungsarbeiten ergibt sich insbesondere durch den vorgestellten generischen Ansatz zur Modellbildung, Simulation und Analyse von Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion. Zudem können die formale Beschreibung und die Implementierung der kognitiven Funktionen, der entwickelten Wissensstrukturierung und der darauf aufbauenden kognitiven Architektur auf beliebige technische Systeme übertragen werden

The Level Game: Architectures of Play in American Fiction and Theory, 1968–2018

This thesis investigates the theme of ‘levels’ in postmodern and contemporary American fiction, as manifested through levels of reality, levels of architecture and levels in games. Postmodern fiction engages levels in the ontological sense, employing literary devices such as reflexivity and narrative embedding in order to interrogate the nature of fictional worlds. In the later stages of postmodernism, approaching the millennium, technological developments contribute to a terminology of levels in video games. Here, levels come to be associated with goal-oriented hierarchies, and are adopted by the corporate world as motivating tools. Throughout these examples, the navigation of levels is associated with play, and I conceptualise the spatiality of levels through the phrase ‘architectures of play’. This applies both abstractly (architectures of narrative) and concretely (architectures in narrative). My introduction defines the concept of levels, detailing their role in my period of study. Chapter one discusses the work of Jean Baudrillard, interrogating the relationship between play and ontology through his remark that ‘reality has passed completely into the game of reality’. Chapter two analyses John Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, where I suggest that the spatial navigation of architectural levels in physical funhouses corresponds with the conceptual navigation of narrative levels in this text. Comparing Barth’s story with David Foster Wallace’s ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way’, I illustrate how Wallace uses the same literary materials as Barth but experiments with their arrangement. This is exemplified by Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which my next chapter examines in relation to the mise en abyme and the play within the play. I conclude by suggesting that the physical traversal demanded by the novel is a means of restoring the boundaries of play to the infinite jest. Chapter four further probes the physicality of texts, studying the material levels of two formally experimental works: Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes. Chapter five contrastingly explores the thematisation of digitality in fiction, where levels are used in a teleological sense to denote progress in video games and commercial gamification strategies. Chapter six elaborates on the theme of technology by discussing levels in relation to networks, comparing Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997) with Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018). Both novels depict worlds structured as networks, but I draw attention to the prepositions of their titles, arguing that one must travel through levels in order to realise the network’s connections. Exploring the ludic capacity of levels, my study asks: what do levels do? How do we play with levels – architecturally, digitally, and narratively? How do these different media interact in postmodern and contemporary fiction? Through the above six case studies, I delineate the effects – and affects – associated with the figure of the level, identifying a pervasive ‘level game’ in postmodern and contemporary literature and culture.English Faculty Centenary Awar

Strategy and ritual in institutional encounters: a linguistic ethnography of weekly meetings in the British Embassy in Brussels

This study enters the closed and secluded community of a British embassy. It enters a cultural milieu, a setting where a group of self-identifying people with certain shared beliefs engage in a set of distinctive and mutually intelligible practices and tries to gain a more complete understanding of its norms, values and expectations. In particular, it investigates the role of the weekly gathering of Heads of Section as organizational ritual and symbol of collective experience, conveying cultural norms, interpretations and expectations. The work is essentially anthropologically-informed and inspired, while at the same time guided by a profound interest in and concern for language and communication. Apart from linguistics and anthropology, the study relies on and expands upon existing methods and views in a variety of other independently established disciplines. It draws on the sociological writings of Goffman, the philosophical work of Durkheim and Turner, the political ideas of Marx and Weber and many others

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia : An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces

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