9,344 research outputs found

    Place, paradox, and transcendental connection in three of E. M. Forster's novels : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

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    E. M. Forster's fiction reflects his own concern with the spirit of place and his seemingly fruitless search for a spiritual reconciliation between people and places. Three novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End and A Passage to India, set out how place functions in Forster's fiction. In these, Forster poses what appears to be an insoluble question for the reader, and proves himself reluctant to achieve closure. This reluctance to provide answers to the theme of place is a reflection of the philosophical uncertainty which pervades his fiction. Readers are encouraged to arrive at their own conclusions and to negotiate the ambivalence of his novels in order to find their own answers to the baffling nature of life and relationships. Place, in Forster's fiction, contains an unseen force that is almost tangible. It determines the movement of the characters and guides them towards their intended destinations. The characters in his novels are transformed and manipulated by the device of genius loci; yet their changes never enable them to achieve permanent attachments with others nor with places. Although Forster's fiction shows no final harmonious home where ancestry and roots are established, the eponymous house in Howards End offers us a window. In it, the sisters achieve an affinity with place; however, there is still no space in which all of humanity can connect, and paradoxically, exclusion is essential to the final scene of reconciliation. Contradiction and opposition inform all of Forster's fiction. In each novel there are localities which represent the socially-controlled space on the one hand, and on the other, the unfettered region. Although Forster shows a Modernist tendency to nostalgically idealise the past, he continues to search for that delicate equilibrium between people and place. But just as he criticises and praises culture, he sees that the rural regions have their own contradictory attributes. This thesis traces Forster's treatment of place through personal, social, cultural, and spiritual sites, and the search for an esoteric home and transcendental reconciliation, becoming as it does an increasingly tentative and paradoxical theme

    Placeholders : 13 pavilions on 13 future construction sites in Berlin

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    Zugleich gedruckt erschienen im UniversitÀtsverlag der Technischen UniversitÀt Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2442-8ADIP, the chair for Architecture Design and Innovation, is a laboratory for new ideas and changing input, run by guest professors at the Institute for Architecture at the Technische UniversitÀt Berlin. In 2011, ADIP welcomed Bostjan Vuga, founding partner of the architectural office SADAR+VUGA in Ljubljana, Slovenia. PLACEHOLDERS are forecasters of the future object at the select location. They are areas for socializing, games, new experiences and showrooms for main public activities in the future object. Placeholders encourage cooperation and interaction between their visitors and users. 13 future construction sites are chosen, 13 urban spots in Berlin where a new construction is not only planned, but already defined with an architectural project. It is shown how a design of 13 pavilions influences the way we see ourselves and how we interact with others today

    Surveillance and the city: patronage, power-sharing and the politics of urban control in Zimbabwe

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    From 2000, ZANU(PF) suffered repeated electoral defeat in the cities and lost control of municipalities to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). This turned urban governance into a battlefield, as ZANU(PF) dramatically recentralised powers over local authorities, developed ‘parallel’ party structures and used militia to control central markets and peri-urban land. Taking the case of Harare and environs during the period of Zimbabwe's Inclusive Government (IG), this article explores contestations over urban authority, focusing on the office of councillor and urban spaces dominated by ZANU(PF)-aligned militia. I argue that surveillance was central to ZANU(PF)'s strategy for urban control and to the politics of patronage. Inconvenient councillors were disciplined by threats and enticements from the feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and were also vulnerable to suspension, while ZANU(PF) militia made political loyalty a condition of access to market stalls, land and housing cooperatives. Dominant political science characterisations of the African postcolonial state and ethnographic accounts of precarity and vigilance mislead in this context if they fail to capture the disciplining roles and social reach of a centralised partisan state security agency and militarised party structures that suffuse work and social life within local government institutions and contested city spaces. Analyses of power-sharing need to reach beyond the national stage not only because conflict over local authorities can undermine transitional political processes but also for the light they can shed on the changing character of the state and its relationship to reconstituted ZANU(PF) powers

    Attention, An Interactive Display Is Running! Integrating Interactive Public Display Within Urban Dis(At)tractors

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    Display or interaction blindness is a known problem for interactive public displays where passers-by simply ignore or pay little attention to them. While previous research created interventions that tried to address this problem or reported on differences between experiences in the lab and in the real world, little attention has been given to examining different attractors surrounding the interactive public display, i.e., people, artifacts, and stimuli that compete for people’s attention in the urban settings and distract them from interacting with public displays. This paper reports on a systematic examination of attractors around a case study of an interactive urban display in London. We outline the initial spatial exploration with the aim to identify suitable locations for the placement of the interactive public display within the urban setting, followed by a two-hour observation of attractors and stimuli around the urban display. We highlight the main attractors that compete for people’s attention and distract them from potentially interacting with the public display. We also note our attempt to reflect the environment and integrate the public display within its setting

    Beyond the smart city:reflecting human values in the built environment

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    The paper presents a work in progress that will develop a tool for mapping and reflection upon human values within the context of the ‘smart’ city. As the rise in ‘smart’ city initiatives and implementation of technologies within the urban environment become more evident, citizens face irrevocable changes to their environment and their lives within the city. Such a reliance upon technological strategies to fix cities’ ills and a drive for constant innovation within the ‘smart’ city is largely being driven by technology companies and city leaders. Citizens must live with the consequences of such strategies which have the potential to change their environments in momentous ways. In order to develop new technologies within the urban environment Living Labs are becoming increasingly prevalent, enabling designers of technologies to engage with multiple stakeholders, including citizens, in the design and implementation of new products. We present a work in progress that develops a tool for the mapping of and reflection upon, human values in order to avoid unnecessary technologies being imposed upon citizens. Furthermore, we seek to engage those currently driving the ‘smart’ city agenda in envisioning an alternative future where consideration of citizen’s values and the effectiveness of the city takes priority over technology implementation for the sake of efficiencies. We present the need for this new tool as it goes further than existing methods in its potential for enabling citizens to develop clear understanding of the values present in the ‘smart’ city environment

    Showboater: Insight into sustainable rural community display networks from a longitudinal study

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    This paper describes Showboater, a simple system architecture for rural community display networks. We outline the context of our 2-year longitudinal study and outline five design goals: a functional, sustainable, scalable, resilient networked display solution which affords roles for the distribution of governance. We describe the design and implementation of Showboater and how it aligns to the design goals, as well as describing two separate deployments. We reflect on evaluation feedback and provide insight into the implications of deploying Showboater as rural community display system, respective of the initial design goals, and present our recommendations for future improvements

    Space time pixels

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    This paper reports the design of a networked system, the aim of which is to provide an intermediate virtual space that will establish a connection and support interaction between multiple participants in two distant physical spaces. The intention of the project is to explore the potential of the digital space to generate original social relationships between people that their current (spatial or social) position can difficultly allow the establishment of innovative connections. Furthermore, to explore if digital space can sustain, in time, low-level connections like these, by balancing between the two contradicting needs of communication and anonymity. The generated intermediate digital space is a dynamic reactive environment where time and space information of two physical places is superimposed to create a complex common ground where interaction can take place. It is a system that provides awareness of activity in a distant space through an abstract mutable virtual environment, which can be perceived in several different ways – varying from a simple dynamic background image to a common public space in the junction of two private spaces or to a fully opened window to the other space – according to the participants will. The thesis is that the creation of an intermediary environment that operates as an activity abstraction filter between several users, and selectively communicates information, could give significance to the ambient data that people unconsciously transmit to others when co-existing. It can therefore generate a new layer of connections and original interactivity patterns; in contrary to a straight-forward direct real video and sound system, that although it is functionally more feasible, it preserves the existing social constraints that limit interaction into predefined patterns

    ‘And if I don’t want to work like an artist...?’ How the study of artistic resistance enriches organizational studies

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    An increasing number of artists, from theatre makers to painters, critique recent aesthetic developments in organizational life.* One of their topics is the relation between work and freedom, as employees, like artists, are required to bring fully into work their subjectivity and emotional motivation. This paper presents several contemporary examples and a case of the theatre maker Renïżœ Pollesch whose plays show the dark side of these role models, leaving the audience to draw its own, bitter conclusions. It is proposed in this paper that organizational studies should consider these forms of ?artistic resistance? more systematically. Artistic resistance goes beyond extant critical intellectual approaches to organization studies: Its presentational form provides an aesthetic experience, and conveys both embodied and tacit forms of knowing in fuller, richer and stimulating ways. The paper discusses implications for organizational theory building (for example with regard to work models and the use of arts for organizational development), and research methods (scholarly applications of arts-based methods for the generation and presentation of research findings)
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