Perceptions of trends in Seychelles artisanal trap fisheries: comparing catch monitoring, underwater visual census and fishers' knowledge

Fisheries scientists and managers are increasingly engaging with fishers' knowledge (FK) to provide novel information and improve the legitimacy of fisheries governance. Disputes between the perceptions of fishers and scientists can generate conflicts for governance, but can also be a source of new perspectives or understandings. This paper compares artisanal trap fishers' reported current catch rates with landings data and underwater visual census (UVC). Fishers' reports of contemporary 'normal' catch per day tended to be higher than recent median landings records. However, fishers' reports of 'normal' catch per trap were not significantly different from the median CPUE calculated from landings data, and reports of 'good' and 'poor' catch rates were indicative of variability observed in landings data. FK, landings and UVC data all gave different perspectives of trends over a ten-year period. Fishers' perceptions indicated greater declines than statistical models fitted to landings data, while UVC evidence for trends varied between sites and according to the fish assemblage considered. Divergence in trend perceptions may have resulted from differences in the spatial, temporal or taxonomic focus of each dataset. Fishers may have experienced and understood behavioural changes and increased fishing power, which may have obscured declines from landings data. Various psychological factors affect memory and recall, and may have affected these memory-based estimates of trends, while different assumptions underlying the analysis of both interview data and conventional scientific data could also have led to qualitatively different trend perceptions. Differing perspectives from these three data sources illustrate both the potential for 'cognitive conflicts' between stakeholders who do not rely on the same data sources, as well as the importance of multiple information sources to understand dynamics of fisheries. Collaborative investigation of such divergence may facilitate learning and improve fisheries governance

Play, Space and Idealized Reader Constructs in Contemporary Argentine Fiction: Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ana María Shua and Belén Gache

This thesis explores the convergences and divergences in the personal conceptualizations of play, space and idealized reader constructs as they are manifest in the short fictions of Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, the sudden fictions of AnaMaría Shua and, more recently, in the hypertext fictions of Belén Gache. The four chapters that make up this thesis offer an in-depth examination of how the narrative strategies employed by each individual author are used in an attempt to imbue the reading process with a game-like quality that serves to reduce the ontological distances between author, text and reader. As such, this thesis not only identifies key developments in the thematic and stylistic concerns of the Argentine short story, but also situates the reader’s position in relation to what I call the ‘narrative space’. This ‘narrative space’ refers to a spatially-inflected manifestation of the cognitive, imaginative and emotional experiences of the ideal reader construct that foregrounds his/her role in the co-production of narrative meaning. Such a focus not only allows this thesis to engage with each author’s individual contribution to the literary politics of the contemporary Argentine short story, but also facilitates a serious consideration of the short story’s ongoing dialogues with increasingly prevalent new media technologies

Horizontality: From "Window" to "Ground", Exploring Immersive Audiotory Space as an Interactive Participant Medium

My sound-based arts practice is currently concerned with the shift of focus from the materiality of the sonic art object to the conceptual and semantic dimensions involved in interaction within a system. The twentieth century saw the dawn of technologies that could not only mediate the sonic arts in new ways but also inform its techniques and tropes. Over the last few decades we have seen the emergence of the genres Transmission and Telematic Art, the methodology of both often being informed by new concepts of space. The rise of post-industrial Capitalism situates us in a new epoch of spatial awareness. This seems particularly relevant now that mediated sonic and communication technologies are an integral part of our lives. Transmitting media “punching a hole in space” now ignore acoustic container boundaries: a sound heard and its source can exist separately yet simultaneously. Physical location and distance become less relevant. How does this create a shift in how we perceive the spatial within the practice of living?; and 2. redefining concepts of author and audience. All who participate are involved in authorship creating a form that is impossible to mediate to a passive audience 5. My work explores how this situation and the aesthetics deriving from it inform me as a practitioner within the medium of sound: the generative and emergent behaviour that arises from relationship as a form of “composition” and, of particular interest to me, the desire to shift focus from the traditional role of sound as an object of aesthetic expression to immersive interactive auditory space as a means of entering into dialogue with the multidimensional environment which humanity inhabits

Transparent Things: A Cabinet

For too long, the Earth has been used to ground thought instead of bending it; such grounding leaves the planet as nothing but a stage for phenomenology, deconstruction, or other forms of anthropocentric philosophy. In far too much continental philosophy, the Earth is a cold, dead place enlivened only by human thought—either as a thing to be exploited, or as an object of nostalgia. Geophilosophy seeks instead to question the ground of thinking itself, the relation of the inorganic to the capacities and limits of thought. This book constructs an eclectic variant of geophilosophy through engagements with digging machines, nuclear waste, cyclones and volcanoes, giant worms, secret vessels, decay, subterranean cities, hell, demon souls, black suns, and xenoarcheaology, via continental theory (Nietzsche, Schelling, Deleuze, et alia) and various cultural objects such as horror films, videogames, and weird Lovecraftian fictions, with special attention to Speculative Realism and the work of Reza Negarestani. In a time where the earth as a whole is threatened by ecological collapse, On an Ungrounded Earth generates a perversely realist account of the earth as a dynamic engine materially invading and upsetting our attempts to reduce it to merely the ground beneath our feet

Discovering design: enhancing the capability to design at the cultural interface between first Australian and western design paradigms

This thesis claims that the First Australian design paradigm is distinct from the paradigms of design articulated in the Western canon (such as the rational and reflective design paradigms). I also investigate what it means to design at the cultural interface between First Australian and Western design paradigms, and identify the capability dimensions that are valued when expanding the freedom to design, from within a First Australia design paradigm as well as at the cultural interface. The methodology is informed by approaches to decolonising research at the cultural interface, which respect Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being. My approach to the methodology informs the phenomenological basis of this study; I use Ricoeur’s approach to hermeneutical phenomenology (HP), as it appears to be suited to cross-cultural interpretation and compatible with the principles of Indigenous standpoint theory that guide research at the cultural interface. The results reveal that First Australian design should be understood as a process of experiential, reflective, respectful, relational discovery, rather than creation. It emphasises the relational aspect and should be understood as a process of connecting people with each other, and to the wider social and natural systems, to maintain a sense of harmony. When designing at the cultural interface between First and Later Australians, the most important differences and tensions seem to occur in the axiological and epistemological dimensions: the principles, the normative questions of what should be designed associated with innovation and creativity, the knowledge system characteristics, and issues of cultural identity and community. Valued capabilities when expanding the freedom to design at the cultural interface include the capability to develop empowering partnerships, and to maintain the integrity of cultural reproduction at the cultural interface

Kukama Radio: the Politics and Aesthetics of Indigenous Media in Peruvian Amazonia

This dissertation is about the political and aesthetic dimensions of Indigenous media in Peruvian Amazonia. It explores how Kukama media-makers use aesthetic mastery to engage in three key political fields in Amazonia: indigeneity, historicity, and environmentalism. I specifically examine the audiovisual discourses and media-making practices coming from an Indigenous radio station called Radio Ucamara, located in the town of Nauta in Northeastern Peru (Loreto region). Drawing on place-based ethnography and digital research methods, I analyze the way this radio station instrumentalizes multiple digital and non-digital media forms to make visible (and also audible) their identities, violent histories, and cosmological worlds amidst their confrontation with the Peruvian neoliberal state and oil companies. The dissertation also contemplates how through these processes of mediatization, Amazonian ontologies, mytho-histories, and identities are being reimagined. For this purpose, I focus both on the analysis of media products (e.g., music videos, documentaries, journalistic reportage, murals, books) and the social dynamics surrounding those creations, to understand the way Kukama media producers take part in ongoing struggles for the revitalization of the Kukama language, seeking justice for the rubber times violence, and stopping the pollution of Amazonian rivers. Following theoretical frameworks derived from the anthropology of media and the anthropology of music and verbal art in Lowland South America, I argue that media aesthetics is becoming a major instrument in building political power in the region

Planetary Cinema

The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world

Evaluation Report of Prospero’s Island: an Immersive Approach to Literacy at Key Stage 3.

Prospero's Island is an immersive theatre project created by Punchdrunk Enrichment and sponsored by Learning Partner, London Borough of Hackney (Hackney Learning Trust). The project sought to inspire and motivate students’ engagement with the English curriculum, and to develop an immersive approach to teaching literacy that would improve students’ learning. Prospero’s Island took place in a secondary academy in Hackney, London over two school terms (autumn 2014-spring 2015). The project was embedded in existing schemes of work, and included the following elements: • An immersive theatre installation for Year 7-8 students (aged 11-13 years); this took the form of an interactive game based on The Tempest; over a two-week period groups of students participated in this experience for a morning or afternoon (autumn term); • A Teaching and Learning Day (TALD) and eight twilight CPD sessions on immersive learning techniques for school staff and teachers across London (autumn term); • A return to the installation for one lesson, led by English teachers (autumn term); • Follow-on work by teachers to develop immersive learning in English lessons (spring term); • An independent evaluation of the project (autumn and spring terms)