6,689 research outputs found

    Mobile heritage practices. Implications for scholarly research, user experience design, and evaluation methods using mobile apps.

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    Mobile heritage apps have become one of the most popular means for audience engagement and curation of museum collections and heritage contexts. This raises practical and ethical questions for both researchers and practitioners, such as: what kind of audience engagement can be built using mobile apps? what are the current approaches? how can audience engagement with these experience be evaluated? how can those experiences be made more resilient, and in turn sustainable? In this thesis I explore experience design scholarships together with personal professional insights to analyse digital heritage practices with a view to accelerating thinking about and critique of mobile apps in particular. As a result, the chapters that follow here look at the evolution of digital heritage practices, examining the cultural, societal, and technological contexts in which mobile heritage apps are developed by the creative media industry, the academic institutions, and how these forces are shaping the user experience design methods. Drawing from studies in digital (critical) heritage, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and design thinking, this thesis provides a critical analysis of the development and use of mobile practices for the heritage. Furthermore, through an empirical and embedded approach to research, the thesis also presents auto-ethnographic case studies in order to show evidence that mobile experiences conceptualised by more organic design approaches, can result in more resilient and sustainable heritage practices. By doing so, this thesis encourages a renewed understanding of the pivotal role of these practices in the broader sociocultural, political and environmental changes.AHRC REAC

    Making change against the odds:Entrepreneurial pursuits among young professionals in South Africa

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    Global middle classes appear to be on the rise: more and more people live or aspire to the associated consumptive or professional lifestyles. At the same time, entrepreneurialism has become mainstream in international development discourse and -practices, yet income security and financial stability have diminished for most people. Together these trends present a complex historical situation for current generations trying to build their lives. In this study I analyze how pressures for middle-class ways of living, the proliferation of entrepreneurialism, and pervasive insecurity intertwine in the lives of young professionals in South Africa, and how they grapple with the inherent tensions. I present an ethnographic case study of participants in business incubators, startup hubs and entrepreneurial events, based on eleven months of fieldwork in Johannesburg and Cape Town between 2015 and 2019. How to understand their entrepreneurial aspirations and continued engagement despite volatile and uncertain outcomes? I argue that young professionals’ uptake of entrepreneurship is a situated, cultural practice through which they renegotiate the aspirational legacies of apartheid and the promises of the transition amidst deepening inequalities, rather than the effect of hegemonic neoliberalism. Foregrounding entrepreneurship’s positive potential and the incompleteness of reality, I argue that it offers a practical mode of becoming, of realizing social changes and of changing in itself. In short, this dissertation shows how the appeal of entrepreneurship in the case of Johannesburg’s young professionals makes sense as a way to realize the possibilities for success and the conditions of respectability in post-transition times

    Knee Osteoarthritis:From early to clinically relevant stage

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    Articulations of inclusivity within in-game concerts: a comparative multi-case study

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    This research will investigate the power of in-game concerts to act as articulators of social connections and inclusivity between their attendees. Despite existing as a category of music consumption since the 2000s, with platforms such as Second Life and Lord of the Rings Online, in-game concerts have entered a new stage in their development and popularity since 2018, with more platforms and artists adhering to (and further developing) the format. This often causes thousands, or millions, of attendees to be simultaneously impacted by a same virtual event and leads to the research questions: (i) in what ways can in-game concerts affect the social experience of music consumption of their attendees and (ii) in what ways can in game concerts be more (or less) inclusive than their non-virtual counterparts? By combining elements from the theory of Liveness, with special attention to the notion of ‘social liveness’ (Auslander, 2008; Couldry, 2004), Social Inclusion Theory (Bailey, 2005; Hayday & Collison, 2020) and Social Dominance Theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Ong et al., 2021), this research will be carried out as a comparative multi-case study. Special focus will be given to the scene of independent Minecraft festivals (2018-2021) and to the concert by Norwegian singer Aurora in the MMORPG Sky: Children of the Light (2022). The investigation of each of these cases will lead to a comparative analysis, from which reflections on the social power of ingame concerts as a wider category will be drawn

    Posthuman Creative Styling can a creative writer’s style of writing be described as procedural?

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    This thesis is about creative styling — the styling a creative writer might use to make their writing unique. It addresses the question as to whether such styling can be described as procedural. Creative styling is part of the technique a creative writer uses when writing. It is how they make the text more ‘lively’ by use of tips and tricks they have either learned or discovered. In essence these are rules, ones the writer accrues over time by their practice. The thesis argues that the use and invention of these rules can be set as procedures. and so describe creative styling as procedural. The thesis follows from questioning why it is that machines or algorithms have, so far, been incapable of producing creative writing which has value. Machine-written novels do not abound on the bookshelves and writing styled by computers is, on the whole, dull in comparison to human-crafted literature. It came about by thinking how it would be possible to reach a point where writing by people and procedural writing are considered to have equal value. For this reason the thesis is set in a posthuman context, where the differences between machines and people are erased. The thesis uses practice to inform an original conceptual space model, based on quality dimensions and dynamic-inter operation of spaces. This model gives an example of the procedures which a posthuman creative writer uses when engaged in creative styling. It suggests an original formulation for the conceptual blending of conceptual spaces, based on the casting of qualities from one space to another. In support of and informing its arguments are ninety-nine examples of creative writing practice which show the procedures by which style has been applied, created and assessed. It provides a route forward for further joint research into both computational and human-coded creative writing

    “I love my AI girlfriend” A study of consent in AI-human relationships.

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    Mastergradsoppgave i digital kulturDIKULT350MAHF-DIKU

    The inherent liminality of lesbian detectives: Shifting spaces and lesbian crime fiction 1984-2022

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    This thesis studies lesbian detective fiction and specifically considers this genre in its early decades (1980s-1990s) from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. This thesis postulates that out of a sample pool of a hundred novels, there are recurring patterns of behaviours and attitudes among the protagonists of this genre within certain physical and metaphorical spaces. These patterns demonstrate a destabilised identity, as the lesbian sleuth never ceases to explore and test the boundaries of her authority as an enforcer of law and order and of her suppressed spatiality as a member of a sexual minority. This causes her to live in a perpetual state of Insider/Outsider liminality and it causes queer trauma to be a fundamental aspect of her character. This thesis considers this concept as the result of long-standing, systemic homophobia and heterosexist normativity, and utilises the notion of queer trauma to interpret the way the lesbian sleuth is inescapably stuck between a sense of duty and justice and a yearning for belonging and self-affirmation. The interpretive process is supported by an extensive and in-depth theoretical research into the fields of history, culture, geography, feminist criticism, gender, and sexuality studies for the selected subject matter. The spaces selected and analysed in this thesis are the queer closet, the medical establishment, domestic settings, and the gay bar. These spaces have been chosen for the significant, emblematic ways in which the lesbian detectives interact with them and have been analysed in order of their importance for the protagonists’ characterisation. The introduction includes introductory statements and the theoretical framework, the first chapter overviews major detectives in the history of crime literature from a spatial perspective; the second chapter discusses the queer closet; the third chapter considers the space of the clinic and the topics of queer trauma and of the pathologisation of homosexuality; the fourth chapter analyses the domestic settings of the protagonists; the fifth chapter examines the context of the gay bar and its history; finally, the conclusion offers closing statements about the focus and originality of this thesis. The originality of this thesis lies in its focus on spaces and on the relationship between the protagonist and society, law and order, and Self and Other. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of queer literature by specifically considering the unescapable liminality of the lesbian/Outsider detective/Insider

    Samozvanets (The Pretender)

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    he Russian word Samozvanets most directly translates to Imposter in English. However, for this thesis, I have selected the alternative interpretation of Pretender. Imposter implies the taking or assuming of another’s position. Pretender, more personally, carries the meaning of presenting self as something one is not. It is through the lens of the Pretender that I examine the idea of what it means to be a member of a particular ethnicity, and to engage with one’s cultural heritage. I do this through a collection of fictional stories, investigating various lives within the Russian diaspora following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I use this lens to present some of the various ways in which Russians preserve and redefine their sense of self apart from their home country. The collection focuses its attention on themes of identity and nationalism to present the unique challenges faced by a modern diasporic community. Shadows in the Field sets the reader in a remote area of Russia and follows a young man as he attempts to pursue his dream of becoming a tailor in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, eventually leading him to immigrate to the United States. The Distance Between Us brings the reader to a dilapidated porch outside of a house party in Boston, Massachusetts where a Russian adoptee and a runaway discuss what it means to be free from the past and present. What We Keep brings the reader further into the home, following the experience of a private tutor called to work with a traumatized Russian orphan. Moonflower expands on the idea of “the home” by inter-weaving three time periods across Moscow, Boston, and London, into the journey of a young woman iii seeking to overcome the grief of the sudden death of her mother, while attempting to establish independence from her controlling oligarch father. The Pretender concludes the collection with a Russian immigrant’s meditation on masculinity, power, and nationalism in the wake of the Russo-Ukrainian War

    Second-Person Surveillance: Politics of User Implication in Digital Documentaries

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    This dissertation analyzes digital documentaries that utilize second-person address and roleplay to make users feel implicated in contemporary refugee crises, mass incarceration in the U.S., and state and corporate surveillances. Digital documentaries are seemingly more interactive and participatory than linear film and video documentary as they are comprised of a variety of auditory, visual, and written media, utilize networked technologies, and turn the documentary audience into a documentary user. I draw on scholarship from documentary, game, new media, and surveillance studies to analyze how second-person address in digital documentaries is configured through user positioning and direct address within the works themselves, in how organizations and creators frame their productions, and in how users and players respond in reviews, discussion forums, and Let’s Plays. I build on Michael Rothberg’s theorization of the implicated subject to explore how these digital documentaries bring the user into complicated relationality with national and international crises. Visually and experientially implying that users bear responsibility to the subjects and subject matter, these works can, on the one hand, replicate modes of liberal empathy for suffering, distant “others” and, on the other, simulate one’s own surveillant modes of observation or behavior to mirror it back to users and open up one’s offline thoughts and actions as a site of critique. This dissertation charts how second-person address shapes and limits the political potentialities of documentary projects and connects them to a lineage of direct address from educational and propaganda films, museum exhibits, and serious games. By centralizing the user’s individual experience, the interventions that second-person digital documentaries can make into social discourse change from public, institution-based education to more privatized forms of sentimental education geared toward personal edification and self-realization. Unless tied to larger initiatives or movements, I argue that digital documentaries reaffirm a neoliberal politics of individual self-regulation and governance instead of public education or collective, social intervention. Chapter one focuses on 360-degree virtual reality (VR) documentaries that utilize the feeling of presence to position users as if among refugees and as witnesses to refugee experiences in camps outside of Europe and various dwellings in European cities. My analysis of Clouds Over Sidra (Gabo Arora and Chris Milk 2015) and The Displaced (Imraan Ismail and Ben C. Solomon 2015) shows how these VR documentaries utilize observational realism to make believable and immersive their representations of already empathetic refugees. The empathetic refugee is often young, vulnerable, depoliticized and dehistoricized and is a well-known trope in other forms of humanitarian media that continues into VR documentaries. Forced to Flee (Zahra Rasool 2017), I am Rohingya (Zahra Rasool 2017), So Leben FlĂŒchtlinge in Berlin (Berliner Morgenpost 2017), and Limbo: A Virtual Experience of Waiting for Asylum (Shehani Fernando 2017) disrupt easy immersions into realistic-looking VR experiences of stereotyped representations and user identifications and, instead, can reflect back the user’s political inaction and surveillant modes of looking. Chapter two analyzes web- and social media messenger-based documentaries that position users as outsiders to U.S. mass incarceration. Users are noir-style co-investigators into the crime of the prison-industrial complex in Fremont County, Colorado in Prison Valley: The Prison Industry (David Dufresne and Philippe Brault 2009) and co-riders on a bus transporting prison inmates’ loved ones for visitations to correctional facilities in Upstate New York in A Temporary Contact (Nirit Peled and Sara Kolster 2017). Both projects construct an experience of carceral constraint for users to reinscribe seeming “outside” places, people, and experiences as within the continuation of the racialized and classed politics of state control through mass incarceration. These projects utilize interfaces that create a tension between replicating an exploitative hierarchy between non-incarcerated users and those subject to mass incarceration while also de-immersing users in these experiences to mirror back the user’s supposed distance from this mode of state regulation. Chapter three investigates a type of digital game I term dataveillance simulation games, which position users as surveillance agents in ambiguously dystopian nation-states and force users to use their own critical thinking and judgment to construct the criminality of state-sanctioned surveillance targets. Project Perfect Citizen (Bad Cop Studios 2016), Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (Osmotic Studios 2016), and Papers, Please (Lucas Pope 2013) all create a dual empathy: players empathize with bureaucratic surveillance agents while empathizing with surveillance targets whose emails, text messages, documents, and social media profiles reveal them to be “normal” people. I argue that while these games show criminality to be a construct, they also utilize a racialized fear of the loss of one’s individual privacy to make players feel like they too could be surveillance targets. Chapter four examines personalized digital documentaries that turn users and their data into the subject matter. Do Not Track (Brett Gaylor 2015), A Week with Wanda (Joe Derry Hall 2019), Stealing Ur Feelings (Noah Levenson 2019), Alfred Premium (JoĂ«l Ronez, Pierre Corbinais, and Émilie F. Grenier 2019), How They Watch You (Nick Briz 2021), and Fairly Intelligentℱ (A.M. Darke 2021) track, monitor, and confront users with their own online behavior to reflect back a corporate surveillance that collects, analyzes, and exploits user data for profit. These digital documentaries utilize emotional fear- and humor-based appeals to persuade users that these technologies are controlling them, shaping their desires and needs, and dehumanizing them through algorithmic surveillance
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