Generative theatre of totality

Generative art can be used for creating complex multisensory and multimedia experiences within predetermined aesthetic parameters, characteristic of the performing arts and remarkably suitable to address Moholy-Nagy's Theatre of Totality vision. In generative artworks the artist will usually take on the role of an experience framework designer, and the system evolves freely within that framework and its defined aesthetic boundaries. Most generative art impacts visual arts, music and literature, but there does not seem to be any relevant work exploring the cross-medium potential, and one could confidently state that most generative art outcomes are abstract and visual, or audio. It is the goal of this article to propose a model for the creation of generative performances within the Theatre of Totality's scope, derived from stochastic Lindenmayer systems, where mapping techniques are proposed to address the seven variables addressed by Moholy-Nagy: light, space, plane, form, motion, sound and man ("man" is replaced in this article with "human", except where quoting from the author), with all the inherent complexities

Local and official forms of symbolic control: An Australian case study of the pedagogic work of para-educational personnel

In this paper an analysis is undertaken of the accounts of pedagogic work provided by para-educational personnel working in two government-funded schools situated in a low socio-economic area of an Australian city. Specifically, the paper examines the accounts of two para-educational personnel who identified as Samoan/Pacific Islander and worked to improve the educational outcomes of students from the local Samoan/Pacific Islander community. It is argued that the pedagogic work of para-educational personnel may play an important role in redistributing discursive (informational) resources transmitted through schooling institutions. However, the positioning of para-educational personnel in the field of the local community and the field of education regulates the form/modality of pedagogic work, that is, what is taught and how it is taught. Moreover, the content and form of pedagogic work has the potential for realising inclusive and/or exclusive relations for students from disadvantaged backgrounds

Metadata Augmentation for Semantic- and Context- Based Retrieval of Digital Cultural Objects

Cultural objects are increasingly stored and generated in digital form, yet effective methods for their indexing and retrieval still remain an open area of research. The main problem arises from the disconnection between the content-based indexing approach used by computer scientists and the description-based approach used by information scientists. There is also a lack of representational schemes that allow the alignment of the semantics and context with keywords and low-level features that can be automatically extracted from the content of these cultural objects. This paper presents an integrated approach to address these problems, taking advantage of both computer science and information science approaches. The focus is on the rationale and conceptual design of the system and its various components. In particular, we discuss techniques for augmenting commonly used metadata with visual features and domain knowledge to generate high-level abstract metadata which in turn can be used for semantic and context-based indexing and retrieval. We use a sample collection of Vietnamese traditional woodcuts to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach