838 research outputs found

    2017 GREAT Day Program

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    SUNY Geneseo’s Eleventh Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1011/thumbnail.jp

    Complicated objects: artifacts from the Yuanming Yuan in Victorian Britain

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    The 1860 spoliation of the Summer Palace at the close of the Second Opium War by British and French troops was a watershed event within the development of Britain as an imperialist nation, which guaranteed a market for opium produced in its colony India and demonstrated the power of its armed forces. The distribution of the spoils to officers and diplomatic corps by campaign leaders in Beijing was also a sign of the British Army’s rising power as an instrument of the imperialist state. These conditions would suggest that objects looted from the site would be integrated into an imperialist aesthetic that reflected and promoted the material benefits of military engagement overseas and foregrounded the circumstances of their removal to Britain for campaign members and the British public. This study mines sources dating to the two decades following the war – including British newspapers, auction house records, exhibition catalogs and works of art – to test this hypothesis. Findings show that initial movements of looted objects through the military and diplomatic corps did reinforce notions of imperialist power by enabling campaign members to profit from the spoliation through sales of looted objects and trophy displays. However, material from the Summer Palace arrived at a moment when British manufacturers and cultural leaders were engaged in a national effort to improve the quality of British goods to compete in the international marketplace and looted art was quickly interpolated in this national conversation. Ironically, the same “free trade” imperatives that motivated the invasion energized a new design movement that embraced Chinese ornament. As a consequence, political interpretations of the material outside of military collections were quickly joined by a strong response to Chinese ornament from cultural institutions and design leaders. Art from the Summer Palace held a prominent place at industrial art exhibitions of the postwar period and inspired new designs in a number of mediums. While the availability of Chinese imperial art was the consequence of a military invasion and therefore a product of imperialist expansion, evidence presented here shows that the design response to looted objects was not circumscribed by this political reality. Chinese ornament on imperial wares was ultimately celebrated for its formal qualities and acknowledged links to the Summer Palace were an indicator of good design, not a celebration of victory over a failed Chinese state. Therefore, the looting of the Summer Palace was ultimately an essential factor in the development of modern design, the essence of which is a break with Classical ornament

    Grounds for a Third Place : The Starbucks Experience, Sirens, and Space

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    My goal in this dissertation is to help demystify or “filter” the “Starbucks Experience” for a post-pandemic world, taking stock of how a multi-national company has long outgrown its humble beginnings as a wholesale coffee bean supplier to become a digitally-integrated and hypermodern café. I look at the role Starbucks plays within the larger cultural history of the coffee house and also consider how Starbucks has been idyllically described in corporate discourse as a comfortable and discursive “third place” for informal gathering, a term that also prescribes its own radical ethos as a globally recognized customer service platform. Attempting to square Starbucks’ iconography and rhetoric with a new critical methodology, in a series of interdisciplinary case studies, I examine the role Starbucks’ “third place” philosophy plays within larger conversations about urban space and commodity culture, analyze Starbucks advertising, architecture and art, and trace the mythical rise of the Starbucks Siren (and the reiterations and re-imaginings of the Starbucks Siren in art and media). While in corporate rhetoric Starbucks’ “third place” is depicted as an enthralling adventure, full of play, discovery, authenticity, or “romance,” I draw on critical theory to discuss how it operates today as a space of distraction, isolation, and loss

    Moving usable security research out of the lab: evaluating the use of VR studies for real-world authentication research

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    Empirical evaluations of real-world research artefacts that derive results from observations and experiments are a core aspect of usable security research. Expert interviews as part of this thesis revealed that the costs associated with developing and maintaining physical research artefacts often amplify human-centred usability and security research challenges. On top of that, ethical and legal barriers often make usability and security research in the field infeasible. Researchers have begun simulating real-life conditions in the lab to contribute to ecological validity. However, studies of this type are still restricted to what can be replicated in physical laboratory settings. Furthermore, historically, user study subjects were mainly recruited from local areas only when evaluating hardware prototypes. The human-centred research communities have recognised and partially addressed these challenges using online studies such as surveys that allow for the recruitment of large and diverse samples as well as learning about user behaviour. However, human-centred security research involving hardware prototypes is often concerned with human factors and their impact on the prototypes’ usability and security, which cannot be studied using traditional online surveys. To work towards addressing the current challenges and facilitating research in this space, this thesis explores if – and how – virtual reality (VR) studies can be used for real-world usability and security research. It first validates the feasibility and then demonstrates the use of VR studies for human-centred usability and security research through six empirical studies, including remote and lab VR studies as well as video prototypes as part of online surveys. It was found that VR-based usability and security evaluations of authentication prototypes, where users provide touch, mid-air, and eye-gaze input, greatly match the findings from the original real-world evaluations. This thesis further investigated the effectiveness of VR studies by exploring three core topics in the authentication domain: First, the challenges around in-the-wild shoulder surfing studies were addressed. Two novel VR shoulder surfing methods were implemented to contribute towards realistic shoulder surfing research and explore the use of VR studies for security evaluations. This was found to allow researchers to provide a bridge over the methodological gap between lab and field studies. Second, the ethical and legal barriers when conducting in situ usability research on authentication systems were addressed. It was found that VR studies can represent plausible authentication environments and that a prototype’s in situ usability evaluation results deviate from traditional lab evaluations. Finally, this thesis contributes a novel evaluation method to remotely study interactive VR replicas of real-world prototypes, allowing researchers to move experiments that involve hardware prototypes out of physical laboratories and potentially increase a sample’s diversity and size. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of using VR studies for prototype usability and security evaluations. It lays the foundation for establishing VR studies as a powerful, well-evaluated research method and unfolds its methodological advantages and disadvantages

    All Things Weird and Wonderful: A Creative Exploration of Disability Representation

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    My dissertation, All Things Weird and Wonderful: A Creative Exploration of Disability Representation, begins with a thorough review of the literature of disability representation in TV and film to set the stage for the one-hour supernatural drama pilot I wrote, which I also adapted into a complete Adult urban fantasy novel. Pitched as the supernatural drama version of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building meets Netflix’s Raising Dion, All Things Weird and Wonderful is a one-hour supernatural drama about an asexual college freshman with cerebral palsy named Genevieve Ross, who has supernatural powers, and an Egyptian American college senior with PTSD named Patrick Nasser, who runs a podcast dedicated to supernatural phenomenon. When Genevieve witnesses a supernatural attack at a nightclub near campus, she turns to Patrick for help. Together they team up to try and solve the supernatural mysteries happening on and around their university campus. All Things Weird and Wonderful explores what it is like to be disabled in an inaccessible and often ableist society tackling themes of ableism regarding both physical disability and mental health with a supernatural twist. There are very few supernatural, sci-fi, fantasy, or horror one-hour TV dramas with authentic disability representation as most authentic disability representation can be found in TV comedies, so this was written in hopes of being part of that change. Some of the major TV influences for this script and my writing in general include Nickelodeon’s The Secret World of Alex Mack, FOX’s Tru Calling, SyFy’s Haven, and Netflix’s Raising Dion. I have also adapted this script into an Adult urban fantasy novel, which I hope to begin querying in fall 2023 or winter 2024

    Everyday Streets

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    Everyday streets are both the most used and most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact but also urban blocks, interiors, depths and hinterlands, which are integral to their nature and contribute to their vitality. Everyday streets are physically and socially shaped by the lives of the people and things that inhabit them through a reciprocal dance with multiple overlapping temporalities. The primary focus of this book is an inclusive approach to understanding and designing everyday streets. It offers an analysis of many aspects of everyday streets from cities around the globe. From the regular rectilinear urban blocks of Montreal to the military-regulated narrow alleyways of Naples, and from the resilient market streets of London to the crammed commercial streets of Chennai, the streets in this book were all conceived with a certain level of control. Everyday Streets is a palimpsest of methods, perspectives and recommendations that together provide a solid understanding of everyday streets, their degree of inclusiveness, and to what extent they could be more inclusive

    The post migration lived experiences of Syrian refugee children in Early Childhood Education and Care in England: four children’s stories.

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    This study is concerned with the lived experiences of four Syrian refugee children in Early Childhood Education and Care. It aimed to capture their voices and tell their stories, using a hybrid praxeological and polyvocal methodology (Formosinho and Formosinho, 2012; Pascal and Bertram, 2012; Tobin et al, 2016) and multi modal methods (Theron et al 2011; Clark and Moss, 2011; Carr et al 2002). Their lives are complex, so Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model (1979) was used to understand their context, whilst an intersectional theoretical triad comprising of Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1979); Orientalism (Said, 1978) and Social Learning Theory (Vygotsky, 1978) was developed to frame the research. Issues of power, emotion, positionality, intersectionality, and invisibility are threaded throughout the research, therefore the paradigm, methodology, research design and theoretical frame were carefully chosen, and new models constructed to consider the sensitivities of the field. A chronological layered approach was adopted for the literature review which identified broad themes and illuminated hidden narratives about refugees, these resonated through the findings and subsequent discussions. Other studies concerned with refugee children’s lived experiences informed this research (Kalkman and Clark, 2017; Prior and Niesz, 2013; Wihstutz, 2020; Peleman et al, 2020; Picchio and Mayer, 2019; Stekalova-Hughes and Wang, 2019; El Gemayei, 2019). The findings are presented using the poem No Man is an Island (Donne, 1624). They suggest that elements of the children’s lived experiences act as islands, causing isolation but others which act as bridges, enabling connection. A dynamic power sensitive ethical approach was developed to respond to the challenges of the field, maintain the original ethical commitment to the parents of the children and be true to the participatory methodological approach (Gaywood et al, 2020). This thesis contributes new theoretical, methodological, ethical, and pedagogical understanding to both research and practice, which is transferable for use with other marginalised groups

    'A way of life': practising place in the small press

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    This thesis is a study of place in the practice and publications of three small presses: Moschatel Press, Coracle Press and Corbel Stone Press. Practice is central to my approach, both in situating place as something practised, unfinished and ongoing, and in the repetitive everyday acts that make running a press ‘a way of life’. I examine the ways in which small press practice shapes and responds to a variety of places. Beginning with the home, the thesis moves gradually outwards to larger-scale spaces: the local area, public spaces, the wider landscape. The thesis is founded upon the press model as one of collaboration, both between artists, and with the places they inhabit. Chapter One establishes the domestic space as central to the activities and publications of the press. The home is a site of production enmeshed with the everyday, and is the intended habitat of many small press pieces. I trace the influence of domestic intimacy and tactility across small press poetics, and the importance of ‘the domestic scale’ is foregrounded throughout the thesis. Chapter Two is an exploration of small press localness. I build upon the domestic chapter to examine how the local is shaped by its relationship to the home. I frame small press localness as distinctly embodied, examining the charting of local places on foot and the gathering of texts and objects by hand. Chapter Three examines site-specific work, exploring the presence of small press pieces in public, communal spaces. I focus particularly upon the hospital-based works of Thomas A Clark, and how they provoke questions around attention, contemplation and care. The chapter closes by reflecting upon how these pieces facilitate thinking about the more- than-human. Chapter Four sustains a focus upon the more-than-human to explore the small press relationship with the wider landscape. The chapter scrutinises an ambivalent attitude towards books as a means of relating to and recording landscapes. I consider work across deep timescales and study the embodied landscape-based practices of Corbel Stone Press, such as burial and the leaving of offerings

    Bonding Over Distances: Building Social Presence Using Mixed Reality for Transnational Families

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    Sparked by the frustrations experienced in transnational family communication and inspired by an interest in exploring the potentials of a mixed reality (MR) future landscape, this study investigates the primary research question: how can we use mixed reality to build social presence for transnational family communication? This study reviews literature and contextual works from relevant fields, including presence and social presence, mixed reality, transnational relationships (inter-family and human-space relationships), and technology for social presence for transnational families. Then, the researcher situates this study at the intersection of the before mentioned categories. Utilizing the Research through Design methodology and paired user testing methods, this study describes 4 iterative MR prototypes for building social presence for transnational families, highlighting each prototype’s relation to a secondary research question, exploration goals, features, performance evaluation, and takeaways for the next iteration. Then, it documents and analyzes data collected from in-depth user testing sessions with 6 transnational family pairs totaling 12 participants, each with one member living locally (in Toronto), and the other overseas. The quantitative and qualitative data were collected from different components of the user testing, including observation notes from paired-up live connection sessions for collaborative tasks, interviews, and online surveys. This study contributes to theory at the overlapping fields of social presence, mixed reality research, transnational family relationship, and human-space relationship. The mixed reality prototypes, design frameworks, and evaluation criteria for designing mixed reality spaces to build social presence for transnational families also provide significance to design practice

    Security Analysis: A Critical Thinking Approach

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    Security Analysis: A Critical-Thinking Approach is for anyone desiring to learn techniques for generating the best answers to complex questions and best solutions to complex problems. It furnishes current and future analysts in national security, homeland security, law enforcement, and corporate security an alternative, comprehensive process for conducting both intelligence analysis and policy analysis. The target audience is upper-division undergraduate students and new graduate students, along with entry-level practitioner trainees. The book centers on a Security Analysis Critical-Thinking Framework that synthesizes critical-thinking and existing analytic techniques. Ample examples are provided to assist readers in comprehending the material. Newly created material includes techniques for analyzing beliefs and political cultures. The book also functions as an introduction to Foreign Policy and Security Studies.https://encompass.eku.edu/ekuopen/1005/thumbnail.jp
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