The construction and interrogation of actor based simulation histories

Large socio-technical systems are complex to comprehend in their entirety because information exchanges between system compo- nents lend an emergent nature to the overall system behaviour. Although Individual system component behaviour may be known at the outset, such components may exhibit uncertainty and further exacerbate issues of a priori prediction of the overall system behaviour. Multi-agent sys- tems and the use of simulation is a possible recourse in such situations however, simulation results need to be correctly interpreted so as to nudge the overall system behaviour towards a desired objective. We pro- pose a solution wherein the system is modelled as a set of actors ex- changing messages, a simulation engine producing execution trace for an actor as its history, and a querying mechanism to identify patterns that may span across individual actor histories to ascertain property of the overall system. The proposed solution is evaluated using a representative sample from real life

Constructing and interrogating actor histories

Complex systems, such as organizations, can be represented as executable simulation models using actor-based languages. Decision-making can be supported by system simulation so that different configurations provide a basis for what-if analysis. Actor-based models are expressed in terms of large numbers of concurrent actors that communicate using asynchronous messages leading to complex non-deterministic behaviour. This chapter addresses the problem of analyzing the results of model executions and proposes a general approach that can be added to any actor-based system. The approach uses a logic programming language with temporal extensions to query execution traces. The approach has been implemented and is shown to support a representative system model

Constructing and interrogating actor histories

Complex systems, such as organizations, can be represented as executable simulation models using actor-based languages. Decision-making can be supported by system simulation so that different configurations provide a basis for what-if analysis. Actor-based models are expressed in terms of large numbers of concurrent actors that communicate using asynchronous messages leading to complex non-deterministic behaviour. This chapter addresses the problem of analyzing the results of model executions and proposes a general approach that can be added to any actor-based system. The approach uses a logic programming language with temporal extensions to query execution traces. The approach has been implemented and is shown to support a representative system model

Planar Refrains

My practice explores phenomenal poetic truths that exist in fissures between the sensual and physical qualities of material constructs. Magnifying this confounding interspace, my work activates specific instruments within mutable, relational systems of installation, movement, and documentation. The tools I fabricate function within variable orientations and are implemented as both physical barriers and thresholds into alternate, virtual domains. Intersecting fragments of sound and moving image build a nexus of superimposed spatialities, while material constructions are enveloped in ephemeral intensities. Within this compounded environment, both mind and body are charged as active sites through which durational, contemplative experiences can pass. Reverberation, the ghostly refrain of a sound calling back to our ears from a distant plane, can intensify our emotional experience of place. My project Planar Refrains utilizes four electro-mechanical reverb plates, analog audio filters designed to simulate expansive acoustic arenas. Historically these devices have provided emotive voicings to popular studio recordings, dislocating the performer from the commercial studio and into a simulated reverberant territory of mythic proportions. The material resonance of steel is used to filter a recorded signal, shaping the sound of a human performance into something more transformative, a sound embodying otherworldly dynamics. In subverting the designed utility of reverb plates, I am exploring their value as active surfaces extending across different spatial realities. The background of ephemeral sonic residue is collapsed into the foreground, a filter becomes sculpture, and this sculpture becomes an instrument in an evolving soundscape

Performing nostalgia: body, memory, and the aesthetics of past-home

Since its etymological beginnings, the meanings and usages of nostalgia have shifted markedly. In the shifting, nostalgia’s associations with the body and with the concept of home has diminished. This study of African American nostalgia for Africa uses genealogical inquiry, personal and autoethnographic narrative, and performance theories and practices to reinvigorate the relations between body, memory, aesthetics, past, and home. Attending to operations of time and space, I theorize the aforementioned relations in order to build a theory of critical nostalgia. Following Debbora Battaglia, I argue and illustrate that nostalgia is an act realized in performance, and I develop my theory of critical nostalgia by investigating three primary sites of memory: two African American genealogy websites, Elmina Castle, a slave castle located on Ghana’s West coast, and my own staged theatre production Copious Notes: A Nostalgia Tale. Informed by Michel Foucault’s method of critical genealogy and Joseph Roach’s genealogies of performance, I offer critical nostalgia as a method of scholarly inquiry, as an active practice of personal and cultural memory, as a tool for representing memories of past-homes, and as a compositional aesthetic. In the study, I interrogate the history of nostalgia and its use for scholars as a critical category. Theorizing the positionality of the corporeal black body within nostalgic appeals of home, homeland and community, I attend to the relations between origin, roots, and identity. Further, I explore the performative possibilities of nostalgia in relation to affective bodily experience and in relation to narratives of trauma. Finally, I illustrate the utility of critical nostalgia for creating aesthetic performances sensitive to time and space, and I synthesize the major tenants of critical nostalgia for use in performance praxis

Halfway to paradise: documenting people and place, fictional constructs and considerations for post-documentary

Dr Deverell explored the potential for video art to move past documentary into post-documentary. The research considered how established conventions in documentary practice are being contested and expanded with the growing dispersal and dissipation of audio-visual culture, and how traditional notions of truth and reality are being challenged

Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation

Machiavelli and the Politics of Democratic Innovation uses original readings of Machiavelli’s texts to develop a new theoretical model of democratic practice. Christopher Holman identifies two unique ideas in Machiavelli through his rearrangement of Machiavellian concepts. The first, drawn primarily from The Prince, is an image of the individual human being as a creative subject that seeks the exteriorization of desire via political creation. The second, drawn primarily from The Discourses on Livy, is an image of the democratic republic as a form of regime in which this desire for creative self-expression is universalized, all citizens being able to affirm their psychic orientation toward innovation through their equal access to political institutions and orders. Such institutions and orders, to the extent that they function as media for the expression of a fundamental human creativity, must be arranged so that they are capable of continual interrogation and refinement

Trying Not to Lie...and Failing: Autoethnography, Memory, Malleability

All research is experiential, whether this is the experience of reading in the library or observing in the field. Autoethnographers take experience into narratives and are themselves key participants in their research, and often also its subject. For autoethnographers the idea of research as a neutral process is abandoned in favour of a self-reflective form that explores the researcher\u27s perspective on the subject in question. Autoethnography inevitably negotiates the relationship between the stories we want to tell and the histories we have lived through; between the necessary fictions of publication/presentation and the real world experiences we draw upon. This article questions whether we can ever tell our experiences truthfully. This article questions what it might mean to write oneself into research findings and narrative reports, and it asks what happens when one\u27s self goes further and becomes the research. It offers perspectives and provocations which are informed but not bound by autoethnography\u27s extant body of thought and readers are invited on a brief journey through self-writing as it relates to the vagaries of memory and the illusion of truth

Cultivating the Erratic: Architectural representation and materialisation after the digital turn

This thesis investigates representation and materialisation in contemporary architectural design. Due to cultural and technological shifts, the act of design is no longer squarely located in the abstract realms of drawings or digital geometries. Computer aided manufacturing, physics simulation, and 3d-scanning offer alternative possibilities for design by incorporating the often-erratic qualities of extant objects and materials. These developments call for architects to intervene in and theorise technological transfers between representation and material reality that might otherwise become matters of mere expediency. Spanning in scope from design to technology to theory, the thesis is developed through a combination of analytical enquiry and design driven research. The design works included, Erratic and Completions, explore materialisation and representation against a critical review of key concepts associated with the ‘digital turn’ in architecture during the 1990s and 2000s. The thesis interrogates how those concepts have been developed and challenged in the decades after this turn. Key to the analysis is a critical enquiry about the nature of architectural representation and the significance of theoretical frameworks gleaned from other areas of enquiry, including materialist and post-digital thinking. The implications of the design work are explored by positioning physics simulation and 3d-scanning as means of representation through an interlacing of thinking from such frameworks with detailed accounts of technical apparatuses involved in conception and production.Overall, the thesis aims to build a new position for architectural conception and production. It argues that the means of representation that facilitate architectural design have agency, and that simulation and scanning offer a contemporary context in which the effects of such agencies can be productively observed. This opens a disciplinary discussion on issues of projection, translation, and codification and their role in shaping the architectural imagination. The discussion also extends beyond such architectural concerns and into political critique, as practices, technicalities, and histories of representation condition how we view the world, how we operate in it, and might even modify how we view ourselves