A Systematic and Minimalist Approach to Lower Barriers in Visual Data Exploration

With the increasing availability and impact of data in our lives, we need to make quicker, more accurate, and intricate data-driven decisions. We can see and interact with data, and identify relevant features, trends, and outliers through visual data representations. In addition, the outcomes of data analysis reflect our cognitive processes, which are strongly influenced by the design of tools. To support visual and interactive data exploration, this thesis presents a systematic and minimalist approach. First, I present the Cognitive Exploration Framework, which identifies six distinct cognitive stages and provides a high-level structure to design guidelines, and evaluation of analysis tools. Next, in order to reduce decision-making complexities in creating effective interactive data visualizations, I present a minimal, yet expressive, model for tabular data using aggregated data summaries and linked selections. I demonstrate its application to common categorical, numerical, temporal, spatial, and set data types. Based on this model, I developed Keshif as an out-of-the-box, web-based tool to bootstrap the data exploration process. Then, I applied it to 160+ datasets across many domains, aiming to serve journalists, researchers, policy makers, businesses, and those tracking personal data. Using tools with novel designs and capabilities requires learning and help-seeking for both novices and experts. To provide self-service help for visual data interfaces, I present a data-driven contextual in-situ help system, HelpIn, which contrasts with separated and static videos and manuals. Lastly, I present an evaluation on design and graphical perception for dense visualization of sorted numeric data. I contrast the non-hierarchical treemaps against two multi-column chart designs, wrapped bars and piled bars. The results support that multi-column charts are perceptually more accurate than treemaps, and the unconventional piled bars may require more training to read effectively. This thesis contributes to our understanding on how to create effective data interfaces by systematically focusing on human-facing challenges through minimalist solutions. Future work to extend the power of data analysis to a broader public should continue to evaluate and improve design approaches to address many remaining cognitive, social, educational, and technical challenges

Chapter 37 Improv, Stand-Up, and Comedy

The idea of improvisation, broadly defined, has been integral to our imagination of the medieval musical past. It can be related to many elements of production: to the act of un-notated creation; to the manipulation and amplification of notated materials; to our observance of rigid rules and formulae; or to spontaneous freedom. Likely a product of the Carolingian Renaissance, this is the first medieval music treatise to address an aspect of chant performance that does not only relate to a memorized repertoire, but includes an unwritten practice of extemporizing an accompanying voice to a pre-given melody. The art of “coloration” or the ornamentation of a line, whether polyphonic or monophonic, had been an integral part of extemporization since at least the time of the Ad organum faciendum treatises. When planning author's ontological inquiries, the author's would do well to remember the possible existence of creativity that is not inspired, or ephemerality that is not performer- or expression-centered

Chapter 37 Improv, Stand-Up, and Comedy

The idea of improvisation, broadly defined, has been integral to our imagination of the medieval musical past. It can be related to many elements of production: to the act of un-notated creation; to the manipulation and amplification of notated materials; to our observance of rigid rules and formulae; or to spontaneous freedom. Likely a product of the Carolingian Renaissance, this is the first medieval music treatise to address an aspect of chant performance that does not only relate to a memorized repertoire, but includes an unwritten practice of extemporizing an accompanying voice to a pre-given melody. The art of “coloration” or the ornamentation of a line, whether polyphonic or monophonic, had been an integral part of extemporization since at least the time of the Ad organum faciendum treatises. When planning author's ontological inquiries, the author's would do well to remember the possible existence of creativity that is not inspired, or ephemerality that is not performer- or expression-centered

The influence of the visual elements of cover design on the appeal of art and cultural magazines: case study is book fare in Oulu

Design of magazines - a complex and time-consuming process, often requiring custom solutions. Developers need to know what impact on the visual component of information influence on the audience. The purpose of this case is to gain an understanding of what kind of visual elements of paper media influence on the choice of viewer. As a particular type of magazine were chosen art and cultural magazine with a reason to narrow research and to get depth knowledge about this topic. The study is structured that in the first chapter the information about purpose and research questions is provided. Second chapter describes research materials and methodology that were used to collect data. The third chapter gives the literature review that focus subjects of the study. In the chapters four, the results of the research is analysed and conclusions are made. After all chapters made generalised conclusion using data from the literature review and data collected from the interviews

Music, Meaning and Transformation: Meaningful Music Making for Life

This book and the series which builds on the philosophy examines the musical experiences that students find meaningful and ways in which teachers, parents and community music leaders might provide access to meaningful music education. This is particularly relevant today because school music often fails to provide sustainable access to music making for life, health and wellbeing beyond school. The book seeks to reframe the focus of music education within a pragmatist philosophy and provide a framework that is culturally and chronologically inclusive. The proposed book is aimed at current and pre-service music teachers, community music leaders and coaches and designed to be a useful professional development tool and reference resource for teacher/community arts workers. Secondary audiences for the book would include all general and trainee elementary school teachers and interested teachers in disciplines other than music particularly those from the community arts concerned with music, cultural health and wellbeing in community settings. Another secondary market would be private music teachers in the community and recreational music-making coaches who need strategies and techniques for the provision of culturally inclusive music experiences within complex multi cultural and cross cultural settings

The Persistence of Minimalism

The following work develops a new and general theory of minimalism – one addressing both its transhistorical and interdisciplinary dimensions, and capable of accounting for existing minimalism of every epoch and in every medium, while suitably open to embrace minimalist work yet to be created. To offer such a theory it is necessary not only to revisit the histories of minimalist practice and criticism, but also to consider its radical philosophical ground and implications. Hence its principal thesis – that minimalism exemplifies the persistence and facticity of the Real – grapples at once with the ontological heart of minimalist theory, and its practical instantiation through canonical as well as rarely considered examples. Divided into three parts, the first part addresses minimalism as the manifestation of particular aesthetic properties in relation to critical and theoretical trends. Since it becomes apparent that no single descriptive or theoretical account adequately frames minimalism, the discussion turns to the possibility of discovering a philosophical ground equally radical to the minimalist objects it addresses. The Real – an indifferent field of forces from which contingent entities are subtracted from within an irreversible temporal passage – offers precisely this radical continuum. Minimalism, by exposing the continuity between radical poiesis and an essentially quantitative understanding of Being, clarifies the indifferent persistence of the Real in every existential situation. Penetrating to the heart of this proposition, parts two and three respectively address minimalism in terms of its quantitative logic of Being – every exemplary subtraction from which is instantiated a type of existential calculation – and its exemplary aesthetic manifestation in terms of an existential transumption – a constructive poietic displacement by which minimalism renders itself maximally intelligible in terms of its objecthood and persistence. The work concludes with a typology which reorients and confirms the substance of the preceding argumentation

Alienation and theatricality in Brecht and Diderot

My research re-evaluates the Brechtian concept of alienation through the dramaturgical and literary thought of Denis Diderot. This project consists of a theoretical dissertation as well as a theatre production of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew, performed at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 1998, and documented in an attached video. Although the Brecht-Diderot connection has been established in previous studies, most notably by Roland Barthes, my aim is to show that we can enlarge and differentiate our understanding of alienation as a dramaturgical concept by focussing on the conceptual shifts emerging from a comparison between both writers. Rather than interpret Diderot as a historical predecessor of Brecht, as it has been proposed in the past, I have explored conceptual difference and contrast in the framework of two separate historical contexts, thereby calling into question the ideological positivism underlying Brecht's concept of alienation. The outcome of my examination suggests that Brecht's theory of acting as self-alienation does not necessarily lead to its intended effect of alienated detachment on the part of the spectator. In opposition, Diderot concludes from the actor's self-alienation an empathetic response in the spectator, placing this theory at the core of eighteenth- century bourgeois theatre ideology. Moreover, if Brecht's concept of alienation is explicitly antagonistic to the notion of subjectivity, an analysis of Diderot's Le Neveu de Rameau shows how alienation relies on subjective experience. Alienation leads to an effect of recognition once the spectator has recognised himself caught in a situation of aesthetic delusion. Contrary to Brecht's Marxist concept of alienation which aims to sharpen the spectator's political consciousness, thereby instigating resistance to the alienated conditions of capitalism, we can observe in Le Neveu de Rameau the strategic employment of alienation as an epistemological means of questioning the precepts of moralism, introducing a notion of critique dependent on ethical self-interrogation

Networks of Liveness in Singer-Songwriting: A practice-based enquiry into developing audio-visual interactive systems and creative strategies for composition and performance.

This enquiry explores the creation and use of computer-based, real-time interactive audio-visual systems for the composition and performance of popular music by solo artists. Using a practice-based methodology, research questions are identified that relate to the impact of incorporating interactive systems into the songwriting process and the liveness of the performances with them. Four approaches to the creation of interactive systems are identified: creating explorative-generative tools, multiple tools for guitar/vocal pieces, typing systems and audio-visual metaphors. A portfolio of ten pieces that use these approaches was developed for live performance. A model of the songwriting process is presented that incorporates system-building and strategies are identified for reconciling the indeterminate, electronic audio output of the system with composed popular music features and instrumental/vocal output. The four system approaches and ten pieces are compared in terms of four aspects of liveness, derived from current theories. It was found that, in terms of overall liveness, a unity to system design facilitated both technological and aesthetic connections between the composition, the system processes and the audio and visual outputs. However, there was considerable variation between the four system approaches in terms of the different aspects of liveness. The enquiry concludes by identifying strategies for maximising liveness in the different system approaches and discussing the connections between liveness and the songwriting process

Working Performatively with Interactive 3D Printing: An artistic practice utilising interactive programming for computational manufacturing and livecoding

This thesis explores the liminal space where personal computational art and design practices and mass-manufacturing technologies intersect. It focuses on what it could look and feel like to be a computationally-augmented, creative practitioner working with 3D printing in a more programmatic, interactive way. The major research contribution is the introduction of a future-looking practice of Interactive 3D Printing (I3DP).I3DP is articulated using the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations in terms of associated user activities and design trade-offs. Another contribution is the design, development, and analysis of a working I3DP system called LivePrinter. LivePrinter is evaluated through a series of qualitiative user studies and a personal computational art practice, including livecoding performances and 3D form-making