Equivalence-Invariant Algebraic Provenance for Hyperplane Update Queries

The algebraic approach for provenance tracking, originating in the semiring model of Green et. al, has proven useful as an abstract way of handling metadata. Commutative Semirings were shown to be the "correct" algebraic structure for Union of Conjunctive Queries, in the sense that its use allows provenance to be invariant under certain expected query equivalence axioms. In this paper we present the first (to our knowledge) algebraic provenance model, for a fragment of update queries, that is invariant under set equivalence. The fragment that we focus on is that of hyperplane queries, previously studied in multiple lines of work. Our algebraic provenance structure and corresponding provenance-aware semantics are based on the sound and complete axiomatization of Karabeg and Vianu. We demonstrate that our construction can guide the design of concrete provenance model instances for different applications. We further study the efficient generation and storage of provenance for hyperplane update queries. We show that a naive algorithm can lead to an exponentially large provenance expression, but remedy this by presenting a normal form which we show may be efficiently computed alongside query evaluation. We experimentally study the performance of our solution and demonstrate its scalability and usefulness, and in particular the effectiveness of our normal form representation

Marsh Hermeneutics: Performing Sites of Disorientation

The aim of this thesis is to perform an originary ‘Disorientation’ of particular sites: one that attempts to performatively tune into and map the affective technological patina of the past as a willing displacement of the present as Real Time. Disorientation is a theoretical term I take from philosopher Bernard Stiegler – and through which he, after Derrida, locates the historical ruptures brought about by successive phases of technology as externalisations of memory, as the medium of individual and collective individuation. My aim is to move an understanding of Disorientation from this solely theoretical realm to that of practice, as a willingly generative modality: to perform an understanding of place as originary technics, symbolised by the mythographic site of the marsh. Disorientation is thus uniquely understood at the material level of place itself, as its originary mode. To perform this, I develop a method of ‘Anachronic Collision’ whose fundamental elements are the tripartite relation between tool, site and personae that, when activated, release the effect of Disorientation. At the centre of this is a ‘Blind Spot of Technicity’ whose modality is spatialised delay, at stake in which is a questioning of the smoothness and speed of the past’s recall in digitised culture, as adverse Disorientation. Contra thinking Stiegler’s Disorientation solely as an effect of memory’s externalisation, this thesis perversely attempts to conjure that which has never occurred in the past, and thus what is not indexed as nostalgic loss through technology. In my multi-disciplinary art practice, this revenant zone is mapped across radio; sculptural installations; re-enactment performances; printmaking, and spoken word, as a repetitive and inter-temporal relationship with the terrain that moves between Disorientation as mode and effect. To start this ‘Marshography,’ Chapter 1 sets the scene for Disorientation in the marshes of ancient Mesopotamia, as figured in the technicity of the cuneiform tablet, the earliest known writing. Preforming the cuneiform tablet, I make manifests the ‘Marsh Regime’ as the first pre-existent technics, and the source of Ur-Disorientation. Chapter 2 is a case study of Antonin Artaud and his methodology, including props, itinerancy and hole making, which outlines his spell-casting practice as an imbrication with the geological. Chapter 3 develops both previous chapters through formulating re-enactments of a geological form of dérive through my own practice, and an emphasis on the minor mode of comedy. Ultimately, this thesis conceives of Disorientation as the original currency of spatio-temporal collaging, the originary force of life: an intervention on the ground of individuation

Across Anthropology

"How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland – and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition-making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful. Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies.

Identifying Experiential Practices and Science in Mid-Eighteenth-Century British Cookbooks with Open-Access Sourcing

This dissertation serves as a proof of concept to demonstrate how combining SEO-optimized and open access digitized primary sources, popular historical accounts and traditional historiographical methods may open areas of inquiry within the history of science, technology, and medicine. The dissertation uses digitized copies of cookbooks published in England between 1740 and 1760 to investigate certain areas of daily life and daily knowledge that have been overlooked within the history of science. These texts indicate the presence of scientific and technological knowledge within daily kitchen management and offer an opportunity for historians to look further at how women established scientific and cultural authority within the kitchen. Moreover, the intentional limitation of this dissertation to SEO-optimized and open access digitized primary sources offers insight not only into avenues for further inquiry and opportunities for continued integration of digitized primary sources into formal historical inquiry, but also reveals the disadvantages of such a methodology

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry—from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles—enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new

Entertaining Crisis in the Atlantic Imperium, 1770–1790

Honorable Mention, 2012 Joe A. Callaway Prize in Drama and TheaterFirst Place, Large Not-for-Profit Publisher, Typographic Cover, 2011 Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness AwardsLess than twenty years after asserting global dominance in the Seven Years' War, Britain suffered a devastating defeat when it lost the American colonies. Daniel O'Quinn explores how the theaters and the newspapers worked in concert to mediate the events of the American war for British audiences and how these convergent media attempted to articulate a post-American future for British imperial society.Building on the methodological innovations of his 2005 publication Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800, O’Quinn demonstrates how the reconstitution of British imperial subjectivities involved an almost nightly engagement with a rich entertainment culture that necessarily incorporated information circulated in the daily press. Each chapter investigates different moments in the American crisis through the analysis of scenes of social and theatrical performance and through careful readings of works by figures such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, William Cowper, Hannah More, Arthur Murphy, Hannah Cowley, George Colman, and Georg Friedrich Handel. Through a close engagement with this diverse entertainment archive, O'Quinn traces the hollowing out of elite British masculinity during the 1770s and examines the resulting strategies for reconfiguring ideas of gender, sexuality, and sociability that would stabilize national and imperial relations in the 1780s. Together, O'Quinn's two books offer a dramatic account of the global shifts in British imperial culture that will be of interest to scholars in theater and performance studies, eighteenth-century studies, Romanticism, and trans-Atlantic studies

Re/constructing Computing Experiences. From "punch girls" in the 1940s to "computer boys" in the 1980s.

Re/constructing computing experiences from “punch girls” to “computer boys” traces the life cycle of five computing devices between the 1940s and the 1980s, each representing a key development in the history of computing. The experimental media archaeology framework of Nutzerperspektiven critically evaluates the type of user sources re/construct. The object’s life cycle traces phases of design, production, sale, installation, application and use, and decommission or re-use. The lens of intersectionality with a focus on gender facilitates (visual) discourse analysis of advertisements to expose stereotypes. User experiences differ because inequalities in computing have at times resulted in occupational segregation, and working conditions varied across case studies. Computing experiences encompass the object, the environment, and application, and a user, serving as a structure for the case studies. The first case study discusses the accounting departments of Helena Rubinstein which used Remington Rand, and later Powers-Samas, punch card machinery since 1940. Miss Summerell led the Powers room in the London branch from 1955 onward. The second case study centers around a workflow Dr. E. Blatt created for the International Business Machines (IBM) System/360 announced in 1964 used in German clinical chemistry laboratories since 1969. The Digital Equipment Company’s client applications slides form the basis of the next case study and showed several uses of the Programmable Data Processor or PDP-11 in aerospace and commercial aircraft between 1970 and 1980. The final chapter compares two educational initiatives from the 1980s. By 1981 the BBC Microcomputer kickstarted the Computer Literacy project in the United Kingdom, first targeting adults but soon entering primary and secondary schools. Apple’s Kids Can’t Wait initiative in the United States equally introduced many children to computing. Methods from user experience (UX) design and experimental media archaeology supported the re/construction or reenactment of past human-computer interaction. As a study of material culture, the historical case studies were informed by museum objects paired with additional archival sources. The research added phases to the life cycle framework and paired a reflection on the provenance of material objects with a focus on human actors. The case studies in turn demonstrated how sources limited the type of user and computing experiences historians can re/construct