The Beyond the Fence Musical and Computer Says Show Documentary

During 2015 and early 2016, the cultural application of Computational Creativity research and practice took a big leap forward, with a project where multiple computational systems were used to provide advice and material for a new musical theatre production. Billed as the world's first 'computer musical... conceived by computer and substantially crafted by computer', Beyond The Fence was staged in the Arts Theatre in London's West End during February and March of 2016. Various computational approaches to analytical and generative sub-projects were used to bring about the musical, and these efforts were recorded in two 1-hour documentary films made by Wingspan Productions, which were aired on SkyArts under the title Computer Says Show. We provide details here of the project conception and execution, including details of the systems which took on some of the creative responsibility in writing the musical, and the contributions they made. We also provide details of the impact of the project, including a perspective from the two (human) writers with overall control of the creative aspects the musical

The Beyond the Fence Musical and Computer Says Show Documentary

During 2015 and early 2016, the cultural application of Com- putational Creativity research and practice took a big leap for- ward, with a project where multiple computational systems were used to provide advice and material for a new musical theatre production. Billed as the world’s first ‘computer mu- sical ... conceived by computer and substantially crafted by computer’, Beyond The Fence was staged in the Arts Theatre in London’s West End during February and March of 2016. Various computational approaches to analytical and genera- tive sub-projects were used to bring about the musical, and these efforts were recorded in two 1-hour documentary films made by Wingspan Productions, which were aired on Sky Arts under the title Computer Says Show. We provide de- tails here of the project conception and execution, including details of the systems which took on some of the creative re- sponsibility in writing the musical, and the contributions they made. We also provide details of the impact of the project, including a perspective from the two (human) writers with overall control of the creative aspects the musical

‘Mediating Remembrance; Personalization and Celebrity in Television Remembrance’

In the period since the First World War both conflict and remembrance have been experienced at a personal level and through a range of media. This article discusses the growing significance of broadcast remembrance texts focusing upon three recent television texts: The Fallen (BBC 2) (Matthews, 2008), My Boy Jack (ITV) (Kirk, 2007) and My Family at War (BBC 1) (Austin, 2008). It is suggested that personalization, celebrity and domesticity within television remembrance enables mediated remembrance to serve as an interface between the personal, domestic, unofficial and often feminized sides of remembrance and its national and official role. These texts both emphasize and legitimate the private and domestic sides of grief by portraying them within the public sphere. In so doing they engage with many who may feel excluded from traditional remembrance events and elicit an empathy for the bereaved which is removed from any support for conflicts and war

Skin pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry and admixture mapping.

Ancestry informative markers (AIMs) are genetic loci showing alleles with large frequency differences between populations. AIMs can be used to estimate biogeographical ancestry at the level of the population, subgroup (e.g. cases and controls) and individual. Ancestry estimates at both the subgroup and individual level can be directly instructive regarding the genetics of the phenotypes that differ qualitatively or in frequency between populations. These estimates can provide a compelling foundation for the use of admixture mapping (AM) methods to identify the genes underlying these traits. We present details of a panel of 34 AIMs and demonstrate how such studies can proceed, by using skin pigmentation as a model phenotype. We have genotyped these markers in two population samples with primarily African ancestry, viz. African Americans from Washington D.C. and an African Caribbean sample from Britain, and in a sample of European Americans from Pennsylvania. In the two African population samples, we observed significant correlations between estimates of individual ancestry and skin pigmentation as measured by reflectometry (R(2)=0.21, P<0.0001 for the African-American sample and R(2)=0.16, P<0.0001 for the British African-Caribbean sample). These correlations confirm the validity of the ancestry estimates and also indicate the high level of population structure related to admixture, a level that characterizes these populations and that is detectable by using other tests to identify genetic structure. We have also applied two methods of admixture mapping to test for the effects of three candidate genes (TYR, OCA2, MC1R) on pigmentation. We show that TYR and OCA2 have measurable effects on skin pigmentation differences between the west African and west European parental populations. This work indicates that it is possible to estimate the individual ancestry of a person based on DNA analysis with a reasonable number of well-defined genetic markers. The implications and applications of ancestry estimates in biomedical research are discussed