: Entretien avec Kmar Bendana

Entretien de Kmar Bendana par Sylvie MazzellaInternational audienceLa génération des universitaires tunisiens, formée à l'école bourguibienne, enseignant au moment de l'arabisation, est le témoin privilégié de l'évolution de la place du français dans le système éducatif post-colonial. Kmar Bendana aborde ici la question du bilinguisme en historienne, pour essayer de repérer, dans l'histoire culturelle de la Tunisie contemporaine, comment ces deux langues ont connu une vie mêlée, des rapports dialectiques, faits de rivalité et d'opposition mais aussi d'interpénétration et d'influence, de dialogue et de contradiction. Ses travaux visent plus largement à élaborer une approche historique et historienne du bilinguisme des discours (interprétariat et édition), en rapport avec la mise en pratique du bilinguisme dans les institutions (l'école, mais aussi les revues, la diplomatie, etc.). Cet entretien permet de retracer certains aspects de l'évolution du statut des langues dans l'enseignement public tunisien depuis la fin du protectorat : l'héritage colonial de l'enseignement français, le bilinguisme de l'ère bourguibienne, l'arabisation et les transformations liées à la mondialisation du savoir, notamment l'introduction des " langues étrangères "

Creating an Interactive/Immersive Classical Music Concert

Classical music is heavily characterized by tradition and conventions that shape and dictate the way is supposed to be performed. As a performer (classical guitarist and conductor) I’ve been looking for ways to negotiate the conventions of the classical music performance by readapting it to the technological and immersive/interactive demands of the 21st Century. Music can also be used to express and declare a social issue such as the migrant crisis we live today, without losing the music’s original value but rather recontextualizing its message to the current events. I consider the stage as the big screen that frames our performances, but how can we enhance the audience experience with the use of technology, immersion and interaction? Also, if the traditional stage is a form of marginalization that creates separation between the audience (as individual and community) and the performers, how can we reshape it as a more inclusive arena? This research explores how, by adding theatre techniques (immersion and interaction) and media (big screens, animations, lights and photography) to classical music concerts, we can create a performance experience that connects with the audience and appeals to their reality, environment and emotions. The main premise behind these additions is that “people want to be engaged” and that empathy can be used to build and enhance the message of a performance to the audience. Therefore, I show how, through media, free roaming (not restricting audiences to chairs) and a focus on social issues, an immersive and interactive classical music experience can be an effective tool to engage audiences, provide a type of enjoyment that goes beyond the sonic layer, and be a form of social declaration and activism

Theorizing suburban public space in Kendall

The purpose of this study was to determine whether public space in the suburbs has the same settings as that of a central city or if it has its own characteristics. In order to approach this problem the area of Kendall was thoroughly studied by examining aerial maps, historic images and writings of local historians such as Donna Knowles Born. Heavy emphasis was placed on the transformation of the original one-mile grid characteristic of the city of Miami. As the area of Kendall was being developed, the grid was transformed into an irregular and organic method of laying out a street system that directly affected pedestrian life. It became evident, therefore, that Kendall is primarily geared toward automobile movement, thus affecting the setting of public space. This also restricted social events forcing them to concentrate in specific places like the malls. These findings demonstrated that malls are centers of social interaction concentrating many social activities in one place. In other words, a mall serves as a common meeting place in the otherwise vast spread of the suburbs. This thesis also explains how public spaces in a suburban context can affect the community by working as filtering agents between the immediate context of a particular site and the overall city. The project, a Wellness Center and Park for the Kendall area, was an exploration of these filtering agents and the transitions they engendered. The research upon which this project was based recognized the important role of the site\u27s history as well as extrapolating as to its future potential

Creating an Interactive/Immersive Classical Music Concert

Classical music is heavily characterized by tradition and conventions that shape and dictate the way is supposed to be performed. As a performer (classical guitarist and conductor) I’ve been looking for ways to negotiate the conventions of the classical music performance by readapting it to the technological and immersive/interactive demands of the 21st Century. Music can also be used to express and declare a social issue such as the migrant crisis we live today, without losing the music’s original value but rather recontextualizing its message to the current events. I consider the stage as the big screen that frames our performances, but how can we enhance the audience experience with the use of technology, immersion and interaction? Also, if the traditional stage is a form of marginalization that creates separation between the audience (as individual and community) and the performers, how can we reshape it as a more inclusive arena? This research explores how, by adding theatre techniques (immersion and interaction) and media (big screens, animations, lights and photography) to classical music concerts, we can create a performance experience that connects with the audience and appeals to their reality, environment and emotions. The main premise behind these additions is that “people want to be engaged” and that empathy can be used to build and enhance the message of a performance to the audience. Therefore, I show how, through media, free roaming (not restricting audiences to chairs) and a focus on social issues, an immersive and interactive classical music experience can be an effective tool to engage audiences, provide a type of enjoyment that goes beyond the sonic layer, and be a form of social declaration and activism

El manifiesto del método. Ensayo de interpretación de las Tesis sobre Feuerbach de Karl Marx.

Traditional intepretation of Gegenstand (thesis 1): the reality. Bendana-Pedroza: human being. The problem is not the constitution of the objetectivity as such, but the constitution of the human objectivity. With de concept of the human obejectivity as practica, we have the genetic explanation of the mysticism (thesis 4 and 8), the problem which the old materialism can not solve, and therefore we have the fundamentation of the category of matter. But the practical conditions of mysticism contain the necessity of the practice that destroy such conditions. This practice is therefore not a consequence of the "precepts" of the method, but itself a "precept". For that reason the "Theses on Feuerbach" are the manifest of the method

The Fragmentation of Belief

Belief storage is often modeled as having the structure of a single, unified web. This model of belief storage is attractive and widely assumed because it appears to provide an explanation of the flexibility of cognition and the complicated dynamics of belief revision. However, when one scrutinizes human cognition, one finds strong evidence against a unified web of belief and for a fragmented model of belief storage. Using the best available evidence from cognitive science, we develop this fragmented model into a nascent theory of the cognitive architecture of belief storage

Coherent magnetic plasmon modes in a contacting gold nano-sphere chain on a gold Slab

A coupled magnetic resonator waveguide, composed of a contacting gold nanosphere chain on a gold slab, is proposed and investigated. A broadband coherent magnetic plasmon mode can be excited in this one dimensional nanostructure. By employing the Lagrangian formalism and the Fourier transform method, the dispersion properties of the wave vector and group velocity of the magnetic plasmon mode are investigated. Small group velocity can be obtained from this system which can be applied as subwavelength slow wave waveguides.Comment: 11pages, 5 figures, This work is published at Optics Express 19, 23782 (2011

Evolutionary Modeling and Prediction of Non-Coding RNAs in Drosophila

We performed benchmarks of phylogenetic grammar-based ncRNA gene prediction, experimenting with eight different models of structural evolution and two different programs for genome alignment. We evaluated our models using alignments of twelve Drosophila genomes. We find that ncRNA prediction performance can vary greatly between different gene predictors and subfamilies of ncRNA gene. Our estimates for false positive rates are based on simulations which preserve local islands of conservation; using these simulations, we predict a higher rate of false positives than previous computational ncRNA screens have reported. Using one of the tested prediction grammars, we provide an updated set of ncRNA predictions for D. melanogaster and compare them to previously-published predictions and experimental data. Many of our predictions show correlations with protein-coding genes. We found significant depletion of intergenic predictions near the 3′ end of coding regions and furthermore depletion of predictions in the first intron of protein-coding genes. Some of our predictions are colocated with larger putative unannotated genes: for example, 17 of our predictions showing homology to the RFAM family snoR28 appear in a tandem array on the X chromosome; the 4.5 Kbp spanned by the predicted tandem array is contained within a FlyBase-annotated cDNA