A quantified past : fieldwork and design for remembering a data-driven life

PhD ThesisA ‘data-driven life’ has become an established feature of present and future technological visions. Smart homes, smart cities, an Internet of Things, and particularly the Quantified Self movement are all premised on the pervasive datafication of many aspects of everyday life. This thesis interrogates the human experience of such a data-driven life, by conceptualising, investigating, and speculating about these personal informatics tools as new technologies of memory. With respect to existing discourses in Human-Computer Interaction, Memory Studies and Critical Data Studies, I argue that the prevalence of quantified data and metrics is creating fundamentally new and distinct records of everyday life: a quantified past. To address this, I first conduct qualitative, and idiographic fieldwork – with long-term self-trackers, and subsequently with users of ‘smart journals’ – to investigate how this data-driven record mediates the experience of remembering. Further, I undertake a speculative and design-led inquiry to explore context of a ’quantified wedding’. Adopting a context where remembering is centrally valued, this Research through Design project demonstrates opportunities and develops considerations for the design of data-driven tools for remembering. Crucially, while speculative, this project maintains a central focus on individual experience, and introduces an innovative methodological approach ‘Speculative Enactments’ for engaging participants meaningfully in speculative inquiry. The outcomes of this conceptual, empirical and speculative inquiry are multiple. I present, and interpret, a variety of rich descriptions of existing and anticipated practices of remembering with data. Introducing six experiential qualities of data, and reflecting on how data requires selectivity and construction to meaningfully account for one’s life, I argue for the design of ‘Documentary Informatics’. This perspective fundamentally reimagines the roles and possibilities for personal informatics tools; it looks beyond the current present-focused and goal-oriented paradigm of a data-driven life, to propose a more poetic orientation to recording one’s life with quantified data

Live events, digital technologies, and data-driven innovation:Lasting impacts from the pandemic pivot to digital

This chapter will consider the extent to which the 'pivot to digital' reported in the cultural and live events sector during COVID-19 lockdowns has brought about lasting impacts on in-person, digital, and hybrid live events. Through case studies, it will explore methods for research in this space that can sensitively explore digital and data literacies in both cultural production and consumption, in the context of broader economic, social, and cultural challenges around inequities in the sector. By considering possible and preferable futures for the development of online and hybrid programmes towards new modalities of experience beyond the pandemic, the chapter will argue that these digital adaptations and transformations - which consuming culture during COVID-19 accelerated - are part of a bigger conversation about data, platforms, digital media, and modes of performing liveness.</p

Simulations of MHD wave propagation and coupling in a 3D magnetosphere

ANW was partially funded by STFC (ST/N000609/1) and the Leverhulme Trust (RPG- 2016-071). TE was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016-071) and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (ECF-2019-155).A novel simulation grid is devised that is optimized for studying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave coupling and phase mixing in a dipole‐like magnetic field. The model also includes flaring on the dawn and dusk flanks. The location of the magnetopause is quite general. In particular, it does not have to coincide with a coordinate surface. Simulations indicate the central role of global fast waveguide modes. These switch from being azimuthally standing in nature at noon, to propagating antisunward on the flanks. The field line resonances (FLRs) seen in the simulation results are three dimensional and not strictly azimuthally polarized. When a plume is present, the FLRs cross a range of 2 in shell, and have a polarization that is midway between toroidal and poloidal.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Modeling features of field line resonance observable by a single spacecraft at Saturn

Funding: T. Elsden was funded by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, the University of Leicester and the University of Glasgow. D. Southwood acknowledges funding from UK Science and Technology Facilities Council grant: ST/W001071/1.The observations of Southwood et al. (2021), using data from the Cassini magnetometer from the final (proximal) orbits of the mission at Saturn, show large scale azimuthally polarized magnetic signals are always present near periapsis. The signals were attributed to standing Alfvén waves excited on the magnetic shells planetward of the Saturn D-ring. The apparent absence of any systematic variation in frequency as the spacecraft crossed magnetic shells, implied that the signals were not simply locally excited standing Alfvén modes, but were pumped by coupling to global compressional eigenmodes excited in a cavity formed in the dayside magnetosphere. In this study, we use a numerical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model to test such theoretical explanations for the observations, by examining in detail the MHD wave coupling and large scale spatial structure of the signals. The modeling not only shows good agreement with the data, but further provides new insight into features previously overlooked in the data. In particular, we show how the apparent frequency of a single spacecraft observation is affected by the phase variation present in a local field line resonance.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The theoretical foundation of 3-D Alfvén resonances : time-dependent solutions

Both authors were funded in part by STFC (through Consolidated Grant ST/N000609/1) and The Leverhulme Trust (through Research Grant RPG-2016-071).We present results from a 3-D numerical simulation which investigates the coupling of fast and Alfvén magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves in a nonuniform dipole equilibrium. This represents the time-dependent extension of the normal mode (∝ exp(−iωt)) analysis of Wright and Elsden (2016), and provides a theoretical basis for understanding 3-D Alfvén resonances. Wright and Elsden (2016) show that these are fundamentally different to resonances in 1D and 2D. We demonstrate the temporal behavior of the Alfvén resonance, which is formed within the "Resonant Zone"; a channel of the domain where a family of solutions exists such that the natural Alfvén frequency matches the fast-mode frequency. At early times, phase mixing leads to the production of prominent ridges in the energy density, whose shape is determined by the Alfvén speed profile and the chosen background magnetic field geometry. These off resonant ridges decay in time, leaving only a main 3-D resonant sheet in the steady state. We show that the width of the 3-D resonance in time and in space can be accurately estimated by adapting previous analytical estimates from 1-D theory. We further provide an analytical estimate for the resonance amplitude in 3-D, based upon extending 2-D theory.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Resonant fast-Alfvén wave coupling in a 3D coronal arcade

Funding: This research was funded in part by STFC grant ST/W001195/1 (A.N.W.). T.E. was funded in part by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship ECF-2019-155.The resonant excitation of Alfvén waves using the fast magnetosonic mode is important in space plasmas. In this paper, we consider a simple model of a three-dimensional (3D) coronal arcade. A numerical approach is used to produce a driven normal mode. We find that resonant coupling can occur in 3D, but there are new features that are absent in 2D. In particular, the polarisation of the Alfvén waves can vary with position throughout the Resonant Zone. Moreover, there are an infinite number of possible paths the resonant waves can exist on.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

It's Just My History Isn't It? Understanding smart journaling practices

Smart journals are both an emerging class of lifelogging applications and novel digital possessions, which are used to create and curate a personal record of one's life. Through an in-depth interview study of analogue and digital journaling practices, and by drawing on a wide range of research around 'technologies of memory', we address fundamental questions about how people manage and value digital records of the past. Appreciating journaling as deeply idiographic, we map a broad range of user practices and motivations and use this understanding to ground four design considerations: recognizing the motivation to account for one's life; supporting the authoring of a unique perspective and finding a place for passive tracking as a chronicle. Finally, we argue that smart journals signal a maturing orientation to issues of digital archiving

Getting our hands dirty: why academics should design metrics and address the lack of transparency

Metrics in academia are often an opaque mess, filled with biases and ill-judged assumptions that are used in overly deterministic ways. By getting involved with their design, academics can productively push metrics in a more transparent direction. Chris Elsden, Sebastian Mellor and Rob Comber introduce an example of designing metrics within their own institution. Using the metric of grant income, their tool ResViz shows a chord diagram of academic collaboration and aims to encourage a multiplicity of interpretations

Theoretical foundation of 3D Alfvén resonances : normal modes

We consider the resonant coupling of fast and Alfvén magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves in a 3D equilibrium. Numerical solutions to normal modes (∝ exp(−iωt)) are presented, along with a theoretical framework to interpret them. The solutions we find are fundamentally different from those in 1D and 2D. In 3D there exists an infinite number of possible resonant solutions within a “Resonant Zone," and we show how boundary conditions and locally 2D regions can favor particular solutions. A unique feature of the resonance in 3D is switching between different permissible solutions when the boundary of the Resonant Zone is encountered. The theoretical foundation that we develop relies upon recognizing that in 3D the orientation of the resonant surface will not align in a simple fashion with an equilibrium coordinate. We present a method for generating the Alfvén wave natural frequencies for an arbitrarily oriented Alfvén wave, which requires a careful treatment of scale factors describing the background magnetic field geometry.PostprintPeer reviewe