Professional game artists:an investigation into the primary considerations that impact upon their work, and the effects upon their creative practice

This article represents the author’s preliminary research into an area of creative practice that he pursued for some 20 years, namely that of a full time professional computer game artist. Initially collaborating with academics as a part time lecturer and industrial consultant, for the past eight years his roles within academia have focused on developing pedagogical models of professional practice within games education. Through his interaction with students, employers and graduates, the author began to identify an area of keen personal interest – namely, the actual realities of being a professional game artist, and the potential consequences on creative practice. In identifying the constraints and influences that direct such an artist’s work, it is the intention that a broader discussion may then follow, exploring how such artists can protect their creative muse, when the evidence would suggest that many aspects of the games industry are an absolute anathema to individual expression. In addition to his own experiences and research, the author has drawn on interviews with other professionals from games development, as well as artists who work in other areas of professional artistic practice (such as Fine Art, Illustration, and Comics). In this way his intention is to identify the areas of practice common to other areas of art, while highlighting any of the more unique elements present specifically within games development itself. While there is a large body or research into game design principles and technologies, there is very little discussion that focuses on the very people that make them. It is the author’s hope that this article plays some small part in starting to redress this balance, and may help the reader to appreciate the challenges such artists face

Honesty, social presence, and self-service in retail

Retail self-service checkouts (SCOs) can benefit consumers and retailers, providing control and autonomy to shoppers independent from staff. Recent research indicates that the lack of presence of staff may provide the opportunity for consumers to behave dishonestly. This study examined whether a social presence in the form of visual, humanlike SCO interface agents had an effect on dishonest user behaviour. Using a simulated SCO scenario, participants experienced various dilemmas in which they could financially benefit themselves undeservedly. We hypothesised that a humanlike social presence integrated within the checkout screen would receive more attention and result in fewer instances of dishonesty compared to a less humanlike agent. Our hypotheses were partially supported by the results. We conclude that companies adopting self-service technology may consider the implementation of social presence to support ethical consumer behaviour, but that more research is required to explore the mixed findings in the current study

Isolator:state of print

Isolator is a papercraft head, 45 x 45 x 45 cm. Isolator was created for State Of Print. It was designed and produced by David Lyons, Ken Fee and Cat Forsyth from Abertay University and Paul Harrison from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. It is based on Hugo Gernsback’s Isolator Helmet designed in 1925 and represents an ‘alternate history’ strand in the State of Print.State Of Print is an artist collective and an artistic investigation. State Of Print asks the question ‘What is essential to making a state?’ Much in the spirit of Plato’s assertion that a philosopher should be king, our answer is ‘art (with an emphasis on printmaking)’ is essential to the identify of a state.  <br/

CHAPS: a new precision laser-spectroscopic technique

Mitsuhiko Kono, Kenneth G. H. Baldwin, Yabai He, Richard T. White, and Brian J. Or

Explanatory pluralism in the medical sciences: theory and practice

Explanatory pluralism is the view that the best form and level of explanation depends on the kind of question one seeks to answer by the explanation, and that in order to answer all questions in the best way possible, we need more than one form and level of explanation. In the first part of this article, we argue that explanatory pluralism holds for the medical sciences, at least in theory. However, in the second part of the article we show that medical research and practice is actually not fully and truly explanatory pluralist yet. Although the literature demonstrates a slowly growing interest in non-reductive explanations in medicine, the dominant approach in medicine is still methodologically reductionist. This implies that non-reductive explanations often do not get the attention they deserve. We argue that the field of medicine could benefit greatly by reconsidering its reductive tendencies and becoming fully and truly explanatory pluralist. Nonetheless, trying to achieve the right balance in the search for and application of reductive and non-reductive explanations will in any case be a difficult exercise

Delivering e-learning : a complete strategy for design, application, and assessment /

Index