Opto-Phono-Kinesia (OPK): Designing Motion-Based Interaction for Expert Performers

Opto-Phono-Kinesia (OPK) is an audio-visual performance piece in which all media elements are controlled by the body movements of a single performer. The title is a play on a possible synesthetic state involving connections between vision, sound and body motion. Theoretically, for a person who experiences this state, a specific colour could trigger both a sound and a body action. This synesthetic intersection is simulated in OPK by simultaneity of body movement, and audio-visual result. Using the Gesture and Media System 3.0 motion-tracking system, the performer can dynamically manipulate an immersive environment using two small infrared trackers. The project employs a multipart interface design based on a formal model of increasing complexity in visual-sound-body mapping, and is therefore best performed by an expert performer with strong spatial memory and advanced musical ability. OPK utilizes the “body as experience, instrument and interface” [1] for control of a large-scale environment

Non- and Minimally-Invasive Methods to Investigate Megalithic Landscapes in the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site (Ireland) and Rousay, Orkney Islands in North-Western Europe

The paper summarizes results of an on-going project in the Boyne Valley in Ireland and in Orkney in the north of Scotland. The research of the Romano-Germanic Commission and our partners aimed to investigate the interaction of social, economic, cultural and environmental phenomena in different types of landscapes in a diachronic perspective. Our exploration of the landscapes was based on geophysical prospection, remote sensing and sedimentological analysis, and we adopted a systematic approach that integrated the various approaches in a GIS. In the Boyne Valley large areas were investigated on the periphery of the monuments of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. The field work on the Orkney Islands is focussing on tracing settlement patterns connected to chambered tombs, on the Island of Rousay. The use of a similar research design in both regions produces compound databases, something that is crucial for comparing trajectories of change in Neolithic land use, and in understanding those changes

Understanding and Efficiently Managing Right-to-Take Challenges in Kentucky

Executive Summary Kentucky constitutional and statutory law requires that a fair process be in place to let a property owner challenge a condemnor’s right to acquire private property, including a right to appeal the initial decision. Property acquired by a condemnor must be for public use, and property owners have the right to an immediate and expedited hearing on right-to-take. Two of these requirements will remain in place regardless of statutory revisions: the requirement that property must be needed (i.e., not arbitrary) for public use, and the right to one appeal. Only an amendment(s) to the Kentucky Constitution would alter these requirements. The right to an expedited hearing is granted by statute and subject to statutory revisions. Most condemnation practitioners perceive the frequency of right-to-take challenges as holding steady, while other see them as increasing. Attorneys report that most property owners make right-to-take challenges because they perceive the condemnor’s offer of just compensation as unfair. Attorneys also observe that property owners sometimes leverage challenges as a delay tactic or to minimize a project’s impact on their property. Kentucky has what the legal community considers a quick take approach to eminent domain, which means that the right to access and use property is obtained before a final determination is made on compensation. While a property owner is free to make right-to-take challenge or appeal an unsatisfactory decision of a challenge, Kentucky’s Eminent Domain Act and legal precedents require expedited trials and appeals of this issue. Additionally, condemnation practitioners currently have tools at their disposal to help prevent a challenge or overcome delays in resolving a challenge. A range of solutions are available to improve the right-to-take process. For example, before identifying a parcel as requiring condemnation, preventative measures can be taken during right-of-way negotiations and must be implemented with Division of Right of Way agents working more closely with attorneys prior to. Other solutions can be adopted through more efficient record keeping during a roadway project’s planning and acquisition phases. Attorneys litigating these cases can leverage a number of legal tools, including the use of an Agreed Interlocutory Order and Judgment; dismissing suits and refiling them after a perceived deficiency has been corrected; a more informed understanding of stays with a selective use of supersedeas bonds, and Civil Rule 11 sanctions (imposition of attorney fees). Early right of entry agreements are also available. One strategy not fully available in Kentucky is a statutory requirement holding that the losing party pay attorney fees if a challenge is made. A condemnor can request — and has been awarded — attorney’s fees after a successful defense of a right-to-take challenge. However, the award is discretionary and will only be granted in the face of egregious conduct. Compared to other states, Kentucky employs similar resolution methods (e.g., monetary settlements, plan changes). And its performance in resolving right-to-take challenges equals that of other states

Being Formal Without Being a Formalist

This paper argues for the value of using formal models within the (digital media) artwork. Eschewing the anti-formalism common to much of postmodernism, it argues for a more active engagement with formal concerns. Without embracing the totalizing theories of late modernist formalism, or discarding the idea of “the concept,” I argue for a more formal approach to the making of the (digital media) artwork. The goal is to point to models that can be used to intimately connect form and concept, rather than treat them as separate or warring entities. The paper critically explores three very specific digital media artworks that endeavor to bridge the gap between formalism and conceptualism, each pointing to indicative (but not exhaustive) methods for reuniting form and concept

Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit-based tasks when they learn to count

Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to their merit (merit-based distributions). Here, we propose that the acquisition of numerical concepts influences how we reason about fairness. We explore this possibility in the Tsimane’, a farming-foraging group who live in the Bolivian rainforest. The Tsimane’ learn to count in the same way children from industrialized countries do, but at a delayed and more variable timeline, allowing us to de-confound number knowledge from age and years in school. We find that Tsimane’ children who can count produce merit-based distributions, while children who cannot count produce both merit-based and egalitarian distributions. Our findings establish that the ability to count – a non-universal, language-dependent, cultural invention – can influence social cognition.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering Program (Grant 1022684)University of Rocheste

Found in space: The MINDful Play Environment is born

The MINDful Play Environment (MPE), an acronym for Motion-tracking, Interactive Deliberation, is a virtual learning environment created as a performance-installation piece, driven by motion-tracking technology, in which three people interact with one another and media elements like video, animation, music, lights, and spoken word. The artists and programmers involved in this project – Dene Grigar, Steve Gibson, Justin Love, and Jeannette Altman – have produced this educational environment so that it does not look or feel educational but rather game-like in a way that is both playful and mindful. Here, we provide an overview of the project, talk about the Phase I stage just completed, and describe the future steps planned for its development and use

Best Practices for Performance Measurement in Transportation Operations and Maintenance

Public agencies benefit from measuring their performance as it helps to focus employee and organizational activities. State departments of transportation have become more performance-oriented over the past two decades and routinely collect data on highway safety, infrastructure condition, system operations, project delivery, winter maintenance, transit, bicycle and pedestrian facilities, and customer service. While the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) use performance measures in a variety of areas, the agency wants to adopt new metrics related to mobility and the responsiveness of maintenance operations. This report documents performance measurement strategies used at state transportation agencies throughout the country and proposes new performance measures in these areas for KYTC. Among the performance measures put forward to the Cabinet, the following ones ranked most highly: (1) response times for complaints and potholes, (2) contract response time, (3) percentage of time and money spent on routine and emergency maintenance of drainage, guardrail, and cable median barriers, (4) response time to repair guardrail and cable median barriers, and (5) winter maintenance operations. As KYTC further integrates performance measures into its operations, it is critical to clearly communicate performance information to the public using tools such as online dashboards and reports

Late Cretaceous to Paleocene Tectonometamorphic Evolution of the Blanchard River Assemblage, Southwest Yukon: New Insight into the Terminal Accretion of Insular Terranes in the Northern Cordillera

The Intermontane-Insular terrane boundary stretches over 2000 kilometers from British Columbia to Alaska in the western Cordillera. Juxtaposed between these terranes is a series of Jura-Cretaceous basinal and arc assemblages that record a complicated and contested tectonic evolution related to the Mesozoic-Paleocene accretionary history of northwestern North America. In southwest Yukon, west-verging thrust faults facilitated structural stacking of the Yukon-Tanana terrane over these basinal assemblages, including the Early Cretaceous Blanchard River assemblage. These previously undated compressional structures are thought to be related to the final collapse of the Jura-Cretaceous basins and the tectonic burial of the Blanchard River assemblage resulting in amphibolite facies metamorphism. New in situ U-Th-Pb monazite ages record at least three tectonic events: (1) the tectonic burial of the Blanchard River assemblage to amphibolite facies conditions between 83 and 76 Ma; (2) peak burial was followed by regional exhumation at ca. 70-68 Ma; and (3) intense heating and ca. 63-61 Ma low-pressure contact metamorphism attributed to the intrusion of the voluminous Ruby Range suite, which is part of the northern Coast Mountains batholith. The tectonometamorphic evolution recorded in the Blanchard River assemblage can be correlated to tectonism within southwest Yukon and along the length of the Insular-Intermontane boundary from western British Columbia through southwestern Yukon and Alaska. In southwest Yukon, these results suggest an asymmetric final collapse of Jura-Cretaceous basins during the Late Cretaceous, which relates to the terminal accretion of the Insular terranes as they moved northward