Composite Modeling based on Distributed Graph Transformation and the Eclipse Modeling Framework

Model-driven development (MDD) has become a promising trend in software engineering for a number of reasons. Models as the key artifacts help the developers to abstract from irrelevant details, focus on important aspects of the underlying domain, and thus master complexity. As software systems grow, models may grow as well and finally become possibly too large to be developed and maintained in a comprehensible way. In traditional software development, the complexity of software systems is tackled by dividing the system into smaller cohesive parts, so-called components, and let distributed teams work on each concurrently. The question arises how this strategy can be applied to model-driven development. The overall aim of this thesis is to develop a formalized modularization concept to enable the structured and largely independent development of interrelated models in larger teams. To this end, this thesis proposes component models with explicit export and import interfaces where exports declare what is provided while imports declare what it needed. Then, composite model can be connected by connecting their compatible export and import interfaces yielding so-called composite models. Suitable to composite models, a transformation approach is developed which allows to describe changes over the whole composition structure. From the practical point of view, this concept especially targets models based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). In the modeling community, EMF has evolved to a very popular framework which provides modeling and code generation facilities for Java applications based on structured data models. Since graphs are a natural way to represent the underlying structure of visual models, the formalization is based on graph transformation. Incorporated concepts according to distribution heavily rely on distributed graph transformation introduced by Taentzer. Typed graphs with inheritance and containment structures are well suited to describe the essentials of EMF models. However, they also induce a number of constraints like acyclic inheritance and containment which have to be taken into account. The category-theoretical foundation in this thesis allows for the precise definition of consistent composite graph transformations satisfying all inheritance and containment conditions. The composite modeling approach is shown to be coherent with the development of tool support for composite EMF models and composite EMF model transformation

Communication and Conflict in Sino-German Global Virtual Teams

This study investigated the correlation between communication and conflict of Sino-German Global Virtual Teams (GVT). An exploratory quantitative online survey was conducted in German companies doing business in Greater China. A focus was given to the analysis of modern web 2.0 communication technologies and their potential influence on conflict. As expected, GVT experience more cross-cultural conflicts than collocated teams. However, there was no statistically significant difference in the amount of conflict between GVT 1.0 and GVT 2.0. Surprisingly, video calls are likely to contribute to the amount of task conflicts and cross-cultural conflicts. Furthermore, social media is likely to mitigate the amount of cross-cultural conflicts. Participants who extensively used social media and video call communication in their private lives, did so in their corporate lives as well. Finally, the team leaders who possessed a higher level of education reported a statistically higher amount of video call usage in their teams

Between oaks and ashes

As part of the 'Digging' exhibition at TCU, Texas, Brigitte Jurack's short essay proposes a reimagined campus space in response to the 1948 publication Texas Christian University Building Programme

Why bother? Uncertainty, awkwardness and bravado in the sculptural representation of youth

This thesis comprises a study of contemporary sculptural practice employed by the researcher to represent youth, including within socially engaged contexts. ‘Youth’ is interpreted here as a developmental stage between the ages of 12-20 and the research focuses on the iconography of sculptural representation of youth from Ancient Greece to present day. While existing studies of figurative sculpture recognise affinities with Ancient Greece, none have so far noted recurring motifs within the representation of youth, such as their relationship with site and the way they instantiate, or even demand, a combined studio and community-based practice. Conversely, although studies of socially engaged art analyse the complex relationships between diverse stakeholders, they lack detailed insight into artists’ perspectives and practices in relation to specific local settings. This research seeks to address these gaps, supported by Aby Warburg’s findings that significant motifs permeate from Antiquity through to the present, and through the use of documentation and critical analysis of a large number of sculpture and relevant socially engaged practices in Merseyside. This is done in conjunction with the researcher’s own creative practice consisting of 15 sculptures, 30 statuettes, a collection of drawings, works produced by young people and the permanent public artwork representing youth, Just wait for me (2012-13) in Central Park, Wallasey. All the works address motifs of youth that reflect uncertainty, awkwardness and bravado. The result is to fuse three iconographic motifs with a new hybrid method for ‘local’ artists working with communities, particularly young people, a local and artist-led approach that remains under-considered in the context of global ‘curatorial-matchmaking’ of socially engaged practice. The documentation of and reflection upon the researcher’s own sculptural work references and discusses the implications and strategies involved when reflecting on aspects of representation within making and interpretation of sculpture. The combination of the researcher’s creative work and written text produces a thesis that demonstrates how key motifs, ur-experiences, the physical studio environment and the local community setting impact upon the sculptural representation of youth, culminating in a new locally engaged site-specific permanent sculpture. The outcomes, also contributions to knowledge, are: The portrayal of youth dating back to Ancient Greece is understood across three key motifs, namely the states of rehearsal, self-absorption and vulnerability. The uses of the double figure as a form of three-dimensional reflection enhances this sculptural representation of youth as uncertain, awkward and being in limbo. The knowledge of a ‘local’ artist from a different cultural background, enables the development of a new hybrid method for creating the socially-engaged site-specific permanent sculpture that regards all participation and engagement within a user-expert model. A new public sculpture embodying and celebrating notions of youth’s awkward presence and undetermined future has been added to the canon of public sculpture within Merseyside. The reflective and transparent methodology employed in the studio, community engagement, exhibitions and specific site aligns this form of art practice to an artistic position concerned with the desire to reclaim public space for the celebration of uncertainty, awkwardness and bravado

You Look at Me Looking at You Looking at Me

Living and working for a month at the Sanskriti Foundation in Delhi, the artist’s life was watched and observed by a group of resident monkeys. This paper is based on notes begun during that studio residency and represents the critical reflections emerging alongside the hands-on sculptural practice. It is illustrated with close-up photographs of the artist’s sculpture that asks how encounters with fabled animals in densely populated 21st century urban areas can alter our understanding of the gaze as an inter-species gaze. The sculpture and paper begin to ask broader questions, including how can sculpture provide a different, and perhaps more tacit and empathetic, encounter with the other to enable a physical, mental or spiritual experience of cultural entanglement between the various onlookers? In how far is modelling the other’s gaze a form of embodiment and mimicry? Do the fast-changing camera angles and soundtracks of natural history programmes hinder an empathic inter-species encounter? Or, does the slow animation of the artist’s sculpted surface heighten a sense of being alongside equally curious, cunning and adaptable others such as crows, foxes and monkeys

What's left behind

Artist's monograph accompanying solo exhibition at Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, with essays by Colin Simpson, Dr Danielle Child and Lauren Velvick

Solving the TTC 2011 Reengineering Case with Henshin

This paper presents the Henshin solution to the Model Transformations for Program Understanding case study as part of the Transformation Tool Contest 2011.Comment: In Proceedings TTC 2011, arXiv:1111.440

Ludo: A Case Study for Graph Transformation Tools

In this paper we describe the Ludo case, one of the case studies of the AGTIVE 2007 Tool Contest (see [22]). After summarising the case description, we give an overview of the submitted solutions. In particular, we propose a number of dimensions along which choices had to be made when solving the case, essentially setting up a solution space; we then plot the spectrum of solutions actually encountered into this solution space. In addition, there is a brief description of the special features of each of the submissions, to do justice to those aspects that are not distinguished in the general solution space