Alice Guy Blaché

From 1896 to 1906 Alice Guy was probably the only woman film director in the world. She had begun as a secretary for Léon Gaumont and made her first film in 1896. After that first film, she directed and produced or supervised almost six hundred silent films ranging in length from one minute to thirty minutes, the majority of which were of the single-reel length. In addition, she also directed and produced or supervised one hundred and fifty synchronized sound films for the Gaumont Chronophone. Her Gaumont silent films are notable for their energy and risk-taking; her preference for real locations gives the extant examples of these Gaumont films a contemporary feel. As Alan Williams has described her influence, Alice Guy “created and nurtured the mood of excitement and sheer aesthetic pleasure that one senses in so many pre-war Gaumont films, including the ones made after her departure from the Paris studio” (57). Most notable of her Gaumont period films is La Vie du Christ (1906), a thirty-minute extravaganza that featured twenty-five sets as well as numerous exterior locations and over three hundred extras

Power-Ups in Digital Games: The Rewarding Effect of Phantom Game Elementson Player Experience

Power-ups are a type of game reward that allow the player tocustomise their experience by altering gameplay for a shortperiod of time. Despite the wide use of power-ups in videogames, little is known about their effect on gaming experiences.To explore this, we conducted an experimental study that compares the experiences of players depending on their exposureto power-ups in a recreational video game. The results show that players who collected power-ups felt significantly more immersed in the game, experienced more autonomy, but didnot feel more competent or challenged than those who played the game without these collectables. Interestingly, a similareffect was observed for those players who picked up ‘placebo ’power-ups, despite the items having no effect on the gameplay. We provide a discussion of these results and their implications both for games user researchers and game designers

Mimesis stories: composing new nature music for the shakuhachi

Nature is a widespread theme in much new music for the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute). This article explores the significance of such music within the contemporary shakuhachi scene, as the instrument travels internationally and so becomes rooted in landscapes outside Japan, taking on the voices of new creatures and natural phenomena. The article tells the stories of five compositions and one arrangement by non-Japanese composers, first to credit composers’ varied and personal responses to this common concern and, second, to discern broad, culturally syncretic traditions of nature mimesis and other, more abstract, ideas about the naturalness of sounds and creative processes (which I call musical naturalism). Setting these personal stories and longer histories side by side reveals that composition creates composers (as much as the other way around). Thus it hints at much broader terrain: the refashioning of human nature at the confluence between cosmopolitan cultural circulations and contemporary encounters with the more-than-human world

Watching You Watching Me

_The Truman Show_ Directed by Peter Weir, 1998. _EDTV_ Directed by Ron Howard, 199

Λεκτικό - Οπτικό - Δυνητικό: Η ιστορία των MUD

According to Manuel Castels we have recently entered the era of Global Networks, in which Culture refers to Culture and Nature is left out of the equation. This paper argues that MUDs (a term used generically to include also MOOs, MUSHes, MUCΚs etc.) are one of the symptoms of this new era, as well as an ideal microterrain for its study. MUDs are communities on line, containing bots (agents and programmed personalities) and avatars (constructed digital personalities that mask other players) and they are laid out along spatial principles, making the "map" of the world a crucial part of its structure. MUDs can be text-based, 2-D or 3-D virtual environments. This paper focuses on text-based MUDs and begins by tracing their history, from the intertextual relationship of the fantasy worlds of Lewis and Tolkien with the board game “Dungeons and Dragons”, to the first on-line MUDs of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Particular attention is paid to the LPMUD called Angalon, examining its avatar creation, bots, quests, navigation of the MUD space, as well as to the various ways that this space has been described by theorists like Aarseth, Landow and Murray. MUDs are a unique form of narrative because of the fluid nature of the existents and the fixed nature of the processes, which are a result of an interactive, modular plot construction. Players are not co-authors, unless they are also wizards. If we think of actual MUDplay as diegetic, and other aspects of MUDding, such as creating avatars and calculating hitpoints, as non-diegetic, we can productively apply theories of levels of narration, such as Branigan's, to interactive fiction.Συμφωνά με τον Manuel Castels έχουμε εδώ και λίγο καιρό εισέλθει στην εποχή των Πλανητικών Δικτύων, στο πλαίσιο των ο­ποίων η Κουλτούρα έχει γίνει καθαρά αυτο-αναφορική, αφήνο­ντας έξω τη Φύση. Η παρούσα εργασία προτείνει ότι τα MUD (συμπεριλαμβανομένων και των MOO, MUSH, MUCK κλπ.) α­ποτελούν ένα από τα συμπτώματα αυτής της νέας εποχής, καθώς και ένα ιδανικό μικρο-πεδίο για τη μελέτη της. Τα MUD είναι η­λεκτρονικές κοινότητες που περιλαμβάνουν προγραμματισμέ­νους χαρακτήρες και τεχνητές ψηφιακές προσωπικότητες πίσω από τις οποίες κρύβονται οι παίκτες. Η δομή τους είναι καθαρά χωρική και βασίζεται στο χάρτη του κόσμου. Τα MUD μπορεί να είναι κειμενικά, δυσδιάστατα ή και τρισδιάστατα. Η παρούσα εργασία εστιάζεται στα κειμενικά MUD και ξεκινά διαγράφο­ντας την ιστορική τους εξέλιξη, από το βασισμένο στους φαντα­στικούς κόσμους του Lewis και του Tolkien επιτραπέζιο παιγνίδι "Dungeons and Dragons" έως τα πρώτα MUD των τελών της δε­καετίας του 1970 και των αρχών της δεκαετίας του 1980. Μια λε­πτομερής ανάλυση επιφυλλάσσεται για το MUD που είναι γνω­στό με το όνομα Angalon. Εξετάζονται οι διάφοροι χαρακτήρες και πλοκές του, καθώς και η πλοήγηση στο χώρο του, ο οποίος έ­χει μελετηθεί από θεωρητικούς σαν τους Aarseth, Landow και Murray. Τα MUD συνιστούν ένα μοναδικό είδος αφηγήματος ε­ξαιτίας της ρευστής φύσης των συντελεστών του και του σταθε­ρού χαρακτήρα των διαδικασιών του, η πλοκή του οποίου παρά­γεται μέσω μιας διαδραστικής σύνθεσης. Εάν εκλάβουμε το παί­ξιμο των MUD ως διηγητικό, και τις άλλες συναφείς δραστηριό­τητες — όπως είναι η δημιουργία των χαρακτήρων — ως μη-διηγητικές, καθίσταται δυνατό να εφαρμόσουμε τις θεωρίες περί αφη­γηματικών επιπέδων, σαν κι αυτή του Branigan, στη μελέτη της διαδραστικής μυθοπλασίας τους

Factors Associated With the Ability of US Nursing Homes to Accept Residents With Severe Obesity

Objectives Severe obesity in nursing home (NH) residents is associated with specialized care needs, limited mobility, and challenges in daily living. The COVID-19 pandemic strained NH resources and exacerbated staffing shortages. This study aimed to assess the ability of US NHs to accept and care for residents with severe obesity post-COVID, as well as associated NH factors. Design Cross-sectional nationwide survey of NH administrators (2021-2022). Setting and Participants 290 NHs from a national sample (n = 224) and a targeted sample in Massachusetts and New Jersey (n = 66). Methods A survey designed to assess how NHs approach admitting and caring for people with severe obesity before and after COVID was fielded from 2021 to 2022. Responses were linked to facility information from the Certification and Survey Provider Enhanced Reports, Minimum Data Set, Nursing Home Compare, Area Health Resources File, and US Diabetes Surveillance System. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess the effect of organizational and survey response variables. Results Of the 2503 surveys sent to US NHs, 1923 were sent to the national NH stratified sample, and 580 were sent to the MA/NJ sample. Overall, 12% (301 of 2503) of NHs surveyed responded. The response rates were similar between the 2 samples. Of 290 NHs with complete data, 34% reported being unlikely to accept residents with severe obesity after COVID-19, compared with 25% before the pandemic (P\u3c .001). The main barriers to acceptance were staffing shortages and difficulties meeting equipment and space needs. NHs with higher proportions of Black residents were more likely to admit individuals with severe obesity. Conclusions and Implications The decline in acceptance of residents with severe obesity during and after COVID-19 highlights potential challenges that this population faces in accessing care. Our results also raise concerns that an intersection of disparities may exist in Black patients with severe obesity

Dear Pictograph: Investigating the Role of Personalization and Immersion for Consuming and Enjoying Visualizations

International audienceMuch of the visualization literature focuses on assessment of visual representations with regard to their effectiveness for understanding data. In the present work, we instead focus on making data visualization experiences more enjoyable, to foster deeper engagement with data. We investigate two strategies to make visualization experiences more enjoyable and engaging: personalization, and immersion. We selected pictographs (composed of multiple data glyphs) as this representation affords creative freedom, allowing people to craft symbolic or whimsical shapes of personal significance to represent data. We present the results of a qualitative study with 12 participants crafting pictographs using a large pen-enabled device and while immersed within a VR environment. Our results indicate that personalization and immersion both have positive impact on making visualizations more enjoyable experiences