Meditation in motion to mindfulness in performance: a psychophysical approach to actor training for Thai undergraduate drama programmes

This thesis explores the ways in which an actor training scheme can be constructed to allow the participants to directly apply the principles of training to their work in the moment of performing. Subsequently, my aim is to employ this actor training approach alongside or as an alternative to the current acting courses in undergraduate drama programmes in Thai universities. Three practical projects were carried out as part of the research. In the first project, I attempted to identify essential areas of enquiry in a psychophysical actor training approach, and the tasks that needed to be tackled by an actor in rehearsal and performance that allow what may be considered the quality of an actor’s presence to emerge. In the second practical project, I examined the function of meditation in motion as an actor training tool that enables the participants to tackle their performance tasks. In the third practical project, I explored the ways in which meditation in motion can be employed in a university actor training course in Thailand to enhance the students’ mindfulness in performance. This thesis argues that Buddhist concepts of meditation and mindfulness are beneficial to the course facilitator in terms of the structuring of an actor training course, and to the students when approaching performance tasks. The main result of this research is a psychophysical approach to actor training, focusing on the practice of meditation in motion and the Buddhist concept of mindfulness of the present, designed specifically for Thai undergraduate drama programmes. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates a move away from the East-West binary towards a more localised and customised approach to actor training in Thailand and the utilisation of resources within the Thai or the broader Asian culture. It also opens up other possibilities of applying Thai or Asian philosophies to performance training, without relying on the Western perspectives on theatre and performance

Meditation in motion to mindfulness in performance : a psychophysical approach to actor training for Thai undergraduate drama programmes

This thesis explores the ways in which an actor training scheme can be constructed to allow the participants to directly apply the principles of training to their work in the moment of performing. Subsequently, my aim is to employ this actor training approach alongside or as an alternative to the current acting courses in undergraduate drama programmes in Thai universities. Three practical projects were carried out as part of the research. In the first project, I attempted to identify essential areas of enquiry in a psychophysical actor training approach, and the tasks that needed to be tackled by an actor in rehearsal and performance that allow what may be considered the quality of an actor’s presence to emerge. In the second practical project, I examined the function of meditation in motion as an actor training tool that enables the participants to tackle their performance tasks. In the third practical project, I explored the ways in which meditation in motion can be employed in a university actor training course in Thailand to enhance the students’ mindfulness in performance. This thesis argues that Buddhist concepts of meditation and mindfulness are beneficial to the course facilitator in terms of the structuring of an actor training course, and to the students when approaching performance tasks. The main result of this research is a psychophysical approach to actor training, focusing on the practice of meditation in motion and the Buddhist concept of mindfulness of the present, designed specifically for Thai undergraduate drama programmes. Moreover, this thesis demonstrates a move away from the East-West binary towards a more localised and customised approach to actor training in Thailand and the utilisation of resources within the Thai or the broader Asian culture. It also opens up other possibilities of applying Thai or Asian philosophies to performance training, without relying on the Western perspectives on theatre and performance.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Epidemiology of Workplace Accident among the Ferroalloy Industries in Bhutan

Workplace accident has a devastating and long term effect on the lives of people who are affected. Globally, workplace accidents are estimated at 317 million annually and 6300 workers die daily of occupational diseases and accidents. This study determines the characteristic of workplace injuries, accident frequency rate (AFR), accident severity rate (ASR) and leading causes across six ferroalloy industries in Bhutan. From the total numbers of 1366 workers, a sample size of 300 was considered and distributed proportionately among the companies and the departments within the companies. Information was gathered through face-to-face interview, observation, and secondary data maintained by each company. This study found that the workplace injury rate was 200 (20%) per 1000 workers, with over all AFR 62.45 and ASR 583.20 per million hours of work annually among the six ferroalloy industries. Out of 561 lost working days, 516 days were lost due to major injury with AFR 11.45 and ASR 540.20 per million hours work annually. This study found that AFR alone cannot be used as an exclusive indicator for predicting the occurrence of severe events at workplace. Contact with object and equipment (44.2%), fall from height (20.9%) and contact with the hot substance (26.7%) were three main leading causes of workplace accidents among ferroalloy industries. Comparing between the survey data and accident record maintained by each company, though it showed a similar nature, the frequency was found to be higher in survey data

Impact of E-learning activities on English as a second language proficiency among engineering cohorts of Malaysian higher education: a 7-month longitudinal study

Recent technology implementation in learning has inspired language educators to employ various e-learning techniques, strategies, and applications in their pedagogical practices while aiming at improving specific learning efficiencies of students. The current study attempts to blend e-learning activities, including blogging, video making, online exercises, and digital storyboarding, with English language teaching and explores its impact on engineering cohorts at a public university in Malaysia. The longitudinal research study used three digital applications—Voyant Tools, Lumos Text Complexity Analyzer, and Advanced Text Analyzer—to analyze the data collected through a variety of digital assignments and activities from two English language courses during the researched academic semesters. Contributing to the available literature on the significance of integrating technology innovation with language learning, the study found that implementing e-learning activities can provide substantial insights into improving the learners’ different linguistic competencies, including writing competency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary enhancement. Moreover, the implementation of such innovative technology can motivate students to engage in more peer interactivity, learning engagement, and self-directed learning.Published versio

DipSAR: Deep Image Prior for Sparse Sampled Near-Field SAR Millimeter-Wave Imaging

We present a deep learning-based approach called DipSAR for reconstructing millimeter-wave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images from sparse samples. The primary challenge lies in the requirement of a large training dataset for deep learning schemes. To overcome this issue, we employ the deep image prior (DIP) technique, which eliminates the need for a large dataset and instead utilizes only the sparse sample itself. Our proposed DipSAR model recovers missing samples from sparse data and reconstructs the SAR image using a conventional method. In this study, we utilize an existing SAR dataset and create fourteen different patterns to generate additional sparse samples by removing certain data points. We then evaluate the performance of DipSAR in comparison to the conventional method. The results show that DipSAR outperforms the conventional method in terms of the intersection over union (IoU) score.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Microwave Sensing, Signals & System