Plague, Pestilence & Pollution : Berkoff\u27s Collision With Aeschylus and Sophocles

Our humanity is bound to perennial themes in drama, so when a classic play is adapted to \u27suit\u27 contemporary audiences, the revised version will often reflect the zeitgeist of the times in which it was produced. The magic of retrospection then allows us to examine the social and political particulars that influence the adapted as well as the original work. Indeed, Steven Berkoff\u27s reworkings of both Aeschylus\u27 Agamemnon and Sophocles\u27 Oedipus Rex reflect an unsettled and divided British context in the throes of ideological upheaval during the 1970\u27s and early 1980\u27s. While consistent criticism of leadership and political strife in Berkoff\u27s Literature suggests a commitment to socialist ideals, I will also argue that images of death and destruction promote the playwright\u27s didactic humanitarian ends. Allegorical themes of plague and pestilence in Berkoff\u27s plays suggest images of humanity in the thrall of forces assumed to be beyond its control. At the same time, these texts work to empower the audience with the belief that their resistant action has the potential to change the course of history. Similarly, as the polluted and decaying British environment is presented as an antecedent to disease and disorder, Berkoff suggests that localised activity is the basis for positive change. While a thematic focus on curse and the idea of fate illustrates the concept of an individual being \u27polluted\u27 through \u27no real fault of their own\u27, his work suggests that within the microcosm of individual agency lies the answer to the problems of the macrocosm of society. Hence in Chapter 1 I will argue that pollution creates an environment conducive to plague and pestilence. As opposed to other forms of literature, theatre is a living entity capable of communicating via the physical senses; a key principle upon which Berkoff builds his Aesthetic. Following in the footsteps of Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht and Jacques Le Coq, Berkoff taps into the power of the theatre to reach beyond logical thought into the deepest recesses of the mind and will. Consequently, I argue that Berkoff\u27s theatrical predecessors in the field of physical theatre inform his attempts to move beyond traditional notions of what theatre should be, what it should say and how it should say it. In Chapter 2 I will examine Artaud\u27s idea that theatre is like plague in their mutual powers of revelation, transformation and the fact that both are potentially refining social phenomena. Berkoff\u27s collision with Aeschylus and Sophocles works to purge audiences of the festering sores of their apathy and ignorance by challenging the idea that the conditions of their existence are in some way predetermined and thus immutable. Therefore in Chapter 3 I will look to the historical context and specific political agenda of Berkoff\u27s rewritings as well as his radical treatment of persistent dramatic themes in an attempt to gauge their potential for durability. Ultimately, I argue that Berkoff as auteur director, actor and playwright is committed to transcending crippling assumptions and patterns of thought in art as in life

Fowl feathered fox: Monsters, pipers, families and flocks

Fowl Feathered Fox: Monsters, Pipers, Families and Flocks is a doctoral work consisting of a full-length stage play and an exegesis. An introduction outlines the scope of the doctoral work, while a concluding chapter reflects on research findings and considers staging issues and implications. Appendices include images incorporated into the play’s action as well as photographed excerpts from a series of visual diaries used to document the play’s evolution. The play, Fowl Feathered Fox, explores the nature of delusion, deception and the tragedy of The Beast Within. Borrowing as it does from the traditions of revenge tragedy, comedy and horror, the style of Fowl Feathered Fox is both sensual and sensationalistic. Indeed, by virtue of overstepping traditional ideological, stage and venue boundaries to tap into an audience’s faculties of taste, physical sensation and smell, I aim to confront, seduce and repel on every possible sensory level. Here, in keeping with the conventions of Renaissance revenge tragedies as well as contemporary re-imaginings of the genre in popular culture, a tragic protagonist is forced to behave as a detective in order to put an end to a terrible, taboo curse. As a black comedy however, Fowl Feathered Fox makes light of taboo topics, as the darkness of the subject matter is buoyed by meta-theatrical gags, ironic humour, word-play and brief forays into interpretive dance. In the tradition of horror film and fiction, my eponymous ‘fowl feathered fox’ is a specifically Australian re-imagining of the archetypal shapeshifter, blending the qualities of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the false prophet, the Pied Piper and the werewolf. Surrealism, with its roots in psychoanalysis, underscores the play’s visual aesthetic: this stage is littered with fearful, surgically invasive and aggressively sexual forms, objects and images. The exegesis, Monsters, Pipers, Families and Flocks, interrogates various mythic, historical and fictional examples of charismatic cult leadership, locating patterns in the paradigmatic nexus shared by monsters, cults and families. A trio of exegetical essays considers the tragic nature of lycanthropy, Nietzsche’s conception of the Apollonian/ Dionysian dichotomy, the socio-cultural dynamics of charismatic cult leadership and the frightening, fascinating phenomenon of pseudologia fantastica. The first exegetical essay explores the lycanthropic and messianic qualities of two real-life malevolent cult leaders: Rock Theriault (Canada) and William Kamm (Australia). The second exegetical essay interrogates the enthralling, intoxicating qualities of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and Greek demi-god Dionysus, finding parallels in tragic revenge narratives wrought by infamous American cult leaders such as Charles Manson and David Berg. Finally, the third exegetical essay examines monstrous, messianic mothers from Greek myth, horror fiction and memoir: specifically, the goddess Demeter, Margaret White from Brian de Palma’s Carrie (1976) and notorious Australian cult leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne

Encrypted statistical machine learning: new privacy preserving methods

We present two new statistical machine learning methods designed to learn on fully homomorphic encrypted (FHE) data. The introduction of FHE schemes following Gentry (2009) opens up the prospect of privacy preserving statistical machine learning analysis and modelling of encrypted data without compromising security constraints. We propose tailored algorithms for applying extremely random forests, involving a new cryptographic stochastic fraction estimator, and na\"{i}ve Bayes, involving a semi-parametric model for the class decision boundary, and show how they can be used to learn and predict from encrypted data. We demonstrate that these techniques perform competitively on a variety of classification data sets and provide detailed information about the computational practicalities of these and other FHE methods.Comment: 39 page

Re-examination of employability as ‘social’ practice: a workshop debate re-shaping current understandings and facilitating enhanced practice across generic to specific perspectives.

Whilst present understandings of employability in Higher Education [HE] have been critically reviewed (e.g. Tibby, 2012a & 2012b; Aslett-Bentley, 2013), the focus on employability policy (BIS, 2011; Hill, 2012; Wilson, 2012) remains predominantly based on neo-liberal marketisation principles. However Reid, (2014) has challenged this by advocating a shift in thinking to account for the social and powerful practices of employability. Such a re-shaping focuses on the co-construction of relations of ruling (Smith 2005) and gives key consideration to issues of, power, responsibility, inclusion and exclusion, as well as need. Despite differences in background and approach, both workshop presenters have, through independent critical review, identified the employability definitions of Yorke, (2006) and of Harvey (2003) as useful foundations for further development and remodelling. Aslett-Bentley’s (2013) interpretation also integrates personal practice perspectives and incorporates aspects of Dacre Poole and Sewell’s (2007) employability model. It is broadly accepted across different areas of practice that the lack of a universally recognised definition of employability is an on-going issue, which is a source of potential confusion and misunderstanding (Tibby, 2012b) affecting practitioners, students (Tymon, 2013) and stakeholders. Nevertheless it is acknowledged some flexibility is also needed for specific disciplines and circumstances, but the authors argue that to achieve this, the common ground of a generic definition should not be excluded. Instead it should be acknowledged as a beneficial central starting point, which enhances mutual understanding and acts as a useful generic resource that can be tailored to specific practice considerations, enabling flexible application. The social practice approach supports such re-shaping of understandings of employability and is essentially in keeping with Walker’s (1998) notion of producing an expressive collaborative model, combining ethical negotiation with mutually allocated, deflected or undertaken responsibilities, underpinned by comprehension of related implications. Socialising employability identifies four main stakeholder groups: 1. Government and organisations (such as the CBI) which set the policy agenda regarding the need for a skilled workforce and employability. 2. Those (such as VCs and Senior Managers in HE) responsible for providing appropriate structure for the continuing provision of a suitably qualified and skilled workforce. 3. Those (including academics and administrators in HE) assuring the achievement of employability. 4. Finally students in HE (or trainees elsewhere) who personally achieve employability through their response to the market. Addressing this list requires consideration of who is setting the need for employability and the responsibilities of self and the other (Walker, 1998, Tronto, 1993), which necessarily includes attention on relations of ruling and positions of power. This workshop will engage all participants in reflection on practice perspectives of employability and facilitate critical analysis. A social practice model will be employed to collaboratively re-shape and enhance understandings at individual, student, stakeholder and generic levels in order to facilitate re-defining employability generically to benefit practice. Participants’ contributions will form the basis of a further paper. Key words: employability, social practice, understandings, practitioners, students, stakeholders, Higher Education. References Aslett-Bentley, A. (2013). Relationships between Work Related Learning and Employability within different Communities of Higher Education Practice, with a focus on Nutrition placements: work in progress. Proceedings of the ASET Annual Conference 2013: The Placement and Employability Professionals Conference 2013: at http://www.asetonline.org.uk/documents, accessed May 2014. BIS (Department for Business Innovation & Skills: Higher Education) (2011): Students at the Heart of the System. Norwich: TSO. Dacre Pool, L. & Sewell, P. (2007). Key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability. Centre for Employability. Preston: UCLAN. Harvey, (2003). Transition from Higher Education to Work: A Briefing Paper prepared by Lee Harvey (Centre for Research and Evaluation, Sheffield Hallam University) with advice from ESECT & LTSN Colleagues. Available at htpp://bit.ly/oeCgqW , accessed March 2013. Hill, F. (2012). Briefing paper: national policy context and HEI strategies for student employability. In:HEA Teaching and Learning Summit on Employability. York: HEA. Reid, J. (2014). Socializing Employability. In: ASET Practice Research Network, 6 March 2014, Aston University, Birmingham, UK. Available at: http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/view/authors_id/3809.html Smith, D.E. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Toronto: Altamira Press. Tibby, M. (2012a). Briefing Paper: employer and student perspectives of employability, p.3 in: HEA Teaching and Learning Summit on Employability: Manchester, 2012. York: HEA and NCCPE. Tibby, M. (2012b). Report on Teaching and Learning Summit 16-17th May 2012. York: HEA & NCCPE. Tronto, J.C. (1993). Moral Boundaries. A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. London: Routledge. Tymon, A. (2013). The student perspective on employability. Studies in Higher Education 38 (6) 841-856. Walker, M.U. (1998). Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. New York: Routledge. Wilson, T. (2012). A Review of Business-University Collaboration London: Department for Business (BIS). Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in Higher Education – what it is and what it is not: Learning and Employability Series One. York: HEA/ESECT

Bayesian inference for reliability of systems and networks using the survival signature

The concept of survival signature has recently been introduced as an alternative to the signature for reliability quantification of systems. While these two concepts are closely related for systems consisting of a single type of component, the survival signature is also suitable for systems with multiple types of component, which is not the case for the signature. This also enables the use of the survival signature for reliability of networks. In this article, we present the use of the survival signature for reliability quantification of systems and networks from a Bayesian perspective. We assume that data are available on tested components that are exchangeable with those in the actual system or network of interest. These data consist of failure times and possibly right-censoring times. We present both a nonparametric and parametric approach

Bayesian nonparametric system reliability using sets of priors

An imprecise Bayesian nonparametric approach to system reliability with multiple types of components is developed. This allows modelling partial or imperfect prior knowledge on component failure distributions in a flexible way through bounds on the functioning probability. Given component level test data these bounds are propagated to bounds on the posterior predictive distribution for the functioning probability of a new system containing components exchangeable with those used in testing. The method further enables identification of prior–data conflict at the system level based on component level test data. New results on first-order stochastic dominance for the Beta-Binomial distribution make the technique computationally tractable. Our methodological contributions can be immediately used in applications by reliability practitioners as we provide easy to use software tools