Nice-looking obstacles: parkour as urban practice of deterritorialization

Most academic publications refer to Parkour as a subversive and embodied tactic that challenges hegemonic discourses of discipline and control. Architecture becomes the playful ground where new ways to move take form. These approaches rarely address the material and embodied relations that occur in these practices and remain on the discursive plane of cultural signifiers. A theory of movement between bodies as the founding aspect of Parkour unfolds alternative concepts of body, space, time and movement beyond the discursive. Movement becomes the leitmotif for a re-conceptualization of the relations between subjects and objects and abandons their division. With the example of Parkour, I will challenge anthropocentric approaches toward embodiment and instead foreground open-ended shifting configurations of places and their relation to movement. Parkour re-shapes rigid concepts of places and their human encounter through movement. Through its encounter with obstacles Parkour activates the silent potential for movement located in the relation between bodies and thus reaches beyond material boundaries (e.g., a wall). As a deterritorializing practice, I will use Parkour to re-consider the relations between different bodies such as architectural configurations, subjects and their urban ecologies to develop a relational model for movement to shape our everyday encounters with matte

Quantum experiments with human eyes as detectors based on cloning via stimulated emission

We show theoretically that the multi-photon states obtained by cloning single-photon qubits via stimulated emission can be distinguished with the naked human eye with high efficiency and fidelity. Focusing on the "micro-macro" situation realized in a recent experiment [F. De Martini, F. Sciarrino, and C. Vitelli, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 253601 (2008)], where one photon from an original entangled pair is detected directly, whereas the other one is greatly amplified, we show that performing a Bell experiment with human-eye detectors for the amplified photon appears realistic, even when losses are taken into account. The great robustness of these results under photon loss leads to an apparent paradox, which we resolve by noting that the Bell violation proves the existence of entanglement before the amplification process. However, we also prove that there is genuine micro-macro entanglement even for high loss.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Premium Auctions and Risk Preferences: An Experimental Study

In premium auctions, the highest losing bidder receives a reward from the seller. This paper studies the private value English premium auction (EPA) for different risk attitudes of bidders. We explicitly derive the symmetric equilibrium for bidders with CARA utilities and conduct an experimental study to test the theoretical predictions. In our experiment, subjects are sorted into risk-averse and risk loving groups. We find that revenues in the EPA are significantly higher when bidders are risk loving rather than risk averse. These results are partly consistent with theory and confirm the general view that bidders’ risk preferences constitute an important factor that affects bidding behavior and consequently also the seller’s expected revenue. However, individual subjects rarely follow the equilibrium strategy and as a result, revenue in our experiment is lower than in the symmetric equilibrium

Ecologies of Relation: Collectivity in Art and Media

How can relation be considered a creative force in the composition of experience? Investigating the status of relation in art, media, and philosophy, this thesis outlines an account of research-creation as a creative practice and tool for analysis. Research-creation, a term used to describe creative practices comprising artistic and theoretical components, provides the backdrop for a more general discussion of the production of knowledge beyond human cognition. By taking a radical empiricist approach, the thesis proposes to include preindividual, affective, and more-than-human elements in the conception of experience. From this point of view, experience is always relationally composed and manifests itself dynamically as an “ecology.” One way of developing a theory and practice attentive to such ecologies of relation resides in the notion of the collective, which refers here to a dimension of experience that exceeds the mere grouping of individual elements under a common interest, ideology, or social bond. The first chapter analyzes collectivity and relation as activities of emergence and becoming. Considered as ecological activity, collectivity emphasizes how experience comprises spatio-temporal dynamics constituting embodied, actual events and their singular forms of knowledge. Using the work of the SenseLab as exemplary, this chapter clarifies how research-creation might be better understood as an investigation into aesthetic and conceptual practices that mutually shape how forms of knowledge and experience co-emerge. From here, the focus on the ecological relation moves toward immersive media environments, which emphasize perception as a relational act of immediation. Immediation as relational act challenges the paradigm of mediation between humans and machines, and instead inserts their activity into an ecological dynamic. In this chapter, research-creation interlaces with concerns in the field of digital aesthetics. Consequently, the entanglements between different temporalities in digital media processes require a rethinking of affect as a temporal operation, which is the focus of chapter three. In chapters four and the conclusion, research-creation as a relational-ecological practice opens up toward political concerns in urban planning and activism, respectively, allowing for the development of an extended conception of the aesthetic politics of the collective beyond art and academia. From a final speculative outlook the thesis asks how an ecological and collective account of research-creation might turn philosophy into an aesthetic and political practice of activation

Design of linear hydrostatic bearings

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 69).Christoph Brünner.M.S

Heralded amplification for precision measurements with spin ensembles

We propose a simple heralded amplification scheme for small rotations of the collective spin of an ensemble of particles. Our protocol makes use of two basic primitives for quantum memories, namely partial mapping of light onto an ensemble, and conversion of a collective spin excitation into light. The proposed scheme should be realizable with current technology, with potential applications to atomic clocks and magnetometry.Comment: 3 pages, 1 figur

Stationary Concepts for Experimental 2 X 2 Games: Comment

Reinhard Selten and Thorsten Chmura (2008) recently reported laboratory results for completely mixed 2 X 2 games used to compare Nash equilibrium with four other stationary concepts: quantal response equilibrium, action-sampling equilibrium, payoff-sampling equilibrium, and impulse balance equilibrium. We reanalyze their data, correct some errors, and find that Nash clearly fits worst while the four other concepts perform about equally well. We also report new analysis of other previous experiments that illustrate the importance of the loss aversion hardwired into impulse balance equilibrium: when the other non-Nash concepts are augmented with loss aversion, they outperform impulse balance equilibrium