The Interlocutor and the End Men

My current research seeks to dissolve the barrier between practice and theory. This has been done through the creation of hybrid identities in the form of composite characters and conceptual avatars towards the realization of what I have termed an event site. Event sites are a text/practice methodology that permits and encourages the simultaneous existence of multiple, varied and sometimes, conflicting positions. The event site allows the words included in a text to perform the job of both theory and practice. Through the action of these diverse subjectivities the site of the event is revealed as a heterogeneous procedure for thought, and the two modes of enquiry (theory and practice) are both reoccupied, suggesting that there is no distinction between theory and practice and they can co-exist in a middle space. This middle space simultaneously accommodates both equivalence and difference and allows for questions on the relationship of language to logic as a site for radical indeterminacy.1 Allowing for a reworking of the tradition notion of an artistic practice and a theoretical text to demonstrate how both ways of working compliment and are an important and valid part of research. Questions my PhD sought to explore: What is the affect of the transition between the virtual space of the screen and the written space of the page? To what extent can a television character situate the re-occupation of both practice and theory in order to assume a different relationship to both of them? In what way can the juxtaposition between theory/practice allow for a dispersed subjectivity to unfold and reconfigure accepted narrative frameworks

Creativity and Autonomy in Swarm Intelligence Systems

This work introduces two swarm intelligence algorithms -- one mimicking the behaviour of one species of ants (\emph{Leptothorax acervorum}) foraging (a `Stochastic Diffusion Search', SDS) and the other algorithm mimicking the behaviour of birds flocking (a `Particle Swarm Optimiser', PSO) -- and outlines a novel integration strategy exploiting the local search properties of the PSO with global SDS behaviour. The resulting hybrid algorithm is used to sketch novel drawings of an input image, exploliting an artistic tension between the local behaviour of the `birds flocking' - as they seek to follow the input sketch - and the global behaviour of the `ants foraging' - as they seek to encourage the flock to explore novel regions of the canvas. The paper concludes by exploring the putative `creativity' of this hybrid swarm system in the philosophical light of the `rhizome' and Deleuze's well known `Orchid and Wasp' metaphor