A Tale Told

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A Tale Told

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The Syzygy Surfer: Creative technology for the World Wide Web

Conference paper given at WebSci11.This paper discusses our development of a new Web engine, the Syzygy Surfer, which aims to induce a search/browsing experience that is more creative than traditional search. We do this by purposefully combining the ambiguity of natural language with the precision of Semantic Web technologies. Here we set out the framework for our investigation and discuss the context and background ideas that are informing the research. The paper offers some preliminary examples taken from our work in progress on the device and suggests the way ahead for future developments and applications

Pianolith

Pianolith was written for the pianist GéNIA in 2003 and is scored for rock sounds (on CD) and piano. The piano material owes something to Scriabin in its mysterious exposition of a hidden order. The CD comprises ten rock grinds and a small shingle cascade

'Pataphysical Piano

Track Listing: Catalogue de Grenouilles; Fete Donné...; O Pax Aetherna; Bride, teeming with sweet to the Bridegroom; Pianolith; DigestifA single-authored CD of work for piano and digital sound spanning 30 years. Performed by six prize-winning pianists

Creative search using pataphysics

This paper looks at defining, analysing and practicing how creativity can be applied to search tools. It defines creativity with respect to search and discusses how these concepts could be applied in software engineering using principles from the pseudo-philosophy of pataphysics. The aim of the proposed tool is to generate surprising, novel, humorous and provocative search results instead of purely relevant ones, in order to inspire a more creative interaction between a user, their information need and the application. A proof-of-concept prototype is described to justify the ideas presented before implications and future work are discussed

Virtual Roman Leicester (VRL): An interactive Computer Model of a Romano-British City

This paper describes the background, development and use of a new Virtual Reality (VR) model of the built fabric of Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvo-rum) which has been based upon direct archaeologi-cal evidence, literary evidence and comparisons with the remains of similar Romano-British cities. It forms the conclusion of the first stage of a larger ongoing collaborative research project to create an inhabited virtual Romano-British world populated by interact-ing avatars programmed using a novel form of artifi-cial intelligence (AI) to have a range of Romano-British morals and values for the purposes of examin-ing resultant emergent behaviors and societal devel-opment. Virtual Roman Leicester (VRL) has been created in a popular games engine to allow real-time exploration by real world users and has a multiplat-form capability to also examine issues surrounding the use of Virtual Reality for public outreach and the wider understanding of cultural heritage. Here we focus firstly upon issues surrounding the interpreta-tion of the archaeological evidence and its extrapola-tion into full buildings (using a technique we call architectural forensics), secondly upon technical is-sues concerning importation of ancient land surface terrain and thirdly upon aspects of initial user expe-rience following an extensive public exhibition of the model

Future of Creative Technologies

The first issue of the journal of the Institute of Creative Technologies (IOCT), the Future of Creative Techologies is a collection of papers by keynote speakers at the IOCT during the period 2006-2008. The papers are introduced by editorial comments. Papers included - Howard Rheingold, Visiting Professor, Institute of Creative Technologies, Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Associate Professor, Stanford University, US: "Understanding and Extending Human Sociality: Literacies, Transliteracies and 21st Century Pedagogy" Claudia Eckert, Senior Research Fellow, Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, UK: "Design Processes and the Rhetoric of Creativity" Bruce Mason, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, and Sue Thomas Professor of New Media, De Montfort University, UK: "A Million Penguins: An Analysis" Wendy Keay-Bright, Reader in Inclusive Design, Cardiff School of Art and Design, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, UK: "The Reactive Colours Project: Taking an Embodied Technologies, Creativity and Special Education" Pauline Oliveros, Composer-Performer, Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and Darius Milhaud Composer in Residence at Mills College, Oakland, US: "The Expanded Instrument System (EIS): An Introduction and Brief History" Martin Rieser, Professor of Digital Creativity, Institute of Creative Technologies and Faculty of Art and Design, De Montfort University, UK: "Mobile, Pervasive and Locative Media Art and the Reinvention of Place

The Business School in the Anthropocene: Parasite Logic and Pataphysical Reasoning for a Working Earth

We have entered the Anthropocene: a new geological epoch in which human activities, led by business interests, have inexorably compromised the Earth System. The current failure to provide a comprehensive and systematic response to this transition does not result from a lack of reason, but is instead the manifestation of a generalized crisis in communication. Drawing from the work of Michel Serres, we analyze how the roots of this crisis lie with “parasite logic,” which has prevented reasoned responses to the Anthropocene. To work through this crisis, it is necessary to adopt different forms of reasoning and imagination to reshape the rational basis of management education. We propose to do this through an engagement with pataphysics, a science that subjects dominant modes of ra�tionality to a divergent thinking of the absurd and proposing playful forms of reasoning. Pataphysics provides a mechanism for developing “imaginary solutions” to the current situation, which can disrupt anthropocentric forms of reason and reasoning, and further serve to slow down the endless cycles of inclusion and exclusion that arise from parasite logic. Finally, we propose slow design as an example of an “imaginary solution” that comes from this process of conceptual and practical deacceleration