Media Ecologies

In this chapter, we frame the media ecologies that contextualize the youth practices we describe in later chapters. By drawing from case studies that are delimited by locality, institutions, networked sites, and interest groups (see appendices), we have been able to map the contours of the varied social, technical, and cultural contexts that structure youth media engagement. This chapter introduces three genres of participation with new media that have emerged as overarching descriptive frameworks for understanding how youth new media practices are defi ned in relation and in opposition to one another. The genres of participation—hanging out, messing around, and geeking out—refl ect and are intertwined with young people’s practices, learning, and identity formation within these varied and dynamic media ecologies

Memory ecologies

The individual and collective and also cultural domains have long constituted challenging boundaries for the study of memory. These are often clearly demarcated between approaches drawn from the human and the social sciences and also humanities, respectively. But recent work turns the enduring imagination – the world view – of these domains on its head by treating memory as serving a link between both the individual and collective past and future. Here, I employ some of the contributions from Schacter and Welker’s Special Issue of Memory Studies on ‘Memory and Connection’ to offer an ‘expanded view’ of memory that sees remembering and forgetting as the outcome of interactional trajectories of experience, both emergent and predisposed

A Software Suite for the Control and the Monitoring of Adaptive Robotic Ecologies

Adaptive robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices (sensors, actuators, automated appliances) pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they learn to cooperate towards the achievement of complex tasks. While their flexibility makes them an increasingly popular way to improve a system’s reliability, scalability, robustness and autonomy, their effective realisation demands integrated control and software solutions for the specification, integration and management of their highly heterogeneous and computational constrained components. In this extended abstract we briefly illustrate the characteristic requirements dictated by robotic ecologies, discuss our experience in developing adaptive robotic ecologies, and provide an overview of the specific solutions developed as part of the EU FP7 RUBICON Project

Towards an archaeology of media ecologies : the case of Italian free radios

This article looks at the contemporary reinvention of the term Media Ecologies in the work of Matthew Fuller, arguing that its provenance is less form Postman's Media Ecology Association andmore form the work of Felix Guattari. It then presents an account of free radios in Italy and France in the 1970s and contemporary pirate radio as exemplary cases of media ecologies in Fuller's sense of the term

Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey

Review of Emergent Ecologies by Eben Kirksey

Avenues for emergent ecologies

In this work, we present some fascinating behaviour emerging from a simple synthetic chemistry model. The results of Ono and Ikegami (2001) demonstrated the spontaneous formation of primitive, self-reproducing cells from a random homogeneous mixture of chemical components. Their model made use of a simple, artificial reaction network. Discrete particles were placed on a triangular lattice and the dynamics consisted of the following particle transitions: translation over one lattice spacing and chemical transformation. The primary particle types were membrane-forming particles, catalysts and water. The membrane particles formed structures akin to lipid bilayers. Their synthesis was stimulated by the catalyst particles, which were also capable of template self-replication using precursors. The system readily exhibits protocell formation from a random initial condition. These protocells form, grow, divide and eventually decay in a continuous cycle. Such emergent dynamics were an illuminating result given that the simulation itself only defines local interactions between particles and a set of physical transition rules. The protocell structures are not explicitly represented or built into the model. Hence it demonstrated a basic physical logic wherein the concepts of self-maintenance and self-reproduction could arise spontaneously from a set of simpler, lower level rules. In essence, it was an in silico realisation of the principle of autopoiesis.We decided to extend this work by augmenting the particle species repertoire. An additional catalyst was added, which did not stimulate the synthesis of membrane particles, but rather stimulated their decay. It was expected that this would reduce the rate of protocell formation. However a surprising dynamic was uncovered with this new system. As one might expect the protocells did not arise in abundance as in the original model. Instead they formed in small, isolated colonies since this was the only means by which they could avoid the destructive effects of the new catalyst. However because this toxic particle was also autocatalytic (like the other, constructive catalyst), its concentration rose sharply in regions confined by membrane particles since the membranes slowed their outward diffusion. Thus membranes actually created a niche for the toxic catalyst. This in turn produced a predator-prey dynamic with clouds of the toxic particle growing near protocells and protocells being forced to grow in the opposite direction to avoid the destructive effects of the new particle. These results reveal that high level, ecological phenomena can manifest themselves even in simple physico-chemical systems. They demonstrate that ideas of natural selection and fitness are intimately bound with the basic principle of free energy minimisation. We have also now enhanced the model further by adding a second reaction network. It is similar, but independent to the first and allows for two "species" of protocell. It is also possible for hybrids to form, comprised of mixtures of the membrane particles from the two reaction networks. Results from this new version are currently being gathered and analyse

Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature by Adrian J Ivakhiv

Review of Adrian J. Ivankhiv\u27s Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature

Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative by Alexa Weik von Mossner

Review of Alexa Weik von Mossner\u27s Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative

Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches edited by Elizabeth Deloughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan

Review of Elizabeth Deloughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan\u27s Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches

Environments for sonic ecologies

This paper outlines a current lack of consideration for the environmental context of Evolutionary Algorithms used for the generation of music. We attempt to readdress this balance by outlining the benefits of developing strong coupling strategies between agent and en- vironment. It goes on to discuss the relationship between artistic process and the viewer and suggests a placement of the viewer and agent in a shared environmental context to facilitate understanding of the artistic process and a feeling of participation in the work. The paper then goes on to outline the installation ‘Excuse Me and how it attempts to achieve a level of Sonic Ecology through the use of a shared environmental context