Enclave spaces as embodiment of performance: case of Pilke science centre

This study aims to describe how the display of objects and technologized materials in a typical enclave space is vital to enhancing modes of performances. My specific objectives cut across concepts of norms, display mode, performance, and visitor experiences. I regard enclave space as encompassing pre-determined norms, use of signs that tend to control behavioural patterns of visitors. The study uses background knowledge on relevant studies in cultural, media, and tourism research to argue that emphases have often been on humanistic aspects of performance in touristic spaces. I then focus on non-humanistic part of interactivity as regarding objects, using a case of the Pilke Science Centre in Rovaniemi, with a survey of international student-participants and a mixed-method approach to collect data. Results show a variety in findings, some of which indentify display modes of objects, specifically the norms they embody that construct spaces by being instructive, reflexive, or informative to visitors. I identify performative modes as greatly influenced by object display and use of norms; ranging from body poses to screen-mediated photography, among others. Results equally highlight experiences and consumer-choices of participants interacting with objects. New in the findings, is a six-concept interactive space model to argue a three-way communication process between the object, visitor, and experience created in the space. My research concludes with the viewpoint that Objects are in essence an embodiment of constructs and performative practices enhanced by their display mode, level expression, and norms

Embodied conversations: Performance and the design of a robotic dancing partner

This paper reports insights gained from an exploration of performance-based techniques to improve the design of relationships between people and responsive machines. It draws on the Emergent Objects project and specifically addresses notions of embodiment as employed in the field of performance as a means to prototype and develop a robotic agent, SpiderCrab, designed to promote expressive interaction of device and human dancer, in order to achieve ‘performative merging’. The significance of the work is to bring further knowledge of embodiment to bear on the development of human-technological interaction in general. In doing so, it draws on discursive and interpretive methods of research widely used in the field of performance but not yet obviously aligned with some orthodox paradigms and practices within design research. It also posits the design outcome as an ‘objectile’ in the sense that a continuous and potentially divergent iteration of prototypes is envisaged, rather than a singular final product. The focus on performative merging draws in notions of complexity and user experience. Keywords: Embodiment; Performance; Tacit Knowledge; Practice-As-Research; Habitus.</p

The (In)visible Display: Reconstituting Museum Experience Through Performance Pedagogy

In this article, I reconceptualize my understanding of Korean objects in terms of how they perform pedagogically within a context of an art museum in the United States. A pedagogical performance occurs when a contextual shift initiates a process of learning that exposes, examines, and critiques the conventional, pre-existing discourse of objects and cultures. Understanding the museum as a performative site, I describe my experiences in the Arts of Korea gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. By juxtaposing past and present and visible and invisible cultural elements, I play with the standards and assumptions of cultural display. Based on this exploration, I conceptualize an entangled, performative relationship between the museum setting, its objects, and the continuous exchange of subjectivities between and among different audiences from which new possibilities for museum education can emerge

Clauses as Semantic Predicates: Difficulties for Possible-Worlds Semantics

The standard view of clauses embedded under attitude verbs or modal predicates is that they act as terms standing for propositions, a view that faces a range of philosophical and linguistic difficulties. Recently an alternative has been explored according to which embedded clauses act semantically as predicates of content-bearing objects. This paper argues that this approach faces serious problems when it is based on possible worlds-semantics. It outlines a development of the approach in terms of truthmaker theory instea

Transcendental Method in Action

Lonergan’s treatment of transcendental method in the first chapter of \u3cMethod in Theology\u3e presents a bit of a puzzle. Something about heightening consciousness at the level of experience is different from the reflexive operations by which we objectify this heightened experience. Lonergan’s summary statement of transcendental method makes no explicit reference to what this difference is. In this paper, I work out an interpretation of transcendental method in which I relate the problem of being explicit about heightening consciousness at the level of experience to the problem of objectifying the subject-as-subject: both are a matter of performance. In this regard I identify a performative mode of subjective operation – in addition to the direct and introspective modes that Lonergan identifies in \u3cInsight\u3e – and develop an account of this mode of operation as it is manifested experientially in feelings and existentially in action. I relate the notion of feelings as data of consciousness to Lonergan’s account of the unity-in-tension of human consciousness, various forms and degrees of tension being the primary feeling-states of conscious experience. Finally, I note the significance of transcendental method in action with regard to understanding the subtleties of subject-to-subject communication in the encounter of patient and clinician as part of a philosophy of health on which I am working

Identities, Education and Reentry: Performative Spaces and Enclosures

This is part one of a two-part interdisciplinary paper that examines the various forces (discourses and institutional processes) that shape prisoner-student identities. Discourses of officers from a correctional website serve as a limited, single case study of discourses that ascribe dehumanized, stigmatized identities to the prisoner. Two critical concepts, performative spaces and identity enclosures, are purposed as potential critical, emancipatory terms to explore the prisoner-student identity work that occurs in schools and elsewhere in prison. This paper is guided by the effort to assist teachers to act as transformative intellectuals in prisons and closed-custody settings by becoming more aware of the multilayered contexts--the politics of location--that undergird their work. Seeing the bigger picture has implications for how and what educators teach in prison settings and, perhaps, why education works to facilitate reentry. This paper is grounded in normalization theory. Normalization theorists believe prisons can facilitate reentry when they mirror important dimensions of outside life. The performance of multiple, contextualized identities, considered here and examined in more detail in a forthcoming article, serves as an example of how educators mirror normal life by facilitating the performance of different roles for prisoners on the inside

Knowing A Few Rules Doesn’t Mean You Can Play the Game : The Limits of “Best Practice” in Enterprise Systems.

We examine the common claim that "best practices" are encompassed and represented in Enterprise Systems (ES). We suggest that an ES can at best only represent the ostensive and not the performative elements of work tasks. Thus, representation of best practice in an ES does not take practical action into account. This has two important implications. First, ostensive abstractions of best practice in an ES are a sparse and superficial representation of a "good" business process, at a specific moment in time. Second, the practical understanding required for performance is often ignored in the ostensive representation of best practice in the implementation of an ES. This constrains user and business adaptability. Inflexible coding of ostensive business tasks furthermore leads to rigidity where flexibility should be sought, to keep on top of the competition. Implications and directions for further research are discussed

The art, poetics, and grammar of technological innovation as practice, process, and performance

Usually technological innovation and artistic work are seen as very distinctive practices, and innovation of technologies is understood in terms of design and human intention. Moreover, thinking about technological innovation is usually categorized as “technical” and disconnected from thinking about culture and the social. Drawing on work by Dewey, Heidegger, Latour, and Wittgenstein and responding to academic discourses about craft and design, ethics and responsible innovation, transdisciplinarity, and participation, this essay questions these assumptions and examines what kind of knowledge and practices are involved in art and technological innovation. It argues that technological innovation is indeed “technical”, but, if conceptualized as techne, can be understood as art and performance. It is argued that in practice, innovative techne is not only connected to episteme as theoretical knowledge but also has the mode of poiesis: it is not just the outcome of human design and intention but rather involves a performative process in which there is a “dialogue” between form and matter and between creator and environment in which humans and non-humans participate. Moreover, this art is embedded in broader cultural patterns and grammars—ultimately a ‘form of life’—that shape and make possible the innovation. In that sense, there is no gap between science and society—a gap that is often assumed in STS and in, for instance, discourse on responsible innovation. It is concluded that technology and art were only relatively recently and unfortunately divorced, conceptually, but that in practices and performances they were always linked. If we understand technological innovation as a poetic, participative, and performative process, then bringing together technological innovation and artistic practices should not be seen as a marginal or luxury project but instead as one that is central, necessary, and vital for cultural-technological change. This conceptualization supports not only a different approach to innovation but has also social-transformative potential and has implications for ethics of technology and responsible innovation