THE NEUTRALITY or the silence before the action

The actor’s imagination is formed and translated into images. The actor shows and embodies the dramatic character on stage with his body, voice and gestures. The actor’s body goes through a semiotic transformation during the show, it becomes the main vehicle of expression, the main channel of transmiting information, an extremely important function in theatrical artistic creation. The actor’s voice is in accordance to his body and psyche, and through its expressive qualities it becomes an essential component of theatrical language and stage communication. Our every day body is also a permanent transmitter of coded messages, voluntary or involuntary, of packets of information about the subject’s previous experiences, memories, sensations, perceptions, knowledge, attitudes, conceptions, relationships, social constraints etc. The human voice also becomes a sign for the social relationships, for the personal identity, the mood or the motivation of the speaker. Due to the state of neutrality, the actor will discover how an image, real or fictional, can transform his psychophysics, he will discover the psychophysical existence of each character with its external and internal world. The actor must put aside his self-image, learn to allow the presence of the mask / role take control of him, to breathe, to speak and to live with his own voice, face, body and mind. When the face is covered and there is silence, the actor has to communicate through his body and movements, when the movement is simple and economical, the mask /the role begins to live.

Remote control and monitoring in smart homes using voice commands

With the development of modern technology, smartphones have become a necessity for most people. Among other uses, mobile phones are increasingly being used in smart home systems. In smart homes, mobile phones are used to remotely control and monitor various systems such as simply turning on/off lights and household appliances, various monitoring systems, etc. Nowadays, sending coded messages or pressing application buttons is increasingly being avoided in process of developing smart systems. More and more frequently is used voice commands. The system which uses voice commands for remote control and monitoring smart home is described in this paper. In the implemented system, the user is able, using specific voice commands to remotely control the operation of various appliances in his home. An Android application was designed to control the implemented system. Using the designed Android application, the user controls the desired home devices with specific voice commands. Also, on the designed Android application are buttons that the user can use, in case the user’s voice is not recognized in the implemented system. For experimental work analysis, the model of the home is made with lights and different home appliances inside. The results of the experimental work analysis of the implemented system show this system is very simple to use and very efficient. Also, the latest technology for remote control and monitor smart systems is applied in the proposed smart home system.

Intelligent Messages in Bacterial DNA – a Sequel to SETI?

It is proposed that the future trajectory of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and our exploration of alien planets and alien intelligence could be to consider the possibility of receiving and transmitting coded messages embedded as DNA inserts in bacteria and/or viruses. Physical space-travel and ambitions of space colonisation may well give way to a new era of “cultural” microbial colonisation of our galaxy.

Bivalent Writing: Hebrew and English Alphabets in Jewish English

Jewish English writing uses multiple combinations of the Hebrew and English alphabets. This paper demonstrates those uses, giving examples from rabbinic literature, Yiddish and Ladino newspapers, handwritten notes, pedagogical materials, organizations’ and restaurants’ logos, and regalia advertising sports teams, universities, and political candidates. The analysis demonstrates that hybrid combinations of Hebrew and English writing serve four functions: 1) Translanguaging: Enabling people who have access to (elements of) English and a traditionally Hebrew-script language (Yiddish, Ladino, Modern Hebrew, Textual Hebrew, Textual Jewish Aramaic) to represent both languages in the same text; 2) Symbolism: Highlighting English-speaking Jews’ Jewish and other identities simultaneously; 3) Code: Communicating coded messages to other Jews; and 4) Pedagogy: Teaching Hebrew decoding to English speakers or teaching English to readers of Yiddish or Ladino. Digraphic texts are bivalent, seen as part of multiple languages simultaneously.

John Smith’s Covid Messages

Since May 2020, John Smith has been at work on an episodic series called Covid Messages, made from repurposed footage of press conferences in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson briefs the public on the status of the pandemic. Through six darkly funny instalments, the artist plays with the press conference as a site of ‘coded messages’, assailing the vacancy of political speech and the grotesque manoeuvres of the Conservative government with his characteristic wit. The following conversation took place online on 17 December 2020.

Unlocking Student Engagement: Creation, Adaptation, and Application of an Educational Escape Room Across Three Pharmacy Campuses

Background. Educational escape rooms are positively received by students, increase knowledge, and serve as a platform for the active application of teamwork and team-based communication. Aim. This article focuses on detailing an educational escape room that is adaptable and transferable for use with any course or discipline. Methods. Puzzles are created around the educational objectives of the course or unit. Puzzles include ciphers, jumbles, coded messages, combination locks, rebuses, and data hunts. Students work in teams to solve content-specific puzzles to escape a room. Teams which solve all of the puzzles in the allotted time are considered to have successfully escaped the room. Gameplay can range from 60 to 75 minutes. Facultyled debriefing is an important part of the educational innovation. Results and Conclusion. This escape room uses collaborative learning to increase student knowledge and skills in educational content. The learning experience is enhanced through dynamic student engagement with the focused topic. This topic can easily be changed to a different course topic and the corresponding gameplay puzzles adapted and transferred for use with a variety of disciplines. This manuscript details the transferability of the educational escape room to 3 campuses and provides insight for successful implementation.

Citizens First?

This chapter explicates the author’s theory of conflicted nativism. This theory argues that blacks use their identity as Americans to claim privilege in American society. Yet, this identity is only superficially related to nativist attitudes and is not accompanied by restrictionist impulses. Using immigration as a lens, blacks have been able to identify the perniciousness of white supremacy that treated them as strangers in their own land. Rather than being threatened by immigrants per se, blacks understand white racism as the real threat to their upward mobility and therefore do not organize around immigration restriction. Furthermore, they are resistant to other race-coded messages.

Coded Messages: Costa Rican Protest Literature, 1970–1985

This chapter posits that the 1970s in Costa Rica was a period of sociological revolution whereby dominant ideas of national identity began to be openly challenged. It analyses the protest literature of this period written by three key authors: Quince Duncan, Carmen Naranjo, and Alfonso Chase. Firstly considering Duncan’s Los cuatro espejos, it explores this novel as an example of the harmful practices of stereotyping and the internalisation of norms. It then considers the feminist subtext of Naranjo’s short stories ‘Simbiosis del encuentro’ and ‘A los payasos todos los quieren’, before moving on to analyse homosexual codes apparent in Chase’s short stories ‘La lluvia. El Silencio. La Música’.