The time in which nothing happened: A memorial to the Battle of Verdun considered through the theoretical discourse of Paul Virilio and his accusations about the violent phenomena of speed

<p>Architecture is under attack! Where it could once be understood as a medium of communication which helped society to situate their existential role within society. Today it can be increasingly understood as little more than a spatial device necessitated by humanities inert vulnerability to the exterior landscape. In the face of the post-modern phenomenon of speed, architecture is becoming a tectonic of interference. Cars to pass around it, communications pierce through it and for the people whom exist within it, it increasingly disappears. While the problems that stem from this remain unclear. Through investigating the work of French intellectual and humanist Paul Virilio, the accidents that this may cause, become slowly exposed. Manifesting themselves beyond just the physical accidents which occur as a direct result of technological progress. But equally as accidental shifts of human consciousness leading to permanent alteration in the ways in which reality is informed. Due to the fact that, perception, which must be understood as filtered and subconsciously reformatted, is a learned response to the otherwise overwhelming stimulation of both physical and virtual speed. Virilio proposes that what this will lead to is a profound disconnection between the individuals who experience the speed of hypermodernity and the objective world. A world which is informed by both by the unrelenting passing of time but also the historical events which slowly play out over time. The problem with this, Virilio would argue, is that the ability to react appropriately to the events and accidents which make up this contemporary existence, is contingent upon this connection. Therefore it would appear that this problem becomes self-perpetuating. The more speed disconnects individuals from the world around them, the harder it becomes to react to the accidents caused by speed, because these accidents increasingly become perceived, or rather not perceived, as time in which nothing happened. In direct opposition to this, the fading memory of the battle of Verdun is forced up against this paradigm, providing the necessary groundwork for Virilio’s work to be explored. Through this dialogue, design conclusions will be reached through the process of designing a memorial architecture, which will be positioned on the site of the battlefield. A process that explores architectures role in returning a collective consciousness back to the battle of Verdun. Whilst simultaneously reconsidering the nature of this responsibility in the contemporary landscape that society has found itself within, only a 100 years after the final shots were fired.</p>

The time in which nothing happened: A memorial to the Battle of Verdun considered through the theoretical discourse of Paul Virilio and his accusations about the violent phenomena of speed

<p>Architecture is under attack! Where it could once be understood as a medium of communication which helped society to situate their existential role within society. Today it can be increasingly understood as little more than a spatial device necessitated by humanities inert vulnerability to the exterior landscape. In the face of the post-modern phenomenon of speed, architecture is becoming a tectonic of interference. Cars to pass around it, communications pierce through it and for the people whom exist within it, it increasingly disappears. While the problems that stem from this remain unclear. Through investigating the work of French intellectual and humanist Paul Virilio, the accidents that this may cause, become slowly exposed. Manifesting themselves beyond just the physical accidents which occur as a direct result of technological progress. But equally as accidental shifts of human consciousness leading to permanent alteration in the ways in which reality is informed. Due to the fact that, perception, which must be understood as filtered and subconsciously reformatted, is a learned response to the otherwise overwhelming stimulation of both physical and virtual speed. Virilio proposes that what this will lead to is a profound disconnection between the individuals who experience the speed of hypermodernity and the objective world. A world which is informed by both by the unrelenting passing of time but also the historical events which slowly play out over time. The problem with this, Virilio would argue, is that the ability to react appropriately to the events and accidents which make up this contemporary existence, is contingent upon this connection. Therefore it would appear that this problem becomes self-perpetuating. The more speed disconnects individuals from the world around them, the harder it becomes to react to the accidents caused by speed, because these accidents increasingly become perceived, or rather not perceived, as time in which nothing happened. In direct opposition to this, the fading memory of the battle of Verdun is forced up against this paradigm, providing the necessary groundwork for Virilio’s work to be explored. Through this dialogue, design conclusions will be reached through the process of designing a memorial architecture, which will be positioned on the site of the battlefield. A process that explores architectures role in returning a collective consciousness back to the battle of Verdun. Whilst simultaneously reconsidering the nature of this responsibility in the contemporary landscape that society has found itself within, only a 100 years after the final shots were fired.</p>

ArguMente: An Online Argumentation System for Formal and Non-Formal Education

ArguMente is an online system that offers two types of learning spaces. On the one hand, a close group space that implements a student-centred teaching strategy, the purpose of which is to automate the Dialogue Design System model for written argumentation (DDS). On the other hand, it offers a space for the exercise of an argued debate under a non-formal environment of education that calls for the creation of learning communities. Experiences for teaching argumentative skills and for teaching teachers have taken place through the first space, the closed classroom, while the second space, the open classroom, is being used to promote the autonomous argumentative dialogue.

Design Consideration for Inter-Religious Dialogue in Malaysia: The Incorporation of Contact Theory

Inter-religious dialogue has been implemented in Malaysia by various organizations, be it Muslim’s or Non-Muslim’s organizations as early as 1950s.Often being carried out in the format of intellectual discourse and forum, its accessibility to the non-academician, non-scholars and non-elite is uncertain.If the inter-religious dialogue programs could not reach the grassroots, its effectiveness in addressing inter-religious issues that affected the grassroots is also doubtful.International dialogue practitioners has begun to include number of theories in their dialogue designs to reach out broader range of community.One of the theories is Contact Theory proposed by Gordon Allport (1959) aims at addressing in-group/out-group bias.Therefore, this study attempts to examine the application of Contact Theory in two models of inter-religious dialogue in Malaysia (i.e. Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia (IKIM) and Inter-faith Spiritual Fellowship (INSaF)).Case study research design was employed in order to identify the design of interreligious dialogue and the presence of Contact Theory within the two models.Data obtained through interviews and document analysis were than analysed using within-case and cross-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994).The finding suggest that IKIM’s and INSaF’s inter-religious dialogue models did not include any special session that allowed a real dialogue or cooperative interaction (one of important elements in Contact Theory) to take place among the participants.Without cooperative interaction among the participants, it would be difficult for these two models to reap the benefit of Contact Theory.Future research should focus on developing inter-religious dialogue design that is more appropriate for the grassroots with the inclusion of Contact Theory.

Modelling Multimodal Dialogues for Social Robots Using Communicative Acts

Social Robots need to communicate in a way that feels natural to humans if they are to effectively bond with the users and provide an engaging interaction. Inline with this natural, effective communication, robots need to perceive and manage multimodal information, both as input and output, and respond accordingly. Consequently, dialogue design is a key factor in creating an engaging multimodal interaction. These dialogues need to be flexible enough to adapt to unforeseen circumstances that arise during the conversation but should also be easy to create, so the development of new applications gets simpler. In this work, we present our approach to dialogue modelling based on basic atomic interaction units called Communicative Acts. They manage basic interactions considering who has the initiative (the robot or the user), and what is his/her intention. The two possible intentions are either ask for information or give information. In addition, because we focus on one-to-one interactions, the initiative can only be taken by the robot or the user. Communicative Acts can be parametrised and combined in a hierarchical manner to fulfil the needs of the robot’s applications, and they have been equipped with built-in functionalities that are in charge of low-level communication tasks. These tasks include communication error handling, turn-taking or user disengagement. This system has been integrated in Mini, a social robot that has been created to assist older adults with cognitive impairment. In a case of use, we demonstrate the operation of our system as well as its performance in real human–robot interactions.