Emerging Forms of Citizen Video Activism

Gilles Deleuze's early reflections on assemblage identify the idea of the diagram or possibility space as a framework to suggest the ways in which the assembling of technology and human practices merge to create distinctive and innovative new assemblages. Yet routinely it is the technological advances of the 21st century that receive the most revered credit for shifts within citizen-based video activism. Essential to the new and often undefined waves of digital documentary birthed in scattered alcoves of social activism and human rights movements are the relationships between the components of these assemblages. Particularly influential are the facilitating agents spearheading the means to digital video literacy that allow these narratives to be shared. Conducted over three years, my Ph.D. research has examined very specific emerging video practices rooted in social activism in a number of global settings. My fieldwork has sought out citizen media makers in order to discuss how these practitioners have approached their nascent video activism with the goal of identifying properties that might allow these surfacing video practices to become sustainable over time. This paper examines and critiques specific elements that these particular forms of video activism confront in their own unique global possibility spaces. Moreover, as traditional methods of video distribution and video recording continue to change even further through online platforms and mobile technology, how might we begin to identify emerging forms of citizen-based video activism and documentary media?

Agency and the Successive Structure of Time-Consciousness

I argue for constraining the nomological possibility space of temporal experiences and endorsing the Succession Requirement for agents. The Succession Requirement holds that the basic structure of temporal experience must be successive for agentive subjects, at least in worlds that are law-like in the same way as ours. I aim to establish the Succession Requirement by showing non-successively experiencing agents are not possible for three main reasons, namely that they (1) fail to stand in the right sort of causal relationship to the outcomes of their actions, (2) exhibit the wrong sort of epistemic status for agency, and (3) lack the requisite agentive mental attitude of intentionality. I conclude that agency is incompatible with non-successive experience and therefore we should view the successive temporal structure of experience as a necessary condition for agency. I also suggest that the Succession Requirement may actually extend beyond my main focus on agency, offering preliminary considerations in favor of seeing successive experience as a precondition for selfhood as well. The consequences of the Succession Requirement are wide-ranging, and I discuss various implications for our understanding of agency, the self, time consciousness, and theology, among other things.

How sf is embodied in level structures

The experience of game intrinsic space is an architectural mode of perception more congruent to actual experiences of physically real architecture than to filmic space. This paper thus centres on the aesthetics of production, concerning the game worlds’ geometry, level structures and game mechanics, within the broader context of how sf and computer games are inextricably merged. This is to investigate how game intrinsic spaces communicate properties of sf or a media-specific ‘science fiction-ness’ through their aesthetics and digital condition. By first building a foundation on the topic of singular space and its liminality, I will then proceed with a few remarks on sf theory, sf imagery and the staging of (im)possible worlds in relation to the concept of ontological possibility space. For this purpose, I refer to two authors of sf theory: Vivian Sobchack and Simon Spiegel. Based on these two sections, I will give an introductory overview on game intrinsic space, its non-linear properties and the incorporation of the player. Here, differences between filmic and game intrinsic space will also be emphasised through a brief discussion. Thus, sf theory and film theory are interwoven with spatial theory and game studies in order to analyse the ontological possibility space that goes beyond the player-character’s everyday experience in actuality. Several examples clarify the theoretical groundwork while Portal 2 (2011) and Echo (2017) function as case studies.

Preliminary project design for insect production: part 2 – organism kinetics, system dynamics and the role of modelling & simulation

During preliminary project design (PPD) an entopreneur can investigate a variety of process types, organism/feed combinations, operating conditions and procedures, control approaches, etc. before deciding on a specific system arrangement and proceeding to a more formal design stage. With modelling and simulation the effort required to locate a high-value point within the overall possibility space for a system can be greatly reduced because much of the development work can be carried out in a virtual environment. Nevertheless, to formulate models of the organism/feed kinetics as well as other system aspects, this approach must be based on experimental data. And, of course, results of a simulation study must be verified empirically. A simulation-based approach to PPD allows an entopreneur to study the dynamics of a wide variety of system arrangements and to gain insight into how a given arrangement is likely to perform with different parameter values and disturbances.

Multifunctionality of weak ferromagnetic porphyrin-based MOF: selective adsorption in liquid and gas phase

In the endless possibility space of metal organic framework design and development, the quest for new multifunctional materials with desirable properties is still ongoing. At the environmental level, their development...

The Metapattern of General Evolutionary Dynamics and the Three Dynamical Realms of Big History

The goal of this paper is to formalize better the division of big history into three main stages (phases, eras). In my own work they are “dynamical realms,” 1. physical laws, 2. biological evolution, and 3. cultural evolution. I show a deep similarity in two mighty transitions; first, from dynamical realm 1 to 2, and then from 2 to 3. The common “metapattern” in these transitions is that of generalized evolutionary dynamics, which in both cases opened up vast new arenas of possibility space. I first present relevant conclu-sions from my book, Quarks to Culture. A “grand sequence” of twelve fundamental levels was forged through a repeated cycle of “combogenesis” spanning the dynamical realms as families of levels. Next, I provide examples of other scholars who have similarly weighed in on a three-fold arc; notably Christian, Spier, Chaisson, Rolston, Salk, and Voros (following Jansch). Like me, all have nominally recognized similarities between biological and cultural evolution as important in the dynamics of realms two and three. Generally, these scholars have not placed primary emphasis on general evolutionary dynamics as a multiply-instantiated process. The PVS metapattern for evolution (propagation, variation, and selection) is well established as overarching across many patterns in biology, following life’s origin. In culture the operation of general evolution-ary dynamics is, I suggest, dual-tier, consisting of cognitive PVS of individuals coupled to social PVS of groups. The emergence of realm-forming PVS-dynamics twice (biology, culture) created radically new ways to explore and stabilize patterns in expansive fields of diverse types within the respective dynamics. Thus, we can recognize a fundamental-ly similar reason (i.e., two emergent forms of evolutionary dynamics) for why so many scholars have correctly, in my opinion, discerned a threefold arc of big history. Im-portant as well in the flow of progress from quarks to culture were two only slightly less major instantiations of PVS-dynamics (though both crucial): an era of chemical evolution within the realm of physical laws, which led into the realm of biological evolution, and also the evolution of the animal cognitive learning PVS of trial, error, and success, which was essential to the path into cultural evolution. In concluding remarks, I note several outstanding issues: alternative proposals for five orders or four dimensions (i.e., divisions more than three in the arc of big history); the use of the word “evolution,” and three matrices (cosmosphere, biosphere, civisphere) that contain and are constituted by the varieties of patterns within the corresponding dynamical realms.

Ethical Regulators and Super-Ethical Systems

This paper combines the good regulator theorem with the law of requisite variety and seven other requisites that are necessary and sufficient for a cybernetic regulator to be effective and ethical. The ethical regulator theorem provides a basis for systematically evaluating and improving the adequacy of existing or proposed designs for systems that make decisions that can have ethical consequences; regardless of whether the regulators are humans, machines, cyberanthropic hybrids, organizations, or government institutions. The theorem is used to define an ethical design process that has potentially far-reaching implications for society. A six-level framework is proposed for classifying cybernetic and superintelligent systems, which highlights the existence of a possibility-space bifurcation in our future time-line. The implementation of “super-ethical” systems is identified as an urgent imperative for humanity to avoid the danger that superintelligent machines might lead to a technological dystopia. It is proposed to define third-order cybernetics as the cybernetics of ethical systems. Concrete actions, a grand challenge, and a vision of a super-ethical society are proposed to help steer the future of the human race and our wonderful planet towards a realistically achievable minimum viable cyberanthropic utopia.

Types, Styles, and Spaces of Possibility : Phenomenology and Musical Improvisation

SummaryI outline an approach to the phenomenology of improvised music which takes typification and the development of multi‐ordered phenomenological structures as central. My approach here is firmly in line with classical Husserlian phenomenology, taking the discussion of types in Experience and Judgment (Husserl, 1973) and Brudzińska (2015) as guide. I provide a phenomenological analysis of musical types as they are found in improvisational contexts, focusing on jazz in the 20th century. Styles are higher‐order musical types. Musical types are structures that are temporally “thick,” relying on sedimented typification and knowledge, driving expectations as definitional. In most forms of music (including improvised music), musical styles involve maintaining a balance between confirming expectations and flouting expectations. I show that improvised music has a phenomenal structure which is enriched by the communicative and “ real‐time” nature of improvised music. Improvised music can be seen as an exploration of a possibility space rendered by the juxtaposition of the musical types afforded by a performance environment (instrumentation, harmonic and melodic traditions, etc.). I show that improvisation in music is a multi‐vectoral form of communication. The communication is founded in what Dieter Lohmar calls “non‐linguistic thinking.” The expression is constituted in the results of active and synthesis. The culmination of improvisational exploration of possibility spaces is the precisification and enrichment of styles‐as‐types, while in some cases developing new styles in the process.