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A Genetic Source-Code Program-Synthesizer for Real-Time Co-Evolution with Humans: Gene-Level Geometric-Push Program-Synthesis
Get PDFCan genetic operators be used to produce human-centric source-code documents for human-interactive and collaborative programming practice?
Addressing this question, a novel automated source-code generation system is created which synthesizes, using genetic operators, object-oriented compilable files, which better conforms to human coding conventions than current benchmark genetic algorithms. This project:
• Provides a new form of AI for automatic source-code generation.
• Implements novel use cases for automatic source-code generation in practical collaborative applications.
• Benchmarks the new algorithm against a standard program synthesis benchmark suite.
• Assesses a genetic realignment algorithm in the context of crossover for elitest fitness.
• Explores novel approaches to interaction methods with a genetic auto-coder for multiple simultaneous users.
As of the beginning of this project, there were no existing implementations of sourcecode generators designed for human legibility while synthesizing for arbitrary language environments: automated program synthesis algorithms derived from genetic operators traditionally operate on specialist languages, with bytecode or machine code solutions or suffered significantly with comprehension against human written code.
The novel algorithm introduced in this thesis interjects into current discourse with a heuristic approach which can operate with relative language agnosticism, while retaining common coding conventions, indentation, arbitrary code length, looping operators, multiple function definitions and function calls.
Using this new algorithm, this thesis explores three diverse experimental phases to analyse potential use-cases, from a qualitative perspective:
An automatic programmer for coding problems: as a tool to support human software developers, for simple programming tasks.
A co-creative environment with Artificial Life: demonstrating the automatic programmer’s ability to create evolvable behaviour controllers which adapt to survive under various environmental pressures and to co-evolve with human interactors.
A public facing music generator: as a collaborative medium for live performance environments, providing human-guided fitness training for live evolution of audio.
The thesis concludes that the algorithm is successful in automatic coding for implicit fitness or regression environments, with several limitations relating to the fitness function used and the size of the search space. These limitations are established and persist across genetic methods for automatic coding. Regardless of the limitations, this approach demonstrates valuable use cases in artistic mediums
Animal Drag: The Critical and Conscious Performance of Animality
Get PDFThis essay proposes Animal Drag as an activist performance in which a human critically and consciously performs animality to de-centre the human. Dress and adornment are key to its dissidence. Animal Drag’s potential is demonstrated through an analysis of Terry Notary’s performance of a nonhuman primate within Ruben Östlund’s 2017 film The Square. Drawing on posthuman studies, scholarship on subordinated groups and from the field of animal studies, the reading of this performance shows how Animal Drag inherently queers humanist and essentialist notions of classification, particularly the human / animal divide. Paying homage to drag, the essay demonstrates how the material and social semiotics of performance can render transparent the constructions of race, coloniality, ability, and gender, as much as species — in other words, “doing human”. Through theories of dress and prosthesis, highlighting how techne facilitates in-between and “becoming” states, and affect theory, this article argues that humans and nonhumans might share vulnerabilities via Animal Drag. Culture is understood through language and dress, which have been mobilised to construct Otherness. As such, this essay posits that Animal Drag should take place within capitalist Culture industries, as both weapons and targets, to undress powers present and performed. Animal Drag is offered as both practice and theory, content and form
Periodizing 'The Marvel Age' Using The Production Of Culture Approach
Get PDFPeriodization is the process of defining temporal divisions which can then be used to categorize events within a certain period. Many attempts have been made to periodize American superhero comics, both in fandom and academia, mostly using the so-called 'Ages' system, but there has rarely been any agreement on how this should be done. Furthermore, most attempts to define these 'Ages' have been based on personal interpretation of the contents, with vague ideas of start and end dates which are unsuitable for quantitative analyses. This chapter demonstrates a way to avoid such issues by using an approach which concentrates on the way that texts are actually produced, rather than value judgements placed upon their contents, in order to define 'The Marvel Age' with specific dates which can be empirically justified
Exhibiting Fashion
No full textExhibition staged as part of the AHRC-funded Exhibiting Fashion research project.
How are fashion exhibitions conceived, developed, delivered? The Exhibiting Fashion research project has been looking into these questions using live observation and analysis of collaborative practice-based research.
This exhibition looks at some of the processes and principles that underpin the project.
The practice-based research centred on production of three fashion exhibitions developed through the collaborative exhibition-making and curatorial practices of the project participants.
Unpicking Couture, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, ends 12 January 2025
Inspired: the art of making historic fashion, Bankfield Museum, Halifax, ends 21 December 2024
The Drag Show, Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, ends 13 July 2025
Development of each exhibition was documented live. Analysis of this documentation (along with data gathered through interviews, participants’ journals and sketchbooks, workshops and evaluation) has informed an Exhibiting Fashion Toolkit.
The toolkit will support non-specialist curators in small and mid-sized museums to create innovative, accessible, resource-efficient fashion displays
The supervisory relationship as a predictor of mental health outcomes in doctoral students in the United Kingdom
Get PDFIntroduction: The process of a doctorate degree has been implicated in the onset and exacerbation of mental health problems among doctoral students. Previous studies have suggested that the student-supervisor relationship may predict emotional wellbeing and mental health outcomes in doctoral students in the UK. However, these studies were conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic and often used unstandardized measures to investigate supervisory styles.
Methods: The present study was part of the Better Together project, a wellbeing initiative for doctoral students in the UK. It explored the predictive ability of aspects of the student-supervisor relationship with regards to doctoral students’ mental health outcomes. The sample consisted of 141 students doing a research-based doctorate degree in the UK. The survey included demographic questions and questionnaires assessing supervisory styles, the discrepancy between actual and preferred supervisory relationship, depression, anxiety, and stress.
Results: A large proportion of participants fell in the severe and extremely severe categories in the depression, anxiety, and stress sub-scales. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both supervisory styles and discrepancy significantly predicted students’ mental health outcomes. More specifically, higher scores in the uncertain supervisory style, which is characterized by indecisiveness and ambiguity, were linked with higher scores in depression, anxiety, and stress.
Discussion: The findings provided new insights concerning the aspects of the student-supervisor relationship that are related to the mental health issues of doctoral students in the UK. They have important implications for future research and supervision practice
Blue Glacial Ice: The End of Reference in the Max Sir International Film Festival
No full textThe video work Blue Glacial Ice: The End of Reference is a continuous panorama of a 360-degree glide towards and across the receding fifteen-kilometre wide and ninety-eight metres high Dahlbreen glacier in Oscar II Land, Spitsbergen, Svalbard in the Norwegian High Arctic
Provisional Semantics: Addressing the Challenges of Representing Multiple Perspectives Within Public Collections
Get PDFThis paper presents a reflective account of the AHRC-funded Provisional Semantics project, which focused on how museums and heritage organisations might produce search terms, catalogue entries and interpretation using ethical and equitable practices, particularly in relation to the artworks and histories of racialised and minoritised people, and in the context of a digitised national collection. As the project developed, the emphasis shifted towards a more fundamental enquiry into whether these objectives were achievable, given the structural racism and colonial logics inherent in the museum project and its conventions, histories, and infrastructure. Through a critical discussion of the project’s three case studies, the paper considers the following questions: what happens when we change words and clean data as a putative solution to problematic cataloguing? Can museums genuinely, equitably and ethically represent multivocality? Why is embedded change in attitudes and behaviours hard to achieve and slow to happen? And is sector guidance for research and documentation fit for purpose in terms of genuine knowledge co-production and engagement
Fungi Forms
No full textEnter the fascinating world of fungi
Fungi are responsible for life on land as we know it and integral to sustained living on earth.
They are a perpetual inspiration for artists. Through music, literature, fashion, design, scent and visual art, Fungi Forms will take you on a spectacular journey, exploring fungi in science, culture and innovation.
Group exhibition 'Stinkhorn' video 2020, with Siôn Parkinson, included
Letting people in, letting objects out: countering the dislocations of collections management practice
Get PDFThis piece is a reponse to the four chapters and case studies presented in Part IV of Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice, called 'Collection management’s publics'
Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat: Là
Get PDFThis essay reviews the exhibition Là by the artist duo Sirah Foighel Brutmann (b.1983) and Eitan Efrat (b.1983) at Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent (SMAK) in 2024. Presented across five galleries, the exhibition is a project of mourning – specifically of the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman, who took her own life in 2015. Taking inspiration from Jacques Derrida’s eulogies in The Work of Mourning (2001) in which he ‘speaks’ to his deceased philosopher friends through their writings, Brutmann and Efrat’s dialogue with Akerman, retraces the route she took across the Negev desert while shooting footage for No Home Movie (2015), which documented her mother’s illness and subsequent death