1,720,967 research outputs found
Modeling the resituation of memory in neurobiology and narrative
No full textIn narrative and neurobiological processes, a common response to an unexpected event can be observed: retroactive reinterpretation. In this activity, an established state of knowledge is restructured so that its ability to interpret causal consequences changes. We present a new graphical knowledge modeling technique to track the stages of retroactive reinterpretation in both narrative and biological domains. This method is based on situation-theoretic foundations, which have been extended using narrative devices to capture elusive properties of everyday reasoning, such as context and causal anticipation. The method and its accompanying visual model enables us to experiment with representational reasoning about cause, shifts in influence between distinct systems and implicit knowledge. This work-in-progress indicates that cross-system, multi-ontology intelligence processes can be modeled using narrative mechanisms. A future goal is to use this method to address problems in ontological interoperability for predictive, multi-system neurobiological modeling. Capturing implicit causal agency in biology using a narrative-based model is thus feasible but comes with challenges in graphical display, which are discussed
Unputdownable: how the agencies of compelling story assembly can be modelled using formalisable methods from Knowledge Representation, and in a fictional tale about seduction
No full text© 2012 Dr. Beth CardierThis thesis is not authorised to be made available in the Baillieu Reading Room until date unknownAs a story unfolds, its structure can drive a reader to want to know more, in a manner that writers sometimes refer to as unputdownable. I model this behaviour so that it can be applied in two fields: creative writing and Knowledge Representation. Two forms of answer to my thesis question therefore emerged – a formalisable diagrammatic method, and an excerpt from a fictional novel, The Snakepig Dialect.
The opening section of my thesis accounts for the theoretical exploration. This framework is designed to support a specific target product: a knowledge base capable of assembling fragments of information into causally coherent ‘stories.’ This assembly would be achieved through the identification of causal agents that connect the fragments, and a causal impetus that would enable the projection of possible outcomes, even when there is no precedent for them. This integration is managed by two novel features of my Dynamic Story Model. First, in order to facilitate accurate interpretation, I consider that multiple contextual situations must be arranged into relationships, just as concepts are positioned in semantic networks. Second, the associative priorities of these multiple inferences are managed by a principle that I term governance, in which the structures of some networks are able to modify and connect others. In order to extend current devices in Knowledge Representation so that these features can be represented, I draw on my own creative writing practice, as well as existing theories in Narratology, Discourse Processes, Causal Philosophy and Conceptual Change.
This model of unputdownability is expressed differently in my fictional submission. The tale is set in a future Australia, in which China is the dominant culture, the weather seems to be developing intentional behaviours, and Asia's largest defence laboratory sometimes selects unusual talents to work in its invention shop. One apprentice in this institute, Lilah, falls in love with someone who seems unattainable. Instead of solving the assigned problem, she develops a formula for seduction, testing it on her beloved before she is capable of controlling her strange gift.
Lilah’s seduction technique is based on a principle of governance similar to that described by my theoretical model. She learns to how to seduce by offering only fragments of information about herself, drawing her beloved into her story by provoking wonder, which eventually bends her lover’s desires. Lilah’s tale also explores the challenge of modelling a new scientific theory, and she struggles with the same difficulty of articulating an elusive phenomenon that I have in this research (but iii! with more dramatic consequences for her failures). At the same time as featuring the core concern of my research question in the plot, I have also used my model to revive this novel. By establishing terms of agency and allowing them to evolve, each section of text came to build on the next, so the reader could wonder how they might resolve.
In this way, I anchored my theoretical propositions about stories in fictional practice, and gained insight into the writing process, in order to revive my ailing novel
Communicating Unnamable Risks: Aligning Open World Situation Models Using Strategies from Creative Writing
No full textHow can a machine warn its human collaborator about an unexpected risk if the machine does not possess the explicit language required to name it? This research transfers techniques from creative writing into a conversational format that could enable a machine to convey a novel, open-world threat. Professional writers specialize in communicating unexpected conditions with inadequate language, using overlapping contextual and analogical inferences to adjust a reader’s situation model. This paper explores how a similar approach could be used in conversation by a machine to adapt its human collaborator’s situation model to include unexpected information. This method is necessarily bi-directional, as the process of refining unexpected meaning requires each side to check in with each other and incrementally adjust. A proposed method and example is presented, set five years hence, to envisage a new kind of capability in human-machine interaction. A near-term goal is to develop foundations for autonomous communication that can adapt across heterogeneous contexts, especially when a trusted outcome is critical. A larger goal is to make visible the level of communication above explicit communication, where language is collaboratively adapted
Narrative Causal Impetus: Situational Governance in Game of Thrones
No full textAs a story unfolds, it constructs a depiction of events, and at the same time, it also builds conceptual structure at a higher, interpretive level. This higher-level structure provides the terms for understanding the unfolding story, indicating what kinds of features and consequences characterize it – a story ontology. The process by which a tale constructs a story ontology is not straightforward, and in many ways is just as complex as the action at the event level. It involves an interaction between inferred situations and contexts, each with their own networks of terms and structures, which jostle for dominance. I refer to this interaction as governance. In this work, I demonstrate an example of governance at both levels, using a scene from the series Game of Thrones. When the interpretive terms of a story emerge, an understanding of what kinds of events might come next – the possible causal implications – are also conveyed, even if they are unexpected.Full Tex
The Evolution of Interpretive Contexts in Stories
No full textModeling the effect of context on interpretation, for the purposes of building intelligent systems, has been a long-standing problem: qualities of logic can restrict accurate contextual interpretation, even when there is only one context to consider. Stories offer a range of structures that could extend formal theories of context, indicating how arrays of inferred contexts are able to knit together, making an ontological reference that is specific to the particular set of circumstances embodied in the tale. This derived ontology shifts as the text unfolds, enabling constant revision and the emergence of unexpected meanings. The described approach employs dynamic knowledge representation techniques to model how these structures are built and changed. Two new operators have been designed for this purpose: governance and causal conceptual agents. As an example, a few lines from the story Red Riding Hood As a Dictator Would Tell It are used to demonstrate how a story interpretive framework can be continually re-made, in a way that produces unexpected interpretations of termsFull Tex
The Evolution of Interpretive Contexts in Stories
Full text linkModeling the effect of context on interpretation, for the purposes of building intelligent systems, has been a long-standing problem: qualities of logic can restrict accurate contextual interpretation,
even when there is only one context to consider. Stories offer a range of structures that could extend formal theories of context, indicating how arrays of inferred contexts are able to knit together, making an ontological reference that is specific to the particular set of circumstances embodied in the tale. This derived ontology shifts as the text unfolds, enabling constant revision and the emergence of unexpected meanings. The described approach employs dynamic knowledge representation techniques to model how these structures are built and changed. Two new operators have been designed for this purpose: governance and causal conceptual agents. As an example, a few lines from the story Red Riding Hood As a Dictator Would Tell It are used to demonstrate how a story interpretive framework can be continually re-made, in a way that
produces unexpected interpretations of terms
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The Moving Lens: Coherence Across Heterogeneous contexts in narrative and biology
No full textNarrative can be considered a distributed system of intelligence: a sprawling network of inferences that connect diverse contexts, perspectives and forms of information. To synthesize these into a coherent fabric, a story employs mechanisms that are usually invisible to a reader. The result is a combined ‘interpretive frame’ that is accessible to all informational components, yet also changes as the story unfolds. This research tracks key operations of that process using a diagrammatic modeling grammar, using the example of the story Red Riding Hood as a Dictator Would Tell It. One goal is to model elusive qualities of narrative information such as ambiguity, tentative states, causal anticipation and managing unknowns, in a manner that can support reasoning systems. A current application is ontological interaction between models of biological processes in the body. This work focuses on the dynamics of a natural collaborative society, and is applicable in understanding how ‘team narratives’ evolve in an unfolding performance.Full Tex
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
- …
