Graffiti composition: screenplay

Ongoing collaboration with Christian Marclay. ‘Graffiti Composition’ and ‘Screenplay’ are two related works consisting of live musical improvisation and performance. They are part of an ongoing collaboration with the artist Christian Marclay. 'Graffiti Composition' involved Beresford directing an invited orchestra of improvising musicians. The work focuses on making music from the random compositional acts of strangers. Prior to realization, Marclay fly-posted several hundred sheets of blank manuscript paper, collecting the sheets some days later, after passers-by had written on them – using either traditional music notation or more transgressive interference modes (colour-blocks, torn holes in or abstract graphic symbols on the paper) – and sending photographs of them to Beresford. Beresford’s directorial decisions helped these random graffiti become music via simple formal processes – restricting each musician to a handout of two MS each, or stipulating a mini-concerto for each player. Beresford’s contribution explores the paradox of improvisation stipulated by strangers and controlled, however loosely, by the structuring agency of a musical director. ‘Screenplay’ extended this collaborative process between Marclay and Beresford. Beresford and other musicians responding to a visual track comprising found and public domain moving images manipulated by Marclay – gunfight scenes from a TV Western; running water; racing cars morphing into crying children, and so on, in black-and-white, with single-colour blocks appearing and developing as lines, spots, and other suggestive ‘notation’. The elliptical, surprising, humorous nature of the images at times is hyperexplicated by the improvised music, and at others challenged, ignored or contradicted by the musicians’ interaction. ‘Graffiti Composition’ was performed by the LSO at St. Luke’s, London, March 22, 2005. ‘Screenplay’ premiered in Dundee in 2006, and toured Europe during 2007. Reviewed in the Herald (21 Feb 06) and Times (24 March 07). Beresford’s work as improviser, composer and performer was profiled in The Wire (April 2002, May 2005).

The personality attributes and leisure activities of the internet users: a Taiwanese case study

This study aims to examine the relationship between the personality attributes of Internet users and their leisure activities. A questionnaire survey was undertaken which revealed that most Internet users are single males aged between 21-30 belonging to the lower income groups, employed in information technology or related fields. The personality attributes of the sample showed a tendency towards a mixed locus control category. The survey indicated that the preferred leisure activities of this population group are reading, collecting and computer-based activities. However, ‘movement’ and collecting were the only leisure activities to show a significant correlation with the users’ personality attributes.

Human Computer Interaction using gestures for mobile devices and serious games: A review

The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with interfaces is an active challenge field in the industry over the past decades and has opened the way to communicate with the means of verbal, hand and body gestures using the latest technologies for a variety of different applications in areas such as video games, training and simulation. However, accurate recognition of gestures is still a challenge. In this paper, we review the basic principles and current methodologies used for collecting the raw gesture data from the user for recognize actions the users perform and the technologies currently used for gesture-HCI in games enterprise. In addition, we present a set of projects from various applications in games industry that are using gestural interaction.

Modular Form as a Curatorial Practice

This article discusses a curatorial approach to authorship as a model for thinking about what I describe as an iterative modular poem, a poetic text composed of appropriated segments. As a response to contemporary proliferation of literary and artistic works created by iterative means, i.e. through acts of appropriation, remixing and remediation, the article is an attempt at putting forward ‘the curatorial’ as an emerging paradigm of writing for the twenty-first century. The article approaches established paradigms of authorship, creativity and originality as inadequate with respect to contemporary experimental poetic practices to suggest a shift from creating to collecting and curating as a possible alternative model for thinking about instances of iterative creative writing. The argument focuses on Robert Fitterman’s Holocaust Museum (2011) as an example of an iterative modular poem and a text emblematic of such curatorial approach to authorship.

Collectors, Producers, and Circulators of Tibetan and Chinese Medicines in Sichuan Province

The act of prescribing pharmaceutical drugs to patients is normally the site of judgements about the drug’s efficacy and safety. The success of treatments and the licences for commodities depend on the biochemical identity of the drugs and of their path and transformations inside the body. However, the ‘supply chain’ outside the body is eschewed by such discourse, and its importance for both pharmaceutical brands and physician-centred historiographies is ignored. As this ethnographic fieldwork on Tibetan and Chinese medicines in Sichuan shows, overlooked social actors ensure reliable knowledge about medicinal things and materials long before patients take their medicine. This paper takes a step back from the final products—clearly defined as ‘Tibetan’ or ‘Chinese’—and introduces those who produce and distribute them. Via observations of particular regimes of circulation and processing, the actions of collecting, manufacturing, transporting, and educating appear as the first and foremost acts of efficacy and safety.

Accessibility Instrument Survey

This chapter presents the main results of the Accessibility Instrument Survey (AIS), collecting basic information on each of the accessibility instruments reviewed in this report (for more detail on these Instruments see Chapter 3). The aim of the survey was to enable quick, objective and comparable overviews of each of the reviewed accessibility instruments. The information collected will enable the categorization of accessibility instruments present in this research, aiming to be a reference for future categorization of accessibility instruments for planning practice. These categories will support the analysis of the coverage of accessibility instruments in this research, i.e., identify how representative this research is across different accessibility instrument types. In addition, these will be used to analyse the characteristics and concerns which most frequently underlie the development of accessibility instruments. Finally, the survey also collects developer’s perceptions on the usefulness of their accessibility instruments in planning practice, enabling the first insight into the main research question of this COST Action, although limited to the developer’s point of view. In summary, the results of the survey will be used for four purposes: Development of an accessibility instrument sheet for each accessibility instrument summarizing its main characteristics (Appendix A); Identify the coverage of accessibility instrument types present in this research (Section 4.3.1) discussing the representativeness of this Action; Provide a glimpse on the characteristics and concerns which most frequently underlie the development of accessibility instruments (Section 4.3.2); Provide a first insight into the perceived usefulness of accessibility instruments in planning practice from the point of view of the developer (Section 4.3.2 and Section 4.3.3). The next section provides an overview of the Survey describing the information collected. This section also describes the development process of this survey including data collection, dates and means. The results of the survey are analysed in the third section starting with a discussion on the coverage of accessibility instruments reviewed by this research (Section 4.3.1), identifying accessibility measure types which are represented and which are absent. This discussion is accompanied by the presentation of the main categories of accessibility instruments from the perspective of the end user. These categories try to summarize the main concerns planning practitioners are expected to have when searching for an accessibility instrument and is built upon some of the information collected by the survey. Following, the third section also presents a general analysis of the results (Section 4.3.2), focussing on the dominant characteristics of the accessibility instruments reviewed and on the developer’s perception of the usefulness their instrument will have for end users. The section ends with a brief cross analysis of results (Section 4.3.3) trying to identify relationships between accessibility instrument characteristics and perceptions of usefulness by developers. The fourth and last section presents the main conclusions of this study.