Metal music as critical dystopia : humans, technology and the future in 1990s science fiction metal

Metal Music as Critical Dystopia: Humans, Technology and the Future in 1990s Science Fiction Metal seeks to demonstrate that the dystopian elements in metal music are not merely or necessarily a sonic celebration of disaster. Rather, metal music's fascination with dystopian imagery is often critical in intent, borrowing themes and imagery from other literary and cinematic traditions in an effort to express a form of social commentary. The artists and musical works examined in this thesis maintain strong ties with the science fiction genre, in particular, and tum to science fiction conventions in order to examine the long-term implications of humanity's complex relationship with advanced technology. Situating metal's engagements with science fiction in relation to a broader practice of blending science fiction and popular music and to the technophobic tradition in writing and film, this thesis analyzes the works of two science fiction metal bands, VOlvod and Fear Factory, and provides close readings of four futuristic albums from the mid to late 1990s that address humanity's relationship with advanced technology in musical and visual imagery as well as lyrics. These recorded texts, described here as cyber metal for their preoccupation with technology in subject matter and in sound, represent prime examples of the critical dystopia in metal music. While these albums identify contemporary problems as the root bf devastation yet to come, their musical narratives leave room for the possibility of hope , allowing for the chance that dystopia is not our inevitable future.

Generating finite integral relation algebras

Relation algebras and categories of relations in particular have proven to be extremely useful as a fundamental tool in mathematics and computer science. Since relation algebras are Boolean algebras with some well-behaved operations, every such algebra provides an atom structure, i.e., a relational structure on its set of atoms. In the case of complete and atomic structure (e.g. finite algebras), the original algebra can be recovered from its atom structure by using the complex algebra construction. This gives a representation of relation algebras as the complex algebra of a certain relational structure. This property is of particular interest because storing the atom structure requires less space than the entire algebra. In this thesis I want to introduce and implement three structures representing atom structures of integral heterogeneous relation algebras, i.e., categorical versions of relation algebras. The first structure will simply embed a homogeneous atom structure of a relation algebra into the heterogeneous context. The second structure is obtained by splitting all symmetric idempotent relations. This new algebra is in almost all cases an heterogeneous structure having more objects than the original one. Finally, I will define two different union operations to combine two algebras into a single one.