Presented here is a starkly schematized and hence quite unrealistic model of cycles in growth rates. This type of formulation now seems to me to have better prospects than the more usual treatment of growth theory or of cycle theory, separately or in combination. Many of the bits of reasoning are common to both, but in the present paper they are put together in a different way. The following as...

Existing source-code-generating tools such as Lex and Yacc suffer from practical inconveniences because they use disembodied code to implement actions. To prevent this problem, such tools could generate closed functors that are then instantiated by the programmer with appropriate action code. This results in all code being type checked in its appropriate context, and it assists the type checker...

By and large, branding literature provides a view of global brands as primarily signifying, semiotic devices. This semiotization of brands is due to a cultural bias that favors the discursive world of signs over lived practices and experiences. Taking Best Western global brand and using Lefèbvre’s tripartite conceptualization—spatial practice, representation of space, and spaces of representati...

As an alternative to fully articulate visual agents much highlighted in recent years this paper presents disembodied, location-specific conversational agents (DELCA) called ‘ghosts’ as a powerful new way of obtaining high quality assistance with less technical requirements. DELCA ghosts combine context specific conversation mediated assistance with an interactive narrative universe designed to ...

The binding problem in perception deals with the question of how we achieve the experience of a coherent world of integrated objects, and avoid seeing a world of disembodied or wrongly combined shapes, colours, motions, sizes and distances. In brief, how do we specify what goes with what and where? The problem is not an intuitively obvious one, which is probably a testimony to how well, in gene...

The story of Pinocchio is the story of a man who creates a puppet with the ability to speak using human language, and to converse naturally – even to lie. Since the early days of the industrial revolution, people have imagined creating agents that can emulate human skills, including language production and conversation (Mayer, 1878; Wood, 2003). A modern example of this is Turing’s test for art...

Non-verbal communication, in particular emotions and social signals, has the potential to improve interaction between humans and robots. Body movement style is known for influencing the affective interpretation of a movement in humans. In this paper the effect of gravity on perceived affective quality of robot movement is investigated. Simulations of a robot arm executing various daily tasks we...

Candidate's Name: John Levack Drever B. Mus, M. Mus Title of Thesis: Phonographies: Practical and Theoretical Explorations into Composing with Disembodied Sound This is PhD submission is both practical and theoretical. The practical element consists of nine electroacoustic compositions. The dissertation acts as a discursive accompaniment to the compositions, addressing many of the contextual an...