Media, Art and Technology

This paper examines what might be at stake in claiming PJHarvey as an 'English' artist. Focusing on, but not limited to, her most recent albums 'Let England Shake ' (2011) and 'White Chalk' (2007), it traces out lyrical concerns and associated audiovisual material that could be considered as 'English'-especially where this national identity collides with narratives of war, loss and home.

abstract for a paper to be given at the University of Sunderland's  symposium, Englishness Rising: The folkish impulse in new English identities, which will take place on 6 January 2015 at Sir David Puttnam Media Centre, St Peter's Campus.

YouTube hosts the music video for PJ Harvey's most recent single release 'The Community of Hope' (2016). Shot by Seamus Murphy, the video shares screen space with official music videos from Harvey's 23 year career. This paper asks what is at stake in that relationship between her past and present, examining the link between YouTube and ageing within popular music performance and fleshing that out by through two concepts; repetitive circularity and the flat archive. YouTube's flat internal chronological architecture complicates the linearity of the ageing process within popular music. Focusing on PJ Harvey's music videos, it traces out the collisions between early and recent music video performances to argue that the 'nowness' of Harvey's (middle)ageing body is haunted (Fisher, 2014) by her earlier performances. This juxtaposition of the past and present affords a degree of circularity in terms of how to place a performance in linear time and is a process that aligns to pop's cyclical character (Reynolds, 2011). This has implications for how performers such as Harvey remain mediated by their youthful past as they mature where they are never free from their former selves/versions. Writing on pop music and feminism within neoliberalism, Robin James (2015) considers the role of repetition within current popular music forms claiming that it is now a key structural component of popular music; I take her argument and trace it across to the terrain of YouTube and ageing to consider the impact of repetitive circularity on Harvey's ageing body. To locate this process within a specific space, I draw on Robert Gehl's (2009) work to trace out YouTube's role as a repository and archive and suggest that there could be something important in the positioning of Harvey's younger self alongside her present in YouTube's 'flat' archive. For Gehl, YouTube is 'Wunderkammer' a decontextualized, chaotic and flattened cabinet of wonders that is not an archive in and of itself. Archival status is afforded internally within YouTube by bloggers who taxonomise the videos and create meaningful narratives. Exactly what types of narratives of ageing in particular are afforded by this

Fantastic Man (2014) and Searching for Sugar Man (2012) mobilize tropes of discovery occurring in the filmed process of collecting and curating the work and identities of two reluctant, elusive, and resistive figures. These documentaries are part of a discourse of collectability marked by the urge to discover and narrate a "quest" that has its precedents in record collecting as obsessive cultural practice and in the fetishizing of obscurity. Furthermore, they can be seen as "performances" of the artiste and repertoire (A&R) process but for a "post-rock" era in which the customary roles of A&R have largely been eclipsed by social, economic, and technological changes to the music industry: the "(re-)discovery" of Onyeabor and Rodriguez exemplifies an increasingly common fusion of, rather than oscillation between, novelty and nostalgia in the music industry, as "old" artists are "newly" discovered through practices of media archaeology aimed at unearthing artifacts of cultural and economic value from an ever bigger and denser digital archive.

Leg-of-mutton sleeves, Victorian mourning feathers, stiff, white governess dresses; Harvey's costumes for her performances on stage and in music video for the three albums White Chalk (2007), Let England Shake (2011) and The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016) position her as English Gothic. Referencing literary and cinematic readings of the term, this article argues that Harvey performs an English, Victorian Gothic. We argue that she recuperates the female Gothic for contemporary times allowing it resonance beyond its literary and cinematic beginnings. Drawing on some of those literary and cinematic debates on the Gothic and the eerie, we consider how her costumes across these albums showcase 'remnants' both of the past and, of the forgotten. Harvey stitches those stories into her performances, allowing her to present spectres of both the past and present in the form of the forgotten, excluded and misunderstood.

Ageing is starting to matter in popular cultural studies but the matter of ageing within YouTube is, at present, unwritten. This article is an attempt to start that process. YouTube hosts the music video for PJ Harvey’s single release The Community of Hope (2016) . Shot by Seamus Murphy, it shares screen space with official music videos from Harvey’s 23-year career. Raising questions about the relationship between her past and present, this article examines the link between YouTube and ageing through two concepts, repetitive circularity and the flat archive. These rely and inform each other in a process that prioritizes the presence of youthfulness through the absenting of age, whereby the ageing body is erased from a popular cultural forum. YouTube’s ‘wallpaper of the past’ has a nagging impact on how we might read the body’s progress through time, in particular, how it ages. Tackling the paucity of work on ageing as it surfaces within the changing topographies of popular music enc...

Model karmaşıklığı, modellerin başarısındaki en önemli ölçütlerden birisidir. Bu çalışmada bugüne dek model karmaşıklığının kontrolünde öne çıkan yaklaşımlar başlıklar halinde incelenmiştir. Bunlar Occam'ın usturası, Popper'ın yanlışlanabilirliği ve istatiksel öğrenme teorisidir. Occam'ın usturası ve Popper'ın yanlışlanabilirliği model karmaşıklığının kontrolünde, evet bir felsefi yaklaşım sağlamaktadırlar ve kabul de görmektedirler. Fakat model karmaşıklığının nasıl kontrol edileceği konusunda matematiksel bir formülasyon sağlamamaktadırlar. Fakat istatiksel öğrenme teorisinin (diğer adıyla, VC teorisi) konuya yaklaşımı yalnızca felsefi bir düzeyde kalmamakta, aynı zamanda şimdiye dek geliştirilen modellerde kullanılan ampirik risk minimizasyonu (ARM) ilkesine VC katsayısını ilave ederek yeni bir risk minimizasyonu (yapısal risk minimizasyonu, YRM) ilkesi getirmektedir. Sonuç olarak Vapnik ve Chervonenkis tarafından geliştirilen VC teorisi, bir kontrol modeli olarak, ispatlanmış matematiksel arka planı ve oldukça başarılı olan sonuçları itibariyle, model karmaşıklığının kontrolü konusunda, günümüz çerçevesinde, en tutarlı ve güvenilir bir yaklaşım olarak, model geliştiriciler için iyi bir ilham kaynağı olabilir.

Model karmaşıklığı, modellerin başarısındaki en önemli ölçütlerden birisidir. Bu çalışmada bugüne dek model karmaşıklığının kontrolünde öne çıkan yaklaşımlar başlıklar halinde incelenmiştir. Bunlar Occam'ın usturası, Popper'ın yanlışlanabilirliği ve istatiksel öğrenme teorisidir. Occam'ın usturası ve Popper'ın yanlışlanabilirliği model karmaşıklığının kontrolünde, evet bir felsefi yaklaşım sağlamaktadırlar ve kabul de görmektedirler. Fakat model karmaşıklığının nasıl kontrol edileceği konusunda matematiksel bir formülasyon sağlamamaktadırlar. Fakat istatiksel öğrenme teorisinin (diğer adıyla, VC teorisi) konuya yaklaşımı yalnızca felsefi bir düzeyde kalmamakta, aynı zamanda şimdiye dek geliştirilen modellerde kullanılan ampirik risk minimizasyonu (ARM) ilkesine VC katsayısını ilave ederek yeni bir risk minimizasyonu (yapısal risk minimizasyonu, YRM) ilkesi getirmektedir. Sonuç olarak Vapnik ve Chervonenkis tarafından geliştirilen VC teorisi, bir kontrol modeli olarak, ispatlanmış matematiksel arka planı ve oldukça başarılı olan sonuçları itibariyle, model karmaşıklığının kontrolü konusunda, günümüz çerçevesinde, en tutarlı ve güvenilir bir yaklaşım olarak, model geliştiriciler için iyi bir ilham kaynağı olabilir.

Michael Britton, the psychologically damaged protagonist of the NBC series Awake, creates his own alternate reality as a subconscious response to his grief following a car accident that took the life of either his wife or his son. In the series’ “Pilot”, the viewer learns through Britton’s visits to two separate therapists in two separate realities, that he lives with his wife until he goes to sleep, only to awake the next day a widow, living at home with his son. The series’ season-long mystery questions whether the world he experiences with his wife and his male therapist, or the one he experiences with his son and his female therapist, denotes true reality. Awake utilizes a complex narrative structure that mirrors Britton’s psyche as he undertakes separate investigations in each of his realities as a police detective. While the story design of Awake initially depends on a dual episodic case-of-the-week construct, where his potential dream(s) offer clues that assist him in solving...

Paper was delivered at the 5th International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology & Design; 27-29 May 2016.  Zagreb, Croatia.

Paper was subsequently published in the Online Journal of Communications and Media Technologies, and is available to download here.

http://www.ojcmt.net/special/sep_2016/5.pdf

This paper was delivered at the inaugural Transmedia Earth Conference in Medellin, Colombia, October 2017.

Paper was subsequently published in conference proceedings and is available to download here:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Modular-Stories:-An-Examination-of-Multi-Modal-in-Dalby/1cfeb7c43a03e07522e62ce9763613bb4820682d

The term Immersion is used widely in professional discourse and industry publications within the UK/US TV and film industries, not only as a self-evident aim of Transmedia and VR content, but also as an achievable goal. Unlike games industries, TV and cinema have traditionally taken the notion of Suspension of Disbelief (SoD) as relatively self-evident, and Immersion appears as its logical extension. Beginning with Holland's (1967) psychoanalytical approach to SoD as removal of the 'desire to act' function by 'framing' texts away from reality, this paper suggests that by including the 'frame' within the experience in Transmedia and VR, SoD is not achievable and therefore any attempts to approach Immersion in this way will fail. The paper argues that Immersion in such experiences is possible, if approached in the sense that Salen & Zimmerman (2004) suggest, where the actual act of involvement becomes the immersive experience, and not the displacement of sense and story. PAPER. All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the […] mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality. François Dominic Laramée; 'Immersion' Broadcasters are planning to take viewers beyond traditional flat-screen viewing and tell stories in increasingly immersive ways in 2016. Alex Farber; 'Broadcast Magazine'. January 2016 We were interested in how we could make short-form drama more immersive and ideally help us to reach younger audiences. We wanted to up the levels of interaction, but not distract people from the story. Robin Moore; BBC Head of Innovation. May 2016 In the last decade, a new lexicon of terminology and ideas that have previously been more generally associated with the computing and games industries, has been seen with increasing frequency in the discourse and industry publications of the UK and US television and film industries. In TV alone, programme-makers are now content-producers and programmes are asset-brands; multiplatform and multi-touchpoint in nature, and based around UX design concepts with developmental analytics, IP/API workflows and '3G' commissioning just some of the ongoing computing-inspired hot-topics in the industry. In terms of contemporary content, one term stands out as becoming synonymous with film and TV industries' efforts to offer new audience-pleasing experiences, and also as a byproduct, synonymous with the technology being trialed to produce these experiences, such as Transmediatechnologies and Virtual Reality. This term is Immersion. This paper argues that immersion within Transmedia and Virtual Reality experiences is a misleading concept, in need of interrogation and classification, and moreover that it is not possible to achieve, if the definition of immersion is taken to be similar to Laramée's quote above. This is to do with it being-in this form-the logical extension of the idea of suspension of disbelief, itself a term regularly treated as being somewhat self-evident in traditional television and film experiences. However, the paper also argues that immersion in Transmedia and VR content is possible, if approached in the sense that Salen & Zimmerman (2004) suggest, where the actual act of involvement becomes the immersive experience, rather than the displacement of sense and story.

Transmedia is a term which has been with us now for almost twenty years, gaining currency in the early 'noughties', although of course we may look to Jenkins' 'transmedia storytelling' (2006) as a point from which we might agree it began to percolate more readily within the broader media consciousness. However while the term is tried and tested, the concept(s) it pertains to are-arguably-less well-defined and agreed-upon, and furthermore may perhaps be continually evolving. Indeed, at the marvellous Transmedia Earth Conference in Medellin, Colombia in 2017-eleven years after the publication of Convergence Culture-a common refrain heard during informal conversations among many of us interested in the subject was 'What the &%&# is transmedia?!' (transmedia theorists, it seems, are fond of a colourful adjective; Jenkins' own blog, of course, contains the subtly-titled bio 'Who the &%&# is Henry Jenkins?'). We had travelled from across the globe to attend the conference, the first of its kind, and discovered that many of us had somewhat disparate ideas about what transmedia might actually be, and that individually we subsequently understood the term rather less fully than we perhaps believed we did beforehand (which is, of course, probably quite indicative of an excellent and successful conference!). Given a variety of overlapping uses, interpretations and definitions of the term, as well as its potential for continual evolution as technology and content-use progresses, the purpose of this short paper is to present a roundup definition of transmedia as-at 2021, and also to propose a new term-Holarchic Media-which I suggest may provide a defining counterpoint to the original concept. Let's continue with Jenkins, who opens his 2017 paper 'Transmedia Logics and Locations' by reminding us that transmedia is an adjective, and not a noun. "Transmedia needs to modify something" he writes (2017, p. 220); in principle the term refers to a method of describing a relationship between media touchpoints, linked either by design or an organic