Abstract not found

The culture of laptop improvisation has grown tremendously in recent years. The development of personalized software instruments presents interesting issues in the context of improvised group performances. This paper examines an approach that is aimed at increasing the modes of interactivity between laptop performers and at the same time suggests ways in which audiences can better discern and identify the sonic characteristics of each laptop performer. We refer to software implementation that was developed for the BLISS networked laptop ensemble with view to designing a shared format for the exchange of messages within local and internet based networks.

Extreme events such as natural or technological disasters challenge society's capabilities both for planning and response. While information technologies and advanced modeling techniques continue to expand how society can limit and manage extreme events (Rinaldi, Peerenboom, and Kelly 2001), flexibility remains crucial to the success of planning and response operations (Mileti 1999; Stewart and Bostrom 2002). Non-routine situations (i.e., those which require responding organizations to develop and deploy new procedures in real-time) pose a challenge not only to decision makers but to designers of decision support systems. One approach to addressing this challenge is to develop decision support systems which incorporate cognitive-level models of decision making and which can assist decision makers in real-time compilation of new procedures. Some of the prospects, challenges and opportunities for developing these types of systems are discussed. An example from the 2001 World Trade Center attack is used to clarify some of these challenges, and to suggest how future work might address them. 1 Flexibility through Improvisation Due to their size, complexity and rarity, extreme events such as natural or technological disasters challenge society's capabilities both for planning and response. While information technologies and advanced modeling techniques continue to expand how society can limit and manage extreme events (Rinaldi, Peerenboom, and Kelly 2001), flexibility remains crucial to organizational resilience when responding to these events (Mileti 2 1999; Stewart and Bostrom 2002). The response to the 2001 World Trade Center offers numerous examples of how flexibility may contribute to resilience: subway maintenance workers joined the response effort to remove obstacles ...

From bricks to brains: the embodied cognitive science of LEGO robots

Sometime within the past two or three years