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1

Di Battista, Andrew. "A quantitative microbial risk assessment for touchscreen user interfaces using an asymmetric transfer gradient transmission mode." PLOS ONE 17, no. 3 (March 25, 2022): e0265565. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265565.

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The ubiquitous use of public touchscreen user interfaces for commercial applications has created a credible risk for fomite-mediated disease transmission. This paper presents results from a stochastic simulation designed to assess this risk. The model incorporates a queueing network to simulate people flow and touchscreen interactions. It also describes an updated model for microbial transmission using an asymmetric gradient transfer assumption that incorporates literature reviewed empirical data concerning touch-transfer efficiency between fingers and surfaces. In addition to natural decay/die-off, pathogens are removed from the system by simulated cleaning / disinfection and personal-touching rates (e.g. face, dermal, hair and clothing). The dose response is implemented with an exponential moving average filter to model the temporal dynamics of exposure. Public touchscreens were shown to pose a considerable infection risk (∼3%) using plausible default simulation parameters. Sensitivity of key model parameters, including the rate of surface disinfection is examined and discussed. A distinctive and important advancement of this simulation was its ability to distinguish between infection risk from a primary contaminated source and that due to the re-deposition of pathogens onto secondary, initially uncontaminated touchscreens from sequential use. The simulator is easily configurable and readily adapted to more general fomite-mediated transmission modelling and may provide a valuable framework for future research.
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Ramalingam, Rajakumar, Rajeswari Muniyan, Ankur Dumka, Devesh Pratap Singh, Heba G. Mohamed, Rajesh Singh, Divya Anand, and Irene Delgado Noya. "Routing Protocol for MANET Based on QoS-Aware Service Composition with Dynamic Secured Broker Selection." Electronics 11, no. 17 (August 23, 2022): 2637. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/electronics11172637.

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MANET is a mobile ad hoc network with many mobile nodes communicating without a centralized module. Infrastructure-less networks make it desirable for many researchers to publish and bind multimedia services. Each node in this infrastructure-less network acts as self-organizing and re-configurable. It allows services to deploy and attain from another node over the ad hoc network. The service composition aims to provide a user’s requirement by combining different atomic services based on non-functional QoS parameters such as reliability, availability, scalability, etc. To provide service composition in MANET is challenging because of the node mobility, link failure, and topology changes, so a traditional protocol will be sufficient to obtain real-time services from mobile nodes. In this paper, the ad hoc on-demand distance vector protocol (AODV) is used and analyzed based on MANET’s QoS (Quality of Service) metrics. The QoS metrics for MANET depends on delay, bandwidth, memory capacity, network load, and packet drop. The requester node and provider node broker acts as a composer for this MANET network. The authors propose a QoS-based Dynamic Secured Broker Selection architecture (QoSDSBS) for service composition in MANET, which uses a dynamic broker and provides a secure path selection based on QoS metrics. The proposed algorithm is simulated using Network Simulator (NS2) with 53 intermediate nodes and 35 mobile nodes of area 1000 m × 1000 m. The comparative results show that the proposed architecture outperforms, with standards, the AODV protocol and affords higher scalability and a reduced network load.
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Uddin, Mohammad Rokon, Mohammad Abdul Matin, Mohammad Kamal Hossain Foraji, and Baizid Hossain. "Energy Efficient Auto–Configurable Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks." Journal of Electrical Engineering 66, no. 3 (May 1, 2015): 149–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/jee-2015-0023.

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Abstract This paper proposed an auto-configurable algorithm for wireless sensor network (WSN) to efficiently re-organize the network topology. The auto-configurable algorithm is based on self- configurable cellular architecture and it has been observed from simulation result that the proposed algorithm achieves lower power consumption than the existing one.
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Beldianu, Spiridon, Roberto Rojas-Cessa, Eiji Oki, and Sotirios Ziavras. "Scheduling for input-queued packet switches by a re-configurable parallel match evaluator." IEEE Communications Letters 14, no. 4 (April 2010): 357–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/lcomm.2010.04.092440.

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Khan, Shahid, Hazrat Ali, Syed Shah, Haider Ali, and Camel Tanougast. "Artificial Magnetic Conductor Based Miniaturized Frequency Re-configurable Dielectric Resonator Antenna for 5G and WBAN Applications." Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society 35, no. 9 (November 4, 2020): 1064–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.47037/2020.aces.j.350913.

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In this work a novel miniaturized frequency reconfigurable Dielectric Resonator antenna using Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) surface is proposed. The prototype is set to work for 5G mid-band frequencies and Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) applications. The work consists of two parts: firstly, the miniaturization of the prototype using AMC surface and secondly using the same AMC surface to reconfigure the frequency to another wireless application. Using AMC surface, the DR volume is reduced by 85% percent. Connecting the AMC unit cells through ideal switches (micro-trip slabs) re-configures the DR for different frequency. The overall performance observed before switching as well as after switching in both the cases is promising. The design is fabricated for performance analysis. A close agreement is reported between simulated and measured values of the reflection coefficients, radiation pattern, gain and efficiencies. The prototype has stable radiation pattern for both the operating frequencies. The impedance bandwidth values for both the resonance frequencies are 14.2% and 16% respectively. The prototype has a maximum gain of 6.8dBi and a maximum efficiency of 88%.
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6

Popa, Cosmin Radu. "High-Accuracy Gaussian Function Generator for Neural Networks." Electronics 12, no. 1 (December 21, 2022): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/electronics12010024.

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A new improved accuracy CMOS Gaussian function generator will be presented. The original sixth-order approximation function that represents the basis for designing the proposed Gaussian circuit allows a large increase in the circuit accuracy and also of the input variable maximal range. The original proposed computational structure has a large dynamic output range of 27 dB, for a variation smaller than 1 dB as compared with the ideal Gaussian function. The circuit is simulated for 0.18 mm CMOS technology and has a low supply voltage (VDD = 0.7 V). Its power consumption is smaller than 0.22 mW, for VDD = 0.7 V, while the chip area is about 7 mm2. The new proposed architecture is re-configurable, the convenient modification of the coefficients allowing to obtain many mathematical functions using the same computational structure.
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Tang, Dunbing, Li Zheng, Kwai-Sang Chin, Zhizhong Li, Yulan Liang, Xiaojian Jiang, and Changjian Hu. "E-DREAM: A Web-Based Platform for Virtual Agile Manufacturing." Concurrent Engineering 10, no. 2 (June 2002): 165–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1063293x02010002698.

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In the emerging agile manufacturing paradigm, there is a great need for a flexible and re-configurable IT platform to form virtual enterprises. In this paper, according to the functional requirements of virtual agile manufacturing, a pragmatic Web-based platform entitled “E-DREAM” has been developed to support the virtual enterprising. Firstly, this paper discusses the E-DREAM basic architecture, infrastructure, and the global object model of E-DREAM. Next, based on the information, information interaction, and role classification, the distributed information management and role management in E-DREAM are interpreted, illustrating that the information access visibility level is dependent on the role that an agile partner plays in a VE (Virtual Enterprise). Making use of CORBA-based method, the implementation of wrapping software resources is conducted, which aims at interoperating the remote software resources. In the end, the E-DREAM prototype implementation is presented. Through the E-DREAM architecture development and prototype system implementation, we have come up with a thorough approach for building agile virtual enterprises, configuring and re-configuring working platforms for different agile partners.
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8

Asghar, Rizwan, Di Wu, Johan Eilert, and Dake Liu. "Memory Conflict Analysis and Implementation of a Re-configurable Interleaver Architecture Supporting Unified Parallel Turbo Decoding." Journal of Signal Processing Systems 60, no. 1 (July 17, 2009): 15–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11265-009-0394-8.

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9

Wichmann, Volker. "The Gravitational Process Path (GPP) model (v1.0) – a GIS-based simulation framework for gravitational processes." Geoscientific Model Development 10, no. 9 (September 8, 2017): 3309–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gmd-10-3309-2017.

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Abstract. The Gravitational Process Path (GPP) model can be used to simulate the process path and run-out area of gravitational processes based on a digital terrain model (DTM). The conceptual model combines several components (process path, run-out length, sink filling and material deposition) to simulate the movement of a mass point from an initiation site to the deposition area. For each component several modeling approaches are provided, which makes the tool configurable for different processes such as rockfall, debris flows or snow avalanches. The tool can be applied to regional-scale studies such as natural hazard susceptibility mapping but also contains components for scenario-based modeling of single events. Both the modeling approaches and precursor implementations of the tool have proven their applicability in numerous studies, also including geomorphological research questions such as the delineation of sediment cascades or the study of process connectivity. This is the first open-source implementation, completely re-written, extended and improved in many ways. The tool has been committed to the main repository of the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA) and thus will be available with every SAGA release.
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10

Kawasaki, Haruhisa. "Special Issue on Recent Advances in Robot Control." Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics 13, no. 5 (October 20, 2001): 449. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jrm.2001.p0449.

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This special issue contains outstanding papers on robot control presented at international meetings in Japan in 2000. Featured topics include face robots, polishing robots, control for multifingered robotic hands, re configurable brachiating space robots, DD parallel robots, and robot control technologies such as a distributed robust motion controller, image-based visual servoing, fault adaptive kinematic control, and optimum control for a robot manipulator. We also will have a variety of topics such as shaft insert tasks in the robot task field, fingerprint image sensing in sensing technologies, compliance display, emergence of affective behavior, human/robot communication in interfaces, and workspace analysis of parallel manipulators in robot analysis. In preparing this special issue, we have asked authors to revise work presented at international meetings to include further analyses and experimental data to help make papers even more interesting and informative concerning the purposes of the study, analyses, experiments, and simulation. We thank Professor Kohei Ohnishi, Department of System Design Engineering, School of Science and Engineering, Keio University, for his complete, courteous assistance, and all of the authors who such unstinting time to update their papers for this special issue.
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11

Cordeiro, Artur, João Pedro Souza, Carlos M. Costa, Vítor Filipe, Luís F. Rocha, and Manuel F. Silva. "Bin Picking for Ship-Building Logistics Using Perception and Grasping Systems." Robotics 12, no. 1 (January 18, 2023): 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/robotics12010015.

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Bin picking is a challenging task involving many research domains within the perception and grasping fields, for which there are no perfect and reliable solutions available that are applicable to a wide range of unstructured and cluttered environments present in industrial factories and logistics centers. This paper contributes with research on the topic of object segmentation in cluttered scenarios, independent of previous object shape knowledge, for textured and textureless objects. In addition, it addresses the demand for extended datasets in deep learning tasks with realistic data. We propose a solution using a Mask R-CNN for 2D object segmentation, trained with real data acquired from a RGB-D sensor and synthetic data generated in Blender, combined with 3D point-cloud segmentation to extract a segmented point cloud belonging to a single object from the bin. Next, it is employed a re-configurable pipeline for 6-DoF object pose estimation, followed by a grasp planner to select a feasible grasp pose. The experimental results show that the object segmentation approach is efficient and accurate in cluttered scenarios with several occlusions. The neural network model was trained with both real and simulated data, enhancing the success rate from the previous classical segmentation, displaying an overall grasping success rate of 87.5%.
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Jain, Harshit, and V. H. Patankar. "FPGA: Field programmable gate array-based four-channel embedded system for ultrasonic imaging of under-water concrete structures." Review of Scientific Instruments 93, no. 11 (November 1, 2022): 114706. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0101490.

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Non-destructive testing is needed for the evaluation of quality and safety of concrete structures in the field of civil engineering. The imaging of concrete/reinforced cement concrete structures (RCC) is a challenging task due to the non-homogeneous properties of the concrete material. To address this challenge, a novel real-time, re-configurable, four-channel embedded system has been designed and developed to image the internal details of the concrete samples using the water immersion pulse-echo (PE) mode under automation, which needs access from one side of the structure. The system performs data acquisition (DAQ) of the amplified echo signals under the control of the computer via a universal serial bus interface. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed using C# in a Visual environment, for image acquisition and control of the DAQ parameters. The performance of the system has been evaluated by acquiring B-Scan images of three types of concrete test blocks having side drilled holes (SDHs) and simulated inclusions embedded in concrete blocks of M20 grade using a linear array of 92 kHz water immersion transducers operating in under-water PE mode. The acquired B-Scan images revealed the internal details of the concrete test blocks with sizing of the SDHs and inclusions. Therefore, the developed four-channel ultrasonic imaging system can visualize the internal details of under-water concrete structures, such as bridges and sea links, with the help of corresponding 2-D cross-sectional images, acquired using the developed system.
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13

Du, Yongqian, Wei Hu, Guifang Li, and Shibin Liu. "Modeling and Analysis of the Nonideality of LO Pulse Overlap for Multi-Phase Passive Mixer First RF Frontend." Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers 28, no. 05 (May 2019): 1950086. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218126619500865.

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Multi-phase passive mixer (PM) first RF frontend has regained great concern for its satisfactory noise performance comparable to LNA-first frontend. Moreover, the re-configurable impedance, bi-directional signal transparency and bi-directional impedance translation performance enable a splendid application future for the multi-phase PM-first RF frontend. However, it still suffers from quite a few nonidealities, among which the adjacent Local Oscillator (LO) pulse overlap is the remaining nonideality lacking deep research, and how the LO pulse overlap decays the impedance matching and noise performance of multi-phase PM-first RF frontend remains unclear. In this work, an accurate model is, for the first time, established and analyzed to reveal how the LO pulse overlap decays the impedance matching and noise performance of multi-phase PM-first RF frontend. The analytical and simulation results demonstrate that the impedance matching will be drastically deteriorated because of LO overlap, and when LO pulse overlap exceeds 2% the impedance matching will be collapsed, while the noise figure (NF) is deteriorated by 3.1 dB when LO overlap ranges from 0% to 2%. Moreover, even a chocking inductor technique and a technique by introducing a synchronous phase-shifted signal have been proposed to suppress the LO overlap, the gain and noise performance can be deteriorated or the power and chip area cost are big. To address this question, a LO pulse overlap suppression technique is proposed furthermore by introducing an overlap safeguard factor (OLSF) in this work. The additional impedance smaller than 2[Formula: see text][Formula: see text] in the main signal path makes the OLSF scheme beneficial for noise and gain improvement, and the proposed OLSF scheme is power, area (0.04[Formula: see text]mm[Formula: see text] and cost efficient compared with existing LO overlap suppression techniques.
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Yu, Danying, Guangzhen Li, Meng Xiao, Da-Wei Wang, Yong Wan, Luqi Yuan, and Xianfeng Chen. "Simulating graphene dynamics in synthetic space with photonic rings." Communications Physics 4, no. 1 (October 1, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00719-9.

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AbstractPhotonic honeycomb lattices have attracted broad interests for their fruitful ways in manipulating light, which yet hold difficulties in achieving arbitrary reconfigurability and hence flexible functionality due to fixed geometry configurations. Here we theoretically propose to construct the honeycomb lattice in a one-dimensional ring array under dynamic modulations, with an additional synthetic dimension created by connecting the frequency degree of freedom of light. Such a system is highly re-configurable with parameters flexibly controlled by external modulations. Therefore, various physical phenomena associated with graphene including Klein tunneling, valley-dependent edge states, effective magnetic field, as well as valley-dependent Lorentz force can be simulated in this lattice, which exhibits important potentials for manipulating photons in different ways. Our work unveils an alternative platform for constructing the honeycomb lattice in a synthetic space, which holds complex functionalities and could be important for optical signal processing as well as quantum simulation.
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Ye, Qian, Xianfeng David Gu, and Shikui Chen. "Variational Level Set Method for Topology Optimization of Origami Fold Patterns." Journal of Mechanical Design 144, no. 8 (March 31, 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4053925.

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Abstract With specific fold patterns, a 2D flat origami can be converted into a complex 3D structure under an external driving force. Origami inspires the engineering design of many self-assembled and re-configurable devices. This work aims to apply the level set-based topology optimization to the generative design of origami structures. The origami mechanism is simulated using thin shell models where the deformation on the surface and the deformation in the normal direction can be simplified and well captured. Moreover, the fold pattern is implicitly represented by the boundaries of the level set function. The folding topology is optimized by minimizing a new multiobjective function that balances kinematic performance with structural stiffness and geometric requirements. Besides regular straight folds, our proposed model can mimic crease patterns with curved folds. With the folding curves implicitly represented, the curvature flow is utilized to control the complexity of the folds generated. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by the computer generation and physical validation of two thin shell origami designs.
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Proctor, Devin. "Wandering in the City: Time, Memory, and Experience in Digital Game Space." M/C Journal 22, no. 4 (August 14, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1549.

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As I round the corner from Church Street onto Vesey, I am abruptly met with the façade of St. Paul’s Chapel and by the sudden memory of two things, both of which have not yet happened. I think about how, in a couple of decades, the area surrounding me will be burnt to the ground. I also recall how, just after the turn of the twenty-first century, the area will again crumble onto itself. It is 1759, and I—via my avatar—am wandering through downtown New York City in the videogame space of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (AC:R). These spatial and temporal memories stem from the fact that I have previously (that is, earlier in my life) played an AC game set in New York City during the War for Independence (later in history), wherein the city’s lower west side burns at the hands of the British. Years before that (in my biographical timeline, though much later in history) I watched from twenty-something blocks north of here as flames erupted from the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Complicating the situation further, Michel de Certeau strolls with me in spirit, pondering observations he will make from almost this exact location (though roughly 1,100 feet higher up) 220 years from now, around the time I am being born. Perhaps the oddest aspect of this convoluted and temporally layered experience is the fact that I am not actually at the corner of Church and Vesey in 1759 at all, but rather on a couch, in Virginia, now. This particular type of sudden arrival at a space is only possible when it is not planned. Prior to the moment described above, I had finished a “mission” in the game that involved my coming to the city, so I decided I would just walk around a bit in the newly discovered digital New York of 1759. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to wander. Truly Being-in-a-place means attending to the interconnected Being-ness and Being-with-ness of all of the things that make up that place (Heidegger; Haraway). Conversely, to travel to or through a place entails a type of focused directionality toward a place that you are not currently Being in. Wandering, however, demands eschewing both, neither driven by an incessant goal, nor stuck in place by introspective ruminations. Instead, wandering is perhaps best described as a sort of mobile openness. A wanderer is not quite Benjamin’s flâneur, characterised by an “idle yet assertive negotiation of the street” (Coates 28), but also, I would argue, not quite de Certeau’s “Wandersmünner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (de Certeau 93). Wandering requires a concerted effort at non-intentionality. That description may seem to fold in on itself, to be sure, but as the spaces around us are increasingly “canalized” (Rabinow and Foucault) and designed with specific trajectories and narratives in mind, inaction leads to the unconscious enacting of an externally derived intention; whereas any attempt to subvert that design is itself a wholly intentional act. This is why wandering is so difficult. It requires shedding layers. It takes practice, like meditation.In what follows, I will explore the possibility of revelatory moments enabled by the shedding of these layers of intention through my own experience in digital space (maybe the most designed and canalized spaces we inhabit). I come to recognise, as I disavow the designed narrative of game space, that it takes on other meanings, becomes another space. I find myself Being-there in a way that transcends the digital as we understand it, experiencing space that reaches into the past and future, into memory and fiction. Indeed, wandering is liminal, betwixt fixed points, spaces, and times, and the text you are reading will wander in this fashion—between the digital and the physical, between memory and experience, and among multiple pasts and the present—to arrive at a multilayered subjective sense of space, a palimpsest of placemaking.Before charging fully into digital time travel, however, we must attend to the business of context. In this case, this means addressing why I am talking about videogame space in Certaudian terms. Beginning as early as 1995, videogame theorists have employed de Certeau’s notion of “spatial stories” in their assertions that games allow players to construct the game’s narrative by travelling through and “colonizing” the space (Fuller and Jenkins). Most of the scholarship involving de Certeau and videogames, however, has been relegated to the concepts of “map/tour” in looking at digital embodiment within game space as experiential representatives of the place/space binary. Maps verbalise spatial experience in place terms, such as “it’s at the corner of this and that street”, whereas tours express the same in terms of movement through space, as in “turn right at the red house”. Videogames complicate this because “mapping is combined with touring when moving through the game-space” (Lammes).In Games as Inhabited Spaces, Bernadette Flynn moves beyond the map/tour dichotomy to argue that spatial theories can approach videogaming in a way no other viewpoint can, because neither narrative nor mechanics of play can speak to the “space” of a game. Thus, Flynn’s work is “focused on completely reconceiving gameplay as fundamentally configured with spatial practice” (59) through de Certeau’s concepts of “strategic” and “tactical” spatial use. Flynn explains:The ability to forge personal directions from a closed simulation links to de Certeau’s notion of tactics, where users can create their own trajectories from the formal organizations of space. For de Certeau, tactics are related to how people individualise trajectories of movement to create meaning and transformations of space. Strategies on the other hand, are more akin to the game designer’s particular matrix of formal structures, arrangements of time and space which operate to control and constrain gameplay. (59)Flynn takes much of her reading of de Certeau from Lev Manovich, who argues that a game designer “uses strategies to impose a particular matrix of space, time, experience, and meaning on his viewers; they, in turn, use ‘tactics’ to create their own trajectories […] within this matrix” (267). Manovich believes de Certeau’s theories offer a salient model for thinking about “the ways in which computer users navigate through computer spaces they did not design” (267). In Flynn’s and Manovich’s estimation, simply moving through digital space is a tactic, a subversion of its strategic and linear design.The views of game space as tactical have historically (and paradoxically) treated the subject of videogames from a strategic perspective, as a configurable space to be “navigated through”, as a way of attaining a certain goal. Dan Golding takes up this problem, distancing our engagement from the design and calling for a de Certeaudian treatment of videogame space “from below”, where “the spatial diegesis of the videogame is affordance based and constituted by the skills of the player”, including those accrued outside the game space (Golding 118). Similarly, Darshana Jayemanne adds a temporal element with the idea that these spatial constructions are happening alongside a “complexity” and “proliferation of temporal schemes” (Jayemanne 1, 4; see also Nikolchina). Building from Golding and Jayemanne, I illustrate here a space wherein the player, not the game, is at the fulcrum of both spatial and temporal complexity, by adding the notion that—along with skill and experience—players bring space and time with them into the game.Viewed with the above understanding of strategies, tactics, skill, and temporality, the act of wandering in a videogame seems inherently subversive: on one hand, by undergoing a destination-less exploration of game space, I am rejecting the game’s spatial narrative trajectory; on the other, I am eschewing both skill accrual and temporal insistence to attempt a sense of pure Being-in-the-game. Such rebellious freedom, however, is part of the design of this particular game space. AC:R is a “sand box” game, which means it involves a large environment that can be traversed in a non-linear fashion, allowing, supposedly, for more freedom and exploration. Indeed, much of the gameplay involves slowly making more space available for investigation in an outward—rather than unidirectional—course. A player opens up these new spaces by “synchronising a viewpoint”, which can only be done by climbing to the top of specific landmarks. One of the fundamental elements of the AC franchise is an acrobatic, free-running, parkour style of engagement with a player’s surroundings, “where practitioners weave through urban environments, hopping over barricades, debris, and other obstacles” (Laviolette 242), climbing walls and traversing rooftops in a way unthinkable (and probably illegal) in our everyday lives. People scaling buildings in major metropolitan areas outside of videogame space tend to get arrested, if they survive the climb. Possibly, these renegade climbers are seeking what de Certeau describes as the “voluptuous pleasure […] of ‘seeing the whole,’ of looking down on, totalizing the most immoderate of human texts” (92)—what he experienced, looking down from the top of the World Trade Center in the late 1970s.***On digital ground level, back in 1759, I look up to the top of St. Paul’s bell tower and crave that pleasure, so I climb. As I make my way up, Non-Player Characters (NPCs)—the townspeople and trader avatars who make up the interactive human scenery of the game—shout things such as “You’ll hurt yourself” and “I say! What on earth is he doing?” This is the game’s way of convincing me that I am enacting agency and writing my own spatial story. I seem to be deploying “tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised” (de Certeau 96), when I am actually following the program the way I am supposed to. If I were not meant to climb the tower, I simply would not be able to. The fact that game developers go to the extent of recording dialogue to shout at me when I do this proves that they expect my transgression. This is part of the game’s “semi-social system”: a collection of in-game social norms that—to an extent—reflect the cultural understandings of outside non-digital society (Atkinson and Willis). These norms are enforced through social pressures and expectations in the game such that “these relative imperatives and influences, appearing to present players with ‘unlimited’ choices, [frame] them within the parameters of synthetic worlds whose social structure and assumptions are distinctly skewed in particular ways” (408). By using these semi-social systems, games communicate to players that performing a particular act is seen as wrong or scandalous by the in-game society (and therefore subversive), even when the action is necessary for the continuation of the spatial story.When I reach the top of the bell tower, I am able to “synchronise the viewpoint”—that is, unlock the map of this area of the city. Previously, I did not have access to an overhead view of the area, but now that I have indulged in de Certeau’s pleasure of “seeing the whole”, I can see not only the tactical view from the street, but also the strategic bird’s-eye view from above. From the top, looking out over the city—now The City, a conceivable whole rather than a collection of streets—it is difficult to picture the neighbourhood engulfed in flames. The stair-step Dutch-inspired rooflines still recall the very recent change from New Amsterdam to New York, but in thirty years’ time, they will all be torched and rebuilt, replaced with colonial Tudor boxes. I imagine myself as an eighteenth-century de Certeau, surveying pre-ruination New York City. I wonder how his thoughts would have changed if his viewpoint were coloured with knowledge of the future. Standing atop the very symbol of global power and wealth—a duo-lith that would exist for less than three decades—would his pleasure have been less “voluptuous”? While de Certeau considers the viewer from above like Icarus, whose “elevation transfigures him into a voyeur” (92), I identify more with Daedalus, preoccupied with impending disaster. I swan-dive from the tower into a hay cart, returning to the bustle of the street below.As I wander amongst the people of digital 1759 New York, the game continuously makes phatic advances at me. I bump into others on the street and they drop boxes they are carrying, or stumble to the side. Partial overheard conversations going on between townspeople—“… what with all these new taxes …”, “… but we’ve got a fine regiment here …”—both underscore the historical context of the game and imply that this is a world that exists even when I am not there. These characters and their conversations are as much a part of the strategic makeup of the city as the buildings are. They are the text, not the writers nor the readers. I am the only writer of this text, but I am merely transcribing a pre-programmed narrative. So, I am not an author, but rather a stenographer. For this short moment, though, I am allowed by the game to believe that I am making the choice not to transcribe; there are missions to complete, and I am ignoring them. I am taking in the city, forgetting—just as the design intends—that I am the only one here, the only person in the entire world, indeed, the person for whom this world exists.While wandering, I also experience conflicts and mergers between what Maurice Halbwachs has called historical, autobiographical, and collective memory types: respectively, these are memories created according to historical record, through one’s own life experience, and by the way a society tends to culturally frame and recall “important” events. De Certeau describes a memorable place as a “palimpsest, [where] subjectivity is already linked to the absence that structures it as existence” (109). Wandering through AC:R’s virtual representation of 1759 downtown New York, I am experiencing this palimpsest in multiple layers, activating my Halbwachsian memories and influencing one another in the creation of my subjectivity. This is the “absence” de Certeau speaks of. My visions of Revolutionary New York ablaze tug at me from beneath a veneer of peaceful Dutch architecture: two warring historical memory constructs. Simultaneously, this old world is painted on top of my autobiographical memories as a New Yorker for thirteen years, loudly ordering corned beef with Russian dressing at the deli that will be on this corner. Somewhere sandwiched between these layers hides a portrait of September 11th, 2001, painted either by collective memory or autobiographical memory, or, more likely, a collage of both. A plane entering a building. Fire. Seen by my eyes, and then re-seen countless times through the same televised imagery that the rest of the world outside our small downtown village saw it. Which images are from media, and which from memory?Above, as if presiding over the scene, Michel de Certeau hangs in the air at the collision site, suspended a 1000 feet above the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial, rapt in “voluptuous pleasure”. And below, amid the colonists in their tricorns and waistcoats, people in grey ash-covered suits—ambulatory statues; golems—slowly and silently march ever uptown-wards. Dutch and Tudor town homes stretch skyward and transform into art-deco and glass monoliths. These multiform strata, like so many superimposed transparent maps, ground me in the idea of New York, creating the “fragmentary and inward-turning histories” (de Certeau 108) that give place to my subjectivity, allowing me to Be-there—even though, technically, I am not.My conscious decision to ignore the game’s narrative and wander has made this moment possible. While I understand that this is entirely part of the intended gameplay, I also know that the design cannot possibly account for the particular way in which I experience the space. And this is the fundamental point I am asserting here: that—along with the strategies and temporal complexities of the design and the tactics and skills of those on the ground—we bring into digital space our own temporal and experiential constructions that allow us to Be-in-the-game in ways not anticipated by its strategic design. Non-digital virtuality—in the tangled forms of autobiographical, historic, and collective memory—reaches into digital space, transforming the experience. Further, this changed game-experience becomes a part of my autobiographical “prosthetic memory” that I carry with me (Landsberg). When I visit New York in the future, and I inevitably find myself abruptly met with the façade of St Paul’s Chapel as I round the corner of Church Street and Vesey, I will be brought back to this moment. Will I continue to wander, or will I—if just for a second—entertain the urge to climb?***After the recent near destruction by fire of Notre-Dame, a different game in the AC franchise was offered as a free download, because it is set in revolutionary Paris and includes a very detailed and interactive version of the cathedral. Perhaps right now, on sundry couches in various geographical locations, people are wandering there: strolling along the Siene, re-experiencing time they once spent there; overhearing tense conversations about regime change along the Champs-Élysées that sound disturbingly familiar; or scaling the bell tower of the Notre-Dame Cathedral itself—site of revolution, desecration, destruction, and future rebuilding—to reach the pleasure of seeing the strategic whole at the top. And maybe, while they are up there, they will glance south-southwest to the 15th arrondissement, where de Certeau lies, enjoying some voluptuous Icarian viewpoint as-yet unimagined.ReferencesAtkinson, Rowland, and Paul Willis. “Transparent Cities: Re‐Shaping the Urban Experience through Interactive Video Game Simulation.” City 13.4 (2009): 403–417. DOI: 10.1080/13604810903298458.Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Ed. Rolf Tiedmann. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002. Coates, Jamie. “Key Figure of Mobility: The Flâneur.” Social Anthropology 25.1 (2017): 28–41. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12381.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.Flynn, Bernadette. “Games as Inhabited Spaces.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture and Policy 110 (2004): 52–61. DOI: 10.1177/1329878X0411000108.Fuller, Mary, and Henry Jenkins. “‘Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue’ [in] CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community.” CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. Steve Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 57–72. <https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=7dc700b8-cb87-e611-80c6-005056af4099>.Golding, Daniel. “Putting the Player Back in Their Place: Spatial Analysis from Below.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 5.2 (2013): 117–30. DOI: 10.1386/jgvw.5.2.117_1.Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2016.Heidegger, Martin. Existence and Being. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949.Jayemanne, Darshana. “Chronotypology: A Comparative Method for Analyzing Game Time.” Games and Culture (2019): 1–16. DOI: 10.1177/1555412019845593.Lammes, Sybille. “Playing the World: Computer Games, Cartography and Spatial Stories.” Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 3 (2008): 84–96. DOI: 10.1080/10402659908426297.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Laviolette, Patrick. “The Neo-Flâneur amongst Irresistible Decay.” Playgrounds and Battlefields: Critical Perspectives of Social Engagement. Eds. Martínez Jüristo and Klemen Slabina. Tallinn: Tallinn University Press, 2014. 243–71.Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002.Nikolchina, Miglena. “Time in Video Games: Repetitions of the New.” Differences 28.3 (2017): 19–43. DOI: 10.1215/10407391-4260519.Rabinow, Paul, and Michel Foucault. “Interview with Michel Foucault on Space, Knowledge and Power.” Skyline (March 1982): 17–20.
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