Academic literature on the topic 'Theater – Technological innovations'

Woyzeck 91, was staged by the Itim Ensemble and the Cameri Theatre, Tel Aviv, in 1991. The production was adapted from Büchner's Woyzeck and directed by Rina Yerushalmi. The adaptation expands Büchner's play text mainly through the addition of scientific lectures, mostly about human physiology, which present the human being as a biological organism: heart, sex organs, reproducing cells, nervous system as the source of feelings. These additional scenes focus attention on Woyzeck's body as an experimental model, along with other performative devices (slides of body parts, and a skeleton). The juxtaposition of the human body (human subject) with its scientific and technological fragmentation reflects the performance's central theme: it objectifies the human subjects in our modern world of genetic experiments, technological innovations and socio-political reactions, which threaten the destruction of humanity.

From its origins and throughout its history, Western theatre has engaged, represented, and/or attempted to affect the course of history. Phrynichus and Aeschylus wrote plays on the Persian wars when they were still fresh in the memories of their auditors—too fresh in the case of Phrynichus, who was censured by the Athenians. Early in the sixteenth century French sotties commented on Papal politics; late in the same century Elizabethan playwrights began to exploit contemporary crime stories. During the French Revolution hack writers issued dramatic accounts of Marat's death within a month of its occurrence. Astley's had spectacular recreations of Crimean War battles on stage almost before they occurred. In the twentieth century, technological innovation has stimulated this tendency and extended it throughout the mass media in numberless examples of reality-driven representation.

The design-build project for the outdoor theater roof structure at the UBC Malcolm Knapp Research Forest at Maple Ridge, British Columbia, explores technical, spatial, and cultural aspects of CNC wood fabrication. References for the project are technological innovation and formal expression of contemporary wood structures. The roof project illustrates how spatial concepts are informed by the logic of fabrication and methods of assembly. A reciprocal relationship between technology, space, and locale suggests that the introduction of new technology coincides with new spatial concepts. Innovative design in this project is defined as work that resonates at the intersection of the fields of technology, material science, manufacturing processes, and techniques of assembly that constitute the expanded context that projects need to engage. It is through collaborative design research on CNC wood fabrication technologies that common design and building practice is put into question, and boundaries are explored and expanded.

In this article, I discuss the influence of stage lighting on the processes of scenic design and the functioning of performance space. There has been a huge advance in lighting technology with regard to their accessibility, usability, luminosity and costs during the past decades. Light can no longer be thought of as a necessity that can just be added to the performance. It has become one of its basic visual elements, directing and focusing the spectators gaze. The rhythm of changing lighting cues create a visual dramaturgy, which has turned visual design from solid constructrions to a score of temporal events. Today you seldom see a performance without any use of projections or digital videos. I begin with a quick historical survey on the adaptation of electric light in order to exemplify the artistic significance of technological innovations. I move on to a more philosophical conversation about the metaphorical connotations of light as a basic component of the visual mise-en-scène. Then I return to the practices of contemporary theatre making and examine the contributions of the latest projection technology. I suggest that stage lighting has developed from being a technical tool making the scenes visible into a sovereign artistic agency creating images on its own terms. Today’s intermedial scenography can be seen as a parallel to the contemporary experience of our spatio-visual environment in everyday life, echoing the changes that happen in our ways of perceiving and conceptualizing the world.

The development of scientific and technical potential in the regions of Russia is an important task, without which it is difficult to imagine the competitiveness of the domestic economy. On the other hand, innovative development is closely related to such a social category as the human potential of the population. The article presents the results of a correlation analysis between indicators of scientific and technical potential, reflecting the resource component and the results of innovative activity of regions, on the one hand, and indicators of human potential, in particular, its physical aspect, on the other. The results obtained confirmed the absolute positive correlation between the indicators of scientific and technical potential and positive factors of human potential (life expectancy, natural population growth, the spread of education, visits to museums and theaters), as well as a negative relationship with negative factors of human potential (the level of addiction). The factors of scientific and technical potential that are most sensitive to the values of human potential indicators are revealed: internal costs for research and development, internal costs for technological innovation, the number of advanced production technologies used. A more detailed correlation analysis was carried out with the study of time lags separately for each region between the indicators of scientific and technical potential and three indicators of the physical aspect of human potential: life expectancy, natural population growth, the spread of alcoholism and drug addiction. The results obtained indicate that life expectancy is the strongest positive indicator of human potential, positively affecting the scientific and technical potential, and the spread of alcoholism and drug addiction is the strongest negative factor negatively associated with indicators of scientific and technical potential.

BackgroundWhile an explosion in technological sophistication has revolutionised surgery within the operating theatre, delivery of surgical ward-based care has seen little innovation. Use of telepresence allowing offsite clinicians communicate with patients has been largely restricted to outpatient settings or use of complex, expensive and static devices. We designed a prospective study ascertaining feasibility and face validity of a remotely controlled mobile audiovisual drone (LUCY) to access inpatients. This device is, uniquely, lightweight, freely mobile and emulates ‘human’ interaction by swiveling and adjusting height to patients’ eye-level.MethodsRobot-assisted ward rounds (RASWRs) were conducted over 3 months. A remotely located consultant surgeon communicated with patients/bedside teams via encrypted audiovisual telepresence robot (DoubleRobotics, Burlingame, CA). Likert-scale satisfaction questionnaires, incorporating free-text sections for mixed-methods data collection, were disseminated to patient and staff volunteers following RASWRs. The same cohort completed a linked questionnaire following conventional (gold-standard) rounds, acting as a control group. Data were paired and non-parametric analysis was performed.ResultsRASWRs are feasible (>90% completed without technical difficulty). The RASWR (n = 52 observations) demonstrated face validity with strong correlations (r > 0.7; Spearman, p-value < 0.05) between robotic and conventional ward rounds among patients and staff on core themes, including dignity/confidentiality/communication/satisfaction with management plan. Patients (96.08%, n = 25) agreed RASWR were a satisfactory alternative when consultant physical presence was not possible. There was acceptance of nursing/non-consultant hospital doctor cohort [100% (n = 11) willing to regularly partake in RASWR].ConclusionRASWRs receive high levels of patient and staff acceptance, and offer a valid alternative to conventional ward rounds when a consultant cannot be physically present.

The postmodern ideas and concepts have produced social, political and economic variables that have been affected by wars, crises, the role of globalization and the information revolution. They have created many variables in concepts and great variables in technological, artistic and cultural innovations. All these changes have contributed to changing the form of the theatrical show aesthetically and intellectually, which cast a shadow over the nature of the actor's performance who has become more demanding to change his performance and to find the mechanisms and new nature of work governing him corresponding to those variables and this prompted the researcher to adopt the subject (the performance variable of the actor's techniques in postmodern theatre show (. Research importance:It provides benefit to actors, directors and workers in the field of theater. The researcher in the theoretical framework tackled two sections:The first section: Postmodern conceptThe second section: the actor's performance in postmodernismThe researcher chose a sample for the analysis represented by the play (Azaiza), which was presented in 2014, and after the analysis, a set of results have been found and the most important of which are:- The theory of playing in the performance and performance technology clearly contributed to the blending of all the styles and artistic trends within one center that depends through their way on fragmentation, anarchy, contradiction, and the ambiguity and multiplicity of the meaning. Then the conclusions reached at and the most important of which are:-The performance variable of the actor's techniques is highlighted in postmodern presentations via subjugating the actor to the hegemony of the techniques that made him a sign subject to its authority within the show system.

Abstract Major theories of military innovation suggest that military organizations will converge on the proper employment of new weapons if they are responsive to strategic threats and overcome cultural, bureaucratic, and material constraints. Using a comparison of British and US interwar carrier programs, I show how these standard intuitions about military innovation wrongly assume that there is a predetermined performance trajectory embedded in new technology. The Royal Navy employed carrier technology differently from its American counterpart, not because of cultural biases, bureaucratic parochialism, or resource scarcity, but because the British possessed in-theater military bases and faced the threat of land-based enemy aircraft in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Far East. British carrier warfare, which the field of military innovation studies roundly criticizes as non-innovative and ineffective, was in fact a creative solution for Britain's geostrategic challenges that proved effective for the first couple of years of World War II. Since carrier warfare is a canonical case for military innovation studies, revising our understanding of Britain's interwar carrier program has significant implications for the way scholars conceptualize military innovation and its relationship to wartime military performance.

Cabiria is ‘an autonomous work of art’, between aesthetical and stylistic peculiarities. In order to legitimately recognise these specificities, we should not exalt the high level of the technical cleverness mixed with ‘tricks’ or mechanisms of technological artificiality. On the contrary, we should – first and foremost – be aware of the identity of the movie, expression of the figurative art which combines painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre and cinematograph, constitutive nucleus of a poetics of the marvellous, created by d’Annunzio’s fervid fantasy and by the director Pastrone, invention – though in a real historical context – precise as regards the chronological limits, of forms, visible signs, allegories and symbols of the Jungian ‘collective subconscious’. Visions of a tangible reality, concrete, recovered by the truth, but raised to the realm of dream, in the oneiric atmosphere of the unreal, conquer the human sensibility. It is like the idea by de Chirico, who thinks the picture as a mental theatre, stage and ideal container of a moving drama that conveys the familiarity of the represented environment with figurative clarity. Thus, the work of the master-director-demiurge becomes an organic solution of all the arts between innovation and modernity.

In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101.” Canberra: ABS (2008). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/3222.0Main+Features12006%20to%202101?OpenDocument›. ——-. “Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2008-2009: Queensland.” Canberra: ABS (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/3218.0Main%20Features62008-09?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3218.0&issue=2008-09&num=&view=›. Baylis, John. Mapping Queensland Theatre. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2009. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Ed. John G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood, 1986.241-58. Cherbo, Joni M., Harold Vogel, and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski. “Towards an Arts and Creative Sector.” Understanding the Arts and Creative Sector in the United States. Ed. Joni M. Cherbo, Ruth A. Stewart and Margaret J. Wyszomirski. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 32-60. Costanza, Robert. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health”. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Eds. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton and Benjamin D. Haskell. Washington: Island Press, 1992. 239-56. Cunningham, Stuart. “Keeping Artistic Tempers Balanced.” The Courier Mail, 4 August (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/keeping-artistic-tempers-balanced/story-e6frerc6-1225901295328›. Gallasch, Keith. “The ABC and the Arts: The Arts Ecologically.” RealTime 61 (2004). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/61/7436›. Gill, Raymond. “Is Brisbane Australia’s New Cultural Capital?” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/is-brisbane-australias-new-cultural-capital-20101015-16np5.html›. Fortin, Marie-Josée and Dale, Mark R.T. Spatial Analysis: A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Foy, Kate. “Is There Anything Right with the Theatre?” Groundling. 10 January (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://katefoy.com/2010/01/is-there-anything-right-with-the-theatre/›. Hearn, Gregory N., Simon C. Roodhouse, and Julie M. Blakey. ‘From Value Chain to Value Creating Ecology: Implications for Creative Industries Development Policy.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 13 (2007). 20 June 2011 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15026/›. Hunt, Cathy and Phyllida Shaw. A Sustainable Arts Sector: What Will It Take? Strawberry Hills: Currency House, 2007. Knell, John. Theatre’s New Rules of Evolution. Available from Intelligence Agency, 2008. Office of Economic and Statistical Research. “Information Brief: Australian Demographic Statistics June Quarter 2009.” Canberra: OESR (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/briefs/aust-demographic-stats/aust-demographic-stats-200906.pdf›.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, 2001.
Bibliography: leaves 288-310.
Introduction -- Introduction to research problem and methodology -- Study context -- Theoretical framework - Review of the literature -- Study design and methods -- Study sites, surgical procedures, and labour input to surgical production -- New intra-operative artefacts: goals, choices and consequences -- Conclusion.
Surgical technologies since the late 1980s have undergone substantial innovations that have involved ...the adoption of new machines, instruments, and related surgical materials... referred to throughtout this thesis as intra-operative artefacts... typically represents a commitment of substantial financial resources by the hospitals concerned. However, little is documented about the process whereby the decisions are made to adopt new intra-operative artefacts, and no previous research appears to have explored the work-related consequences of new intra-operative artefact adoption within operating theatre services. This thesis explores the reasons why new intra-operative artefacts are adopted, how the decisions are made, who are the participants in the decsion process and what are the expected and actual organisational consequences of new intra-operative artefact adoption.
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This research aims to delineate various modes and means of communication in the field of multimedia theatre and to relate this field of practice to contemporary debates in both theatre and media studies. This thesis defines 'multimedia theatre' in two ways: firstly to include performance where media technologies are brought into the theatrical frame as a feature of the mise en scene, and secondly to refer to the area of new media performance, where a live performer may not be present but a high degree of performativity and liveness are achieved. Discourse in the field of digital aesthetics and new media theory is applied to examples and case studies of contemporary multimedia theatre practice to highlight the formal structures and modes of audience engagement operating within such work. Multimedia theatre may be characterised by the qualities of intermediality, immersion, interactivity, and postnarratvity, and these characteristics are used in this thesis as focal points to structure analysis and investigation. The thesis also argues that recent developments in the field of multimedia theatre and performance may be viewed as related to a larger cultural shift predicated on the dissolution of the separation of the real and the virtual. It is further argued that multimedia theatre is acting as a forum for the exploration of the contemporary human experience, an experience shaped by the ubiquity of digital media and the development of a 'posthuman' perspective.

Tactical and technological innovations of one terrorist group often cross-pollinate into other groups with wildly different ideologies and from geographically diverse combat theaters. The aim of this chapter is thus to examine the potential imitation/emulation dynamics that extremist groups (both jihadist and other) might enter following the “success” of the propaganda produced by the Islamic State (IS). The chapter looks at two aspects of this problem: first, to what extent did IS innovate or imitate while producing its propaganda, and, second, how likely is it that IS’s propaganda will constitute a source of imitation for today’s and tomorrow’s violent groups? Drawing on what organizational psychology, business management, communications science, and terrorism studies say regarding creativity and innovation, the chapter highlights the drivers of IS’s innovation and thereby considers the likelihood of their being replicated elsewhere.

A set of metaheuristics has proved its efficiency in solving rapidly NP-hard problems. Several combinatorial and continuous optimization areas drew profit from these powerful alternative techniques. This chapter intends to describe a discrete version of bat algorithm (BA) combined to generalized walk evolutionary (GEWA), also called bat algorithm with generalized fly or walk (BAG) in order to solve discrete industrial optimization. The first case of study is the well-known hybrid flow shop scheduling. The second one concerns the operating theatre that represents a critical manufacturing system, as the products delivered are patients. The last problem is the redundancy optimization (ROP) for series-parallel multi-state power system (MSS). Its resolution involves the selection of components with an appropriate level of redundancy to maximize system reliability with constrained cost. A universal moment generating function (UMGF) is used to estimate reliabilities. The modified bat algorithm on specific benchmarks was compared with the original one, and other results taken from the literature of each case study.

The connections between epic performances and technological innovation are longstanding, dating from the invention of the mechane in the fifth century BCE. In the early modern period they encompass Inigo Jones’ extraordinary scenic innovations, which he introduced in direct imitation of the Italians for the Court Masques in England from 1604 to 1640. With his complex machinery, Jones was able to effect movement across time and space and, especially, for the gods in his retellings. These scenic innovations, which were to endure for at least the next two-and-a-half centuries, were in many ways dictated by, and heavily dependent upon, epic’s divine machinery, its spectacular encounters and its multiple locations. Yet in 1781 the philosopher and critic James Harris praises Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and George Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity (1737) because they both avoid ‘using Machines, Deities, Prodigies, Spectres or anything else incomprehensible, or incredible’. The ‘merveilleux’ of tragedy, and especially the machines used to usher it into the action, were now deemed deeply problematic in the theatre of bourgeois realism. Throughout the nineteenth and for much of the twentieth century, the machinery associated with the gods was confined to ballet and opera. In recent years, however, in what is regularly dubbed the contemporary ‘posthuman’ world, where the boundaries between human and machine are increasingly blurred and artificial intelligences are not merely tools but potentially independent agencies, thinking about gods from machines has taken on new resonances.