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Journal articles on the topic 'Derivative-free line search'

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1

Diniz-Ehrhardt, M. A., J. M. Martínez, and M. Raydan. "A derivative-free nonmonotone line-search technique for unconstrained optimization." Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 219, no. 2 (2008): 383–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cam.2007.07.017.

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2

Li, Dong-Hui, and Masao Fukushima. "A derivative-free line search and global convergence of Broyden-like method for nonlinear equations." Optimization Methods and Software 13, no. 3 (2000): 181–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10556780008805782.

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3

Wang, Jueyu, and Detong Zhu. "Conjugate gradient path method without line search technique for derivative-free unconstrained optimization." Numerical Algorithms 73, no. 4 (2016): 957–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11075-016-0124-9.

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4

Pellegrini, Riccardo, Andrea Serani, Giampaolo Liuzzi, Francesco Rinaldi, Stefano Lucidi, and Matteo Diez. "Hybridization of Multi-Objective Deterministic Particle Swarm with Derivative-Free Local Searches." Mathematics 8, no. 4 (2020): 546. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math8040546.

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The paper presents a multi-objective derivative-free and deterministic global/local hybrid algorithm for the efficient and effective solution of simulation-based design optimization (SBDO) problems. The objective is to show how the hybridization of two multi-objective derivative-free global and local algorithms achieves better performance than the separate use of the two algorithms in solving specific SBDO problems for hull-form design. The proposed method belongs to the class of memetic algorithms, where the global exploration capability of multi-objective deterministic particle swarm optimization is enriched by exploiting the local search accuracy of a derivative-free multi-objective line-search method. To the authors best knowledge, studies are still limited on memetic, multi-objective, deterministic, derivative-free, and evolutionary algorithms for an effective and efficient solution of SBDO for hull-form design. The proposed formulation manages global and local searches based on the hypervolume metric. The hybridization scheme uses two parameters to control the local search activation and the number of function calls used by the local algorithm. The most promising values of these parameters were identified using forty analytical tests representative of the SBDO problem of interest. The resulting hybrid algorithm was finally applied to two SBDO problems for hull-form design. For both analytical tests and SBDO problems, the hybrid method achieves better performance than its global and local counterparts.
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5

Fan, Bin. "A smoothing Broyden-like method with a nonmonotone derivative-free line search for nonlinear complementarity problems." Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 290 (December 2015): 641–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cam.2015.06.022.

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6

Griewank, Anderas. "The “global” convergence of Broyden-like methods with suitable line search." Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society. Series B. Applied Mathematics 28, no. 1 (1986): 75–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0334270000005208.

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Iterative methods for solving a square system of nonlinear equations g(x) = 0 often require that the sum of squares residual γ (x) ≡ ½∥g(x)∥2 be reduced at each step. Since the gradient of γ depends on the Jacobian ∇g, this stabilization strategy is not easily implemented if only approximations Bk to ∇g are available. Therefore most quasi-Newton algorithms either include special updating steps or reset Bk to a divided difference estimate of ∇g whenever no satisfactory progress is made. Here the need for such back-up devices is avoided by a derivative-free line search in the range of g. Assuming that the Bk are generated from an rbitrary B0 by fixed scale updates, we establish superlinear convergence from within any compact level set of γ on which g has a differentiable inverse function g−1.
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7

Halilu, Abubakar Sani, M. K. Dauda, M. Y. Waziri, and M. Mamat. "A Derivative-Free Decent Method Via Acceleration Parameter for Solving Systems of Nonlinear Equations." Open Journal of Science and Technology 2, no. 3 (2019): 1–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.31580/ojst.v2i3.931.

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An algorithm for solving large-scale systems of nonlinear equations based on the transformation of the Newton method with the line search into a derivative-free descent method is introduced. Main idea used in the algorithm construction is to approximate the Jacobian by an appropriate diagonal matrix. Furthermore, the step length is calculated using inexact line search procedure. Under appropriate conditions, the proposed method is proved to be globally convergent under mild conditions. The numerical results presented show the efficiency of the proposed method.
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8

Cheng, W., and D. H. Li. "A derivative-free nonmonotone line search and its application to the spectral residual method." IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis 29, no. 3 (2008): 814–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/imanum/drn019.

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9

Long, Jun, and Changfeng Ma. "A filter method for solving nonlinear complementarity problems based on derivative-free line search." Applied Mathematics and Computation 190, no. 1 (2007): 271–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2007.01.025.

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10

Mohammad, Hassan, and Auwal Bala Abubakar. "A descent derivative-free algorithm for nonlinear monotone equations with convex constraints." RAIRO - Operations Research 54, no. 2 (2020): 489–505. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/ro/2020008.

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In this paper, we present a derivative-free algorithm for nonlinear monotone equations with convex constraints. The search direction is a product of a positive parameter and the negation of a residual vector. At each iteration step, the algorithm generates a descent direction independent from the line search used. Under appropriate assumptions, the global convergence of the algorithm is given. Numerical experiments show the algorithm has advantages over the recently proposed algorithms by Gao and He (Calcolo 55 (2018) 53) and Liu and Li (Comput. Math. App. 70 (2015) 2442–2453).
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11

Sabi'u, Jamilu. "Enhanced Derivative-Free Conjugate Gradient Method for Solving Symmetric Nonlinear Equations." International Journal of Advances in Applied Sciences 5, no. 1 (2016): 50. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijaas.v5.i1.pp50-57.

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In this article, an enhanced conjugate gradient approach for solving symmetric nonlinear equations is propose without computing the Jacobian matrix. This approach is completely derivative and matrix free. Using classical assumptions the proposed method has global convergence with nonmonotone line search. Some reported numerical results shows the approach is promising.<p style="margin: 0px; text-indent: 0px; -qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty;"> </p>
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12

Dai, Zhifeng, and Huan Zhu. "A Modified Hestenes-Stiefel-Type Derivative-Free Method for Large-Scale Nonlinear Monotone Equations." Mathematics 8, no. 2 (2020): 168. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math8020168.

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The goal of this paper is to extend the modified Hestenes-Stiefel method to solve large-scale nonlinear monotone equations. The method is presented by combining the hyperplane projection method (Solodov, M.V.; Svaiter, B.F. A globally convergent inexact Newton method for systems of monotone equations, in: M. Fukushima, L. Qi (Eds.)Reformulation: Nonsmooth, Piecewise Smooth, Semismooth and Smoothing Methods, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1998, 355-369) and the modified Hestenes-Stiefel method in Dai and Wen (Dai, Z.; Wen, F. Global convergence of a modified Hestenes-Stiefel nonlinear conjugate gradient method with Armijo line search. Numer Algor. 2012, 59, 79-93). In addition, we propose a new line search for the derivative-free method. Global convergence of the proposed method is established if the system of nonlinear equations are Lipschitz continuous and monotone. Preliminary numerical results are given to test the effectiveness of the proposed method.
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13

Donghui, Li, and Masao Fukushima. "A derivative-free line search and dfp method for symmetric equations with global and superlinear convergence." Numerical Functional Analysis and Optimization 20, no. 1-2 (1999): 59–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01630569908816881.

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14

Su, Zhenhua, and Min Li. "A Derivative-Free Liu–Storey Method for Solving Large-Scale Nonlinear Systems of Equations." Mathematical Problems in Engineering 2020 (October 28, 2020): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/6854501.

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In this paper, a descent Liu–Storey conjugate gradient method is extended to solve large-scale nonlinear systems of equations. Based on certain assumptions, the global convergence property is obtained with a nonmonotone line search. The proposed method is suitable to solve large-scale problems for the low-storage requirement. Numerical experiment results show that the new method is practically effective.
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15

FANG, XIAOWEI, and QIN NI. "A NEW DERIVATIVE-FREE CONJUGATE GRADIENT METHOD FOR LARGE-SCALE NONLINEAR SYSTEMS OF EQUATIONS." Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society 95, no. 3 (2017): 500–511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0004972717000168.

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We propose a new derivative-free conjugate gradient method for large-scale nonlinear systems of equations. The method combines the Rivaie–Mustafa–Ismail–Leong conjugate gradient method for unconstrained optimisation problems and a new nonmonotone line-search method. The global convergence of the proposed method is established under some mild assumptions. Numerical results using 104 test problems from the CUTEst test problem library show that the proposed method is promising.
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16

Wang, Jueyu, and Detong Zhu. "Derivative-free restrictively preconditioned conjugate gradient path method without line search technique for solving linear equality constrained optimization." Computers & Mathematics with Applications 73, no. 2 (2017): 277–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.camwa.2016.11.025.

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17

Sani Halilu, Abubakar, H. Abdullahi, and Mohammed Yusuf Waziri. "En enhanced matrix-free method via double step length approach for solving systems of nonlinear equations." International Journal of Applied Mathematical Research 6, no. 4 (2017): 147. http://dx.doi.org/10.14419/ijamr.v6i4.8072.

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A variant method for solving system of nonlinear equations is presented. This method use the special form of iteration with two step length parameters, we suggest a derivative-free method without computing the Jacobian via acceleration parameter as well as inexact line search procedure. The proposed method is proven to be globally convergent under mild condition. The preliminary numerical comparison reported in this paper using a large scale benchmark test problems show that the proposed method is practically quite effective.
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18

Tang, Jingyong, and Jinchuan Zhou. "Smoothing inexact Newton method based on a new derivative-free nonmonotone line search for the NCP over circular cones." Annals of Operations Research 295, no. 2 (2020): 787–808. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-020-03773-8.

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19

Berkemeier, Manuel, and Sebastian Peitz. "Derivative-Free Multiobjective Trust Region Descent Method Using Radial Basis Function Surrogate Models." Mathematical and Computational Applications 26, no. 2 (2021): 31. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mca26020031.

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We present a local trust region descent algorithm for unconstrained and convexly constrained multiobjective optimization problems. It is targeted at heterogeneous and expensive problems, i.e., problems that have at least one objective function that is computationally expensive. Convergence to a Pareto critical point is proven. The method is derivative-free in the sense that derivative information need not be available for the expensive objectives. Instead, a multiobjective trust region approach is used that works similarly to its well-known scalar counterparts and complements multiobjective line-search algorithms. Local surrogate models constructed from evaluation data of the true objective functions are employed to compute possible descent directions. In contrast to existing multiobjective trust region algorithms, these surrogates are not polynomial but carefully constructed radial basis function networks. This has the important advantage that the number of data points needed per iteration scales linearly with the decision space dimension. The local models qualify as fully linear and the corresponding general scalar framework is adapted for problems with multiple objectives.
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20

Waziri, M. Y., L. Muhammad, and J. Sabi’u. "A Simple Three-term Conjugate Gradient Algorithm for Solving Symmetric Systems of Nonlinear Equations." International Journal of Advances in Applied Sciences 5, no. 3 (2016): 118. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijaas.v5.i3.pp118-127.

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<p>This paper presents a simple three-terms Conjugate Gradient algorithm for solving Large-Scale systems of nonlinear equations without computing Jacobian and gradient via the special structure of the underlying function. This three term CG of the proposed method has an advantage of solving relatively large-scale problems, with lower storage requirement compared to some existing methods. By incoporating the Powel restart approach in to the algorithm, we prove the global convergence of the proposed method with a derivative free line search under suitable assumtions. The numerical results are presented which show that the proposed method is promising.</p>
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21

Feng, Haishan, and Tingting Li. "An Accelerated Conjugate Gradient Algorithm for Solving Nonlinear Monotone Equations and Image Restoration Problems." Mathematical Problems in Engineering 2020 (October 5, 2020): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/7945467.

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Combining the three-term conjugate gradient method of Yuan and Zhang and the acceleration step length of Andrei with the hyperplane projection method of Solodov and Svaiter, we propose an accelerated conjugate gradient algorithm for solving nonlinear monotone equations in this paper. The presented algorithm has the following properties: (i) All search directions generated by the algorithm satisfy the sufficient descent and trust region properties independent of the line search technique. (ii) A derivative-free search technique is proposed along the direction to obtain the step length αk. (iii) If ϕk=−αkhk−hwkTdk>0, then an acceleration scheme is used to modify the step length in a multiplicative manner and create a point. (iv) If the point satisfies the given condition, then it is the next point; otherwise, the hyperplane projection technique is used to obtain the next point. (v) The global convergence of the proposed algorithm is established under some suitable conditions. Numerical comparisons with other conjugate gradient algorithms show that the accelerated computing scheme is more competitive. In addition, the presented algorithm can also be applied to image restoration.
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22

Abubakar, Kumam, Mohammad, and Awwal. "An Efficient Conjugate Gradient Method for Convex Constrained Monotone Nonlinear Equations with Applications." Mathematics 7, no. 9 (2019): 767. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math7090767.

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This research paper proposes a derivative-free method for solving systems of nonlinearequations with closed and convex constraints, where the functions under consideration are continuousand monotone. Given an initial iterate, the process first generates a specific direction and then employsa line search strategy along the direction to calculate a new iterate. If the new iterate solves theproblem, the process will stop. Otherwise, the projection of the new iterate onto the closed convex set(constraint set) determines the next iterate. In addition, the direction satisfies the sufficient descentcondition and the global convergence of the method is established under suitable assumptions.Finally, some numerical experiments were presented to show the performance of the proposedmethod in solving nonlinear equations and its application in image recovery problems.
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23

Sun, Min, Jing Liu, and Yaru Wang. "Two Improved Conjugate Gradient Methods with Application in Compressive Sensing and Motion Control." Mathematical Problems in Engineering 2020 (May 5, 2020): 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2020/9175496.

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To solve the monotone equations with convex constraints, a novel multiparameterized conjugate gradient method (MPCGM) is designed and analyzed. This kind of conjugate gradient method is derivative-free and can be viewed as a modified version of the famous Fletcher–Reeves (FR) conjugate gradient method. Under approximate conditions, we show that the proposed method has global convergence property. Furthermore, we generalize the MPCGM to solve unconstrained optimization problem and offer another novel conjugate gradient method (NCGM), which satisfies the sufficient descent property without any line search. Global convergence of the NCGM is also proved. Finally, we report some numerical results to show the efficiency of two novel methods. Specifically, their practical applications in compressive sensing and motion control of robot manipulator are also investigated.
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24

Dauda, Muhammad Kabir, Shehu Usman, Hayatu Ubale, and M. Mamat. "An Alternative Modified Conjugate Gradient Coefficient for Solving Nonlinear System of Equations." Open Journal of Science and Technology 2, no. 3 (2019): 5–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.31580/ojst.v2i3.932.

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In mathematical term, the method of solving models and finding the best alternatives is known as optimization. Conjugate gradient (CG) method is an evolution of computational method in solving optimization problems. In this article, an alternative modified conjugate gradient coefficient for solving large-scale nonlinear system of equations is presented. The method is an improved version of the Rivaie et el conjugate gradient method for unconstrained optimization problems. The new CG is tested on a set of test functions under exact line search. The approach is easy to implement due to its derivative-free nature and has been proven to be effective in solving real-life application. Under some mild assumptions, the global convergence of the proposed method is established. The new CG coefficient also retains the sufficient descent condition. The performance of the new method is compared to the well-known previous PRP CG methods based on number of iterations and CPU time. Numerical results using some benchmark problems show that the proposed method is promising and has the best efficiency amongst all the methods tested.
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25

Wang, Peng, and Detong Zhu. "A derivative-free affine scaling trust region methods based on probabilistic models with new nonmonotone line search technique for linear inequality constrained minimization without strict complementarity." International Journal of Computer Mathematics 96, no. 4 (2018): 663–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207160.2018.1517208.

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26

K. Dauda, M., Mustafa Mamat, Mohamad A. Mohamed, and Nor Shamsidah Amir Hamzah. "Hybrid conjugate gradient parameter for solving symmetric systems of nonlinear equations." Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 16, no. 1 (2019): 539. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijeecs.v16.i1.pp539-543.

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Mathematical models from recent research are mostly nonlinear equations in nature. Numerical solutions to such systems are widely needed and applied in those areas of mathematics. Although, in recent years, this field received serious attentions and new approach were discovered, but yet the efficiency of the previous versions suffers setback. This article gives a new hybrid conjugate gradient parameter, the method is derivative-free and analyzed with an effective inexact line search in a given conditions. Theoretical proofs show that the proposed method retains the sufficient descent and global convergence properties of the original CG methods. The proposed method is tested on a set of test functions, then compared to the two previous classical CG-parameter that resulted the given method, and its performance is given based on number of iterations and CPU time. The numerical results show that the new proposed method is efficient and effective amongst all the methods tested. The graphical representation of the result justify our findings. The computational result indicates that the new hybrid conjugate gradient parameter is suitable and capable for solving symmetric systems of nonlinear equations.
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27

Obieziurska, Magdalena, Agata Pacuła, Ulana Juhas, Jędrzej Antosiewicz, and Jacek Ścianowski. "The Influence of O/S Exchange on the Biocatalytical Activity of Benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-ones." Catalysts 8, no. 11 (2018): 493. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/catal8110493.

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The crucial feature of organoselenium compounds, when considering them as promising drug candidates in cancer therapy, is their unique ability to alter the cellular redox regulations. Organic Se-molecules continue to demonstrate a positive therapeutic effect both in cancer prevention—as antioxidants, and treatment—as prooxidants. The growing interest in this field of research highlights the need to search for particular pharmacophore motifs, which could enhance the efficiency and selectivity, and decrease the toxicity of potential anticancer agents. Herein, a series of redox-active organoselenium derivatives—N-functionalized benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-thiones, has been designed and synthetized. A new synthetic pathway, with the application of Lawesson’s reagent, has been developed and efficiently applied. The key steps involving microwave irradiation facilitated performing the reaction in solvent-free conditions, shortening the reaction time and significantly improving the overall yield of the process. Six N-alkyl derivatives have been obtained and tested as antioxidant catalysts and anti-proliferative agents. The N-propyl benzisoselenazol-3(2H)-thione was the best peroxide scavenger and the N-cyclohexyl derivative exhibited the best cytotoxic activity towards prostate cancer cell line DU145.
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28

Wei, Changzhu, Yepeng Han, Jialun Pu, Yuan Li, and Panxing Huang. "Rapid multi-layer method on solving optimal endo-atmospheric trajectory of launch vehicles." Aeronautical Journal 123, no. 1267 (2019): 1396–414. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/aer.2019.17.

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ABSTRACTIn order to increase the speed, precision and robustness against the engine failure in solving optimal endo-atmospheric ascent trajectory of a launch vehicle, a rapid multi-layer solving method with improved numerical algorithms was proposed. The proposed method is capable of decomposing a large number of intervals into multiple layers with advantageous convergence property. Firstly, the problem of solving optimal endo-atmospheric ascent trajectory, which was subjected to path constraints and terminal constraints, was transformed into a Hamilton Two Point Boundary Value Problem (TPBVP). Then, through the finite difference method and numerical solving algorithm, the Hamilton TPBVP was iteratively solved with fewer initial discrete intervals. The initial values of higher-layer iterations were obtained by interpolating convergent solutions at sparse nodes into the doubly discrete nodes of high layers. The process was repeatedly performed until the solving precision met the requirements. To decrease the calculation load in solving TPBVPs, two improved solving algorithms without and with fewer Jacobian calculations were studied, respectively the Derivative-free Spectral Algorithm for Nonlinear Equations(DF-SANE) combined with the improved derivative-free nonmonotone line search strategy, and the Modified Newton method with a relaxation factor in combination with the Inverse Broyden Quasi-Newton method, denoted as ‘MN-IBQ’. Simulation verifications showed that the multi-layer method had significantly higher solving speed than the single-layer method. For the improved numerical algorithms, the DF-SANE was trapped in the local convergence problem. While using the proposed MN-IBQ can further increase the solving rate. Typical engine failure simulations showed that the multi-layer method with the MN-IBQ algorithm had not only significantly higher solving speed but also stronger robustness, where the traditional single-layer method could not adapt. In addition, the thrust loss tolerance limits for the multi-layer solving method were given for different engine failure times. The results show promising potential of the proposed approach in trajectory online generation and closed-loop guidance of launch vehicles at the endo-atmospheric ascent stage.
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29

Selvan, S. Easter, S. Thomas George, and R. Balakrishnan. "Range-Based ICA Using a Nonsmooth Quasi-Newton Optimizer for Electroencephalographic Source Localization in Focal Epilepsy." Neural Computation 27, no. 3 (2015): 628–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/neco_a_00700.

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Independent component analysis (ICA) aims at separating a multivariate signal into independent nongaussian signals by optimizing a contrast function with no knowledge on the mixing mechanism. Despite the availability of a constellation of contrast functions, a Hartley-entropy–based ICA contrast endowed with the discriminacy property makes it an appealing choice as it guarantees the absence of mixing local optima. Fueled by an outstanding source separation performance of this contrast function in practical instances, a succession of optimization techniques has recently been adopted to solve the ICA problem. Nevertheless, the nondifferentiability of the considered contrast restricts the choice of the optimizer to the class of derivative-free methods. On the contrary, this letter concerns a Riemannian quasi-Newton scheme involving an explicit expression for the gradient to optimize the contrast function that is differentiable almost everywhere. Furthermore, the inexact line search insisting on the weak Wolfe condition and a terminating criterion befitting the partly smooth function optimization have been generalized to manifold settings, leaving the previous results intact. The investigations with diversified images and the electroencephalographic (EEG) data acquired from 45 focal epileptic subjects demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in terms of computational savings and reliable EEG source localization, respectively. Additional experimental results are available in the online supplement.
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Dauda, Muhammad Kabir, Mustafa Mamat, Mohamad Afendee Mohamed, and Mahammad Yusuf Waziri. "Improved quasi-newton method via SR1 update for solving symmetric systems of nonlinear equations." Malaysian Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences 15, no. 1 (2019): 117–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.11113/mjfas.v15n2019.1085.

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The systems of nonlinear equations emerges from many areas of computing, scientific and engineering research applications. A variety of an iterative methods for solving such systems have been developed, this include the famous Newton method. Unfortunately, the Newton method suffers setback, which includes storing matrix at each iteration and computing Jacobian matrix, which may be difficult or even impossible to compute. To overcome the drawbacks that bedeviling Newton method, a modification to SR1 update was proposed in this study. With the aid of inexact line search procedure by Li and Fukushima, the modification was achieved by simply approximating the inverse Hessian matrix with an identity matrix without computing the Jacobian. Unlike the classical SR1 method, the modification neither require storing matrix at each iteration nor needed to compute the Jacobian matrix. In finding the solution to non-linear problems of the form 40 benchmark test problems were solved. A comparison was made with other two methods based on CPU time and number of iterations. In this study, the proposed method solved 37 problems effectively in terms of number of iterations. In terms of CPU time, the proposed method also outperformed the existing methods. The contribution from the methodology yielded a method that is suitable for solving symmetric systems of nonlinear equations. The derivative-free feature of the proposed method gave its advantage to solve relatively large-scale problems (10,000 variables) compared to the existing methods. From the preliminary numerical results, the proposed method turned out to be significantly faster, effective and suitable for solving large scale symmetric nonlinear equations.
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31

Gusev, A. V., E. Majorana, V. N. Rudenko, and V. D. Yushkin. "Measurement of geophysical effects on the large-scale gravitational-wave interferometer." International Journal of Modern Physics D 29, no. 07 (2020): 2050050. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218271820500509.

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Geophysical application of large free-mass laser interferometers, which had been designed merely for the detection of gravitational radiation of an astrophysical nature, are considered. Despite the suspended mass-mirrors, these interferometers can be considered as two coordinate meters even at very low frequency ([Formula: see text][Formula: see text]Hz) are rather accurate two-coordinate distance meters. In this case, the measurement of geodynamic deformations looks like a parallel product of long-term observations dictated by the task of the blind search for gravitational waves (GW) of extraterrestrial origin. Compared to conventional laser strain meters, gravitational interferometers have the advantage of an increased absolute value of the deformation signal due to the 3–4[Formula: see text]km baseline. The magnitude of the tidal variations of the baseline is 150–200[Formula: see text]microns, leading to conceive the observation of the fine structure of geodynamic disturbances. This paper presents the results of processing geophysical measurements made on a Virgo interferometer during test (technical) series of observations in 2007–2009. The specific design of mass-mirrors suspensions in the Virgo gravitational interferometer also creates a unique possibility of separating gravitational and deformation perturbations through a recording mutual angular deviations of the suspensions of its central and end mirrors. It gives a measurement of the spatial derivative of the gravity acceleration along with the geoid of the Earth. In this mode, the physics of the interferometer is considered with estimates of the achievable sensitivity in the application to the classical problem of registration of oscillations of the inner Earth’s core.
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32

Awasthi, Aradhana, Delphine Rolland, Matthew J. Barth, et al. "Global Phosphoproteomics Analysis Of Burkitt Lymphoma (BL) Demonstrates Abnormal Protein Phosphorylation In BCR, Spliceosome, mTOR and Chemokine Signaling Pathways In Rituximab Induced Resistant BL." Blood 122, no. 21 (2013): 928. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v122.21.928.928.

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Abstract Background Burkitt Lymphoma (BL) is the most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in children and adolescents and has an excellent prognosis (≥80% 5years, EFS) following short but intense multi-agent chemotherapy (Cairo et al JCO, 2012). The prognosis has improved following the addition of targeted immunotherapy with rituximab (Goldman/Cairo et al, Leukemia, 2013). However, a subset of patients with chemoimmunotherapy resistant disease have a dismal prognosis (≤ 10% 5 years, EFS) (Miles/Cairo et al. BJH, 2012 and Cairo et al Blood, 2007). Deregulation of signaling pathways controlled by protein phosphorylation underlies the pathogenesis of B-cell lymphomas, however the extent to which they contribute to rituximab resistance is largely unknown (Barth et al. BJH, 2013). Recently, Czuczman et al have generated a chemoimmunotherapy resistant BL cell line Raji4RH from the native Raji BL line after serial exposures to rituximab (Czuczman et al Clin Cancer Res, 2008). Objective We therefore sought to compare the in-vitro cytotoxicity of rituximab to Raji vs. Raji4RH and the resulting phosphoproteomics changes between untreated and rituximab treated Raji vs. Raji4RH by global phosphoproteomics. Methods In order to identify deregulated signaling proteins/pathways that play a role in BL rituximab resistance, we performed a mass spectrometry-based label-free quantitative phosphoproteomic profiling of the BL cell line Raji, (CD20+,ATCC, Manhassas, VA) and its rituximab resistant derivative Raji 4RH in the presence or absence of Rituximab (100µg/ml for 24 hr) or isotype control. Six milligrams of protein from each condition were digested by trypsin and peptides were subjected to phosphopeptide enrichment using metal oxide affinity chromatography (MOAC) and immunoprecipitation using a cocktail of 3 anti-phosphotyrosine antibodies. An LTQ Orbitrap XL in-line with a Paradigm MS2 HPLC was employed for acquiring high-resolution MS and MS/MS data which were searched with the Swissprot Human taxonomic protein database. Quantitation of identified phosphopeptides was based on spectral counts of phosphorylated peptides. The accuracy of the phospho-site localization was predicted using Luciphor program. Pathway analyses were performed using the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) Results Our in-vitro results shows that rituximab induced significantly more cell death against Raji vs. Raji4RH (32.7±6.8% vs.5.5±2.2%, p=0.001) compared to isotype control (9.35±0.75% vs.8.9±1.1%, p=NS) at 24 hrs. Furthermore, 2272 unique phosphopeptides were identified and quantified with a probability P> 0.7 and a false localization rate (FLR) < 0.01. These unique phosphopeptides corresponded to 850 unique phosphorylated proteins. Six hundred and nine proteins were differentially phosphorylated (>1.5-fold change) between Raji and Raji 4RH (Figure 1A). Out of these proteins, 374 were more phosphorylated in Raji4RH than in Raji and 235 were more phosphorylated in Raji than in Raji 4RH. Proteins in the spliceosome and the BCR signaling pathway were significantly represented. Changes in the phosphorylation of 430 proteins were induced by Rituximab in Raji cells and involved those in the B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling pathway (LYN, LCK, SLAMF1, PAG1, CD20), the spliceosome (SF3A1, SF3B1, SRSF6), the mTOR pathway (RICTOR, PDPK1, RPS6KA1, BRAF) and the chemokine signaling pathway (CXCR5, PTK2B, CCL1, PRKCD). After rituximab treatment, 559 proteins were differentially phosphorylated between Raji and Raji 4RH (Figure 1B). Rituximab treatment increased the phosphorylation of 262 proteins in Raji 4R while it increased the phosphorylation of 299 proteins in Raji. Conclusions The data indicate that Rituximab results in global changes in proteins in BL involved in not just BCR signaling but also in the spliceosome, the mTOR and the chemokine signaling pathway. Furthermore, aberrant phosphorylation-induced signaling events in the spliceosome and the BCR signaling pathways may contribute to resistance to rituximab. These data revealed the utility of unbiased phosphoproteome interrogation of rituximab mediated signaling events as well as characterizing signaling networks that may provide insights into pathogenetic mechanisms of rituximab resistance. AA and DR considered co-primary first authors, and ML and MC considered co-senior authors. Disclosures: Cairo: Roche/Genentech : advisory board Other.
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33

Lapucci, Matteo, Tommaso Levato, and Marco Sciandrone. "Convergent Inexact Penalty Decomposition Methods for Cardinality-Constrained Problems." Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, December 14, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10957-020-01793-9.

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AbstractIn this manuscript, we consider the problem of minimizing a smooth function with cardinality constraint, i.e., the constraint requiring that the "Equation missing"-norm of the vector of variables cannot exceed a given threshold value. A well-known approach of the literature is represented by the class of penalty decomposition methods, where a sequence of penalty subproblems, depending on the original variables and new variables, are inexactly solved by a two-block decomposition method. The inner iterates of the decomposition method require to perform exact minimizations with respect to the two blocks of variables. The computation of the global minimum with respect to the original variables may be prohibitive in the case of nonconvex objective function. In order to overcome this nontrivial issue, we propose a modified penalty decomposition method, where the exact minimizations with respect to the original variables are replaced by suitable line searches along gradient-related directions. We also present a derivative-free penalty decomposition algorithm for black-box optimization. We state convergence results of the proposed methods, and we report the results of preliminary computational experiments.
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Arkani-Hamed, Nima, and Keisuke Harigaya. "Naturalness and the muon magnetic moment." Journal of High Energy Physics 2021, no. 9 (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/jhep09(2021)025.

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Abstract We study a predictive model for explaining the apparent deviation of the muon anomalous magnetic moment from the Standard Model expectation. There are no new scalars and hence no new hierarchy puzzles beyond those associated with the Higgs; the only new particles at the TeV scale are vector-like singlet and doublet leptons. Interestingly, this simple model provides a calculable example violating the Wilsonian notion of naturalness: despite the absence of any symmetries prohibiting its generation, the coefficient of the naively leading dimension-six operator for (g − 2) vanishes at one-loop. While effective field theorists interpret this either as a surprising UV cancellation of power divergences, or as a delicate cancellation between matching UV and calculable IR corrections to (g − 2) from parametrically separated scales, there is a simple explanation in the full theory: the loop integrand is a total derivative of a function vanishing in both the deep UV and IR. The leading contribution to (g − 2) arises from dimension-eight operators, and thus the required masses of new fermions are lower than naively expected, with a sizeable portion of parameter space already covered by direct searches at the LHC. The viable parameter space free of fine-tuning for the muon mass will be fully covered by future direct LHC searches, and all of the parameter space can be probed by precision measurements at planned future lepton colliders.
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35

Walker, Ruth. "Double Quote Unquote: Scholarly Attribution as (a) Speculative Play in the Remix Academy." M/C Journal 16, no. 4 (2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.689.

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Many years ago, while studying in Paris as a novice postgraduate, I was invited to accompany a friend to a seminar with Jacques Derrida. I leapt at the chance even though I was only just learning French. Although I tried hard to follow the discussion, the extent of my participation was probably signing the attendance sheet. Afterwards, caught up on the edges of a small crowd of acolytes in the foyer as we waited out a sudden rainstorm, Derrida turned to me and charmingly complimented me on my forethought in predicting rain, pointing to my umbrella. Flustered, I garbled something in broken French about how I never forgot my umbrella, how desolated I was that he had mislaid his, and would he perhaps desire mine? After a small silence, where he and the other students side-eyed me warily, he declined. For years I dined on this story of meeting a celebrity academic, cheerfully re-enacting my linguistic ineptitude. Nearly a decade later I was taken aback when I overheard a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney re-telling my encounter as a witty anecdote, where an early career academic teased Derrida with a masterful quip, quoting back to him his own attention to someone else’s quote. It turned out that Spurs, one of Derrida’s more obscure early essays, employs an extended riff on an inexplicable citation found in inverted commas in the margins of Nietzsche’s papers: “J’ai oublié mon parapluie” (“I have forgotten my umbrella”). My clumsy response to a polite enquiry was recast in a process of Chinese whispers in my academic community as a snappy spur-of-the-moment witticism. This re-telling didn’t just selectively edit my encounter, but remixed it with a meta-narrative that I had myself referenced, albeit unknowingly. My ongoing interest in the more playful breaches of scholarly conventions of quotation and attribution can be traced back to this incident, where my own presentation of an academic self was appropriated and remixed from fumbler to quipster. I’ve also been struck throughout my teaching career by the seeming disconnect between the stringent academic rules for referencing and citation and the everyday strategies of appropriation that are inherent to popular remix culture. I’m taking the opportunity in this paper to reflect on the practice of scholarly quotation itself, before examining some recent creative provocations to the academic ‘author’ situated inventively at the crossroad between scholarly convention and remix culture. Early in his own teaching career at Oxford University Lewis Carroll, wrote to his younger siblings describing the importance of maintaining his dignity as a new tutor. He outlines the distance his college was at pains to maintain between teachers and their students: “otherwise, you know, they are not humble enough”. Carroll playfully describes the set-up of a tutor sitting at his desk, behind closed doors and without access to today’s communication technologies, relying on a series of college ‘scouts’ to convey information down corridors and staircases to the confused student waiting for instruction below. The lectures, according to Carroll, went something like this: Tutor: What is twice three?Scout: What’s a rice-tree?Sub-scout: When is ice free?Sub-sub-scout: What’s a nice fee??Student (timidly): Half a guinea.Sub-sub-scout: Can’t forge any!Sub-scout: Ho for jinny!Scout: Don’t be a ninny!Tutor (looking offended, tries another question): Divide a hundred by twelve.Scout: Provide wonderful bells!Sub-scout: Go ride under it yourself!Sub-sub-scout: Deride the dunderhead elf!Pupil (surprised): What do you mean?Sub-sub-scout: Doings between!Sub-scout: Blue is the screen!Scout: Soup tureen! And so the lecture proceeds… Carroll’s parody of academic miscommunication and misquoting was reproduced by Pierre Bourdieu at the opening of the book Academic Discourse to illustrate the failures of pedagogical practice in higher education in the mid 1960s, when he found scholarly language relied on codes that were “destined to dazzle rather than to enlighten” (3). Bourdieu et al found that students struggled to reproduce appropriately scholarly discourse and were constrained to write in a badly understood and poorly mastered language, finding reassurance in what he called a ‘rhetoric of despair’: “through a kind of incantatory or sacrificial rite, they try to call up and reinstate the tropes, schemas or words which to them distinguish professorial language” (4). The result was bad writing that karaoke-ed a pseudo academic discourse, accompanied by a habit of thoughtlessly patching together other peoples’ words and phrases. Such sloppy quoting activities of course invite the scholarly taboo of plagiarism or its extreme opposite, hypercitation. Elsewhere, Jacques Derrida developed an important theory of citationality and language, but it is intriguing to note his own considerable unease with conventional acknowledgement practices, of quoting and being quoted: I would like to spare you the tedium, the waste of time, and the subservience that always accompany the classic pedagogical procedures of forging links, referring back to past premises or arguments, justifying one’s own trajectory, method, system, and more or less skilful transitions, re-establishing continuity, and so on. These are but some of the imperatives of classical pedagogy with which, to be sure, one can never break once and for all. Yet, if you were to submit to them rigorously, they would very soon reduce you to silence, tautology and tiresome repetition. (The Ear of the Other, 3) This weariness with a procedural hyper-focus on referencing conventions underlines Derrida’s disquiet with the self-protecting, self-promoting and self-justifying practices that bolster pedagogical tradition and yet inhibit real scholarly work, and risk silencing the authorial voice. Today, remix offers new life to quoting. Media theorist Lev Manovich resisted the notion that the practice of ‘quotation’ was the historical precedent for remixing, aligning it instead to the authorship practice of music ‘sampling’ made possible by new electronic and digital technology. Eduardo Navas agrees that sampling is the key element that makes the act of remixing possible, but links its principles not just to music but to the preoccupation with reading and writing as an extended cultural practice beyond textual writing onto all forms of media (8). A crucial point for Navas is that while remix appropriates and reworks its source material, it relies on the practice of citation to work properly: too close to the original means the remix risks being dismissed as derivative, but at the same time the remixer can’t rely on a source always being known or recognised (7). In other words, the conceptual strategies of remix must rely on some form of referencing or citation of the ideas it sources. It is inarguable that advances in digital technologies have expanded the capacity of scholars to search, cut/copy & paste, collate and link to their research sources. New theoretical and methodological frameworks are being developed to take account of these changing conditions of academic work. For instance, Annette Markham proposes a ‘remix methodology’ for qualitative enquiry, arguing that remix is a powerful tool for thinking about an interpretive and adaptive research practice that takes account of the complexity of contemporary cultural contexts. In a similar vein Cheré Harden Blair has used remix as a theoretical framework to grapple with the issue of plagiarism in the postmodern classroom. If, following Roland Barthes, all writing is “a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture” (146), and if all writing is therefore rewriting, then punishing students for plagiarism becomes problematic. Blair argues that since scholarly writing has become a mosaic of digital and textual productions, then teaching must follow suit, especially since teaching, as a dynamic, shifting and intertextual enterprise, is more suited to the digital revolution than traditional, fixed writing (175). She proposes that teachers provide a space in which remixing, appropriation, patch-writing and even piracy could be allowable, even useful and productive: “a space in which the line is blurry not because students are ignorant of what is right or appropriate, or because digital text somehow contains inherent temptations to plagiarise, but because digital media has, in fact, blurred the line” (183). The clashes between remix and scholarly rules of attribution are directly addressed by the pedagogical provocations of conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith, who has developed a program of ‘uncreative writing’ at the University of Pennsylvania, where, among other plagiaristic tasks, he forces students to transcribe whole passages from books, or to download essays from online paper mills and defend them as their own, marking down students who show a ‘shred of originality’. In his own writing and performances, which depend almost exclusively on strategies of appropriation, plagiarism and recontextualisation of often banal sources like traffic reports, Goldsmith says that he is working to de-familiarise normative structures of language. For Goldsmith, reframing language into another context allows it to become new again, so that “we don’t need the new sentence, the old sentence re-framed is good enough”. Goldsmith argues for the role of the contemporary academic and creative writer as an intelligent agent in the management of masses of information. He describes his changing perception of his own work: “I used to be an artist, then I became a poet; then a writer. Now when asked, I simply refer to myself as a word processor” (Perloff 147). For him, what is of interest to the twenty-first century is not so much the quote that ‘rips’ or tears words out of their original context, but finding ways to make new ‘wholes’ out of the accumulations, filterings and remixing of existing words and sentences. Another extraordinary example of the blurring of lines between text, author and the discursive peculiarities of digital media can be found in Jonathan Lethem’s essay ‘An Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism’, which first appeared in Harpers Magazine in 2007. While this essay is about the topic of plagiarism, it is itself plagiarized, composed of quotes that have been woven seamlessly together into a composite whole. Although Lethem provides a key at the end with a list of his sources, he has removed in-text citations and quotation marks, even while directly discussing the practices of mis-quotation and mis-attribution throughout the essay itself. Towards the end of the essay can be found the paragraph: Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. …By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-paste ourselves, might we not forgive it of our artworks? (68) Overall, Lethem’s self-reflexive pro-plagiarism essay reminds the reader not only of how ideas in literature have been continuously recycled, quoted, appropriated and remixed, but of how open-source cultures are vital for the creation of new works. Lethem (re)produces rather than authors a body of text that is haunted by ever present/absent quotation marks and references. Zara Dinnen suggests that Lethem’s essay, like almost all contemporary texts produced on a computer, is a provocation to once again re-theorise the notion of the author, as not a rigid point of origin but instead “a relay of alternative and composite modes of production” (212), extending Manovich’s notion of the role of author in the digital age of being perhaps closest to that of a DJ. But Lethem’s essay, however surprising and masterfully intertextual, was produced and disseminated as a linear ‘static’ text. On the other hand, Mark Amerika’s remixthebook project first started out as a series of theoretical performances on his Professor VJ blog and was then extended into a multitrack composition of “applied remixology” that features sampled phrases and ideas from a range of artistic, literary, musical, theoretical and philosophical sources. Wanting his project to be received not as a book but as a hybridised publication and performance art project that appears in both print and digital forms, remixthebook was simultaneously published in a prestigious university press and a website that works as an online hub and teaching tool to test out the theories. In this way, Amerika expands the concept of writing to include multimedia forms composed for both networked environments and also experiments with what he terms “creative risk management” where the artist, also a scholar and a teacher, is “willing to drop all intellectual pretence and turn his theoretical agenda into (a) speculative play” (xi). He explains his process halfway through the print book: Other times we who create innovative works of remix artare fully self-conscious of the rival lineagewe spring forth fromand knowingly take on other remixological styles just to seewhat happens when we move insideother writers’ bodies (of work)This is when remixologically inhabitingthe spirit of another writer’s stylistic tendenciesor at least the subconsciously imagined writerly gesturesthat illuminate his or her live spontaneous performancefeels more like an embodied praxis In some ways this all seems so obvious to me:I mean what is a writer anyway buta simultaneous and continuous fusion ofremixologically inhabited bodies of work? (109) Amerika mashes up the jargon of academic writing with avant-pop forms of digital rhetoric in order to “move inside other writers’ bodies (of work)” in order to test out his theoretical agenda in an “embodied praxis” at the same time that he shakes up the way that contemporary scholarship itself is performed. The remixthebook project inevitably recalls one of the great early-twentieth century plays with scholarly quotation, Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. Instead of avoiding conventional quoting, footnoting and referencing, these are the very fabric of Benjamin’s sprawling project, composed entirely of quotes drawn from nineteenth century philosophy and literature. This early scholarly ‘remixing’ project has been described as bewildering and oppressive, but which others still find relevant and inspirational. Marjorie Perloff, for instance, finds the ‘passages’ in Benjamin’s arcades have “become the digital passages we take through websites and YouTube videos, navigating our way from one Google link to another and over the bridges provided by our favourite search engines and web pages" (49). For Benjamin, the process of collecting quotes was addictive. Hannah Arendt describes his habit of carrying little black notebooks in which "he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of 'pearls' and 'coral'. On occasion he read from them aloud, showed them around like items from a choice and precious collection" (45). A similar practice of everyday hypercitation can be found in the contemporary Australian performance artist Danielle Freakley’s project, The Quote Generator. For what was intended in 2006 to be a three year project, but which is still ongoing, Freakley takes the delirious pleasure of finding and fitting the perfect quote to fit an occasion to an extreme. Unlike Benjamin, Freakley didn’t collect and collate quotes, she then relied on them to navigate her way through her daily interactions. As The Quote Generator, Freakley spoke only in quotations drawn from film, literature and popular culture, immediately following each quote with its correct in-text reference, familiar to academic writers as the ‘author/date’ citation system. The awkwardness and seeming artificiality of even short exchanges with someone who responds only in quotes might be bewildering enough, but the inclusion of the citation after the quote maddeningly interrupts and, at the same time, adds another metalevel to a conversation where even the simple platitude ‘thank you’ might be followed by an attribution to ‘Deep Throat 1972’. Longer exchanges become increasingly overwhelming, as Freakley’s piling of quote on quote, and sometimes repeating quotes, demands an attentive listener, as is evident in a 2008 interview with Andrew Denton on the ABC’s Enough Rope: Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope (2008) Denton: So, you’ve been doing this for three years??Freakley: Yes, Optus 1991Denton: How do people respond to you speaking in such an unnatural way?Freakley: It changes, David Bowie 1991. On the streets AKA Breakdance 1984, most people that I know think that I am crazy, Billy Thorpe 1972, a nigger like me is going insane, Cyprus Hill 1979, making as much sense as a Japanese instruction manual, Red Dwarf 1993. Video documentation of Freakley’s encounters with unsuspecting members of the public reveal how frustrating the inclusion of ‘spoken’ references can be, let alone how taken aback people are on realising they never get Freakley’s own words, but are instead receiving layers of quotations. The frustration can quickly turn hostile (Denton at one point tells Freakley to “shut up”) or can prove contaminatory, as people attempt to match or one-up her quotes (see Cook's interview 8). Apparently, when Freakley continued her commitment to the performance at a Perth Centerlink, the staff sent her to a psychiatrist and she was diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, then prescribed medication (Schwartzkoff 4). While Benjamin's The Arcades Project invites the reader to scroll through its pages as a kind of textual flaneur, Freakley herself becomes a walking and talking word processor, extending the possibilities of Amerika’s “embodied praxis” in an inescapable remix of other people’s words and phrases. At the beginning of the project, Freakley organised a card collection of quotes categorised into possible conversation topics, and devised a ‘harness’ for easy access. Image: Danielle Freakley’s The Quote Generator harness Eventually, however, Freakley was able to rely on her own memory of an astounding number of quotations, becoming a “near mechanical vessel” (Gottlieb 2009), or, according to her own manifesto, a “regurgitation library to live by”: The Quote Generator reads, and researches as it speaks. The Quote Generator is both the reader and composer/editor. The Quote Generator is not an actor spouting lines on a stage. The Quote Generator assimilates others lines into everyday social life … The Quote Generator, tries to find its own voice, an understanding through throbbing collations of others, constantly gluttonously referencing. Much academic writing quotes/references ravenously. New things cannot be said without constant referral, acknowledgement to what has been already, the intricate detective work in the barking of the academic dog. By her unrelenting appropriation and regurgitating of quotations, Freakley uses sampling as a technique for an extended performance that draws attention to the remixology of everyday life. By replacing conversation with a hyper-insistence on quotes and their simultaneous citation, she draws attention to the artificiality and inescapability of the ‘codes’ that make up not just ordinary conversations, but also conventional academic discourse, what she calls the “barking of the academic dog”. Freakley’s performance has pushed the scholarly conventions of quoting and referencing to their furthest extreme, in what has been described by Daine Singer as a kind of “endurance art” that relies, in large part, on an antagonistic relationship to its audience. In his now legendary 1969 “Double Session” seminar, Derrida, too, experimented with the pedagogical performance of the (re)producing author, teasing his earnest academic audience. It is reported that the seminar began in a dimly lit room lined with blackboards covered with quotations that Derrida, for a while, simply “pointed to in silence” (177). In this seminar, Derrida put into play notions that can be understood to inform remix practices just as much as they do deconstruction: the author, originality, mimesis, imitation, representation and reference. Scholarly conventions, perhaps particularly the quotation practices that insist on the circulation of rigid codes of attribution, and are defended by increasingly out-of-date understandings of contemporary research, writing and teaching practices, are ripe to be played with. Remix offers an expanded discursive framework to do this in creative and entertaining ways. References Amerika, Mark. remixthebook. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 29 July 2013 http://www.remixthebook.com/. Arendt, Hannah. “Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940.” In Illuminations. New York, NY: Shocken, 1969: 1-55. Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image Music Text. Trans Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977: 142-148. Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland & Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Blaire, Cheré Harden. “Panic and Plagiarism: Authorship and Academic Dishonesty in a Remix Culture.” Media Tropes 2.1 (2009): 159-192. Bourdieu, Pierre, Jean-Claude Passeron, and Monique de Saint Martin. Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power. Trans. Richard Teese. Stanford California: Stanford University Press, 1965. Carroll, Lewis (Charles Dodgson). “Letter to Henrietta and Edwin Dodgson 31 Jan 1855”. 15 July 2013 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Letters_of_Lewis_Carroll. Cook, Richard. “Don’t Quote Me on That.” Time Out Sydney (2008): 8. http://rgcooke.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/interview-danielle-freakley.Denton, Andrew. “Interview: The Quote Generator.” Enough Rope. 29 Feb. 2008. ABC TV. 15 July 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsrGvwXsenE. Derrida, Jacques. Spurs, Nietzsche’s Styles. Trans. Barbara Harlow. London: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Derrida, Jacques. The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Text, Transference. Trans Peggy Kampf. New York: Shocken Books, 1985. Derrida, Jacques. “The Double Session”. Dissemination. Trans Alan Bass, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981. Dinnen, Zara. "In the Mix: The Potential Convergence of Literature and New Media in Jonathan Letham's 'The Ecstasy of Influence'". Journal of Narrative Theory 42.2 (2012). Freakley, Danielle. The Quote Generator. 2006 to present. 10 July 2013 http://www.thequotegenerator.com/. Goldsmith, Kenneth. Uncreative Writing. New York: University of Colombia Press 2011. Gottlieb, Benjamin. "You Shall Worship No Other Artist God." Art & Culture (2009). 15 July 2013 http://www.artandculture.com/feature/999. Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism.” Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 2007: 59-71. http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/the-ecstasy-of-influence/. Manovich, Lev. "What Comes after Remix?" 2007. 15 July 2013 http://manovich.net/LNM/index.html. Markham, Annette. “Remix Methodology.” 2013. 9 July 2013 http://www.markham.internetinquiry.org/category/remix/.Morris, Simon (dir.). Sucking on Words: Kenneth Goldsmith. 2007. http://www.ubu.com/film/goldsmith_sucking.html.Navas, Eduardo. Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. New York: Springer Wein, 2012. Perloff, Marjorie. Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Schwartzkoff, Louise. “Art Forms Spring into Life at Prima Vera.” Sydney Morning Herald 19 Sep. 2008: Entertainment, 4. http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/art-forms-spring-into-life-at-primavera/2008/09/18/1221331045404.html.Singer, Daine (cur.). “Pains in the Artists: Endurance and Suffering.” Blindside Exhibition. 2007. 2 June 2013 http://www.blindside.org.au/2007/pains-in-the-artists.shtml.
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Dixon, Ian. "Film Writing Adapted for Game Narrative: Myth or Error?" M/C Journal 20, no. 1 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1225.

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J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is appalled to learn that his lover is a victim of incest in Robert Towne and Roman Polanski’s definitive, yet subversive film Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). Similarly, Ethan Mars (Pascale Langdale), the hero of the electronic game Heavy Rain (David Cage, 2010), is equally devastated to find his child has been abducted. One a cinema classic of the detective genre, the other a sophisticated electronic game: both ground-breaking, both compelling, but delivered in contrasting media. So, what do Chinatown and Heavy Rain have in common from the writer’s point of view? Can the writer of games learn from the legacy of film storytelling yet find alternative rules for new media? This article attempts to answer these questions making reference to the two works above to illuminate the gap between games writing and traditional screenwriting scholarship.Western commercial cinema has evolved to place story centrally and Chinatown is an example of a story’s potential as film art and entertainment concurrently. Media convention derives from the lessons of previous relatable art forms such as pictorial art, literature and architecture in the case of film; board games and centuries of physical gaming in the case of games design. Therefore, the invention of new media such as online and electronic gaming relies, in part, on the rules of film. However, game play has reassessed screenwriting and its applicability to this new media rendering many of these rules redundant. If Marshall McLuhan’s adage “the medium is the message” is correct, then despite the reliance of one medium on the traditions of its predecessor, gaming is simply not cinema. This article considers writing for games as axiomatically unconventional and calls for radical reinventions of storytelling within the new media.In order to investigate games writing, I will first revisit some of the rules of cinematic construction as inherited from an original Aristotelian source (Cleary). These rules require: a single focussed protagonist driving the plot; a consistent story form with narrative drive or story engine; the writer to avoid the repeated dramatic beat and; a reassessment of thematic concerns for the new technology. We should also investigate game-centric terminology such as “immersion” and “agency” to see how electronic gaming as an essentially postmodern phenomenon reciprocates, yet contrasts to, its cinematic predecessor (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Must the maker of games subscribe to the filmmaker’s toolbox when the field is so very different? In order to answer this question, I will consider some concepts unique to games technology, firstly, the enduring debate known as ludology versus narratology. Gaming rhetoric since the late 1990s has questioned the efficacy of the traditional film narrative when adapted to game play. Players are still divided between the narratologists’ view, which holds that story within games is inevitable and the ludologists’ opinion, which suggests that traditional narrative has no place within the spatially orientated freedom of game play. Originally espousing the benefits of ludology, Janet H Murray argues that the essential formalism of gaming separates it from narrative, which Aarseth describes as representing “'colonialist' intrusions” on game play (46). Mimetic aspects inherited from narrative principles should remain incidental rather than forming an overarching hegemony within the game (Murray, "Last Word"). In this way, the ludologists suggest that game development has been undermined by the persistence of the narrative debate and Murray describes game studies as a “multi-dimensional, open-ended puzzle” worth solving on its own terms (indeed, cinema of attractions compelled viewers for thirty years before narrative cinema became dominant in the early twentieth century.Gaming history has proved this argument overblown and Murray herself questions the validity of this spurious debate within game play. She now includes the disclaimer that, ironically, most ludologists are trained in narratology and thus debate a “phantom of their own creation” (Murray, "Last Word"). This implies a contemporary opposition to ludology’s original meaning and impacts upon screenwriting principles in game making. Two further key concepts, which divide the medium of game entirely from the art of cinema are “immersion” and “agency” (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Murray likens immersion to the physical sensation of being “submerged in water” pointing out that players enjoy the psychologically immersive phenomenon of delving into an undiscovered reality (Murray, Hamlet 98). Although distinct from the passive experience of cinema viewing, this immersion is like the experience of leaving the ordinary world and diving into the special world as Christopher Vogler’s screenwriting theory suggests. The cinema audience is encouraged to immerse themselves in the new world of Gittes’s Chinatown from the comfort of their familiar one. Similarly, the light-hearted world of the summer home contrasts Heavy Rain’s decent into urban, neo-noir corruption. Contrary to its cinematic cousin, the immediacy and subjectivity of the new media experience is more tangible and controllable, which renders immersion in games more significant and brings us to the next gaming concept, agency.To describe agency, Murray uses the complex metaphor of participatory dance, with its predetermined structures, “social formulas” and limited opportunities to change the overall “plot” of the dance: “The slender story is designed to unfold in the same way no matter what individual audience members may do to join the fun” (Hamlet 126-27). In electronic gaming, time-honoured gaming traditions from chess and board games serve as worthy predecessors. In this way, sophisticated permutations of outcome based on the player’s choice create agency, which is “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Murray, Hamlet 126). Bearing this in mind, when narrative enters game play, a world of possibility opens up (Murray, Hamlet).So where do the old rules of cinema apply within gaming and where is the maker of games able to find alternatives based on their understanding of agency and immersion? McLuhan’s unconventional scholarship leads the way, by pointing out the alternativity of the newer media. I consider that the rules of cinematic construction are also often disregarded by the casual viewer/player, but of utmost importance to the professional screenwriter.Amongst these rules is the screenwriting convention of having a single protagonist. This is a being fuelled with desire and a clear, visually rendered, actively negotiated goal. This principle persists in cinema according to Aristotle’s precepts (Cleary). The protagonist is a single entity making decisions and taking actions, even if that entity is a collection of individuals acting as one (Dethridge). The exploits of this main character (facing an opposing force of antagonism) determine the path of the story and for that reason a clear, single-minded narrative line is echoed in a single story form (McKee). For example, the baffling depth of meaning in Chinatown still emanates from protagonist J.J. Gittes’s central determination: to solve the crime suggested by the Los Angeles water shortage. The audience’s ability to identify and empathise with Gittes is paramount when he discovers the awful perversion his love interest, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), has been subjected to. However, the world of Chinatown remains intriguing as a string of corruption is revealed though a detective plot fuelled by our hero’s steadfast need to know the truth. In this way, a single protagonist’s desire line creates a solid story form. Conversely, in computer games (and despite the insistence of Draconian screenwriting lecturers who insist on replicating cinematic rules) the effect of a multiple protagonist plot still allows for the essential immersion in an imaginative world. In Heavy Rain, for example, the search for clues through the eyes of several related characters including a hapless father, a hangdog, ageing detective and a hyper-athletic single mother still allows for immersion. The player/interactor’s actions still create agency even as they change avatars from scene to scene. The player also negotiates for mastery of their character’s actions in order to investigate their situation, facts and world. However, each time the player switches their character allegiance, they revert to square one of their potential identification with that character. Indeed, in Heavy Rain, the player keenly aware of the chilling effect generated by the father losing his child in a busy shopping mall, but then another avatar steps forward, then another and the player must learn about new and unfamiliar characters on a scene-by-scene basis. The accumulative identification with a hero like Chinatown’s Gittes, begins with an admiration for his streetwise charm, then strengthens through his unfolding disillusionment and is cemented with Polanski’s brilliant invention: the death of Evelyn Mulwray replete with its politico-sexual implications (Polanski). However, does this mean cinematic identification is superior to game play’s immersion and agency? McLuhan might argue it is not and that the question is meaningless given that the “message” of games is axiomatically different. Traditional screenwriting scholarship therefore falters in the new medium. Further, Heavy Rain’s multi-protagonist miasma conforms to a new breed of structure: the mosaic plot, which according to Murray mirrors the internet’s click and drag mentality. In this sense, a kaleidoscopic world opens in pockets of revelation before the player. This satisfies the interactor in a postmodernist sense: an essential equality of incoming information in random, nonlinear connections. Indeed electronic games of this nature are a triumph of postmodernism and of ludology’s influence on the narratologist’s perspective. Although a story form including clues and detection still drives the narrative, the mosaic realisation of character and situation (which in a film’s plot might seem meandering and nonsensical) is given life by the agency and immersion provided by gaming (Truby).Back in traditional screenwriting principles, there is still the need for a consistent and singular story form providing a constant narrative drive (McKee). As mentioned, this arises from the protagonist’s need. For example a revenge plot relies on the hero’s need for vengeance; a revelation plot like Chinatown hinges on detection. However, first time screenwriting students’ tendency to visualise a story based unconsciously on films they have previously seen (as a bricolage of character moments arranged loosely around a collection of received ideas) tends to undermine the potential effectiveness of their story form. This lack of singularity in filmic writing indicates a misunderstanding of story logic. This propensity in young screenwriters derives from a belief that if the rendered filmic experience means something to them, it will necessarily mean something to an audience. Not so: an abandoned story drive or replaced central character diminishes the audience’s enjoyment and even destroys suspension of disbelief. Consequently, the story becomes bland and confusing. On investigation, it appears the young screenwriter does not realise that they are playing out an idea in their head, which is essentially a bricolage in the postmodern sense. Although this might lead to some titillating visual displays it fails to engage the audience as the result of their participation in an emotional continuum (Hayward). In contradistinction to film, games thrive on such irregularities in story, assuming radically different effects. For example, in cinema, the emotional response of a mass audience is a major draw card: if the filmic story is an accumulation of cause and effect responses, which steadily drive the stakes up until resolution, then it is the emotional “cathexis” as by-product of conflict that the audience resonates with (Freud 75; Chekhov). Does this transfer to games? Do notions such as feeling and empathy actually figure in game play at all? Or is this simply an activity rewarding the interactor with agency in lieu of deeper, emotive experiences? This final question could be perceived as anti-gaming sentiment given that games such as Heavy Rain suggest just such an emotional by-product. Indeed, the mechanics of gaming have the ability to push the stakes even higher than their cinematic counterparts, creating more complex emotionality in the player. In this way, the intentional psychological malaise of Heavy Rain solicits even greater emotion from players due to their inherent act of will. Where cinema renders the audience emotional by virtue of its passivity, no such claim is possible in the game. For example, where in Chinatown, Gittes tortures his lover by repeatedly slapping her, in Heavy Rain the character must actively perform torture on themself in order to solve the mystery. Further, the potential for engagement is extended given there are fourteen possible endings to Heavy Rain. In this way, although the film viewer’s emotional response is tempered by guessing the singular outcome, the multiple endings of this electronic game prevent such prescience (films can have multiple endings, but game mechanics lend the new media more readily to this function, therefore, game books with dice-rolling options are a stronger precedent then cinema).Also effective for the construction of cinema is Aristotle’s warning that the repetition of story and expositional information without rising stakes or any qualification of meaning creates a sense of “dramatic stall” for the audience (Aristotle). This is known as a repeated dramatic story beat and it is the stumbling block of many first time screenwriters. The screenplay should be an inventive effort to overcome escalating obstacles and an accumulative cause and effect chain on the part of the protagonist (Truby). The modern screenwriter for film needs to recognise any repeated beat in their early drafting and delete or alter the repetitive material. What then are the implications of repeated dramatic beats for the game writer? The game form known as “first person shooter” (FPS) depends on the appearance of an eternally regenerating (indeed re-spawning) enemy. In an apocalyptic zombie shooter game, for example, many hordes of zombies die unequivocally without threatening the interactor’s intrigue. Presumably, the antagonists are not intended to pose intellectual opposition for the gamer. Rather, the putrefying zombies present themselves for the gamer’s pugilistic satisfaction, again and again. For the game, therefore, the repeated beat is a distinct advantage. They may come harder and faster, but they are still zombies to be dispatched and the stakes have not necessarily risen. Who cares if this is a succession of repeated beats? It is just good clean fun, right? This is where the ludologists hold sway: to impose principles such as non-repeated beats and rising stakes on the emergence of a world based on pure game play offers no consequence for the FPS game. Nevertheless, the problem is exacerbated in “role play games” (RPG) of which Heavy Rain is an example. Admittedly, the gamer derives effective horror as our hero negotiates his way amongst a sea of disassociated shoppers searching for his lost child. The very fact of gamer agency should abnegate the problem, but does not, it merely heightens the sense of existential hopelessness: turning face after face not finding the child he is searching for is a devastating experience exacerbated by active agency (as opposed to the accepting passivity of cinema spectatorship). The rising panic in the game and the repetition of the faces of impassive shoppers also supports the player’s ongoing disorientation. The iconic appearance of the gruff clown handing out balloons further heightens the panic the gamer/protagonist experiences here. These are examples of repeated beats, yet effective due to player agency. The shoppers only persist until the gamer masters the situation and is able to locate the missing child. Thus, it is the capacity of the gamer to circumvent such repetition, which actually propels the game forward. If the gamer is adept, they will overcome the situation easily; if they are inexperienced, the repetition will continue. So, why apply traditional narrative constrictions on game play within a narrative game?Another crucial aspect of story is theme, which in the young writer reflects a postmodernist fetishisation of plot over story. In fact, theme is one of the first concepts to be ignored when a film student puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) when designing their game. In this way, the themes students choose to ignore resurface despite their lack of conscious application of them. They write plot, and plot in abundance (imperative for the modern writer (Truby)), which the mosaic structure of games accommodates for seamlessly. However, plot is causative and postmodern interpretations do not necessarily require the work of art to “say” anything beyond the “message” trapped in the clichés of their chosen genre (McLuhan). In concentrating on plot, therefore, the young writer says what they are unaware they are saying. At its most innocuous level this creates cliché. At its worst, it erases history and celebrates an attitude of unexamined ignorance toward the written material (Hayward). In extreme cases, student writers of both media support fascism, celebrate female masochism, justify rape (with or without awareness), or create nihilistic and derivative art, which sensationalises violence to a degree not possible within film technology. This is ironic given that postmodernism is defined, in part, by a canny reaction to modernist generation of meaning and cynicism toward the technology of violence. In all this postmodernism, that illusive chestnut known as “originality” (a questionable imperative still haunting the conventional screenplay despite the postmodernist declamation that there is no such thing) should also be considered. Although the game writer can learn from the lessons of the screenwriter, the problems of game structure and expression are unique to the new medium and therefore alternative to film. Adhering to traditional understandings of screenwriting in games is counterproductive to the development of the form and demands new assessment. If gaming students are liberated from narratologist impositions of cinematic story structures, will this result in better or more thoughtful games? Further to the ludologists’ original protestation against the ““colonialist” intrusions” of narrative on game play, film writing must recede where appropriate (Aarseth). Then again, if a ludologist approach to game creation renders the student writer free of filmic dogma, why do they impose the same stories repetitively? What gain comes from ignoring the Aristotelian traditions of storytelling–especially as derived from screen culture? I suggest that storytelling, to echo McLuhan’s statement, must necessarily change with the new medium: the differences are illuminating. The younger, nonlinear form embodies the player as protagonist and therefore should not need to impose the single protagonist regime from film. Story engine has been replaced by player agency and game mechanics, which also allows for inventive usage of the repeated beat. Indeed, postmodern and ludological concerns embedded within mosaic plots almost entirely replace the need for any consistency of story form while still subverting the expectations of modernism? Genre rules are partly reinvented by the form and therefore genre conventions in gaming are still in their infancy. Indeed, the very amorality of nihilistic game designers opens a space for burgeoning post-postmodernist concerns regarding ethics and faith within art. In any case, the game designer may choose the lessons of film writing’s modernist legacy if story is to be effective within the new medium. However, as meaning derives from traditional form, it might be wiser to allow the new medium its own reinvention of writing rules. Given Heavy Rain’s considerable contribution to detective genre in game play by virtue of its applying story within new media, I anticipate further developments that might build on Chinatown’s legacy in the future of gaming, but on the game play’s own terms.ReferencesAarseth, Espen. Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 2004. Aristotle. Poetics. Australia: Penguin Classics, 1997.Chekhov, Michael. Lessons for the Professional Actor. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1985.Chinatown. Roman Polanski. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Cleary, Stephen. “'What Would Aristotle Do?' Ancient Wisdom for Modern Screenwriters.” Stephen Cleary Lecture Series, 1 May 2011. Melbourne, Vic.: Victorian College of the Arts.Dethridge, Lisa. Writing Your Screenplay. Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2003.Freud, Sigmund. “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Middlesex: Pelican, 1984. 65-97.Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2006.Heavy Rain. David Cage. Quantic Dream, 2010.McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. UK: Methuen, 1999. McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium Is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994. 1-18.Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Simon and Schuster / Free Press, 1997.Murray, Janet H. “The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies.” Keynote Address. DiGRA, Vancouver, 17 June 2005.Polanski, Roman, dir. DVD Commentary. Chinatown. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. London: Boxtree, 1996.
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Collins, Steve. "Amen to That." M/C Journal 10, no. 2 (2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2638.

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Abstract:

 
 
 In 1956, John Cage predicted that “in the future, records will be made from records” (Duffel, 202). Certainly, musical creativity has always involved a certain amount of appropriation and adaptation of previous works. For example, Vivaldi appropriated and adapted the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue of Ruggieri’s Gloria (Burnett, 4; Forbes, 261). If stuck for a guitar solo on stage, Keith Richards admits that he’ll adapt Buddy Holly for his own purposes (Street, 135). Similarly, Nirvana adapted the opening riff from Killing Jokes’ “Eighties” for their song “Come as You Are”. Musical “quotation” is actively encouraged in jazz, and contemporary hip-hop would not exist if the genre’s pioneers and progenitors had not plundered and adapted existing recorded music. Sampling technologies, however, have taken musical adaptation a step further and realised Cage’s prediction. Hardware and software samplers have developed to the stage where any piece of audio can be appropriated and adapted to suit the creative impulses of the sampling musician (or samplist). The practice of sampling challenges established notions of creativity, with whole albums created with no original musical input as most would understand it—literally “records made from records.” Sample-based music is premised on adapting audio plundered from the cultural environment. This paper explores the ways in which technology is used to adapt previous recordings into new ones, and how musicians themselves have adapted to the potentials of digital technology for exploring alternative approaches to musical creativity. Sampling is frequently defined as “the process of converting an analog signal to a digital format.” While this definition remains true, it does not acknowledge the prevalence of digital media. The “analogue to digital” method of sampling requires a microphone or instrument to be recorded directly into a sampler. Digital media, however, simplifies the process. For example, a samplist can download a video from YouTube and rip the audio track for editing, slicing, and manipulation, all using software within the noiseless digital environment of the computer. Perhaps it is more prudent to describe sampling simply as the process of capturing sound. Regardless of the process, once a sound is loaded into a sampler (hardware or software) it can be replayed using a MIDI keyboard, trigger pad or sequencer. Use of the sampled sound, however, need not be a faithful rendition or clone of the original. At the most basic level of manipulation, the duration and pitch of sounds can be altered. The digital processes that are implemented into the Roland VariOS Phrase Sampler allow samplists to eliminate the pitch or melodic quality of a sampled phrase. The phrase can then be melodically redefined as the samplist sees fit: adapted to a new tempo, key signature, and context or genre. Similarly, software such as Propellerhead’s ReCycle slices drum beats into individual hits for use with a loop sampler such as Reason’s Dr Rex module. Once loaded into Dr Rex, the individual original drum sounds can be used to program a new beat divorced from the syncopation of the original drum beat. Further, the individual slices can be subjected to pitch, envelope (a component that shapes the volume of the sound over time) and filter (a component that emphasises and suppresses certain frequencies) control, thus an existing drum beat can easily be adapted to play a new rhythm at any tempo. For example, this rhythm was created from slicing up and rearranging Clyde Stubblefield’s classic break from James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”. Sonic adaptation of digital information is not necessarily confined to the auditory realm. An audio editor such as Sony’s Sound Forge is able to open any file format as raw audio. For example, a Word document or a Flash file could be opened with the data interpreted as audio. Admittedly, the majority of results obtained are harsh white noise, but there is scope for serendipitous anomalies such as a glitchy beat that can be extracted and further manipulated by audio software. Audiopaint is an additive synthesis application created by Nicolas Fournel for converting digital images into audio. Each pixel position and colour is translated into information designating frequency (pitch), amplitude (volume) and pan position in the stereo image. The user can determine which one of the three RGB channels corresponds to either of the stereo channels. Further, the oscillator for the wave form can be either the default sine wave or an existing audio file such as a drum loop can be used. The oscillator shapes the end result, responding to the dynamics of the sine wave or the audio file. Although Audiopaint labours under the same caveat as with the use of raw audio, the software can produce some interesting results. Both approaches to sound generation present results that challenge distinctions between “musical sound” and “noise”. Sampling is also a cultural practice, a relatively recent form of adaptation extending out of a time honoured creative aesthetic that borrows, quotes and appropriates from existing works to create new ones. Different fields of production, as well as different commentators, variously use terms such as “co-creative media”, “cumulative authorship”, and “derivative works” with regard to creations that to one extent or another utilise existing works in the production of new ones (Coombe; Morris; Woodmansee). The extent of the sampling may range from subtle influence to dominating significance within the new work, but the constant principle remains: an existing work is appropriated and adapted to fit the needs of the secondary creator. Proponents of what may be broadly referred to as the “free culture” movement argue that creativity and innovation inherently relies on the appropriation and adaptation of existing works (for example, see Lessig, Future of Ideas; Lessig, Free Culture; McLeod, Freedom of Expression; Vaidhyanathan). For example, Gwen Stefani’s 2004 release “Rich Girl” is based on Louchie Lou and Michie One’s 1994 single of the same title. Lou and One’s “Rich Girl”, in turn, is a reggae dance hall adaptation of “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. Stefani’s “na na na” vocal riff shares the same melody as the “Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum” riff from Fiddler on the Roof. Samantha Mumba adapted David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” for her second single “Body II Body”. Similarly, Richard X adapted Tubeway Army’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” for a career saving single for Sugababes. Digital technologies enable and even promote the adaptation of existing works (Morris). The ease of appropriating and manipulating digital audio files has given rise to a form of music known variously as mash-up, bootleg, or bastard pop. Mash-ups are the most recent stage in a history of musical appropriation and they epitomise the sampling aesthetic. Typically produced in bedroom computer-based studios, mash-up artists use software such as Acid or Cool Edit Pro to cut up digital music files and reassemble the fragments to create new songs, arbitrarily adding self-composed parts if desired. Comprised almost exclusively from sections of captured music, mash-ups have been referred to as “fictional pop music” because they conjure up scenarios where, for example, Destiny’s Child jams in a Seattle garage with Nirvana or the Spice Girls perform with Nine Inch Nails (Petridis). Once the initial humour of the novelty has passed, the results can be deeply alluring. Mash-ups extract the distinctive characteristics of songs and place them in new, innovative contexts. As Dale Lawrence writes: “the vocals are often taken from largely reviled or ignored sources—cornball acts like Aguilera or Destiny’s Child—and recast in wildly unlikely contexts … where against all odds, they actually work”. Similarly, Crawford argues that “part of the art is to combine the greatest possible aesthetic dissonance with the maximum musical harmony. The pleasure for listeners is in discovering unlikely artistic complementarities and revisiting their musical memories in mutated forms” (36). Sometimes the adaptation works in the favour of the sampled artist: George Clinton claims that because of sampling he is more popular now than in 1976—“the sampling made us big again” (Green). The creative aspect of mash-ups is unlike that usually associated with musical composition and has more in common with DJing. In an effort to further clarify this aspect, we may regard DJ mixes as “mash-ups on the fly.” When Grandmaster Flash recorded his quilt-pop masterpiece, “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” it was recorded while he performed live, demonstrating his precision and skill with turntables. Modern audio editing software facilitates the capture and storage of sound, allowing mash-up artists to manipulate sounds bytes outside of “real-time” and the live performance parameters within which Flash worked. Thus, the creative element is not the traditional arrangement of chords and parts, but rather “audio contexts”. If, as Riley pessimistically suggests, “there are no new chords to be played, there are no new song structures to be developed, there are no new stories to be told, and there are no new themes to explore,” then perhaps it is understandable that artists have searched for new forms of musical creativity. The notes and chords of mash-ups are segments of existing works sequenced together to produce inter-layered contexts rather than purely tonal patterns. The merit of mash-up culture lies in its function of deconstructing the boundaries of genre and providing new musical possibilities. The process of mashing-up genres functions to critique contemporary music culture by “pointing a finger at how stifled and obvious the current musical landscape has become. … Suddenly rap doesn’t have to be set to predictable funk beats, pop/R&B ballads don’t have to come wrapped in cheese, garage melodies don’t have to recycle the Ramones” (Lawrence). According to Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School critic, popular music (of his time) was irretrievably simplistic and constructed from easily interchangeable, modular components (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). A standardised and repetitive approach to musical composition fosters a mode of consumption dubbed by Adorno “quotation listening” and characterised by passive acceptance of, and obsession with, a song’s riffs (44-5). As noted by Em McAvan, Adorno’s analysis elevates the producer over the consumer, portraying a culture industry controlling a passive audience through standardised products (McAvan). The characteristics that Adorno observed in the popular music of his time are classic traits of contemporary popular music. Mash-up artists, however, are not representative of Adorno’s producers for a passive audience, instead opting to wrest creative control from composers and the recording industry and adapt existing songs in pursuit of their own creative impulses. Although mash-up productions may consciously or unconsciously criticise the current state of popular music, they necessarily exist in creative symbiosis with the commercial genres: “if pop songs weren’t simple and formulaic, it would be much harder for mashup bedroom auteurs to do their job” (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). Arguably, when creating mash-ups, some individuals are expressing their dissatisfaction with the stagnation of the pop industry and are instead working to create music that they as consumers wish to hear. Sample-based music—as an exercise in adaptation—encourages a Foucauldian questioning of the composer’s authority over their musical texts. Recorded music is typically a passive medium in which the consumer receives the music in its original, unaltered form. DJ Dangermouse (Brian Burton) breached this pact to create his Grey Album, which is a mash-up of an a cappella version of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ eponymous album (also known as the White Album). Dangermouse says that “every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somewhere.” In deconstructing the Beatles’ songs, Dangermouse turned the recordings into a palette for creating his own new work, adapting audio fragments to suit his creative impulses. As Joanna Demers writes, “refashioning these sounds and reorganising them into new sonic phrases and sentences, he creates acoustic mosaics that in most instances are still traceable to the Beatles source, yet are unmistakeably distinct from it” (139-40). Dangermouse’s approach is symptomatic of what Schütze refers to as remix culture: an open challenge to a culture predicated on exclusive ownership, authorship, and controlled distribution … . Against ownership it upholds an ethic of creative borrowing and sharing. Against the original it holds out an open process of recombination and creative transformation. It equally calls into question the categories, rifts and borders between high and low cultures, pop and elitist art practices, as well as blurring lines between artistic disciplines. Using just a laptop, an audio editor and a calculator, Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, created the Night Ripper album using samples from 167 artists (Dombale). Although all the songs on Night Ripper are blatantly sampled-based, Gillis sees his creations as “original things” (Dombale). The adaptation of sampled fragments culled from the Top 40 is part of Gillis’ creative process: “It’s not about who created this source originally, it’s about recontextualising—creating new music. … I’ve always tried to make my own songs” (Dombale). Gillis states that his music has no political message, but is a reflection of his enthusiasm for pop music: “It’s a celebration of everything Top 40, that’s the point” (Dombale). Gillis’ “celebratory” exercises in creativity echo those of various fan-fiction authors who celebrate the characters and worlds that constitute popular culture. Adaptation through sampling is not always centred solely on music. Sydney-based Tom Compagnoni, a.k.a. Wax Audio, adapted a variety of sound bytes from politicians and media personalities including George W. Bush, Alexander Downer, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, and John Howard in the creation of his Mediacracy E.P.. In one particular instance, Compagnoni used a myriad of samples culled from various media appearances by George W. Bush to recreate the vocals for John Lennon’s Imagine. Created in early 2005, the track, which features speeded-up instrumental samples from a karaoke version of Lennon’s original, is an immediate irony fuelled comment on the invasion of Iraq. The rationale underpinning the song is further emphasised when “Imagine This” reprises into “Let’s Give Peace a Chance” interspersed with short vocal fragments of “Come Together”. Compagnoni justifies his adaptations by presenting appropriated media sound bytes that deliberately set out to demonstrate the way information is manipulated to present any particular point of view. Playing the media like an instrument, Wax Audio juxtaposes found sounds in a way that forces the listener to confront the bias, contradiction and sensationalism inherent in their daily intake of media information. … Oh yeah—and it’s bloody funny hearing George W Bush sing “Imagine”. Notwithstanding the humorous quality of the songs, Mediacracy represents a creative outlet for Compagnoni’s political opinions that is emphasised by the adaptation of Lennon’s song. Through his adaptation, Compagnoni revitalises Lennon’s sentiments about the Vietnam War and superimposes them onto the US policy on Iraq. An interesting aspect of sampled-based music is the re-occurrence of particular samples across various productions, which demonstrates that the same fragment can be adapted for a plethora of musical contexts. For example, Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” break is reputed to be the most sampled break in the world. The break from 1960s soul/funk band the Winstons’ “Amen Brother” (the B-side to their 1969 release “Color Him Father”), however, is another candidate for the title of “most sampled break”. The “Amen break” was revived with the advent of the sampler. Having featured heavily in early hip-hop records such as “Words of Wisdom” by Third Base and “Straight Out of Compton” by NWA, the break “appears quite adaptable to a range of music genres and tastes” (Harrison, 9m 46s). Beginning in the early 1990s, adaptations of this break became a constant of jungle music as sampling technology developed to facilitate more complex operations (Harrison, 5m 52s). The break features on Shy FX’s “Original Nutta”, L Double & Younghead’s “New Style”, Squarepusher’s “Big Acid”, and a cover version of Led Zepplin’s “Whole Lotta Love” by Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell. This is to name but a few tracks that have adapted the break. Wikipedia offers a list of songs employing an adaptation of the “Amen break”. This list, however, falls short of the “hundreds of tracks” argued for by Nate Harrison, who notes that “an entire subculture based on this one drum loop … six seconds from 1969” has developed (8m 45s). The “Amen break” is so ubiquitous that, much like the twelve bar blues structure, it has become a foundational element of an entire genre and has been adapted to satisfy a plethora of creative impulses. The sheer prevalence of the “Amen break” simultaneously illustrates the creative nature of music adaptation as well as the potentials for adaptation stemming from digital technology such as the sampler. The cut-up and rearrangement aspect of creative sampling technology at once suggests the original but also something new and different. Sampling in general, and the phenomenon of the “Amen break” in particular, ensures the longevity of the original sources; sampled-based music exhibits characteristics acquired from the source materials, yet the illegitimate offspring are not their parents. Sampling as a technology for creatively adapting existing forms of audio has encouraged alternative approaches to musical composition. Further, it has given rise to a new breed of musician that has adapted to technologies of adaptation. Mash-up artists and samplists demonstrate that recorded music is not simply a fixed or read-only product but one that can be freed from the composer’s original arrangement to be adapted and reconfigured. Many mash-up artists such as Gregg Gillis are not trained musicians, but their ears are honed from enthusiastic consumption of music. 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