Journal articles on the topic 'Physical human-machine coordination'

Reading partners’ actions correctly is essential for successful coordination, but interpretation does not always reflect reality. Attribution biases, such as self-serving and correspondence biases, lead people to misinterpret their partners’ actions and falsely assign blame after a surprise, or unexpected event. These biases further influence people’s trust in their partners, including machine partners (Muir, 1987; Madhavan & Wiegmann, 2004). Advances in robotics have allowed for robots to partner with people at work and be treated socially (Young, Hawkins, Sharlin & Igarashi, 2009). However, these advances may interfere with a person’s appropriate calibration of trust in robots (Parasuraman & Miller, 2004). A better understanding of attribution biases in the wake of an unexpected event may shed light on how trust develops in a robot partner. This study was built on a human coordination example to serve as a reference for future human-robot interactions. We posit that attribution biases lead people to blame their partner after experiencing a negative performance outcome, thus lowering their trust in the partner. Sixty participants (30 pairs) were tasked to coordinate with an unfamiliar human partner, to lift a 17.5 lb. box containing a 200ml cup of water filled to the brim, from the floor to a table, as quickly as possible without spilling water. Before the task, participants were told that the pair with the best performance would be rewarded; however, all pairs were told they did not achieve this. Participant pairs were randomly assigned to a surprise condition during which they heard a 250 Hz warning tone, or a baseline condition with no warning tone. Participants in both conditions were told to pause the task as quickly as possible if the warning tone was present. It was unknown to participants when or if a warning tone would occur. To assess participants’ trust in their partner, Muir’s (1987) trust questionnaire was administered twice, once after introducing the task to participants, and again after the coordination task was completed. To capture blame assignment, a scale based on Kim and Hinds (2006) was administered after participants were told they did not achieve the best performance. Results indicate participants were less likely to blame their partners for the negative outcome, compared to blaming themselves or the warning tone itself (in the surprise condition). Next, surprisingly, in the surprise condition, instead of experiencing a decrease of trust in a partner after the negative outcome, there was a significant increase in trust in their partners. No significant difference in trust was found in the baseline condition. Finally, results also indicate that initial trust in a partner is a significant predictor for how people assign blame. In general, the effects of attribution biases were not observed in the present study. Friendliness may be a factor in people’s assignment of blame; although participants were unfamiliar with one another, all participants were students at the same university. Second, shared experience during the surprise condition, including the chance to assess their partner’s behaviors in response to the warning tone, may have been a catalyst for increased trust in a partner. It is important to note that although physical differences between participants were not evaluated in this study, height may be a potential confounding factor in this task. These findings enlighten our understanding of physical human-robot coordination scenarios and trust in a partner.

Repetitive industrial tasks can be easily performed by traditional robotic systems. However, many other works require cognitive knowledge that only humans can provide. Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) emerges as an ideal concept of co-working between a human operator and a robot, representing one of the most significant subjects for human-life improvement.The ultimate goal is to achieve physical interaction, where handing over an object plays a crucial role for an effective task accomplishment. Considerable research work had been developed in this particular field in recent years, where several solutions were already proposed. Nonetheless, some particular issues regarding Human-Robot Collaboration still hold an open path to truly important research improvements. This paper provides a literature overview, defining the HRC concept, enumerating the distinct human-robot communication channels, and discussing the physical interaction that this collaboration entails. Moreover, future challenges for a natural and intuitive collaboration are exposed: the machine must behave like a human especially in the pre-grasping/grasping phases and the handover procedure should be fluent and bidirectional, for an articulated function development. These are the focus of the near future investigation aiming to shed light on the complex combination of predictive and reactive control mechanisms promoting coordination and understanding. Following recent progress in artificial intelligence, learning exploration stand as the key element to allow the generation of coordinated actions and their shaping by experience.

As manufacturing industry heads toward the socialization and mass individualization, customer requirements have become personalized and dynamic. Socialized manufacturing resources spring up in different finer-grained market segments to provide various manufacturing services for customers. To facilitate the mass business collaboration, these resources and customers need to be cyber-physical-social interconnected. This article proposes a cyber-physical-social system for the personalized product production in a social manufacturing environment, which incorporates social sensors in the human end, cyber-physical system nodes in the machine end, and smart products in the product end for social interaction and distributed production control. The three-layer framework of cyber-physical-social system and three-stage interaction scenarios are discussed. The multi-role distributed production control mechanism is studied to enhance the agility, responsiveness, flexibility, and coordination capability of the cyber-physical-social system–enabled personalized product production system. Cyber-physical-social system leverages the global cyber-physical-social convergence and the local regional autonomy for the personalized product production. It is expected that this article will contribute to the research areas of industry 4.0-based manufacturing mode innovation and intelligent production process control.

Human operated, hydraulic actuated machines are widely used in many high-power applications. Improving productivity, safety and task quality (e.g., haptic feedback in a teleoperated scenario) has been the focus of past research. For robotic systems that interact with the physical environments, passivity is a useful property for ensuring safety and interaction stability. While passivity is a well utilized concept in electromechanical robotic systems, investigation of electrohydraulic control systems that enforce this passivity property are rare. This paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates a teleoperation control algorithm that renders a hydraulic backhoe/force feedback joystick system as a two-port, coordinated, passive machine. By fully accounting for the fluid compressibility, inertia dynamics and nonlinearity, coordination performance is much improved over a previous scheme in which the coordination control approximates the hydraulic system by its kinematic behavior. This is accomplished by a novel bond graph based three step design methodology: (1) energetically invariant transformation of the system into a pair of “shape” and “locked” subsystems; (2) inversion of the shape system bond graph to derive the coordination control law; (3) use of the locked system bond graph to derive an appropriate control law to achieve a target locked system dynamics while ensuring the passivity property of the coordinated system. The proposed passive control law has been experimentally verified for its bilateral energy transfer ability and performance enhancements.

In recent years collaborative robots have become major market drivers in industry 5.0, which aims to incorporate them alongside humans in a wide array of settings ranging from welding to rehabilitation. Improving human–machine collaboration entails using computational algorithms that will save processing as well as communication cost. In this study we have constructed an agent that can choose when to cooperate using an optimal strategy. The agent was designed to operate in the context of divergent interest tacit coordination games in which communication between the players is not possible and the payoff is not symmetric. The agent’s model was based on a behavioral model that can predict the probability of a player converging on prominent solutions with salient features (e.g., focal points) based on the player’s Social Value Orientation (SVO) and the specific game features. The SVO theory pertains to the preferences of decision makers when allocating joint resources between themselves and another player in the context of behavioral game theory. The agent selected stochastically between one of two possible policies, a greedy or a cooperative policy, based on the probability of a player to converge on a focal point. The distribution of the number of points obtained by the autonomous agent incorporating the SVO in the model was better than the results obtained by the human players who played against each other (i.e., the distribution associated with the agent had a higher mean value). Moreover, the distribution of points gained by the agent was better than any of the separate strategies the agent could choose from, namely, always choosing a greedy or a focal point solution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to construct an intelligent agent that maximizes its utility by incorporating the belief system of the player in the context of tacit bargaining. This reward-maximizing strategy selection process based on the SVO can also be potentially applied in other human–machine contexts, including multiagent systems.

The coordination of humanitarian relief, e.g. in a natural disaster or a conflict situation, is often complicated by a scarcity of data to inform planning. Remote sensing imagery, from satellites or drones, can give important insights into conditions on the ground, including in areas which are difficult to access. Applications include situation awareness after natural disasters, structural damage assessment in conflict, monitoring human rights violations or population estimation in settlements. We review machine learning approaches for automating these problems, and discuss their potential and limitations. We also provide a case study of experiments using deep learning methods to count the numbers of structures in multiple refugee settlements in Africa and the Middle East. We find that while high levels of accuracy are possible, there is considerable variation in the characteristics of imagery collected from different sensors and regions. In this, as in the other applications discussed in the paper, critical inferences must be made from a relatively small amount of pixel data. We, therefore, consider that using machine learning systems as an augmentation of human analysts is a reasonable strategy to transition from current fully manual operational pipelines to ones which are both more efficient and have the necessary levels of quality control. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations’.

The rehabilitation robot is an application of robotic technology for people with limb disabilities. This paper investigates a new applicable and effective sitting/lying lower limb rehabilitation robot (the LLR-Ro). In order to improve the patient’s training initiative and accelerate the rehabilitation process, a new motion intention acquisition method based on static torque sensors is proposed. This motion intention acquisition method is established through the dynamics modeling of human–machine coordination, which is built on the basis of Lagrangian equations. Combined with the static torque sensors installed on the mechanism leg joint axis, the LLR-Ro can obtain the active force from the patient’s leg. Based on the variation of the patient’s active force and the kinematic functional relationship of the patient’s leg end point, the patient motion intention is obtained and used in the proposed active rehabilitation training method. The simulation experiment demonstrates the correctness of mechanism leg dynamics equations through ADAMS software and MATLAB software. The calibration experiment of the joint torque sensors’ combining limit range filter with an average value filter provides the hardware support for active rehabilitation training. The consecutive variation of the torque sensors from just the mechanism leg weight, as well as both the mechanism leg and the patient leg weights, obtains the feasibility of lower limb motion intention acquisition.

Functional safety networks are becoming of paramount importance in industrial systems, due to the progressive innovation introduced by the Industry 4.0 paradigm, characterized by high production flexibility, reliability and scalability. In this context, new and challenging applications have emerged such as hyperautomation, which refers to the combination of machine vision, robotics, communication, and learning, with the explicit involvement of humans. This requires the pervasive and ubiquitous connectivity encompassed by the Industrial Internet of Things, typically achieved via wireless systems. As an example, wireless communications are today fundamental to open up to new categories of autonomous devices that can actively collaborate with human personnel in the production process. This challenging scenario has important implications for safety. Indeed, a reliable coordination among sensors, actuators and computing systems is required to provide satisfactory levels of safety, especially in the case of innovative processes and technologies, such as mobile and collaborative robotics. Hence, it becomes imperative to ensure the correct transfer of safety-critical data via communication networks. In this paper, we address the challenges concerned with functional safety networks and protocols in Industrial Internet of Things ecosystems. We first introduce the design characteristics of functional safety networks and discuss the adoption of safety protocols over wireless networks. Then, we specifically address one of such protocols, namely Fail Safety over EtherCAT (FSoE), and provide the results of an extensive experimental session carried out exploiting a prototype system, implemented using commercial devices based on a WiFi network. Finally, the outcomes of the experiments are used as a basis for a discussion about future trends of functional safety in the Industrial Internet of Things era.

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Electronic health records have become the fulcrum for efforts by institutions to reduce errors, improve safety, reduce cost, and improve compliance with recommended guidelines. In recent times they are also being considered as a potential game changer for improving patient recruitment for clinical trials (CT). Although the use of CDS for clinical care is partially understood, its use for CT patient identification and recruitment is young and a great deal of experimental and theoretical research is needed in this area to optimize the use of CDS tools that personalize patient care by identifying relevant clinical trials and other research interventions. The use of CDS tools for CT recruitment offers a great deal of possibilities, but some initial usage has been disappointing. This may not be surprising because, while the implementation of these interventions is somewhat simple, ensuring that they are embedded into the right point of the care providers workflow is highly complex and may affect many actors in a clinical care setting, including patients, nurses, physicians, clinical coordinators, and investigators. Overcoming the challenges of alerting providers regarding their patient’s eligibility for clinical trials is an important and difficult challenge. Translating that effort into effective recruitment will require understanding of the psychological and workflow barriers and facilitators for how providers respond to automated alerts requesting patient referrals. Evidence from using CDS for clinical care that shows alerts become increasingly ignored over time or with more exposure (1, 2). The features, timing, and method of these alerts are important usability factors that may influence effectiveness of the referral process. Focus group methods capture the shared perspectives of a phenomenon and have been shown to be an effective method for identifying perceptions, attitudes, information needs, and other human factors effecting workflow (3, 4). Our objective was to develop a generalizable method for measuring physician and clinic level factors defining a successful point of care recruitment program in an outpatient care setting. To achieve this we attempted to (a) Characterize provider’s attitudes regarding CTs referrals and research. (b) Identify perceived workflow strategies and facilitators relevant to CT recruitment in primary care. (c) Develop and test a pilot instrument. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The methods had 3 phases: focus groups, development of item pool, and tool development. Focus group topics were developed by 4 experienced investigators, with training in biomedical informatics, cognitive psychology, human factors, and workflow analysis, based upon a knowledge of the literature. A script was developed and the methods were piloted with a group of 4 clinicians. In all, 16 primary care providers, 5 clinic directors, and 6 staff supervisors participated in 6 focus groups, with an average of 5 participants each, to discuss clinical trial recruitment at the point of care. Focus groups were conducted by the development team. Audio recording were content coded and analyzed to identify themes by consensus of 3 authors. Item Pool generation involved extracting items identified in the focus group analysis, selecting a subset deemed most interesting based on knowledge of the recruitment literature and iteratively writing and refining questions. Instrument development consisted of piloting an initial 7-item questionnaire with a local primary provider sample. Questions were correlated with the item pool and limited to reduce provider burden, based on those that the study team deemed most applicable to information technology supported recruitment. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed on the pilot survey results. An online survey was developed based on the findings of the focus groups and emailed to 127 primary care providers who were invited to participate. In total, 36 questionnaires were completed. This study was approved by the University of Utah Institutional Review Board. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The results section is organized into 3 sections: (a) Focus groups, (b) Item generation; and (c) Questionnaire pilot. (I) (1) Focus Groups. Themes identified through a qualitative review are presented below with illustrative comments of participants. The diversity of attitudes and willingness to support clinical trial recruitment varied so substantially that no single pattern emerged. Attitudes ranged from enthusiastic support, to interest in some trials to disinterest or distrust in trials in general. Compensation for time spent, which could be monetary, informational, or through professional recognition; and provider relationship with the study team or pre-selection of specific trials by a clinic oversight committee, and importance to providers practice positively affected willingness to help recruit. “I would love to get people into clinical trials as much as possible... If it works for them you are going to help a whole lot of other people.” If we felt like we have done every possible thing that was already established as evidence-based and it didn’t work out, then we would consider the trials. I think that studies are more beneficial for specific specialists... There might be a whole slew of things that I never deal with or don’t care about because it’s not prevalent for my patient population. Local and reputable... A long distance someone asking to do something is just not the same as someone in the trenches with you. The bottom line is how much work is involved at our end and if there is going to be any compensation for that. I think also the providers would like have feedback on what they referred them to. And how did it go? So did we pick the right patient? ... It helps us to know, did they even sign up for the study? Getting your name on a research paper would be nice too. Lack of information regarding trials reduced support for recruitment of patients. Providers stated that they do not know how to quickly find information about studies, nor do they have time to find the information, and therefore cannot efficiently council patients regarding trial participation. Notifications regarding clinical trials that were deemed to be important included: Trial coordinator intention to recruit patients, enrollment of a patient in a clinical drug trial, trial progress and result updates, and reports of effectiveness of provider recruitment efforts. Perceived information needs regarding trials that providers are referring patients to included: trial purpose, design, benefits and risks, potential side effects, intervention details, medication class (mechanism of action), drug interactions with study drug, study timeline, coordinator contact information, link to print off patient handouts, enrollment instructions, and a link to study website. (2) It’s just we don’t know any of the information ... and it can’t take any of our time. ... I don’t have time to research it. Sometimes the patients ask me questions about it and I would like to be in a position where I have some information about it before I am asked. It would be nice to be notified if they [my patients] are enrolled in the trial, when it turns into actual recruitment. I do like to know if they’re in [a trial] so that when they come in for problems, I at least know that they might be on a study medication so I can be safe. I’ll get an ER message, “The patient got admitted. There blood pressure’s, you know, tanked, because they’re on a study drug I didn’t know anything about.” if there’s certain side effects that I need to be watching out for. It would also be good to have a contact person from the study in case we need to notify them of. “this person’s possible having an adverse event. Look into it more.” (3) Provider burden associated with patient recruitment appeared to be a deterrent. These burdens included adding to the providers task list, increasing the time required to complete a visit, and usurpation of control over the patients care plan with the associated effect on provider quality scores. We don’t have time. I mean, we don’t even take a lunch break. I have 15 minutes and now this is taking this many minutes away from my 15 minutes. I am just sick of extra work. We already have so much extra work. It’s just more stuff to do. We are maxed out on stuff to do. Right now, part of our compensation depends on having our patients A1Cs controlled. And so if we’re taking a chance that maybe they’re getting a medicine, maybe they’re not, maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t, its gonna further delay our ability to get paid. Cause they’re like “I’m not going to let you go mess up my patient and I’m going to have to deal with the consequences is kind of the way they think. If you’re going to put the patient in a study, being able drop them from our registry so we don’t get penalized for a negative outcome [is important]. (4) Patient’s needs were a priority among factors influencing likelihood to help recruitment patients. Providers considered perceived benefit or risk to the patient, such as additional healthcare services, increased monitoring, financial assistance, or access to new treatments when other options have been ineffective, important; as well as continuance of established care that has proven effective, and ethical recruitment that addresses language and mental health to ensure that patients can make decisions regarding study participation. If there’s something great that’s gonna benefit a patient, I would definitely wanna know about it to give them that option. You know that’s what we wanna try to do is make our patients better. Someone who is really well controlled and doing well, I would not tend to put them toward the study. Just keep going with what’s working right now. Sometimes there’s financial incentives for them to participate, so you know, if its a good fit its easy to at least offer that to the patient. They get treatment maybe that they can’t afford. You don’t want to be seen as somebody who's forcing a patient... if their provider is telling them this is a good idea you are more likely to get your patient to do it. I think they have to understand what a clinical trial is, first of all, in that it’s a trial. Right? We’re trying to figure out if a certain treatment is good or not. It may not work. It may work. With many patients, they don’t only have medical problems, but significant mental illness that sometimes interferes a lot with just our treatment of them here for their clinical problems. And so, that probably would interfere with someone’s ability to understand and consent to a trial. And the patients have the right to make that choice. I don’t need to be—I don’t mind influencing them on things I know about, I think are invaluable, but I don’t need to be a barrier to them. (5) Perceived responsibility in trial recruitment varied substantially, from no involvement at all, to prescreening, counseling, or recruiting patients. Some providers felt that they should have the right to say “no” to recruitment of their patients while others believed prescreening was an unnecessary burden, outside of their role as a primary care provider. if someone prescreens and thinks its appropriate and gives me that judgment call to say, do you think it would be a good fit? I think one of them, they sent, and I said, Oh, I don’t think it would be a good fit because of this...So that would be fine. I don’t think I need to be a gatekeeper for studies. I mean, if there’s people that qualify for a study, and there’s a great study that’s been approved, and they can recruit them without me knowing, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I liked how it was—I could do a simple referral ... someone else figured out the qualifications. if we knew of ongoing studies and if we thought a certain patient may qualify for a certain study, we just contact the coordinator, and then they just take care of the rest. I think that appropriate ... from our perspective, would be, “Are you interested?” “This is the number for a person who can sit with you, talk with you about a trial, tell you everything about it, answer your questions, and then you can make a decision.” I’m not going to let you go mess up my patient and I’m going to have to deal with the consequences. (6) A clinic-implementation approach that systemizes workflow, limits the number of trials providers are asked to recruit for, and minimizes provider time burden is needed. Suggested methods for informing providers of patient clinical trial eligibility included: email, alerts, in-basket messages, texts, phone-calls, and in-person contact. People are so sick of change, change, change, change ... if there’s no stability whatsoever, then people get frustrated and start to burn out. Having my staff remember how to do it correctly and I remember what studies we have going ... it becomes somewhat of a burden... it’s hard for us to remember as we are flying through our day. There just needs to be a clear understanding with those roles... Who does the patient call? We don’t want to look like we don’t know what we are doing. There probably should be a selection committee put together from various people who have stakes in the community, at least who can say, “This would be applicable for xx clinic.” (7) Provider Suggestions Providers had multiple suggestions regarding notification methods. (II) Development of item pool and construction of questionnaire The specific items were constructed from literature review on physician’s attitudes and results from the focus group. The overarching concern was on readability, brief questionnaire size, and relevance. A large item were constructed and then reduced through piloting. (III) Questionnaire Pilot Results: The 7-item pilot questionnaire was completed by 36 physicians (28% response rate). In this section, we report the empirical results. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Discussion Relevance of Methods. Overall, the described methods for determining components for a recruitment program in primary care shows early promise. The focus groups that consisted of providers, staff and administrators resulted in insights as to workflows, attitudes, and clinical processes. These insights significantly varied across clinics. This variation supported the need for an individualized clinic-based approach that will meet local needs. During the course of the study, participants were willing to participate in all activities (although some requested payment). We were able to conduct the focus groups as scheduled and obtained the desired input. The analysis of the focus group transcripts was performed using iterative discussions and did not needed any special adaptation for this area of study. The pilot survey response rate was within the expected for this type of study. Focus groups can rapidly provide rich information regarding attitudes and other factors affecting provider participation at the point of care. However, findings from focus groups must always be confirmed through larger studies. It is important to keep the focus groups small and to hold multiple focus groups to offset the more vocal participants that may influence comments of others. This study shows that using our 3-step approach it is possible to gather important information on clinician’s and staff perceptions and needs to participate in point of care patient recruitment for CT. The focus groups also provide an important step for survey construction. Designing surveys empirically requires multiple validation efforts, which will be conducted in the future. However, we can draw preliminary conclusions from the results of the pilot study which are quite informative and they are discussed below. Near future work will be to expand the response rate through additional local survey and conduct formal psychometric testing and validation both locally and nationally. A final validation will be proposed through the CTSA consortiums. Variation in responses. There was a lack of normal curves in our survey results. This points to the need to target education and recruitment efforts by provider type (with similar perspectives). Identification of these types would be useful. Some specific points regarding variability that should be considered in program design. Preferences for trail recruitment methods. Many trial recruitment notification methods have the potential to be successful when used judiciously and done well, particularly if the trial coordinator/provider relationship is supported by reciprocal benefits to the provider. Consistency in workflow within seems paramount to success. Providers can pull some notifications at a time they choose, while other notifications interrupt and must be used sparingly. Some allow review of multiple patients at the same time, and some foster easy access to the patient’s medical record. Conclusions. The authors recommend that recruitment HIT be customizable at the clinic and provider level by responsibility and interest to allow selection of level of information, delivery method, that is, email, text, in-basket, alert, dashboard, mail; frequency of notification, and an opt out feature. These customizable options will allow for better support of clinic workflow or goals. There is the potential with machine learning technology to monitor provider interactions with trial notifications and for the system to automatically make adjustments to the method and level that best supports each physician. Limitations: The major limitation is the focus on one site only and one delivery system (university based). The low response makes generalization difficult. Efforts to improve the rate are underway. Many populations are under-represented in Utah. Full psychometric analysis was not conducted but will part of the final project.

Abstract Smooth and efficient human–machine coordination in joint physical tasks may be realized through greater sensing and prediction of a human partner's intention to apply force to an object. In this paper, we define compliance and reliance in the context of physical human–machine coordination (pHMC) to characterize human responses in a joint object transport task. We apply an optimization framework to explain human intention and behavior. The weighting factor in the optimization problem, lambda (λ), is presented as a person's reliance on the machine in a joint physical task with varying constraints. We demonstrate that with an estimated λ, the intended two-dimensional motion of a person's trajectory can be captured. We also found a relationship between λ and trust while participants performed a familiar task with no distraction. This finding suggests a relationship between the psychological construct of trust and joint physical coordination. The extent to which λ may serve as an online measure of trust and reliance in a physical load sharing task requires further investigation under more complex task scenarios that involve greater degrees of vulnerability and uncertainty.

The current development in production is directed towards a system called socio-cyber-physical, where humans, machine facilities, materials, technologies and the environment work together. Processes in companies are enrolling in a platform called Industry 4.0. Production is more similar to a living organism where the planned dynamic in the field of logistic and production elements of the system are exchange by emergent dynamically moving fully adaptable autonomous agents. Agents are plant facilities that have software implemented with decisions rules and are not control by human. These autonomous agents communicate and interact with each other in a protocol. In the factories of the future, presence of humans is also predicted and therefore the humanization of communication and interaction between human and agents of system must be considered. The human becomes a living agent who will communicate with others and collaborate to achieve goals. In individual workplaces, agents will serve and support humans in service, production, inspection, supply etc. but also a human will do that for agents. Although production will behave Emergent it is necessary that the activity of agents support the activities of humans in the workplace and that is not possible without communication. In this point there is a need for mastering the communication between the human and the agent and this can be done through Chatbot systems. This paper is aimed at designing a potential coordination system between humans and agents in factories of the future by using Chatbot systems.

Human Activity Recognition is one of the active research areas in computer vision for various contexts like security surveillance, health care and human computer interaction. Parkinson's disease is a brain disorder that leads to shaking, stiffness, and difficulty with walking, balance and coordination. Parkinson's symptoms usually begin gradually and get worse over time. As the disease progresses, people may have difficulty in walking and talking. The objective of the project is to train a machine-learning based model using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and K-means algorithm. This model helps the patient with Parkinson’s disease to understand their actions and identify the error in their movements. The kinect camera captures the actions of the patient and transforms those into Gray scale image and depth view. The advantage of this system is to prevent the patient from going clinic thereby saving the time of physically challenged people. The proposed virtual Physiotherapist (PT) system has the potential of enabling on demand virtual care and significantly reducing cost for both patients and care providers.

AbstractAlternative splicing relies on the combinatorial recruitment of splicing regulators to specific RNA binding sites. Chromatin has been shown to impact this recruitment. However, a limited number of histone marks have been studied at a global level. In this work, a machine learning approach, applied to extensive epigenomics datasets in human H1 embryonic stem cells and IMR90 foetal fibroblasts, has identified eleven chromatin modifications that differentially mark alternatively spliced exons depending on the level of exon inclusion. These marks act in a combinatorial and position-dependent way, creating characteristic splicing-associated chromatin signatures (SACS). In support of a functional role for SACS in coordinating splicing regulation, changes in the alternative splicing of SACS-marked exons between ten different cell lines correlate with changes in SACS enrichment levels and recruitment of the splicing regulators predicted by RNA motif search analysis. We propose the dynamic nature of chromatin modifications as a mechanism to rapidly fine-tune alternative splicing when necessary.

Economics of Cute There are many ways to study cute: for example, neuro-biology (cute as adaptation); anthropology (cute in culture); political economy (cute industries, how cute exploits consumers); cultural studies (social construction of cute); media theory and politics (representation and identity of cute), and so on. What about economics? At first sight, this might point to a money-capitalism nexus (“the cute economy”), but I want to argue here that the economics of cute actually works through choice interacting with fixed costs and what economists call ”the substitution effect”. Cute, in conjunction with the Internet, affects the trade-offs involved in choices people make. Let me put that more starkly: cute shapes the economy. This can be illustrated with internet animals, which at the time of writing means Grumpy Cat. I want to explain how that mechanism works – but to do so I will need some abstraction. This is not difficult – a simple application of a well-known economics model, namely the Allen-Alchian theorem, or the “third law of demand”. But I am going to take some liberties in order to represent that model clearly in this short paper. Specifically, I will model just two extremes of quality (“opera” and “cat videos”) to represent end-points of a spectrum. I will also assume that the entire effect of the internet is to lower the cost of cat videos. Now obviously these are just simplifying assumptions “for the purpose of the model”. And the purpose of the model is to illuminate a further aspect of how we might understand cute, by using an economic model of choice and its consequences. This is a standard technique in economics, but not so in cultural studies, so I will endeavour to explain these moments as we go, so as to avoid any confusion about analytic intent. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a way that a simple economic model might be applied to augment the cultural study of cute by seeking to unpack its economic aspect. This can be elucidated by considering the rise of internet animals as a media-cultural force, as epitomized by “cat videos”. We can explain this through an application of price theory and the theory of demand that was first proposed by Armen Alchian and William Allen. They showed how an equal fixed cost that was imposed to both high-quality and low-quality goods alike caused a shift in consumption toward the higher-quality good, because it is now relatively cheaper. Alchian and Allen had in mind something like transport costs on agricultural goods (such as apples). But it is also true that the same effect works in reverse (Cowen), and the purpose of this paper is to develop that logic to contribute to explaining how certain structural shifts in production and consumption in digital media, particularly the rise of blog formats such as Tumblr, a primary supplier of kittens on the Internet, can be in part understood as a consequence of this economic mechanism. There are three key assumptions to build this argument. The first is that the cost of the internet is independent of what it carries. This is certainly true at the level of machine code, and largely true at higher levels. What might be judged aesthetically high quality or low quality content – say of a Bach cantata or a funny cat video – are treated the same way if they both have the same file size. This is a physical and computational aspect of net-neutrality. The internet – or digitization – functions as a fixed cost imposed regardless of what cultural quality is moving across it. Second, while there are costs to using the internet (for example, in hardware or concerning digital literacy) these costs are lower than previous analog forms of information and cultural production and dissemination. This is not an empirical claim, but a logical one (revealed preference): if it were not so, people would not have chosen it. The first two points – net neutrality and lowered cost – I want to take as working assumptions, although they can obviously be debated. But that is not the purpose of the paper, which is instead the third point – the “Alchian-Allen theorem”, or the third fundamental law of demand. The Alchian-Allen Theorem The Alchian-Allen theorem is an extension of the law of demand (Razzolini et al) to consider how the distribution of high quality and low quality substitutes of the same good (such as apples) is affected by the imposition of a fixed cost (such as transportation). It is also known as the “shipping the good apples out” theorem, after Borcherding and Silberberg explained why places that produce a lot of apples – such as Seattle in the US – often also have low supplies of high quality apples compared to places that do not produce apples, such as New York. The puzzle of “why can’t you get good apples in Seattle?” is a simple but clever application of price theory. When a place produces high quality and low quality items, it will be rational for those in faraway places to consume the high quality items, and it will be rational for the producers to ship them, leaving only the low quality items locally.Why? Assume preferences and incomes are the same everywhere and that transport cost is the same regardless of whether the item shipped is high or low quality. Both high quality and low quality apples are more expensive in New York compared to Seattle, but because the fixed transport cost applies to both the high quality apples are relatively less expensive. Rational consumers in New York will consume more high quality apples. This makes fewer available in Seattle.Figure 1: Change in consumption ratio after the imposition of a fixed cost to all apples Another example: Australians drink higher quality Californian wine than Californians, and vice versa, because it is only worth shipping the high quality wine out. A counter-argument is that learning effects dominate: with high quality local product, local consumers learn to appreciate quality, and have different preferences (Cowen and Tabarrok).The Alchian-Allen theorem applies to any fixed cost that applies generally. For example, consider illegal drugs (such as alcohol during the US prohibition, or marijuana or cocaine presently) and the implication of a fixed penalty – such as a fine, or prison sentence, which is like a cost – applied to trafficking or consumption. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift toward higher quality (or stronger) drugs, because with a fixed penalty and probability of getting caught, the relatively stronger substance is now relatively cheaper. Empirical work finds that this effect did occur during alcohol prohibition, and is currently occurring in narcotics (Thornton Economics of Prohibition, "Potency of illegal drugs").Another application proposed by Steven Cuellar uses Alchian-Allen to explain a well-known statistical phenomenon why women taking the contraceptive pill on average prefer “more masculine” men. This is once again a shift toward quality predicted on falling relative price based on a common ‘fixed price’ (taking the pill) of sexual activity. Jean Eid et al show that the result also applies to racehorses (the good horses get shipped out), and Staten and Umbeck show it applies to students – the good students go to faraway universities, and the good student in those places do the same. So that’s apples, drugs, sex and racehorses. What about the Internet and kittens?Allen-Alchian Explains Why the Internet Is Made of CatsIn analog days, before digitization and Internet, the transactions costs involved with various consumption items, whether commodities or media, meant that the Alchian-Allen effect pushed in the direction of higher quality, bundled product. Any additional fixed costs, such as higher transport costs, or taxes or duties, or transactions costs associated with search and coordination and payment, i.e. costs that affected all substitutes in the same way, would tend to make the higher quality item relatively less expensive, increasing its consumption.But digitisation and the Internet reverse the direction of these transactions costs. Rather than adding a fixed cost, such as transport costs, the various aspects of the digital revolution are equivalent to a fall in fixed costs, particularly access.These factors are not just one thing, but a suite of changes that add up to lowered transaction costs in the production, distribution and consumption of media, culture and games. These include: The internet and world-wide-web, and its unencumbered operation The growth and increasing efficacy of search technology Growth of universal broadband for fast, wide band-width access Growth of mobile access (through smartphones and other appliances) Growth of social media networks (Facebook, Twitter; Metcalfe’s law) Growth of developer and distribution platforms (iPhone, android, iTunes) Globally falling hardware and network access costs (Moore’s law) Growth of e-commerce (Ebay, Amazon, Etsy) and e-payments (paypal, bitcoin) Expansions of digital literacy and competence Creative commons These effects do not simply shift us down a demand curve for each given consumption item. This effect alone simply predicts that we consume more. But the Alchian-Allen effect makes a different prediction, namely that we consume not just more, but also different.These effects function to reduce the overall fixed costs or transactions costs associated with any consumption, sharing, or production of media, culture or games over the internet (or in digital form). With this overall fixed cost component now reduced, it represents a relatively larger decline in cost at the lower-quality, more bite-sized or unbundled end of the media goods spectrum. As such, this predicts a change in the composition of the overall consumption basket to reflect the changed relative prices that these above effects give rise to. See Figure 2 below (based on a blog post by James Oswald). The key to the economics of cute, in consequence of digitisation, is to follow through the qualitative change that, because of the Alchian-Allen effect, moves away from the high-quality, highly-bundled, high-value end of the media goods spectrum. The “pattern prediction” here is toward more, different, and lower quality: toward five minutes of “Internet animals”, rather than a full day at the zoo. Figure 2: Reducing transaction costs lowers the relative price of cat videos Consider five dimensions in which this more and different tendency plays out. Consumption These effects make digital and Internet-based consumption cheaper, shifting us down a demand curve, so we consume more. That’s the first law of demand in action: i.e. demand curves slope downwards. But a further effect – brilliantly set out in Cowen – is that we also consume lower-quality media. This is not a value judgment. These lower-quality media may well have much higher aesthetic value. They may be funnier, or more tragic and sublime; or faster, or not. This is not about absolute value; only about relative value. Digitization operating through Allen-Alchian skews consumption toward the lower quality ends in some dimensions: whether this is time, as in shorter – or cost, as in cheaper – or size, as in smaller – or transmission quality, as in gifs. This can also be seen as a form of unbundling, of dropping of dimensions that are not valued to create a simplified product.So we consume different, with higher variance. We sample more than we used to. This means that we explore a larger information world. Consumption is bite-sized and assorted. This tendency is evident in the rise of apps and in the proliferation of media forms and devices and the value of interoperability.ProductionAs consumption shifts (lower quality, greater variety), so must production. The production process has two phases: (1) figuring out what to do, or development; and (2) doing it, or making. The world of trade and globalization describes the latter part: namely efficient production. The main challenge is the world of innovation: the entrepreneurial and experimental world of figuring out what to do, and how. It is this second world that is radically transformed by implications of lowered transaction costs.One implication is growth of user-communities based around collaborative media projects (such as open source software) and community-based platforms or common pool resources for sharing knowledge, such as the “Maker movement” (Anderson 2012). This phenomenon of user-co-creation, or produsers, has been widely recognized as an important new phenomenon in the innovation and production process, particularly those processes associated with new digital technologies. There are numerous explanations for this, particularly around preferences for cooperation, community-building, social learning and reputational capital, and entrepreneurial expectations (Quiggin and Potts, Banks and Potts). Business Models The Alchian-Allen effect on consumption and production follows through to business models. A business model is a way of extracting value that represents some strategic equilibrium between market forms, organizational structures, technological possibilities and institutional framework and environmental conditions that manifests in entrepreneurial patterns of business strategy and particular patterns of investment and organization. The discovery of effective business models is a key process of market capitalist development and competition. The Alchian-Allen effect impacts on the space of effective viable business models. Business models that used to work will work less well, or not at all. And new business models will be required. It is a significant challenge to develop these “economic technologies”. Perhaps no less so than development of the physical technologies, new business models are produced through experimental trial and error. They cannot be known in advance or planned. But business models will change, which will affect not only the constellation of existing companies and the value propositions that underlie them, but also the broader specializations based on these in terms of skill sets held and developed by people, locations of businesses and people, and so on. New business models will emerge from a process of Schumpeterian creative destruction as it unfolds (Beinhocker). The large production, high development cost, proprietary intellectual property and systems based business model is not likely to survive, other than as niche areas. More experimental, discovery-focused, fast-development-then-scale-up based business models are more likely to fit the new ecology. Social Network Markets & Novelty Bundling MarketsThe growth of variety and diversity of choice that comes with this change in the way media is consumed to reflect a reallocation of consumption toward smaller more bite-sized, lower valued chunks (the Alchian-Allen effect) presents consumers with a problem, namely that they have to make more choices over novelty. Choice over novelty is difficult for consumers because it is experimental and potentially costly due to risk of mistakes (Earl), but it also presents entrepreneurs with an opportunity to seek to help solve that problem. The problem is a simple consequence of bounded rationality and time scarcity. It is equivalent to saying that the cost of choice rises monotonically with the number of choices, and that because there is no way to make a complete rational choice, agents will use decision or choice heuristics. These heuristics can be developed independently by the agents themselves through experience, or they can be copied or adopted from others (Earl and Potts). What Potts et al call “social network markets” and what Potts calls “novelty bundling markets” are both instances of the latter process of copying and adoption of decision rules. Social network markets occur when agents use a “copy the most common” or “copy the highest rank” meta-level decision rule (Bentley et al) to deal with uncertainty. Social network markets can be efficient aggregators of distributed information, but they can also be path-dependent, and usually lead to winner-take all situations and dynamics. These can result in huge pay-offs differentials between first and second or fifth place, even when the initial quality differentials are slight or random. Diversity, rapid experimentation, and “fast-failure” are likely to be effective strategies. It also points to the role of trust and reputation in using adopted decision rules and the information economics that underlies that: namely that specialization and trade applies to the production and consumption of information as well as commodities. Novelty bundling markets are an entrepreneurial response to this problem, and observable in a range of new media and creative industries contexts. These include arts, music or food festivals or fairs where entertainment and sociality is combined with low opportunity cost situations in which to try bundles of novelty and connect with experts. These are by agents who developed expert preferences through investment and experience in consumption of the particular segment or domain. They are expert consumers and are selling their “decision rules” and not just the product. The more production and consumption of media and digital information goods and services experiences the Alchian-Allen effect, the greater the importance of novelty bundling markets. Intellectual Property & Regulation A further implication is that rent-seeking solutions may also emerge. This can be seen in two dimensions; pursuit of intellectual property (Boldrin and Levine); and demand for regulations (Stigler). The Alchian-Allen induced shift will affect markets and business models (and firms), and because this will induce strategic defensive and aggressive responses from different organizations. Some organizations will seek to fight and adapt to this new world through innovative competition. Other firms will fight through political connections. Most incumbent firms will have substantial investments in IP or in the business model it supports. Yet the intellectual property model is optimized for high-quality large volume centralized production and global sales of undifferentiated product. Much industrial and labour regulation is built on that model. How governments support such industries is predicated on the stability of this model. The Alchian-Allen effect threatens to upset that model. Political pushback will invariably take the form of opposing most new business models and the new entrants they carry. Conclusion I have presented here a lesser-known but important theorem in applied microeconomics – the Alchian-Allen effect – and explain why its inverse is central to understanding the evolution of new media industries, and also why cute animals proliferate on the Internet. The theorem states that when a fixed cost is added to substitute goods, consumers will shift to the higher quality item (now relatively less expensive). The theorem also holds in reverse, when a fixed cost is removed from substitute items we expect a shift to lower quality consumption. The Internet has dramatically lowered fixed costs of access to media consumption, and various development platforms have similarly lowered the costs of production. Alchian-Allen predicts a shift to lower-quality, ”bittier” cuter consumption (Cowen). References Alchian, Arman, and William Allen. Exchange and Production. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1967. Anderson, Chris. Makers. New York: Crown Business, 2012. Banks, John, and Jason Potts. "Consumer Co-Creation in Online Games." New Media and Society 12.2 (2010): 253-70. Beinhocker, Eric. Origin of Wealth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. Bentley, R., et al. "Regular Rates of Popular Culture Change Reflect Random Copying." Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007): 151-158. Borcherding, Thomas, and Eugene Silberberg. "Shipping the Good Apples Out: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Reconsidered." Journal of Political Economy 86.1 (1978): 131-6. Cowen, Tyler. Create Your Own Economy. New York: Dutton, 2009. (Also published as The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy. Penguin, 2010.) Cowen, Tyler, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Good Grapes and Bad Lobsters: The Alchian and Allen Theorem Revisited." Journal of Economic Inquiry 33.2 (1995): 253-6. Cuellar, Steven. "Sex, Drugs and the Alchian-Allen Theorem." Unpublished paper, 2005. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.sonoma.edu/users/c/cuellar/research/Sex-Drugs.pdf›.Earl, Peter. The Economic Imagination. Cheltenham: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986. Earl, Peter, and Jason Potts. "The Market for Preferences." Cambridge Journal of Economics 28 (2004): 619–33. Eid, Jean, Travis Ng, and Terence Tai-Leung Chong. "Shipping the Good Horses Out." Wworking paper, 2012. http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ngkaho/Research/shippinghorses.pdf Potts, Jason, et al. "Social Network Markets: A New Definition of Creative Industries." Journal of Cultural Economics 32.3 (2008): 166-185. Quiggin, John, and Jason Potts. "Economics of Non-Market Innovation & Digital Literacy." Media International Australia 128 (2008): 144-50. Razzolini, Laura, William Shughart, and Robert Tollison. "On the Third Law of Demand." Economic Inquiry 41.2 (2003): 292–298. Staten, Michael, and John Umbeck. “Shipping the Good Students Out: The Effect of a Fixed Charge on Student Enrollments.” Journal of Economic Education 20.2 (1989): 165-171. Stigler, George. "The Theory of Economic Regulation." Bell Journal of Economics 2.1 (1971): 3-22. Thornton, Mark. The Economics of Prohibition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991.Thornton, Mark. "The Potency of Illegal Drugs." Journal of Drug Issues 28.3 (1998): 525-40.

The paper discusses mobility in the context of displacement. How is the mobile phone appropriated by refugees in immigration detention? What does the mobile phone, and indeed, mobility, signify in an Australian policy landscape of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and formerly prohibited access to mobile phones for detainees inside immigration detention centres? What does this intimate about the perceived dangers of “new” and mobile media? The author’s preliminary research with refugees in Australian immigration detention centres compares policy and practice. Firstly, it interrogates the unwritten policies regulating refugees’ access to media technologies when incarcerated in immigration detention. As there is no written policy on technology access and practices vary across immigration detention centres, the information in this paper has been given by detainees and has not been verified by the management of detention centres. The paper suggests that the utopian promises of mobile media echo those made about cyberspace in the 1990s. Furthermore, the residual effects of such rhetoric have infiltrated government policy in terms of perceiving mobile media as dangerous when adopted by marginalised groups such as refugees. Secondly, the research examines how and why the mobile phone has been adopted by immigration detainees despite their former prohibition. It explores the ways in which refugees practice an imagined mobility through media whilst in detention, and finds that this is critical to sustaining connection with their imagined communities. Why Refugees? In the context of increased forced migration of people due to circumstances such as political instability, war, natural disaster and famine; it is necessary to better understand how refugees mobilise and organise in situations of displacement. As new technologies encourage the capacity for borderlessness, such advantages also have to be contrasted with the potential dangers of spontaneous border crossings. The study of the behaviour and practices of refugees in relation to communication technologies offers an insight into the efficacy of immigration detention policy in filtering movement and interaction, both physical and virtual, between Australia and other countries. Although the study of refugees is a discipline in its own right, there has been minimal examination of how they appropriate technology, particularly that which facilitates and complements their mobility, to maintain connections with their diasporic networks while in situations of displacement. The studies that have been undertaken concentrate on the use of technology by refugees living in the wider community (see Glazebrook, McIver Jr. and Prokosch; Howard and Owens), rather than in the context of detention. In previous research of diasporas within the discipline of Cultural Studies, technology has been regarded as vital to subcultures and minority groups. Technology has been the tool by which such communities respond to their structural conditions (see Cunningham; Hall; Halleck). Such investigations have concentrated on the intersection of class, gender and ethnicity and how they inscribe meanings to specific technologies, which in turn, become intrinsic to the identities of the groups and communities. The research extends the work that has been done within Cultural Studies by similarly focusing on a marginalised group, refugees, and their participation in particular technologies. A review of literature across refugee studies, diaspora studies and technology studies has shown that: The study of technology use by refugees has had minimal investigation The study of diasporas has rarely included refugees The study of communities and communication practices which surround particular technologies has concentrated on groups other than refugees The escalation of issues of asylum and border control in public discourse warrant more knowledge about refugees and their networks of communication beyond the boundaries of detention and Australia The notion of “networks” refers to people, technologies, processes and practices that form the relationships between refugees in institutionalised immigration detention and the outside world. The Australian Immigration Detention Context Between 1992 and 1994, Australian law moved from permitting (but not enforcing) limited detention of asylum seekers, to a blanket policy of mandatory detention (HREOC) which, at one point, had up to 12,000 individuals in detention (Castan Centre for Human Rights Law). The detention context is particularly relevant to Australia, because its policy of mandatory detention means that refugees have restricted contact with the world outside of the detention centre. In 2005, the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Bill allowed detained families with children to live in community detention, that is, in residential accommodation outside of an immigration detention centre. Although community detention carries with it specific conditions, families are unaccompanied and have more freedom of movement. This paper discusses the author’s preliminary work with refugees in immigration detention, prior to the introduction of community detention. The research sought to investigate how asylum seekers use technology to sustain connections with their virtual communities in situations of displacement. Specifically, it explored how technology is appropriated to mediate communication in the context of institutionalised detention. The key research questions addressed by the research were: what kinds of technologies are available to refugees? How are these used? How are their benefits and limitations perceived? What, if any, kinds of social networks surround these technologies? How are relationships of power surrounding these technologies negotiated? Can technology assist refugees in sustaining connections with their communities of choice and reducing their sense of isolation? Can technology play a role in reducing the well-documented effects of this incarceration by providing mediated social interaction? What are the implications for policy, especially in relation to permitted technologies and surveillance of communication practices? Access to informants was gained by working with a refugee community advocacy group, which has established links with refugees in detention and experience in dealing with the management of detention centres. One such group is ChilOut, which organises visitor programs to immigration detention centres. This affiliation was important in gaining access to, and trust of, detainees who were willing to participate in the research. It presented opportunities to interact with detainees on a social basis. Semi-structured interviews with the research subjects were conducted to ascertain the strategies and resources currently utilised to counter the effects of mandatory detention. In 2005, detainees had access to a range of technology which can be broadly termed “old media”, while access to “new media” – such as the Internet and mobile phones – are prohibited. At the time of printing, detainees reported that mobile phones without cameras were only recently permitted. Detainees have access to pay phones inside the centre. Visitors are allowed to give detainees phone cards so they can use the pay phones without charge or the need for change. In addition to pay phones, detainees are provided with access to a fax and photocopier, which are generally used to liaise with and send relevant documentation to lawyers. There is distrust of using the fax machine at the detention centre because it is in a management office area and the detainees require permission to use it. It means the guards can read the faxes that are sent, as well as those that are received before notifying the detainees that they have received one. Detainees also have television, videos, DVDs and newspapers, so there is the possibility of feeling like part of an imagined community (Anderson) through these media. There are computers available, but no Internet access. Some of the children load computer games on them to play, others have Playstation in their rooms. It is noteworthy that the only technology to which detainees have access and which facilitates real-time person-to-person interaction is the telephone. The phone offers the opportunity for direct contact with the outside world without the visual and other sensory realities of detention. The telephone is able to mask the extent of imprisonment as it does not show the barbed razor wire surrounding the compound. Yet detainees were not permitted to have mobile phones for a long time. Thus, the key question remains: why were they deprived of access to mobile phones while allowed access to pay phones and landlines? What does this suggest about the perceived dangers of mobile media and the resonance of last century’s techno-utopian discourses? Given that detainees were only given access to “old media”, it seems that this tired but resolutely upbeat rhetoric about new technology which celebrates it as inherently liberating actually inflected policies determining the kinds of technologies to which detainees have access. It confirms the pessimistic assertions of media theorists such as Schiller and Mosco, that new technologies further alienate disadvantaged groups. As the Australian government attempts to regulate the physical movement of people across its borders, mantras of the dot.com era such as “everyone is a free agent” (Kumar 77) appear to undermine this agenda. The assumptions of liberty and democracy embedded in this “free agency” are implicit in policies that denied refugees access to “new media” such as the Internet and mobile phones. The “liberating” nature of such technology was regarded as unsafe in the hands of refugees, whose freedom of movement is institutionally contained by the Australian government through mandatory detention. The physical movement of refugees, as well as the agency and freedom with which they can claim asylum in a country, is actively discouraged through immigration detention policy and limitations on access to technology. The promise of self-expression afforded by mobile media seemed antithetical to the prejudicial administration of refugees, which is premised upon a distrust of their claims of identity and asylum. Subsequently, their use of mobile technology was also assumed to be suspect and therefore had to be restricted. Detained refugees serve as a reminder of the parameters of upbeat discourses about new technology. That is, the utopian possibilities of mobile media appear to be conditional such that its “power” can only be entrusted to certain groups. In policy terms, the mobile phone is a rich site of signification. Not only does the technology itself imply a way of being (that is free, mobile, always accessible and always able to access), but it also connotes an ideal type of user, one that is appropriate and deserving of such technology. It seems that refugees are not entitled to their mobility and, therefore, do not have rights to media that is considered to facilitate such mobility, in spite of their detention. Furthermore, there is a suggested dichotomy in the government’s classification of the technologies to which refugees have access. The fact of detention means refugees are surrounded by technology, held captive by it and are inevitably in close proximity to it. It is technology which is seen as antithetical to mobility and therefore could be described as “static”: phones, faxes, photocopiers, television, video – all of which may be characterised as “old media”. The binary opposite of such technology is that which can be regarded as mobile or new or interactive media; that which resonates with the residual effects of 1990s techno-utopian rhetoric; and could be considered as threatening in the hands of those who have physically made unauthorised border crossings. However, prior investigations of “mobile” technologies, demonstrates that such dualisms are flawed as the lowest technologies also have the capacity to facilitate mobility. Examples include Paul Gilroy’s work on the Black Atlantic, which notes that books and records have been vital in carrying oppositional ideologies and philosophies across the black diaspora. Within Asian diasporas, the exchange of video letters and taped Bollywood movies have been interpreted as forms of localised challenges to the centralised power of the broadcast media industries (Ang; Gillespie). These economies of exchange as facilitated by older forms of mobile media have been studied in relation to issues of migration and marginalisation. Given that refugees are also affected by such issues, their mobile media practices are a sobering reminder that mobility is not necessarily hi-tech nor confined to the realms of the affluent, educated and socio-economically advantaged. Rather, mobility can be a tenuous state of being displaced and itinerant, with technology adopted to manage and adapt to its challenges. The Mobile Media Practices of Detained Refugees The initial findings from the fieldwork indicate that for refugees, the mobile phone is not a technology of choice but instead, a technology of necessity and survival. Every technology that is available to them is used to sustain connection to their localized and globalised networks. The restriction to their physical movement of detainees is compensated through use of technology which allows any sort of interaction and communication. Being part of a technologically-mediated community appears to minimise the marginalisation and isolation they experience. Such feelings of dislocation have been well-documented in studies of the impact of incarceration on the mental health of refugees (see Mares and Jureidini; RANZCP; Hodes). It seems that the telephone and fax are the mainstays of their communication networks. However, such technologies are closely monitored, as landline phone calls can be traced or even tapped, and faxes have to be sent from an office manned by guards. An experienced visitor to detention centres commented that “most” detainees had mobile phones and when they were contraband, guards knew about them but generally ignored their use by detainees. Only mobile phones offer the potential for communication to be free from the surveillance by detention centres staff. The ways in which mobile phones are used by detainees is decidedly lo-tech, for example, for communication with family where use of a landline is impractical. One of the detainees said that he speaks to his wife and children on the centre pay phone every few days. However, the call costs are expensive as his family only has a mobile phone, not a landline, at their place of residence. For them to call him is also expensive and awkward, because they have to call the pay phone and if somebody answers, they have then to locate him somewhere within the compound. Thus, the connections between the detainees and their loved ones are very fragile in that they are almost totally dependent on the phone to maintain these relationships. In this instance, the mobile phone offers another means for managing the tenuous nature of these ties. The mobile phone, particularly SMS technology, offers a suitable alternative as the detainee can communicate with his family cheaply and quickly. It compensates for the constraints of the pay phone. The informal interactions afforded by the mobile phone also extend beyond family members of detainees to their supporters and advocates. Likewise, the mobile phone complements the communication practices facilitated through permitted technologies. For example, when detainees are liaising with the Department of Immigration (DIMIA), they will ask advice from the regular visitors to the immigration detention centre who come from an array of organizations such as churches, refugee advocacy groups, law firms and health organizations. Visitors generally offer whatever assistance they can by obtaining necessary forms from the department, searching the Internet, undertaking letter writing campaigns, and lobbying government ministers. Something worked in amongst all the network activity that took place over the course of this week. As promised to the family, I scoured the DIMIA web site for a form for applying under Section 417. While there didn’t seem to be an official form, I used the opportunity to research the section of the Migration Act. Googling turned up a 12 page “guide to section 417 applications” written by a barrister, which I printed out and faxed to them. So as to ensure that the family received the fax, I SMS-ed them to let them know a fax was on its way and how many pages to expect. They responded to me by fax, saying that they had been notified that they too were going to be released into community detention in the coming weeks. (Extract from fieldwork diary) The mobile phone serves the function of anticipating and verifying communications which may potentially be surveilled by staff of detention centres. Where detainees may not trust that they are being given all the letters or faxes that have been sent to them, the mobile phone enables a degree of privacy so that they at least know what to expect from their correspondents. Furthermore, it provides the opportunity for detainees to speak about matters related to their case for asylum that are regarded as too sensitive to risk being discussed in a public place such as on the centre pay phone. Often this involves seeking assistance with their application for asylum. He rang T on the centre pay phone and said that he would like to speak with me, but did not have my number. He didn’t have a pen and paper to jot down my details at the time, so he gave T his mobile number and asked her to pass it onto me, so I could ring him on it. When I rang, he had returned to his room where he could talk freely. He told me about the visit from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who undertook to look into his case over the next couple of weeks. We talked about what would assist the Ombudsman in reviewing the case. I said I would write a letter or email in the first instance, and if he wanted other letters of support, I could circulate details of his case on the ChilOut newsletter. He said he didn’t want publicity at this stage. I offered to fax him a copy of my email, but he preferred that I give it to him in person as the fax machine in the office was too public and any documents received could be read. Again, the mobile seems to be the most appropriate technology for coordinating and organising privately away from centre surveillance… (Extract from fieldwork diary) Fear of breaches of confidentiality form only part of detainees’ desire for privacy from detention centre staff. There is also a need for private space away from other detainees as their imprisonment necessitates the constant use of communal facilities such as the pay phone. In addition to being used for its capacity for private communication, the mobile phone was also exploited as a broadcast technology by detained refugees. Text messages proved an effective way of providing brief updates to family and friends about the status of their case: 20 September 200510:24:07 Hi Linda. I am fine thank u. not news yet, I think they’ll come to see me soon, if I got news, I’ll let u know. Wish u have a good time. 15 October 200516:31:49 HI Linda, I was interview by Ombudsman yesterday, we talked about one hour and a half, it sound good…Thank u for yr concern 25 December 200520:26:54 Hi Linda. I am still in [detention centre]. No any news from Ombudsman, may be early next year. I am fine here, thanks. Tuesday 17 October 200613:44:41 Hi Linda…I transferd to [community] housing. Its much better here. How a u? takecare ur health, thanks. Thursday 16 November 200618:46:23 HI There is a good news to let u know I got the decision from that I won the FC case. Thus, for detained refugees, the mobile phone has been adopted for simple, lo-tech use. None of the respondents indicated a desire for a camera function on their mobile phones. However, one detainee did suggest that she would like to use a webcam to see and hear her child in China, whom she has not seen in eight years. While she did use the Internet for this purpose when she was on the “outside”, now she can only rely on weekly telephone conversations made from inside the detention centre. Conclusion What happens when technology is placed in the hands of those for whom it was never meant? It makes explicit what is often implied in studies of adoption of new technology, that the “utopian promise” is confined to a narrow socio-economic demographic: the advantaged, the affluent and the educated. Those who fall outside these perimeters are perceived as undeserving and untrustworthy of such technology. This is exemplified in the Australian government’s policy to deny refugees access to “new” and mobile media whilst being compulsorily detained. The decision to withhold mobile technology from mobile communities who are not so materially privileged is not only ironic but unwarranted in light of the empirical data. This has since been acknowledged by allowing detainees use of mobile phones. The mobile phone practices of detained refugees show that it is being used as a complementary and alternative technology, that is, to compensate for the inadequacies of the communication media allowed by detention centres. The mobile phone is exploited for the functions that permitted technologies do not offer: firstly, the ability to communicate with friends and family more immediately and effectively; secondly, the capacity to communicate privately with less probability of surveillance; thirdly, the opportunity to broadcast content one to many. In such communications, use of the mobile phone is simple and lo-tech: it is deployed for straightforward (but improved) interaction with detainees’ imagined communities which would otherwise be possible anyway through the “old” media technologies provided in detention. In practice, there was no evidence of the use of the hi-tech functions of mobile phones; nor was there any indication, as implied by policy, of the possible dangers that may ensue if such features of mobile media were available to detained refugees. Potentially, the research can impact on immigration detention policy, particularly in terms of reviewing the conditions under which technology is made available to refugees in institutionalised detention contexts. However, further research is required, especially a comparison of the former prohibited use of mobile media in immigration detention centres with the permitted use of these in community immigration detention. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1993. Ang, Ien. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. London: Routledge, 1996. Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. 2003. “Detention, Children and Asylum Seekers: A Comparative Study.” Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Cunningham, Stuart. “Popular Media as Public ‘Sphericules’ for Diasporic Communities.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.2 (2001): 131-147. Gillespie, Marie. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge, 1995. Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchison, 1987. Glazebrook, Diana. “Becoming Mobile after Detention.” Social Analysis: International Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 48.3 (2004). Hall, Stuart. “Aspirations and Attitude… Reflections on Black Britain in the 90s.” New Formations: Frontlines, Backyards. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998. Halleck, Dee. “Watch Out Dick Tracy! Popular Video in the Wake of Exxon Valdez.” Technoculture. Eds. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991. Hodes, Matthew. “Three Key Issues for Young Refugees’ Mental Health.” Transcultural Psychiatry 39.2 (2002): 196-213. Howard, Ellen, and Christine Owens. “Using the Internet to Communicate with Immigrant/Refugee Communities about Health.” Poster presentation at JCDL ‘02, Portland, Oregon, 13-17 July 2002. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). “A Last Resort?” Report on National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Kumar, Amitava. “Temporary Access: The Indian H-1B Worker in the US.” Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life. Eds. Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh Tu. New York: NYU P, 2001. Mares, Sarah, and Jon Jureidini. “Children and Families Referred from a Remote Immigration Detention Centre.” Forgotten Rights – Responding to the Crisis of Asylum Seeker Health Care: A National Summit. 12 Nov. 2003. McIver, William, and Arthur Prokosch. “Towards a Critical Approach to Examining the Digital Divide”. IEEE, 2002. Mosco, Vincent. Pushbutton Fantasies: Critical Perspectives in Videotex and Information Technology. Norwood: Ablex, 1982. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. “RANZCP Airs Deep Concern at the Mandatory Detention of Child Asylum Seekers.” Media release, 11 Nov. 2003. Schiller, Herbert. Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. London: Routledge, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Leung, Linda. "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>. APA Style Leung, L. (Mar. 2007) "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>.

Images 1-6: Photographs by Rachelle Viader Knowles (2012)This article discusses the cross-cultural, augmented artwork Parallel Worlds, Intersecting Moments (2012) by Rachelle Viader Knowles and Judy Anderson, that premiered at the First Nations University of Canada Gallery in Regina, on 2 March 2012, as part of a group exhibition entitled Critical Faculties. The work consists of two elements: wall pieces with black and white Quick Response (QR) codes created using traditional beading and framed within red Stroud cloth; and a series of videos, accessible via scanning the beaded QR codes. The videos feature Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people from Saskatchewan, Canada telling stories about their own personal experiences with new technologies. A QR code is a matrix barcode made up of black square modules on a white square in a grid pattern that is optically machine-readable. Performance artist and scholar Rebecca Caines was invited by the artists to participate in the work as a subject in one of the videos. She attended the opening and observed how audiences improvised and interacted with the work. Caines then went on to initiate this collaborative writing project. Like the artwork it analyzes, this writing documents a series of curated experiences and conversations. This article includes excerpts of artist statements, descriptions of artists’s process and audience observation, and new sections of collaborative critical writing, woven together to explore the different augmented elements of the artwork and the results of this augmentation. These conversations and responses explore the cross-cultural processes that led to the work’s creation, and describe the results of the technological and social disruptions and slippages that occurred in the development phase and in the gallery as observers and artists improvised with the augmentation technology, and with each other. The article includes detail on the augmented art practices of storytelling, augmented reality (AR), and traditional beading, that collided and mutated during this project, exploring the tension and opportunity inherent in the human impulse to augment. Storytelling through Augmented Art Practices: The Creation of the WorkJUDY ANDERSON: I am a Plains Cree artist from the Gordon’s First Nation, which is located in Saskatchewan, Canada. As a Professor of Indian Fine Arts at the First Nations University of Canada, I research and continue to learn about traditional art making using traditional materials creating primarily beaded pieces such as medicine bags and drum sticks. Of particular interest to me, however, is how such traditional practices manifest in contemporary Aboriginal art. In this regard I have been greatly influenced by my colleague and friend, artist Ruth Cuthand, and specifically her Trading series, which reframed my thinking about beadwork (Art Placement), and later by the work of artists like Nadia Myer, and KC Adams (Myer; KC Adams). Cuthand’s incredibly successful series taught me that beadwork does not only beautify and “augment” our world, but it has the power to bring to the forefront important issues regarding Aboriginal people. As a result, I began to work on my own ideas on how to create beadworks that spoke to both traditional and contemporary thoughts.RACHELLE VIADER KNOWLES: At the time we started developing this project, we were both working in leadership roles in our respective Departments; Judy as Coordinator of Indian Fine Arts at First Nations University, and myself as Head of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. We began discussing ways that we could create more interconnection between our faculty members and students. At the centre of both our practices was a dialogic method of back and forth negotiation and compromise. JA: Rachelle had the idea that we should bead QR codes and make videos for the upcoming First Nations and University of Regina joint faculty exhibition. Over the 2011 Christmas holiday we visited each other’s homes, beaded together, and found out about each other’s lives by telling stories of the things we’ve experienced. I felt it was very important that our QR codes were not beaded in the exact same manner; Rachelle built up hers through a series of straight lines, whereas mine was beaded with a circle around the square QR code, which reflected the importance of the circle in my Cree belief system. It was important for me to show that even though we, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, have similar experiences, we often have a different approach or way of thinking about similar things. I also suggested we frame the black and white beaded QR codes with bright red Stroud cloth, a heavy wool cloth originating in the UK that has been used in North America as trade cloth since the 1680s, and has become a significant part of First Nations fabric traditions.Since we were approaching this piece as a cross-cultural one, I chose the number seven for the amount of stories we would create because it is a sacred number in my own Plains Cree spiritual teachings. As such, we brought together seven pairs of people, including ourselves. The participants were drawn from family and friends from reserves and communities around Saskatchewan, including the city of Regina, as well as colleagues and students from the two university campuses. There were a number of different age ranges and socioeconomic backgrounds represented. We came together to tell stories about our experiences with technology, a common cross-cultural experience that seemed appropriate to the work.RVK: As the process of making the beadworks unfolded however, what became apparent to me was the sheer amount of hours it takes to create a piece of “augmentation” through beading, and the deeply social nature of the activity. We also worked together on the videos for the AR part of the artwork. Each participant in the videos was asked to write a short text about some aspect of their relationship to technology and communications. We took the short stories, arranged them into pairs, and used them to write short scripts. We then invited each pair to perform the scripts together on camera in my studio. The stories were really broad ranging. My own was a reflection of the profound discomfort of finding a blog where a man I was dating was publishing the story of our relationship as it unfolded. Other stories covered the loss of no longer being able to play the computer games from teenage years, first encounters with new technologies and social networks, secret admirers, and crank calls to emergency services. The storytelling and dialogue between us as we shared our practices became an important, but unseen layer of this “dialogical” work (Kester).REBECCA CAINES: I came along to Rachelle’s studio at the university to be a participant in a video for the piece. My co-performer was a young woman called Nova Lee. We laughed and chatted and talked and sat knee-to-knee together to film our stories about technology, both of us focusing on different types of Internet relationships. We were asked to read one line of our story at a time, interweaving together our poem of experience. Afterwards I asked her where her name was from. She told me it was from a song. She found the song on YouTube on Rachelle’s computer in the studio and played it for us. Here is a sample of the lyrics: I told my daddy I'd found a girlWho meant the world to meAnd tomorrow I'd ask the Indian chiefFor the hand of Nova LeeDad's trembling lips spoke softlyAs he told me of my life twangs then he said I could never takeThis maiden for my wifeSon, the white man and Indians were fighting when you were bornAnd a brave called Yellow Sun scalped my little boySo I stole you to get even for what he'd doneThough you're a full-blooded Indian, son I love you as much as my own little fellow that's deadAnd, son, Nova Lee is your sisterAnd that's why I've always saidSon, don't go near the IndiansPlease stay awaySon, don't go near the IndiansPlease do what I say— Rex Allen. “Don’t Go Near the Indians.” 1962. Judy explained to Rachelle and I that this was a common history of displacement in Canada, people taken away, falling in love with their relatives without knowing, perhaps sensing a connection, always longing for a home (Campbell). I thought, “What a weight for this young woman to bear, this name, this history.” Other participants also learnt about each other this way through the sharing of stories. Many had come to Canada from other places, each with different cultural and colonial resonances. Through these moments of working together, new understandings formed that deeply affected the participants. In this way, layers of storytelling form the heart of this work.JA: Storytelling holds an incredibly special place in Aboriginal people’s lives; through them we learned the laws, rules, and regulations that governed our behaviour as individuals, within our family, our communities, and our nations. These stories included histories (personal and communal), sacred teachings, the way the world used to be, creation stories, medicine stories, stories regarding the seasons and animals, and stories that defined our relationship with the environment, etc. The stories we asked for not only showed that we as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people have the same experiences, but also work in the way that a traditional story would. For example, Rachelle’s story taught a good lesson about how it is important to learn about the individual you are dating—had she not, her whole life could have been laid out to any who may have come across that man’s blog. My story spoke to the need to look up and observe what is around you instead of being engrossed in your own little world, because you don’t know who could be lifting your information. They all showed a common interest in sharing information, and laughing at mistakes and life lessons.Augmented Storytelling and Augmented RealityRC: This work relies on the augmented reality (AR) qualities of the QR code. Pavlik and Bridges suggest AR, even through relatively limited tools like a QR code, can have a significant impact on storytelling practices: “AR enriches an individual’s experience with the real world … Stories are put in a local context and act as a supplement to a citizen’s direct experience with the world” (Pavlik and Bridges 21). Their research shows that AR technologies like QR codes brings the story to life in a three dimensional and interactive form that allows the user a level of participation impossible in traditional, analogue media. They emphasize the different viewing possible in AR storytelling as: The new media storytelling model is nonlinear. The storyteller conceptualizes the audience member not as a consumer of the story engaged in a third-person narrative, but rather as a participant engaged in a first-person narrative. The storyteller invites the participant to explore the story in a variety of ways, perhaps beginning in the middle, moving across time, or space, or by topic. (Pavlik and Bridges 22) In their case studies, Pavlik and Bridges show AR has the “potential to become a viable storytelling format with a diverse range of options that engage citizens through sight, sound, or haptic experiences… to produce participatory, immersive, and community-based stories” (Pavlik and Bridges 39). The personal stories in this artwork were remediated a number of different ways. They were written down, then separated into one-line fragments, interwoven with our partners, and re-read again and again for the camera, before being edited and processed. Marked by the artists clearly as ‘Aboriginal’ and ‘non Aboriginal’ and placed alongside works featuring traditional beading, these stories were marked and re-inscribed by complex and fragmented histories of indigenous and non-indigenous relations in Canada. This history was emphasized as the QR codes were also physically located in the First Nations University of Canada, a unique indigenous space.To view this artwork in its entirety, therefore, two camera-enabled and internet-capable mobile devices were required to be used simultaneously. Due to the way they were accessed and played back through augmented reality technologies, stories in the gallery were experienced in nonlinear fashions, started part way through, left before completion, or not in sync with the partner they were designed to work with. The audience experimented with the video content, stopping and starting it to produce new combinations of words and images. This experience was also affected by chance as the video files online were on a cycle, after a set period of time, the scan would suddenly produce a new story. These augmented stories were recreated and reshaped by participants in dialogue with the space, and with each other. Augmented Stories and Improvised CommunitiesRC: In her 1997 study of the reception of new media art in galleries, Beryl Graham surveys the types of audience interaction common to new media art practices like AR art. She “reveals patterns of use of interactive artworks including the relation of use-time to gender, aspects of intimidation, and social interaction.” In particular, she observes “a high frequency of collective use of artworks, even when the artworks are designed to be used by one person” (Graham 2). What Graham describes as “collective” and “social,” I see as a type of improvisation engaging with difference, differences between audience members, and differences between human participants and the alien nature of sophisticated, interactive technologies. Improvisation “embodies real-time creative decision-making, risk-taking, and collaboration” (Heble). In the improvisatory act, participants participate in active listening in order to work with different voices, experiences, and practices, but share a common focus in the creative endeavour. Notions such as “the unexpected” or “the mistake” are constantly reconfigured into productive material. However, as leading improvisation studies scholar Ajay Heble suggests, “improvisation must be considered not simply as a musical or creative form, but as a complex social phenomenon that mediates transcultural inter-artistic exchanges that produce new conceptions of identity, community, history, and the body” (Heble). I watched at the opening as audience members in Parallel Worlds, Intersecting Moments paired up, successfully or unsuccessfully attempted to scan the code and download the video, and physically wrapped themselves around their partner (often a stranger) in order to hear the quiet audio in the loud gallery. The audience began to help each other through the process, to improvise together. The QR code was not always a familiar or comfortable object. The audience often had to install a QR code reader application onto their own device first, and then proceed to try to get the reader to work. Underfunded university Wi-Fi connections dropped, Apple ID logins failed, devices stalled. There were sudden loud cries when somebody successfully scanned their half of the work, and then rushes and scrambles as small groups of people attempted to sync their videos to start at the same time. The louder the gallery got, the closer the pairs had to stand to each other to hear the video through the device’s tiny speakers. Many people looked over someone else’s shoulder without their knowledge. Sometimes people were too close for comfort and behavior was negotiated and adapted. Sometimes, the pairs gave up trying; sometimes they borrowed each other’s devices, sometimes their phone or tablet was incompatible. Difference created new improvisations, or introduced sudden stops or diversions in the activities taking place. The theme of the work was strengthened every time an improvised negotiation took place, every time the technology faltered or succeeded, every time a digital or physical interaction was attempted. Through the combination of augmented bead practices used in an innovative way, and augmented technology with new audiences, new types of improvisatory responses could take place.Initially I found it difficult to not simplify and stereotype the processes taking place, to read it as a metaphor of the differing access to resources and training in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities, a clear example of the ways technology-use marks wealth and status. As I moved through the space, caught up in dialogic, improvisatory encounters, cross-cultural experiences broke down, but did not completely erase, these initial markers of difference. Instead, layers of interaction and information began to be placed over the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal identities in the gallery. My own assumptions were placed under pressure as I interacted with the artists and the other participants in the space. My identity as a relative newcomer to Saskatchewan was slowly augmented by the stories and experiences I shared and heard, and the audience members shifted back and forth between being experts in the aspects of the stories and technologies that were familiar, and asking for help to translate and activate the stories and processes that were alien.Augmented Art PracticesJA: There is an old saying, “if it doesn’t move, bead it.” I think that this desire to augment with the decorative is handed down through traditional thoughts and beliefs regarding clothing. Once nomadic we did not accumulate many goods, as a result, the goods we did keep were beautified though artistic practices including quilling and eventually beadwork (painting too). And our clothing was thought of as spiritual because it did the important act of protecting us from the elements, therefore it was thought of as sacred. To beautify the clothing was to honour your spirit while at the same time it honoured the animal that had given its life to protect you (Berlo and Phillips). I think that this belief naturally grew to include any item, after all, there is nothing like an object or piece of clothing that is beaded well—no one can resist it. There is, however, a belief that humans should not try to mimic perfection, which is reserved for the Creator and in many cases a beader will deliberately put a bead out of place.RC: When new media produces unexpected results, or as Rachelle says, when pixels “go out of place”, it can be seen as a sign that humans are (deliberately or accidently) failing to use the digital technology in the way it was intended. In Parallel Worlds, Intersecting Moments the theme of cross cultural encounters and technological communication was only enhanced by these moments of displacement and slippage and the improvisatory responses that took place. The artists could not predict the degree of slippage that would occur, but from their catalogue texts and the conversations above, it is clear that collective negotiation was a desired outcome. By creating a QR code based artwork that utilized augmented art practices to create new types of storytelling, the artists allowed augmented identities to develop, slip, falter, and be reconfigured. Through the dialogic art practices of traditional beading and participatory video work, Anderson and Knowles began to build new modes of communication and knowledge sharing. I believe there could be productive relationships to be further explored between what Judy calls the First Nations “desire to bead” whilst acknowledging human fallibility; and the ways Rachelle aims to technologically-augment conversation and storytelling through contemporary AR and video practices despite, or perhaps because of the possibility of risk and disruptions when bodies and code interact. What kind of trust and reciprocity becomes possible across cultural divides when this can be acknowledged as a common human quality? How could beads and/or pixels being “out of place” expose fault lines and opportunities in these kinds of cross-cultural knowledge transfer? As Judy suggested in our conversations, such work requires active engagement from the audience in the process that does not always occur. “In those instances, does the piece fail or people fail the piece? I'm not sure.” In crossing back and forth between these different types of augmentation impulses, and by creating improvisatory, dialogic encounters in the gallery, these artists began the tentative, complex, and vital process of cultural exchange, and invited participants and audience to take this step with them and to work “across traditional and contemporary modes of production” to “use the language and process of art to speak, listen, teach and learn” (Knowles and Anderson).ReferencesAdams, K.C. “Cyborg Hybrid \'cy·borg 'hi·brid\ n.” KC Adams, n.d. 16 Nov. 2013 ‹http://www.kcadams.net/art/arttotal.html›. Allen, Rex. “Don't Go Near the Indians.” Rex Allen Sings and Tells Tales of the Golden West. Mercury, 1962. LP and CD.Anderson, Judy, and Rachelle Viader Knowles. Parallel Worlds, Intersecting Moments. First Nations University of Canada Gallery; Slate Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan, 2012. Art Placement. “Ruth Cuthand”. Artists. 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