Arts and Humanities – Page 11 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Arts and Humanities

Documenting Criminalization and Confinement

“Documenting Criminalization and Confinement” is a project housed within the “University of Michigan Carceral State Project” and is focused on creating a comprehensive database containing different elements and evidence from within incarceration facilities and the lives of incarcerated individuals. The intent of the project is to create a space for academic researchers, legal teams, incarcerated individuals, and activists to find and utilize different sources of information about incarceration. The research for this project includes data processing and translating each research object into a line of metadata. Each object is analyzed and interpreted in terms of title, type, creator, date, source, subject, language, rights, description, and spatial coverage. All these different lenses will help future database users to quickly and easily find what they are looking for within the system. This project will help the larger process of decriminalization and hopefully will be able to spread correct and meaningful answers and information about the current state of incarceration and the criminal justice system in the United States today. Those who are currently incarcerated and those who are victims of a poorly created and maintained system will benefit from the increased exposure of the current prison conditions and the negative environment created by the criminal justice system in the United States. The increasing accessibility to the knowledge of the topic will hopefully inspire and inform many.

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Wicked Solutions Domain – Obesity

Obesity is a complex issue that has been prominent throughout the world for the past few decades. It affects all ages and is a system with multiple levels, feedback loops, and other aspects that make it difficult with which to manage. Various design interventions within local contexts globally exist, however, there is lack of access to all of these context-specific existing solutions. Technologically mediating access to existing solutions, particularly by underserved populations, can contribute to what design researcher Audrey Bennett calls a “wicked solution.” The first step to providing access is compiling information of existing design interventions derived through creative or empirical inquiry. The following review of literature discusses the general topic of design thinking and making towards addressing obesity, the many ways obesity has been addressed in the past, and, also how it is being looked at now.

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Méliès and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès who was a pioneer of special effects and story films during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Furthermore, we are looking to highlight the importance of Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Méliès, including locating his many lost films. Our focus has been supporting the publication of a translation of a key historical source that has long been unavailable in English, the late Madeleine Malthête-Méliès’ biography, Georges Méliès, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Méliès’ work better known to a wider audience including readers of English. We have worked to document the author’s work by arranging English subtitling of a video interview with Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Méliès. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Méliès Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Méliès has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Méliès at the University of Michigan undertaken since 2011 told from the point-of-view of a new generation of media makers who draw continuing inspiration from learning about Méliès and his work.

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Méliès and the Modern World

This project looks in depth at the work of early filmmaker Georges Méliès who was a pioneer of special effects and story films during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Furthermore, we are looking to highlight the importance of Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, who had perhaps the longest active career of any film historian and whose main concentration was documenting her grandfather Georges Méliès, including locating his many lost films. Our focus has been supporting the publication of a translation of a key historical source that has long been unavailable in English, the late Madeleine Malthête-Méliès’ biography, Georges Méliès, L’Enchanteur, which is under contract with the University of Michigan Press. This book will make Méliès’ work better known to a wider audience including readers of English. We have worked to document the author’s work by arranging English subtitling of a video interview with Madeleine Malthête-Méliès, and have compiled a complete bibliography of the research publication connected with the organization she founded, Les Amis de Georges Méliès. We are summarizing relevant articles for discussion in the introduction to the biography and assisting in the publication of another book, Méliès Boots: Material Contexts for Early Film Manufacturing (University of Michigan Press, under contract). To further show how Georges Méliès has impacted the modern world, we are preparing a short film that will summarize research on Méliès at the University of Michigan undertaken since 2011 told from the point-of-view of a new generation of media makers who draw continuing inspiration from learning about Méliès and his work.

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Wicked Solutions Domain

Rohan Agrawal Pronouns: he/him/his Research Mentor(s): Audrey Bennett, Professor Research Mentor School/College/Department: Stamps School of Art & Design, Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021 Session: Session 2 (11am – 11:50am) Breakout Room: Room 19 Presenter: 2 Event Link Abstract Authors: Rohan Agrawal, Tawsif Habib, Audrey Bennett Research Method: Survey Research

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Wicked Solutions Domain: Building a Data Modeling and Visualization Tool

The solutions to the problems that plague our society today arguably are rooted in data. This research will go through the development of a platform that allows for the collection, analysis, and interactive display of data as it relates to societal issues, similar to the Hopkins Medicine COVID-19 platform. To do this, scholarly articles relating to similar projects were assessed to understand what frameworks to use/what functionalities were important and then replicated to match the problems being focused on by the WISDOM research team, which are sustainability, obesity, and poverty. As a result of this, a website-based platform was created where users could interact with data collected about these issues with the intent that it would inform users about the problem and provide insights to enable change. This allows for smarter problem-solving for issues that impact large groups of people and will be accessible to the masses. This will likely help make huge strides in solving problems because it will provide evidence to inform the methodology upon which users can act. The main purpose of the research project is to help users find interventions to wicked societal problems and in return enable them to add their interventions. A digital platform that enables participants to find the solution to their problem will also help designers refine the solution to wicked problems and implement it in the digital platform.

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Modeling Depth of Interaction: A Neural Network Approach

One of the key elements underlying successful second language (L2) learning is the interaction with other language users in the target language (Gass & Varonis, 1985). While the expectation exists that learners will use their linguistic skills in theStudy Abroad (SA) context (e.g., Fraser 2002; Freed, 1990; 2000; Hernández, 2010; Martinsen, 2011; Mendelson 2004; Vande Berg et al., 2009, Whitworth, 2006), it is also known that many SA learners interact substantially less with native speakers (NSs) than they initially anticipate (DeKeyser, 1986; Dewey et al., 2014; Rivers, 1998; Wilkinson, 1998a, 1998b; García-Amaya, 2017). Recent research further shows that SA learners’ target-language use decreases over a six-week SA experience (García-Amaya, 2017; forthcoming). While interaction in the L2 is essential for achieving L2 gains, research has found that learners must negotiate meaning to notice gaps in their acquisition and benefit from their interlocutor(s)’ efforts to adjust interaction and facilitate comprehension (Long 1981, 1983, 1986).

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Modeling Depth of Interaction: A Neural Network Approach

One of the key elements underlying successful second language (L2) learning is the interaction with other language users in the target language (Gass & Varonis, 1985). While the expectation exists that learners will use their linguistic skills in theStudy Abroad (SA) context (e.g., Fraser 2002; Freed, 1990; 2000; Hernández, 2010; Martinsen, 2011; Mendelson 2004; Vande Berg et al., 2009, Whitworth, 2006), it is also known that many SA learners interact substantially less with native speakers (NSs) than they initially anticipate (DeKeyser, 1986; Dewey et al., 2014; Rivers, 1998; Wilkinson, 1998a, 1998b; García-Amaya, 2017). Recent research further shows that SA learners’ target-language use decreases over a six-week SA experience (García-Amaya, 2017; forthcoming). While interaction in the L2 is essential for achieving L2 gains, research has found that learners must negotiate meaning to notice gaps in their acquisition and benefit from their interlocutor(s)’ efforts to adjust interaction and facilitate comprehension (Long 1981, 1983, 1986). One could thus argue that deeper conversations, involving such negotiating of meaning, may be necessary for facilitating L2 learning. Along with this hypothesis, several questions come to mind. How can we distinguish deep from shallow interactions? How can we understand interaction depth without necessarily observing learners’ interactions in real time? In this presentation, we will discuss modeling depth of interaction through neural networks (cf. Frank, Monaghan, Tsoukala, 2019). Instead of asking participants to self-rate the depth of their interactions via online questionnaires, we have designed a predictive model that takes as input several structural parameters of interaction, including length, interactiveness, activeness, and number of participants involved. In terms of precision and recall, our model’s preliminary results are 76% and 82%, respectively. These results will be discussed in light of our modest dataset and future steps.

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Wicked Solutions Domain – Poverty

Across the world there are certain “wicked” problems that face us including poverty. The goal this term was to compile existing design interventions that address this wicked problem among others towards providing access to them by professional designers and lay communities. After we find the solutions that already exist for these problems the plan is to create a central location that will serve as a resource for communities wishing to tackle these issues themselves. This term, we conducted secondary research by scouring scholarly articles and books for design interventions that could populate our database, as well as other articles that can serve as background information for the problem as a whole. After we compile the list of solutions to the wicked problems we will visualize them in a format similar to that of the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus pandemic map. The format will be based on Professor Bennett’s “wicked solutions” diagram and will be called Wicked Solutions Domain (WISDOM). The aim with the WISDOM platform is to make a long lasting and meaningful impact on the aforementioned wicked problem that is impacting communities globally, and aid designers around the globe in combating it.

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The Detroit Square: Is There an Engagement Process?

The Museums and Publics project is looking at how public spaces are integrated in urban cities. We are trying to answer the broad question of “Who decides the future of the city?” We want to understand how the futures of post-industrial cities are determined; more specifically, we want to understand the decision making and design process and how that is shown in the final built environment. Currently, we are following the design and engagement process of the Detroit Square. The aim of the Square is to recreate the cultural district in Midtown Detroit and link the existing cultural institutions together in one space. The goal of the project is to create a film and answer the question, “What will the designers implement in the design process that will allow the Detroit community to have a voice?” This study will try to answer this question through qualitative interviews over Zoom with the project designers and the Detroit community. The interviews will help us understand if there will actually be public engagement or if it is only said for show. This film will also continue the conversation of who gets to be a part of the design process and start to hold designers accountable for not engaging the long-term residents of the city. As the Detroit Square is still in the beginning stages, future researchers on this project will continue to follow along with the design process and later with the building process.

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