Search

This thesis proceeds from an analysis and a critical assessment of socially engaged spatial practices that have arisen from the convergence, intersections and conflicts between public, social art, and architecture's spatial practices; specifically, those situated within informal settlements of marginalized communities in Latin America. Through a literature review, the thesis identifies the persistence of a number of overarching misconceptions informing the design thinking of art and architecture's spatial practices. This research is geographically framed in Latin America. The thesis develops within the contextual arena of informality as a vernacular practice in the informal settlements of marginalized communities at the borderlands of the Latin-American city. The thesis is informed by projects and interventions that artist and architects have developed and constructed within communities in these borderlands sites. The thesis contends that public and social art and architecture spatial practices in the site of poor marginalized communities perpetuate the colonizing attitudes and processes of extractivist capitalism. To substantiate this, claim the research has been informed by two case studies of art and architecture spatial practice. The projects this thesis focuses on are located in the informal settlements of La Perla in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in Ciudad Bolivár, Bogotá, Colombia. These are the sites where the impact and effect of artists' and architects' spatial practices were observed. The content of this research results from conversations and observations within these communities, thus weaving a communal narrative of epistemic injustices, resistance, appropriation and place-making. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the decolonization of the working paradigms of art and architecture's spatial practices. It begins by outlining a methodology for identifying epistemic and hermeneutical injustices in the design thinking of artists and architects; this is followed by the proposal for a critical epistemology to guide the design thinking of art and architecture's spatial practices away from their epistemic errors. The thesis provides a model for further practical exploration by uncovering the epistemological problems in the design thinking of artist and architects. This research speculates a design-thinking solution of a critical epistemic methodology for artists and architects to develop a socially sensible epistemology of justice and solidarity for a socio-spatial practice that promotes social engagement in marginalized and disenfranchised communities.

This research study seeks to investigate the absence of multiple means of engagement in an adult intermediate EFL class at a private university in Santiago, using a qualitative approach and an interpretive paradigm. Thus, after different data collection materials, such as field notes, interview and fieldnotes were applied to the participants, which includes the teacher, it was possible to devise the theory to understand the absence of multiple means of engagement. These data collection materials were thoroughly analysed using grounded theory and provided the answer for the research question: What is the theory that explains the absence of multiple means of engagement in a tenth grade EFL class at a public school in Santiago?, and the general objective: To devise a theory to understand the absence of multiple means of engagement in a tenth grade EFL class at a public school in Santiago, considering the students’ psychological profile, students’ socio-cultural background, multiple means of engagement and the teacher’s beliefs towards the language. The results showed that in the context of English as a foreign language with adult students the teacher with her attitude, activities, techniques, methodology, and beliefs towards students’ learning is the first responsible for the students’ engagement during the lessons and that results in the attitude that students will have in the upcoming lessons, which is either positive or negative towards learning the language and based on all these reasons and factors is that students are not engaged in the classes.

It has been well reported that the use of multidimensional constellation signals can help to reduce the bit error rate in Additive Gaussian channels by using the hyperspace geometry more efficiently. Similarly, in fading channels, dimensionality provides an inherent signal space diversity (distinct components between two constellations points), so the amplitude degradation of the signal are combated significantly better. Moreover, the set of n-dimensional signals also provides great compatibility with various Trellis Coded modulation schemes: N-dimensional signaling joined with a convolutional encoder uses fewer redundant bits for each 2D signaling interval, and increases intra-subset minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) to approach the ultimate capacity limit predicted by Shannon's theory. The multidimensional signals perform better for the same complexity than two-dimensional schemes. The inherent constellation expansion penalty factor paid for using classical mapping structures can be decreased by enlarging the constellation's dimension. In this thesis, a multidimensional signal set construction paradigm that completely avoids the constellation expansion penalty is used in Band-limited channels and in fading channels. As such, theoretical work on performance analysis and computer simulations for Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q2PSK), Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and trellis-coded 16D CEQ2PSK in ideal band-limited channels of various bandwidths is presented along with a novel discussion on visualization techniques for 4D Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (Q2PSK), Saha's Constant Envelope (CE) Q2PSK, and Cartwright's CEQ2PSK in ideal band-limited channels. Furthermore, a metric designed to be used in fading channels, with Hamming Distance (HD) as a primary concern and Euclidean distance (ED) as secondary is also introduced. Simulation results show that the 16D TCM CEQ2PSK system performs well in channels with AWGN and fading, even with the simplest convolutional encoder tested; achievable coding gains using 16-D CEQ2PSK Expanded TCM schemes under various conditions are finally reported.

In this thesis, the author presents and analyzes two 4-dimensional Constant Envelope Quadrature-Quadrature Phase Shift Keying constellations. Optimal demodulators for the two constellations are presented, and one of them was designed and implemented by the author. In addition, a novel expanded 16-dimensional CEQ2PSK constellation that doubles the number of points without decreasing the distance between points or increasing the peak energy is generated by concatenating the aforementioned constellations with a particular method and restrictions. This original 16-dimensional set of symbols is set-partitioned and used in a multidimensional Trellis-Coded Modulation scheme along with a convolutional encoder of rate 2/3. Effective gain of 2.67 dB over uncoded CEQ2PSK constellation with low complexity is achieved theoretically. A coding gain of 2.4 dB with 8 dB SNR is obtained by using Monte Carlo simulations. The TCM systems and demodulators were tested under an Additive White Gaussian Noise channel by using Matlab's Simulink block diagrams.

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues by Bach… It is a sort of benediction on the house… It is a rediscovery of the wonder of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day it is something new, fantastic, and unbelievable. That is Bach… a miracle! A whole radiance of space and poetry pours forth from them! They are the very essence of Bach, and Bach is the essence of music. (Casals:1974:17 & 47). Such comments, common among musicians, are usually ignored by the disciplines that study music. This thesis, however, is the result of a decision to take these comments seriously. This thesis addresses the issues of creativity, order and discipline, through the perspective of a sociology and phenomenology of everyday life. The main issues of this thesis are first introduced through Bachelard’s phenomenological study of poetry and Heidegger’s approach to art. Embodied modes of knowing are introduced through Buber’s dialogic I-Thou concept. This is followed by Winnicott’s discussion of creativity and Bohm and Peat’s discussion of order. Discipline is introduced through a counter-analysis of some central sociological theorists on authority and power: Lukes, Foucault and Durkheim. Among other writers influential for the thesis are Eliade on origins, sacred temporality and ‘eternal return’, Simmel and Douglas on space, Levinas, Merton, Herrigel and Stendl-Rast on ethics and discipline. Hegel and Sartre on identity-logic and Serres on relational modes of knowing. The main issues are drawn from experiences with music and particularly with the music of J. S. Bach. These experiences raise ontological, cosmological and epistemological questions that are examined in this thesis. The material used in the analysis is drawn from musicians’ experiences and from a variety of sources non-academic and academic.