Writing | EPFL Graph Search

Writing is a cognitive and social activity involving neuropsychological and physical processes and the use of writing systems to structure and translate human thoughts into persistent representations of human language. A system of writing relies on many of the same semantic structures as the language it represents, such as lexicon and syntax, with the added dependency of a system of symbols representing that language's phonology and morphology. Nevertheless, written language may take on characteristics distinctive from any available in spoken language. The outcome of this activity, also called "writing", and sometimes a "text", is a series of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented linguistic symbols. The interpreter or activator of a text is called a "reader". Writing systems do not themselves constitute languages (with the debatable exception of computer languages); they are a means of rendering language into a form that can be read and reconstruc

La création d'une japonité moderne (1870-1940), ou Le regard des architectes européens sur le Japon

Irène Elizabeth Vogel Chevroulet

This thesis questions the fundamentals and modes characterising the European architects' way of looking at Japanese architecture and garden art between 1870 and 1940. It establishes the corpus of the major writings and of other texts published by their Occidental and Japanese contemporaries in English, French and German. We analyse the writings' major issues, outstanding specifics and realisations. We detect and describe the creation of a modern Japan-ness through the writings of four major protagonists. Firstly, Josiah Conder was professor of Architectural History and Theory at Tokyo Imperial College and later considered as the "father of modern architecture" in Japan. We discuss his articles and books, published between 1877 and 1893, as being inaugural as well as forerunners of Japan-ness. Between 1903 and 1910, the architect Chûta Itô and the art historian Kakuzô Okakura gave its premises in their publications. The engineer Franz Baltzer as well as the architects Ralph A. Cram and Frank Lloyd Wright confirmed some of these ideas in their books published between 1903 and 1912. Secondly, we study writings from an architect who never traveled to Japan : Robert Mallet-Stevens. His articles, written in France from 1911 et 1913, were an indirect reference to Conder's articles. Thirdly, we analyse the theoretical and innovative works published by Bruno Taut between 1924 and 1937. We look at the way in which he valued and consolidated an intercultural Japan-ness. We question the existence of a Japan-ness in garden arts' writings. We establish how his contemporaries spread Japan-ness specificities : the architects Wajiro Kon, Kôji Fujii, Tetsuro Yoshida, Sutemi Horiguchi, Wells Coates, Richard Neutra and Antonin Raymond, the art historian Jirô Harada, the landscape designers – Tsuyoshi Tamura, Percy. S. Cane et Christopher Tunnard –, and the writer Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. We identify which specificities had already been defined by Itô, Kon and Horiguchi before Taut validation. Fourthly, Charlotte Perriand confirmed this established modern Japan-ness as a source of inspiration with her notes taken during her stay in Japan between 1940 and 1941. The thesis chronicles the impact of her notes onto some of her realisations in Japan and later in France. Thanks to this comparative analysis of texts, the thesis argues that the European gaze towards Japan is reflecting its preoccupations towards justifications for its own architectural development. This gaze is also orientated by the interests of the Japanese themselves. These are looking for an international recognition of their traditional architecture. We describe then how Japan-ness is created through writings and how it works as an appropriation of modernity enabling Japanese architecture to step in an avant-garde role. This creation follows two stages. The first one is a process of distinction from Asian architecture by identification and reinforcement of Japanese specifics. At its core lies the discourse upon the differences of the Japanese shintoist and zen soul. The second one is a process of sorting out common specificities with Western avant-garde ones. This time, the discourse concerns abstract similarities. The whole set of Japan-ness specificities defines an intercultural architecture which distinguishes itself both from Japonisme and from Occidentalisme. Lastly, the results show the profits gained by this European gaze and taken into account in their own architecture.

EPFL2009

Learning How to Write with a Social Robot

Shruti Chandra

Learning handwriting is one of the main occupations for children in primary education. It is a complex skill that has been associated with children’s learning and development. Poor handwriting skills affect children negatively concerning their academic performance and motivation. In schools, children with handwriting problems need extra support and one-to-one interventions from teachers. Personalised one-to-one support requires additional resources that most schools generally cannot afford. Therefore, there is a need to explore different methods of learning and contemporary technologies to develop new educational tools to foster children’s learning process of handwriting. The research presented in this thesis addresses the question of - “How to create a social robot that can help children to acquire handwriting skills?". Thus, we looked into three different research domains: education; pedagogic sciences; and social human-robot interaction (HRI). On the one hand, we investigated the types of errors commonly present in children’s handwriting. On the other hand, we needed to explore different educational theories to find alternate learning methods that would maximise children’s learning gains. In addition, we investigated various possibilities for integrating a social robot into educational scenarios and measured its impact on the children’s learning process. This thesis presents five studies that follow an incremental evolution of the research. The first three studies were based on the interaction between two children, in the presence of either a human or a robotic facilitator, with the children performing a collaborative writing activity. We explored the ‘peer-learning’ and ‘peer-tutoring’ methods and compared the differences in terms of interaction behaviour and learning gains. Further, we analysed children’s interpersonal distance and feelings of responsibility towards their peers, both in the presence of a robot and human facilitator. Finally, we examined children’s assessment behaviour towards their peers and self-disclosure towards the robotic facilitator. The outcomes of these first studies provided enough data to generate a taxonomy of children handwriting errors to be used in the subsequent studies. They hinted that the ‘peer-tutoring’ method had a positive influence on children’s learning and corrective feedback to their peers in the presence of the social robot, providing positive support to the applicability of social robots as ‘facilitators’ in handwriting learning. The next step was to study the effects of the robot in the peer-tutoring scenario when assuming the role of a peer, directly interacting and performing a collaborative writing activity with the children. Thus, we developed an educational system with an autonomous social behaviour of a robot exhibiting various levels of learning competencies. The tutor-child provides corrective feedback on the writing of the learner-robot and in turn, enhances his writing skills. The robot’s writing was generated by an algorithm incorporating human-inspired movements and could reproduce a set of writing errors from the error taxonomy. We tested the system by conducting two longitudinal studies, each of them composed of four sessions. In the fourth study, we assigned the robot two contrasting competencies: ‘learning’ and ‘non-learning’. We measured the differences in children’s learning gains and changes in their perceptions towards the learner-robot. The fifth study followed a similar interaction scenario and research questions, but this time the robot performed three learning competencies: ‘continuous-learning’;’non-learning’ and ‘personalised-learning’. The findings of these studies show that the children improved more with the robot exhibiting learning, continuous-learning and personalised-learning competencies compared to the robot showing non-learning competency. The way children’s learning and perception of the robot evolved over time confirmed the need for multiple sessions for the last two studies. This thesis presents some evidence that social robots can be successfully used as tools for enhancing children’s handwriting skills in peer-learning scenarios.

EPFL2019