Category: Humanities

Immersive Languages

It’s a misuse of terms to say that we have a natural language; languages are arbitrary and conventions of peoples by institution. – François Rabelais

Constructed languages, or conlangs, are popular features of many science fiction and fantasy tales. Examples include Barsoomian (Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter series), Elvish and Khuzdul (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy), Klingon (Star Trek), Na’vi (James Cameron’s Avatar), and Dothraki and Valyrian (George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire). Thanks to the efforts of dedicated – some might say obsessive – fans, these invented languages occasionally slip the bonds of their native genres, as witnessed by Klingon translations of Shakespeare and the Bible.

Not all conlangs have roots in fantastic literature. The most widely-spoken “auxiliary language,” Esperanto, was created in the late 19th century by a Polish ophthalmologist, and was intended to be an easy and flexible second tongue that would foster peace and international understanding. UC San Diego Linguistics Professor Grant Goodall was fascinated by languages at an early age, and quickly found himself drawn to Esperanto; through his study of Esperanto he developed an interest in other conlangs.

In addition to Goodall’s remarks about his linguistic adventures in Inventing Languages, two of the most popular contemporary conlangs, Na’vi and Dothraki, are discussed by their creators. Paul Frommer was tasked by Avatar director James Cameron to create a language for his science fiction epic set on an alien world. Frommer describes a process which entailed setting certain rules for the new language, dubbed Na’vi, which were drawn from various Earthbound tongues, including English, the Romance languages, and several Eastern European languages. The primary challenge was to create a language that seems sufficiently alien to our experience, yet could be learned quickly by decidedly human actors portraying the language’s native speakers while also lending itself to a vocabulary that could be expanded on short notice.

David Peterson, co-creator of the Dothraki language used in Game of Thrones, faced a somewhat different set of challenges since the basics of Dothraki were established in the novels upon which the series is based (complete with translations). Peterson’s first task was to reconcile inconsistencies in spellings across various books, followed by establishment of certain rules of grammar and pronunciation based on common usages in various modern languages – key elements in Peterson’s ability to form new Dothraki vocabulary upon demand. Like Frommer’s Na’vi, Peterson’s Dothraki needed to sound exotic while retaining just enough familiarity for actors to learn and speak the language convincingly.

In recent years conventions, workshops, seminars, websites, and user groups have sprung up around fictional languages, including Na’vi and Dothraki, as fans seek an immersive experience based on their favorite novel, film, or TV series. Thus far none have yet achieved the international prominence of Esperanto, but devotees are convinced that it’s only a matter of time.

Watch Inventing Languages: A Conversation in Language Construction

Neuroscience, Mini Brains, and Your Health

“All the best models are the ones that you can improve in complexity to get closer and closer to the reality.”

The idea of a brain in a dish may sound like science fiction to some but scientists are becoming more and more adept at creating cortical organoids in the lab. The organoids are models of what is happening in utero as the brain forms. Being able to study this kind of human development not only opens new insights into neurological conditions but raises ethical questions.

Alysson Muotri, director of the UC San Diego Stem Cell Program, gives a look at how his lab is using these organoids to model specific conditions, treat disease, and explore fundamental brain mechanisms. Learn what the limitations, future projections, and ethical concerns are surrounding this exciting science.

Watch Re-constructing Brains in the Lab to Revolutionize Neuroscience – Exploring Ethics

Dreams That You Dare to Dream

The annual Lytle Scholarship Concerts were inaugurated in 1996 to benefit the Preuss School at UC San Diego, a public college prep charter school for grades 6 through 12. The concerts are specific to a composer (e.g., Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Liszt) or to a musical concept or genre (e.g., gospel tunes, tangos, ragtime, Latin jazz). This format has led to some unusual performances, including one in which five jazz pianists performed on five grand pianos arranged in a circle.

The 23rd Lytle concert, “Jewish Music: From Bessarabia to Broadway” carries on the series’ thematic custom by focusing on the evolution of Judaic musical traditions from roots in Russia and Eastern Europe to such early 20th Century practitioners of popular song as George & Ira Gershwin and Irving Berlin. The creativity of Jewish emigres flourished predominantly in New York City, particularly in the Bowery, Lower East Side, and Harlem.

American musical theater – indeed, American popular culture as a whole – was transformed by the efforts of Jewish composers, songwriters, and performers. Themes of suffering and hope, and the tensions between the two, combined with a yearning for social justice to fashion a portrait of a people striving to endure and assimilate in their new home. Perhaps no other song of the era encapsulates these aspirations as poignantly as Somewhere Over the Rainbow, written by Harold Arlen and “Yip” Harburg:

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true…

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Why then, oh why can’t I?

The programming of the concert reflects the diversity of the Jewish repertoire, from cantorial songs of worship to jazz to classical forms to popular songs of stage and screen. While many of the works performed arose from, or evoke, a specific time or place, their cumulative effect is universal; a celebration of a rich religious and social heritage, and a reminder of just how much immigrants have contributed to our American identity.

Watch Jewish Music – From Bessarabia to Broadway – Lytle Memorial Concert

Recommended for You

We use recommender system all the time. A website will recommend something to you based on what you’ve watched, listened to, bought or who you’ve friended on Facebook. These systems attempt to predict your preferences based on past interactions.

The systems range from simple statistical approaches like Amazon’s people who bought X also bought Y links, to complex Artificial Intelligence-based approaches that drive feed ranking on sites like Facebook.

Julian McAuley, UC San Diego Computer Science and Engineering, explores the modeling techniques behind personalized recommendation technology on the web and the different systems that we encounter.

He reminds us that we often find these recommendations a bit “creepy,” but that actually the recommender system has no human intelligence; it’s really a simple statistical process. They focus on short-term predictions but could they be adapted to make long-term predictions or estimate more subjective qualities? Would that be bad?

Watch How Do Websites Personalize Recommendations for Me? – Exploring Ethics

The Fallen Angel

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel…”
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Since its first (initially anonymous) publication in 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein has intrigued successive generations of readers and critics while inspiring dozens of cinematic adaptations and re-imaginings. In honor of the novel’s 200th anniversary the Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara presented Frankenstein: Afterlives, a series of screenings and interviews that explored the lasting impact of Shelley’s Gothic masterpiece on popular culture.

The inaugural program in the series uses the 2017 biographical film Mary Shelley as a springboard for discussion about the author’s relationship to her most famous work, and the various interpretations of Frankenstein arising from scholarly examination of her life. UC Santa Barbara’s Professor Julie Carlson frames Shelley’s story, both personal and fictional, as a series of oppositions – radicalism vs. conformity, class distinctions vs. egalitarianism, intellect vs. imagination, pragmatism vs. idealism, art vs. commerce – while noting that it is only fairly recently that scholars and commentators have begun to fully grasp the complexities of Shelley’s life and work. Frankenstein is key to any such discussion, not merely because of its iconic status but because it was one of the first popular texts to foreground the post-Enlightenment confluence of art and science. The story’s resulting conflict between pure scientific inquiry and philosophical concerns constitutes an early treatise on bioethics, a topic of increasing urgency today.

Frankenstein has also been championed by modern scholars and critics as an early feminist text, but Carlson cautions that this interpretation is dependent upon a consensus definition of “feminism” and is therefore debatable. According to Carlson it may be argued with equal validity that the novel was autobiographically-inspired, an allegorical reaction to Shelley’s own upbringing as, in Carlson’s words, “an experiment of radical parents.” Shelley was doubtless keenly aware of the oppositions mentioned above and incorporated them into her work, but she doesn’t resolve them neatly for the reader; rather than a destination, her interest was in the exploration. The many other possible interpretations of Frankenstein – as cautionary fable, post-revolutionary tract, political allegory, critique of English Romanticism, etc. – are a tribute to the novel’s many facets and confirmation of its status as a vaunting work of imagination.

Watch Frankenstein: Afterlives – Mary Shelley