Papers by Christopher Molineux
This thesis employs a primarily inductive approach to determine the path of emergence and subsequ... more This thesis employs a primarily inductive approach to determine the path of emergence and subsequent evolution of humour in hominins based on biological roots. This includes an outline of the cognitive, psychological, and social/behavioural impact ramifications, with emphasis on factors associated with cognitive evolution and the emergence of language and the aesthetic faculty. It is shown that the emergence of humour would have preceded language and prelinguistic humour would have functioned as a "break in pattern" recognition system. This system served the informatic function of detecting and parsing constituent elements of holistic perceptions, and creating abstracted conceptions, which could then be cross-correlated across multiple schemata and manifested in domain-general 1 expressions. Humorous behaviour would have ritualized such expressions, which then became part of shared bodies of knowledge imbued with social capital. Futhermore, due to associated rewards, this system was autotelic and autocatalytic, and thus stimulated the hierarchical evolution of hominin cognition (including the capacity for analogical thought and symbolic communication), behaviour, communication, sociality and culture, before being largely supplanted in its importance by the aesthetic faculty and language, which are shown to be products of this process. As such, humour can be seen to have played an important role in the hominin transition from biological to bio-social evolutionary dynamics.
Life memory archive translation performance memory archive life: textual self-documentation in stand-up comedy (7:1)
Life memory archive translation performance memory archive life: textual self-documentation in stand-up comedy
Comedy Studies, 2016
Understanding the Foundations and Devices in Humour to Determine Practical Design Methods for Systems That Create and/or Detect Humour in Video Games, Robots and other Forms of Artificial Intelligence
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2014
The role self-documentation plays in stand-up comedy is unique within the performing arts. It int... more The role self-documentation plays in stand-up comedy is unique within the performing arts. It intertwines the functions of memory, creation, translation, performance, and archive and transcends the art itself to additionally serve as a representation of self. I am engaged in an on-going study of comedian's practices in documenting their material and set-lists which involves Practice as Research (PaR), Practice as Research in Performance (PaRiP), interviewing comedians of both genders from a broad spectrum of backgrounds, ages, and skill levels, and organising and analysing the quantitative and qualitative data that is yielded. At this stage my findings show that while comedians utilise a range of documentation methods and practices these methods and practices are consistently ritualised and exhibit various mnemonic and hermeneutic elements.
Abstract: There have been numerous attempts to understand humour's nature and meanings and a few ... more Abstract: There have been numerous attempts to understand humour's nature and meanings and a few attempts to formalize the sum of this knowledge but the practical aspects of humour recognition and creation have not been given the same level of attention. In a 14 year study of stand-up comedy, social humour, and other humourous forms I have attempted to isolate specific devices that can be utilized in the creation of humour in video games, avatars, robots, and other forms of artificial intelligence. The human experience of humour also involves the frequent repetition of previously experienced humour termed in this paper as "repeatables". A comprehensive use of devices and "repeatables" combined with an understanding of the role of humour in the evolution of human cognition, language, and social systems has the potential to yield an improved ability to entertain, educate, and communicate in digital formats.
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Papers by Christopher Molineux