About
I analyse the structure of stories to understand what makes them compelling. I hold an interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Melbourne (2013) and currently work at independent research lab Sirius-Beta Corp, applying those models to systems design. My research and CV provide more details.
I’m currently collaborating with the Virginia Modeling Analytics and Simulation Center (VMASC) at Old Dominion University to build a VR modeling platform that captures narrative structures. This follows two funded projects that apply narrative-based mechanisms of contextual integration to problems of modeling interaction among multiple systems in medicine. These were supported by seed grants from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative; the current project realizes that research as a new representational system. More information about these can be found in my blog and on twitter.
I also write stories and articles, and am secretly working on a science fiction novel.
I participate in communities concerned with: computational models of narrative, interpretation in context, intelligent narrative technologies, visualization and modeling, situation theory, quantum interaction, and symmetry and form. I’m on the Advisory Board of the Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry (ISIS-Symmetry). This group is affiliated with the Society for Science on Form, in Japan, which explores one of the richest approaches to form and structure I know, katachi.
My understanding of stories is informed by my work in Media Analysis, the theatre arts, and a formative interest in drawing.
Contact
For enquiries, media, interviews, and event requests, please email bethcardier (at) hotmail.com.
How does a narrative analyst work on medical systems?
Contextual integration and knowledge modeling can be used to map complex systems (in both computer science and biology). Both narrative and bioinformatics are multi-level systems; that is, they integrate diverse processes and information types, to produce higher-level behaviors. Even though these domains are different, some of the principles of modeling information transfer among multiple contexts are the same.
My work differs from current educational approaches in the medical humanities in that I take artistic abstractions (like analogy) and adapt scientific frameworks towards them, to extend their capabilities. Examples can be found in three co-authored papers in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, listed under Research.
These projects have been radically interdisciplinary, and I also write and teach interdisciplinary collaboration skills. An online interview with EVMS can be found here.
Creative writing can be an investigative research tool, and I also explore how the semantic structures of logic and poetics might be connected. This is a way to extend computational logic and reasoning using the lens of creative writing.
In the future, I’ll use the results of these projects to contribute to discussions about how cognitive modeling depends on both biological embodiment and higher-level comprehension (such as narrative understanding). Surrounding work can be found in Patrick Winston’s recent musings at the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines at MIT, Keith Devlin’s writing on Modeling Real Reasoning, Fox Harrell’s work on using virtual identities to affect social change, and the Cognitive Linguistics corpus at Berkeley, such as George Lakoff’s work on analogy and embodied cognition.