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Theorising Digital Self-Mediation and the Smartphone as Filmic Apparatus after 6 January, 2021
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Review: Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits; Lydia Papadimitriou and Ana Grgić
Get PDFWork and the Shema
Get PDFThis article offers a proposal for a spirituality of work that takes its inspiration and guidance from the Shema, ‘the greatest commandment’. Drawing attention to the Hebraic holism and its incorporation of the physical expression of loving God with all one’s ‘might’ or ‘strength’, it calls for a ‘somatic revival’ of human work. It highlights the harmful effects of the sedentary working conditions that have come to characterise the working lives of many in today’s Scotland, and urges the development of a spirituality of work that takes a fuller account of the Shema, ‘which moves its utterers to working in a way that ignites soul, mind and body […] to implement afresh the greatest commandment as integrated in active Christian living’
The Gender Recognition Act: Past, Present and Future
Get PDFThis article shall focus on the landmark 2004 Gender Recognition Act and associated legal cases. It will explore the legal rulings that lead to the Act being passed, the content of the Act and the impact this had on the transgender community in the UK, including subsequent legal issues. 
“Home Is Where: The Journeys of a Missionary Child” by Margaret Newbigin Beetham
No full textReview of Margaret Newbigin Beetham, Home Is Where: The Journeys of a Missionary Child (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2019), pp. 240, ISBN 978-0232534085. £12.9
“Deepfakes” and the End of the Photographic Age
Get PDFA recent innovation in artificial intelligence, known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), has enabled computers to generate images that are visually indistinguishable from photographs. GAN images, sometimes called “deepfakes”\footnote{The term “deepfake” is often to refer to images (or videos) of people created for deceptive or salacious purposes. In this paper I will use the term ‘GAN image’ to refer more broadly to all photorealistic images generated by GANs, regardless of their purpose or content.}, have already been recognized to pose an epistemic threat to society by undermining the capacity of photographs to provide evidence. In this paper, I will investigate both the epistemic status and the potential aesthetic value of GAN images, as well as how the proliferation of GAN images will affect the epistemic and aesthetic value of true photographs. I will affirm the view that GAN images are a potential epistemic threat, but also argue that they are nevertheless a medium with significant potential for artistic expression. To do so, I will draw upon Dawn Wilson’s argument that photographs are ontologically dual and can be considered as both mind-independent “photo-images” and mind-dependent “photo-pictures”. I will extend that argument to GAN images to show that, while they are indeed the outputs of mind-independent computer algorithms that do not provide information about real objects in the world, they can also be skilfully generated in a way that can embody artistic intentions. Consequently, I will argue that if GAN images and photographs become indistinguishable, then photographs will come to occupy a role in society similar to that of paintings today, in that they will lose their epistemic authority but continue to be valued aesthetically