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As If: Expectation as Worldmaking Fiction
No full textRegardless of any human pretense to foresight or omniscience, we are stuck with thereality that for now the future is, and remains, an open-ended question. In pursuing theissue of humankind’s preoccupation with its mastery and the ensuing contests over itscharacter, this essay begins with a tracing of future-oriented thinking’s development and thevarious manners of foresight which result, considering the future’s indeterminacy in light ofthe fundamental human impulse to plan around its projected, imaginary image. It will brieflychart the evolution of foresight as a means by which humans plan for—and in effectcreate—their futures. From early conceptions of the not-yet as a phenomena observable inthe rhythms and patterns of nature, to the later methodological rigours of modern foresightpractice, it centres the foundational concept of the ‘image of the future’ (as what is “seen” byforesight) and it’s mythopoetic function in bringing the future under a measure of humancontrol, providing placeholder knowledge and the certainty necessary to the carrying out ofactions calculated to either increase or decrease the likelihood of any particular imagesactualization. Foresight is presented as a defining characteristic of modern capitalistdynamics, operating in its most common institutional form as a means for extending thereach of presently powerful political and economic actors into the future, generating thefictional expectations that underlie the complimentary practices of speculative investmentand risk securitization. Following this, the essay turns to alternative formations which queer futurityand foresight, productively exploiting the fact that the images generated by foresight andspeculation, regardless of the power of their authors, are necessarily fictional. Relishing in(rather than retreating from) the future’s indeterminacy, queer futures proliferate possibility,disrupt reproduction, and instrumentalize desire in the performance of emancipatory futuresthrough their rhetorical and material instantiation in the present. As a counterpoint to thecapitalist and queer future imaginaries discussed, the paper closes on a consideration ofindigenous anti-futurisms which regard the imaginaries at the heart of foresight andpretensions of humankind’s command of the future as necessarily apocalyptic, thereforeincorporating foresight only insofar as it articulates the anticipation of a decline and eventualcollapse of ‘the future’ as such
Paper Monuments
No full textWhen we return to certain memories, whether they be stored for us as images in the mind, or as binary data, we imagine these figments to be essentially siteless, floating. We think of "the cloud" as existing immanently, all around us, hanging in the air between screens. And it is. But it is also anchored to real, monumental amounts of physical space. It is not just everywhere, it is somewhere on Earth, sitting on millions of square feet of land, ready to be called up in front of any eye with the right keywords. Paper Monuments examines the substance of memory, our relationship to the unseen, and the narrative scaffolding we build around these figments. Analyzing the ever-evolving technologies of memory, this paper reflects on the unending loop between seeing, remembering, and knowing, and the funciton of images within this cycle. It proposes that images are not pointing us toward the past histories or narratives to which they appear to be anchoreed, but towards a future past—a past which has not yet come to be, a perfect past, where we had it all.
Yield to the figural—communicating the unconscious in montage: The Pool Group and Borderline (1930)
No full textPsychoanalytic approaches to dreams and the method of their interpretation are considered as foundational for the sorts of theories of montage editing and cinematic movement presented in the written works of Sergei Eisenstein, and collected in the Pool Group’s journal Close-Up. The film Borderline (1930) is taken as a case study of this relationship, and analysis focuses on instances of correlation between the models for dream interpretation presented by Sigmund Freud and the new medium of film
Woman Power is Victory Power: Depictions of Woman’s Industrial War Work and the Maintenance of Traditional Femininity
No full textThis Essay analyzes wartime Propaganda, advertisements and newspaper articles to evaluate depictions of femininity and Gender Roles in Canada during and immediately after the Second World War. This essay focuses on women's enterance into the paid labour force and its depictions in popular Canadian media and its connections to national duty, beauty ideals and domestice roles. 
Critical points and trajectories of the Bohmian quantum flow
No full textIn the present work we study the critical points of the Bohmian quantum flow, namely the nodal point and its associated X-point, which are responsible for the generation of chaos in Bohmian trajectories. In the first part of the paper we find an analytical equation for the position of the X-point in a planar 2-d Bohmian system with a single nodal point and test its accuracy numerically. We then calculate its asymptotic curves and comment on the way they affect the evolution of the nearby Bohmian trajectories. In the second part we present our first results on the position of the X-point and its asymptotic curves in a 3d partially integrable system, where the Bohmian trajectories evolve on spherical surfaces
A Bibliographic Study on the Computer Algebra System Maple
No full textThe authors were surprised by the number of bibliographic citations to the computer algebra system DERIVE long after it was discontinued and developed a small bibliographic study about its evolution. They later carried out a similar one about the successful dynamic geometry system GeoGebra. Finally, they presented at Maple Conference 2022 a comparative small bibliographic study about Maple and other computer algebra systems, which can be found here
La Révolution (Netflix) comme symptôme du transmédiatisme dans une fiction historique
No full textTwo hundred years later, the French Revolution lives on on our screens in films, docu-dramas, TV series and video games. Representations of the past are part of an iconographic and fictional tradition that can be traced back. In fact, there are contemporary mythologies of the Revolution in the forms, motifs and current discourse that authors project onto this period. In return, these fictions feed a social imagination that clashes with the work of historians.
We therefore propose to use contemporary mythologies to conduct a genealogy of the image. More specifically, we will take a look at the TV series La Révolution (Molas and Guasti, Netflix, 2020) to understand the artistic and cultural roots of this work. The series recounts the fantastical origins of the Revolution, which is said to have been caused by a virus called “Sang bleu”, spread by aristocratic vampires. The French series is said to be the transposition of a Japanese manga into a revolutionary background. To grasp all the authors' inspirations, we will draw on design sources such as interviews and reviews.
In this way, we want to show that La Révolution is an adaptation of literary motifs that appeared at the end of the eighteenth century, on which other, more recent inspirations have been superimposed. The series is not a new script, but part of an old, ideologically-oriented fictional tradition. We will use contemporary mythologies of the French Revolution (violence, fascination with the guillotine, eschatological iconography, teleologism) to carry out this genealogy.Deux cents ans après, la Révolution française survit sur nos écrans par les films, les docufictions, les séries télévisées et les jeux vidéo. Les représentations du passé s’inscrivent dans une filiation iconographique et fictionnelle dont il est possible de remonter la trace. Nous proposons de nous servir des mythologies contemporaines pour mener une généalogie de l’image. Plus précisément, nous nous intéresserons à la série-télévisée La Révolution (Molas et Guasti, Netflix, 2020) afin de comprendre dans quelle filiation artistique et culturelle elle s’inscrit. Cette œuvre raconte les origines fantastiques de la Révolution qui aurait été causée par un virus, le Sang bleu, propagé par des vampires aristocratiques. La série française serait la transposition d’un manga japonais vers un arrière-plan révolutionnaire. Pour appréhender toutes les inspirations des auteurs, nous nous appuierons sur des sources de conception, comme les entretiens et les critiques. Ainsi, nous voulons démontrer que La Révolution est une adaptation de motifs littéraires apparus dès la fin du XVIIIe siècle, à laquelle d’autres inspirations plus récentes se sont superposées. Cette série ne constitue pas une nouveauté scénaristique et s’inscrit dans une tradition fictionnelle ancienne, orientée idéologiquement. Nous nous aiderons des mythologies contemporaines de la Révolution (violence, fascination pour la guillotine, iconographie eschatologique, téléologisme) pour mener à bien cette généalogie