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Intersectional Analysis of Food Insecurity for 2S/LGBTQIA+ Communities in Canada and Implications for Dietetic Practice
No full textThe right to food is a fundamental human right, as established in international conventions and declarations. However, Canada has not explicitly protected the right to food in its Charter or National Food Policy. Food insecurity is a multifaceted issue requiring collaboration across different policy arenas and jurisdictions such as healthcare, housing, social assistance, and agriculture. For Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and other sexually and gender diverse (2S/LGBTQIA+) populations, intersecting forms of discrimination and barriers to health, including ingrained cisheteronormativity, must also be considered.
We approach the topic of food insecurity among 2S/LGBTQIA+ populations and the associated policy implications through the lens of Kimberle Crenshaw’s critical theory of intersectionality. Intersectionality theory recognizes that marginalized and polymarginalized groups experience discrimination along multiple axes. Policies which fail to recognize this serve to distort polymarginalized people’s lived experiences with issues such as food insecurity and may result in their legal and structural erasure.
We aim to peel back the layers of policies affecting 2S/LGBTQIA+ Canadians experiencing food insecurity to reveal points of intersection that may have been rendered functionally invisible. First, we will describe the current national policy context related to food security and 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities. Then, we will undertake a multi-axes analysis to attempt to illuminate the complex and multi-dimensional experiences of 2S/LGBTQIA+ populations living with food insecurity, using Nova Scotia as a regional case study example. We conclude by exploring the implications for dietetic practice across health and food systems in improving the health of 2S/LGBTQIA+ populations
Committed Documentary Practices in Digital Media Cultures: Community Building and Socio-Cultural Participation
No full textCommitted documentary practices designed with and for marginalized people and those affected by social problems have a long tradition. Digital media cultures seem to offer new opportunities for participation and community building along with new forms of expression that can potentially create cultural visibility for marginalized positions on a global level.
This contribution argues that in engaged interactive documentary projects on the web (i-docs), communal experiences and counterpublics that respond to social and cultural exclusion mechanisms are closely related. The focus is on projects that offer space for dialog and are also called “open space documentaries” (Zimmermann/de Michiel 2018). To collectively demand one\u27s participation in the public sphere and dominant culture through DOING documentary can foster the feeling of being part of a (virtual) community. Emerging ‘we-groups’ with democratic goals articulate marginalized positions in the form of counterpublics and seek to address an outside audience with their counterpublic discourses. However, the shared aesthetic practices and communicative narrative processes that form the basis of communal experiences are not always conducive to cultural participation and democratic participation in the public sphere.
This presentation examines the relationship between demanding one\u27s socio-cultural participation and community experiences in committed participatory i-docs. The hypothesis is that group-specific goals are difficult to reconcile with promoting the cultural and democratic participation of those affected by social problems – meaning cultural forms of democracy. The theoretical framework first discusses the prerequisites for cultural participation and participation in the public sphere, including media-philosophical approaches such as those of Jacques Rancière (2010) or Michaela Ott (2018) and theories of democracy and the public sphere such as those of Chantal Mouffe (2013) and Nancy Fraser (1990). In addition, the contribution clarifies what distinguishes a (virtual) community from communal experiences (Deterding 2009). Then, three committed i-docs that promote communal experiences and try to challenge dominant cultural and societal structures serve as examples in this media studies investigation: Dadaab Stories (2013), Question Bridge: Black Males (2012), The G Word: Transforming Gender Norms, One Story at a Time (2015). The study uses media-aesthetic and content analyses of the i-docs as well as praxeological analyses of their processes conducted based on paratexts and interviews to examine communal experiences and to identify the potential for counter-narratives that deconstruct stereotypes and disseminate positions that are culturally almost invisible.
The three i-docs show that the self-representation of marginalized participants and sharing their experiences can be useful for a sense of community but are not always sufficient for challenging dominant images and identity attributions. The presentation argues that an unreflected handling of stereotypical self-images, for example, prevents the promotion of participation. People affected by social problems are usually not in the position to reflect on their representation on a meta-level.
A conclusion regarding further research suggests differentiating between forms of active media participation and passive cultural or democratic participation or participation in a (virtual) community instead of euphorically equating these forms by hastily ascribing political potential to the act of taking part in a media project
Reshaping Narratives: Authorship, Agency, and Digital Storytelling in Marginalized Settings
No full textSince 2019, the research group Imagis Lab (Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano) has aimed to experiment with a virtuous synergy between an innovative understanding of rehabilitative prison treatment and a co-design approach based on storytelling. As a result, the research group intends communication design as a relational process and a tool to activate storylistening and participative storytelling processes, enabling stakeholders to reshape the narratives that define their experiences actively.
Building upon previous research endeavors in marginalized contexts, notably in "ACTS. A Chance Through Sports" (Polisocial Award, 2019), an action-research project held in Bollate prison, the team works on fostering processes of identification, reappropriation, reworking, and transformation through storytelling.
Within the multifaceted researchers and storytelling activities ongoing, this paper covers the work related to Storylab, a permanent participatory storytelling workshop held in the young adults (YA) sector of the Casa Circondariale \u27Francesco di Cataldo\u27 commonly known as San Vittore prison. In particular, it will delve into the development of a digital narrative format aimed at conveying the stories originating within the prison walls to a broader public audience.
While Storylab operates within a 3-step structured framework [collection of fragments, crafting of stories, reframing of fragments] honed and refined through prior research projects, we focus on the third step of the process, which involves the designers in the creation of a digital storytelling format and the production of associated narrative and multimedia outputs.
In the realm of digital storytelling, agency is a fundamental concept. However, in the distinctive prison setting, participants face linguistic and cultural barriers and a substantial impediment to having their voices heard. In this unique context, the role of the designer as mediator emerges as pivotal, acting as the bridge between the carceral environment and the external world.
The development of the format, tentatively named Frammenti Invisibili (Invisible Fragments) and based on Instagram as a central platform, thus presents a compelling challenge.
How can we create a format that remains faithful to the participatory ethos and the inherently fragmented nature of the stories collected within the prison while offering the external audience an engaging and meaningful consumption experience? What parameters is Instagram as a platform bringing in the design and consumption of the Frammenti Invisibili format? How can we develop an open format to provide compelling and ever-evolving narratives from fragments?
The research outcome will tackle these questions by taking advantage of the micro-narratives form characteristic of social media communication and relying on non-linear and interactive storytelling principles.
The paper then presents the development and analysis of the format and its outcomes, providing a valuable opportunity for reflection on the designer\u27s role in participatory story-based processes. This role is relevant in the nexus between agency and authorship in digital storytelling processes, even more so in one that deals with stories originating in a context of marginality and reclusion. Furthermore, it encourages consideration of the intricate relationship between micro-narratives, narrative structures, and interaction within digital storytelling
The Universe Peoples: Towards a Symptomatic Deep Ecology in OReilly’s Everything
No full textEnvironmental historian William Cronon believes “storytelling is inherently a moral activity” that can disrupt the “paradox of modernity”, our unprecedented interconnectedness at present coupled with a widespread inability to see it, by inculcating a richer understanding of the world (Reardon & Cronon, 2017, 25:35, 32:45). Part of the difficulty in addressing environmental issues such as climate change is the challenge in inculcating an ecologically realistic perspective outside of our learned reductive anthropocentric lens. This might explain why storytelling through conventional climate communications has largely been ineffective (As, 2022, p. 16). Technological fixes that do not account for the entangled ways in which the world relates with itself end up reproducing the same metabolic rifts and slow violence that characterizes our current milieu.
At the same time, entertainment media, inclusive of film, television, and more recently games, have quickly become one of the predominant forms of storytelling (Gitnux 2023), and present novel means of communicating such entanglement. Alenda Chang argues all forms of mass media “encapsulate tacit ecological lessons that partially shape our sense of environmental self-efficacy”, but games and their interactivity in particular can transform “abstract information and otherwise distant threats of ecological calamity” into “operable form” (2019, 15). David OReilly’s Everything, a simulative game, intensifies this, allowing players to traverse a procedurally generated universe through the perspectives of literally everything that exists in the game. This includes thousands of things, from an oxygen atom, to a cigarette butt, to a mountain lion, to a galaxy.
In my paper, I carry out an ecocritical analysis of Everything, focusing on its narrative, mechanical, and visual rhetoric, to evaluate how it might confer a sense of who we are as an entangled ecological entity. I employ methods from literary criticism and game studies to interrogate how the game evokes and navigates the dualities of simulation & realism, anthropocentrism & agency, and anthropomorphism & ecopedagogy. Some highlights of my analysis include how: [1] Everything charts a different course towards realism from other games, eschewing graphical fidelity, destructibility, and permadeath mechanics, in favor of facilitating rich and varied perspective-taking and communication; [2] Everything radically disrupts the game design trope of the environment as a passive backdrop, as everything that the player sees can be ‘played’, and decenters the player’s agency through constructing an infinite game while avoiding a narrow presentation of nature as simply pristine wilderness. [3] the anthropomorphic qualities of things in Everything serve as a form of nature study which adds to an interspecies communicative ethic by highlighting their agency and influence.
Huizinga’s notion of a “magic circle” that contains and separates gameplay from the ‘real’ world has been thoroughly challenged by game studies scholars (Chang 2019, 15; Columbus 2021, 61). Everything adds to this discourse, pointing the way not to a symptomatic entanglement that can dismantle the myths underlying our climate crisis, but to the myriad of narrative, mechanical, and visual rhetorical approaches that interactive media can use to such communicate such posthumanist worldviews
The Interactive Potential of Emergent Narrative through Spatial Nesting of the Cinematic Experience
No full textCommon application of the term ‘interactive’ within film and cinema tends to require the creation of hyper-narratives. However, this can have implications for the viewer’s emotional connection to and experience of the film (Shaul, 2008). Contemporary interactive films, such as Choose Love (2023), focus on the alternative flow or bifurcation of the plot, offering audiences alternative choices that impact on the protagonist’s journey or outcomes within the film. However, as this paper argues, film cannot be reduced to the plot, as the communication of story in film relies on visuals and sound that constitute the film’s simulation of reality: the world of the story. Furthermore, virtual reality (VR) blurs the line between immersive and interactive experiences, in the way it spatialises the audio-visual simulation of the film world. Indeed, the immersion of the viewer within the film world can create a feeling of interactivity via physical space, similar to immersive theatre such as Burnt City (2022), making the viewing experience participatory – even though the temporal flow of the narrative is not essentially altered. Therefore, interactivity in film does not have to mean audience or personal control over the plot but can instead be expanded to include the world of the story and the ways in which this world can be immersive, especially through the application of emerging technologies, such as VR and Internet of Things (IoT). This can give rise to viewer interaction through the embodied, spatial relationship to the fictional world and the narrative, rather than through making choices about the plot. Through this kind of spatialisation of the cinematic experience, the structure of the narrative is contingent on the viewer’s embodied choices within the space, which gives rise to a sense of emergent narrative (Walsh, 2011).
This paper explores the above argument, rooting it in a theoretical framework based in narratology, semiotics, and phenomenology, especially the writings of Sobchack and Merleau-Ponty, and then considers its practical application in the recent multi-media installation and ongoing practice-as-research entitled Nested Cinema, led by Pavel Prokopic, in collaboration with Jayne Sayer. The aim of this research is to test the potential for emergent narrative through spatialising the cinematic form into an immersive experience, while orchestrating smart technology and devices across multiple nested layers of experience: the installation space and IoT flexible lighting, synchronised multi-screen projection, multi-channel audio, and VR. In this way, the installation offers a unique participatory experience, in which the installation visitor makes embodied choices toward the narrative by repeatedly transitioning between the nested layers of the experience – in the process complicating the boundary between their sense of primary reality and the experience of the simulated world of the story. Apart from employing practice-as-research methodologies, the research engages qualitative methods to account for the visitor experience via in-depth interviews. This paper presents the practical outcomes and findings of the research, and considers the wider potential and application of this work to future interactive modes of immersive home cinema technology.
Relational Possibilities: Using Generative Artificial Intelligence in Artful Digital Storytelling with Black and Indigenous Aesthetic Forms
No full textRelational Possibilities is an immersive design that pulls together original datasets, generative artificial intelligence imagery, itch.io video games, podcast, vignettes, and curatorial statements into two distinct, interconnected virtual museums. Through a lens of community, visitors experience the shared history of African Americans in Philadelphia through 7 Black visual and literary artists and the stories of climate racism, Indigeneity, and climate change that public art and environmental histories tell. Museum visitors experience the nonlinear interactive design by participating in a digital community archive, listening to the podcast, playing the video games, exploring the data sets, and viewing the digital exhibition site that houses both virtual museums.
As the seminal collaboration between Dana Reijerkerk and kYmberly Keeton (The Creative CoLab), Relational Possibilities: A Remix of Aesthetic Forms Through Indigeneity and Blackness is a meta creative digital work between two researchers, writers, and artists from different races using generative artificial intelligence. Relational Possibilities is a digital community archive data science project that explores community relations and futurist realities of Indigeneity and Blackness through artists, writers, and public art in Philadelphia. Relational Possibilities pushes the boundaries of creative information science through art and data science technologies to expose the aesthetic complexity of Black and Indigenous forms and lived experiences. Beneath these stories are the emotions, human expressions, and societal racial tensions between The Creative CoLab. As women and librarians from different races, the project explores a reciprocal partnership with self-referential elements of reflection, use of immersive digital media, and a spectrum of our personal human emotions
Liberatory Pedagogy in The Great Tit is a Bird
No full textAs an artist and engineer, I created The Great Tit is a Bird, a science fiction storytelling project that follows Black and Brown femmes and transfemmes, the losses they survive, and the ways they shape our high-tech era even as they are pushed to the margins. The project consists of an audio drama, 3D-animated narrative (fiction) films, and forthcoming animated documentary shorts, and immersive reality films. It was launched by Black and Brown women in the United States and Kenya as a way to creatively examine relationships between elite neoimperial academic spaces centered by the Global North, and women’s networks centered by the Global Majority. The project probes issues its creators have experienced firsthand, including techno-colonization, research misconduct, and threats to bodily/embodied sovereignty. In addition to gender and race, The Great Tit is a Bird explores vulnerability related to other marginalized identities its creators hold. These include disability, carceral status, socioeconomic status, and immigration status. While The Great Tit is a Bird is directly inspired by a range of real-world examples, from the East African women’s empowerment group Inua Kike to the male-dominated academic networks connected to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, its focus on low-income people of color supports its ultimate liberatory goal: survivors of neocolonial aggression affirming solidarity for each other and their community.
I originally launched The Great Tit is a Bird during the 2020 pandemic lockdown to process personal trauma—the death of a parent, a reckoning with childhood domestic abuse—as well as the professional challenges I’ve experienced as a student and teacher, conditioned by the banking system so prevalent in college-level STEM education. Since then, I have started to use The Great Tit is a Bird as a pedagogical tool amongst small groups of students. This feels like a genuinely transgressive act for three reasons: the project’s sensitive, personal themes; the sharing of such themes with STEM students conditioned to marginalize their own identities and experiences while in the classroom; and the cultivation of community within an engineering school. Like bell hooks, who originally regarded teaching as a job that would support her vocation as a writer (2) and eventually grew to realize that it was a vital part of her creative practice, I have grown to deeply value teaching as a time and space to cultivate creative community, particularly amongst underrepresented, underestimated, undervalued student technologists yearning to investigate, interrogate, critique and contribute to technical cultures.
I am submitting excerpts from The Great Tit is a Bird (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSSgjIjqx_paVQXWGaUXMQMTVoAC7Yp_x), which I would discuss with resonant passages from Teaching to Transgress and other relevant texts. I’m grateful for the opportunity to develop this new pedagogical tool, which I will use in sharing The Great Tit is a Bird with my students. To watch additional materials, visit https://thegreattitisabird.com.
Firgrove Forever: An Immersive Media Community Arts Project
No full textA space within the Jane-Finch (JF) community north of Toronto, Firgrove shares similar challenges as other social housing projects in fighting negative media portrayals that situate them as hubs for crime, drugs and social issues. Affectionately known as Connections, it boasts rich cultural diversity and an unbiased caring spirit. In 2014, it was identified as 1 of 31 Toronto neighbourhoods to be designated as a Neighbourhood Improvement Area (NIA) and was subject to a “revitalization” process to redevelop aging community housing in the area, resulting in a progressive displacement of residents and dissolution of communities. In 2018, a partnership was struck between the community and creative technologists at York University with the focus on empowering the youth of this community with critical and technical skills as well as cutting edge media production technology to allow them to record, express, archive and disseminate the stories of this vibrant community as it presently exists.
The project was originally motivated to function as a creative outlet for the youth to articulate the way these changes to their geographical and cultural landscapes have exposed a myriad of intersectional issues, but the outputs of the project - 2 virtual spaces that were co-created with youth now function as the only immersive archives of the buildings and community spaces that no longer exist.
Given the massive change in the near future for this community, the Firgrove Immersive Media Oral Narratives Project focuses on empowering the youth of this community with critical and technical skills as well as cutting edge media production technology to allow them to record, express, archive and disseminate the stories of this vibrant community as it presently exists. This virtual environment consists of ‘bubbles’ of panoramic photographs overlayed with voices of interviews conducted through summer school programs between 2020-22, and interview clips with residents positioned around a virtual recreation of the Firgrove neighborhood – itself made by David Han through photogrammetry workflows using Google Earth images before the buildings were torn down.
For Firgrove Reimagined, we also worked with youth members in the community that were part of a parallel redevelopment project in JF/Firgrove to recontextualize their artistic inclinations and inspirations from the process. Some works included in this virtual exhibit were a spoken word performance by poet Venesha Cardwell who performed her work “The Projects" through a digital twin animation; an environment co-created with community activist and hip hop producer Nathan Baya who developed a virtual stage/studio for his music series “Jane Street Speaks”; and short films by documentary filmmaker Christine Le who interviewed JF food stall owners in precarious status. To access these rooms, visitors would navigate through a virtual lobby created by David Han that was a digital twin of the JF intersection stratified by time - a lower level would lead to rooms featuring memories/past experiences, and an upper level stretching up into the clouds leading to rooms featuring more future-oriented imaginings
Revalidation of the Client Perceptions of Nutrition Counselling (CPNC) Instrument
No full textThe purpose of this project was to reassess the utility and content validity of the Client Perceptions of Nutrition Counselling (CPNC) instrument, originally developed in the early 1990s as a valid and reliable means to evaluate the effectiveness of nutrition counselling from the perspectives of those who consulted with a dietitian in an ambulatory care setting, while in hospital, or at a clinic. Outcomes assessed using the CPNC include trust in the dietitian per the Value of Nutrition Education conceptual framework (Hauchecorne et al., 1994), perceptions of and confidence in one’s ability to manage one’s health condition through diet, and comprehension of nutrition advice. These measures contrast with traditional outcome measures of weight and body composition, laboratory findings, clinical status, and dietary intake. A three-step progressive development design was used to assess and update the instrument: 1) a literature and report review; 2) an advisory panel (AP) consultation; and 3) based on Step 2, instrument revision if required. Findings from the literature review were that a more recent instrument based on user reflections on their nutrition counselling experiences was not available. The AP determined the CPNC remained relevant and updated the instrument. The revised CPNP 2.0 instrument is included in the article. Use of the CPNC 2.0 instrument makes it possible for people who have consulted with a dietitian to report on their perceptions of the service, and on personal outcomes related to using the service. These findings have implications at the unit/departmental level; dietitians and managers can consider how they might modify their services (for example, timing of consultations, virtual meetings rather than face to face, or integrating food skilling/culinary therapy into programs) to address service users’ needs and preferences. Findings can be used to advocate for nutrition counselling services to administrators, foundations, boards, health ministries, and others. Individually, and as a group, findings can inform dietitians’ decisions about professional development needs
Thermal Conductivity and Heat Transfer of Hybrid Nanofluids
No full textThe paper is devoted to the experimental study of thermal conductivity and heat transfer of hybrid nanofluids with single-walled (SWCNT) and multi-walled (MWCNT) carbon nanotubes and nanoparticles of aluminum oxide. The thermal conductivity of nanofluids based on ethylene glycol, and isopropyl alcohol was measured. It is shown that at the same weight concentration, the thermal conductivity of nanofluids with SWCNTs is significantly higher than that with MSCNTs. However, the thermal conductivity of hybrid nanofluids turns out to be even higher than that of SWCNT nanofluids. The last part of the paper presents the results of measuring the heat transfer coefficient of the hybrid nanofluid. Along with heat transfer, the pressure drop in the channel was systematically studied, for this purpose, the viscosity and rheology of the nanofluids used were previously studied