Toronto Metropolitan University Open Journals
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Health promotion in primary care across Brazil: Genealogic-inspired qualitative study
No full textObjective: To describe and analyze Health Promotion practices in Primary Health Care. Method: Genealogic-inspired qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory research conducted in a PHC service in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were held with the service staff from February to May 2020. The data were qualitatively analyzed using genealogically inspired techniques, which allowed us to identify tensions, disputes, discourses, practices, and power relationships. Results: We established eight sets of Health Promotion practices: 1) Educational activities focused on behavioral/habit changes and development of personal abilities; 2) Intersectoral practices and community social networks involving other community equipment; 3) Practices that encourage community organization and participation; 4) Integrative and Complementary Health practices; 5) Practices that stimulate meeting people, sociability, art, and creativity; 6) Practices that encourage environmental and food sustainability; 7) Practices that stimulate income generation; 8) Community communication practices. Conclusion: We identified a heterogeneous field of practices to promote health established through the circulation of different types of knowledge and powers. The practices are permeated by discourses linked to neoliberal governability and practices that position themselves against such discourse.
Regenerative economics for planetary health: A scoping review: RESEARCH PAPER
No full textIntroduction: The relationship between humans and our planet is conditioned by an economic system that undermines rather than supports health. There has been an emerging focus on the relationship between economic structures and planetary health, but alternative economic approaches to support health for people and the planet require further development. Regenerative economics offers a compelling approach to transform humankind’s relationships with each other and their environment. Regenerative economics fosters grounded, pragmatic solutions to wider human and ecological crises that moves beyond a sustainability discourse towards one of regeneration. While there are, notionally, large areas of overlap between regenerative economics and planetary health, to date these have not been systematically articulated. Methods: A scoping review was performed to examine the background, principles, and applications of regenerative economics, and their implications for planetary health. Five databases (SCOPUS, Ovid Medline, Web of Science, Geobase, IEEE Xplore) were searched for peer-reviewed literature using key terms relating to regenerative economics and planetary health. Findings were reported using thematic synthesis. Results: The review identified a total of 121 articles and included 30 papers in the final review, from economics, industrial design, business, tourism, education, urban design and architecture, energy, technology, and food and agriculture. The principles of regenerative economics focused on people, place, planet, position, peace, plurality, and progress. Putting these principles into action requires identifying and valuing different forms of capital, taking a dynamic systems approach, applying regenerative design, developing a true circular economy, good governance, and transdisciplinary education and advocacy. Conclusions: While the principles of regenerative economics and planetary health are well aligned, the tools and actions of each field differ substantially. Planetary health can learn from regenerative economics’ grounding in natural design principles, systems-based approaches, actions at the right scale and cadence, respect for diversity, community and place, and mindset that moves beyond sustainability towards a regenerative future
Escaping Confinement: Phone Footage in Fictions about the COVID-19 Pandemic
No full textOne of the most representative aspects of fiction films that address the COVID-19 pandemic is the insistent appearance of electronic devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) to allow virtual communication between the main characters of the story. I claim that, in those films, the use of these devices and the images they produce is different from those that appeared in pre-pandemic cinema, and, as such, conveys different meanings to the filmed images. In order to explore these ideas, I will first study the ontology of phone footage imagery, to establish the main traits of this type of image. Afterwards, I will signal the differences between pre-pandemic and pandemic phone footage imagery, in order to understand the key formal traits that imply different meanings for each case. Finally, by analyzing some of the most relevant commercial films about the COVID-19 pandemic that have been produced so far (Songbird (2020), Locked Down (2021), Safer at Home (2021), Host (2020), and Ctrl+Alt+Trick/treat (2020)), I will intend to prove that in these fictions phone footage (as opposed to other electronic-device footage) addresses the desire to gain certain freedom in a scenario of confinement
Exploring-Deconstructing Reality with Interactive Storytelling
No full textBlack Mirror is a ground-breaking, sensational, staggering, critical science fiction TV series depicting a dystopic near future and present time which is concerned with various themes about society, environment, technology, social media, power, cyborgs etc. One of the most innovative booms of Black Mirror is definitely the interactive episode Bandersnatch.
Mainly, Bandersnatch focuses on the concept of reality. With the characters and their actions in different pathways of the fragmented plot, the main issue tackled by the film is the question of reality and its perception, suggesting that what it pictures is an illusion of the world. This questioning is being made by a medium—cinematographic narration—that constitutes itself as an art form for representing and reproducing reality but is also defined as “illusion of reality” in some theoretical approaches.
In addition, such terms as reality and illusion can refer to extensive philosophical literature. In relation to Bandersnatch, we can remember William James with his “multi-reality” approach, or focus on “time and reality” notion, one of the constituting layers of the narrative and a concept found in the theories of Henri Bergson. From Bergson, necessarily, we should jump to Gilles Deleuze’s “time-image theory” arising from Bergson, in order to understand Bandersnatch interpretation
What is Art? NFTs, Beeple, and Art Connoisseurship in the 21st Century
No full textThis paper investigates non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, and examines their place within art historical canon. Crypto-art and crypto-collectibles have flooded digital markets, offering unique art. Recently, Beeple’s Everydays—The First 5000 Days, the first digital artwork fitted with a non-fungible token offered by the major auction house Christie’s, sold for $69,346,250 on March 11, 2021. It is the third most expensive artwork sold by a living artist, following Jeff Koon’s sculpture Rabbit (1986) and David Hockney’s painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972). While Jeff Koons and David Hockney are the artists, whose theoretical perspectives are well known and have a secured place in an art historical canon, Beeple’s work and works of other digital NFT artists have not been fully investigated to be positioned in relation to art history, seemingly existing in a theoretical vacuum. The absence of artistic statements that usually accompany artworks contributes to this effect. Is it possible to think of the 21st century NFT-backed digital artists as the avant-gardes, who, like their 20th -century predecessors, confronted and condemned the art historical tradition? Using the case study of Beeple’s Everydays, this paper proposes an answer to the puzzling question of how a mosaic of everyday sketches produced by “pooping something out in 45 minutes,” using Beeple’s own words, was claimed to be “the next chapter in art history.” Using historical and textual analyses, this essay provides a critical response to the recent digital artworld trends driven by the decentralized networks and currencies existing in fully digital ecosystems
What can listening do? Propositions for expanded documentary
No full textDocumentary has traditionally been used and understood as a communicative tool to frame and impart knowledge about a subject matter. For Paula Rabinowitz, documentary’s “purpose is to speak and confer value on the objects it speaks about” (1994). But what other functions might documentary have if it were to draw attention to how we can also listen?
Over the past twenty-five year, listening scholarship has focused on a number of domains including the public sphere (Lacey 2013), participatory democracy (Bickford 1996; Couldry 2010), and media practices (Dreher 2009). Yet, while ‘voice’ as authorship and social participation has been well theorised in documentary, there has been little scholarly attention given to how audiences listen, and what strategies creators can use to evoke different ways of listening. The possibilities for listening as an active role in documentary have further been enhanced through interactive technologies.
In this presentation, I draw on my current research and practice around the possibilities for interactive and expanded documentary to promote listening as a way to attend to ethical and political questions. Listening is not a singular action, rather, it can fulfill multiple functions. I propose that practices of listening can reframe the self as collective, reveal multiple co-existing narratives, counter erasure, promote engagement with difference and destabilise a anthropocentric perspective. Drawing on frameworks which include political, non-representational and sound theory, I ground my propositions through a range of interactive and immersive documentaries from the past ten years, each of which attempts to implicate the audience in new and responsible relationships to the historical and phenomenological world
Spatial Interaction and Hybrid Spaces: Dis-location in Shadows from Another Place
No full textThe notion of spaces constantly is growing with the advancement of technology. The spatial interactions using digital media provide new possibilities to bridge between physical and digital spaces. Location is not all about longitude and latitude, but all the added digital layers may change the idea of positioning. Over the last decades, studying space faced many conceptual perceptions. The approach of having/imagining the different worlds and spaces, such as cyberspace and physical space, has been mostly formed by distinguishing them. Adriana de Souza e Silva (2006) drew a chronology for these imaginary spaces from cyberspace to virtual and hybrid space. Hybridizing of space with the advancement of nomadic technology like mobiles become more popular and indicates how the interfaces are transparent in our everyday life. So, hybridity occurs when the interconnection of the spaces is reachable for the people who can interact with, through the devices, wearables, headsets, etc. In this respect, the physical space needed to be filled with data, as Manovich (2006, p.226) defined this as augmentation of the space through “overlay[ing] physical space with layers of data.”
The question of reality may not be valid anymore since both are affecting each other. And, it is time to think about the interlinked worlds and their effects rather than separating and labelling them as real and unreal. Technology can play a crucial role in changing our interaction with space.
The paper will investigate the concept of hybrid spaces in relation to the production of dis-locative space. The dislocation environment reveals the interconnected spaces and their realities through new ways of interactions and narratives. The realities are created under the influence of each other. The paper will use the art project Shadows from Another Place as a case study. It will explore the idea of dis-location through spatial interaction and digital technology. The paper will profit from the theories including Production of Space by Henry Lefebvre, Supermodernity and Non-places by Marc Augé, and Relational Spaces by Scott McQuire.
Paula Levine is a scholar and media artist who experiments with maps, geolocation data, and the dynamic of spaces. Shadows from Another Place is a web-based project using transposed maps, including three artworks San Francisco <-> Baghdad, The Wall, and TheWall-TheWorld. In this series, she tries to challenge the reality of geographical distances by hybridization of the spaces. Shadows from Another Place is a series of artwork that examines the discussion around dis-locative space, and spatial interaction using digital technology. The paper investigates three questions of locations and dislocation, real and unreal, and intervening in the physical space by the virtual world and vice versa. Question of Location ‘where am I’? What is un/real? How virtual world affects the physical world and vice versa
Understanding First Person Media with India’s ElseVR Platform
No full textElseVR, the non-fiction offshoot of Memesys Cultural Lab, based in Mumbai India is one of the pioneering filmmaking labs working with mixed reality in India. It has been releasing 360 video documentaries as a VR app based quarterly magazine that demands spectatorship as well as engagement by way of the subjects it chooses to talk about. In a country where severe inequities of access are present, with digital and smartphone penetration being reasonably fragmented across the country, the feasibility and acceptance of such technology on a larger level remains to be seen. What is interesting however, are the intersections between civic engagement and technology in ElseVR’s documentaries. The documentaries are not only narrative in nature, but also employ and encourage the spectator to imagine different positions while viewing them. Using the concepts proposed by Nash (2022), in making sense of first-person experience in VR documentary, the researcher employs the position of a tourist, encounter, and witness (2022:108) while viewing three documentaries using ElseVR’s technology as a medium. The three films are Nishtha Jain’s Submerged (2016); Faiza Khan’s When Land Is Lost, Do We Eat Coal (2016) and Naomi Shah and Pourush Turel’s Caste is Not a Rumour (2017). Each position leads to an understanding of the experience of what it is like to enter a space that is not one’s own. Along with the researcher’s own interpretation, and an analysis of the supporting material on the documentaries (such as publications by humanitarian organizations on the topic of the documentaries), news media reports highlighting the issues, and online community conversation received from viewers on Else VR’s Facebook and Youtube channels was conducted to make sense of the overall engagement with the documentaries besides a first-person experience. Considerations of interest and inquisitiveness towards the content, and the affordances offered by the VR environment gave way to a multi-sensory experience where the positions of tourist, encounter and witness overlapped with no conscious intent. Going back and forth with the virtual community conversation around the films and the researcher’s experience of immersion with the documentaries, it was a heightened awareness of VR technology’s role in documentary filmmaking in non-Western environments. Avoiding a technologically determinist gaze, it was the larger purpose of VR journalism that stood out to bring to light stories that deserve more civic engagement
Hybridity and Agency in Interactive Comic Books: New Forms of Sequential Storytelling
No full textThis paper focuses on interactive and animated comic books as visual storytelling medium. With the rise of digital media, previous forms and methods of storytelling has been changed and reformed in hybridity and/or as emerging medium. Like movies, documentaries, games; comic books gained digital, moving, and interactive levels to be described and examined.
This research aims to analyze interactivity maps to reach forms of interactivity used in selected comic books as examples representing emerged types of this media under various names such as motion comics, interactive comics, hyper comics, interactive game comics and web comics.
As Goodbrey (2007) states different types of comics in the scope of hybridization and digitality of the medium, a distinction between levels of interactivity in video games is offered in digital game theory. Digital types of comic books are not all interactive in the sense of content and may be more linear than a printed “choose your own adventure” comic book like Eight Grade Witch (Gaska et. al, 2021). With digitality of the medium, interactivity is set firstly in form providing an agency for the interactor by turning the pages or making the reader click on pages. Some examples, such as web comics expands the medium to develop an interactivity between text and audience; some of them became more interactive providing more agency on the page; some are interactive in content and others converge comics books with games and redefine the medium with play at the center. Main question guiding the research is how they provide different forms of interactive of storytelling. Meanwhile: An Interactive Comic Book (Zarfhome Software, 2018), Framed (Noodlecake Studios, 2014), Florence (Mountains Studio, 2018) and Our Plague Year (Burton, 2022) are selected examples representing different forms of digital comic books and interactive – sequential storytelling to be analyzed comparatively within the scope of this research. In conclusion interactivity forms and maps are exposed and discussed through Sheldon’s interactivity categories. The epistemology of interactivity is reconsidered with an analysis of interactive and animated comic books which combine various media and provide distinct ways of hybridity
Korsakow Film Workshop: Seeing with and thinking through Korsakow
No full textBased on the premise that Korsakow configurations are not merely another form of interactive film, we will explore the entanglement of the epistemological and ontological dimension of this unorthodox manifestation of digital media practices based on database logic and opaque algorithmic editing.
This workshop explores non-linear thinking, co-creative, polyphonic filmmaking and pluri-perspective self-reflection to those interested in pushing further the boundaries of linear filmmaking. The goal of this workshop is to re-think processes of interactive filmmaking as well as notions of interactive tools in their ‘toolness,’ and methods concerning their applicability as lenses through which we reflect on the work of others and our work. Though we will collaboratively create an interactive Korsakow film, the focus of this workshop primarily lies in the process rather than a product.
No prior knowledge nor specific technical skills are required as one of the core realizations will be that these practices can be integrated into vernacular life. The only digital device participants will need is their smartphone for shooting the clips