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Decameron-19 [group project]
No full textA transnational collaboration from cities around the world, generating 100 stories in response to life during this global pandemic. The project draws inspiration from the literature of plague, in particular Boccaccio’s ‘Decameron’, in which ten characters, sheltering in an empty villa outside Florence, tell each other stories whilst in isolation from the Black Death of 1348. DECAMERON-19, by contrast, plays out in the digital present, physically and virtually, in our streets and public spaces, under open skies and in cyber-space.
A network of artists from cities across the globe, many of whom were initially strangers to each other,
have been meeting weekly, virtually, to narrate stories lived, retold and performed through the project’s methodology of exchanging scores.
Each contributor, in turn, writes and presents a score which then becomes a tool for exploring the edges of shared, and separate, space. The embodied and situated responses, reflect the common and the unique spatial, psychological, social and political conditions we find ourselves in.
By interpreting the same score in different contexts, Decameronistas have been mapping their localities, and exchanging their experience of making work
in differing states of lockdown, restrictive policy measures and economic constraints. The emergent work, and the emergent colleagueship and friendship, is sustaining the group. The weekly conversations connect these different perspectives, and map the present, exploring the role of art in finding resource currently, and in imagined futures. The result is the co-production of new knowledge about the nature of living through multidimensional crises.
The DECAMERON-19 meetings have been full of laughter, and febrile, furtive, provocative exchange, leavened with a sense of underlying pathos at the state we find ourselves in, and the precarity of individuals situations at different times and places. Like Boccaccio’s novel, the emerging work provides a document of sorts of life at this time. His was written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, this account is written in the individual poetic visions, ritual inventions, weird fictions, unexpected narratives and humorous political critiques of makers, artists, musicians and others, employing their creativity in these transdisciplinary conversations
My sister, my mirror [essay]
No full textVanessa and Virginia – intimates in art, adversaries in love. Can we ever transcend the primal envy of the sisterly bond
Writing ambient literature
No full textThis chapter explores the potential of a poetics for ambient literature, and discusses specific grammars that might provide writers and designers a set of design dimensions (as they apply to experiential writing) within which to consider the creation of ambient works. These are offered, alongside a survey of pre-existing work that informs the development of the Ambient Literature Research Project, as a proposal for future developments in this field. Finally, a series of concluding thoughts as to the foundational aspect of the project and its intended legacy are offered
Evidence of inverted gravity‐driven variation in predictive sensorimotor function
Get PDFWe move our eyes to place the fovea into the part of a viewed scene currently of interest. Recent evidence suggests that each human has signature patterns of eye movements like handwriting which depend on their sensitivity, allocation of attention and experience. Use of implicit knowledge of how earth's gravity influences object motion has been shown to aid dynamic perception. We used a projected ball-tracking task with a plain background offering no context cues to probe the effect of acquired experience about physical laws of gravitation on performance differences of 44 participants under a simulated gravity and an atypical (upward) antigravity condition. Performance measured by the unsigned difference between instantaneous eye and stimulus positions (RMSE) was consistently worse in the antigravity condition. In the vertical RMSE, participants took about 200 ms longer to improve to the best performance for antigravity compared to gravity trials. The antigravity condition produced a divergence of individual performance which was correlated with levels of questionnaire-based quantified traits of schizotypy but not control traits. Grouping participants by high or low traits revealed a negative relationship between schizotypy trait level and both initiation and maintenance of tracking, a result consistent with trait-related impoverished sensory prediction. The findings confirm for the first time that where cues enabling exact estimation of acceleration are unavailable, knowledge of gravity contributes to dynamic prediction improving motion processing. With acceleration expectations violated, we demonstrate that antigravity tracking could act as a multivariate diagnostic window into predictive brain function
Self-harm and moral codes in emergency departments in England
Get PDFThis article uses a theory of ‘moral codes’ to analyse the treatment of non-fatal self-harm in emergency departments in the NHS in England. It argues that self-harm has historically been the object of various moral classifications ranging from criminality, to immorality, to mental illness. In the contemporary situation these classifications are highlighted in two areas of health and social policy: first, in terms of the implementation of the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence’s clinical guideline on self-harm; second, in terms of the application of section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act to individuals who self-harm or who are at risk of self-harm and are brought to emergency departments by the police. The main influences upon the theoretical framework employed are Durkheim, Parsons, especially his concept of the sick role, and Alexander
Sociology for education studies: connecting theory, settings and everyday experiences
No full textThis book provides a fresh look at the sociology of education, focusing on themes such as 'habitus', 'hegemony' and 'intersectionality'. It supports students in applying sociological theory to their own educational experiences and developing an understanding of why social orders appear to be predetermined, why the state continues to create education policy in certain forms and, crucially, how to make it better
Towards molecular musical instruments: interactive sonifications of 17-alanine, graphene and carbon nanotubes
No full textScientists increasingly rely on computational models of atoms and molecules to observe, understand and make predictions about the microscopic world. Atoms and molecules are in constant motion, with vibrations and structural fluctuations occurring at very short time-scales and corresponding length-scales. But can these microscopic oscillations be converted into sound? And, what would they sound like? In this paper we present our initial steps towards a generalised approach for sonifying data produced by a real-time molecular dynamics simulation. The approach uses scanned synthesis to translate real-time geometric simulation data into audio. The process is embedded within a stand alone application as well as a variety of audio plugin formats to enable the process to be used as an audio synthesis method for music making. We review the relevant background literature before providing an overview of our system. Simulations of three molecules are then considered: 17-alanine, graphene and a carbon nanotube. Four examples are then provided demonstrating how the technique maps molecular features and parameters onto the auditory character of the resulting sound. A case study is then provided in which the sonification/synthesis method is used within a musical composition