Stripping Sight Bare : Alison Jones’ ‘Portraits by Proxy’

In this paper I analyse UK artist Alison Jones’ sonic interventions Portrait of the Artist by Proxy (2008), Voyeurism by Proxy (2008) and Art, Lies and Audio Tapes (2009). In Portrait of the Artist by Proxy, Jones – who, due to deteriorating vision, has not seen her reflection in a mirror in years – asks and trusts participants to audio-describe her own image back to her. In Voyeurism by Proxy, Jones asks participants to audio-describe erotic drawings by Gustav Klimt. In Art, Lies and Audio Tapes, Jones asks participants to audio-describe other artworks, such as W.F. Yeames’ And When Did You Last see Your Father?. In these portraits by proxy, Jones opens her image, and other images, to interpretation. In doing so, Jones draws attention to the way sight is privileged as a mode of access to fixed, fundamental truths in Western culture – a mode assumed to be untainted by filters that skew perception of the object. “In a culture where vision is by far the dominant sense,” Jones says, “and as a visual artist with a visual impairment, I am reliant on audio-description …Inevitably, there are limitations imposed by language, time and the interpreter’s background knowledge of the subject viewed, as well as their personal bias of what is deemed important to impart in their description” . In these works, Jones strips these background knowledges, biases and assumptions bare. She reveals different perceptions, as well as tendencies or censor, edit or exaggerate descriptions. In this paper, I investigate how, by revealing unconscious biases, Jones’ works renders herself and her participants vulnerable to a change of perception. I also examine how Jones’ later editing of the audio-descriptions allows her to show the instabilities of sight, and, in Portrait of the Artist by Proxy, to reclaim authorship of her own image.

Reply to William B. Grant

THE UVI working group acknowledges the contribution of Vitamin D to bone health as stated in our paper. However, we concluded that an optimal level of Vitamin D for humans has not yet been established with any certainty...

Cungellela by William ‘Dura Danje’ Leisha and Shem ‘Curan Danje’ Leisha

Research background: Cungelela is an intercultural music project undertaken in collaboration with William ‘Dura Danje’ Leisha and Shem ‘Curan Danje’ Leisha. The project contributes to cultural maintenance for Australian First Nations peoples, and is informed by prior work in this area by scholars including Peter Dunbar-Hall, Chris Gibson and Karl Neuenfeldt. These existing studies have discussed the complexities of intercultural collaboration, and the types of cultural politics that are involved when Indigenous and non-Indigenous musicians and scholars work together on projects of cultural significance. Critical race theory has also informed the creative work, as a means of interpreting the implicit and explicit discourses of race that arise through intercultural creative practice. The project asked the research question, in what ways can collaborative music making contribute to intercultural understanding and support cultural maintenance for Australian First Nations people affected by the Stolen Generations? Research contribution: This project has identified that collaborative production of recorded popular music can produce shared affective, embodied and transformative forms of knowledge about the impact of the Stolen Generations on Australian First Nations peoples. Research significance: The compact disc was presented by Aunty Anne Leisha as part of an invited presentation at the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium in New Mexico, 2013. The work also formed part of a refereed conference presentation at the 2013 conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music held at the University of Oviedo, Gijon, Spain.

William James, Sciences of Mind, and Anti-imperial Discourse

In the past few decades, the humanities and social sciences have developed new methods of reorienting their conceptual frameworks in a “world without frontiers.” In this book, Bernadette M. Baker offers an innovative approach to rethinking sciences of mind as they formed at the turn of the twentieth century, via the concerns that have emerged at the turn of the twenty-first. The less-visited texts of Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James provide a window into contemporary debates over principles of toleration, anti-imperial discourse, and the nature of ethics. Baker revisits Jamesian approaches to the formation of scientific objects including the child mind, exceptional mental states, and the ghost to explore the possibilities and limits of social scientific thought dedicated to mind development and discipline formation around the construct of the West.

Genetic studies of body mass index yield new insights for obesity biology

Obesity is heritable and predisposes to many diseases. To understand the genetic basis of obesity better, here we conduct a genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI), a measure commonly used to define obesity and assess adiposity, in up to 339,224 individuals. This analysis identifies 97 BMI-associated loci (P < 5 × 10−8), 56 of which are novel. Five loci demonstrate clear evidence of several independent association signals, and many loci have significant effects on other metabolic phenotypes. The 97 loci account for ~2.7% of BMI variation, and genome-wide estimates suggest that common variation accounts for >20% of BMI variation. Pathway analyses provide strong support for a role of the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and implicate new genes and pathways, including those related to synaptic function, glutamate signalling, insulin secretion/action, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.