Readjusting our Sporting Sites/Sight: Sportification and the Theatricality of Social Life

This paper points out the potential of using sport for the analysis of society. Cultivated human movement is a specific social and cultural subsystem (involving sport, movement culture and physical culture), yet it becomes a part of wider social discourses by extending some of its characteristics into various other spheres. This process, theorised as sportification, provides as useful concept to examine the permeation of certain phenomena from the area of sport into the social reality outside of sport. In this paper, we investigate the phenomena of sportification which we parallel with visual culture and spectatorship practices in the Renaissance era. The emphasis in our investigation is on theatricality and performativity; particularly, the superficial spectator engagement with modern sport and sporting spectacles. Unlike the significance afforded to visualisation and deeper symbolic interpretation in Renaissance art, contemporary cultural shifts have changed and challenged the ways in which the active and interacting body is positioned, politicised, symbolised and ultimately understood. We suggest here that the ways in which we view sport and sporting bodies within a (post)modern context (particularly with the confounding amalgamations of signs and symbols and emphasis on hyper-realities) has invariably become detached from sports��� profound metaphysical meanings and resonance. Subsequently, by emphasising the associations between social theatrics and the sporting complex, this paper aims to remind readers of ways that sport���as a nuanced phenomenon���can be operationalised to help us to contemplate questions about nature, society, ourselves and the complex worlds in which we live.

Psychology and Social Work: Applied Perspectives

Successful social work practice is underpinned by knowledge, theories and research findings from a range of related disciplines, key amongst which is psychology. This timely book offers a grounded and engaging guide to psychology s vital role at the heart of contemporary social work practice. The book skilfully addresses some of the central theoretical developments in psychology from an applied perspective, and explains how these make essential contributions to the methods and theory base of social work in ways that foster critical evaluation and promote best practice. Written by two authors with extensive backgrounds in psychology and social work respectively as well as a deep understanding of the intersections of the two this book delivers a unique synthesis of perspectives and approaches, focusing on their application to the lives of individuals and families. Each chapter contains reflective points and case studies based on contemporary practice realities which are related to the Professional Capabilities Framework for Social Workers and also to the Health and Care Professions Council s Standards of Proficiency. Times have never been more challenging for social work and this book will be an invaluable source of professional support within the ever-more complex psychological worlds where social work takes place. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: The place of psychological knowledge and research in social work training and practice 2. Signposts from Developmental Psychology on Human Development over the Life Course 3. Perspectives from Clinical and Counselling Psychology on Mental Health and Illness 4. Perspectives from Social and Community Psychology: Understanding values, attitudes, diversity and community change 5. Health Psychology: Understanding health, illness, stress and addiction 6. Organizational Psychology: Understanding the individual and the organization in the social work structure 7. Forensic Psychology: Understanding criminal behaviour and working with victims of crime 8. Conclusion References Index

Relocating the Frame: Object-Oriented (1.) and Locative Art (2.) Environments

The locative project is in a condition of emergence, an embryonic state in which everything is still up for grabs, a zone of consistency yet to emerge. As an emergent practice locative art, like locative media generally, it is simultaneously opening up new ways of engaging in the world and mapping its own domain. (Drew Hemment, 2004) Artists and scientists have always used whatever emerging technologies existed at their particular time throughout history to push the boundaries of their fields of practice. The use of new technologies or the notion of ���new��� media is neither particularly new nor novel. Humans are adaptive, evolving and will continue to invent and explore technological innovation. This paper asks the following questions: what role does adaptive and/or intelligent art play in the future of public spaces, and how does this intervention alter the relationship between theory and practice? Does locative or installation-based art reach more people, and does ���intelligent��� or ���smart��� art have a larger role to play in the beginning of this century? The speakers will discuss their current collaborative prototype and within the presentation demonstrate how software art has the potential to activate public spaces, and therefore contribute to a change in spatial or locative awareness. It is argued that the role and perhaps even the representation of the audience/viewer is left altered through this intervention. 1. A form of electronic imagery created by a collection of mathematically defined lines and/or curves. 2. An experiential form of art which engages the viewer both from within a specific location and in response to their intentional or unintentional input.

���Art Will Not Disappear Into Nothing; It Will Disappear Into Everything���: The Black Audio Film Collective and Latin America

The development of Latin American cinema in the 1960s was underwritten by a number of key texts that outlined the aesthetic and political direction of individual filmmakers and collectives (Solanas and Getino, 1969; Rocha, 1965; Espinosa, 1969). Although asserting the specificity of Latin American culture, the theoretical foundations of its New Wave influenced oppositional filmmaking way beyond its own regional boundaries. This chapter looks at how movements in British art cinema, especially the Black Audio Film Collective, were inspired and propelled by the theories behind New Latin American cinema. Facilitated by English translations in journals such as Jump Cut in the early ���80s, Cuban and Argentine cinematic manifestoes provided a radical alternative to the traditional language of film theory available to filmmakers in Europe and works such as Signs of Empire (1983-4); Handsworth Songs (1986) and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993) grew out of this trans-continental exchange. The Black Audio Film Collective represented a merging of politics, popular culture, and art that was, at once, oppositional and melodic. Fusing postcolonial discourse with pop music, the avant-garde and re-imaginings of subalternity, the work of ���The Collective��� provides us with a useful example of how British art cinema has drawn from theoretical foundations formed outside of Europe and the West. As this chapter will argue however, the Black Audio Film Collective���s work can also be read as a reaction to the specificity of British socio-politics of the ���80s and ���90s. Its engagement with the aesthetico-political strategies of Latin American cinema, then, undercut what was a solidly British project, rooted in (post)colonial history and emerging ideas of disaporic identity. If the propulsive thrust of The Black Audio Film Collective���s art was shaped by Third Cinema, its images and concerns were self-consciously British.

The Role of Art in Computer Game Design

Computer games are significant since they embody our youngsters��� engagement with contemporary culture, including both play and education. These games rely heavily on visuals, systems of sign and expression based on concepts and principles of Art and Architecture. We are researching a new genre of computer games, ���Educational Immersive Environments��� (EIEs) to provide educational materials suitable for the school classroom. Close collaboration with subject teachers is necessary, but we feel a specific need to engage with the practicing artist, the art theoretician and historian. Our EIEs are loaded with multimedia (but especially visual) signs which act to direct the learner and provide the ���game-play��� experience forming semiotic systems. We suggest the hypothesis that computer games are a space of deconstruction and reconstruction (DeRe): When players enter the game their physical world and their culture is torn apart; they move in a semiotic system which serves to reconstruct an alternate reality where disbelief is suspended. The semiotic system draws heavily on visuals which direct the players��� interactions and produce motivating gameplay. These can establish a reconstructed culture and emerging game narrative. We have recently tested our hypothesis and have used this in developing design principles for computer game designers. Yet there are outstanding issues concerning the nature of the visuals used in computer games, and so questions for contemporary artists. Currently, the computer game industry employs artists in a ���classical��� role in production of concept sketches, storyboards and 3D content. But this is based on a specification from the client which restricts the artist in intellectual freedom. Our DeRe hypothesis places the artist at the generative centre, to inform the game designer how art may inform our DeRe semiotic spaces. This must of course begin with the artists��� understanding of DeRe in this time when our ���identities are becoming increasingly fractured, networked, virtualized and distributed��� We hope to persuade artists to engage with the medium of computer game technology to explore these issues. In particular, we pose several questions to the artist: (i) How can particular ���periods��� in art history be used to inform the design of computer games? (ii) How can specific artistic elements or devices be used to design ���signs��� to guide the player through the game? (iii) How can visual material be integrated with other semiotic strata such as text and audio?

The Visual Arts as a Canvas for Teaching Computer Programming

We explore the relationships between the construction of a work of art and the crafting of a computer program in Java and suggest that the structure of paintings and drawings may be used to teach the fundamental concepts of computer programming. This movement "from Art to Science", using art to drive computing, complements the common use of computing to inform art. We report on initial experiences using this approach with undergraduate and postgraduate students. An embryonic theory of the correspondence between art and computing is presented and a methodology proposed to develop this project further.

The Measure of All Things: Rethinking Humanism through Art (Group Show)

University of Buffalo New York Department of Art Gallery. The ancient philosopher Protagoras is most famous for his claim: ���Of all things the measure is Man��� and today, Western societies continue to promote anthropocentrism, an approach to the world that assumes humans are the principal species of the planet. We naturalize a scale of worth, in which beings that most resemble our own forms or benefit us are valued over those that do not. The philosophy of humanism has been trumpeted as the hallmark of a civilized society, founded on the unquestioned value of humankind defining not only our economic, political, religious, and social systems, but also our ethical code. However, artists recently have questioned whether humanism has actually lived up to its promises and made the world a better place for humankind. Are we better off privileging humans above all else or could there be other, preferable, ways to value life? With the continued prevalence of violent crimes, even genocide, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we see the ways in which the discourse of humanism falters, as groups are targeted through rhetoric reducing them to the subhuman, and therefore disposable. But what if the subhuman, nonhuman, and even the non-animal and material, were reconsidered as objects of worth even if far removed from us?

Unfolding the Archive (Group Exhibition)

Unfolding the Archive, an exhibition of new work by the international artists��� group Floating World, is the result of a collaboration between the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) and the F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio in partnership with the NCAD Gallery at the National College of Art & Design. The exhibition takes its title from the tangible starting point for engagement with an archive ��� the simple act of unfolding ��� and the practice of appraisal, valuation and interpretation that is inherent in this process.