Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction” (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship.

Cue combination for 3D location judgements

Cue combination rules have often been applied to the perception of surface shape but not to judgements of object location. Here, we used immersive virtual reality to explore the relationship between different cues to distance. Participants viewed a virtual scene and judged the change in distance of an object presented in two intervals, where the scene changed in size between intervals (by a factor of between 0.25 and 4). We measured thresholds for detecting a change in object distance when there were only 'physical' (stereo and motion parallax) or 'texture-based' cues (independent of the scale of the scene) and used these to predict biases in a distance matching task. Under a range of conditions, in which the viewing distance and position of the tarte relative to other objects was varied, the ration of 'physical' to 'texture-based' thresholds was a good predictor of biases in the distance matching task. The cue combination approach, which successfully accounts for our data, relies on quite different principles from those underlying geometric reconstruction.

Field trials to assess the uptake of arsenic by vegetables from contaminated soils and soil remediation with iron oxides

The uptake of arsenic (As) by plants from contaminated soils presents a health hazard that may affect the use of agricultural and former industrial land. Methods for limiting the hazard are desirable. A proposed remediation treatment comprises the precipitation of iron (Fe) oxides in the contaminated soil by adding ferrous sulfate and lime. The effects on As bioavailability were assessed using a range of vegetable crops grown in the field. Four UK locations were used, where soil was contaminated by As from different sources. At the most contaminated site, a clay loam containing a mean of 748 mg As kg(-1) soil, beetroot, calabrese, cauliflower, lettuce, potato, radish and spinach were grown. For all crops except spinach, ferrous sulfate treatment caused a significant reduction in the bioavailability of As in some part of the crop. Application of ferrous sulfate in solution, providing 0.2% Fe oxides in the soil (0-10 cm), reduced As uptake by a mean of 22%. Solid ferrous sulfate was applied to give concentrations of 0.5% and 1% Fe oxides: the 0.5% concentration reduced As uptake by a mean of 32% and the 1% concentration gave no significant additional benefit. On a sandy loam containing 65 mg As kg(-1) soil, there was tentative evidence that ferrous sulfate treatment up to 2% Fe oxides caused a significant reduction in lettuce As, but calabrese did not respond. At the other two sites, the effects of ferrous sulfate treatment were not significant, but the uptake of soil As was low in treated and untreated soils. Differences between sites in the bioavailable fraction of soil As may be related to the soil texture or the source of As. The highest bioavailability was found on the soil which had been contaminated by aerial deposition and had a high sand content. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Abrasion control on dune colour: Muleshoe Dunes, SW USA

The Muleshoe Dunes, an east-west trending dunefield on the border separating Texas and New Mexico, consist of two distinct components: a white (carbonate rich) component and an overlying pink (quartz rich) component. The pink component exhibits significant spatial variation in redness. The reddest sands, in the western part of the dunefield, decrease in redness towards the east. This gradient is thought to result from abrasion of all iron-rich, red clay coating as the sediments were transported eastward by Late Quaternary aeolian processes. The effects of aeolian abrasion on the spectral signature and surface texture of the sediments were examined using laboratory abrasion experiments. Changes in spectral reflectance of abrasion samples from the laboratory were compared to field samples that were abraded naturally because of sediment transport. The changes resulting from increased time of abrasion are similar to those observed with increased distance downwind in the dunefield. These results suggest that downwind abrasion can explain the pattern of dune colour in the Muleshoe Dunes, although this does not preclude other possible causes. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Influence of time on the plant availability of Cd, Ni and Zn after sewage sludge has been applied to soils

A pot experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that decomposition of organic matter in sewage sludge and the consequent formation of dissolved organic compounds (DOC) would lead to an increase in the bioavailability of the heavy metals. Two Brown Earth soils, one with clayey loam texture (CL) and the other a loamy sand (LS) were mixed with sewage sludge at rates equivalent to 0, 10 and 50 1 dry sludge ha(-1) and the pots were sown with ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.). The organic matter content and heavy metal availability assessed with soil extractions with 0.05 M CaCl2 were monitored over a residual time of two years, while plant uptake over one year, after addition of the sludge. It was found that the concentrations of Cd and Ni in both the ryegrass and the soil extracts increased slightly but significantly during the first year. In most cases, this increase was most evident especially at the higher sludge application rate (50 t ha(-1)). However, in the second year metal availability reached a plateau. Zinc concentrations in the ryegrass did not show an increase but the CaCl2 extracts increased during the first year. In contrast, organic matter content decreased rapidly in the first months of the first year and much more slowly in the second (total decrease of 16%). The concentrations of DOC increased significantly in the more organic rich CL soil in the course of two years. The pattern followed by the decomposition of organic matter with time and the production of DOC may provide at least a partial explanation for trend towards increased metal availability.

A geostatistical analysis of the spatial variation of soil mineral nitrogen and potentially available nitrogen within an arable field.

The technology for site-specific applications of nitrogen (N) fertilizer has exposed a gap in our knowledge about the spatial variation of soil mineral N, and that which will become available during the growing season within arable fields. Spring mineral N and potentially available N were measured in an arable field together with gravimetric water content, loss on ignition, crop yield, percentages of sand, silt, and clay, and elevation to describe their spatial variation geostatistically. The areas with a larger clay content had larger values of mineral N, potentially available N, loss on ignition and gravimetric water content, and the converse was true for the areas with more sandy soil. The results suggest that the spatial relations between mineral N and loss on ignition, gravimetric water content, soil texture, elevation and crop yield, and between potentially available N and loss on ignition and silt content could be used to indicate their spatial patterns. Variable-rate nitrogen fertilizer application would be feasible in this field because of the spatial structure and the magnitude of variation of mineral N and potentially available N.