File Transfer Protocol

The discourse surrounding the virtual has moved away from the utopian thinking accompanying the rise of the Internet in the 1990s. The Cyber-gurus of the last decades promised a technotopia removed from materiality and the confines of the flesh and the built environment, a liberation from old institutions and power structures. But since then, the virtual has grown into a distinct yet related sphere of cultural and political production that both parallels and occasionally flows over into the old world of material objects. The strict dichotomy of matter and digital purity has been replaced more recently with a more complex model where both the world of stuff and the world of knowledge support, resist and at the same time contain each other. Online social networks amplify and extend existing ones; other cultural interfaces like youtube have not replaced the communal experience of watching moving images in a semi-public space (the cinema) or the semi-private space (the family living room). Rather the experience of viewing is very much about sharing and communicating, offering interpretations and comments. Many of the web’s strongest entities (Amazon, eBay, Gumtree etc.) sit exactly at this juncture of applying tools taken from the knowledge management industry to organize the chaos of the material world along (post-)Fordist rationality. Since the early 1990s there have been many artistic and curatorial attempts to use the Internet as a platform of producing and exhibiting art, but a lot of these were reluctant to let go of the fantasy of digital freedom. Storage Room collapses the binary opposition of real and virtual space by using online data storage as a conduit for IRL art production. The artworks here will not be available for viewing online in a 'screen' environment but only as part of a downloadable package with the intention that the exhibition could be displayed (in a physical space) by any interested party and realised as ambitiously or minimally as the downloader wishes, based on their means. The artists will therefore also supply a set of instructions for the physical installation of the work alongside the digital files. In response to this curatorial initiative, File Transfer Protocol invites seven UK based artists to produce digital art for a physical environment, addressing the intersection between the virtual and the material. The files range from sound, video, digital prints and net art, blueprints for an action to take place, something to be made, a conceptual text piece, etc. About the works and artists: Polly Fibre is the pseudonym of London-based artist Christine Ellison. Ellison creates live music using domestic devices such as sewing machines, irons and slide projectors. Her costumes and stage sets propose a physical manifestation of the virtual space that is created inside software like Photoshop. For this exhibition, Polly Fibre invites the audience to create a musical composition using a pair of amplified scissors and a turntable. http://www.pollyfibre.com John Russell, a founding member of 1990s art group Bank, is an artist, curator and writer who explores in his work the contemporary political conditions of the work of art. In his digital print, Russell collages together visual representations of abstract philosophical ideas and transforms them into a post apocalyptic landscape that is complex and banal at the same time. www.john-russell.org The work of Bristol based artist Jem Nobel opens up a dialogue between the contemporary and the legacy of 20th century conceptual art around questions of collectivism and participation, authorship and individualism. His print SPACE concretizes the representation of the most common piece of Unicode: the vacant space between words. In this way, the gap itself turns from invisible cipher to sign. www.jemnoble.com Annabel Frearson is rewriting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein using all and only the words from the original text. Frankenstein 2, or the Monster of Main Stream, is read in parts by different performers, embodying the psychotic character of the protagonist, a mongrel hybrid of used language. www.annabelfrearson.com Darren Banks uses fragments of effect laden Holywood films to create an impossible space. The fictitious parts don't add up to a convincing material reality, leaving the viewer with a failed amalgamation of simulations of sophisticated technologies. www.darrenbanks.co.uk FIELDCLUB is collaboration between artist Paul Chaney and researcher Kenna Hernly. Chaney and Hernly developed together a project that critically examines various proposals for the management of sustainable ecological systems. Their FIELDMACHINE invites the public to design an ideal agricultural field. By playing with different types of crops that are found in the south west of England, it is possible for the user, for example, to create a balanced, but protein poor, diet or to simply decide to 'get rid' of half the population. The meeting point of the Platonic field and it physical consequences, generates a geometric abstraction that investigates the relationship between modernist utopianism and contemporary actuality. www.fieldclub.co.uk Pil and Galia Kollectiv, who have also curated the exhibition are London-based artists and run the xero, kline & coma gallery. Here they present a dialogue between two computers. The conversation opens with a simple text book problem in business studies. But gradually the language, mimicking the application of game theory in the business sector, becomes more abstract. The two interlocutors become adversaries trapped forever in a competition without winners. www.kollectiv.co.uk

Premature impairment of methylation pathway and cardiac metabolic dysfunction in fa/fa obese Zucker rats

Increasing evidence suggests that obesity is a chronic inflammatory disease, in which adipose tissue is involved in a network of endocrine signals to modulate energy homeostasis. These oxidative-inflammatory pathways, which are associated with cardiovascular complications, are also observed during the aging process. In this study, we investigated the interaction between aging and the development of obesity in a hyperphagic rat model. Metabolic profiles of the liver, white adipose tissue (WAT) and heart from young and adult Zucker lean (fa/+) and obese (fa/fa) rats were characterized using a (1)H NMR-based metabonomics approach. We observed premature metabolic modifications in all studied organs in obese animals, some of which were comparable to those observed in adult lean animals. In the cardiac tissue, young obese rats displayed lower lactate and scyllo-inositol levels associated with higher creatine, choline and phosphocholine levels, indicating an early modulation of energy and membrane metabolism. An early alteration of the hepatic methylation and transsulfuration pathways in both groups of obese rats indicated that these pathways were affected before diabetic onset. These findings therefore support the hypothesis that obesity parallels some metabolic perturbations observed in the aging process and provides new insights into the metabolic modifications occurring in pre-diabetic state.

The zero, the centre and the empty utopia: from Rossellini to Walter Salles

This article examines utopian gestures and inaugural desires in two films which became symbolic of the Brazilian Film Revival in the late 1990s: Central Station (1998) and Midnight (1999). Both evolve around the idea of an overcrowded or empty centre in a country trapped between past and future, in which the motif of the zero stands for both the announcement and the negation of utopia. The analysis draws parallels between them and new wave films which also elaborate on the idea of the zero, with examples picked from Italian neo-realism, the Brazilian Cinema Novo and the New German Cinema. In Central Station, the ‘point zero’, or the core of the homeland, is retrieved in the archaic backlands, where political issues are resolved in the private sphere and the social drama turns into family melodrama. Midnight, in its turn, recycles Glauber Rocha’s utopian prophecies in the new millennium’s hour zero, when the earthly paradise represented by the sea is re-encountered by the middle-class character, but not by the poor migrant. In both cases, public injustice is compensated by the heroes’ personal achievements, but those do not refer to the real nation, its history or society. Their utopian breadth, based on nostalgia, citation and genre techniques, is of a virtual kind, attune to cinema only.

Roman public libraries

This thesis aims to investigate the development and functions of public libraries in Rome and the Roman world. After a preface with maps of libraries in Rome, Section I discusses the precursors for public library provision in the private book collections of Republican Rome, and their transfer into the public domain with the first public libraries of Asinius Pollio and Augustus. Section II contains three 'case studies' of public libraries' different roles. The Augustan library programme is used in Ch.II.l to examine the role of imperial public libraries in literary life and the connections between Rome's libraries and those of Alexandria. Chapter II.2 concentrates on the libraries of Trajan's Forum to explore the intersection of imperial public libraries and monumental public architecture. This chapter responds to an important recent article by arguing for the continued identification of the Forum's libraries with twin brick buildings at its northern end, and suggests a series of correspondences between these libraries and its other monumental components. The conclusions of this chapter are important when considering the public libraries of the wider empire, several of which seem to have been inspired by the Trajanic libraries. Chapter II.3 considers imperial public libraries and leisure by looking at the evidence for libraries within bath-house complexes, concluding that their presence there is consistent with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence and fits in well with what we know of the intellectual and cultural life of these structures. Section III examines various aspects of the practical function of Roman public libraries: their contents (books and archives), division into Latin and Greek sections, provisions for shelving and cataloguing, staff, usership, architectural form, decoration, and housing of works of art. The picture that emerges is of carefully designed and functional buildings intended to sustain public, monumental, and practical functions. Section IV uses a variety of texts to examine the way in which libraries were viewed and used. Ch. IV. 1 discusses the evidence for use of libraries by scholars and authors such as Gellius, Galen, Josephus, and Apuleius. Ch. IV.2 examines parallels between library collections and compendious encyclopaedic elements within Roman literature and considers how library collections came to be canon-forming institutions and vehicles for the expression of imperial approval or disapproval towards authors. The channels through which this imperial influence flowed are investigated in Ch. IV.3, which looks at the directors and staff of the public libraries of Rome. The final section (V) of the thesis concerns public libraries outside the city of Rome. Provincial libraries provide a useful case study in 'Romanisation': they reveal a range of influences and are shown to embody local, personal, and metropolitan imperial identities. There follows a brief conclusion, and a bibliography. There are also five appendices of numismatic and epigraphic material discussed in the text. This material has not been adequately or completely gathered elsewhere and is intended to assist the reader; where appropriate it includes illustrations, transcriptions, and translations.

The origins of domestic horses in north-west Europe: new direct dates on the horses of Newgrange, Ireland

This paper presents direct radiocarbon measurements on horse skeletal remains from the Beaker period settlement at the site of Newgrange in Ireland, finds which have previously been argued as the earliest domestic horses in Ireland. The new determinations date the horse remains to the Irish Iron Age and shed important new light on the introduction of domestic horses to Ireland and to north-west Europe more generally. Although the new dates undermine the idea for the introduction of horses as part of a ‘Beaker package’, the early use of horse is not well defined archaeologically or chronologically and the earliest use of domestic horses in Ireland and Britain is still uncertain. This paper also identifies evidence for heavy bitting damage on the Iron Age Newgrange horse teeth and presents some possible parallels between the evidence from Newgrange and that at Tara, which has been previously linked with kingship rituals

“The suffering black male body and the threatened white female body": ambiguous bodies in Candyman

This article explores the roles of monster and victim as experienced through the body, and considers how the relationship between violence and the body affects the presentation of these roles through close analysis of performance in Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992). I aim to demonstrate that commitment to such a detailed approach, offers a more intricate and rewarding critical interaction, reflecting the complexity of narrative film. Consideration of the particulars of performance is crucial, in its affect on our engagement with the performer and their physical presence. Through this attention I intend to demonstrate how the seemingly fixed role of monster is in fact more fluid than first apparent, that monster and victim can co-exist in the same body. Candyman’s physicality and the way it is presented foregrounds the oscillations between violence and suffering, the relationship between the body and the violence inflicted on and by it, ambiguities which are also found in the heroine’s development, thus enhancing the film’s striking preoccupation with the shifting parallels between monster and victim.

When bookkeepers become beekeepers: why bee accountability

Accounting for biodiversity has received increasing attention from the academic accounting community in recent years. Despite a stream of research investigating the quality and quantity of biodiversity reporting in general, no academic research has focused on reporting related to one specific species. This paper explores the quality and quantity of corporate disclosures relating to bees. Society is becoming increasingly concerned about the accelerating fall in bee populations around the world. Colony Collapse Disorder has been spreading through global bee populations since 2006, decimating commercial hives. Concerns are fuelled by fears that pollinators may become extinct which would have dire consequences for the majority of world food production, leaving human pollination, at immense cost, the only alternative. On the basis of these fears, companies as well as other organisations, have started to establish programmes aimed at rejuvenating global bee populations. In this paper we explore the bee-related disclosures provided by a large selection of UK listed companies. We assess the extent to which companies believe they have a role to play in enhancing and protecting bee populations. Further we consider whether corporate accountability in this area derives solely from a business case or whether there is a deeper societal connection with bees as a species which is encouraging companies to protect their survival. The paper investigates the historical and philosophical connection between bees and human beings, for example the ways industrial production has been likened to honey production. We draw parallels between bees and human industrial organisation as well as between the role and responsibilities of the bookkeeper and the beekeeper.

Knowledge transfer of the Western concept of ‘quality’

This paper addresses one of the issues in contemporary globalisation theory: the extent to which there is ‘one best way’ in which business can be done and organisations managed. It uses Czarniawska’s ‘Travels of Ideas’ model as an organising framework to present and understand how the concept of ‘Quality’, so important in contemporary approaches to manufacturing & services, and their management, travelled to, and impinged on, a newly opened vehicle assembly plant in Poland. The extent to which new meanings were mutually created in the process of translation is discussed, using ethnographic reporting and analysis techniques commonly used in diffusion research. Parallels between the process of translation as an idea becomes embedded into a new cultural location, and the processes which contemporary research has identified as important to organisational learning, are briefly discussed in conclusion.