The new Hollywood, 1981���1999: special/visual effects

The emergence and development of digital imaging technologies and their impact on mainstream filmmaking is perhaps the most familiar special effects narrative associated with the years 1981-1999. This is in part because some of the questions raised by the rise of the digital still concern us now, but also because key milestone films showcasing advancements in digital imaging technologies appear in this period, including Tron (1982) and its computer generated image elements, the digital morphing in The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), computer animation in Jurassic Park (1993) and Toy Story (1995), digital extras in Titanic (1997), and ���bullet time��� in The Matrix (1999). As a result it is tempting to characterize 1981-1999 as a ���transitional period��� in which digital imaging processes grow in prominence and technical sophistication, and what we might call ���analogue��� special effects processes correspondingly become less common. But such a narrative risks eliding the other practices that also shape effects sequences in this period. Indeed, the 1980s and 1990s are striking for the diverse range of effects practices in evidence in both big budget films and lower budget productions, and for the extent to which analogue practices persist independently of or alongside digital effects work in a range of production and genre contexts. The chapter seeks to document and celebrate this diversity and plurality, this sustaining of earlier traditions of effects practice alongside newer processes, this experimentation with materials and technologies old and new in the service of aesthetic aspirations alongside budgetary and technical constraints. The common characterization of the period as a series of rapid transformations in production workflows, practices and technologies will be interrogated in relation to the persistence of certain key figures as Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, and James Cameron, but also through a consideration of the contexts for and influences on creative decision-making. Comparative analyses of the processes used to articulate bodies, space and scale in effects sequences drawn from different generic sites of special effects work, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror, will provide a further frame for the chapter���s mapping of the commonalities and specificities, continuities and variations in effects practices across the period. In the process, the chapter seeks to reclaim analogue processes��� contribution both to moments of explicit spectacle, and to diegetic verisimilitude, in the decades most often associated with the digital���s ���arrival���.

The history of the practice of strategy from Antiquity to Napoleon

This chapter outlines the history of the practice of strategy, predating the introduction of the term. It homes in on episodes of European history since Antiquity for which historians claim to have found evidence of the practice of strategy, defined by Kimberly Kagan as ���the setting of a state���s objectives and of priorities among those objectives��� in order to allocate resources and choose the best means. While focusing only on Europe, this chapter covers case studies over nearly 2500 ranging from the wars of Ancient Greece, of the Romans to Medieval warfare (here with a focus on English history), the warfare of Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Frederick II of Prussia, the French Revolutionaries and Napoleon.

Anticipatory governance for social-ecological resilience

Anticipation is increasingly central to urgent contemporary debates, from climate change to the global economic crisis. Anticipatory practices are coming to the forefront of political, organizational, and citizens��� society. Research into anticipation, however, has not kept pace with public demand for insights into anticipatory practices, their risks and uses. Where research exists, it is deeply fragmented. This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. We use a resilience lens to examine these questions. We illustrate how varying forms of anticipatory governance are enhanced by multi-scale regional networks and technologies and by the agency of individuals, drawing from an empirical case study on regional water governance of M��laren, Sweden. Finally, we discuss how an anticipatory approach can inform adaptive institutions, decision making, strategy formation, and societal resilience.

Making: the invisible visible

In this book essay I argue that modern and contemporary works of art (i.e. paintings, photographs, films, and videos) really ought to retrieve something of their auratic-character, which turns the physical toward the metaphysical, the material toward the immaterial, the visible toward the invisible - making artworks, ���things among things, something other than [a] thing��� (Theodor W. Adorno,��Aesthetic Theory,��86). There is, perhaps, an aura to art or art is a medium or a conduit or a technology for rediscovering and reproducing aura, which makes it something other than a mere thing. Such works of art are constitutively enigmatic, a certain form of magic making: they (re-)distribute the visible and the invisible, they (re-)configure appearance and disappearance. Such works of art may become visual events, which begin an education in and through (dis-)appearances. To achieve this end, I detail Theodor W. Adorno���s and Walter Benjamin���s respective theories of (art���s) aura in the age of technological reproducibility, which I relate to Jacques Ranci��re���s more recent discussion of the ���pensive image,��� and I focus my reading on a number of works by Susan Hiller (photographs), John Constable (paintings), Alfred Stieglitz (photographs), and Tacita Dean (photograph and 16mm film).

Convergence accommodation in orthoptic practice

Aims. Orthoptists are familiar with AC/A ratios and the concept that accommodation drives convergence, but the reverse relationship, that of the accommodation associated with convergence, is rarely considered. Methods. This article reviews published evidence from our laboratory which has investigated the drives to both vergence and accommodation. All studies involved a method by which accommodation and vergence were measured concurrently and objectively to a range of visual stimuli which manipulate blur, disparity and proximal/looming cues in different combinations. Results Results are summarised for both typical and atypical participants, and over development between birth and adulthood. Conclusions For the majority of typical children and adults, as well as patients with most heterophorias and intermittent exotropia, disparity is the main cue to both vergence and accommodation. Thus the convergence���accommodation relationship is more influential than that of accommodative vergence. Differences in ���style��� of near cue use may be a more useful way to think about responses to stimuli moving in depth, and their consequences for orthoptic patients, than either AC/A or CA/C ratios. The implications of a strong role for vergence accommodation in orthoptic practice are considered.