Prêt-à-Médiatiser by House of POLLYFIBRE

Prêt-à-Médiatiser by House of POLLYFIBRE is a performance/film that takes the fashion show catwalk as a site for exploration, with a focus on the dialogue between liveness and mediatisation. The performance showcases a clothing collection that has been designed to be documented and thus is challenged in the context of the live event. Motivated by the 2-dimensionality and biased perspective of mediated images such as magazine photography, social network profiles images and the surfaces of digital interfaces, the garments are one sided and obstruct the models in their attempt to play out familiar fashion poses, unless they align themselves 'correctly' for the lense. There is material metaphor and wordplay throughout, for example the clothing pieces are made from interfacing fabrics that are physically cut, pasted and layered to create the rigid flat silhouettes. The performance is accompanied by live sound created by tools of the fashion industry (including scissors and camera clicks) that have been adapted and amplified to be used as instruments. The audience and press are invited to document the live event and the subsequent film is made using footage collated from the crew, the audience and the official press

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

Langmuir turbulence and deeply penetrating jets in an unstratified mixed layer

The influence of surface waves and an applied wind stress is studied in an ensemble of large eddy simulations to investigate the nature of deeply penetrating jets into an unstratified mixed layer. The influence of a steady monochromatic surface wave propagating parallel to the wind direction is parameterized using the wave-filtered Craik-Leibovich equations. Tracer trajectories and instantaneous downwelling velocities reveal classic counterrotating Langmuir rolls. The associated downwelling jets penetrate to depths in excess of the wave's Stokes depth scale, δs. Qualitative evidence suggests the depth of the jets is controlled by the Ekman depth scale. Analysis of turbulent kinetic energy (tke) budgets reveals a dynamical distinction between Langmuir turbulence and shear-driven turbulence. In the former, tke production is dominated by Stokes shear and a vertical flux term transports tke to a depth where it is dissipated. In the latter, tke production is from the mean shear and is locally balanced by dissipation. We define the turbulent Langmuir number Lat = (v*/Us)0.5 (v* is the ocean's friction velocity and Us is the surface Stokes drift velocity) and a turbulent anisotropy coefficient Rt = /( + ). The transition between shear-driven and Langmuir turbulence is investigated by varying external wave parameters δs and Lat and by diagnosing Rt and the Eulerian mean and Stokes shears. When either Lat or δs are sufficiently small the Stokes shear dominates the mean shear and the flow is preconditioned to Langmuir turbulence and the associated deeply penetrating jets.

Spontaneous generation and impact of inertia-gravity waves in a stratified, two-layer shear flow

Inertia-gravity waves exist ubiquitously throughout the stratified parts of the atmosphere and ocean. They are generated by local velocity shears, interactions with topography, and as geostrophic (or spontaneous) adjustment radiation. Relatively little is known about the details of their interaction with the large-scale flow, however. We report on a joint model/laboratory study of a flow in which inertia-gravity waves are generated as spontaneous adjustment radiation by an evolving large-scale mode. We show that their subsequent impact upon the large-scale dynamics is generally small. However, near a potential transition from one large-scale mode to another, in a flow which is simultaneously baroclinically-unstable to more than one mode, the inertia-gravity waves may strongly influence the selection of the mode which actually occurs.

Instructions for an Audio Performance/Scissors Music

‘Instructions for an Audio Performance/Scissors Recording’ is a score for a performance using an amplified scissors that can be downloaded and interpreted by a performer anywhere in the world. The file functions as a manual for the performer with guidance for creating the instrument and preparing the performance space while it also provides a template for the actual sonic pattern to be followed in the live performance. Created originally for ‘Storageroom’ an online platform featuring complete exhibitions that are available for download, the piece was exhibited and interpreted in a live performance by Ayelet Lerman for the File Transfer Protocol, the contemporary section of the Haifa-Jerusalem-Tel Aviv exhibition at the Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel.

The Prophetic Sound: a day and night of noise cabaret(symposium of talks and live performances)

'The Prophetic Sound: a day and night of noise cabaret' is the first event hosted by Agency of Noise. This all day event brought together artists and academics whose subject of focus is noise (in creative practice). Artists from across the UK were invited to consider a future post-digital era in which everything with a microchip has malfunctioned, as a thought exercise and starting point for response through sound. In response to Jacques Attali’s claim that music is prophecy, The Prophetic Sound asks us to consider if noise can communicate in an unbridled, unfiltered, way that is somehow not culturally coded -before it becomes sound that is recognised, refined, manipulated and exploited for musical or other cultured purpose. Featuring students from Reading, Brighton, LCC and Goldsmiths alongside more established artists and academics from across the UK, this event brings into focus locations where pattern, timbre, pitch, organisation and sequencing of sounds become distinguishable from noise and asks us to consider, through diversion within such locations, new origins for future communication systems. The Prophetic Sound included talks, films, presentations and performances from: Ryo Ikeshiro / Inigo Wilkins / Neal Spowage / Dane Sutherland / Poulomi Desai / Benedict Drew / AAS / Polly Fibre / Steven Dickie As part of The Prophetic Sound, POLLYFIBRE (Ellison, C.) performed LIVE RECORDING with Amplified Scissors. This industrial activity by POLLYFIBRE short-circuits the complicated chain that is music production. The distinctive roles of consumer, producer, composer, and performer collapse in a series of live ‘cuts’ where vinyl discs are produced with amplified scissors. Production happens through action and action becomes production. A limited edition of 9 flexi discs were produced and available for special collectors at the event.

Large-scale dynamics of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere: an analysis using the extended Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model

The extended Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model is used to investigate the large-scale dynamics of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT). It is shown that the 4-day wave is substantially amplified in southern polar winter in the presence of instabilities arising from strong vertical shears in the MLT zonal mean zonal winds brought about by parameterized nonorographic gravity wave drag. A weaker 4-day wave in northern polar winter is attributed to the weaker wind shears that result from weaker parameterized wave drag. The 2-day wave also exhibits a strong dependence on zonal wind shears, in agreement with previous modeling studies. In the equatorial upper mesosphere, the migrating diurnal tide provides most of the resolved westward wave forcing, which varies semiannually in conjunction with the tide itself; resolved forcing by eastward traveling disturbances is dominated by smaller scales. Nonmigrating tides and other planetary-scale waves play only a minor role in the zonal mean zonal momentum budget in the tropics at these heights. Resolved waves are shown to play a significant role in the zonal mean meridional momentum budget in the MLT, impacting significantly on gradient wind balance. Balance fails at low latitudes as a result of a strong Reynolds stress associated with the migrating diurnal tide, an effect which is most pronounced at equinox when the tide is strongest. Resolved and parameterized waves account for most of the imbalance at higher latitudes in summer. This results in the gradient wind underestimating the actual eastward wind reversal by up to 40%.

Ion flows and heating at a contracting polar-cap boundary: GISMOS observations indicating viscous-like interaction on the flanks of the magnetotail

This paper complements that in this issue by Clauer et al. concerning the international GISMOS campaign of 3–5 June 1987. From a detailed study of the EISCAT data, the polar-cap boundary, as defined by an almost shear east-west convection reversal, is found to contract across the EISCAT field of view between 04 and 07 MLT. An annulus of enhanced ion temperature and non-thermal plasma is observed immediately equatorward of the contracting boundary due to the lag in the response of the neutral-wind pattern to the change in ion flows. The ion flow inside the polar cap and at the boundary is shown to be relatively smooth, compared with that in the auroral oval, at 15-second resolution. The flow at the boundary is directed poleward, with velocities which exceed that of the boundary itself. The effect of velocity shears on the beamswinging technique used to derive the ion flows has been analysed in detail and it is found that spurious flows across a moving boundary can be generated. However, these are much smaller than the observed flows into the polar cap and cannot explain the 7 kV potential difference across the observed segment of the cap boundary between 04:30–06:30 UT. The ion temperature enhancements at the two observing azimuths is used to define the boundary orientation. The results are consistent with recent observations of slow anti-sunward flow of closed field lines on the flanks of the geomagnetic tail, which appears to be generated by some form of “viscous” coupling to the magnetosheath plasma.

Ion flows and heating at a contracting polar-cap boundary

Data recorded by the POLAR experiment run on the EISCAT radar during the international GISMOS campaign of 3–5 June 1987 are studied in detail. The polar-cap boundary, as denned by an almost shear East-West convection reversal, was observed to jump southward across the EISCAT field of view in two steps at 02:00 and 03:00 Magnetic Local Time and subsequently to contract back between 04:00 and 07:00 M.L.T. An annulus of enhanced ion temperature and non-thermal plasma was observed immediately equatorward of the contracting boundary due to the lag in the response of the neutral-wind pattern to the change in ion flows. The ion flow at the boundary is shown to be relatively smooth at 15 s resolution and directed northward, with velocities which exceed that of the boundary itself. The effect of velocity shears on the beamswinging technique used to derive the ion flows is analyzed in detail and it is shown that, for certain orientations of the cap boundary, spurious flows into the cap can be generated. However, these are much smaller than the observed flows into the polar cap and cannot explain the potential difference across the observed segment of the cap boundary (extending over 2 h of M.L.T.) which is roughly 7 kV. Similarly, an observed slowing of the zonal flow near the boundary cannot be explained as an error introduced by the use of the beamswinging technique. The results could be interpreted as being due to reconnection occurring on the dawn flank of the magnetopause (mapping to the polar cap at 04:30 06:30 M.L.T.). However, they are more consistent with recent observations of slow anti-sunward flow of closed field lines on the flanks of the geomagnetic tail, which appears to be generated by some form of “viscous” coupling to the magnetosheath plasma.