Chasing Infinite Junctures

A collaborative solo exhibition at Boxcopy, Brisbane. For Chasing Infinite Junctures, Caitlin Franzmann presented an installation as an open site for affect, response and collaboration. The exhibition began with an architectural intervention, which was available for exchange and transformation involving other artists, events and the sensing body of the audience. For five weeks, Caitlin provided a space for new junctures to unfold – artists including Andrew McLellan, Ross Manning, Henry Mills, Louise Bennett, Leena Riethmuller and Sandra Selig will gather, experiment and create in the space.

Psychologically-Based and Content-Oriented Experience in Entertainment Virtual Environments

In daily life, rich experiences evolve in every environmental and social interaction. Because experience has a strong impact on how people behave, scholars in different fields are interested in understanding what constitutes an experience. Yet even if interest in conscious experience is on the increase, there is no consensus on how such experience should be studied. Whatever approach is taken, the subjective and psychologically multidimensional nature of experience should be respected. This study endeavours to understand and evaluate conscious experiences. First I intro-duce a theoretical approach to psychologically-based and content-oriented experience. In the experiential cycle presented here, classical psychology and orienting-environmental content are connected. This generic approach is applicable to any human-environment interaction. Here I apply the approach to entertainment virtual environments (VEs) such as digital games and develop a framework with the potential for studying experiences in VEs. The development of the methodological framework included subjective and objective data from experiences in the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) and with numerous digital games (N=2,414). The final framework consisted of fifteen factor-analytically formed subcomponents of the sense of presence, involvement and flow. Together, these show the multidimensional experiential profile of VEs. The results present general experiential laws of VEs and show that the interface of a VE is related to (physical) presence, which psychologically means attention, perception and the cognitively evaluated realness and spatiality of the VE. The narrative of the VE elicits (social) presence and involvement and affects emotional outcomes. Psychologically, these outcomes are related to social cognition, motivation and emotion. The mechanics of a VE affect the cognitive evaluations and emotional outcomes related to flow. In addition, at the very least, user background, prior experience and use context affect the experiential variation. VEs are part of many peoples lives and many different outcomes are related to them, such as enjoyment, learning and addiction, depending on who is making the evalua-tion. This makes VEs societally important and psychologically fruitful to study. The approach and framework presented here contribute to our understanding of experiences in general and VEs in particular. The research can provide VE developers with a state-of-the art method (www.eveqgp.fi) that can be utilized whenever new product and service concepts are designed, prototyped and tested.

Tiedostumaton nykytaiteessa : Katse, ääni ja aika vuosituhannen taitteen suomalaisessa nykytaiteessa

Leevi Haapala explores moving image works, sculptures and installations from a psychoanalytic perspective in his study The Unconscious in Contemporary Art. The Gaze, Voice and Time in Finnish Contemporary Art at the Turn of the Millennium . The artists included in the study are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Hans-Christian Berg, Markus Copper, Liisa Lounila and Salla Tykkä. The theoretical framework includes different psychoanalytic readings of the concepts of the gaze, voice and temporality. The installations are based on spatiality and temporality, and their detailed reading emphasizes the medium-specific features of the works as well as their fragmentary nature, heterogeneity and affectivity. The study is cross-disciplinary in that it connects perspectives from the visual culture, new art history and theory to the interpretation of contemporary art. The most important concepts from psychoanalysis, affect theory and trauma discourse used in the study include affect, object a (objet petit a) as articulated by Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud s uncanny (das Unheimliche) and trauma. Das Unheimliche has been translated as uncanny in art history under the influence of Rosalind Krauss. The object of the study, the unconscious in contemporary art, is approached through these concepts. The study focuses on Lacan s additions to the list of partial drives: the gaze and voice as scopic and invocative drives and their interpretations in the studies of the moving image. The texts by the American film theorist and art historian Kaja Silverman are in crucial role. The study locates contemporary art as part of trauma culture, which has a tendency to define individual and historical experiences through trauma. Some of the art works point towards trauma, which may appear as a theoretic or fictitious construction. The study presents a comprehensive collection of different kinds of trauma discourse in the field of art research through the texts of Hal Foster, Cathy Caruth, Ruth Leys and Shoshana Felman. The study connects trauma theory with the theoretical analysis of the interference and discontinuity of the moving image in the readings by Susan Buck-Morss, Mary Ann Doane and Peter Osborn among others. The analysis emphasizes different ways of seeing and multisensoriality in the reception of contemporary art. With their reflections and inverse projections, the surprising mechanisms of Hans-Christian Berg s sculptures are connected with Lacan s views on the early mirroring and imitation attempts of the individual s body image. Salla Tykkä s film trilogy Cave invites one to contemplate the Lacanian theory of the gaze in relation to the experiences of being seen. The three oceanic sculpture installations by Markus Copper are studied through the vocality they create, often through an aggressive way of acting, as well as from the point of view of the functioning of an invocative drive. The study compares the work of fiction and Freud s texts on paranoia and psychosis to Eija-Liisa Ahtila s manuscripts and moving image installations about the same topic. The cinematic time in Liisa Lounila s time-slice video installations is approached through the theoretical study of the unconscious temporal structure. The viewer of the moving image is inside the work in an in-between state: in a space produced by the contents of the work and its technology. The installations of the moving image enable us to inhabit different kinds of virtual bodies or spaces, which do not correspond with our everyday experiences. Nevertheless, the works of art often try to deconstruct the identification to what has been shown on screen. This way, the viewer s attention can be fixed on his own unconscious experiences in parallel with the work s deconstructed nature as representation. The study shows that contemporary art is a central cultural practice, which allows us to discuss the unconscious in a meaningful way. The study suggests that the agency that is discursively diffuse and consists of several different praxes should be called the unconscious. The emergence of the unconscious can happen in two areas: in contemporary art through different senses and discursive elements, and in the study of contemporary art, which, being a linguistic activity is sensitive to the movements of the unconscious. One of the missions of art research is to build different kinds of articulated constructs and to open an interpretative space for the nature of art as an event.

Atomistic Origin Of Rate-Dependent Serrated Plastic Flow In Metallic Glasses

Nanoindentation simulations on a binary metallic glass were performed under various strain rates by using molecular dynamics. The rate-dependent serrated plastic flow was clearly observed, and the spatiotemporal behavior of its underlying irreversible atomic rearrangement was probed. Our findings clearly validate that the serration is a temporally inhomogeneous characteristic of such rearrangements and not directly dependent on the resultant shear-banding spatiality. The unique spatiotemporal distribution of shear banding during nanoindentation is highlighted in terms of the potential energy landscape (PEL) theory.

Corpo como superfície: fazer-se imagem

Dissertação que pesquisa o desdobramento de espetáculos teatrais em imagens de potencial plástico fecundo na interação entre a cenografia e as artes visuais. Estudos de caso de obras de Robert Wilson que elaboram as questões da tensão entre a ficção e a biografia, além de abordar imagem, corpo, movimento e espacialidade. Desenvolve-se em análise das posturas do espaço quando atravessado por trabalhos que promovem o pensamento acerca da imobilidade e de seu contrário. A reprodutibilidade esteticamente explorada é observada enquanto elemento fundamental na proposta que trata a disponibilidade do corpo justaposta à imagética que este é capaz de produzir. Na análise aparecem alguns materiais - imagens - resultantes de processos artísticos de Robert Wilson bem como de outros artistas como Marina Abramovic e Rineke Djcstra. Estruturado no encadeamento de imagens partícipes de processos de construção e condução de performances artísticas que abrangem as perspectivas da colaboração imagética incorporada ao pensamento criativo que recondiciona o corpo no campo da superficialidade enquanto abrangência poética

A luta dos sem-teto pelo direito à cidade na área central da cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Esta pesquisa busca ampliar o debate sobre os movimentos sociais de luta por moradia no contexto da cidade capitalista. Embasados no conceito de direito à cidade, objetivamos analisar as espacialidades dos movimentos sociais de luta por moradia na primeira década do século XXI, na área central do Rio de Janeiro. A presença de terrenos e edifícios vazios públicos ou privados suscita questionamentos pelo fato de um município com elevado déficit habitacional possuir tantos espaços vazios. Contradições que resultam da negação do direito à cidade a todos os cidadãos. Assim, a expansão das lutas por moradia na nossa sociedade expressa o profundo agravamento da denominada: questão social. Na atual conjuntura e ao mesmo tempo, revela a capacidade de organização de segmentos da classe trabalhadora extremamente pauperizada. A partir do estudo do processo de luta protagonizada pelos moradores das ocupações: Chiquinha Gonzaga, Manoel Congo e Regente Feijó. Analisamos como essa prática social produz uma nova espacialidade na área central, da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Essa dinâmica não indica apenas o momento de luta pela moradia, mas também como os movimentos sociais se organizam a partir desse espaço. Movimentos sociais urbanos que, no embate da vida cotidiana, produzem espaços e relações sociais alternativos ao modelo vigente de desenvolvimento geográfico desigual. A espacialidade das ocupações simboliza uma resistência e uma ação criativa ao demonstrar ao poder público que é possível transformar os espaços vazios na cidade em moradia popular, proporcionando, dessa maneira, melhora em termos de qualidade de vida dos seus moradores. O direito à cidade significa estar na cidade e vivenciá-la na sua plenitude, ou seja, fazendo uso de todas as suas benesses, participando ativamente da sua construção e reconstrução. Porém, a ação contrária dos agentes que se beneficiam da ordem vigente é imediata, e várias são as estratégias para desmobilizar os movimentos sociais. Nesse sentido, a formação de uma rede de resistência solidária dos movimentos sociais pela moradia busca: promover o fortalecimento da luta pelo direito à cidade.

Memória e cidade sensível: Fortaleza e Rio em comentários no Facebook

Esta dissertação busca investigar imaginários sobre memória social nas redes sociais on-line. Para tanto, analisam-se comentários deixados nas fan pages (páginas de fãs) Fortaleza Nobre, de Fortaleza, e O Rio de Janeiro Que Não vivi, do Rio de Janeiro, no site de rede social Facebook. O trabalho parte da hipótese de que os comentadores experimentam uma experiência com a cidade sensível ao curtir, comentar e compartilhar imagens antigas na sociabilidade, entendida como expressão comunicativa, observada nas duas comunidades virtuais. O principal objetivo da pesquisa é descobrir o que dão a ler os textos deixados em postagens públicas, no que diz respeito a espacialidades, temporalidades e sensorialidades evocadas pela cidade habitada e pela cidade perpassada pelo imaginário. Para tal abordagem, utiliza-se como metodologia de pesquisa a etnografia em meios digitais aliada às contribuições teóricas da hermenêutica, a partir da abordagem ricoeuriana de texto. Tendo em vista o caráter histórico e transdisciplinar do objeto, verdadeiros rastros escritos, a pesquisa tem como referenciais teóricos textos da Escola de Toronto, da História Cultural, da Geografia Cultural e da antropologia. Também serão caras à análise contribuições da sociologia do imaginário, dos estudos em memória social e a perspectiva de pesquisadores brasileiros que problematizam as relações entre comunicação e o sensível. A pesquisa aponta para a ocorrência do devaneio na web como expressão desse contato com a cidade sensível. Os comentários falam de uma valorização da experiência vivida e de construções arquetípicas sobre o espaço e o tempo condutoras de relações sacralizadas e monumentais com a memória e com as fotografias

Beginning primary teachers’ perspectives on becoming a teacher in the workplace: Contextual, emotional, and temporo-spatial dimensions of identity shaping

The issue, with international and national overtones, of direct relevance to the present study, relates to the shaping of beginning teachers’ identities in the workplace. As the shift from an initial teacher education programme into initial practice in schools is a period of identity change worthy of investigation, this study focuses on the transformative search by nine beginning primary teachers for their teaching identities, throughout the course of their initial year of occupational experience, post-graduation. The nine beginning teacher participants work in a variety of primary school settings, thus strengthening the representativeness of the research cohort. Privileging ‘insider’ perspectives, the research goal is to understand the complexities of lived experience from the viewpoints of the participating informants. The shaping of identity is conceived of in dimensional terms. Accordingly, a framework composed of three dimensions of beginning teacher experience is devised, namely: contextual; emotional; temporo-spatial. Data collection and analysis is informed by principles derived from sociocultural theories; activity theory; figured worlds theory; and, dialogical self theory. Individual, face-to-face semi-structured interviews, and the maintenance of solicited digital diaries, are the principal methods of data collection employed. The use of a dimensional model fragments the integrated learning experiences of beginning teachers into constituent parts for the purpose of analysis. While acknowledging that the actual journey articulated by each participant is a more complex whole than the sum of its parts, key empirically-based claims are presented as per the dimensional framework employed: contextuality; emotionality; temporo-spatiality. As a result of applying the foci of an international literature to an under-researched aspect of Irish education, this study is offered as a context-specific contribution to the knowledge base on beginning teaching. As the developmental needs of beginning teachers constitute an emerging area of intense policy focus in Ireland, this research undertaking is both relevant and timely.

The spatial turn: geographical approaches in the history of science

Over the past decade or so a number of historians of science and historical geographers, alert to the situated nature of scientific knowledge production and reception and to the migratory patterns of science on the move, have called for more explicit treatment of the geographies of past scientific knowledge. Closely linked to work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies and connected with a heightened interest in spatiality evident across the humanities and social sciences this ‹spatial turn’ has informed a wide-ranging body of work on the history of science. This discussion essay revisits some of the theoretical props supporting this turn to space and provides a number of worked examples from the history of the life sciences that demonstrate the different ways in which the spaces of science have been comprehended.

Placing political economy: organising opposition to free trade before the abolition of the Corn Laws

The unfurling of global capitalism – and its attendant effects – has long been fertile intellectual terrain for geographers. But whilst studies of the processes and mechanisms of globalisation undoubtedly assume a talismanic importance in the discipline, geographers, with few exceptions, have left examinations of early economic liberalism to historians. One such critically important episode in the evolution of the liberal economic project was the repeal of the so-called 'Corn Laws' in 1846. Whilst the precise impact of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL) continues to be a matter of conjecture, Eric Sheppard has asserted that their particular take on political economy managed to assume a 'truth-like status' and worldwide universality. But the ACLL's campaign represents only one, albeit decisive, stage in the long intellectual and practical struggle between 'protectionists' and the disciples of free trade. Studies of the non-'Manchester' components have tended to focus squarely upon national politics. This paper examines a pivotal attempt in 1838 by Lord Melbourne's Government to experiment with the effective elimination of import duties on fresh fruit. Unlike most agricultural commodities, table fruit was produced in a tightly defined area, thus allowing the Government's experiment to play out, in theory, without national political fallout. Whilst the Government's clandestine actions left little time for a concerted opposition to develop, Kentish fruit growers soon organised. A formidable lobby was forged that drew wide local support yet also evolved beyond the original 'epistemic community'. Whilst the coalition failed in their efforts to reintroduce protective duties, their actions allow us to see how protectionist ideologies and policies were vivified through practices at many different spatial scales and to better understand the complex spatiality of protectionist takes on political economy. Their campaign also changed – at least in the short term – the course of British mercantile policy.

Collaborative artistic laboratories. Transfrontier spaces of cultural production

The appearance of the open code paradigm and the demands of social movements have permeated the ways in which today’s cultural institutions are organized. This article analyzes the birth of a new critical and cooperative spatiality and how it is transforming current modes of cultural research and production. It centers on the potential for establishing the new means of cooperation that are being tested in what are defined as collaborative artistic laboratories. These are hybrid spaces of research and creation based on networked and cooperative structures producing a new societal-technical body that forces us to reconsider the traditional organic conditions of the productive scenarios of knowledge and artistic practice.

Spatial Perception and Cognition in Multichannel Audio for Electroacoustic Music

Listeners experience electroacoustic music as full of significance and meaning, and they experience spatiality as one of the factors contributing to its meaningfulness. If we want to understand spatiality in electroacoustic music, we must understand how the listener’s mental processes give rise to the experience of meaning. In electroacoustic music as in everyday life, these mental processes unite the peripheral auditory system with human spatial cognition. In the discussion that follows we consider a range of the listener’s mental processes relating space and meaning from the perceptual attributes of spatial imagery to the spatial reference frames for places and navigation. When considering multichannel loudspeaker systems in particular, an important part of the discussion is focused on the distinctive and idiomatic ways in which this particular mode of sound production contributes to and situates meaning. These idiosyncrasies include the phenomenon of image dispersion, the important consequences of the precedence effect and the influence of source characteristics on spatial imagery. These are discussed in close relation to the practicalities of artistic practice and to the potential for artistic meaning experienced by the listener.

Netwar Geopolitics: Security, Failed States and Illicit Flows

Recent and emerging security policies and practices claim a mutual vulnerability that closely links human insecurity in failed states with the threat to powerful states from illicit flows. This article first examines this ‘emerging orthodoxy’ of transnational security issues that reinforces the securitisation of poverty and the poor. It then subjects this orthodoxy to theoretical and empirical critique. Theoretically it shows that this orthodoxy is formed as a ‘geopolitical imagination’ that associates and stabilises particular views of weak states and illicit flows in a ‘netwar imagination’ by reasserting and reconfiguring traditional assumptions of the spatiality and nature of threats. A final empirical section, focusing on drug production and nuclear smuggling, argues that those assumptions and their assemblage are a partial, incomplete and often self-referential reading of illicit flows.