Image usefulness of compressed surveillance footage with different scene contents

The police use both subjective (i.e. police staff) and automated (e.g. face recognition systems) methods for the completion of visual tasks (e.g person identification). Image quality for police tasks has been defined as the image usefulness, or image suitability of the visual material to satisfy a visual task. It is not necessarily affected by any artefact that may affect the visual image quality (i.e. decrease fidelity), as long as these artefacts do not affect the relevant useful information for the task. The capture of useful information will be affected by the unconstrained conditions commonly encountered by CCTV systems such as variations in illumination and high compression levels. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate aspects of image quality and video compression that may affect the completion of police visual tasks/applications with respect to CCTV imagery. This is accomplished by investigating 3 specific police areas/tasks utilising: 1) the human visual system (HVS) for a face recognition task, 2) automated face recognition systems, and 3) automated human detection systems. These systems (HVS and automated) were assessed with defined scene content properties, and video compression, i.e. H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The performance of imaging systems/processes (e.g. subjective investigations, performance of compression algorithms) are affected by scene content properties. No other investigation has been identified that takes into consideration scene content properties to the same extend. Results have shown that the HVS is more sensitive to compression effects in comparison to the automated systems. In automated face recognition systems, `mixed lightness' scenes were the most affected and `low lightness' scenes were the least affected by compression. In contrast the HVS for the face recognition task, `low lightness' scenes were the most affected and `medium lightness' scenes the least affected. For the automated human detection systems, `close distance' and `run approach' are some of the most commonly affected scenes. Findings have the potential to broaden the methods used for testing imaging systems for security applications.

Africa through Chinese eyes: new frames or the same old lens? African news in English from China Central Television, compared with the BBC

[No abstract as this is a book chapter: the following represents the first 2 paragraphs.] The screen fills with close-ups of smiling African faces against a black-and-orange background: the carefree child, the gap-toothed man with smoke curling from his pipe. The faces retreat into an outline of a map of Africa as the saccharine background music dissolves into birdsong. The silhouette of an acacia tree appears. This is not the much-derided Western romantic stereotype of the continent: it is an extract from a promotional trailer on CCTV Africa, the embodiment of China’s “soft power” drive and a spearhead of Chinese state television’s overseas expansion. Yet this image is at variance with the English-language channel’s professed ambitions. The Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, himself declared that “CCTV embraces the vision of seeing Africa from an African perspective and reporting Africa from the viewpoint of Africa”. These contradictory messages prompt fundamental questions about CCTV’s expansion into Africa. Are the channel’s English-language news bulletins aimed at African or Chinese viewers? What kind of Africa – and indeed China – do they represent, and could the framing of African events by CCTV News provide an alternative to the perspective of international rivals? Is CCTV’s main mission in Africa to provide news or to act as mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party and state? This chapter addresses these questions by applying a cross-cultural variant of framing theory to the news content of CCTV’s Africa Live and that of its closest direct competitor, Focus on Africa from BBC World News TV.

Kahvehane Kongresspark

“Kahvehane (Coffeehouse) Kongresspark”explores the question of transcultural relations and belonging through an artistic exploration of coffee and its cultural history. The project was commissioned as an urban art intervention by the 'Soho in Ottakring' Biennial in Vienna. Organic and fair-trade coffee, sponsored by Kaffee Alt Wien , was served free of charge to the public in specially designed cups and saucers, which were created at the Ceramics Research Centre at the University of Westminster. The designs reflect coffee’s shared multi-ethnic history and the globalization of coffee.The project includes an interactive lecture-performance exploring the many legends about the origins of coffee tracing its journey from Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula through the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) to Vienna and across the entire globe. While adopting a humorous take on the globalization of coffee, the performance sheds light on the history of colonialism and question the conditions of contemporary trade. The performance was written and performed in collaboration with Bharatanatyam artist and actor Shane Shambhu.

Not Belonging to one’s Self: Affect on Facebook’s Site Governance page

This article makes a contribution to a growing number of works that discuss affect and social media. I use Freudian affect theory to analyse user posts on the public Site Governance Facebook page. Freud’s work may help us to explore the affectivity within the user narratives and I suggest that they are expressions of alienation, dispossession and powerlessness that relate to the users’ relations with Facebook as well as to their internal and wider social relations. The article thus introduces a new angle on studies of negative user experiences that draws on psychoanalysis and critical theory.

Screening the RSC stage: the 2014 Live from Stratford-upon-Avon cinema broadcasts

During the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2014 summer season, both parts of Henry IV and The Two Gentlemen of Verona were presented as Live from Stratford-upon-Avon broadcasts in cinemas around the world. This article presents a case study of these broadcasts, drawing on the author's observations and insights as their producer as well as interview contributions from those involved in both the stage and screen presentations. Recognising that the hybrid form of “live cinema” performance has developed rapidly over the past five years but is as-yet little-documented, the study develops an analytical approach to its creative processes and to its aesthetics. This discussion is combined with a consideration of the history of earlier screen adaptations of RSC productions at Stratford-upon-Avon. The article details the stages of the production process for the Live from Stratford-upon-Avon broadcasts in 2014 and considers the ways in which the broadcast teams collaborate with the casts and creative teams of the theatre productions. In addition, the article explores processes of adaptation in the journey from stage to screen, the poetics of multi-camera presentation and questions of “live-ness”, the social experience of viewing performance in the cinema, and possible developments for live theatre on screen.

CODEX: mapping co-created data for speculative geographies

This paper discusses a series of artworks named CODEX produced by the authors as part of a collaborative research project between the Centre for Research in Education, Art and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster, and the Oxford Internet Institute. Taking the form of experimental maps, large-scale installations and prints, we show how big data can be employed to reflect upon social phenomena through the formulation of critical, aesthetic and speculative geographies.

Curating in the post-industrial landscape case study: Ambika P3

An analysis of curating in the post-industrial landscape using the venue of Ambika P3, University of Westminster as a case study.

Returning to an old question: What do television actors do when they act?

This article argues for acknowledging and exploring actors’ processes in critical considerations of television drama. Theatre studies boasts a tradition of research privileging the actor, including a century’s worth of actor-training manuals, academic works observing rehearsals and performances and actor accounts. However, such considerations within television studies are relatively nascent. Drawing upon continuing drama as a fertile case study for investigating the specificities of television acting, the article concludes that the only way to understand television acting is through the analysis of insights from actors themselves, in combination with the well-established practices of analysing the textual end products of television acting.

The Art of the State

When we talk of culture we are talking about a source of enormous historical social power. Why did the GLC commitment to Popular Culture upset the rules of the unelected arts and sports quangos? How did the now abolished GLC get politics into arts policy?