Performance as social practice

Starting point for these outputs is a large scale research project in collaboration with the Zurich University for the Arts and the Kunstmuseum Thun, looking at a redefinition of Social Sculpture (Joseph Beuys/ Bazon Brock, 1970) as a functional device re-deployed to expand the art discourse into a societal discourse. Although Beuys‘ version of a social sculpture involved notions of abstruse mysticism and reformulations of a national identity these were never-the less part of a social transformation that shifted and re-arranged power relations. Following Laclau and Mouffe in their contention that democray is a fundamentally antagonistic process and contesting Grant Kester’s understanding of a ethically based relational practice, this work is alignes itself with Hirschhorn’s claim to an aesthetic practice within communities, following the possibility to view a socially based practice from both ends of the ethics debate, whereby ethical aspects fuels the aethetic to “create situations that are beautiful because they are ethical and shocking because they are ethical, thus in turn aesthetic because they are ethical” (O’Donnell). This project sets out to engage in activities which interact with surrounding communities and evoce new imaginations of site, thereby understanding site as a catalysts for subjective emergences. Performance is tested as a site for social practice. Archival research into local audio/visual resources, such as the Swiss Radio Archive, the Swiss Military Film Archives and zoological film archives of the Basel Zoo, was instrumental to the navigation of this work, under theme of crisis, catastrophy, landscape, fallout, in order to create a visual language for an active performance site. Commissioned by the Kunstmuseum Thun in collaboration with the University for the Arts in Zurich as part of a year long exhibition programme, (other artists are Jeanne Van Heeswijk (NL) and San Keller (CH), ) this project brings together a series of different works in a new performace installation. The performance process includes a performance workshop with 30 school children from local Swiss schools and their teachers, which was conducted publicly in the museum spaces. It enabled the children to engage with an unexpected set of tribal and animalistic behaviours, looking at situations of flight and rescue, resulting in a large performance choreography orchestration without an apparent conductor, it includes a collaboration with renowned Swiss zoologist, Prof Klaus Zuberbühler(University of St Andrews) and the Colonal General Haldimann commander of the military base in Thun. The installation included 2 static video images, shot in an around spectacular local cave site (Beatus Caves) including 3 children. The project will culminate in an edited edition of the Oncurating Journal, (issue no, tbc, in 2012) including interviews and essays from project collaborators. (Army Commander General, Thun, Jörg Hess, performance script, Timothy Long, and others)

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.

Squirmish at the Oasis: an evening of performance and rant hosted by Agency of Noise at the Kinsgate Workshsops Trust in affiliation with Camden Arts Centre

Squirmish at the Oasis takes its name from Luigi Russolo's fourth noise network 'Skirmish at the Oasis' performed in Milan in 1913. 100 years on the Agency of Noise contemplate changes in technology and the culture industry that provoke new questions around the deliberate use of noise within music and art. Through live acts of enquiry and experimentation five artists unravel paradoxes associated with the use of noise in art, music and the gallery space. The works challenge tensions, contradictions and possible oxymorons that emerge through the use and acceptance of noise within an artistic framework. Featuring: DAISY DIXON / GRAHAM DUNNING / POLLYFIBRE / DANE SUTHERLAND / MARNIE WATTS

Modeling bidding competitiveness and position performance in multi-attribute construction auctions

Currently, multi-attribute auctions are becoming widespread awarding mechanisms for contracts in construction, and in these auctions, criteria other than price are taken into account for ranking bidder proposals. Therefore, being the lowest-price bidder is no longer a guarantee of being awarded, thus increasing the importance of measuring any bidder’s performance when not only the first position (lowest price) matters. Modeling position performance allows a tender manager to calculate the probability curves related to the more likely positions to be occupied by any bidder who enters a competitive auction irrespective of the actual number of future participating bidders. This paper details a practical methodology based on simple statistical calculations for modeling the performance of a single bidder or a group of bidders, constituting a useful resource for analyzing one’s own success while benchmarking potential bidding competitors.

Image indexing and retrieval using an ART-2A neural network architecture

Traditional content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems use low-level features such as colors, shapes, and textures of images. Although, users make queries based on semantics, which are not easily related to such low-level characteristics. Recent works on CBIR confirm that researchers have been trying to map visual low-level characteristics and high-level semantics. The relation between low-level characteristics and image textual information has motivated this article which proposes a model for automatic classification and categorization of words associated to images. This proposal considers a self-organizing neural network architecture, which classifies textual information without previous learning. Experimental results compare the performance results of the text-based approach to an image retrieval system based on low-level features. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Dynamic whole system testing of combined renewable heating systems : the current state of the art

Objective: For the evaluation of the energetic performance of combined renewable heating systems that supply space heat and domestic hot water for single family houses, dynamic behaviour, component interactions, and control of the system play a crucial role and should be included in test methods. Methods: New dynamic whole system test methods were developed based on “hardware in the loop” concepts. Three similar approaches are described and their differences are discussed. The methods were applied for testing solar thermal systems in combination with fossil fuel boilers (heating oil and natural gas), biomass boilers, and/or heat pumps. Results: All three methods were able to show the performance of combined heating systems under transient operating conditions. The methods often detected unexpected behaviour of the tested system that cannot be detected based on steady state performance tests that are usually applied to single components. Conclusion: Further work will be needed to harmonize the different test methods in order to reach comparable results between the different laboratories. Practice implications: A harmonized approach for whole system tests may lead to new test standards and improve the accuracy of performance prediction as well as reduce the need for field tests.

Body art, existência e conhecimento :a percepção do corpo na Educação Física

In the Renaissance, the anatomy project a map of the body. Since then, the human body has been investigated for innumerable techniques, configuring new landscapes on the condition human being and the proper knowledge. In accordance with Merleau-Ponty (1975), All technique is body technique. It configures and extends the Metaphysical structure of our meat. In this direction, any intervention in the human body, a tattooing, a surgery or a performance, extends the perception and the directions of the existence of the subject. Merleau-Ponty (1975) still affirms, that all technique presents objective interventions. However, the body, ahead of these interventions, doesn t have to be considered only object, but subject that, from the interventions, attributes sensible and meanings through the movements, also being this its way of being in the world. Searching to extend this reflection on the discontinuities between the object body and the subject body, as well as, with the objective to reflect on the relation between the corporal techniques and the production of the subjectivity and the knowledge of the physical education, we reflect on the body art, as one technique of body that marks the exterior of the body, exteriorizing the subjectivity, to search new means to the body and that ahead of this, we believe being able to project innumerable directions for the corporal transformations in the contemporarily. As a method for our reflection in we will support them in the phenomenology. IT presents as a new ontology, in which distinction does not occur enters the operating paper of the citizen that knows and the influence of the known object. The phenomenological understanding of body will be able to contribute with the knowledge of the Physical Education, a time that gives us important arguments on the experience of the body in relation with the nature, the culture, history. To be a body is to be tied to a world that we do not possess completive, but that we do not cease to search it

Resistência e performance na arte de João Cota

Researching about the art of tell and the tales told by João Cota is somehow revisiting the oral tradition and social practice in the story-telling art. It takes into consideration the resistance this art still exerts, mainly by using the performance of oral transmission and receptiveness to tales. The study of this practice contributes to the vivacious and dynamcis permanence of this authentic and traditional storyteller of his repertory and of his form to tellin our culture. Story-telling is part of the humankind living heritage communicated by means of popular wisdom. Despite the risk of vanishing into thin air, along with their narrators, the tales still manage to resist the contemporary mass culture model. How long further will stories like the ones narrated by João Cota be able to resist to strong and stronger structures dictated by writing and other communication means? João Cota s practice in story-telling will be studied not only as a proposal to identify the presence of this practice and the oral cultural resistance but also, through the performance prospective, to identify the oral transmission and receptiveness to the tales that are part of this storyteller s repertoire. In other words: what he tells, how he tells it, and why he tells it. The advent of new technologies such as internet, through which people can easily communicate with others in different parts of the world, and the greater and greater expansion in the writing skill concept interfere the maintenance of the oral tradition elements present in João Cota s narratives and inserted in the Brazilian culture. This has become more visible in the latest decades although we still notice the living tradition and permanence of the story-telling practice in several parts of the country through their wise storytellers. Our research target will require - in each of its study stages reference to works by several theoreticians namely Paul Zumthor, Mikhail Bakhtin, Câmara Cascudo, theoreticians from the receptiveness aesthetic, from the written culture history, from oral cultures and reading practices, from tradition and the Brazilian Culture of oral story-telling. In order to get to know and draw a profile of this storyteller, we ve chosen to use the comprehensive interview method by French Sociologist Jean Claude Kaufmann. The originality in the method consists of the qualitative data put together in situ , concentrated on the storyteller s narratives/speeches recorded on tape, which will be the focal point of this study. Our analysis method is based on tireless sessions of listening to interviews out of which we gathered information related to the storyteller, his practice in telling the tales, and his repertoire

Transient stability analysis of electric energy systems via a fuzzy ART-ARTMAP neural network

This work presents a methodology to analyze transient stability (first oscillation) of electric energy systems, using a neural network based on ART architecture (adaptive resonance theory), named fuzzy ART-ARTMAP neural network for real time applications. The security margin is used as a stability analysis criterion, considering three-phase short circuit faults with a transmission line outage. The neural network operation consists of two fundamental phases: the training and the analysis. The training phase needs a great quantity of processing for the realization, while the analysis phase is effectuated almost without computation effort. This is, therefore the principal purpose to use neural networks for solving complex problems that need fast solutions, as the applications in real time. The ART neural networks have as primordial characteristics the plasticity and the stability, which are essential qualities to the training execution and to an efficient analysis. The fuzzy ART-ARTMAP neural network is proposed seeking a superior performance, in terms of precision and speed, when compared to conventional ARTMAP, and much more when compared to the neural networks that use the training by backpropagation algorithm, which is a benchmark in neural network area. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Electric load forecasting using a fuzzy ART&ARTMAP neural network

This work presents a neural network based on the ART architecture ( adaptive resonance theory), named fuzzy ART& ARTMAP neural network, applied to the electric load-forecasting problem. The neural networks based on the ARTarchitecture have two fundamental characteristics that are extremely important for the network performance ( stability and plasticity), which allow the implementation of continuous training. The fuzzy ART& ARTMAP neural network aims to reduce the imprecision of the forecasting results by a mechanism that separate the analog and binary data, processing them separately. Therefore, this represents a reduction on the processing time and improved quality of the results, when compared to the Back-Propagation neural network, and better to the classical forecasting techniques (ARIMA of Box and Jenkins methods). Finished the training, the fuzzy ART& ARTMAP neural network is capable to forecast electrical loads 24 h in advance. To validate the methodology, data from a Brazilian electric company is used. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Education and the labour market in Latin America: why measurement is important and what it tells us about policies, reforms and performance

Includes bibliography

Energy-performance tradeoffs in software transactional memory

Transactional memory (TM) is a new synchronization mechanism devised to simplify parallel programming, thereby helping programmers to unleash the power of current multicore processors. Although software implementations of TM (STM) have been extensively analyzed in terms of runtime performance, little attention has been paid to an equally important constraint faced by nearly all computer systems: energy consumption. In this work we conduct a comprehensive study of energy and runtime tradeoff sin software transactional memory systems. We characterize the behavior of three state-of-the-art lock-based STM algorithms, along with three different conflict resolution schemes. As a result of this characterization, we propose a DVFS-based technique that can be integrated into the resolution policies so as to improve the energy-delay product (EDP). Experimental results show that our DVFS-enhanced policies are indeed beneficial for applications with high contention levels. Improvements of up to 59% in EDP can be observed in this scenario, with an average EDP reduction of 16% across the STAMP workloads. © 2012 IEEE.

Clinical evaluation of multisurface ART restorations

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar o comportamento de dois cimentos de ionômero de vidro: um de alta viscosidade (Ketac Molar - ESPE) e um modificado por resina (Fuji VIII – GC) em restaurações envolvendo duas ou mais superfícies dentárias, confeccionadas pela técnica do Tratamento Restaurador Atraumático. Sessenta restaurações (30 com cada material) foram inseridas em estudantes (9-16 anos) por dois operadores. Após 6 meses, dois examinadores independentes avaliaram as restaurações de acordo com os critérios utilizados em trabalhos prévios semelhantes. Os dados foram analisados pelos testes de McNemar e Fischer. A porcentagem de sucesso do tratamento foi de 98,3%. Uma restauração (Ketac Molar) foi substituída por outro material e classificada como falha. As porcentagens de sucesso das restaurações foram de 100% e 96,6% para o Fuji VIII e Ketac Molar, respectivamente. Não houve diferença estatisticamente significante no sucesso das restaurações entre o baseline e 6 meses (p>0,05). Da mesma forma, não houve diferença estatística entre os materiais, tipos de cavidade ou entre operadores.(p>0,05). A técnica ART foi altamente apropriada e efetiva em restaurações envolvendo duas ou mais superfícies, após 6 meses. Os resultados mostraram um comportamento promissor com ambos os materiais.

Clinical evaluation of multiple-surface ART restorations: three-year follow-up

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)