Journal articles on the topic 'Barcelona 19th century'

The article concerns the problems of implementation of the modern urban planning methods and principles in the context of historical process of urbanization. Network and polycentric urban planning actively developed in 19th century and implied the equal distribution of public facilities and communications, the unification of the urban space with the connecting axes, the integration of transport and engineering infrastructure. The purpose of the article is to consider the urban planning strategies of Barcelona’s renovation of 19th centuries and to define it’s correspondence to the tasks of modern urban development. The relevance of the topic is determined by it’s connection with problems of modern growth-oriented urban structures. The article is based on complex and system theoretical approach. Theoretical analysis of urban planning strategies and urban space development is implemented to reveal the most perspective and progressive tendencies of urban planning, which anticipated the modern principles of urban space formation. The results of the work include the characteristic of polycentric Urban structures on the example of Barcelona, the determination of it’s key features. The review of researches, dedicated to the history of urban planning and the problems of modern urban planning allows to make the conclusions about the advantages of polycentric urban planing and it’s perspectives in future development of the cities.

This study intends to examine leather craft, an applied art that has not well studied in the context of Catalan Modernisme as well as raise awareness about its use for production and design of Modernista furniture and interior decoration. This handicraft, that had been in decline in the Catalan sphere since the 18th century, reappeared in Barcelona in the last quarter of the 19th century, due to the Modernista movement and the renaissance of medieval crafts. Thus, new workshops were created and their processes were modernized according to industrial progress.
 We will highlight the Miguel Fargas and Vilaseca Factory, which will manage to industrialize this handricraft, becoming one of the few internationally known manufacturers. We will try to illustrate the history of this office by analyzing this case study, since it reveals an interesting part of the panorama of decorative arts in Modernista Barcelona.

Two of the largest architecture libraries in Spain are in institutions in Catalonia. One of these is the UPC (the Technical University of Catalonia), the home of the library of the ETSAB (the School of Architecture of Barcelona), which is one of the oldest architecture schools in Spain. The other is COAC (the Architects’ Association of Catalonia), which boasts one of the biggest architecture libraries in a professional association in the country. While these two libraries were built up in the 19th century, other architecture libraries have been created in Catalonia in the 20th century, both in schools of architecture and in the branches of COAC.

The town of Barcelona in Venezuela, with a present population of nearly half a million inhabitants, is – by far – the most important New World settlement bearing the name of Catalonia’s capital. It owes its name to its founder, Joan Orpí i del Pou, also known as Juan de Orpín or Urpín (Piera, 1593 – Barcelona, Venezuela, 1645), who managed to distinguish himself as one of the last conquistadors within the territory of present-day Venezuela. This was no easy task since a Catalan was, technically, not allowed to reside or even to travel to lands under the exclusive control of the Crown of Castille and León. However, since its foundation in 1638, Nueva Barcelona del Cerro Santo was soon to become a sort of Catalan enclave in eastern Venezuela, particularly due to the influence of the Catalan Capuchin missionaries who, since the end of the 17th century on, used it as a base for inland penetration. Similarly, Venezuela’s Barcelona was one of the important trading posts for the Compañía de Comercio de Barcelona, following the latter’s foundation in 1755. A sizeable community of Catalan merchants ensured the town’s growth and prosperity at the turn of the 19th century. This community also fuelled a strong resistance against the independence movement from 1810 onwards, as Barcelona was to become a savagely disputed prey between royalist and patriot armies: the episode of the Casa Fuerte massacre in 1817 is still today remembered as a landmark of royalist cruelty, even though the revenge later exerted by the patriot troops in no way fell behind in terms of mercilessness. The Catalans were particularly singled out and, with few exceptions, were all either killed or forced to leave.

The Trèmols herbarium, preserved at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, is one of the oldest herbaria in Catalonia, largely made up of European plants collected in 19th century. The digitization of this historical collection, currently in progress, has made possible to locate nomenclatural types of various authors, acquired through exchange. In this article, we indicate two syntypes (for Fumaria caespitosa Loscos and Carex loscosii Lange), and one isolectotype (Polygala vayredae Costa) in Trèmols herbarium. Additionally, we designate the lectotype of Polygala vayredae in the Costa herbarium and its isolectotype in the Vayreda herbarium.

The main purpose of this article is to examine how a new medical technology – the operating room- resulted in the establishment of a model of private clinics in late 19th – century Barcelona. This research explains that this kind of private medical care happened in an open medical market and successfully met a growing demand. Since its origins in the 1880s, private surgery clinics rose to more than 50 in just half-a-century. Here, several business strategies put at work by those surgeons-entrepreneurs are considered, especially those related to publicity and the search of patients/customers. Several aspects played a paramount role in that success: medical technology, domestic comfort, and surgical efficacy. In a context where medical care delivered at hospital was provided by the city-state or the local bourgeoisie as a part of the medieval model of charity, a potential customer for the private surgery clinics was formed by the urban, popular and working classes through the model of mutual aid societies and health insurance companies. Moreover, private clinics also showed how the process of medical specialization was configured and what kind of relationships surgeons-entrepreneurs established with general practitioners to attract their patients. Here, medical directories and medical journals reveal as a useful source of information.

Barcelona, as well as a large number of cities in the Mediterranean basin, has a housing stock composed of a large number of unreinforced brick masonry buildings. Motivated by different factors, the enlargement of the city (Eixample in Catalan) was held from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, a period in which a large number of buildings of this type were built, many of which are still used as dwellings. Although the buildings were built individually, some of them are linked to adjacent buildings by the side walls. This feature leads to the analysis of the buildings as isolated structures and also as an aggregate. Barcelona is located in a seismic region of low to moderate hazard, with macroseismic intensity between the grades VI and VII of the European macroseismic scale EMS'98. Based on the deterministic and probabilistic response spectra for the different types of soils present in Barcelona obtained in the work of Irizarry (2004), the seismic risk of four individual buildings and an aggregate is evaluated. The buildings are modeled and analyzed using the TREMURI program and MATLAB routines under the guidance of RISK-UE project.

Long-term drought variability and trends were assessed in Barcelona at annual and seasonal scale for the period 1787-2014 and sub-periods 1851-2014, 1901-2014 and 1951-2014 to identify changes in drought patterns across time. High quality and adjusted monthly temperature and precipitation series were required for this purpose. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), based on precipitation, and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), based on the difference between precipitation and reference evapotranspiration (ET0), were calculated to describe temporal drought fluctuations. Therefore, major droughts and wet events were identified and an accurate analysis of drought severity, magnitude and duration were also carried out.Both drought indices provided similar results related to drought variability and trends in Barcelona across time, although the SPEI showed larger drought severity than SPI especially during the second half of the 20th century. Trends analysis revealed a significant drying trend at annual scale according to the SPEI since mid-19th century while the SPI did not show changes in drought patterns. At seasonal scale, both the SPI and SPEI found a clear drying trend only for summer (JJA) during the current period (1951-2014), although the SPEI was indicating the trend towards drier conditions for the whole period (1787-2014). Drought severity in SPEI series increased 13% during the second half of the 20th century compared with the whole period under study while drought magnitude and duration did not present significant changes in both the SPI and SPEI series. The increasing atmospheric evaporative demand associated to the large temperature rising experienced in Barcelona during the last decades could have played a substantial role in explaining the increase of drought severity and trends found in the SPEI series.

This article is dedicated to the Catalan caricature of the mid-19th century. The thematic field is being investigated to which artists have been addressing for 20 years. After all, political, social and cultural shifts within Spanish society are reflected in the cartoons of the Barcelona press, for example, El Pájaro verde, El Pájaro azul, El Diablo suelto, La Flaca, La Madeja, La Campana de Gràcia, La Esquella de la Torratxa. The work identifies three periods: 1) from the 1860s to 1868, 2) The six democratic or revolutionary years, 3) the first years after the Restoration. 1860-1868 is the period when caricature was born and developed in Catalonia. It was in the 1860s that such great illustrators as Tomas Padro and José Luis Paleser emerged. In the Catalan satirical press, the period of The six democratic years was a time of creative upsurge and development of the genre of caricature, when artists could openly denounce the authorities and honestly talk about problems.

Studying the evolution of private medical clinics is extremely useful in understanding the history of the Catalan healthcare system where, from the 19th century onwards, a Marshallian atmosphere of flows of knowledge, people and technology has resulted in close connections between the public and private practice of modern medicine. The history of the Grifols Laboratories, from 1880 to the 1950s, is a relevant case study in this context, as it highlights patterns that were repeated in other medical laboratories in Catalonia a century ago. But Grifols is also particularly interesting both because of its survival and evolution to this day, and for its curation of its own historical archive.This article aims to understand how a small laboratory in the healthcare district of Barcelona built its scientific foundations on laboratory medicine during the early 20th century, and finally changed its business strategy because of the Spanish Civil War, becoming a family pharmaceutical company. The sources are documents from the Grifols archive and interviews with managers at the company. The findings highlight the importance of interdisciplinary analysis, suggesting that both scientific and business adaptations by successive generations are equally important in explaining the success of Grifols Laboratories. Science-based family firms that endure over time not only acquire specialised knowledge to compete in the market, but also knowledge about transferring entrepreneurship in the long term. In Grifols case, knowledge from younger generations was crucial to adapting their activity, first to a changing scientific paradigm and then to a precarious national market.

AbstractTime-of-flight (ToF) measurements were conducted on twelve 76×226-mm2in cross-section, 4.52-m long specimens of Norway spruce timber pieces from a dismantled 19th-century building in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). Two commercially available acoustic devices were used: the USLab ultrasound device with conical 22 and 45 kHz sensors and the MicroSecond Timer (MST) stress wave device with spike sensors. ToF were obtained for the full-length (4.52 m) specimens in an end-to-end arrangement and for lengths of 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4 m on the same surface and on opposite surfaces. The differences between the velocities obtained from end-to-end and semi-direct measurements were less than 4.5%. Apparent velocity dependence on length was observed in short-distance measurements. This could be corrected by determining a time lag (tL) from a linear regression between the ToF and the distance. Estimation of the modulus of elasticity (MOE) from the dynamic MOE (MOEdyn) is acceptable (r2=0.45–0.69) depending on the measurement procedure, and the best results forin situtimber are obtained in edge surface velocity. Although modulus of rupture (MOR) estimation from MOEdynimproves slightly when knottiness is included, it has low predictive capacity.

Resum: L’article fa evident un fil conductor que va dels novatores preil·lustrats valencians de la fi del s. XVII fins a l’actualitat. També la connexió directa de València amb Londres i París al segle XIX –no sols amb Cadis, Madrid o Barcelona. Els poemes «En los dies del rei Fernando» d’Antoni Maria Peyrolon (1830) i «Lo somni» de Vicent Salvà (1831) són exponents valencians de cultura avançada. Teodor Llorente és també valorat com l’eix que connecta malgré lui l’esforç cultural dignificador valencià anterior a 1859 –amb l’Escola Pia de València com a focus primigeni de l’evolució romàntica– i l’esforç cultural dignificador valencià posterior a 1909. És a dir, entre la celebració dels Jocs Florals de València en honor a Ausiàs March l’any 1859 i l’emblemàtica coronació de Llorente com a poeta a València l’any 1909, que conclogué la Renaixença valenciana amb un èxit històricament suficient.Paraules clau: Teodor Llorente, Renaixença, Vicent Salvà, Antoni Maria Peyrolon, Il·lustració, Romanticisme, ss. xviii-xixAbstract: This article presents evidence of a cultural continuum spanning from the pre-enlightened Valencian Novatores of the late 17th century to the present day. It also highlights the direct cultural connection of València with London and Paris during the first half of the 19th century –along with Cádiz, Madrid or Barcelona, which are more commonly acknowledged. In this context, the Valencian poems «En los dies del rei Fernando» by Antoni Maria Peyrolon (1830), and «Lo somni» by Vicent Salvà (1831) exhibit a high and up to date culture. This paper also evidences the Calasanzian Pious School of València as an early hub of the romantic shift. In 1859, València organized Jocs Florals –Floral Games– in celebration of Ausiàs March. Teodor Llorente, one of the winners, is regarded as the key link that connects the pre-1859 Valencian cultural dignifying efforts and the post-1909 ones. The popular event of Llorente’s coronation as Poet in 1909 turned him an icon and concluded the Valencian Renaixença –Rebirth– with a historically sufficient success, as this work proves.Keywords: Teodor Llorente, Renaixença, Vicent Salvà, Antoni Maria Peyrolon, Enlightment, Romanticism, Valencia, 18th c. - 19 th c

Formulation of the problem. U. Giordano is a bright representative of the late romantic tradition of the Italian opera of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Among the brightest stage versions of his most famous opera “Andrea Chenier”, within this study we have selected a number of the key implementations of Andrea Chenier’s part, which show the constant and mobile signs of the interpretation of this famous opera image. The purpose of the study is to identify the features of interpreting the image of Andrea Chenier from the opera of the same name by the performers of various schools in the aspect of the interaction of historical traditions and modern tendencies from viewpoint of comparative interpretation science. Analysis of recent publications on the topic of the article. The Italian opera of the XIX century is the object of many fundamental researches. The monograph of O. Stakhevych [7] demonstrates a multifaceted approach to the problems of becoming and development the bel canto style; in the study by M. Cherkashina [9], the music theatre of Bellini and Donizetti is presented as an independent phenomenon of Italian operatic history in its first period. I. Drach [2] points to debatable and sometimes subjectivity of interpretation of the concept “bel canto”. The evolution of the Italian opera already at the beginning of the XX century is considered in the study of L. Kirillina [3]; reference information about the Italian opera can be found in English-language articles from Grove’s dictionary [17]. An interesting concept is the book of A. Mallach [14] – the author traces the very fast path of the Italian opera from verismo to modernism. As for U. Giordano’s creativity directly, beside the small articles of encyclopaedic character [12; 13], the publication of M. Morini [15] is the most fundamental and complete. It collected not only researches of the composer’s creativity, but also reviews by contemporaries U. Giordano, his correspondence, registers of his performances and music recordings. The study of C. Ruizzo [16] contains arguments about the components of verismo in the work of U. Giordano, in particular, analyzes the finale of the III pictures of the opera “Andre Chenier”. Regarding this opera, we will separate the mini-guide by Burton D. Fisher [11], the articles of I. Sorokina [8], G. Marquezi [5], H. W. Simon [6], C. Duault [10]. The authors discuss not only the dramatic features of this opera masterpiece, the figure of the main character, but also the influences that this opera made, for example, on “Tosca” by J. Puccini. Statement of the main content of the article. The opera “Andrea Chenier” is a sign composition of the verismo era, despite the fact that its main character is the well-known politician, French poet and journalist. After composing (1895) and the premiere (1896, Milan), the opera was staged in Genoa, Mantua, Parma, Turin, New York (1896), Kharkov, Moscow; Budapest, Buenos-Aires, Florence, Naples, Prague, Santiago (1897), Antwerp, Barcelona, Berlin, Cairo, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro (1898); in 1907, in the production of Covent Garden, E. Caruso played the title role. The composer and librettist brought to the stage as the protagonist of opera bright, courageous and ambitious person, so it is not surprising that both separate arias and the party of Shenier still belong to the repertoire of many prominent tenors of the planet – F. Tamagno, J. Martinelli, E. Caruso, B. Gigly, G. Lauri-Volpi, A. Cortis, F. Corelli, M. Del Monaco, P. Domingo, L. Pavarotti, M. Alvarez. The opera “Andre Chenier” is a model of the golden age of verismo, and it is endowed with all the main features of this direction of Italian art. However, the protagonist, in addition to being a poet, is also a revolutionary, that is, an uneasy person, a hero, and it is the fact that deduces this work for the stylistic limits of verismo by demonstration of a strong, extraordinary character. These features are embodied in the musical characteristics of Chenier. The main thing in interpreting his famous Improvisation “Un di al’azzurro spazio” (the 1 act of the opera) by E. Caruso is the very elaboration, exact construction of the melodic line and the bright climax, that is, combination the features both a lyrical and a dramatic role specializations that E. Caruso was possessed in equal measure. B. Gigli’s singing (which we consider an example of a dramatic embodiment of the image) is characterized by the refinement of the mezzo voce and the richness, when he sings in full voice, therefore his performance of the Improvisation, in general, is more emotional (a high-profile register, a rhythmic emphasizing that gives a distinct organization the image). M. Del Monaco performs the Improvisation not so much playing by the shades of his strong voice as leading the almost continuous melodic line, which gives mostly lyrical colours to the Chenier’s image. The aria “Come un bel di Maggio” from the 4 act performed by F. Corelli is a model of the exalted lyrics, the lyrical culmination of the opera. F. Corelli performs the aria legato that is tellingly to the bel canto tradition, with a full sound, as if the sound hovers and penetrates everywhere through the skilful addition of dramatic notes (the last sounds of the upper tenor range – si, la of the first octave). P. Domingo interprets Andrea’s image as a whole more dramatically, but in a fairly wide range – from the pathetic (Act 1), the sublime, lyrical (recognition in love in the Act 2) to the tragic (monologue “Yes, I was a soldier” of the Act 3) and the dramatic (Act 4). His striking rubato, aimed at acutely emotional expression, is impressive, P. Domingo has literally speaking in the some parts of the recitatives and even the arias, and that, in conjunction with accelerando, fills the musical language by the speech expression. The interpretation by P. Domingo corresponds to Chenier’s status as a revolutionary hero. Conclusions. Composing the opera, U. Giordano counted on the Italian tenor in the main role, according to the traditions of the bel canto era (strong upper notes, wide range, and equal voice sounding in different registers). The tradition of interpreting the image of Chenier, laid by the first performer J. Borgatti, generally is preserved. The analysis of the most famous interpretations of the Chenier’s part (performed by E. Caruso, B. Gigli, M. Del Monaco, F. Corelli, P. Domingo, J. Carreras, and L. Pavarotti) demonstrated the leading role of the Italian bel canto school. This applies to the principle of canto è riflesso, singing without forcing the sound, the role of breathing, which transforms into the singing sound, the predomination of the head register (la voce di testa), and the integrity of the cantilena. For instance, M. Del Monaco and F. Corelli are lyrical tenors; they sing brightly, with a shine light decoration of high notes. In the performance of B. Gigli, there is a constant movement forward; L. Pavarotti, F. Corelli, J. Carreras, being within the limits of the lyric and dramatic role specifications, transmit in music the power of deep feelings. Instead, B. Gigli and, P. Domingo especially demonstrate the power of drama in the role specification of the Italian tenor, thereby enhancing the heroic side of the image of Shenier. The prospect of further study of the topic is associated with the emergence of new interpretations of the image of A. Chenier in the 21st century, which opens up new dimensions of the science about art interpretation.

Catalog of the petrological collection of Pere Antiga i Sunyer (1854-1904) of the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona The didactic collections of natural sciences are an excellent resource for teaching at any educational level. In the 19th century, Pere Antiga i Sunyer treasured collections for the Antiga School, which he ran since it was inherited from his father. In 1888, when the school was closed, the collections were sold to the Martorell Museum, currently the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona. The collection catalogue consisted of 100 specimens with their corresponding lithological description and localities. The curator of Petrology at that time, Maximino San Miguel de la Cámara, reviewed and registered 97 of these 100 specimens. Nowadays, only 47 records are preserved from the Antiga collection that have been studied and documented again. In the present study we detail the complete catalogue of the Antiga collection that includes the lithological description, the locality and the most relevant features of each sample.

Conservation and conditioning of the salts showcase of the Museu Martorell (Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona): 1921-2018 The Cardona salts showcase was built and designed in 1921 by Francesc Pardillo. Located at the Museu Martorell building (Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona) it exposes and preserves a collection of salt rocks from the Cardona Salt Mountain. These specimens were donated at the end of 19th century by Ms. Casilda de Salabert i Arteaga (Medinaceli Duchess) and Mr. Miguel De Elías Marchal and represent a collection with a significant heritage and historic value. Due to the trace of time and the lack of conditioning interventions, this showcase did not preserve the samples in optimal conditions. The specimens began an alteration process interacting with high relative humidity, also generating the general degradation of the showcase furniture. In order to stop this degradation, it has been carried out an integral conditioning of this showcase but also of the salt specimens. This process has been executed respecting the original design of the showcase and carrying out the minimum intervention into the rock samples. In addition, a new passive and sustainable system to control environmental conditions has been set up to maintain optimal humidity conditions. This action stopped the degradation of the showcase as well as the specimens and guarantees their preservation over time.

The process of modernisation can be understood to have contributed to a radical loss of collective and individual orientation, by depriving geography of identity, and replacing ‘place’ by ‘space’. "Space", writes Klapp, "robs identity. Place, on the other hand, nurtures it, tells you who you are" (28). If the replacement of place by space is an achievement of modernity, the replacement of space by time can be considered a postmodern hallmark. The fact is that cultures are now bounded as entities more in time than in space, and "time depth now prevails over field depth" (Virilio 24). It is, in other words, the unfolding of time that reflects change more immediately than does spatial distance. In fact space itself is now defined by time. The 200-year development course of the meter as the unit of length, for example, displays an interesting parallel to the space-time transition. In 1793 the French government decided the unit of length to be 10-7 of the earth's quadrant passing through Paris and to be called meter. It became clear in further examinations that the earth's quadrant had been miscalculated, but this discovery did not stop the use of the unit. Initially referred to as "meter of the archives", the unit was announced in 1799 to be based on a measurement of a meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona, embodied by a rectangular platinum bar with polished parallel ends. This bar, which was supposed to equal one ten-millionth (10-7) part of the quadrant of the earth, went on to serve as the international standard of length throughout the 19th century. In 1872, the length was set as the official definition of meter by the International Commission of the Meter, even though it was admitted that "its relationship to a quadrant of the earth was tenuous and of little consequence anyway"1. The original bar was then replaced by another platinum-iridium line tool which was christened "the international prototype meter" and its 'copies' were distributed between member countries of the International Metric Convention in 1889. This definition was to serve as the reference of length until the mid-twentieth century. In 1960, following decades of deliberation, meter was redefined in the Eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures as "1,659,763.73 vacuum wavelengths of light resulting from unperturbed atomic energy level transition 2p10 - 5d5 of the krypton isotope having an atomic weight of 86". This is an interesting development, because now the concept of length is removed from a geographical reference like the distance between Dunkirk and Barcelona to a 'virtual', non-geographical space like the distance between the peaks of the sine waves of a certain type of light. Finally in 1983 the meter was redefined once again. This time the definition refers directly to time as the unit for measuring space. The meter is defined currently as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". A fast glance at this history reveals the absence of 'real' reference for what we have come to accept as the 'standard' unit, and the unstable nature of this unit. More intriguingly, the course of development of this definition portrays the gradual progression of reference from geographic place to virtual space and from there to time. Shrinking Time If the modern question of identity concerned locality and spatial reference, what informs the question of identity in the postmodern condition is primarily defined by temporal locatedness and virtual geography or even virtual space. This progression then causes speed to inevitably inform the issue of identification reference. The speed of environmental change is gradually approaching a point where identity could lack a reference, a precedence with which to identify oneself. The conflict is fundamental: if self-identification has traditionally always already implied a reference in time, then acceleration is inherently the enemy of identity, by continuously curtailing the ‘stuff’ identity is made of. It is not a coincidence perhaps that the concerns of social sciences have gradually moved from being able to predict the future to being content with simply explaining the present, as the high speed of change leaves little room for the luxury of prediction. If the modern question of identity concerned locality and spatial reference, what informs the question of identity in the postmodern condition is primarily defined by temporal locatedness and virtual geography or even virtual space. This progression then causes speed to inevitably inform the issue of identification reference. The speed of environmental change is gradually approaching a point where identity could lack a reference, a precedence with which to identify oneself. The conflict is fundamental: if self-identification has traditionally always already implied a reference in time, then acceleration is inherently the enemy of identity, by continuously curtailing the ‘stuff’ identity is made of. It is not a coincidence perhaps that the concerns of social sciences have gradually moved from being able to predict the future to being content with simply explaining the present, as the high speed of change leaves little room for the luxury of prediction. If we describe the postmodern condition as a condition where ‘the critical referential distance’ of identity approaches zero (the contraction of time), then the increase in speed of change can, theoretically at least, lead to a reversal of the orders of reference (see above). This may in fact be conceptualised as a reversal in the order of signification, so that the signifier precedes the signified. Though extremely important for a theory of posthuman identity, the possibility and implications of such reversal are not within the scope of the present paper. Presently applicable, however, is the more-or-less current postmodern predicament, within which self-identification seems to be running short of reference. To imagine a system of meaning wherein the act of self-identification (as traditionally done by humans) is unfeasible is to imagine a constant state of flux, a seamless ocean of meaning, a state traditionally considered pathological and diagnosed schizoid: a "smooth space," which is "in principle infinite, open, and unlimited in every direction"; and which "has neither top nor bottom nor centre" (Deleuze & Guattari 476). It is not difficult to realise that the ‘self’ native to this environment cannot be the human self we are familiar with. In the words of Gergen, the postmodern self resides in "a continuous state of construction and reconstruction", a fluid landscape where "each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality", a reality where "the centre fails to hold" (6). While such conception of a posthuman to come may appear fantastic, the undeniable fact is that the postmodern condition is constantly expanding its reach, erasing boundaries, transforming nations, and dissolving temporal horizons. "Here as elsewhere, in our ordinary everyday life", writes Virilio, "we are passing from the extensive time of history to the intensive time of an instantaneity without history made possible by the technologies of the hour" (24-5). Conclusion As the progression of speed renders space and time as constituents of human reality less inflexible, it becomes imperative for any new theory of identity to accommodate a conception of ‘identity’ ultimately unconstrained by these grids. Such theoretical argument, however, needs to be accompanied by serious political considerations. Despite the specific philosophical perspective endorsed through the language of this paper, and while accepting Bauman’s suggestion that "identity is a name given to the sought escape from uncertainty" (82), I would insist nonetheless that political and clinical concerns demand certain concepts-to-work-with, certain constructions meant to ‘translate’ Being into the human reality. True, such translation spells ‘violence’, but the fact is that in a final analysis violence appears as the ‘other’ name for being, and any semiotic construction of the world always already exists through a systemised (if partial) negation of Being. That is to say, a philosophical appreciation of the void behind the term "identity" does not necessarily render a conceptualisation of identity futile. The challenge, however, may lie in gradually freeing the concept, so as to move as far as possible from positivistic reification towards the least rigid conceptualisations permitted within the current discourse of a given era. Currently, for example, the notions of change and fluidity championed by postmodern thinkers may provide useful metaphors towards such liberation of the working concept. Footnotes The information on the history of the meter is from the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the Government of the United States, through the Manufacturing Engineering Lab Web Site: http://www.mel.nist.gov. References Bauman, Z. Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995. Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen Lane. New York: Viking, 1977. Gergen, K. J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Klapp, O. E. Collective Search for Identity. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1969. Fraser, J. T. "An Embarrassment of Proper Times: A Foreword." Time: Modern and Postmodern Experience. By Helga Nowotny. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1994. Virilio, P. Polar Inertia. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Sage Publications, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Sadeq Rahimi. "Identities without a Reference: Towards a Theory of Posthuman Identity." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/identity.php>. Chicago style: Sadeq Rahimi, "Identities without a Reference: Towards a Theory of Posthuman Identity," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/identity.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Sadeq Rahimi. (2000) Identities without a reference: towards a theory of posthuman identity. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/identity.php> ([your date of access]).

Scores of farm workers on hunger strike in the US. A campaigner for affordable housing abducted in Cape Town. Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators marching in Istanbul. None of those stories made my daily paper — instead, I read them all this morning on the global Indymedia network. Developments in communication technologies have often enabled new approaches to the production, distribution and reception of news. In this article, using Carey’s analysis of the impacts of the telegraph (1989) and Burnett and Marshall’s discussion of “informational news” (2003) as starting points, I want to offer some examples from the brief history of the Indymedia movement to show how the Net is making possible a significant shift in who gets to make the news. The telegraph offers a number of useful perspectives from which to consider the impacts of the Net, and there are some striking parallels between the dot.com boom of the 1990s and the dot.dash boom of the 19th century. Telegraphy, writes James Carey, “permitted for the first time the effective separation of communication from transportation” (203). The telegraph was not only an instrument of business, but “a thing to think with, an agency for the alteration of ideas” (204). And a consideration of the telegraph offers a number of examples of the relationships between technological form and the nature of news. One such example, in Carey’s analysis, was the impact of the telegraph on the language and nature of journalism. “If the same story were to be understood in the same way from Maine to California,” he writes, “language had to be flattened out and standardised” (210). Local colour was bleached out of news reports to make them saleable in a market unconstrained by geography. “The origins of objectivity,” Carey argues, “may be sought, therefore, in the necessity of stretching language in space over the long lines of Western Union” (210). The telegraph didn’t just affect the quality of news — it greatly increased the quantity of it as well, forcing greater attention to be paid to the management of newsrooms. News became a commodity; not only that, just like cattle or wheat, news was now subject to all the vagaries of any other commodity business, from contracts and price gouging to outright theft (211). And in Western Union, the telegraph made possible the prototype of today’s transnational media firms (201). As the telegraph solved problems of communicating across space, it opened up time as a new arena for expansion. In this sense, the gradual emergence of 24-hour broadcasting schedules is traceable to the impact of the telegraph (Carey 228). A key legacy of this impact is the rise to primacy of CNN and its imitators, offering round-the-clock news coverage made possible by satellite transmission. This too changed the nature of news. As McKenzie Wark has pointed out, a 24-hour continuous news service is not ideally compatible with the established narrative strategies of news. Rather than cutting and shaping events to fit familiar narrative forms, CNN instead introduced an emphasis on what Wark calls “the queer concept of ‘live’ news coverage — an instant audiovisual presence on the site of an event” (38). This focus on speed and immediacy, on being the first on the scene, leads to news that is all event and no process. More than this, it leads at times to revealing moments when CNN-style coverage becomes obvious as a component part of the event it purports to cover. In his analysis of the Tiananmen Square crisis of 1989 Wark argues that the media event appeared as “a positive feedback loop” (22). The Beijing students’ perceptions of Western accounts of their demands and motives became caught up in the students’ own accounts of their own motives, their own demands: Western interpretations of what was happening in Beijing, Wark writes, “fed back into the event itself via a global loop encompassing radio, telephone, and fax vectors. They impacted back on the further unfolding of the event itself” (22). Both the telegraph and the satellite contributed to major shifts in the production, distribution and reception of news. And both made possible new types of media institution, from Western Union and Reuters to CNN. This is not to argue that technologies determine the nature of news or of news organisations, but rather that certain developments are made possible by both the adoption and the adaptation of new technologies. Institutional and cultural factors, of course, affect the nature of news, but technology also both enables and constrains. The medium might not be the message — but it does matter. So with such precedents as those above in mind, what might be the key impacts of the Net on the nature of news? In an important analysis of the online news environment, Robert Burnett and P. David Marshall introduce the concept of “informational news,” defined as “the transformation of journalism and news in Web culture where there is a greater involvement of the user and news hierarchies are in flux” (206). News, they argue, has become “a subset of a wider search for information by Web users” (206) and this “has led to a shift in how we recontextualise news around a much larger search for information” (152). In this analysis, audience members are transformed into researchers. These researchers become comfortable with getting their news from a broader range of sources, while at the same time searching for new ways to hierarchise those sources, to establish some as more legitimate than others. Adding to the complexity are Burnett and Marshall’s observations that new media forms offer enhanced flexibility (with, for example, archival access to news databases, including audio and video, available 24 hours a day), and that online news fosters and caters for new global communities of interest 161-7). When these phenomena are taken together, the result for Burnett and Marshall is “a shifted boundary of what constitutes news” (167). But this concept of informational news is largely cast in terms of reception and consumption: the practices of the new informational news researchers are discussed in terms of information retrieval, not production — even newsgroups and Weblogs are considered as additional sources for information retrieval, rather than as new avenues for new kinds of journalists to develop and publish new kinds of news. Burnett and Marshall are, I believe, right in their identification of changes to the nature of news, and their analysis is an important contribution. But what I want to emphasise in this article is that there is also a corresponding ongoing shift in the boundary of what constitutes newsmakers. The Indymedia movement offers clear examples of this, in its spectacular growth and in its promotion of open publishing models. As a forum for non-professional journalists of all stripes, Indymedia’s development is a vivid example of the shifting boundary around who gets to make the news. By now, many readers of M/C will perhaps be familiar with Indymedia to some degree. But it’s worth briefly reviewing both the scope of the movement and the speed with which it’s developed. The first Indymedia Website was established for the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organisation meeting in November 1999. Its key feature was offering news coverage supplied by anyone who wanted to contribute, using free software and ideas from the Australian activists who had created the Active network. As events in Seattle gathered pace, the nascent Indymedia drew a claimed 1.5 million hits; this success led to the site being refocussed around several subsequent protests, before local collectives began to appear and form their own Indymedia centres. Within a year, this original Indymedia site was just one of a new network of more than 30. At the time of writing, a little over three years on from the movement’s inception, there are more than 100 Indymedia centres around the world — there are both Israeli and Palestinian Indymedia; Indymedia is established in Mumbai, Jakarta and Buenos Aires; there are centres in Poland, Colombia and South Africa. By any measure, this is a remarkable achievement for a decentralised project run entirely by volunteers and donations. Like any other complex phenomenon, the story of this development can be told in many different ways, each adding a different dimension. Three are especially relevant here. The first version would centre around the Active software developed by Sydney’s Catalyst tech collective. This was devised to create the Active Sydney site, an online hub for Sydney activists to promote events from direct actions to screenings and seminars. Launched in January 1999, Active Sydney was to become a prototype for Indymedia — part events calendar, part meeting place, part street paper. For June of that year, the Active team revised the system for the J18 global day of action. Using this system, anyone could now upload a report, a video clip, a photo or an audio file, and see it instantly added to the emerging narrative of events. It was as easy as sending email. And it ran on open source code. With Catalyst members collaborating online with organisers in Seattle to establish the first site, this system became the basis for Indymedia. While the Active software is no longer the only platform used for Indymedia sites, it made a huge contribution to the movement’s explosive growth (see Arnison, 2001; Meikle, 2002). Another version of the story would place Indymedia within the long traditions of alternative media. John Downing’s work is important here, and his definition of “politically dissident media that offer radical alternatives to mainstream debate” is useful (240). To tell the Indymedia story from this perspective would be to highlight its independence and self-management, and the autonomy of each local editorial collective in running each Indymedia centre. It would be to emphasise Indymedia as a forum for viewpoints which are not usually expressed within the established media’s consensus about what is and isn’t news. And, perhaps most importantly, to tell the Indymedia story as one in the alternative media tradition would be to focus on the extent to which this movement fosters horizontal connections and open participation, in contrast to the vertical flows of the established broadcast and print media (Downing, 1995). A third version would approach Indymedia as part of what cultural studies academic George McKay terms “DiY Culture.” McKay defines this as “a youth-centred and -directed cluster of interests and practices around green radicalism, direct action politics, new musical sounds and experiences”(2). For this version of the story, a useful analogy would be with punk — not with the music so much as with its DIY access principle (“here’s three chords, now form a band”). DIY was the key to Richard Hell’s much-misunderstood lyric “I belong to the blank generation” — the idea of the blank was that you were supposed to fill it in for yourself, rather than sign up to someone else’s agenda. To consider Indymedia as part of this DIY spirit would be to see it as the expression of a blank generation in this fine original sense — not a vacant generation, but one prepared to offer their own self-definitions and to create their own media networks to do it. More than this, it would also be to place Indymedia within the frameworks of independent production and distribution which were the real impact of punk — independent record labels changed music more than any of their records, while photocopied zines opened up new possibilities for self-expression. Just as the real importance of punk wasn't in the individual songs, the importance of Indymedia isn't in this or that news story posted to this or that site. Instead, it's in its DIY ethos and its commitment to establishing new networks. What these three versions of the Indymedia story share is that each highlights an emphasis on access and participation; each stresses new avenues and methods for new people to create news; each shifts the boundary of who gets to speak. And where these different stories intersect is in the concept of open publishing. This is the Net making possible a shift in the production of news, as well as in its reception. Matthew Arnison of Catalyst, who played a key role in developing the Active software, offers a working definition of open publishing which is worth quoting in full: “Open publishing means that the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site.” (Arnison, 2001) Open publishing has undoubtedly been a big part of the appeal of Indymedia for its many contributors. In fact, one of Indymedia’s slogans is “everyone is a journalist.” If this is a provocation, who and what is it meant to provoke? Obviously, “everyone” is not a journalist — at least not if journalists are seen as employees of news institutions and news businesses, employees with some kind of training in research methods and narrative construction. But to say that “everyone is a journalist” is not to claim that everyone has such institutional affiliation, or that everyone has such training or expertise. Instead, the tactic here seems to be to inflate something out of all proportion in order to draw attention to the core smaller truth that may otherwise go unnoticed. Specifically in this case, what authorises some to be story-tellers and not others? From this perspective, the slogan reads like a claim for difference, a claim that other kinds of expertise and other kinds of know-how also have valid claims on our attention, and that these too can make valid contributions to the more plural media environment made possible — but not guaranteed — by the Net. It’s a claim that the licence to tell stories should be shared around. But developments to this core element — open publishing — point both to an ongoing challenge for the Indymedia movement, and to a possible future which might enable a further significant shift in the nature of Net news. In March 2002, a proposal was circulated to remove the open publishing newswire from the front page of the main site at http://www.indymedia.org/, replacing this with features sourced from local sites around the world. While this was said to have the objective of promoting those local sites to a broader audience, it should also be seen as acknowledgement that Indymedia was struggling against limits to growth. One issue was the large number of items being posted to sites, which meant that even especially well-researched or significant stories would be replaced quickly on the front page; another issue was the persistent trolls and spam which plagued some Indymedia sites. In April 2002, after a voting process in which 15 Indymedia collectives from Brazil to Barcelona voted unanimously in favour of the reform, the open publishing newswire was taken off the front page. Many local Indymedia sites followed suit. Even the Sydney site, which, perhaps because of the history and involvement of the Catalyst group, promotes open publishing rather more than some other Indymedia sites, adopted a features-based front page in August 2002, stating that “promoting certain issues above others” would make the site “more effective.” These developments might signal the eventual demise of the open publishing component. Indymedia might instead become ‘professionalised,’ with greater reliance on de facto staff reporters and more stringent editing, moving closer to existing alternative media outlets. But the new centrality of its news features might also open Indymedia up to a new level of involvement, because those features are given prominence in the site’s central column and can remain on the front page for some weeks. This offers the potential for what Arnison terms “automated open-editing”. This would involve creating the facility for audience members to contribute to sub-editing stories on an Indymedia site: they might, for instance, check facts or add sources; edit spelling, grammar or formatting; nominate a topic area within which a given story could be archived; or translate the story from one language or style to another (Arnison, 2001). Open publishing is one phenomenon in which we can see the Net enabling changes to the nature of news and newsmakers. If open editing were also to work, then it would need to be as simple to operate as the original open publishing newswire. But if this were possible, then open editing might involve not only more new people in the development of informational news, but involve them in new ways, catering for a broader range of abilities and aptitudes than open publishing alone. Like earlier communication technologies, the Net could facilitate new types of media institution — ones built on an open model, which enable a new, more plural, news environment. Works Cited Arnison, Matthew. “Open Publishing Is the Same as Free Software.” 2001. 21 Feb. 2003 <http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.php>. Arnison, Matthew. “Open Editing: A Crucial Part of Open Publishing.” 2002. 21 Feb. 2003 <http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openedit.php>. Burnett, Robert, and P. David Marshall. Web Theory: An Introduction. London & New York: Routledge, 2003. Carey, James. Communication as Culture. New York & London: Routledge, 1989. Downing, John. “Alternative Media and the Boston Tea Party.” Questioning The Media. Eds. John Downing, Ali Mohammadi and Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. 238-52. McKay, George. “DiY Culture: Notes towards an Intro.” DiY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain. Ed. George McKay. London: Verso, 1998. 1-53. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. New York & London: Routledge, and Annandale: Pluto Press, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Links http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openedit.html http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.html http://www.indymedia.org/ http://www.sydney.active.org.au/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Meikle, Graham. "Indymedia and The New Net News" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/02-feature.php>. APA Style Meikle, G. (2003, Apr 23). Indymedia and The New Net News. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/02-feature.php>