Journal articles on the topic 'Moving breakdown model'

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic strategic approach to handle corrective maintenance onto the failures/breakdowns of construction equipment. For the maintenance crew/team, a breakdown code management is proposed, which will provide focused and unambiguous approach to manage any kind of breakdowns in construction equipments. Design/methodology/approach – The past breakdown records of a construction organization in the UAE are considered for analysis. From the failure data, through cause effect analysis (CEA) tools, the components and the breakdown codes namely breakdown main codes (BMC) and breakdown sub-codes (BSC) are formulated. With Pareto analysis, the critical codes are identified and validated through failure modes and effects analyses (FMEA) tools for the critical effect on the affected components. From this identified BSC's further closer failure identification codes namely breakdown symptom codes (BSyC) and breakdown reason codes (BRC) are identified through fault tree analysis (FTA) tools. The approach to modified breakdown maintenance management (MB2M) with breakdown maintenance protocol (BMP) is envisaged. Findings – The study was conducted on four different types of heavy lifting/earth moving/material handling system of equipment and further focused with two earth moving equipment namely dumpers and wheel loaders. Failure analysis is performed and the failure ratio and the component contribution to the failures are identified. Based on the information, the preliminary codes namely BMC and BSC are identified through CEA tools and the BMC and BSC are identified to find the most contributing codes to the maximum number of failures through Pareto analysis. Further the critical sub-codes are further verified through FMEA tools on the severity levels of the sub components due to these codes. The FTA methods are used to identify the closer reasoning and relations of these codes and the further codes namely BSyC and BRC are identified which are the exact cause of the failures. The management of breakdowns is further proposed through MB2M which includes BMP which provides all resources for the breakdowns. Research limitations/implications – The failure data collected are only pertaining to the Middle East region and applicable to similar regions for similar plant mix in construction companies. The sample equipment is only part representative of the construction equipment. A more robust model can be suggested in the future covering all aspects and for other regions as well. Practical implications – The proposed methodology and model approach is highly adaptable to similar industries operating in the Middle East countries. Originality/value – Many authors have studied the preventive maintenance models and procedures and proposals have been proposed. On the breakdown maintenance management of construction equipment, very few studies have been proposed mostly on the cost analysis. This model attempts to provide a code management solution to manage the unpredictable failures in construction equipment through failure data analysis on a construction organization.

The propagation of electron driven shock waves has been investigated by employing a one-dimensional, three-component fluid model. In the fluid model, the basic set of equations consists of equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, plus Poisson's equation. The wave is assumed to be a shock front followed by a dynamical transition region. Following Fowler's (1976) categorization of breakdown waves, the waves propagating into a preionized medium will be referred to as Class II Waves. To describe the breakdown waves, Shelton and Fowler (1968) used the terms proforce and antiforce waves, depending on whether the applied electric field force on electrons was with or against the direction of wave propagation. Breakdown waves, i.e., return strokes of lightning flashes, therefore, will be referred to as Antiforce Class II waves. The shock boundary conditions and Poisson's equation for Antiforce Class II waves are different from those for Antiforce Waves. The use of a newly derived set of boundary conditions and Poisson's equation for Antiforce Class II waves allows for a successful integration of the set of fluid equations through the dynamical transition region. The wave structure, i.e., electric field, electron concentration, electron temperature, and electron velocity, are very sensitive to the ion concentration ahead of the wave.

On a very short time scale, breakdown of superconductivity with increasing transport current turns out to be a highly dynamical process, called “current-induced resistive state”. Magnetic flux domains rapidly move perpendicular to the direction of the transport current applied, with increasing velocity as the current is further increased. At sufficiently high currents, superconductivity is completely destroyed, and the sample ends up in the normal state. In this paper, the first timeresolved measurements of voltage signals induced by the motion of single flux domains are reported. A stability analysis of the superconducting state based on the “Gibbs free energy barrier model” describes the temporal voltage profile generated by a single flux domain, which is solitarily moving across the sample cross-section, as well as the superimposed signals of a series of competing domains, existing simultaneously in the sample. In the latter case, the interaction among the flux domains is taken into account by a monopole ansatz. Studying the onset of the breakdown of superconductivity in type I materials, an oscillatory behavior of the domain size was found. After a few periods, these transients change into a stationary number of flux quanta per domain.

In this paper, motorized traffic flow in the vicinity of an unsignalized crosswalk on a provincial highway in China was studied. Based on the Kerner–Klenov–Schreckenberg–Wolf (KKSW) three-phase cellular automaton (CA) traffic flow model for single-lane roads, the cars’ moving rules when there were pedestrians walking on the crosswalk was redefined. A series of simulations were carried out to reveal the cars’ travel process and the influence of pedestrians crossing behavior on traffic flow. The simulations results show the redefined model can be used to study not only the characteristics of traffic flow in the vicinity of crosswalks on provincial highways but also some complex traffic problems such as traffic breakdown, synchronized flow, and moving jams. Moreover, some suggestions about signal control for the pedestrians crossing in the future were presented. Thus, this work is helpful for managing traffic flow and improving road safety and capacity in the vicinity of crosswalks on provincial highways in China.

We consider Weyl’s conformal gravity coupled to a complex matter field in Weyl geometry. It is shown that a Higgs potential naturally arises from a [Formula: see text] term in moving from the Jordan frame to the Einstein frame. A massless Nambu–Goldstone boson, which stems from spontaneous symmetry breakdown of the Weyl gauge invariance, is absorbed into the Weyl gauge field, thereby the gauge field becoming massive. We present a model where the gravitational interaction generates a Higgs potential whose form is a perfect square. Finally, we show that a theory in the Jordan frame is gauge-equivalent to the corresponding theory in the Einstein frame via the BRST formalism.

<p>The estimation of time-to-failure of machines is of utmost importance in the Manufacturing Industry. As the world is moving towards Industry 4.0, it is high time that we progress from the traditional methods, where we wait for a breakdown to occur, to the prognostics based methods. It is the need of the era to be aware of any incident before it occurs. This study provides application of Statistical-based Predictive maintenance. A BOPP Production line has been considered as a case study for this research. Since the inception of the line in 2013, it is evident that 60% of breakdowns are due to lack of maintenance and timely replacement of bearings. Therefore, the research is based on the application of FMECA (Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis) to determine which bearing in the production line is most prone to failure and determination of which statistical model best fits the failure data of the most critical bearing. The result provides the best distribution fit for the failure data and the fit can be utilized for further study on RUL (Remaining Useful Life) of the bearing through Bayesian Inference.</p>

Abstract Large-scale free-surface ocean models designed to run over climatic time scales are required to globally conserve the volume and any tracer up to machine precision. In addition, local consistency is critical and requires that the discrete tracer equation preserve constants in a closed domain and if there is no tracer source or sink. Local consistency, together with monotonicity, will ensure that no spurious tracer extrema occur. A three-dimensional, finite-element, shallow-water model is presented. The mesh is unstructured in the horizontal, extruded in the third dimension, and made up of multiple layers of prisms. In addition, the mesh is allowed to move in the vertical and adapts itself to the free-surface motions. It is shown that achieving consistency requires a discrete compatibility between the tracer and continuity equations. In addition, to ensure global tracer conservation in a consistent way, a discrete compatibility between the tracer, continuity, and free-surface elevation equations must be fulfilled. It is suggested that this compatibility constraint, together with the use of a numerically stable scheme, severely restricts the choice of usable finite-element spatial discretizations. A consistent and conservative time-stepping algorithm is described for which a unique time step is used. It is suggested that future research is needed in order to design a consistent and conservative split-explicit algorithm. Some illustrative test cases are presented in which the method is shown to satisfy all conservation properties. A few experiments in which consistency breaks down are carried out, and the consequences of this breakdown process are investigated.

The forces and pressures on a generic bluff body in ground effect were investigated. The bluff-body model was equipped with interchangeable underbody diffuser ramps and side plates. Five different diffuser angles were tested: 5, 10, 15, 17, and 20 deg to the horizontal. The experiments were undertaken in a low-speed wind tunnel equipped with a moving ground. Load cells, pressure taps, and surface flow visualization were the techniques used to evaluate the flow field. The flow field is characterized by vortex flow and three-dimensional flow separation. A region of hysteresis was found for the 15, 17, and 20 deg diffusers. As the ride height is varied, five different flow types can be identified with three subtypes within the region of hysteresis. The force reduction phenomenon was found to be caused by both vortex breakdown and flow separation.

A risk assessment model is developed to estimate the potential combined influence of concurrent safety risks facing on-foot construction worker at a certain point in space or instant of time. The model is based on a holistic approach that comprehensively systemizes principal types and subjective values of possible safety risk events. Fuzzy fault tree is built using a deductive approach to identify possible concurrent basic and conditional risk events, not risk symptoms, from the major subgroups of triggering, enabling and environment-related risks. The inclusive risk breakdown structure helps in combating assessment underestimation related to overlooking influential risks. Adequate logic gates are suggested at tree junctions to overcome assessment overestimation related to accumulating the effect of dependent, redundant, and non-concurrent risks, and ignoring the effectiveness of safety precautions and measures that may reduce or eliminate risks. Operational logic gates are applied to properly combine the residual risk of static (non-moving) events and dynamic (moving) events that can concurrently influence safety. The model is programmed into an interactive interfaced intelligent system to simulate cases of risk assessment input, computations, and output. The system shows the advantages of using the model as a prognostic or diagnostic tool to estimate top risk event. Subjective linguistic risk values can be induced for basic risk events at the bottom of the tree, and conditional risk events controlling residual risk values can be induced at different levels of the tree. Fuzzy logic plays a key role in hosting subjective risk evaluation into computational truth values to generate realistic and meaningful assessment values that are helpful for risk control.

The observed ratio of removal of material by (i) scratches gouged by large clasts and (ii) polishing by debris suggests that the latter is the dominant form of bedrock erosion. We examine this with a multi-stage breakdown model of glacial debris, which includes active erosion by fines. These models suggest that a mother clast can, through the action of its daughter debris, erode several times its own volume of bedrock.Till-sliding over bedrock is likely to be a potent source of scouring. By proposing a till/bedrock sliding law, we investigate the kinematics of sliding till bodies. Ice flow naturally tends to thin and extend till cover, even in the absence of longitudinal gradients in the applied stress. Thicker till cover has an increased effective pressure at its base, a lower sliding velocity and, for larger thicknesses, a decrease in sediment flux with thickness. This implies backward-moving kinematic waves and shocks. It is suggested that this is related to the blunt upstream faces of drumlins, and that drumlinization can be a consequence of debris sliding over bedrock.

The observed ratio of removal of material by (i) scratches gouged by large clasts and (ii) polishing by debris suggests that the latter is the dominant form of bedrock erosion. We examine this with a multi-stage breakdown model of glacial debris, which includes active erosion by fines. These models suggest that a mother clast can, through the action of its daughter debris, erode several times its own volume of bedrock.Till-sliding over bedrock is likely to be a potent source of scouring. By proposing a till/bedrock sliding law, we investigate the kinematics of sliding till bodies. Ice flow naturally tends to thin and extend till cover, even in the absence of longitudinal gradients in the applied stress. Thicker till cover has an increased effective pressure at its base, a lower sliding velocity and, for larger thicknesses, a decrease in sediment flux with thickness. This implies backward-moving kinematic waves and shocks. It is suggested that this is related to the blunt upstream faces of drumlins, and that drumlinization can be a consequence of debris sliding over bedrock.

Abstract. Understanding the variability of precipitation at small scales is fundamental in urban hydrology. Here we consider the case study of Warsaw, Poland, characterized by a precipitation-monitoring network of 25 gauges and microcanonical cascade models as the instrument of investigation. We address the following issues partially investigated in literature: (1) the calibration of microcanonical cascade model generators in conditions of short time series (i.e., 2.5–5 years), (2) the identification of the probability distribution of breakdown coefficients (BDCs) through ranking criteria and (3) the variability among the gauges of the monitoring network of the empirical distribution of BDCs. In particular, (1) we introduce an overlapping moving window algorithm to determine the histogram of BDCs and compare it with the classic non-overlapping moving window algorithm; (2) we compare the 2N–B distribution, a mixed distribution composed of two normal (N) and one beta (B), with the classic B distribution to represent the BDCs using the Akaike information criterion; and (3) we use the cluster analysis to identify patterns of BDC histograms among gauges and timescales. The scarce representation of the BDCs at large timescales, due to the short period of observation (~ 2.5 years), is solved through the overlapping moving window algorithm. BDC histograms are described by a 2N–B distribution. A clear evolution of this distribution is observed, in all gauges, from 2N–B for small timescales, N–B for intermediate timescales and B distribution for large timescales. The performance of the microcanonical cascades is evaluated for the considered gauges. Synthetic time series are analyzed with respect to the intermittency and the variability of intensity and compared to observed series. BDC histograms for each timescale are compared with the 25 gauges in Warsaw and with other gauges located in Poland and Germany.

The Interdependence model currently uses an analytical expression for a moving planar interface to calculate the solute diffusion length designated as x’dl in the model. Upon nucleation within an alloy melt (i.e. when the solid embryo starts to grow), the interface grows with a spherical front which then breaks down into a dendritic interface. The time required for this breakdown is a subject for separate research. In this paper, we explore the validity of using a planar interface in the early stages of nucleation and growth of metal alloys as used in the Interdependence model. The diffusion field ahead of a planar interface, in theory, has an exponentially changing composition of infinite length. In the Interdependence model, x’dl is assumed to be where this exponentially decreasing composition profile in the liquid ahead of the interface (for k < 1) reduces to within 1% of a quantity proportional to the nominal alloy composition, C0, far from the interface. A numerical solidification model, μMatIC, is used to simulate the growth of a single grain with a dendritic interface in 2D and 3D. The numerical model is capable of generating the solute profile ahead of the growing grain which is used to evaluate the solute diffusion length that can be compared with the results obtained from the planar interface model. The comparisons were made with both 1% and 0.1% cut-off criteria. The results indicate that the 1% assumption being used in the planar front diffusion length calculation is a good approximation for the Interdependence model.

AbstractThis paper extends the resolvent analysis of McKeon & Sharma (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 658, 2010, pp. 336–382) to consider flow control techniques that employ linear control laws, focusing on opposition control (Choi, Moin & Kim, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 262, 1994, pp. 75–110) as an example. Under this formulation, the velocity field for turbulent pipe flow is decomposed into a series of highly amplified (rank-1) response modes, identified from a gain analysis of the Fourier-transformed Navier–Stokes equations. These rank-1 velocity responses represent propagating structures of given streamwise/spanwise wavelength and temporal frequency, whose wall-normal footprint depends on the phase speed of the mode. Opposition control, introduced via the boundary condition on wall-normal velocity, affects the amplification characteristics (and wall-normal structure) of these response modes; a decrease in gain indicates mode suppression, which leads to a decrease in the drag contribution from that mode. With basic assumptions, this rank-1 model reproduces trends observed in previous direct numerical simulation and large eddy simulation, without requiring high-performance computing facilities. Further, a wavenumber–frequency breakdown of control explains the deterioration of opposition control performance with increasing sensor elevation and Reynolds number. It is shown that slower-moving modes localized near the wall (i.e. attached modes) are suppressed by opposition control. Faster-moving detached modes, which are more energetic at higher Reynolds number and more likely to be detected by sensors far from the wall, are further amplified. These faster-moving modes require a phase lag between sensor and actuator velocity for suppression. Thus, the effectiveness of opposition control is determined by a trade-off between the modes detected by the sensor. However, it may be possible to develop control strategies optimized for individual modes. A brief exploration of such mode-optimized control suggests the potential for significant performance improvement.

Conventional joint replacements consist of a polished metallic or ceramic component articulating against a layer of polyethylene. Although the friction in the contact between these articulating surfaces is low, polyethylene wear is produced as a result of a boundary/mixed lubrication regime. Wear debris is generated by direct asperity contact, abrasion, adhesion and fatigue, and has been shown to cause adverse tissue reactions which can lead to joint failure. The introduction of soft compliant materials, similar in stiffness to articular cartilage, has shown that with cyclic loading and relative motion between the articulating surfaces typical of normal walking, a fluid film can be maintained through combined entraining and squeeze-film actions, and hence wear can be minimized. For 95 per cent of the time, however, we are not walking but standing still or moving slowly. A pendulum simulator has been used in the present study to investigate the effect of adverse tribological conditions which may lead to fluid film breakdown, such as severe cyclic loading, particularly in the swing phase, reduced sliding velocity, reduced stroke length and start-up after a period of constant loading. Friction of a model composite cushion knee bearing, manufactured from a graded modulus (20–1000 MPa) layer of polyurethane, sliding against a polished metal cylinder has been measured for various lubricants and the results have been analysed using a Stribeck assessment. Severe cyclic loading, decreased sliding velocity and decreased stroke length have been found to limit the degree of fluid entrainment previously allowed during the swing phase of normal walking, thus allowing breakdown of fluid films and elevated levels of friction and surface damage. Soft layer joint replacements must therefore be designed to operate with thick elastohydrodynamic fluid films to provide some degree of protection when tribological conditions become severe, or alternatively incorporate alternative boundary or mixed lubrication mechanisms. This study quantifies a potential limitation of the cushion bearing concept.

Responses from 69 Purkinje cells in the flocculus and paraflocculus of two rhesus monkeys were studied during smooth pursuit of targets moving along circular trajectories and compared with responses during sinusoidal pursuit and fixation. A variety of interesting responses was observed during circular pursuit. Although some neurons fired most strongly in a single preferred direction during clockwise (CW) and counterclockwise (CCW) pursuit, others had directional preferences that changed with rotation direction. Some of these neurons showed similar modulation amplitudes during CW and CCW pursuit, whereas other neurons showed a preference for a particular rotation direction. Response specificity also was observed during sinusoidal pursuit. Some neurons showed responses that were much stronger during centrifugal pursuit, others showed a preference for centripetal pursuit, and still others showed responses during both centripetal and centrifugal motion. Differences in preferred response direction were sometimes observed for centripetal versus centrifugal pursuit. CW/CCW and centrifugal/centripetal preferences were not explained by a breakdown in component additivity. That is, modulations in firing rate during pursuit along a circular trajectory equaled the sum of modulations during horizontal and vertical sinusoidal components as well as for diagonal components. Instead all responses were well fit by a model that expressed the instantaneous firing rate of each neuron as a multilinear function of the two-dimensional position and velocity of the eye. This model generalized well to performance at different sinusoidal frequencies. It did somewhat less well for responses during fixation, suggesting some separation in the neural mechanisms of dynamic and static positioning. The model indicates that position sensitivity accounted for ∼36% of the modulation during circular pursuit, and velocity sensitivity accounted for ∼64%. When position and velocity sensitivity vectors were aligned, responses were simpler and modulations were similar during CW versus CCW pursuit. In contrast, when these vectors pointed in different directions, response complexity increased. Nonaligned position and velocity influences tended to reinforce during circular pursuit in one direction and to cancel each other during pursuit in the opposite direction. They also tended to produce response differences during centripetal versus centrifugal sinusoidal pursuit. The distinct roles played by position and velocity in shaping Purkinje cell responses are compatible with the control signals required to generate smooth pursuit along circular and other two-dimensional trajectories.

Purpose The aim of the research is to conduct a study into a configuration of an aircraft system with a focus on aerodynamics. In addition, trim condition and static stability constraints were included. The main application of this system is suborbital space flights. The presented concept of a modular airplane system (MAS) consists of two vehicles: a Rocket Plane and a Carrier. Both are designed in tailless configurations but coupled formed a classic tail aircraft configuration, where the Rocket Plane works as the empennage. The most important challenge is to define the mutual position of those two tailless vehicles under the assumption that each vehicle will be operating alone in different flight conditions while joined in one object create a conventional aircraft. Each vehicle configuration (separated and coupled) must fulfil static stability and trim requirements. Design/methodology/approach Aircrafts’ aerodynamic characteristics were obtained using the MGAERO software which is a commercial computing fluid dynamics tool created by AMI Aero. This software uses the Euler flow model. Results from this software were used in the static stability and trim condition analysis. Findings The main outcome of this investigation is a mutual position of the Rocket Plane and the Carrier that fulfils project requirements. Also, the final configuration of both separated vehicles (Rocket Plane and Carrier) and the complete MAS were defined. In addition, it was observed that in the case of classic aircraft configuration which is created by connecting two tailless vehicles increasing horizontal tail arm reduces static stability. This is related to a significantly higher mass ratio of the horizontal tail (the Rocket Plane) with respect to the whole system. Moving backward, the Rocket Plane has a notable effect on a position of a centre of gravity of the whole system static stability. Moreover, the impact of the mutual vehicles’ position (horizontal tail arm) and inclination angle on the coupled vehicle lift to drag ratio was analysed. Research limitations/implications In terms of aerodynamic computation, MGAERO software using an inviscid flow model, therefore, both a friction drag and breakdown of vortex are not considered. But the presented research is for the computation stage of the design, and the MGAERO software guarantees satisfactory accuracy with respect to the relatively low time of computations. The second limitation is that the presented results are for the conceptual stage of the design and dynamic stability constraints were not taken into account. Practical implications The ultimate goal of the coupled aircraft project is to conduct flying tests and the presented result is one of the milestones to achieve this goal. Originality/value A design process for a conventional aircraft configuration is well known however, there are not many examples of vehicles that consist of two coupled aircrafts where both vehicles have similar mass. The unique part of this paper includes results of the investigation of the mutual position of the vehicles that can fly alone, as well as in coupled form. The impact of the position of the centre of gravity on trim conditions and static stability of the coupled configuration was investigated.

Summary Optimization of foam treatments requires modeling or simulation of the process using a foam model that is capable of reproducing the critical properties of foam. In this work we present a simple model that is based on the relative permeability concept, and is well suited for simulation of foam processes with conventional or slightly modified numerical simulators. The model can unify understanding of a number of phenomena that characterizes foam flow. The validity of the model is substantiated by experimental data. A consistent interpretation of foam breakdown, shear thinning effects, permeability effects, and effects of system pressure is possible with the model for gas relative permeability in foam presented. Introduction Foam can be used in reservoir engineering for control of gas flow in reservoirs. By injection of gas and surfactant-containing water, foam can be generated in a formation, and the mobility of the gas be reduced. The macroscopic effect of a large number of foam films in the pore system is determined by the properties of the individual foam films, the number of foam films, and the properties of the three-dimensional network of open pores where gas can flow. One previous effort to model foam flow was the mechanistic approach, where these entities were accounted for explicity.1 Another approach was to identify all factors that influence macroscopic foam flow, and parameterize them in an empirical foam mobility function that reproduces experimental foam behavior.2 Important factors are flow rate, oil saturation, absolute permeability, foam quality, and surfactant concentration. The model presented here falls somewhere in between the mechanistic and the completely empirical approaches. Here, physical arguments are used to advocate a particular shape of the gas relative permeability curve to be used for foam flow, and physically reasonable rules for how this shape should change with changing flow conditions (rates, permeability, system pressure, etc.). The model presented is empirical in the sense that it requires calibration to laboratory data for a specific foam system. Its predictive power is improved compared to a purely empirical model; because a physically reasonable dependence of foam properties on flow conditions is built in, the number of degrees of freedom is reduced. Theory The assumption forming the basis for this work is that the relative permeability concept is equally accurate for the flow of the foam constituents, gas and surfactant solution, as it is for the flow of any other pair of phases. Because foam films contain water, moving films could potentially constitute an extra path for transport for water at a given water saturation. This would change the water relative permeability curve relative to that in the no-foam case. This does not seem to be the case however. Bernard et al.3 have shown that the relative permeability curve for surfactant solution in foam is equal to the curve for water in ordinary water-gas flow. This must mean that the water flows in the same channels whether there is foam in the porous medium or not, and that foam films transport only insignificant amounts of water, either because they do not move, or because they contain too little water. The foam films do influence the mobility of gas however. Foam films span the pore throats in the same manner as films span the ring of a children's toy bubble generator. Gas cannot flow through pore channels that contain films, unless the films move or rupture. Macroscopically, the mobility reduction of gas in porous media by foams is determined by the interplay among many films in many pore channels. The number of films per unit volume is believed to be given by a dynamic balance between film generation and rupture processes.1 The resulting effects on the gas relative permeability curve for foam is discussed next. Single Foam Films. Single foam films form the basis for understanding the behavior of foam in a porous medium. In the present work, the effects of both capillary pressure and of viscous pressure gradients on single foam films are considered. Capillary Pressure Effects. The theory for static film stability considers the forces acting between the two surfaces on each side of a water film. These forces are described by the disjoining pressure,4 ?, which varies with film thickness. Parallel to the definition of capillary pressure, Pc as the difference between pressures in the gas and water phases over a curved interface, the disjoining pressure is the difference between gas and water pressures over a flat film surface, caused by interactions between the two film surfaces. The water pressure in a thin film can be expressed by pg ?? where pg is the gas pressure outside the film. Elsewhere in the pore, the water pressure is pg?P c. As long as Pc&gt;? the water pressure in the film exceeds that of the surrounding water, and the resulting pressure gradient drives water out of the film. A pressure balance is obtained at the thickness where Pc=?.5 In this theory, foam films are supposed to rupture whenever the capillary pressure in the porous medium exceeds the maximum disjoining pressure that the films exhibit. Rupture of thin liquid films by the application of high capillary pressures can be observed in studies of single films.5 Viscous Pressure Gradients. A foam film that is stable against capillary drainage will not necessarily block gas flow. Such films may flow or rupture because of the viscous pressure gradient, like a film in a bubble toy that is blown too hard. This is because there is a geometrical limit to the pressure drop a static film can support. Over a single film that blocks gas flow, there will be a pressure difference, pg1? pg2, generated by gas flow elsewhere in the porous medium. The pressure drop can be related to the pore geometry and the surface tension of the surfactant solution, ?, through the Young-Laplace equation, which states that p g 1 − p g 2 = 4 γ s i n α / r . ( 1 ) The geometrical parameters, r and ?, are defined in Fig. 1. The film is in mechanical equilibrium when the angle between the film and the pore wall is 90°. The group ?/r will have a local maximum in every pore. If the pressure drop exceeds the value corresponding to the maximum ?/r the film cannot remain in that pore, and it will flow and jump to the next pore. This will lead to flow of gas in the pore: either the flow that accompanies film movement, or, if the film ruptures during the jump, the flow that will take place in an open pore. Foams at the Limiting Capillary Pressure. From the existence of a maximum disjoining pressure for foam films, consequences for the macroscopic behavior of foams in porous media can be deduced.6

AbstractConnections across seasons in atmospheric circulation and sea ice have long been sought to advance seasonal prediction. This study presents a link between the springtime stratosphere and Arctic sea ice in summer through autumn. The polar stratospheric vortex dominates the winter stratosphere before breaking down each spring, which is called the stratospheric final warming, as solar radiation returns to the pole. Interannual variability of this breakdown is dynamically driven, leading to different springtime tropospheric and surface circulation patterns. To examine the different impacts of delayed and early final warmings, a multimodel composite was generated from selected CMIP5 models. Additionally, regressions were performed on JRA-55 against an index of springtime polar vortex strength. In both the multimodel composites and reanalysis regressions, significant anomalies in sea ice thickness persist several months following an anomalous timing of the final warming. A later final warming or stronger springtime polar stratospheric vortex leads to negative sea ice thickness anomalies in the East Siberian Sea and positive anomalies in the Beaufort Sea in comparison with an earlier final warming or weaker polar vortex. The spring polar stratospheric vortex is related to spring polar surface circulation patterns. The winds associated with this pattern induce anomalous sea ice motion, moving ice from the East Siberian Sea toward the Beaufort Sea. Reduced sea ice in the East Siberian Sea is linked to anomalous warmth over this region in autumn. Our results suggest that the timing of the stratospheric final warming exerts an influence on the tropospheric circulation and sea ice through autumn, which has implications for seasonal climate prediction.

Abstract. Understanding the variability of precipitation at small scales is fundamental in urban hydrology. Stochastic models of precipitation are required to feed hydrodynamic models with high resolution data, in order to obtain a probabilistic assessment of urban drainage networks. Microcanonical random cascades are considered here to represent precipitation time series collected in 25 gauges of a monitoring network in Warsaw, Poland. Breakdown coefficients (BDCs) are calculated separately for a hierarchy of subdaily timescales from 5 min (time resolution) to 1280 min, for all gauges. Strong deformations of BDC histograms in form of sharp peaks at small timescales are observed due to the truncation of precipitation depths recorded by gauges. Satisfactory smoothing of empirical BDC histograms is obtained statistically by a slight randomization of nonzero precipitation amounts. The scarce representation of BDCs at large timescales, due to the short period of observation, is solved by the introduction of an algorithm based on overlapping moving windows. BDC histograms are modeled by a 2N-B distribution, which combines two Normal (N) and one Beta (B) distribution. A clear evolution of the distribution from 2N-B at small timescales, to N-B at intermediate timescales, and finally to Beta distribution for large timescales is observed in all gauges. The performance of the microcanonical cascades is evaluated for the considered gauges. Synthetic time series are analyzed with respect to their intermittency and variability of intensity, and compared to observed series. BDC histograms, for each timescale, are compared among the 25 gauges in Warsaw, and with other gauges located in Poland and Germany. The cluster analysis is used to identify patterns of BDC histograms among analyzed set of gauges and timescales, as well as to detect outlier gauges.

In developing countries, where political instability, former conflicts and social breakdown take place, heritage can be included in urban regeneration processes as a driver for economic development but also for social cohesion and cultural identity. This paper presents a heritage-based method for urban regeneration, developed for the city of Luanda (Angola), within the elaboration of its Metropolitan Plan (2016). Actions focus on the rehabilitation of buildings and public spaces, creating the conditions to implement effective financial mechanisms able to cover the costs of urban regeneration by results. Here, rehabilitation measures are combined with the implementation of mixed-use development models, addressing one of the key issues of urban regeneration: attracting private investments. From a practical perspective, the proposed approach focusses on the elaboration of heritage preservation, valorization and requalification strategies, moving from a geographical urban delimitation of Heritage Sets to a regeneration process based on a radius of influence that goes beyond the single building. From the regeneration of the built environment and public spaces in these Heritage Sets, the surrounding area is naturally affected. Strategic actions applied to Heritage Sets aim to produce a domino effect of regeneration that involves multiple spatial scales: from buildings and public spaces to neighbourhoods and, consequently, to the entire city. The implementation of this approach to several Heritage Sets delimited across the city, would, in the long-term, create a connected heritage network that results in an integrated urban regeneration process. Criteria for the delimitation of Heritage Sets are proposed, dealing with the concept of diversity, namely: time, historical, symbolic and functional diversity. The results from this study aim to support decision-makers in integrating heritage-based urban regeneration approaches into public policies and local planning practice.

There are indications, contraindications and risks of the climatotherapy application. The impact of weather factors on the human body during the period of sanatorium-resort treatment is not only able to trigger the mechanisms of sanogenesis, but also cause a breakdown in adaptation and a deterioration in the course of cardiovascular diseases. According to various domestic sources, pronounced weather sensitivity is observed in 80-85% of patients with common diseases of the circulatory system. Aim. To assess the influence of biotropic weather conditions on the occurrence of exacerbation and progression of meteorological diseases of the circulatory system associated with the passage of sanatorium-resort treatment in another region, in order to draw up a personalized forecast of the exacerbations progression as well as to develop programs for the prevention and treatment of weatherdependent circulatory system diseases. Material and methods. Two series of studies were conducted on a single patient population: a study of adaptation depending on the climatic conditions of the residence region r(n=200) and a retrospective study on symptoms – weather events linkage, the relationship of symptoms with a region of sanatorium-resort treatment (n=148). Designs of retrospective and longitudinal prospective clinical trials were used. To evaluate the presence of weather factors and patient complaints linkage, the method of hierarchical agglomerative clustering was used. The ARIMA moving variable method was used to assess risks and build predictive models. Results. The greatest impact on the well-being of patients with hypertension treated in Sanatorium and Resort Complex «Vulan», a scientific and clinical branch of the National Medical Research Center of Rehabilitation and Balneology, are rapid changes in atmospheric pressure (1.7 points out of 3 maximums possible) and temperature (1.3 points), “magnetic storms” (1.9 points), as well as high atmospheric pressure (1.2 points), the least influence is frost (0.2 points) and snow (0.1 points). Patients with essential hypertension who came to undergo sanatorium-resort treatment in the Southern Federal District (FD) (Gelendzhik) showed pronounced adaptive changes, manifested in an increase in the amplitude of changes in subjective indicators from 3-5 to 10-14 days of treatment. Adaptation of patients who arrived from the Central FD and the Ural FD was distinguished by the onset of the adaptive changes peak on the 3 day and attenuation of adaptive reactions by 10-14th days. In patients coming from the Southern FD, the adaptive reactions were poorly expressed, had no significant peaks and subsided on 10-14th days. Conclusion. The severity of meteopathic reactions depends on the region of the patient’s residence, the region of the sanatoriumresort treatment, the duration of the patient’s staying in the resort area. The questionnaire and the self-control diary developed in the course of the study allow an adequate assessment of the meteorological factors influence on the human body.

This paper examines the transition process in a boundary layer similar to that present over the suction surfaces of aero-engine low-pressure (LP) turbine blades. This transition process is of significant practical interest since the behaviour of this boundary layer largely determines the overall efficiency of the LP turbine. Modern ‘high-lift’ blade designs typically feature a closed laminar separation bubble on the aft portion of the suction surface. The size of this bubble and hence the inefficiency it generates is controlled by the transition between laminar and turbulent flow in the boundary layer and separated shear layer. The transition process is complicated by the inherent unsteadiness of the multi-stage machine: the wakes shed by one blade row convect through the downstream blade passages, periodically disturbing the boundary layers. As a consequence, the transition to turbulence is multi-modal by nature, being promoted by periodic and turbulent fluctuations in the free stream and the inherent instabilities of the boundary layer. Despite many studies examining the flow behaviour, the detailed physics of the unsteady transition phenomena are not yet fully understood. The boundary-layer transition process has been studied experimentally on a flat plate. The opposing test-section wall was curved to impose a streamwise pressure distribution typical of modern high-lift LP turbines over the flat plate. The presence of an upstream blade row has been simulated by a set of moving bars, which shed wakes across the test section inlet. Further upstream, a grid has been installed to elevate the free-stream turbulence to a level believed to be representative of multi-stage LP turbines. Extensive particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) measurements have been performed on the flat-plate boundary layer to examine the flow behaviour. In the absence of the incoming bar wakes, the grid-generated free-stream turbulence induces relatively weak Klebanoff streaks in the boundary layer which are evident as streamwise streaks of low-velocity fluid. Transition is promoted by the streaks and by the inherent inflectional (Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH)) instability of the separation bubble. In unsteady flow, the incoming bar wakes generate stronger Klebanoff streaks as they pass over the leading edge, which convect downstream at a fraction of the free-stream velocity and spread in the streamwise direction. The region of amplified streaks convects in a similar manner to a classical turbulent spot: the leading and trailing edges travel at around 88% and 50% of the free-stream velocity, respectively. The strongest disturbances travel at around 70% of the free-stream velocity. The wakes induce a second type of disturbance as they pass over the separation bubble, in the form of short-span KH structures. Both the streaks and the KH structures contribute to the early wake-induced transition. The KH structures are similar to those observed in the simulation of separated flow transition with high free-stream turbulence by McAuliffe & Yaras (ASME J. Turbomach., vol. 132, no. 1, 2010, 011004), who observed that these structures originated from localised instabilities of the shear layer induced by Klebanoff streaks. In the current measurements, KH structures are frequently observed directly under the path of the wake. The wake-amplified Klebanoff streaks cannot affect the generation of these structures since they do not arrive at the bubble until later in the wake cycle. Rather, the KH structures arise from an interaction between the flow disturbances in the wake and localised instabilities in the shear layer, which are caused by the weak Klebanoff streaks induced by the grid turbulence. The breakdown of the KH structures to small-scale turbulence occurs a short time after the wake has passed over the bubble, and is largely driven by the arrival of the wake-amplified Klebanoff streaks from the leading edge. During this process, the re-attachment location moves rapidly upstream. The minimum length of the bubble occurs when the strongest wake-amplified Klebanoff streaks arrive from the leading edge; these structures travel at around 70% of the free-stream velocity. The bubble remains shorter than its steady-flow length until the trailing edge of the wake-amplified Klebanoff streaks, travelling at 50% of the free-stream velocity, convect past. After this time, the reattachment location moves aft on the surface as a consequence of a calmed flow region which follows behind the wake-induced turbulence.

Experimental data of formation laser-induced filaments in various media (potassium chloride, water, air and silicon carbide) are represented. These phenomena are analyzed as processes of Nonlinear and Relaxed Optics. Problems of modeling the creation the volume laser-induced filaments are investigated. Comparative analysis of plasma, nonlinear optical, diffractive and interference phenomena (including diffractive stratification), shocking processes (including Cherenkov radiation) and physical-chemical processes (including cascade model of excitation the proper chemical bonds in the regime of saturation the excitation), methods and models are represented and discussed. The optical breakdown for various matters has various natures: from shock ionization of gas to disruption of all chemical bonds for solid in the region of interaction light and matter or from nonequilibrium radiated processes in gas and liquid to irreversible phase transformations in solid. For diffraction stratification the modified models of Rayleygh rings was used. We show that this model allow to explain the experimental data for silicon carbide more effectively as Lugovoy-Prokhorov theory of moving foci. Modified Niels and Aage Bohrs models (microscopic) and Golub model (macroscopic) of Cherenkov radiation were used for the explanation of generation continuous radiation. Diffraction stratification shows the surface conic nature of Cherenkov radiation. It was show that physical-chemical method of estimations of corresponding processes is more general as electromagnetic (Kerr media) and one allow explain basic terms of resulting chain process with united point of view. Modified I. Frank model of interference the Cherenkov radiation was used for the explanation laser-induced optical breakdown in silicon carbide. Modified Rayleygh model and methods of continuum mechanics was created and used for the estimation sizes and form of observing nanovoids of silicon carbide. In whole the represented models allow to explain the corresponding chain more fuller and really as other models because one take into account of nonlinear optical transformation of primary laser radiation.

Compared to robots and devices made of rigid components, soft robots and flexible devices driven by soft active materials possess various advantages including high adaptability under extreme environment and compatibility with a human. Dielectric elastomer (DE) membrane, which is commonly used in building soft actuators, can achieve large actuation by the combined loadings of voltage-induced Maxwell stress and fluidic pressures (pneumatic and hydraulic pressure). This paper proposes a pneumatic–hydraulic coupled electromechanical actuator (PHCEA), which exhibits strong coupling effect of electromechanical actuation (the Maxwell stress on DE membrane), pneumatic and hydraulic pressures. Considering the moving boundary and state transition, a computational model has been developed to investigate the coupling behaviors of the PHCEA. The numerical result by this model is in accordance with the experimental measurements. The combination of experimental data and the theoretical result indicates that the state transition and moving boundary separate the potential region of electrical breakdown and mechanical damage. This model can be utilized as a practical method to characterize the performance and guide the design of soft devices. The experimental setup and computational method of the PHCEA bring new insights into the fabrication and characterization of soft robots, adaptive optics, and flexible bio-medical devices. The PHCEA possesses wide applications in underwater robots, soft muscles, and microfluidics systems. It can serve as the gas bladder of soft swimming robots, the soft actuator of hydraulic–pneumatic coupling systems, and the gas–liquid valve of flexible microfluidics systems.

Abstract Background In Camponotus sericeus (Fabricius), foraging ants are recruited mostly as individuals but occasionally as small groups that move in a single file. We studied the structure and organization of these small foraging groups and attempted to understand the process through which the cohesiveness of the moving file is maintained. Results The recruited group moves in a single file as if steered by a leader at the moving tip. Ants in the group were found to exhibit certain fidelity to their respective positions in the file, despite the occasional breakdown of the cohesiveness due to disturbance and or obstructions on their path. This fidelity decreases from both ends towards the middle part of the file. Accordingly, three segments could be recognized in the moving file: (a) the leading ant that almost always maintains its position and steers the group, (b) a short tail part with a few ants that always trail the file and, (c) the mid part that binds the group; ants in this segment always tend to follow the leader through a cascading chain of tactile communication. If the leader ant is removed, entire group loses its orientation and enters into a chaotic search state. But removing any other ant does not affect the cohesiveness; rather it’s position is occupied by the member preceding it and thus maintains the link in the group. Conclusions The cohesiveness of the moving group appeared to result from (a) regulation of the movement of the group by the leading ant, and, (b) an interactive process among the rest of the ants. Based on these two elements, a simple automated model of the group’s movement was developed that could effectively mimic the observed pattern. We also provide evidence to suggest that recruitment of groups occurs in the direction of, and in response to, the information received by the colony on, the resource rich patches.

Planning of Container Terminal equipment has always been uncertain due to seasonal and fluctuating throughput demand, along with factors of delay in operation, breakdown and maintenance. Many time-series models have been developed to forecast the unforeseen future of container throughput to project the needed amount of port equipments for optimum operation. Conventionally, a "ratio" method developed by port consultants at early port design stage is adopted for equipment planning, giving no consideration to the dynamic growth of the port in terms of improved layout and technological advancement in equipments. This study seeks first to enhance the empirical approach of the equipment planning at the end of planning time horizon by including assumed coefficient of port capacity parameters. The second is to compare the size of equipment purchase by receiving different terminal's future throughput demand from two univariate forecasting models at planning time horizon. The empirical method of equipment planning will be tested against the conventional yard equipment per quay crane ratio after deriving the throughput demand from forecasting models of Holt-Winter's exponential smoothing and seasonal ARIMA (autoregression integrated moving average) model. Results in the form of graphs and tables indicate similar forecasting pattern by two models and equipment estimation proofs to avail more redundancy for optimum operation. Suggestions for better estimation of equipments are also made for future models.

This paper explores an investigation on Queuing framework in E-trade. Online business (electronic trade) is the acquiring and selling of product and adventures, or the transmitting of benefits or data, over an electronic system, basically the web. It is the trading of things or administrations using PC systems like Internet or online casual networks. Here the Business is led utilizing PCs, phones, fax machines, standardized tag per users, Visas, ATM or other electronic apparatuses without the trading of paper-based records or physically moving to a strip mall. It incorporates exercises, for instance, acquirement, request passage, trade handling, online installment, verification, stock control, request satisfaction, shipment, and client support. In the Queuing arrangement of E trade, the clients touches base in Batch with Reneging happens at the set-up time organize and Optional second stage where breakdown happens just as fix procedure will be done. Moreover, we accept that the clients may renege amid the Initial stage because of eagerness (Slow server) or Non-Satisfaction in acquiring the items from the specific site. At the season of Repair process, Strictly Non-acceptability of the clients is executed. The model is well analyzed and solved by supplementary variable method .The system performance measures are derived. Numerical analysis and graphical representation of the model clearly justifies the model to a fullest satisfaction.

The unsteady flow physics due to interactions between a separated shear layer and film cooling jet apart from excitation of periodic passing wake are studied using large eddy simulation (LES). An aerofoil of constant thickness with rounded leading edge induced flow separation, while film cooling jets were injected normal to the crossflow a short distance downstream of the blend point. Wake data extracted from precursor LES of flow past a cylinder are used to replicate a moving bar that generates wakes in front of a cascade (in this case, an infinite row of the model aerofoils). This setup is a simplified representation of rotor-stator interaction in a film cooled gas turbine. The results of numerical simulation are presented to elucidate the formation, convection and breakdown of flow structures associated with the highly anisotropic flow involved in film cooling perturbed by convective wakes. The various vortical structures namely, horseshoe vortex, roller vortex, upright wake vortex, counter rotating vortex pair (CRVP), and downward spiral separation node (DSSN) vortex associated with film cooling are resolved. The effects of wake on the evolution of these structures are then discussed.

Study of the flow within diesel injector has gained in importance over the years as several authors have reported that the injector flow in the sac volume highly influenced the nozzle-flow characteristics at low lifts. Few studies have, however, characterized the sac volume and its dynamics. Thus, this paper reports on a numerical characterization of the needle displacement effects (static vs dynamic) on the internal flow of a sac-volume, single-hole diesel injector. To this end, a transient double-injection “closing-opening-closing-opening” cycle was simulated with a monophasic incompressible CFD model in combination with a moving mesh strategy to capture axial needle displacement. A large eddy simulation (LES) approach was chosen to gain better insight into the complexity of this unsteady turbulent flow. The emphasis of the paper is on the dynamic effects of needle movement on the sac flow, while static needle LES results are also shown to illustrate differences. The main findings reported herein are that the dynamic model shows a hysteresis effect associated with the needle motion between opening/closing phases. Quantitatively, the transient needle movement caused a difference in mass flow rate between the sac entrance and exit that was found to reach a maximum of [Formula: see text]. The hysteresis effect was found to be more pronounced at low needle lifts; both static and dynamic models seem to have performed similarly at very high needle lifts. Qualitatively, the LES sac-volume flow representations revealed a fuel jet attachment/detachment with needle movement, while static partial-lift simulations always predict an attached fuel jet. Further analysis of sac vortex dynamics revealed a high-energy vortex-structure breakdown just before the nozzle entrance that could help explain the higher turbulence production reported in the literature, both experimentally and numerically, at low needle lifts.

Abstract It has become apparent recently that the fluidic oscillators, also known as sweeping jets, can be used to create a combination of steady (streamwise vortices) and unsteady (spanwise vortices) forcing mechanisms which have the potential to fulfill many of the promises of active separation control. The fluidic oscillators contain no moving parts, but produce an unsteady component via a natural feedback loop inherent to their geometry. The oscillations are entirely self-induced and self-sustaining. Their simple and robust design and their effectiveness over a wide range of flow conditions make them more attractive than other flow control devices, such as synthetic jets and plasma actuators. Figure 1 shows the instantaneous jet generated in quiescent environment using the Improved Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (IDDES) model, where the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) branch of the IDDES model is able to capture the turbulence structures properly. An instantaneous iso-surface of vorticity magnitude, colored by streamwise velocity for flow over a wall-mounted hump is depicted in Figure 2. As expected, a massive flow separation occurs behind the hump in the uncontrolled condition (Figure 2 (a)), with a nearly two-dimensional free shear layer at the edge of the separation line. Breakdown of the shear layer by an array of sweeping jets located slightly downstream of the separation line is seen in Figure 2 (b), which is followed by the elimination of the separation region behind hump. The three-dimensional structures generated by the sweeping jets are smaller and closer to the hump wall than those produced by the steady jets shown in Figure 2 (c). Presence of a large region of reversed flow near the hump wall in its aft section is also seen in the case of the steady jet. This study indicates a superior effectiveness of sweeping jets on separated flows.

Resilience is an interdisciplinary concept that has been interrogated and investigated in a number of fields of research and practice including psychology, climate change, trauma studies, education and disaster planning. This paper considers its position within critical disability studies, popular understandings of disability and the emergence of a disability culture. Patrick Martin-Breen and J. Marty Anderies offer a colloquial definition of resilience as: Bouncing back after stress, enduring greater stress, and being less disturbed by a given amount of stress. … To be resilient is to withstand a large disturbance without, in the end, changing, disintegrating, or becoming permanently damaged; to return to normal quickly; and to distort less in the face of such stresses. (1182) Conversely, Glenn E. Richardson argues that resiliency is a ‘metatheory’ that can best be described as ‘growth or adaptation through disruption rather than to just recover or bounce back’ (1184). He argues that resiliency theory has progressed through several stages, from the recognition of characteristics of resilient individuals to an appreciation of the support structures required beyond the level of the individual. In her memoir Resilience, Ann Deveson describes resilience as a concept that people think they understand until they are called upon to define it. Deveson offers many definitions and examples of resilience throughout her book, beginning with stories about disability, people with disability and their experiences of changing levels of social inclusion and exclusion (632). She paints an evocative picture of a young mother whose five year old son has cerebral palsy giving evidence before a Royal Commission into Human Relationships during a period of significant social change involving the deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities: A few years earlier, this child with cerebral palsy would have been placed in an institution. His mother might not even have seen him. Now she had care of her child but the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. (632) During the 1980s a number of large institutions caring for people with developmental impairments and psychiatric illnesses were closed in favour of community care (Clear 652). Although giving an appearance of endorsing equality of disabled people in the community, the ‘hidden agenda’ of this initiative was to cut public expenditure on social services (Ellis 163). As a result, an undue burden fell to women who became primary carers with little support such as the woman Deveson remembers. She questions where this young mother mustered such ‘magnificent resilience’ when she had such little support: When he was born, she had been discharged from the hospital with her baby, a feeding formula and a tiny pink plate for the child’s cleft palate. The only advice she received was to come back later to have the plate refitted. Her general practitioner prescribed her sedatives for depression, and she and her husband found their own way to the Royal Blind society by asking a blind man they saw outside a supermarket. She had only learned accidentally from one of the nurses that her baby was blind. ‘He’s mentally retarded too,’ the nurse had added, almost as an afterthought. (632) Thus Deveson’s consideration of resilience includes both an individual’s response to what could be described as tragedy and the importance of social support and the drive to demand it. Despite her child’s impairment and the lack of community resources made available to her family to cope, this young woman was leading public discussion about the plight of people with disabilities and their families in the hopes the government would intervene to help improve the situation (Deveson 632). Indeed, when it comes to the experience of disability, resilience is implied and generally understood to mean an attribute of the individual. However, as resilience theory has progressed, resilience can no longer be considered as existing exclusively within the domain of an individual’s personal qualities. Environmental support structures are vital in fostering resilience (Wilkes). Despite resiliency theory moving on from the level of the individual, popular discourses of resiliency as an individual’s attribute continue to dominate disability. As such, some critical disability commentators have redefined resilience as a response to a disabling social world. My aim in this paper is to explore this discourse by engaging with ideas about disability and resilience that emerge in popular culture. Despite the changing social position of people with disabilities in the community, notions of resilience are often invoked to describe the experience of people with disability and attributes of successful (often considered ‘inspiring’) people with disability. I begin by offering a definition of resilience as it is bound up in notions of inspiration and usually applied to people with disabilities. The second part of the paper explores disability as a cultural signifier to comment on the ways in which disability offers cultural meanings that may work to reassure nondisabled people of their privileged position. Finally, the paper considers interpretations of disability as a personal tragedy before exploring the emergence of a disability culture that recognises the social and cultural oppression experienced by people with disabilities and reworks definitions of resilience as a response to that oppression. Defining Resilience: Good Outcomes in Spite of Serious Threats Disability is often invoked in stories about resilience. Gillian King, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith argue that a clear link exists between resilience and feeling that life is meaningful. They argue that the experiences of people with disabilities can offer a template for how to develop resilience and cope with life changes (King, Brown and Smith 633). According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, resilience is ‘the action or an act of rebounding or springing back’ (653). King et al add that several concepts are associated with resilience such as hardiness, a sense of coherence and learned optimism (633). Deveson, resilience ‘has come to mean an ability to confront adversity and still find hope and meaning in life’. She comments that it conjures up notions of heroism, endurance and determination (632). Each of these characteristics we might describe as inspirational. It is telling that both Deveson and King et al use people with disabilities as signifiers of resilience in practice. However, Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley argue that this definition of resilience has not necessarily been useful to people with disabilities and instead recommend a definition of resilience that Deveson only alludes to. For Runswick-Cole and Goodley resilience can be located in social processes. They argue that a thorough investigation of resilience in the lives of people with disabilities considers the broader social and cultural restrictions placed on top of impairments rather than simply individualising resilience as a character trait of people who can ‘overcome the odds’: An exploration of resilience in the lives of disabled people must, then, focus on what resources are available and who is accessing those resources. Crucially, in seeking to build resilience in the lives of disabled people, this can never simply be a matter of building individual capacity or family support, it must also be a case of challenging social, attitudinal and structural barriers which increase adversity in the lives of disabled people. (634) This is an alternative approach to disability that sees ‘the problem’ located in social structures and inaccessible environments. This so-called social model of disability is based on principles of empowerment and argues that able-bodied mainstream society disables people who have impairments through an inaccessible built environment and the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes. Disability Dustbins and Inspirational Cripples Arthur Frank, sociologist and author of The Wounded Storyteller, explains that ‘the human body, for all its resilience, is fragile; breakdown is built into it. Bodily predictability, if not the exception, should be regarded as exceptional; contingency ought to be accepted as normative’ (634). Frank argues that we do not want to admit that our bodies are unpredictable and could ‘break down’ at any moment. Those bodies that do break down therefore become representatives of many of the things [the able-bodied, normal world] most fear-tragedy, loss, dark and the unknown. Involuntarily we walk- or more often sit- in the valley of the shadow of death. Contact with us throws up in people's faces the fact of sickness and death in the world … A deformed and paralysed body attacks everyone's sense of well-being and invincibility. (Hunt 186) People with disabilities therefore become loaded cultural signifiers, as Tom Shakespeare argues in Cultural Representations of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal: ‘it is non-disabled people’s embodiment which is the issue: disabled people remind non-disabled people of their own vulnerability’ (139). As a result, people with disabilities are culturally othered. Several disability theorists have argued that this makes the non-disabled feel better about themselves and their tenuous privileged position (Barnes; Ellis; Kumari Campbell; Oliver, Goggin and Newell; Shakespeare). Disability, as a concept, is both everywhere and nowhere. Generally considered a medical experience or personal tragedy, the discipline of critical disability studies has emerged to question why disability is considered an inherently negative experience and if there is more to disability than a body that has something wrong with it. Fiona Kumari Campbell suggests ableism – ‘the network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species typical and therefore essential and fully human’ – is repeatedly performed in our culture. This cultural project is difficult to sustain because by their very nature all bodies are out of control. People with disability are an acute reminder of the temporariness of an able bodied ontology (650). In order to maintain this division and network of beliefs, the idea that disability is a personal tragedy rather than a set of social relations designed to exclude some bodies but not others is culturally reproduced through stereotypes such as the idea that people with disabilities who achieve both ordinary and extraordinary things are sources of inspiration. Resilience as a personal quality is implicated in this stereotype. In a powerful Ramp Up blog that was republished on the ABC’s Drum and the influential popular culture/mummy blogging site website Mamamia, Stella Young takes issues with the media’s framing of disability as inspirational: We all learn how to use the bodies we're born with, or learn to use them in an adjusted state, whether those bodies are considered disabled or not. So that image of the kid drawing a picture with the pencil held in her mouth instead of her hand? That's just the best way for her, in her body, to do it. For her, it's normal. I can't help but wonder whether the source of this strange assumption that living our lives takes some particular kind of courage is the news media, an incredibly powerful tool in shaping the way we think about disability. Most journalists seem utterly incapable of writing or talking about a person with a disability without using phrases like "overcoming disability", "brave", "suffers from", "defying the odds", "wheelchair bound" or, my personal favourite, "inspirational". If we even begin to question the way we're labelled, we slide immediately to the other end of the scale and become "bitter" and "ungrateful". We fail to be what people expect. (610) These phrases, that Young claims the media rely on to isolate people with disabilities, are synonyms for the qualities Deveson attributes to resilient individuals (632). As Beth Haller notes, although disabled activists and academics attempt to progress important political work, the news media continue to frame people with disability as courageous and inspirational simply for living their lives (216). By comparison, disability theorist Irving Zola describes rejecting his leg braces (symbolic of his professional status) electing instead to use a wheelchair: If we lived in a less healthiest, capitalist, and hierarchal society, which spent less time finding ways to exclude and disenfranchise people and more time finding ways to include and enhance the potentialities of everyone, then there wouldn’t have been so much for me to overcome. (654) Harilyn Russo agrees, and in her memoir Don’t Call Me Inspirational highlights the socially created barriers put in her way and the ways these are ignored in favour of individualising social disablement as something inspirational people ‘overcome’: I’ll tell you why I am inspirational: I put up with the barriers, the barricades, the bullshit you put between us to avoid confronting something—probably yourself—and still pay the rent on time and savor dark chocolate. Now that takes real courage. (651) Throughout her book, Russo seeks to ‘overcome disability prejudice’ rather than ‘overcome disability’. Russo establishes herself and her experiences as normal and every day while articulating the tedium she finds in being pigeon holed as inspirational. These authors are constructing a new way of thinking about disability. Michael Oliver first described this as the ‘social model of disability’ in 1981. He sought to overturn the pathologisation of disability by giving people ‘a way of applying the idea that it was society not people with impairments that should be the target for professional intervention and practice’ (Runswick-Cole and Goodley 634). Resilience: A Key Concept Fiona Kumari Campbell questions whether resilience is a useful concept in the context of disability and reflects on its use to obscure “the ‘real’ problem, namely disability oppression” (649). She interrogates traditional definitions of resilience as they draw on notions of good outcomes in spite of risk factors or experiences of severe trauma and calls for an understanding of the interactive and dynamic features of resilience as opposed to ‘individualised psychological attributes’. Thus, individualised notions of resilience as they are implicated in the cultural stories of inspirational people with disabilities are embedded within the ableist relations that Kumari Campbell seeks to expose. In Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience, Dan Goodley argues that resilience is a key concept that has repeatedly emerged throughout his research into disability and self-advocacy. He draws on the reflections of people with disabilities to offer a re-definition of resilience as a response to a disabling society that includes five interrelated aspects (648). First is resilience as contextual, which recognises resilience as the result of the contexts in which it emerges, including through relationships with others and the experience of disabling and enabling environments. Secondly, resilience complicates preconceived notions about people with disabilities such as the view that they are passive. Goodley’s third feature of resilience is optimism. He notes resistance toward oppression as a key characteristic of optimistic resilience. Goodley again considers the importance of interpersonal relationships and group identity when he argues that the fourth feature of resilience relies on people with disabilities forming relationships with each other and group identities to question their oppression. Finally, Goodley argues ‘resilience is indicative of disablement’ and suggests that people with disability must be resilient in everyday life because we live in a disabling society. Kumari Campbell posits that individualised notions of resilience are a ‘cop out’ designed to ‘distract and defuse the reality of people labouring under very difficult circumstances of which the solution is better access to quality services’. She is hopeful, like Goodley, that resilience can be redefined as a political project, and encourages people with disabilities to develop a critical consciousness and find a new sense of community through art, humour and peer support. Therefore, according to Kumari Campbell and Goodley, resilience can be redefined as a response to social disablement rather than bodily impairment. Disability Culture: Acts of Resilience in a Disabling Society Russo and Zola’s work is part of a disability culture that has emerged in response to narrow ways of understanding disability. Steven Brown emphasises the importance of experience and personal identity in his definition of disability culture: People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives and our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. (520) Brown’s definition of disability culture therefore draws on all five of Goodley’s features of resilience. Disability culture is contextual, complicating, optimistic, interpersonal and indicative of disablement. The forging of a group identity reveals the resilience of disability culture as contextual and interpersonal. The creation of art, music, literature and other cultural artefacts reveals resilience as optimistic. The notion that people with disabilities are proud of their identity complicates traditional understandings of disability as a personal tragedy. Brown’s emphasis on the common history of the oppression of people with disabilities, as it initiated the whole disability culture movement, is ‘indicative of disablement’. The bonds of resilience that create the disability cultural movement are a result of the social oppression of people with disabilities (Gill; Martin; Brown; Goodley). Conclusion Whereas people with disabilities going about their every day lives have often been considered inspirational and as possessing resilient qualities, a new disability culture is emerging that repositions the resilience of people with disabilities as a political response to social oppression. Drawing on Runswick-Cole and Goodley’s argument that individualising qualities of resilience in inspirational people with disabilities has not benefitted people with disabilities, this paper sought to reveal the importance of resilience as a response to social oppression. People with disabilities in their formation of a disability cultural movement are reworking and redefining resilience as a response to oppression. Throughout this paper I have drawn on the reflections of a number of people with disabilities to illustrate the emergence of a disability culture as it has begun the work of redefining resilience as a political project that “‘outs’ the problems that disabled people face and names and prioritises the concerns” (Kumari Campbell 649). As Goodley argues, people with disabilities have developed a politics of resilience ‘in the face of a disabling world’. References Barnes, Colin. “Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People.” 1992. Brown, Steven. “What Is Disability Culture?” Disability Studies Quarterly 22.2 (2002). Clear, Mike. Promises, Promises: Disability and Terms of Inclusion. Leichhardt: Federation Press, 2000. Deveson, Ann. Resilience. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Ellis, Katie. Disabling Diversity: The Social Construction of Disability in 1990s Australian National Cinema. Saarbrücken, Germany: VDM Verlag, 2008. Frank, Arthur. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness and Ethics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Gill, Carol. “A Psychological View of Disability Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly (Fall 1995). ———. "Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid." Sydney: University of New South Wales, 2005. Goodley, Dan. “Empowerment, Self-Advocacy and Resilience.” Journal of Intellectual Disabilities 9.4 (2005): 333-343. Haller, Beth. Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media. Louisville, KY: Avocado Press, 2010. Hunt, Paul. “A Critical Condition.” Stigma: The Experience of Disability. Ed. Paul Hunt. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966. King, Gillian, Elizabeth Brown, and Linda Smith. “Resilience: Learning from People with Disabilities and the Turning Points in Their Lives.” Health Psychology. Ed. Barbara, Tinsley. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Kumari Campbell, Fiona. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. ———. “Out of the Shadows: Resilience and Living with Ableism Seminar.” The University of Dundee, 13 Sep. 2010. Martin-Breen, Patrick, and J. Marty Anderies. “Resilience: A Literature Review.” The Rockefeller Foundation, 2011. Martin, Douglas. Disability Culture: Eager to Bite the Hands That Would Feed Them. New York Times, 1997. Oliver, Mike. “Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice.” Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillian, 1996. Oxford English Dictionary. “resilience, n.” Oxford University Press. Richardson, G. E. “The Metatheory of Resilience and Resiliency,” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3. (2002): 307-321. Rousso, Harilyn. "Don’t Call Me Inspirational: A Disabled Feminist Talks Back." Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2013. Runswick-Cole, Katherine, and Dan Goodley. “Resilience: A Disability Studies and Community Psychology Approach.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7. 2 (2013): 67-78. Shakespeare, Tom. “Cultural Representation of Disabled People: Dustbins for Disavowal?” Disability & Society 9.3 (1994): 283-299. Wilkes, Glenda. “Introduction – A Second Generation of Resilience Research.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 58.3 (2002): 229-232. Young, Stella. “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration.” Ramp Up 2012. Zola, Irving. Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1982.

Clinical trials that involve medical products are critical to advancing treatments in any medical field and are designed with careful thought and attention to detail. These details include careful assessment of safety parameters from patient safety visits, lab work and deliberately placed screening parameters. Meticulous planning for primary, secondary and correlative outcomes is completed by the study team and the biostatisticians involved in each study design. These precise measures are then methodically written as a clinical trial protocol and submitted to regulatory bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) often as an Investigational Drug Application (IND) and also submitted to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) so that a study can have the appropriate regulatory approval to be tested for the desired outcome. The Principal Investigator (PI) and study team are required to follow these protocols and regulatory requirements with exactitude to maintain clinical trial integrity. While there are many models projecting variances in the timeframe of this pandemic, it is very possible that these modifications will be in place for months/years to come in varying intensities, so it is imperative that we understand them if we participate in clinical trials moving forward.

The main problem of the theory in the arena of islamic architecture is affected by some of its Western<br />thoughts, and stereotyping the islamic architecture according to Western thoughts; this leads to the breakdown<br />of the foundations in the islamic architecture. It is a myth that islamic architecture is subjected to the<br />influence from foreign architectures. This paper will highlight the dialectical concept of islamic architecture or<br />muslim buildings and the areas of recognition in islamic architecture. It will also widen the knowledge in the<br />characteristics of each point in time according to the stages of islamic architecture from the prophetic age<br />moving through the architecture outside the city of Medina, the Caliphs, the Umayyad, Abbasid, and<br />architectural models by spatial and time periods, taking Iraq as the example to explain how the Islam influents<br />on architecture and vice versa.

The accuracy of a parallel kinematic mechanism (PKM) is directly related to its dynamic stiffness, which in turn is configuration dependent. For PKMs with kinematic redundancy, configurations with higher stiffness can be chosen during motion-trajectory planning for optimal performance. Herein, dynamic stiffness refers to the deformation of the mechanism structure, subject to dynamic loads of changing frequency. The stiffness-optimization problem has two computational constraints: (i) calculation of the dynamic stiffness of any considered PKM configuration, at a given task-space location, and (ii) searching for the PKM configuration with the highest stiffness at this location. Due to the lack of available analytical models, herein, the former subproblem is addressed via a novel effective emulator to provide a computationally efficient approximation of the high-dimensional dynamic-stiffness function suitable for optimization. The proposed method for emulator development identifies the mechanism's structural modes in order to breakdown the high-dimensional stiffness function into multiple functions of lower dimension. Despite their computational efficiency, however, emulators approximating high-dimensional functions are often difficult to develop and implement due to the large amount of data required to train the emulator. Reducing the dimensionality of the approximation function would, thus, result in a smaller training data set. In turn, the smaller training data set can be obtained accurately via finite-element analysis (FEA). Moving least-squares (MLS) approximation is proposed herein to compute the low-dimensional functions for stiffness approximation. Via extensive simulations, some of which are described herein, it is demonstrated that the proposed emulator can predict the dynamic stiffness of a PKM at any given configuration with high accuracy and low computational expense, making it quite suitable for most high-precision applications. For example, our results show that the proposed methodology can choose configurations along given trajectories within a few percentage points of the optimal ones.

Abstract Hydrodynamics and (catalytic & non-catalytic) reaction [high-pressure hydrodesulfurization; Fischer-Tropsch synthesis; CO2-monoethanolamine (MEA) absorption; simultaneous CO2 and H2S absorption in MEA; CO2 thermal desorption, enzymatic CO2 hydration] performances of trickle-bed and packed-bed column reactors subjected to static inclination, rolling (symmetrical/asymmetrical externally-generated reactor oscillations) and heaving motions were analyzed via detailed dynamic 3-D models which couple the macroscopic volume-averaged momentum, mass, energy and species balance equations in the liquid/gas phases with diffusion/chemical reaction inside the catalyst particles, enzyme washcoat or liquid film near the gas-liquid interface. Axial symmetry breakdown once the packed bed systems become inclined inflicts noticeable reductions of the reactor (or scrubber) performances. Only the performance of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in the presence of water-gas shift reaction increases slightly with the increase of trickle-bed reactor inclination because of facile uptake of reactants in the key reactions from the gas phase while a fraction of valuable CO can be forwarded in water gas-shift reaction. For most of the reactions examined, the reactor performance is negatively impacted in asymmetric oscillating multiphase reactors with Fischer-Tropsch synthesis as an exception owing to the presence of water-gas shift reaction the performance of which is slightly improved. This performance deterioration/enhancement is maximal for the reactor moving between vertical and an inclined position when the time-dependent performance waves develop around the steady-state solution of the mid-inclination angle. The oscillatory reactor performance moves towards the steady-state solution of the vertical state when the asymmetry between the two inclined positions dwindles. Symmetric oscillating and heaving trickle-bed and packed-bed column reactors generate an oscillatory performance around the steady-state solution of vertical state which is affected by the amplitude and period of the angular and heaving motions of the vessel.

The two companions scurry off when they hear a noise at the door. It was only a noise, but it was also a message, a bit of information producing panic: an interruption, a corruption, a rupture of communication. Was the noise really a message? Wasn’t it, rather, static, a parasite? Michael Serres, 1982. Since, ordinarily, channels have a certain amount of noise, and therefore a finite capacity, exact transmission is impossible. Claude Shannon, 1948. Reading Information At their most simplistic, there are two means for shifting information around – analogue and digital. Analogue movement depends on analogy to perform computations; it is continuous and the relationships between numbers are keyed as a continuous ordinal set. The digital set is discrete; moving one finger at a time results in a one-to-one correspondence. Nevertheless, analogue and digital are like the two companions in Serres’ tale. Each suffers the relationship of noise to information as internal rupture and external interference. In their examination of historical constructions of information, Hobart and Schiffman locate the noise of the analogue within its physical materials; they write, “All analogue machines harbour a certain amount of vagueness, known technically as ‘noise’. Which describes the disturbing influences of the machine’s physical materials on its calculations” (208). These “certain amounts of vagueness” are essential to Claude Shannon’s articulation of a theory for information transfer that forms the basis for this paper. In transforming the structures and materials through which it travels, information has left its traces in digital art installation. These traces are located in installation’s systems, structures and materials. The usefulness of information theory as a tool to understand these relationships has until recently been overlooked by a tradition of media art history that has grouped artworks according to the properties of the artwork and/or tied them into the histories of representation and perception in art theory. Throughout this essay I use the productive dual positioning of noise and information to address the errors and impurity inherent within the viewing experiences of digital installation. Information and Noise It is not hard to see why the fractured spaces of digital installation are haunted by histories of information science. In his 1948 essay “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” Claude Shannon developed a new model for communications technologies that articulated informational feedback processes. Discussions of information transmission through phone lines were occurring alongside the development of technology capable of computing multiple discrete and variable packets of information: that is, the digital computer. And, like art, information science remains concerned with the material spaces of transmission – whether conceptual, social or critical. In the context of art something is made to be seen, understood, viewed, or presented as a series of relationships that might be established between individuals, groups, environments, and sensations. Understood this way art is an aesthetic relationship between differing material bodies, images, representations, and spaces. It is an event. Shannon was adamant that information must not be confused with meaning. To increase efficiency he insisted that the message be separated from its components; in particular, those aspects that were predictable were not to be considered information (Hansen 79). The problem that Shannon had to contend with was noise. Unwanted and disruptive, noise became symbolic of the struggle to control the growth of systems. The more complex the system, the more noise needed to be addressed. Noise is both the material from which information is constructed, as well as being the matter which information resists. Weaver (Shannon’s first commentator) writes: In the process of being transmitted, it is unfortunately characteristic that certain things are added to the signal which were not intended by the information source. These unwanted additions may be distortions of sound (in telephony, for example) or static (in radio), or distortions in shape or shading of picture (television), or errors in transmission (telegraphy or facsimile), etc. All of these changes in the transmitted signal are called noise. (4). To enable more efficient message transmission, Shannon designed systems that repressed as much noise as possible, while also acknowledging that without some noise information could not be transmitted. Shannon’s conception of information meant that information would not change if the context changed. This was crucial if a general theory of information transmission was to be plausible and meant that a methodology for noise management could be foregrounded (Pask 123). Without meaning, information became a quantity, a yes or no decision, that Shannon called a “bit” (1). Shannon’s emphasis on separating signal or message from both predicability and external noise appeared to give information an identity where it could float free of a material substance and be treated independently of context. However, for this to occur information would have to become fixed and understood as an entity. Shannon went to pains to demonstrate that the separation of meaning and information was actually to enable the reverse. A fluidity of information and the possibilities for encoding it would mean that information, although measurable, did not have a finite form. Tied into the paradox of this equation is the crucial role of noise or error. In Shannon’s communication model information is not only complicit with noise; it is totally dependant upon it for understanding. Without noise, either encoded within the original message or present from sources outside the channel, information cannot get through. The model of sender-encoder-channel-signal (message)-decoder-receiver that Shannon constructed has an arrow inserting noise. Visually and schematically this noise is a disruption pointing up and inserting itself in the nice clean lines of the message. This does not mean that noise was a last minute consideration; rather noise was the very thing Shannon was working with (and against). It is present in every image we have of information. A source, message, transmitter, receiver and their attendant noises are all material infrastructures that serve to contextualise the information they transmit, receive, and disrupt. Figure 1. Claude Shannon “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” 1948. In his analytical discussion of the diagram, Shannon actually locates noise in two crucial places. The first position accorded noise is external, marked by the arrow that demonstrates how noise is introduced to the message channel whilst in transit. External noise confuses the purity of the message whilst equivocally adding new information. External noise has a particular materiality and enters the equation as unexplained variation and random error. This is disruptive presence rather than entropic coded pattern. Shannon offers this equivocal definition of noise to be everything that is outside the linear model of sender-channel-receiver; hence, anything can be noise if it enters a channel where it is unwelcome. Secondly, noise was defined as unpredictability or entropy found and encoded within the message itself. This for Shannon was an essential and, in some ways, positive role. Entropic forces invited continual reorganisation and (when engaging the laws of redundancy) assisted with the removal of repetition enabling faster message transmission (Shannon 48). Weaver calls this shifting relationship between entropy and message “equivocation” (11). Weaver identified equivocation as central to the manner in which noise and information operated. A process of equivocation identified the receiver’s knowledge. For Shannon, a process of equivocation mediated between useful information and noise, as both were “measured in the same units” (Hayles, Chaos 55). To eliminate noise completely is to sacrifice information. Information understood in this way is also about relationships between differing material bodies, representations, and spaces, connected together for the purposes of transmission. It, like the artwork, is an event. This would appear to suggest a correlation between information transmission and viewing in galleries. Far from it. Although, the contemporary information channel is essentially a tube with fixed walls, (it is still constrained by physical properties, bandwidth and so on) and despite the implicit spatialisation of information models, I am not proposing a direct correlation between information channels and installation spaces. This is because I am not interested in ‘reading’ the information of either environment. What I am suggesting is that both environments share this material of noise. Noise is present in four places. Firstly noise is within the media errors of transmission, and secondly, it is within the media of the installation, (neither of which are one way flows). Thirdly, the viewer or listener introduces noise as interference, and lastly, it is present in the very materials thorough which it travels. Noise layered on noise. Redundancy and Modulation So far in this paper I have discussed the relationship of information to noise. For the remainder, I want to address some particular processes or manifestations of noise in New Zealand artists’ collective, et al.’s maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 (2006, exhibited as part of the SCAPE Biennal of Art in Public Space, Christchurch Art Gallery). The installation occupies a small alcove that is partially blocked by a military-style portable table stacked with newspapers. Inside the space are three grey wooden chairs, some headphones, and a modified data projection of Google Earth. It is not immediately clear if the viewer is allowed within the spaces of the alcove to listen to the headphones as monotonous voices fill the whole space intoning political, social, and religious platitudes. The headphones might be a tool to block out the noise. In the installation it is as if multiple messages have been sent but their source, channel, and transmitter are unintelligible to the receiver. All that is left is information divorced from meaning. As other works by et al. have demonstrated, social solidarity is not a fundamentalism with directed positions and singular leaders. For example, in rapture (2004) noise disrupts all presence as a portable shed quivers in response to underground nuclear explosions 40,000km away. In the fundamental practice (2005) the viewer is left attempting to decode the un-encoded, as again sound and large steel barriers control and determine only certain movements (see http://www.etal.name/ for some documentation of these projects) . maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 is a development of the fundamental practice. To enter its spaces viewers slip around the table and find themselves extremely close to the projection screen. Despite the provision of copious media the viewer cannot control any aspect of the environment. On screen, and apparently integral to the Google Earth imagery, are five animated and imposing dark grey monolith forms. Because of their connection to the monotonous voices in the headphones, the monoliths seem to map the imposition of narrative, power, and force in various disputed territories. Like their sudden arrival in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) it is the contradiction of the visibility and improbability of the monoliths that renders them believable. On the video landscape the five monoliths apparently house the dispassionate voices of many different media and political authorities. Their presence is both redundant and essential as they modulate the layering of media forces – and in between, error slips in. In a broad discussion of information Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari highlight the necessary role of redundancy commenting that: redundancy has two forms, frequency and resonance; the first concerns the significance of information, the second (I=I) concerns the subjectivity of communication. It becomes apparent that information and communication, and even significance and subjectification, are subordinate to redundancy (79). In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 patterns of frequency highlight the necessary role of entropy where it is coded into gaps in the vocal transmission. Frequency is a structuring of information tied to meaningful communication. Resonance, like the stack of un-decodable newspapers on the portable table, is the carrier of redundancy. It is in the gaps between the recorded voices that connections between the monoliths and the texts are made, and these two forms of redundancy emerge. As Shannon says, redundancy is a problem of language. This is because redundancy and modulation do not equate with relationship of signal to noise. Signal to noise is a representational relationship; frequency and resonance are not representational but relational. This means that an image that might be “real-time” interrupts our understanding that the real comes first with representation always trailing second (Virilio 65). In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 the monoliths occupy a fixed spatial ground, imposed over the shifting navigation of Google Earth (this is not to mistake Google Earth with the ‘real’ earth). Together they form a visual counterpoint to the texts reciting in the viewer’s ears, which themselves might present as real but again, they aren’t. As Shannon contended, information cannot be tied to meaning. Instead, in the race for authority and thus authenticity we find interlopers, noisy digital images that suggest the presence of real-time perception. The spaces of maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 meld representation and information together through the materiality of noise. And across all the different modalities employed, the appearance of noise is not through formation, but through error, accident, or surprise. This is the last step in a movement away from the mimetic obedience of information and its adherence to meaning-making or representational systems. In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 we are forced to align real time with virtual spaces and suspend our disbelief in the temporal truths that we see on the screen before us. This brief introduction to the work has returned us to the relationship between analogue and digital materials. Signal to noise is an analogue relationship of presence and absence. No signal equals a break in transmission. On the other hand, a digital system, due to its basis in discrete bits, transmits through probability (that is, the transmission occurs through pattern and randomness, rather than presence and absence (Hayles, How We Became 25). In his use of Shannon’s theory for the study of information transmission, Schwartz comments that the shift in information theory from analogue to digital is a shift from an analogue relationship of signal to noise to one of the probability of error (318). As I have argued in this paper, if it is measured as a quantity, noise is productive; it adds information. In both digital and analogue systems it is predictability and repetition that do not contribute information. Von Neumann makes the distinction clear saying that to some extent the “precision” of the digital machine “is absolute.” Even though, error as a matter of normal operation and not solely … as an accident attributable to some definite breakdown, nevertheless creeps in (294). Error creeps in. In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5, et al. disrupts signal transmission by layering ambiguities into the installation. Gaps are left for viewers to introduce misreadings of scale, space, and apprehension. Rather than selecting meaning out of information within nontechnical contexts, a viewer finds herself in the same sphere as information. Noise imbricates both information and viewer within a larger open system. When asked about the relationship with the viewer in her work, et al. collaborator p.mule writes: To answer the 1st question, communication is important, clarity of concept. To answer the 2nd question, we are all receivers of information, how we process is individual. To answer the 3rd question, the work is accessible if you receive the information. But the question remains: how do we receive the information? In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 the system dominates. Despite the use of sound engineering and sophisticated Google Earth mapping technologies, the work appears to be constructed from discarded technologies both analogue and digital. The ominous hovering monoliths suggest answers: that somewhere within this work are methodologies to confront the materialising forces of digital error. To don the headphones is to invite a position that operates as a filtering of power. The parameters for this power are in a constant state of flux. This means that whilst mapping these forces the work does not locate them. Sound is encountered and constructed. Furthermore, the work does not oppose digital and analogue, for as von Neumann comments “the real importance of the digital procedure lies in its ability to reduce the computational noise level to an extent which is completely unobtainable by any other (analogy) procedure” (295). maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 shows how digital and analogue come together through the productive errors of modulation and redundancy. et al.’s research constantly turns to representational and meaning making systems. As one instance, maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 demonstrates how the digital has challenged the logics of the binary in the traditions of information theory. Digital logics are modulated by redundancies and accidents. In maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 it is not possible to have information without noise. If, as I have argued here, digital installation operates between noise and information, then, in a constant disruption of the legacies of representation, immersion, and interaction, it is possible to open up material languages for the digital. Furthermore, an engagement with noise and error results in a blurring of the structures of information, generating a position from which we can discuss the viewer as immersed within the system – not as receiver or meaning making actant, but as an essential material within the open system of the artwork. References Barr, Jim, and Mary Barr. “L. Budd et al.” Toi Toi Toi: Three Generations of Artists from New Zealand. Ed. Rene Block. Kassel: Museum Fridericianum, 1999. 123. Burke, Gregory, and Natasha Conland, eds. et al. the fundamental practice. Wellington: Creative New Zealand, 2005. Burke, Gregory, and Natasha Conland, eds. Venice Document. et al. the fundamental practice. Wellington: Creative New Zealand, 2006. Daly-Peoples, John. Urban Myths and the et al. Legend. 21 Aug. 2004. The Big Idea (reprint) http://www.thebigidea.co.nz/print.php?sid=2234>. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: The Athlone Press, 1996. Hansen, Mark. New Philosophy for New Media. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2004. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1999. Hayles, N. Katherine. Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science. Ithaca and London: Cornell University, 1990. Hobart, Michael, and Zachary Schiffman. Information Ages: Literacy, Numeracy, and the Computer Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. p.mule, et al. 2007. 2 Jul. 2007 http://www.etal.name/index.htm>. Pask, Gordon. An Approach to Cybernetics. London: Hutchinson, 1961. Paulson, William. The Noise of Culture: Literary Texts in a World of Information. Ithaca and London: Cornell University, 1988. Schwartz, Mischa. Information Transmission, Modulation, and Noise: A Unified Approach to Communication Systems. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Serres, Michel. The Parasite. Trans. Lawrence R. Schehr. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1982. Shannon, Claude. A Mathematical Theory of Communication. July, October 1948. Online PDF. 27: 379-423, 623-656 (reprinted with corrections). 13 Jul. 2004 http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/paper.html>. Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Trans. Julie Rose. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, British Film Institute, 1994. Von Neumann, John. “The General and Logical Theory of Automata.” Collected Works. Ed. A. H. Taub. Vol. 5. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1963. Weaver, Warren. “Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication.” The Mathematical Theory of Commnunication. Eds. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. paperback, 1963 ed. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1949. 1-16. Work Discussed et al. maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 2006. Installation, Google Earth feed, newspapers, sound. Exhibited in SCAPE 2006 Biennial of Art in Public Space Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, September 30-November 12. Images reproduced with the permission of et al. Photographs by Lee Cunliffe. Acknowledgments Research for this paper was conducted with the support of an Otago Polytechnic Resaerch Grant. Photographs of et al. maintenance of social solidarity–instance 5 by Lee Cunliffe. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ballard, Su. "Information, Noise and et al." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/02-ballard.php>. APA Style Ballard, S. (Oct. 2007) "Information, Noise and et al.," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/02-ballard.php>.

Newspapers and the 7:15 Showing Cinemagoing involves planning. Even in the most impromptu instances, one has to consider meeting places, line-ups and competing responsibilities. One arranges child care, postpones household chores, or rushes to finish meals. One must organise transportation and think about routes, traffic, parking or public transit. And during the course of making plans for a trip to the cinema, whether alone or in the company of others, typically one turns to locate a recent newspaper. Consulting its printed page lets us ascertain locations, a selection of film titles and their corresponding show times. In preparing to feed a cinema craving, we burrow through a newspaper to an entertainment section, finding a tableau of information and promotional appeals. Such sections compile the mini-posters of movie advertisements, with their truncated credits, as well as various reviews and entertainment news. We see names of shopping malls doubling as names of theatres. We read celebrity gossip that may or may not pertain to the film selected for that occasion. We informally rank viewing priorities ranging from essential theatrical experiences to those that can wait for the videotape release. We attempt to assess our own mood and the taste of our filmgoing companions, matching up what we suppose are appropriate selections. Certainly, other media vie to supplant the newspaper's role in cinemagoing; many now access on-line sources and telephone services that offer the crucial details about start times. Nonetheless, as a campaign by the Newspaper Association of America in Variety aimed to remind film marketers, 80% of cinemagoers refer to newspaper listings for times and locations before heading out. The accuracy of that association's statistics notwithstanding, for the moment, the local daily or weekly newspaper has a secure place in the routines of cinematic life. A basic impetus for the newspaper's role is its presentation of a schedule of show times. Whatever the venue -- published, phone or on-line -- it strikes me as especially telling that schedules are part of the ordinariness of cinemagoing. To be sure, there are those who decide what film to see on site. Anecdotally, I have had several people comment recently that they no longer decide what movie to see, but where to see a (any) movie. Regardless, the schedule, coupled with the theatre's location, figures as a point of coordination for travel through community space to a site of film consumption. The choice of show time is governed by countless demands of everyday life. How often has the timing of a film -- not the film itself, the theatre at which it's playing, nor one's financial situation --determined one's attendance? How familiar is the assessment that show times are such that one cannot make it, that the film begins a bit too earlier, that it will run too late for whatever reason, and that other tasks intervene to take precedence? I want to make several observations related to the scheduling of film exhibition. Most generally, it makes manifest that cinemagoing involves an exercise in the application of cinema knowledge -- that is, minute, everyday facilities and familiarities that help orchestrate the ordinariness of cultural life. Such knowledge informs what Michel de Certeau characterises as "the procedures of everyday creativity" (xiv). Far from random, the unexceptional decisions and actions involved with cinemagoing bear an ordering and a predictability. Novelty in audience activity appears, but it is alongside fairly exact expectations about the event. The schedule of start times is essential to the routinisation of filmgoing. Displaying a Fordist logic of streamlining commodity distribution and the time management of consumption, audiences circulate through a machine that shapes their constituency, providing a set time for seating, departure, snack purchases and socialising. Even with the staggered times offered by multiplex cinemas, schedules still lay down a fixed template around which other activities have to be arrayed by the patron. As audiences move to and through the theatre, the schedule endeavours to regulate practice, making us the subjects of a temporal grid, a city context, a cinema space, as well as of the film itself. To be sure, one can arrive late and leave early, confounding the schedule's disciplining force. Most importantly, with or without such forms of evasion, it channels the actions of audiences in ways that consideration of the gaze cannot address. Taking account of the scheduling of cinema culture, and its implication of adjunct procedures of everyday life, points to dimensions of subjectivity neglected by dominant theories of spectatorship. To be the subject of a cinema schedule is to understand one assemblage of the parameters of everyday creativity. It would be foolish to see cinema audiences as cattle, herded and processed alone, in some crude Gustave LeBon fashion. It would be equally foolish not to recognise the manner in which film distribution and exhibition operates precisely by constructing images of the activity of people as demographic clusters and generalised cultural consumers. The ordinary tactics of filmgoing are supplemental to, and run alongside, a set of industrial structures and practices. While there is a correlation between a culture industry's imagined audience and the life that ensues around its offerings, we cannot neglect that, as attention to film scheduling alerts us, audiences are subjects of an institutional apparatus, brought into being for the reproduction of an industrial edifice. Streamline Audiences In this, film is no different from any culture industry. Film exhibition and distribution relies on an understanding of both the market and the product or service being sold at any given point in time. Operations respond to economic conditions, competing companies, and alternative activities. Economic rationality in this strategic process, however, only explains so much. This is especially true for an industry that must continually predict, and arguably give shape to, the "mood" and predilections of disparate and distant audiences. Producers, distributors and exhibitors assess which films will "work", to whom they will be marketed, as well as establish the very terms of success. Without a doubt, much of the film industry's attentions act to reduce this uncertainty; here, one need only think of the various forms of textual continuity (genre films, star performances, etc.) and the economies of mass advertising as ways to ensure box office receipts. Yet, at the core of the operations of film exhibition remains a number of flexible assumptions about audience activity, taste and desire. These assumptions emerge from a variety of sources to form a brand of temporary industry "commonsense", and as such are harbingers of an industrial logic. Ien Ang has usefully pursued this view in her comparative analysis of three national television structures and their operating assumptions about audiences. Broadcasters streamline and discipline audiences as part of their organisational procedures, with the consequence of shaping ideas about consumers as well as assuring the reproduction of the industrial structure itself. She writes, "institutional knowledge is driven toward making the audience visible in such a way that it helps the institutions to increase their power to get their relationship with the audience under control, and this can only be done by symbolically constructing 'television audience' as an objectified category of others that can be controlled, that is, contained in the interest of a predetermined institutional goal" (7). Ang demonstrates, in particular, how various industrially sanctioned programming strategies (programme strips, "hammocking" new shows between successful ones, and counter-programming to a competitor's strengths) and modes of audience measurement grow out of, and invariably support, those institutional goals. And, most crucially, her approach is not an effort to ascertain the empirical certainty of "actual" audiences; instead, it charts the discursive terrain in which the abstract concept of audience becomes material for the continuation of industry practices. Ang's work tenders special insight to film culture. In fact, television scholarship has taken full advantage of exploring the routine nature of that medium, the best of which deploys its findings to lay bare configurations of power in domestic contexts. One aspect has been television time and schedules. For example, David Morley points to the role of television in structuring everyday life, discussing a range of research that emphasises the temporal dimension. Alerting us to the non- necessary determination of television's temporal structure, he comments that we "need to maintain a sensitivity to these micro-levels of division and differentiation while we attend to the macro-questions of the media's own role in the social structuring of time" (265). As such, the negotiation of temporal structures implies that schedules are not monolithic impositions of order. Indeed, as Morley puts it, they "must be seen as both entering into already constructed, historically specific divisions of space and time, and also as transforming those pre-existing division" (266). Television's temporal grid has been address by others as well. Paddy Scannell characterises scheduling and continuity techniques, which link programmes, as a standardisation of use, making radio and television predictable, 'user friendly' media (9). John Caughie refers to the organization of flow as a way to talk about the national particularities of British and American television (49-50). All, while making their own contributions, appeal to a detailing of viewing context as part of any study of audience, consumption or experience; uncovering the practices of television programmers as they attempt to apprehend and create viewing conditions for their audiences is a first step in this detailing. Why has a similar conceptual framework not been applied with the same rigour to film? Certainly the history of film and television's association with different, at times divergent, disciplinary formations helps us appreciate such theoretical disparities. I would like to mention one less conspicuous explanation. It occurs to me that one frequently sees a collapse in the distinction between the everyday and the domestic; in much scholarship, the latter term appears as a powerful trope of the former. The consequence has been the absenting of a myriad of other -- if you will, non-domestic -- manifestations of everyday-ness, unfortunately encouraging a rather literal understanding of the everyday. The impression is that the abstractions of the everyday are reduced to daily occurrences. Simply put, my minor appeal is for the extension of this vein of television scholarship to out-of-home technologies and cultural forms, that is, other sites and locations of the everyday. In so doing, we pay attention to extra-textual structures of cinematic life; other regimes of knowledge, power, subjectivity and practice appear. Film audiences require a discussion about the ordinary, the calculated and the casual practices of cinematic engagement. Such a discussion would chart institutional knowledge, identifying operating strategies and recognising the creativity and multidimensionality of cinemagoing. What are the discursive parameters in which the film industry imagines cinema audiences? What are the related implications for the structures in which the practice of cinemagoing occurs? Vectors of Exhibition Time One set of those structures of audience and industry practice involves the temporal dimension of film exhibition. In what follows, I want to speculate on three vectors of the temporality of cinema spaces (meaning that I will not address issues of diegetic time). Note further that my observations emerge from a close study of industrial discourse in the U.S. and Canada. I would be interested to hear how they are manifest in other continental contexts. First, the running times of films encourage turnovers of the audience during the course of a single day at each screen. The special event of lengthy anomalies has helped mark the epic, and the historic, from standard fare. As discussed above, show times coordinate cinemagoing and regulate leisure time. Knowing the codes of screenings means participating in an extension of the industrial model of labour and service management. Running times incorporate more texts than the feature presentation alone. Besides the history of double features, there are now advertisements, trailers for coming attractions, trailers for films now playing in neighbouring auditoriums, promotional shorts demonstrating new sound systems, public service announcements, reminders to turn off cell phones and pagers, and the exhibitor's own signature clips. A growing focal point for filmgoing, these introductory texts received a boost in 1990, when the Motion Picture Association of America changed its standards for the length of trailers, boosting it from 90 seconds to a full two minutes (Brookman). This intertextuality needs to be supplemented by a consideration of inter- media appeals. For example, advertisements for television began appearing in theatres in the 1990s. And many lobbies of multiplex cinemas now offer a range of media forms, including video previews, magazines, arcades and virtual reality games. Implied here is that motion pictures are not the only media audiences experience in cinemas and that there is an explicit attempt to integrate a cinema's texts with those at other sites and locations. Thus, an exhibitor's schedule accommodates an intertextual strip, offering a limited parallel to Raymond Williams's concept of "flow", which he characterised by stating -- quite erroneously -- "in all communication systems before broadcasting the essential items were discrete" (86-7). Certainly, the flow between trailers, advertisements and feature presentations is not identical to that of the endless, ongoing text of television. There are not the same possibilities for "interruption" that Williams emphasises with respect to broadcasting flow. Further, in theatrical exhibition, there is an end-time, a time at which there is a public acknowledgement of the completion of the projected performance, one that necessitates vacating the cinema. This end-time is a moment at which the "rental" of the space has come due; and it harkens a return to the street, to the negotiation of city space, to modes of public transit and the mobile privatisation of cars. Nonetheless, a schedule constructs a temporal boundary in which audiences encounter a range of texts and media in what might be seen as limited flow. Second, the ephemerality of audiences -- moving to the cinema, consuming its texts, then passing the seat on to someone else -- is matched by the ephemerality of the features themselves. Distributors' demand for increasing numbers of screens necessary for massive, saturation openings has meant that films now replace one another more rapidly than in the past. Films that may have run for months now expect weeks, with fewer exceptions. Wider openings and shorter runs have created a cinemagoing culture characterised by flux. The acceleration of the turnover of films has been made possible by the expansion of various secondary markets for distribution, most importantly videotape, splintering where we might find audiences and multiplying viewing contexts. Speeding up the popular in this fashion means that the influence of individual texts can only be truly gauged via cross-media scrutiny. Short theatrical runs are not axiomatically designed for cinemagoers anymore; they can also be intended to attract the attention of video renters, purchasers and retailers. Independent video distributors, especially, "view theatrical release as a marketing expense, not a profit center" (Hindes & Roman 16). In this respect, we might think of such theatrical runs as "trailers" or "loss leaders" for the video release, with selected locations for a film's release potentially providing visibility, even prestige, in certain city markets or neighbourhoods. Distributors are able to count on some promotion through popular consumer- guide reviews, usually accompanying theatrical release as opposed to the passing critical attention given to video release. Consequently, this shapes the kinds of uses an assessment of the current cinema is put to; acknowledging that new releases function as a resource for cinema knowledge highlights the way audiences choose between and determine big screen and small screen films. Taken in this manner, popular audiences see the current cinema as largely a rough catalogue to future cultural consumption. Third, motion picture release is part of the structure of memories and activities over the course of a year. New films appear in an informal and ever-fluctuating structure of seasons. The concepts of summer movies and Christmas films, or the opening weekends that are marked by a holiday, sets up a fit between cinemagoing and other activities -- family gatherings, celebrations, etc. Further, this fit is presumably resonant for both the industry and popular audiences alike, though certainly for different reasons. The concentration of new films around visible holiday periods results in a temporally defined dearth of cinemas; an inordinate focus upon three periods in the year in the U.S. and Canada -- the last weekend in May, June/July/August and December -- creates seasonal shortages of screens (Rice-Barker 20). In fact, the boom in theatre construction through the latter half of the 1990s was, in part, to deal with those short-term shortages and not some year-round inadequate seating. Configurations of releasing colour a calendar with the tactical manoeuvres of distributors and exhibitors. Releasing provides a particular shape to the "current cinema", a term I employ to refer to a temporally designated slate of cinematic texts characterised most prominently by their newness. Television arranges programmes to capitalise on flow, to carry forward audiences and to counter-programme competitors' simultaneous offerings. Similarly, distributors jostle with each other, with their films and with certain key dates, for the limited weekends available, hoping to match a competitor's film intended for one audience with one intended for another. Industry reporter Leonard Klady sketched some of the contemporary truisms of releasing based upon the experience of 1997. He remarks upon the success of moving Liar, Liar (Tom Shadyac, 1997) to a March opening and the early May openings of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997), generally seen as not desirable times of the year for premieres. He cautions against opening two films the same weekend, and thus competing with yourself, using the example of Fox's Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and The Edge (Lee Tamahori, 1997). While distributors seek out weekends clear of films that would threaten to overshadow their own, Klady points to the exception of two hits opening on the same date of December 19, 1997 -- Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) and Titanic (James Cameron, 1997). Though but a single opinion, Klady's observations are a peek into a conventional strain of strategising among distributors and exhibitors. Such planning for the timing and appearance of films is akin to the programming decisions of network executives. And I would hazard to say that digital cinema, reportedly -- though unlikely -- just on the horizon and in which texts will be beamed to cinemas via satellite rather than circulated in prints, will only augment this comparison; releasing will become that much more like programming, or at least will be conceptualised as such. To summarize, the first vector of exhibition temporality is the scheduling and running time; the second is the theatrical run; the third is the idea of seasons and the "programming" of openings. These are just some of the forces streamlining filmgoers; the temporal structuring of screenings, runs and film seasons provides a material contour to the abstraction of audience. Here, what I have delineated are components of an industrial logic about popular and public entertainment, one that offers a certain controlled knowledge about and for cinemagoing audiences. Shifting Conceptual Frameworks A note of caution is in order. I emphatically resist an interpretation that we are witnessing the becoming-film of television and the becoming-tv of film. Underneath the "inversion" argument is a weak brand of technological determinism, as though each asserts its own essential qualities. Such a pat declaration seems more in line with the mythos of convergence, and its quasi-Darwinian "natural" collapse of technologies. Instead, my point here is quite the opposite, that there is nothing essential or unique about the scheduling or flow of television; indeed, one does not have to look far to find examples of less schedule-dependent television. What I want to highlight is that application of any term of distinction -- event/flow, gaze/glance, public/private, and so on -- has more to do with our thinking, with the core discursive arrangements that have made film and television, and their audiences, available to us as knowable and different. So, using empirical evidence to slide one term over to the other is a strategy intended to supplement and destabilise the manner in which we draw conclusions, and even pose questions, of each. What this proposes is, again following the contributions of Ien Ang, that we need to see cinemagoing in its institutional formation, rather than some stable technological, textual or experiential apparatus. The activity is not only a function of a constraining industrial practice or of wildly creative patrons, but of a complex inter-determination between the two. Cinemagoing is an organisational entity harbouring, reviving and constituting knowledge and commonsense about film commodities, audiences and everyday life. An event of cinema begins well before the dimming of an auditorium's lights. The moment a newspaper is consulted, with its local representation of an internationally circulating current cinema, its listings belie a scheduling, an orderliness, to the possible projections in a given location. As audiences are formed as subjects of the current cinema, we are also agents in the continuation of a set of institutions as well. References Ang, Ien. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge, 1991. Brookman, Faye. "Trailers: The Big Business of Drawing Crowds." Variety 13 June 1990: 48. Caughie, John. "Playing at Being American: Games and Tactics." Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Ed. Patricia Mellencamp. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984. Hindes, Andrew, and Monica Roman. "Video Titles Do Pitstops on Screens." Variety 16-22 Sep. 1996: 11+. Klady, Leonard. "Hitting and Missing the Market: Studios Show Savvy -- or Just Luck -- with Pic Release Strategies." Variety 19-25 Jan. 1998: 18. Morley, David. Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992. Newspaper Association of America. "Before They See It Here..." Advertisement. Variety 22-28 Nov. 1999: 38. Rice-Barker, Leo. "Industry Banks on New Technology, Expanded Slates." Playback 6 May 1996: 19-20. Scannell, Paddy. Radio, Television and Modern Life. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken, 1975. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Charles Acland. "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php>. Chicago style: Charles Acland, "Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Charles Acland. (2000) Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends: Cinemagoing Audiences as Institutional Subjects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/cinema.php> ([your date of access]).

Let’s begin with the paradox of disavowal. On the one hand, we all “know” that television is hypnotic. On the other hand, we tend to imagine that we each – perhaps alone – remain impervious to the blandishments it murmurs as we watch it, often without being fully aware we are doing so. One of the many things contributing to the invention of television, according to Stefan Andriopoulos, was “spiritualist research into the psychic television of somnambulist mediums” (618). His archaeology of the technological medium of television uncovers a reciprocal relation (or “circular causality”) between the new technology and contemporary cultural discourses such that “while spiritualism serves as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the invention of electrical television, the emerging technology simultaneously fulfils the very same function for spiritualist research on psychic telesight” (618). Television and the occult seem to be inextricably linked from the outset, so that perhaps the claims of some schizophrenics: that television addresses them personally and importunes them with suggestions, are not so outlandish as one might at first think. Nor, perhaps, are they merely a delusion able to be safely located in the pathology of the other. In fact it could be argued, as Laurent Gerbereau does, that television, as distinct from film with its historical imbrication of crowds with the image, aims to create the illusion of intimacy, as if the viewer were the only person watching and were being addressed directly by the medium. With two exceptions, the illusion of direct contact is sustained by the exclusion of crowds from the image. The first is major sporting events, which people gather to watch on large screens or in bars (which Gerbereau notes) and where, I think, the experience of the crowd requires amplification of itself, or parts of itself, by the large screen images. The second is the more recent advent of reality TV in which contestants’ fates are arbitrated by a public of voting viewers. This illusion of direct contact is facilitated by the fact that viewing actually does take place more and more in individual isolation as the number of TV sets in households multiplies. And it is true in spite of the growth in what Anna McCarthy has called “ambient television”, the television of waiting rooms, airport terminals and bars, which enables us to be alone with the illusion of company, without the demands that being in company might potentially make. Television can be understood as a form of refuge from the crowd. Like the crowd, it offers anonymity and the voyeuristic pleasures of seeing without being seen. But it requires no special skill (for example, of negotiating movement in a crowd) and it seems, on the face of things, to obviate the risk that individuals will themselves become objects of observation. (This, however, is an illusion, given the array of practices, like data-mining, that aim to make new segments of the market visible.) It also enables avoidance of physical contact with others – the risks of being bumped and jostled that so preoccupied many of the early commentators on modernity. New mobile technologies extend the televisual illusion of direct address. You can receive confidences from a friend on the mobile phone, but you can also receive a lot of spam which addresses “you” in an equally intimate mode. You are, of course, not yourself under these conditions, but potentially a member of a consuming public, as the availability of many visual subscription services for 3G phones, including televisually-derived ones like one-minute soap episodes, makes clear. Television cathects (in Virginia Nightingale’s suggestive psychoanalytically-inflected usage) aspects of the human in order to function, and I have argued elsewhere that what it primarily cathects is human affect (Gibbs). We could think of this investment of media in the human body in a number of different ways: in the terms suggested by Mark Seltzer when he writes of the “miscegenation” of bodies and machines, of nature and culture; or we could adapt Eugene Hacker’s term “biomediation”; or again Bolter and Grusin’s concept of “remediation”, which have the advantage of moving beyond earlier models of the cyborg (such as Donna Haraway’s), in the way they describe how media repurposes the human (Angel and Gibbs). Here I want to focus on the media’s capture of human attention. This returns me to the question of television as a hypnotic medium. But on the way there we need to take one short detour. This involves Julian Jaynes’s remarkable book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind published in 1976 and only since the late nineties beginning to be rescued by its uptake by the likes of Daniel Dennett and Antonio Damasio from its early reception as an intriguing but highly eccentric text. The book proposes taking literally the fact that in The Iliad the gods speak directly to the characters, admonishing them to perform certain acts. In this way, the voices of the gods seem to replace the kind of psychic interiority with which we are familiar. Jaynes argues that people once did actually hallucinate these voices and visions. Consciousness comes into being relatively recently in human history as these voices are internalised and recognised as the formation of the intentions of an “analogue I” – a process Jaynes suggests may have happened quite suddenly, and which involves the forging of closer relations between the two hemispheres of the brain. What drives this is the need for the more diffuse kinds of control enabled by relative individual autonomy, as social organisations become larger and their purposes more complex. Jaynes views some forms of consciousness (those which, like hypnosis, the creation of imaginary friends in childhood, religious ecstasy, or, arguably, creative states, involve a degree of dissociation) as atavistic vestiges of the bicameral state. While he insists that the hypnotic state is quite distinct from everyday experiences, such as being so lost in television that you don’t hear someone talking to you, other writers on hypnosis take the contrary view. So does Dennett, who wants to argue that the voices of the gods needn’t have been actually hallucinated in quite the way Jaynes suggests. He proposes that advertising jingles that get “on the brain”, and any admonitions that have a superegoic force, may also be contemporary forms of the voices of the gods. So we arrive, again, from a quite different avenue of approach, at the idea of television as a hypnotic medium, one that conscripts a human capacity for dissociation. It is perhaps worth noting at this point that, while we tend to associate dissociation with dysfunction, with splitting (in the psychoanalytic sense) and trauma, Jaynes sees it in far more positive terms – at least when it is accompanied by certain kinds of voices. He characterises hypnosis, for example, as a “supererogatory enabler” (379) militated against by consciousness which, to save us from our impulses, creates around us “a buzzing cloud of whys and wherefores”, so that “we know too much to command ourselves very far” [into the kinds of superhuman feats made possible with the assistance of the gods] (402). Most writers on hypnosis speak of the necessity for inducing the hypnotic state, and I want to suggest that televisual “flow” performs this function continuously, even though, as Jane Feuer and Margaret Morse respectively have suggested, television is designed for intermittent spectatorship and is often actually watched in states of distraction. While the interactivity of the internet and the mobile phone militate against this, they do not altogether vitiate it, especially as video and animation are increasingly appearing on these media. The screen has ways of getting your attention by activating the orienting reflexes with sudden noises, changes of scene, cuts, edits, zooms and pans. These reflexes form the basis of what Silvan Tomkins calls the surprise-startle affect which alerts us to a new state of affairs, and technologies of the screen constantly reactivate them (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi). No wonder, given the need for surprise, that sensationalism is such a well-used technique. While some writers (like S. Elizabeth Bird) link this to the production of “human interest” which creates a focus for everyday talk about news and current affairs that might otherwise be unengaging, I want to focus on the less rational aspects of sensationalism. Televisual sensationalism, which has its origins in the gothic, includes the supernatural, though this may appear as frequently in the guise of laughter as in horror, even if this laughter is sometimes uneasy or ambivalent. Hypnotism as entertainment might also qualify as sensationalism in this sense. A quick survey of Websites about hypnosis on television reveals that stage hypnosis appeared on American television as least as early as 1949, when, for 10 minutes after the CBS evening news on Friday nights, Dr Franz Polgar would demonstrate his hypnotic technique on members of the audience. It has featured as a frequent trope in mystery and suspense genres from at least as early as 1959, and in sitcoms, drama series, comedy sketches and documentaries since at least 1953. If on one level we might interpret this as television simply making use of what has been – and to some extent continues to be – popular as live entertainment, at another we might view it as television’s mise-en-abyme: the presentation of its own communicational models and anti-models for the reception of commands by voices. It’s ironic, then, that the BBC Editorial Guidelines treat hypnotism as a special kind of program rather than a feature of the medium and – in conformity with the Hypnotism Act 1952 – require that demonstrations of public hypnotism be licensed and authorised by a “senior editorial figure”. And the guideline on “Images of Very Brief Duration” (which follows the wording of the Agreement associated with the BBC’s Charter) states that programs should not “include any technical device which, by using images of very brief duration or by any other means, exploits the possibility of conveying a message to, or otherwise influencing the minds of, persons watching or listening to the programmes without their being aware, or fully aware, of what has occurred”. Finally, though, if psychoanalysis is, as Borch-Jacobsen suggests, one more chapter in the history of trance (in spite of its apparent rejection of techniques of suggestion as it attempts to establish its scientific and therapeutic credentials), then perhaps screen-based technologies should be taken seriously as another. What this might suggest about the constitution of belief requires further investigation – especially under conditions in which the pervasiveness of media and its potentially addictive qualities efface the boundary that usually demarcates the time and place of trance as ritual. Such an investigation may just possibly have some bearing on paradoxes such as the one Lyn Spigel identifies in relation to her observation that while the scripting of the “grand narratives of national unity that sprang up after 9/11 were for many people more performative than sincere”, Americans were nevertheless compelled to perform belief in these myths (or be qualified somehow as a bad American) and, further, may have ended by believing their own performances. References Andriopoulis, Stefan. “Psychic Television.” Critical Inquiry 31.3 (2005): 618-38. Angel, Maria, and Anna Gibbs. “Media, Affect and the Face: Biomediation and the Political Scene.” Forthcoming in Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture Special Issue 38.3 (2005). Bird, S. Elizabeth. “News We Can Use: An Audience Perspective on the Tabloidisation of News in the United States.” In Virginia Nightingale and Karen Ross, eds., Critical Readings: Media and Audiences. Maidenhead: Open UP, 2003. 65-86. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge Mass., MIT P, 1999. Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. The Emotional Tie. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1992. Feuer, Jane. “The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology.” In Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology. 1983. Gerbereau, Laurent. “Samples or Symbols? The Role of Crowds and the Public on Television.” L’image 1 (1995): 97-123. Gibbs, Anna. “Disaffected.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 16.3 (2002): 335-41. Jaynes, Julian. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. Kubey, Richard, and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. “Television Addiction.” http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/drugs/television_addiction.htm>. McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. Morse, Margaret. “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, The Mall and Television.” In Patricia Mellencamp, ed., Logics of Television. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1990. 193-221. Nightingale, Virginia. “Are Media Cyborgs?” In Angel Gordo-Lopez and Ian Parker, eds., Cyberpsychology. London: Macmillan, 1999. Selzer, Mark. Bodies and Machines. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Tomkins, Silvan S. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. New York: Springer, 1962. Spigel, Lyn. “Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11.” American Quarterly 56.2 (2004): 235-70. Thacker, Eugene. “What Is Biomedia.” Configurations 11 (2003): 47-79. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Gibbs, Anna. "In Thrall: Affect Contagion and the Bio-Energetics of Media." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/10-gibbs.php>. APA Style Gibbs, A. (Dec. 2005) "In Thrall: Affect Contagion and the Bio-Energetics of Media," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/10-gibbs.php>.

Introduction "Doesn't that wreck your records?" This is one of the first things I generally get asked when someone watches me at work in my home or while spinning at a party. It reminds me of a different but related question I once asked someone who worked at Rotate This!, a particularly popular Toronto DJ refuge, a few days after I had bought my first turntable: DJO: "How do you stop that popping and crackling sound your record gets when you scratch back and forth on the same spot for a while?" CLERK: "You buy two copies of everything, one you keep at home all wrapped-up nice and never use, and the other you mess with." My last $150 had just managed to pay for an old Dual direct drive record player. The precious few recently-released records I had were gifts. I nodded my head and made my way over to the rows of disks which I flipped through to make it look like I was maybe going to buy something. Lp cover after lp cover stared back at me all with names I had absolutely never heard of before, organised according to a hyper- hybridised classification scheme that completely escaped my dictionary-honed alphabetic expectations. Worst of all, there seemed to be only single copies of everything left! A sort of outsider's vertigo washed over me, and 3 minutes after walking into unfamiliar territory, I zipped back out onto the street. Thus was to begin my love/hate relationship with the source of all DJ sounds, surliness and misinformation--the independent record shop. My query had (without my planning) boldly pronounced my neophyte status. The response it solicited challenged my seriousness. How much was I willing to invest in order to ride "the wheels of steel"? Sequence 1 Will Straw describes the meteoric rise to prominence of the CD format, If the compact disk has emerged as one of the most dazzlingly effective of commodity forms, this has little to do with its technical superiority to the vinyl record (which we no longer remember to notice). Rather, the effectiveness has to do with its status as the perfect crossover consumer object. As a cutting-edge audiophile invention, it seduced the technophilic, connoisseurist males who typically buy new sound equipment and quickly build collections of recordings. At the same time, its visual refinement and high price rapidly rendered it legitimate as a gift. In this, the CD has found a wide audience among the population of casual record buyers.(61) Straw's point has to do with the fate of musical recordings within contemporary commodity culture. In the wake of a late 70's record industry slump, music labels turned their attention toward the recapturing of casual record sales (read: aging baby boomers). The general shape of this attempt revolved around a re-configuring of the record- shopping experience dedicated towards reducing "the intimidation seen as endemic to the environment of the record store."(59) The CD format, along with the development of super-sized, general interest (all-genre) record outlets has worked (according to Straw) to streamline record sales towards more-predictable patterns, all the while causing less "selection stress."(59) Re-issues and compilations, special-series trademarks, push-button listening stations, and maze-like display layouts, combined with department store-style service ("Can I help you find anything?") all work towards eliminating the need for familiarity with particular music "scenes" in order to make personally gratifying (and profit engendering) musical choices. Straw's analysis is exemplary in its dissatisfaction with treating the arena of personal musical choice as unaffected by any constraints apart from subjective matters of taste. Straw's evaluation also isolates the vinyl record as an object eminently ready (post-digital revolution) for subcultural appropriation. Its displacement by the CD as the dominant medium for collecting recorded music involved the recasting of the turntable as outdated and inferior, thereby relegating it to the dusty attic, basement or pawn shop (along with crates upon crates upon crates of records). These events set the stage for vinyl's spectacular rise from the ashes. The most prominent feature of this re-emergence has to do not simply with possession of the right kind of stuff (the cachet of having a music collection difficult for others to borrow aside), but with what vinyl and turntable technology can do. Bridge In Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige claims that subcultures are, cultures of conspicuous consumption...and it is through the distinctive rituals of consumption, through style, that the subculture at once reveals its "secret identity" and communicates its forbidden meanings. It is basically the way in which commodities are used in subculture which mark the subculture off from more orthodox cultural formations.(103 Hebdige borrows the notion of bricolage from Levi Strauss in order to describe the particular kind of use subcultures make of the commodities they appropriate. Relationships of identity, difference and order are developed from out of the minds of those who make use of the objects in question and are not necessarily determined by particular qualities inherent to the objects themselves. Henceforth a safety pin more often used for purposes like replacing missing buttons or temporarily joining pieces of fabric can become a punk fashion statement once placed through the nose, ear or torn Sex Pistols tee-shirt. In the case of DJ culture, it is the practice of mixing which most obviously presents itself as definitive of subcultural participation. The objects of conspicuous consumption in this case--record tracks. If mixing can be understood as bricolage, then attempts "to discern the hidden messages inscribed in code"(18) by such a practice are not in vain. Granting mixing the power of meaning sets a formidable (semiotic) framework in place for investigating the practice's outwardly visible (spectacular) form and structure. Hebdige's description of bricolage as a particularly conspicuous and codified type of using, however, runs the risk of privileging an account of record collecting and mixing which interprets it entirely on the model of subjective expression.(1.) What is necessary is a means of access to the dialogue which takes place between a DJ and her records as such. The contents of a DJ's record bag (like Straw's CD shopping bag) are influenced by more that just her imagination, pocket book and exposure to different kinds of music. They are also determined in an important way by each other. Audio mixing is not one practice, it is many, and the choice to develop or use one sort of skill over another is intimately tied up with the type and nature of track one is working with. Sequence 2 The raw practice of DJing relies heavily on a slider integral to DJ mixers known as the _cross-fader_(ital). With the standard DJ set up, when the cross-fader is all the way to the left, the left turntable track plays through the system; vice versa when the fader is all the way to the right. In between is the "open" position which allows both inputs to be heard simultaneously. The most straightforward mixing technique, "cutting," involves using this toggle to quickly switch from one source to another--resulting in the abrupt end of one sound- flow followed by its instantaneous replacement. This technique can be used to achieve a variety of different effects--from the rather straightforward stringing together of the final beat of a four bar sequence from one track with a strong downbeat from something new in order to provide continuous, but sequential musical output, to the thoroughly difficult practice of "beat juggling," where short excerpts of otherwise self-contained tracks ("breaks") are isolated and then extended indefinitely through the use of two copies of the same record (while one record plays, the DJ spins the other back to the downbeat of the break in question, which is then released in rhythm). In both cases timing and rhythm are key. These features of the practice help to explain DJ predilections for tracks which make heavy, predictable use of their rhythm sections. "Blending" is a second technique which uses the open position on the cross-fader to mix two inputs into a live sonic collage. Tempo, rhythm and "density" of source material have an enormous impact on the end result. While any two tracks can be layered in this way, beats that are not synchronized are quick to create cacophony, and vocals also tend to clash dramatically. Melodic lines in general pose certain challenges here since these are in particular keys and have obvious starts and finishes. This is one reason why tracks produced specifically for DJing often have such long, minimal intros and exits. This makes it much easier to create "natural" sounding blends. Atmospheric sounds, low-frequency hums, speech samples and repetitive loops with indeterminate rhythm structures are often used for these segments in order to allow drawn-out, subtle transitions when moving between tracks. If an intro contains a fixed beat (as is the case often with genres constructed specifically for non-stop dancing like house, techno and to some extent drum and bass), then those who want seamless blends need to "beat match" if they want to maintain a dancer's groove. The roots of this technique go back to disco and demand fairly strict genre loyalty in order to insure that a set's worth of tracks all hover around the same tempo, defined in beats-per- minute, or BPMs. The basic procedure involves finding the downbeat of the track one wishes to mix through a set of headphones, releasing that beat in time with the other record while making fine tempo- adjustments via the turntable's pitch control to the point where the track coming through the earphones and the track being played over the system are in synch. The next step is "back-spinning" or "needle dropping" to the start of the track to be mixed, then releasing it again, this time with the cross-fader open. Volume levels can then be adjusted in order to allow the new track to slowly take prominence (the initial track being close to its end at this point) before the cross-fader is closed into the new position and the entire procedure is repeated. Scratching is perhaps the most notorious mixing technique and involves the most different types of manipulations. The practice is most highly developed in hip hop (and related genres like drum and bass) and is used both as an advanced cutting technique for moving between tracks as well as a sonic end-in-itself. It's genesis is attributed to a South Bronx DJ known as Grand Wizard Theodore who was the first (1977) to try to make creative use of the sound associated with moving a record needle back and forth over the same drumbeat, a phenomena familiar to DJs used to cueing-up downbeats through headphones. This trick is now referred to as the "baby scratch," and it along with an ever-increasing host of mutations and hybrids make- up the skills that pay the bills for hip hop DJs. In the case of many of these techniques, the cross-fader is once again used heavily in order to remove unwanted elements of particular scratches from the mix, as well as adding certain staccato and volume-fading effects. Isolated, "pure" sounds are easiest to scratch with and are therefore highly sought after by this sort of DJ--a pastime affectionately referred to as "digging in the crates." Sources of such sounds are extremely diverse, but inevitably revolve around genre's which use minimal orchestration (like movie-soundtracks), accentuated rhythms with frequent breakdowns (like funk or jazz), or which eschew musical form all together (like sound-effects, comedy and children's records). Exit To answer the question which started this investigation, in the end, how wrecked my records get depends a lot on what I'm using them for. To be sure, super-fast scratching patterns and tricks that use lots of back-spinning like beat-juggling will eventually "burn" static into spots on one's records. But with used records costing as little as $1 for three, and battle records (2.) widely available, the effect of this feature of the technology on the actual pursuit of the practice is negligible. And most techniques don't noticeably burn records at all, especially if a DJ's touch is light enough to allow for minimal tone-arm weight (a parameter which controls a turntable's groove-tracking ability). This is the kind of knowledge which comes from interaction with objects. It is also the source of a great part of the subcultural bricoleur's stylistic savvy. Herein lies the essence of the intimidating power of the indie record shop--its display of intimate, physical familiarity with the hidden particularities of the new vinyl experience. Investigators confronted with such familiarity need to find ways to go beyond analyses which stop at the level of acknowledgment of the visible logic displayed by spectacular subcultural practices if they wish to develop nuanced accounts of subcultural life. Such plumbing of the depths often requires listening in the place of observing--whether to first-hand accounts collected through ethnography or to the subtle voice of the objects themselves. (1.) An example of such an account: "DJ-ing is evangelism; a desire to share songs. A key skill is obviously not just to drop the popular, well-known songs at the right part of the night, but to pick the right new releases, track down the obscurer tunes and newest imports, get hold of next month's big tune this month; you gather this pile, this tinder, together, then you work the records, mix them, drop them, cut them, scratch them, melt them, beat them all together until they unite. Voilà; disco inferno." Dave Haslam, "DJ Culture," p. 169. (2.) Records specifically designed by and for scratch DJs and which consist of long strings of scratchable sounds. References Haslam, David. "DJ Culture." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997 Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Melvin and Co. Ltd.. 1979 Straw, Will. "Organized Disorder: The Changing Space of the Record Shop." The Clubcultures Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1997

IntroductionAccording to Friedrich Nietzsche, the death of Man follows the death of God. Man as a concept must be overcome. Yet Nietzsche extends humanism’s jargon of creativity that privileges Man over animal. To truly overcome the notion of Man, one must undercome Man, in other words go below Man. Once undercome, creativity devolves into a type of building and unbuilding, affording art the ability to conceive of the subject emptied of divine creation. This article will examine how Man is unbuilt in three works by three different artists: Francis Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon” (1953), Jan Švankmajer’s Darkness, Light, Darkness (1989), and Patricia Piccinini’s “The Young Family” (2002). All three artists evoke the animalistic in their depiction of what could be called the sub-subject, a diminished agent. Unbuilding the subject becomes the basis for building the sub-subject in these depictions of the human remainder. Man, from this vantage, will be examined as a cultural construct. Man largely means human, yet the Renaissance concept favoured a certain type of powerful male. Instead of rescuing Man, Bacon, Švankmajer and Piccinini, present the remnants of the human amidst the animal rather than the human subject detached from the animal. Such works challenge humanism, expressed in Giorgio Vasari’s analysis of art and creativity as indicative of Man’s closeness to the divine, which in a strange way, is extended in Nietzsche’s writings. These artists dismantle and build a subhuman form of subjectivity and thereby provide a challenge to traditional conceptions of creativity that historically favour Man as the creator beneath only God Himself. In the course of this article, I explore the violence of Bacon’s painted devolution, the deflationary animation of Švankmajer and Piccinini’s subhuman tenderness. I do not argue that we must abandon humanism altogether as there are a multiplicity of humanisms, or attempt to invalidate all the various posthumanisms, transhumanisms and antihumanisms. Rather, I attempt to show that Nietzsche’s posthumanism is a suprahumanism and that one possible way to frame the death of Man is through undercoming Man. Art, held in high esteem by Renaissance humanism, becomes a vehicle to imagine and engage with subhuman subjectivity.What Is Humanism? Humanism has numerous connotations from designating atheism to celebrating culture to privileging humans above other animals. The type of humanism I am interested in is not secular humanism, but rather humanism that celebrates and conceptualises Man’s place in the universe and does so through accentuating his (and I mean his given humanism’s often sexist, masculinist history) creativity and intellectual power. This celebration of creativity depends in part on a type of religious view, where Man is at the centre of God’s design. Such a view holds that Man’s power to shape nature’s materials resembles God. This type of humanism remains today but usually in a more humbled form, enfeebled by the scientific realisations that characterised the Enlightenment, namely the realisation that Man was not the centre of God’s universe. The Enlightenment is sometimes characterised as the birth of modern humanism, where the human subject undergoes estrangement from his surroundings through the conceptualisation of the subject–object division, and gains control over nature. A common narrative is that the subject’s autonomy and power came to extend to art itself, which in turn, became valued as possessing its own aesthetic legitimacy and yet also becoming an alienated commodity. Yet Cary Wolfe, in What Is Posthumanism?, echoes Michel Foucault’s claim that the Enlightenment could be viewed in tension to humanism (“Introduction” n.p.). Indeed, the Enlightenment’s creation of modern science would come to seriously challenge any view of humanity’s privileged status in this world. In contrast, Renaissance humanism conceived of Man as the centrepiece of God’s design and gifted with artistic creation and the ability to uncover truth. Renaissance HumanismRenaissance humanism is encapsulated by Vasari’s preface to The Lives of the Artists. In his preface, Vasari contends that God was the first artist, being both a painter and sculptor: God on High, having created the great body of the world and having decorated the heavens with its brightest lights, descended with His intellect further down into the clarity of the atmosphere and the solidity of the earth, and, shaping man, discovered in the pleasing invention of things the first form of sculpture and painting. (3)Interestingly, God discovers creation, which is a type of decoration, where the skies are decorated with bright lights—the stars. Giving colour, light and shade to the world and heavens, qualifies God as a painter. The human body, according to Vasari, is sculpted by God, which in turn inspires artists to depict the human form. Art and design—God’s design—is thereby ‘at the origin of all things’ and not merely painting and sculpture, though the reality we know is still the product of God’s painting and sculpture. According to Vasari, God privileges Man not for his intellect per se, but by bestowing him with the ability of creation and design. Indeed, creativity and design are for Vasari a part of all intellectual discovery. Intellect is the mode of discovering design, which for Vasari, is also creation. Vasari claims “that divine light infused in us by a special act of grace which has not only made us superior to other animals but even similar, if it is permitted to say so, to God Himself” (4). God is more than just a maker, he is a creator with an aesthetic sense. All intellectual human endeavours, claims Vasari, are aesthetic and creative, in their comprehension of God’s design of the world. Vasari’s emphasis on design became outmoded as Renaissance humanism was challenged by the Enlightenment’s interest in humans and other animals as machines. However, evolution challenges even some mechanistic understandings of the human subject, which sometimes presupposed that the human-machine had a maker, as with William Paley’s watchmaker theory. As Richard Dawkins put it in The Blind Watchmaker, nature “has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If [evolution] can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker” (“Chapter One: Explaining the Very Improbable” n.p.). No longer was God’s universe designed for Man’s comprehension and appreciation, foretelling humanity’s own potential extinction.Man and God’s DeathThe idea that humanity was created by blind processes raises the question of what sort of depiction of the human subject is possible after the death of God and the Enlightenment’s tendency toward disenchantment? An art and self-understanding founded on atheism would be in sharp distinction to Vasari’s characterisation of the nature as an artwork coloured by the divine painter and sculptor in the heavens. Man’s creativity and design are, for the Renaissance humanist, part of discovery, the embodied realisations and iterations of the Platonic realm of divine forms. But such designs, wondrous for Vasari, can be viewed as shadows without origin in a post-God world. In Vasari, Platonism is still present where the artist’s creation becomes a way of discerning the origin of all forms, God himself. Yet, without divine origin, these forms are no longer discoveries and the possibility emerges that they are not even creations, emptied of the divine meaning that gave Man’s creative and scientific work value. Nietzsche understood that the loss of God called for the revaluation of all values. This is why Nietzsche claims that God’s death signifies the death of Man. For Nietzsche, the last Man was such an iteration, a shadow of what man had been (Thus Spoke Zarathustra 9-10). The Post-Man, the Übermensch, is one who extends the human power of creation and evaluation. In Vasari, Man is a model created by God. Nietzsche extends this logic: Man is his own creation as is God Man’s model. Man is capable of self-construction and overcoming without the hindrance of the divine. This freedom unlocked by auto-creation renders Man capable of making himself God. As such, art remains a source of sacred power for Nietzsche since it is a process of creative evaluation. The sacred is affirmed against secular profanity. For Nietzsche, God must be envisaged as Dionysus, a God that Nietzsche claims takes on a human form in Greek festivals dedicated to creation and fecundity. Mankind, in order to continue to have value after God’s death, “must become gods”, must take the place of God (The Gay Science 120). Nietzsche, All-Too HumanistNietzsche begins a project of rethinking Man as a category. Yet there is much in common with Renaissance humanism generated by Nietzsche’s Dionysian belief in a merger between God and Man. Man is overcome by a stronger and more creative figure, that of the Übermensch. By comparing Nietzsche with Vasari we can understand just how humanist Nietzsche remained. Indeed, Nietzsche fervently admired the Renaissance as a rebirth of paganism. Such an assessment of the rebirth of pagan art and values can almost be found in Vasari himself. Vasari claimed that pagan art, far from being blasphemous, brought Man closer to the divine in a tribute to the creativity of God. Vasari’s criticism of Christianity is careful but present. Indeed, Vasari—in a way that anticipates Nietzsche’s view that secular sacrilege was merely an extension of Christian sacrilege—attacks Christian iconoclasm, noting that barbarians and Christians worked together to destroy sacred forms of art: not only did [early Christianity] ruin or cast to the ground all the marvellous statues, sculptures, paintings, mosaics, and ornaments of the false pagan gods, but it also did away with the memorials and testimonials to an infinite number of illustrious people, in whose honour statues and other memorials had been constructed in public places by the genius of antiquity. (5) In this respect, Vasari embodies the values Nietzsche so praised in the Italian Renaissance. Vasari emphasises the artistic creations that enshrine distinctions of value and social hierarchy. While Vasari continues Platonic notions that ideals exist before human creation, he nevertheless holds human creation as a realisation and embodiment of the ideal, which is not dissimilar to Nietzsche’s notion of divine embodiment. For Nietzsche and Vasari, Man is exulted when he can rise, like a god, above other men. Another possibility would be to lower Man to just another animal. One way to envision such a lowering would be to subvert the mode by which Man is deemed God-like. Art that engages with the death of Man helps conceptualise subhumanism and the way that the subject ceases to be raised above the animal. What follows are studies of artworks that unbuild the subject. Francis Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon”Francis Bacon’s work challenges the human subject by depicting nonhuman subjects, where the flesh is torn open and Man’s animal flesh is exposed. Sometimes Bacon does not merely disfigure the human form but violently abandons it to focus on animals that reveal animal qualities latent in the subject. Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon”, expresses a sense of human devolution: Man devolved to monkey. In the work, we see a baboon within an enclosure, sitting above a tree that simultaneously resembles a gothic shadow, a cross, and even a smear. The dark, cross-like tree may suggest the conquering of God by a baboon, a type of monkey, recalling the old slander of Darwin’s theory, namely that Darwinism entailed that humanity descended from monkeys (which Darwin’s theory does not claim). But far from victorious, the monkey is in a state of suffering. While the baboon is not crucified on or by the tree, suffering pervades the frame. Its head resembles some sort of skull. The body is faintly painted in a melancholy blue with smudges of purple and is translucent and ghostly—at once a lump of matter and a spectral absence. We do not see the baboon through the cage. Instead we see through the baboon at the cage. Indeed, its very physiology involves the encountering of trauma as the head of the baboon does not simply connect to the body but stabs through the body as a sharp bone, perhaps opaquely evoking the violence of evolution. Similarly, the baboon’s tail seems to stab through the tree. Its eye is an enlarged void and a pupil is indicated by a bluish white triangle splitting through the void. The tree has something of the menacing and looming quality of a shadow and there is a sense of wilderness confronted by death and entrapment, evoked through the background. The yellowy ground is suggestive of dead grass. While potentially gesturing to the psychical confusion and intensity of Vincent Van Gogh or Edvard Munch, the yellowed grass more likely evokes the empty, barren and hostile planes of the desert and contrasts with the darkened colours. The baboon sitting on the cross/tree may seem to have reached some sort of pinnacle but such a status is mocked by the tree that manages to continue outside the fence: the branches nightmarishly protrude through the fence to conquer the frame, which in turn furthers the sense of inescapable entrapment and threat. The baboon is thereby precluded from reaching a higher point on the tree, unable to climb the branches, and underscores the baboon’s confines. The painting is labelled a study, which may suggest it is unfinished. However, Bacon’s completed works preserve an unfinished quality. This unfinished quality conveys a sense in which Man and evolution are unfinished and that being finished in the sense of being completed is no longer possible. The idea that there can finished work of art, a work of art that preserves an eternal meaning, has been repeatedly subject to serious doubt, including by artists themselves. Indeed, Bacon’s work erases the potential for perfection and completion, and breaks down, through devolution, what has been achieved by Man and the forces that shaped him. The subject is lowered from that of human to that of a baboon and is therefore, by Vasari’s Renaissance reasoning, not a subject at all. Bacon’s sketch and study exist to evoke a sense of incompletion, involving pain without resolution. The animal state of pain is therefore married with existential entrapment and isolation as art ceases to express the Platonic ideal and aims to show the truth of the shadow—namely that humanity is without a God, a God that previously shed light on humanity’s condition and anchored the human subject. If there is a trace or echo of human nobility left, such a trace functions through the wild and violent quality of animal indignation. A scream of painful indignity is the last act approaching (or descending from) any dignity that is afforded. Jan Švankmajer’s Darkness, Light, DarknessAn even more extreme case of the subject no longer being the subject, of being broken and muted—so much so that animal protest is annulled—can be witnessed in Jan Švankmajer’s animated short Darkness, Light, Darkness. In the animation, green clay hands mould and form a human body in order to be part of it. But when complete, the human body is trapped, grotesquely out of proportion with its environment. The film begins in a darkened house. There is a knocking of the door, and then the first green hand opens the door and turns on the light. The hand falls to the floor, blindly making its way to another door on the opposite side of the house. The hand opens the door only for eyeballs to roll out. The eyes look around. The hand pushes its clay fingers against the eyeballs, and the eyeballs become attached to the fingers. Suddenly with sight, the hand is able to lift itself up. The hand discovers that another hand is knocking at the door. The first hand helps the second hand, and then goes to the window where a pair of ears are stuck together flapping like a moth. The hands work together and break the ears apart. The first hand, the one with eyes, attaches the ears to the second hand. Then a head with a snout, but missing eyes and ears, enters through the door. The hands pull the snout until it becomes a nose, suppressing and remoulding the animal until it becomes human. As with Bacon, the violence of evolution, of auto-construction is conveyed indirectly: in Bacon’s case, through painted devolution and, in the case of the claymation, through a violent construction based on mutilation and smashing body parts together.Although I have described only three minutes of the seven-minute film, it already presents an image of human construction devoid of art or divine design. Man, or rather the hands, become the blind watchman of evolution. The hands work contingently, with what they are provided. They shape themselves based on need. The body, after all, exists as parts, and the human body is made up of other life forms, both sustaining and being sustained by them. The hands work together, and sacrifice sight and hearing for the head. They tear off the ears and remove the eyes and give them to the head. Transcendence is exchanged for subsistence. The absurdity of this contingency becomes most apparent when the hands attempt to merge with the head, to be the head’s feet. Then the feet actually arrive and are attached to the head’s neck. The human subject in such a state is thereby deformed and incomplete. It is a frightened form, cowering when it hears banging at the door. It turns out that the banging is being produced by an angry erect penis pounding at the door. However, even this symbol of masculine potency is subdued, rendered harmless by the hands that splash a bucket of cold water on it. The introduction of the penis signifies the masculinist notions implicit in the term Man, but we only ever see the penis when it is flaccid. The human subject is able to be concluded when clay pours from both doors and the window. The hands sculpt the clay and make the body, which, when complete is oversized and barely fits within the house. The male subject is then trapped, cramped in a foetal position. With its head against the ceiling next to the light, breathing heavily, all it can do is turn out the light. The head opens its mouth either in horror or a state of exertion and gasps. The eyes bulge before one of the body’s hands turns switch, perhaps suggesting terror before death or simply the effort involved in turning off the light. Once completed and built, the human subject remains in the dark. Despite the evident quirky, playful humour, Švankmajer’s film reflects an exhaustion with art itself. Human life becomes clay comically finding its own form. For Vasari, the ideal of the human form is realised first by God and then by Man through marble; for Švankmajer it is green clay. He demotes man back to the substance for a God to mould but, as there is no God to breathe life into it and give form, there is just the body to imperfectly mould itself. The film challenges both Vasari’s humanism and the suprahumanism of Nietzschean spectacle. Instead of the self-generating power and radical interdependence and agency of Übermensch, Švankmajer’s sub-subject is Man undercome—man beneath as opposed to over man, man mocked by its ambition, and with no space to stand high. Švankmajer thereby realises the anti-Nietzschean potential inherent within cinema’s anti-spectacular nature. Antonin Artaud, who extends the aesthetics advanced by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, contrasts the theatre’s sense of animal life with cinema. Artaud observes that movies “murder us with second-hand reproductions […] filtered through machines” (84). Thus, films murder creative and animal power as film flattens life to a dead realm of reproduction. Continuing Jacques Derrida’s hauntological framing of the screen, the animation theorist Alan Cholodenko has argued that the screen implies death. Motion is dead and replaced by illusion, a recording relayed back to us. What renders cinema haunting also renders it hauntological. For Cholodenko, cinema’s animation challenges ontology and metaphysics by eschewing stable ontologies through a process that entails both presence and absence. As Cholodenko points out, all film is a type of animation and reanimation, of making images move that are not in fact moving. Thus, one can argue that the animated-animation (such as Švankmajer’s claymation) becomes a refinement of death, a Frankesteinian reanimation of dead material. Indeed, Darkness, Light, Darkness accentuates the presence of death with the green clay almost resembling putrefaction. The fingerprints on the clay accentuate a lack of life, for the autonomous and dead matter that constructs and shapes a dead body from seemingly severed body parts. Even the title of the film, Darkness, Light, Darkness reflects an experience of cinema as deflation rather than joyous spectacle. One goes to a darkened space, watches light flicker on a screen and then the light goes out again. The cartoonish motions of the hands and body parts in the film look only half alive and therefore seem half-dead. Made in the decaying Communist state of Czechoslovakia, Švankmajer’s film aptly acknowledges the deflation of cinema, reflecting that illumination—the light of God, is put out, or more specifically, switched off. With the light of God switched off, creation becomes construction and construction becomes reconstruction, filtered through cinema’s machine processes as framed through Cholodenko. Still, Švankmajer’s animation is not unsympathetic to the plight of the hands. We do see the body parts work together. When a vulgar, meaty, non-claymation tongue comes out through the door, it goes straight to the other door to let the teeth in. The teeth and tongue are aided by the hands to complete the face. Indeed, what they produce is a human being, which has some sense of coherence and success—a success enmeshed with failure and entrapment. Piccinini’s “The Young Family”Patricia Piccinini’s sculptural works offer a more tender approach to the subject, especially when her works focus on the nonhuman animal with human characteristics. Piccinini is interested in the combinations of the animal and the machine, so her ideas can be seen almost as transhuman, where the human is extended beyond humanism. Her work is based on connection and connectedness, but does not emphasise the humanist values of innovation and self-creation often inherent to transhumanism. Indeed, the emphasis on connection is distinct from the entrapment of Bacon’s baboon and Švankmajer’s clay human, which half lament freedom’s negation.The way that Piccinini preserves aspects of humanism within a framework of subhumanism is evident in her work “The Young Family”. The hypperrealistic sculpture depicts a humanoid pig form, flopped, presumably exhausted, as piglet-babies suckle on her nipples. The work was inspired by a scientific proposal for pigs to be genetically modified to provide organs for humans (“Educational Resource” 5). Such a transhuman setting frames a subhuman aesthetic. Care is taken to render the scene with sentiment but without a sense of the ideal, without perfection. One baby-piglet tenderly grasps its foot with both hands and stares with love at its mother. We see two piglets enthusiastically sucking their mother’s teat, while a third baby/piglet’s bottom is visible, indicating that there is a third piglet scrambling for milk. The mother gazes at us, with her naked mammalian body visible. We see her wrinkles and veins. There is some fur on her head and some hair on her eyebrows humanising her. Indeed, her eyes are distinctly human and convey affection. Affection seems to be a motif that carries through to the materials (carefully crafted by Piccinini’s studio). The affection displayed in the artwork is trans-special, emphasising that human tenderness is in fact mammalian tenderness. Such tenderness conflates the human, the nonhuman animal and the material out of which the humanoid creature and its young are constructed. The sub-agency brings together the young and the old by displaying the closeness of the family. Something of this sub-subjectivity is theorised in Malcolm Bull’s Anti-Nietzsche, where he contrasts Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch with the idea of the subhuman. Bull writes that subhumanism involves giving up on “becoming more than a man and think[ing] only of becoming something less” (n.p.; Chapter 2, sec. “The Subhuman”). Piccinini depicts vulnerability and tenderness with life forms that are properly speaking subhuman, and reject the displays of strength of Nietzsche’s suprahumanism or Vasari’s emphasis on art commemorating great men. But Piccinini’s subhumanism preserves enough humanism to understand art’s ability to encourage an ethics of nurturing. In this respect, her works offer an alternative to Bull’s subhumanism that aims, so Bull argues, to devalue art altogether. Instead, Piccinini affirms imagination, but through its ability to conjure new ways to perceive animal affection. The sub-subject thereby functions to reveal states of emotion common to mammals (including humans) and other animals. ConclusionThese three artists therefore convey distinct, if related and intersecting, ways of visualising the sub-subject: Bacon through animal suffering, Švankmajer through adaptation that ultimately leads to the agent’s entrapment, and Piccinini who, instead of marrying anti-humanism with the subhumanism (the procedure of Švankmajer, and Bacon), integrates aspects of transhumanism and Renaissance humanism into her subhuman vision. As such, these works present a realisation of how we might think of the going under of the human subject after Darwin, Nietzsche and the deaths of God, Man and the diminishment of creativity. Such works remain not only antithetical to Vasari’s humanism but also to Nietzsche’s suprahumanism. These artists use art’s power to humble—not through overpowering awe but through the visible breakdown of the human agent, speaking for and to the sub-subject. Such art, by unbuilding and dismantling the subject, draws on prehuman trajectories of evolution, and in the case of Piccinini, transhuman trajectories. Art ceases to be about the grandiose evocations of power. Rather, more modestly, these works build a connection between the human with other mammals. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge Daniel Canaris for his valuable insights into Christianity and the Italian Renaissance, Alan Cholodenko for providing copies of his works that were central to my interpretation of Švankmajer, and Rachel Franks and Simon Dwyer for their invaluable assistance and finding very helpful reviewers. References Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. New York: Grove P, 1958.Art Gallery of South Australia. “Educational Resource Patricia Piccinini.” Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia. 11 Dec. 2016 <https://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Learning/docs/Online_Resources/Piccinini_online_resource.pdf>.Bacon, Francis. “Head I.” 1948. Oil on Canvas. 100.3 x 74.9cm. ———. “Study of a Baboon.” 1953. Oil on Canvas. 198.3 x 137.3cm. Bull, Malcolm. Anti-Nietzsche. New York: Verso, 2011. Cholodenko, Alan. “First Principles of Animation.” Animating Film Theory. Ed. Karen Beckman. Duke UP, 2014. 98-110.———. “The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema.” Cultural Studies Review 10.2 (2004): 99-113. Darkness, Light, Darkness. Jan Švankmajer, 1990. 35mm. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. ———. The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.Piccinini, Patricia. “The Young Family.” 2002. Silicone, Polyurethane, Leather, Plywood, Human Hair, 80 x 150 x 110cm. Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of Artists. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.

We Break Up, I Publish: Theorising and Emotional Processing like Taylor Swift In 2007 after the rather painful end of my first long-term same-sex relationship I asked myself two questions (and like a good graduate student wrote a paper about it that was subsequently published): (1) what is love; (2) and if love exists, are queer and straight love somehow different. I asked myself the second question because, unlike my previous “straight” breakups (back when I honestly thought I was straight), this one was different, was far more messy, and seemed to have a lot to do with the fact that my then fresh ex-boyfriend and I had dramatically different ideas about how the relationship should look, work, be codified, or if it should or could be codified. It was an eye-opening experience since the truth that these different ideas existed—basically his point of view—really only “came out” in my mind through the act and learning involved in that breakup. Until then, from a Queer Theory perspective, you could have described me as a “man who had sex with men,” called himself homosexual, but was so homonormative that if you’d approached me with even a light version of Michel Foucault’s thoughts on “Friendship as a Way of Life” I’d have looked at you as queerly, and cluelessly, as possible. Mainstream Queer Theory would have put the end of the relationship down to the difference and conflict between what is pejoratively called the “marriage-chasing-Gay-normaliser,” represented by me, and the “radical-Queer(ness)-of-difference” represented by my ex-boyfriend, although like a lot of theory, that misses the personal (which I recall being political...), and a whole host of non-theoretical problems that plagued that relationship. Basically I thought Queer/Homosexual/Lesbian/Transgendered and the rest of the alphabet soup was exactly the same as Straight folks both with respect to a subjective understanding of the self, social relations and formations, and how you acted or enacted yourself in public and private except in the bedroom.. I thought, since Canada had legalised same-sex marriage, all was well and equal (other than the occasional hate-crime which would then be justly punished). Of course I understood that at that point Canada was the exception and not the rule with respect to same-sex rights and same-sex marriage, so it followed in my mind that most of our time collectively should be spent supporting those south of the border or overseas who still faced restrictions on these basic rights, or out-and-out violence, persecution and even state-sanctioned death for just being who they are and/or trying to express it. And now, five years on, stating that Canada is the exception as opposed to the rule with respect to the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the codification of same-sex rights in law has the potential to be outdated as the recent successes of social movements, court rulings and the tenor of political debate and voting has shifted internationally with rapid speed. But it was only because of that breakup that these theoretical and practical issues had come out of my queer closet and for the first time I started to question some necessary link between love and codification (marriage), and how the queer in Queer relationships does or potentially can disrupt this link. And not just for Queers, but for Straight folk too, which is the primary point that should be underlined now and is addressed at the end of this paper. Because, embittered as I was at the time, I still basically agree with the theoretical position that I came to in that paper on love—based on a queering of the terms of Alain Badiou—where I affirmed that love resisted codification, especially in its queer form, because it is fidelity to an act and truth between two or more partners which resists the rigid walls of State-based codification (Potts, Love Hurts; Badiou, Ethics and Saint Paul). But as one of the peer reviewers for this paper rightly pointed out, the above distinctions between my ex and myself implicitly rely upon a State-centric model of rights and freedoms, which I attacked in the first paper, but which I freely admit I am guilty of utilising and arguing in favour of here. But that is because I am interested, here, not in talking about love as an abstract concept towards which we should work in our personal relationships, but as the state of things, and specifically the state of same-sex marriage and the discourse and images which surrounds it, which means that the State does matter. This is specifically so given the lack of meaningful challenges to the State System in Canada and the US. I maintain, following Butler, that it is through power, and our response to the representatives of power “hailing us,” that we become bodies that matter and subjects (Bodies That Matter; The Psychic Life of Power; and Giving An Account of Oneself). While her re-reading of Althusser in these texts argues that we should come to a philosophical and political position which challenges this State-based form of subject creation and power, she also notes that politically and philosophically we have yet to articulate such a position clearly, and I’d say that this is especially the case for what is covered and argued in the mainstream (media) debate on same-sex marriage. So apropos what is arguably Foucault’s most mature analysis of “power,” and while agreeing that my State-based argument for inclusion and rights does indeed strengthen the “biopolitical” (The History of Sexuality 140 and 145) control over, in this case, Queer populations, I argue that this is nonetheless the political reality with which we are working in and analyzing, and that is my concern here. Despite a personal desire that this not be the case, the State or state sanctioned institutions do continue to hold a monopoly of power in conferring subjecthood and rights. To take a page from Jeremy Bentham, I would say that arguing from a position which does not start from or seriously consider the State as the current basis for rights and subjecthood, though potentially less ethically problematic and more in line with my personal politics, is tantamount to talking and arguing about “nonsense on stilts.” “Caught in a Bad Romance?” Comparing Homonationalist Trajectories and the Appeal of Militarist Discourse to LGBT Grassroots Organisations In comparing the discourses and enframings of the debate over same-sex marriage between Canada in the mid 1990s and early 2000s and in the US today, one might presume that how it came to say “I do” in Canada and how it might or might not get “left at the altar” in the US, is the result of very different national cultures. But this would just subscribe to one of a number of “cultural explanations” for perceived differences between Canada and the US that are usually built upon straw-man comparisons which then pillorise the US for something or other. And in doing so it would continue an obscuration that Canada, unlike the US, is unproblematically open and accepting when it comes to multicultural, multiracial and multisexual diversity and inclusion. Which Canada isn’t nor has it ever been. When you look at the current discourse in both countries—by their key political representatives on the international stage—you find the opposite. In the US, you have President Barack Obama, the first sitting President to come out in favour of same-sex marriage, and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, setting same-sex rights at home and abroad as key policy planks (Gay Rights are Human Rights). Meanwhile, in Canada, you have Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in office since 2006, openly support his Conservative Party’s “traditional marriage” policy which is thankfully made difficult to implement because of the courts, and John Baird, the badly closeted Minister of Foreign Affairs, who doesn’t mention same-sex rights at home or with respect to foreign relations—unless it is used as supplementary evidence to further other foreign policy goals (c.f. Seguin)—only showing off his sexuality outside of the press-gallery to drum up gay-conservative votes or gay-conservative fundraising at LGBTQ community events which his government is then apt to pull funding for (c.f. Bradshaw). Of course my point is not to just reverse the stereotypes, painting an idyllic picture of the US and a grim one of Canada. What I want to problematise is the supposed national cultural distinctions which are naturalised when arguments are made through them as to why same-sex marriage was legalised in Canada, while the Defense of Marriage Act still stands in the US. To follow and extend Jasbir Puar’s argument from Terrorist Assemblages, what we see in both same-sex marriage debates and discourses is really the same phenomenon, but, so far, with different outcomes and having different manifestations. Puar contends that same-sex rights, like most equalising rights for minority groups, are only granted when all three of the following conditions prevail: (1) in a state or narrative of exception, where the nation grants a minority group equal rights because “the nation” feels threatened from without; (2) only on the condition that normalisation (or homonormalisation in the case of the Queer community) occurs, with those who don’t conform pushed further from a place in the national-subject; (3) and that the price of admission into being the “allowed Queer” is an ultra-patriotic identification with the Nation. In Canada, the state or narrative of exception was an “attack” from within which resulted in the third criterion being downplayed (although it is still present). Court challenges in a number of provinces led in each case to a successful ruling in favour of legalising same-sex marriage. Appeals to these rulings made their way to the Supreme Court, who likewise ruled in favour of the legalisation of same-sex marriage. This ruling came with an order to the Canadian Parliament that it had to change the existing marriage laws and definition of marriage to make it inclusive of same-sex marriage. This “attack” was performed by the judiciary who have traditionally (c.f. Makin) been much less partisan in appointment or ruling than their counterparts in the US. When new marriage laws were proposed to take account of the direction made by the courts, the governing Liberal Party and then Prime Minister Paul Martin made it a “free vote” so members of his own party could vote against it if they chose. Although granted with only lacklustre support by the governing party, the Canadian LGBTQ community rejoiced and became less politically active, because we’d won, right? International Queers flocked to Canada—one in four same-sex weddings since legalisation in Canada have been to out of country residents (Postmedia News)—as long as they had the proper socioeconomic profile (which is also a racialised profile) to afford the trip and wedding. This caused a budding same-sex marriage tourism and queer love normalisation industry to be built around the Canada Queer experience because especially at the time of legalisation Canada was still one of the few countries to allow for same-sex marriages. What this all means is that homonationalism in Canada is much less charged. It manifests itself as fitting in and not just keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to things like community engagement and Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings, but trying to do them one better (although only by a bit so as not to offend). In essence, the comparatively bland process in the 1990s by which Canada slowly underwent a state of exception by a non-politically charged and non-radical professional judiciary simply interpreting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at the provincial and then the federal level is mirrored in the rather bland and non-radical homonationalism which resulted. So unlike the US, the rhetoric of the LGBT community stays subdued unless there’s a hint that the right to same-sex divorce might get hit by Conservative Party guns, in which case all hell breaks loose (c.f. Ha). While the US is subject to the same set of logics for the currently in-progress enactment of legalising same-sex marriage, the state of exception is dramatically different. Puar argues it is the never-ending War on Terror. This also means that the enframings and debate in the US are exceptionally charged and political, leading to a very different type of homonationalism and homonationalist subject than is found in Canada. American homonationalism has not radically changed from Puar’s description, but due to leadership from the top (Obama, Clinton and Lady Gaga) the intensity and thereby structured confinement of what is an acceptable Queer-American subject has become increasingly rigid. What is included and given rights is the hyper-patriotic queer-soldier, the defender of the nation. And what reinforces the rigidity of what amounts to a new “glass closet” for queers is that grassroots organisations have bought into the same rhetoric, logic, and direction as to how to achieve equality as the Homecoming advertisement from the Equal Love Campaign in Britain shows. For the other long-leading nation engaged in the War on Terror narrative, Homecoming provides the imagery of a gay member of the armed services draped in the flag proposing to his partner at the end of duty overseas that ends with the following text: “All men can be heroes. All men can be husbands. End discrimination.” Can’t get more patriotic—and heteronormative with the use of the term “husbands”—than that. Well, unless you’re Lady Gaga. Now Lady Gaga stands out as a public figure whom has taken an explicitly pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance from the outset of her career. And I do not want to diminish the fact that she has been admirably effective in her campaigning and consistent pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance. While above I characterised her input above as leadership from the top, she also, in effect, by standing outside of State Power unlike Obama and Clinton, and being able to be critical of it, is able to push the State in a more progressive direction. This was most obviously evidenced in her very public criticism of the Democratic Party and President Obama for not moving quickly enough to adopt a more pro-queer and pro-LGBT stance after the 2008 election where such promises were made. So Lady Gaga plays a doubled role whereby she also acts as a spokesperson for the grassroots—some would call this co-opting, but that is not the charge made here as she has more accurately given her pre-existing spotlight and Twitter and Facebook presence over to progressive campaigns—and, given her large mainstream media appeal and willingness to use this space to argue for queer and LGBT rights, performs the function of a grassroots organisation by herself as far as the general public is concerned. And in her recent queer activism we see the same sort of discourse and images utilised as in Homecoming. Her work over the first term of Obama’s Presidency—what I’m going to call “The Lady Gaga Offensive”—is indicative: she literally and metaphorically wrapped herself in the American flag, screaming “Obama, ARE YOU LISTENING!!! Repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and [have the homophobic soldiers] go home, go home, go home!” (Lady Gaga Rallies for Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell). And presumably to the same home of otherness that is occupied by the terrorist or anything that falls under the blanket of “anti-American” in Puar’s critique of this approach to political activism. This speech was modelled on her highly successful one at the National Equality March in 2009, which she ended with “Bless God and Bless the Gays.” When the highly watched speeches are taken together you literally can’t top them for Americanness, unless it is by a piece of old-fashioned American apple-pie bought at a National Rifle Association (NRA) bake-sale. And is likely why, after Obama’s same-sex “evolution,” the pre-election ads put out by the Democratic Party this year focused so heavily on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the queer patriotic soldier or veteran’s obligation to or previous service in bearing arms for the country. Now if the goal is to get formal and legal equality quickly, then as a political strategy, to get people onside with same-sex marriage, and from that place to same-sex rights and equal social recognition and respect, this might be a good idea. Before, that is, moving on to a strategy that actually gets to the roots of social inequality and doesn’t rely on “hate of ‘the other’” which Puar’s analysis points out is both a byproduct of and rooted in the base of any nationalist based appeal for minoritarian rights. And I want to underline that I am here talking about what strategy seems to be appealing to people, as opposed to arguing an ethically unproblematic and PC position on equality that is completely inclusive of all forms of love. Because Lady Gaga’s flag-covered and pro-military scream was answered by Obama with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the extension of some benefits to same-sex couples, and has Obama referring to Gaga as “your leader” in the pre-election ads and elsewhere. So it isn’t really surprising to find mainstream LGBT organisations adopting the same discourse and images to get same-sex rights including marriage. One can also take recent poll numbers from Canada as indicative as well. While only 10 percent of Canadians have trust in political parties, and 17 and 16 percent have trust in Parliament and Prime Minister Harper respectively, a whopping 53 percent have trust in the Canadian Forces (Leblanc). One aspect that undergirds Puar’s argument is that especially at a "time of war," more than average levels of affection or trust is shown for those institutions that defend “us,” so that if the face of that institution is reinscribed to the look of the hyper-patriotic queer-soldier (by advertising of the Homecoming sort which is produced not by the State but by grassroots LGBT organisations), then it looks like these groups seem to be banking that support for Gays and Lesbians in general, and same-sex marriage in specific, will further rise if LGBT and Queer become substantively linked in the imagination of the general public with the armed forces. But as 1980s Rockers Heart Asked: “But There’s Something That You Forgot. What about Love?” What these two homonationalist trajectories and rhetorics on same-sex marriage entirely skip over is how exactly you can codify “love.” Because isn’t that the purpose of marriage? Saying you can codify it is like grasping at a perfectly measured and exact cubic foot of air and telling it to stay put in the middle of a hurricane. So to return to how I ended my earlier exploration of love and if it could or should be codified: it means that as I affirm love, and as I remain in fidelity to it, I subject myself in my fundamental weakness constantly to the "not-known;" to constant heartbreak; to affirmations which I cannot betray as it would be a betrayal of the truth process itself. It's as if at the very moment the Beatles say the words 'All you need is love' they were subjected to wrenching heartbreak and still went on: 'All you need is love...' (Love Hurts) Which is really depressing when I look back at it now. But it was a bad breakup, and I can tend to the morose in word choice and cultural references when depressed. But it also remains essentially my position. If you impose “till death or divorce do us part” on to love you’re really only just participating in the chimera of static love and giving second wind to a patriarchal institution which has had a crappy record when it comes to equality. It also has the potential to preserve asymmetrical roles “traditional marriage” contains from when the institution was only extended to straight couples. And isn’t equality the underlying philosophical principle and political position that we’re supposedly fighting for if we’re arguing for an equal right to get married? Again, it’s important to try and codify the same rights for everyone through the State at the present time because I honestly don’t see major changes confronting the nation state system in Canada or the US in the near future. We remain the play-children of a digitally entrenched form of Foucaultian biopower that is State and Capital directed. Because while the Occupy Wall Street movements got a lot of hay in the press, I’ve yet to see any substantive or mainstreamed political change come out of them—if someone can direct me to their substantive contribution to the recent US election I’d be happy to revise my position—which is likely to our long term detriment. So this is a pragmatic analysis, one of locating one node in the matrices of power relations, of seeing how mainstream LGBT political organisations and Lady Gaga are applying the “theoretical tool kits” given to us by Foucault and Puar, and seeing how these organisations and Gaga are applying them, but in this case in a way that is likely counter to authorial intention(s) and personal politics (Power/Knowledge 145, 193; Terrorist Assemblages). So what this means is that we’re likely to continue to see, in mainstream images of same-sex couples put out by grassroots LGBT organisations, a homonationalism and ideological construction that grows more and more out of touch with Queer realities—the “upper-class house-holding PTA Gay”; although on a positive note I should point out that the Democratic Party in the US seems to be at least including both white and non-white faces in their pre-election same-sex marriage ads—and one that most Queers don’t or can’t fit themselves into especially when it comes down to the economic aspect of that picture, which is contradictory and problematic (c.f. Christopher). It also means that in the US the homonationalism on the horizon looks the same as in Canada except with a healthy dose of paranoia of outsiders and “the other” and a flag draped membership in the NRA, that is, for when the queer super-soldier is not in uniform. It’s a straightjacket for a closet that is becoming smaller because it seeks, through the images projected, inclusion for only a smaller and smaller social sub-set of the Lesbian and Gay community and leaves out more and more of the Queer community than it was five years ago when Puar described it. So instead of trying to dunk the queer into the institution of patriarchy, why not, by showing how so many Queers, their relationships, and their loving styles don’t fit into these archetypes help give everyone, including my “marriage-chasing-Gay-normaliser” former self a little “queer eye, for all eyes.” To look at and see modern straight marriage through the lenses and reasons LGBT and Queer communities (by-and-large) fought for years for access to it: as the codification and breakdown of some rights and responsibilities (i.e. taking care of children); as an act which gives you straightforward access to health benefits and hospital visitation rights; as an easy social signifier for others of a commitment to another person that doesn’t use diluted language like “special friend;” and because when it comes down to it that “in sickness and in health” part of the vow—in the language of a queered Badiou, a vow can be read as the affirmation of a universal and disinterested truth (love) and a moment which can’t be erased retrospectively, say, by divorce—seems like a sincere way to value at least one of those you really care for in the world. And hopefully it, as a side-benefit, it acts as a reminder but is not the actuality of that first fuzzy feeling which (hopefully) doesn’t go away. But I learned my lesson the first time and know that the fuzzy feeling might disappear as it often does. It doesn’t matter how far we try and cram it into any variety of homonationalist closets, since it’ll always find a way to not be there, no matter how tight you thought you’d locked the door to keep it in for good if it wants out. Because you can’t keep emotions by contract: so at the end of the day the logical, ethical and theoretically sound position is to argue for the abolition of marriage as an institution. However, Plato and others have been making that argument for thousands of years, and it still doesn’t seem to have gained popular traction. And we also need to realise, contrary to the opinion of my former self and The Beatles, that you really do need more than love as fidelity to an event of you and your partner’s making when you are being denied your partners health benefits just because you are a same-sex couple, especially when those health benefits could be saving your life. And if same-sex marriage codification is a quick fix for that and similar issues for those who can fit into the State sanctioned same-sex marriage walls, which admittedly leaves some members of the Queer community who don’t overlap out, as part of an overall and more inclusive strategy that does include them then I’m in favour of it. That is, till the time comes that Straight and Queer can, over time and with a lot of mutual social learning, explore how to recognise and give equal rights with or without State based codification to the multiple queer and sometimes polyamorous relationship models that already populate the Gay and Straight worlds right now. So in the meantime continue to count me down as a “marriage-chasing-Gay.” But just pragmatically, not to normalise, as one of a diversity of political strategies for equality and just for now. References Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. New York: Verso, 2001. ———. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Bradshaw, James. “Pride Toronto Denied Federal Funding.” The Globe and Mail. 7 May. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/pride-toronto-denied-federal-funding/article1211065/›. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,1990. ———. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993. ———. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge, 1997. ———. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. ———. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham UP, 2005. Christopher, Nathaniel. “Openly Gay Men Make Less money, Survey Shows.” Xtra! .5 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Openly_gay_men_make_less_money_survey_shows-12756.aspx›. Clinton, Hillary. “Gay Rights Are Human Rights, And Human Rights Are Gay Rights.” United Nations General Assembly. 26 Dec. 2011 ‹http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/12/06/383003/sec-clinton-to-un-gay-rights-are-human-rights-and-human-rights-are-gay-rights/?mobile=nc›. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham, Kate Soper. New York: Random House,1980. —. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Toronto: Random House, 1977. —. The History of Sexuality Volume One: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978. Heart. “What About Love.” Heart. Capitol Records, 1985. CD. Ha, Tu Thanh. “Dan Savage: ‘I Had Been Divorced Overnight’.” The Globe and Mail. 12 Jan. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/dan-savage-i-had-been-divorced-overnight/article1358211/›. “Homecoming.” Equal Love Campaign. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a54UBWFXsF4›. Leblanc, Daniel. “Harper Among Least Trusted Leaders, Poll Shows.” The Globe and Mail. 12 Nov. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harper-among-least-trusted-leaders-poll-shows/article5187774/#›. Makin, Kirk. “The Coming Conservative Court: Harper to Reshape Judiciary.” The Globe and Mail. 24 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/the-coming-conservative-court-harper-to-reshape-judiciary/article595398/›. “Lady Gaga Rallies for Repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in Portland, Maine.” 9 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4rGla6OzGc›. “Lady Gaga Speaks at Gay Rights Rally in Washington DC as Part of the National Equality March.” 11 Oct. 2009 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jepWXu-Z38›. “Obama’s Stirring New Gay Rights Ad.” Newzar.com. 24 May. 2012 ‹http://newzar.com/obamas-stirring-new-gay-rights-ad/›. Postmedia News. “Same-sex Marriage in Canada will not be Revisited, Harper Says.” 12 Jan. 2012 ‹http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/12/same-sex-marriage-in-canada-will-not-be-revisited-harper-says/›. Potts, Graham. “‘Love Hurts’: Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade and St. Paul Queer Alain Badiou’s Truth and Fidelity.” CTheory. rt002: 2009 ‹http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=606›. Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. London: Duke UP, 2007. Seguin, Rheal. “Baird Calls Out Iran on Human Rights Violations.” The Globe and Mail. 22 Oct. 2012 ‹http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/baird-calls-out-iran-on-human-rights-violations/article4628968/›.

As the single most successful social-networking Website to date, Facebook has caused a shift in both practice and perception of online socialisation, and its relationship to the offline world. While not the first online social networking service, Facebook’s user base dwarfs its nearest competitors. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation boasts more than 750 million users (Facebook). The currently ailing MySpace claimed a ceiling of 100 million users in 2006 (Cashmore). Further, the accuracy of this number has been contested due to a high proportion of fake or inactive accounts. Facebook by contrast, claims 50% of its user base logs in at least once a day (Facebook). The popular and mainstream uptake of Facebook has shifted social use of the Internet from various and fragmented niche groups towards a common hub or portal around which much everyday Internet use is centred. The implications are many, but this paper will focus on the progress what Mimi Marinucci terms the “Facebook effect” (70) and the evolution of lists as a filtering mechanism representing one’s social zones within Facebook. This is in part inspired by the launch of Google’s new social networking service Google+ which includes “circles” as a fundamental design feature for sorting contacts. Circles are an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of a single, unified friends list that defines the Facebook experience. These lists and circles are both manifestations of the same essential concept: our social lives are, in fact, divided into various zones not defined by an online/offline dichotomy, by fantasy role-play, deviant sexual practices, or other marginal or minority interests. What the lists and circles demonstrate is that even very common, mainstream people occupy different roles in everyday life, and that to be effective social tools, social networking sites must grant users control over their various identities and over who knows what about them. Even so, the very nature of computer-based social tools lead to problematic definitions of identities and relationships using discreet terms, in contrast to more fluid, performative constructions of an individual and their relations to others. Building the Monolith In 1995, Sherry Turkle wrote that “the Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life” (180). Turkle describes the various deliberate acts of personnae creation possible online in contrast to earlier constraints placed upon the “cycling through different identities” (179). In the past, Turkle argues, “lifelong involvement with families and communities kept such cycling through under fairly stringent control” (180). In effect, Turkle was documenting the proliferation of identity games early adopters of Internet technologies played through various means. Much of what Turkle focused on were MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), explicit play-spaces that encouraged identity-play of various kinds. Her contemporary Howard Rheingold focused on what may be described as the more “true to life” communities of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) (1–38). In particular, Rheingold explored a community established around the shared experience of parenting, especially of young children. While that community was not explicitly built on the notion of role-play, the parental identity was an important quality of community members. Unlike contemporary social media networks, these early communities were built on discreet platforms. MUDs, MOOs, Bulletin Board Systems, UseNet Groups and other early Internet communication platforms were generally hosted independently of one another, and even had to be dialled into via modem separately in some cases (such as the WELL). The Internet was a truly disparate entity in 1995. The discreetness of each community supported the cordoning off of individual roles or identities between them. Thus, an individual could quite easily be “Pete” a member of the parental WELL group and “Gorak the Destroyer,” a role-player on a fantasy MUD without the two roles ever being associated with each other. As Turkle points out, even within each MUD ample opportunity existed to play multiple characters (183–192). With only a screen name and associated description to identify an individual within the MUD environment, nothing technical existed to connect one player’s multiple identities, even within the same community. As the Internet has matured, however, the tendency has been shifting towards monolithic hubs, a notion of collecting all of “the Internet” together. From a purely technical and operational perspective, this has led to the emergence of the ISP (Internet service provider). Users can make a connection to one point, and then be connected to everything “on the Net” instead of individually dialling into servers and services one at a time as was the case in the early 1980s with companies such as Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, and America On-Line (AOL). The early information service providers were largely walled gardens. A CompuServe user could only access information on the CompuServe network. Eventually the Internet became the network of choice and services migrated to it. Standards such as HTTP for Web page delivery and SMTP for email became established and dominate the Internet today. Technically, this has made the Internet much easier to use. The services that have developed on this more rationalised and unified platform have also tended toward monolithic, centralised architectures, despite the Internet’s apparent fundamental lack of a hierarchy. As the Internet replaced the closed networks, the wider Web of HTTP pages, forums, mailing lists and other forms of Internet communication and community thrived. Perhaps they required slightly more technological savvy than the carefully designed experience of walled-garden ISPs such as AOL, but these fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms still provided the discreet environments within which to role-play. An individual could hold dozens of login names to as many different communities. These various niches could be simply hobby sites and forums where a user would deploy their identity as model train enthusiast, musician, or pet owner. They could also be explicitly about role-play, continuing the tradition of MUDs and MOOs into the new millennium. Pseudo- and polynymity were still very much part of the Internet experience. Even into the early parts of the so-called Web 2.0 explosion of more interactive Websites which allowed for easier dialog between site owner and viewer, a given identity would be very much tied to a single site, blog or even individual comments. There was no “single sign on” to link my thread from a music forum to the comments I made on a videogame blog to my aquarium photos at an image gallery site. Today, Facebook and Google, among others, seek to change all that. The Facebook Effect Working from a psychological background Turkle explored the multiplicity of online identities as a valuable learning, even therapeutic, experience. She assessed the experiences of individuals who were coming to terms with aspects of their own personalities, from simple shyness to exploring their sexuality. In “You Can’t Front on Facebook,” Mimi Marinucci summarizes an analysis of online behaviour by another psychologist, John Suler (67–70). Suler observed an “online disinhibition effect” characterised by users’ tendency to express themselves more openly online than offline (321). Awareness of this effect was drawn (no pun intended) into popular culture by cartoonist Mike Krahulik’s protagonist John Gabriel. Although Krahulik’s summation is straight to the point, Suler offers a more considered explanation. There are six general reasons for the online disinhibition effect: being anonymous, being invisible, the communications being out of sync, the strange sensation that a virtual interlocutor is all in the mind of the user, the general sense that the online world simply is not real and the minimisation of status and authority (321–325). Of the six, the notion of anonymity is most problematic, as briefly explored above in the case of AOL. The role of pseudonymity has been explored in more detail in Ruch, and will be considered with regard to Facebook and Google+ below. The Facebook effect, Marinucci argues, mitigates all six of these issues. Though Marinucci explains the mitigation of each factor individually, her final conclusion is the most compelling reason: “Facebook often facilitates what is best described as an integration of identities, and this integration of identities in turn functions as something of an inhibiting factor” (73). Ruch identifies this phenomenon as the “aggregation of identities” (219). Similarly, Brady Robards observes that “social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook collapse the entire array of social relationships into just one category, that of ‘Friend’” (20). Unlike earlier community sites, Ruch notes “Facebook rejects both the mythical anonymity of the Internet, but also the actual pseudo- or polynonymous potential of the technologies” (219). Essentially, Facebook works to bring the offline social world online, along with all the conventional baggage that accompanies the individual’s real-world social life. Facebook, and now Google+, present a hard, dichotomous approach to online identity: anonymous and authentic. Their socially networked individual is the “real” one, using a person’s given name, and bringing all (or as many as the sites can capture) their contacts from the offline world into the online one, regardless of context. The Facebook experience is one of “friending” everyone one has any social contact with into one homogeneous group. Not only is Facebook avoiding the multiple online identities that interested Turkle, but it is disregarding any multiplicity of identity anywhere, including any online/offline split. David Kirkpatrick reports Mark Zuckerberg’s rejection of this construction of identity is explained by his belief that “You have one identity … having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (199). Arguably, Zuckerberg’s calls for accountability through identity continue a perennial concern for anonymity online fuelled by “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog” style moral panics. Over two decades ago Lindsy Van Gelder recounted the now infamous case of “Joan and Alex” (533) and Julian Dibbell recounted “a rape in cyberspace” (11). More recent anxieties concern the hacking escapades of Anonymous and LulzSec. Zuckerberg’s approach has been criticised by Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan—a bastion of Internet anonymity. During his keynote presentation at South by SouthWest 2011 Poole argued that Zuckerberg “equates anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Yet in spite of these objections, Facebook has mainstream appeal. From a social constructivist perspective, this approach to identity would be satisfying the (perceived?) need for a mainstream, context-free, general social space online to cater for the hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet. There is no specific, pre-defined reason to join Facebook in the way there is a particular reason to join a heavy metal music message board. Facebook is catering to the need to bring “real” social life online generally, with “real” in this case meaning “offline and pre-existing.” Very real risks of missing “real life” social events (engagements, new babies, party invitations etc) that were shared primarily via Facebook became salient to large groups of individuals not consciously concerned with some particular facet of identity performance. The commercial imperatives towards monolithic Internet and identity are obvious. Given that both Facebook and Google+ are in the business of facilitating the sale of advertising, their core business value is the demographic information they can sell to various companies for target advertising. Knowing a user’s individual identity and tastes is extremely important to those in the business of selling consumers what they currently want as well as predicting their future desires. The problem with this is the dawning realisation that even for the average person, role-playing is part of everyday life. We simply aren’t the same person in all contexts. None of the roles we play need to be particularly scandalous for this to be true, but we have different comfort zones with people that are fuelled by context. Suler proposes and Marinucci confirms that inhibition may be just as much part of our authentic self as the uninhibited expression experienced in more anonymous circumstances. Further, different contexts will inform what we inhibit and what we express. It is not as though there is a simple binary between two different groups and two different personal characteristics to oscillate between. The inhibited personnae one occupies at one’s grandmother’s home is a different inhibited self one plays at a job interview or in a heated discussion with faculty members at a university. One is politeness, the second professionalism, the third scholarly—yet they all restrain the individual in different ways. The Importance of Control over Circles Google+ is Google’s latest foray into the social networking arena. Its previous ventures Orkut and Google Buzz did not fare well, both were variously marred by legal issues concerning privacy, security, SPAM and hate groups. Buzz in particular fell afoul of associating Google accounts with users” real life identities, and (as noted earlier), all the baggage that comes with it. “One user blogged about how Buzz automatically added her abusive ex-boyfriend as a follower and exposed her communications with a current partner to him. Other bloggers commented that repressive governments in countries such as China or Iran could use Buzz to expose dissidents” (Novak). Google+ takes a different approach to its predecessors and its main rival, Facebook. Facebook allows for the organisation of “friends” into lists. Individuals can span more than one list. This is an exercise analogous to what Erving Goffman refers to as “audience segregation” (139). According to the site’s own statistics the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we anticipate it would be time-consuming to organise one’s friends according to real life social contexts. Yet without such organisation, Facebook overlooks the social structures and concomitant behaviours inherent in everyday life. Even broad groups offer little assistance. For example, an academic’s “Work People” list may include the Head of Department as well as numerous other lecturers with whom a workspace is shared. There are things one might share with immediate colleagues that should not be shared with the Head of Department. As Goffman states, “when audience segregation fails and an outsider happens upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult problems in impression management arise” (139). By homogenising “friends” and social contexts users are either inhibited or run the risk of some future awkward encounters. Google+ utilises “circles” as its method for organising contacts. The graphical user interface is intuitive, facilitated by an easy drag and drop function. Use of “circles” already exists in the vocabulary used to describe our social structures. “List” by contrast reduces the subject matter to simple data. The utility of Facebook’s friends lists is hindered by usability issues—an unintuitive and convoluted process that was added to Facebook well after its launch, perhaps a reaction to privacy concerns rather than a genuine attempt to emulate social organisation. For a cogent breakdown of these technical and design problems see Augusto Sellhorn. Organising friends into lists is a function offered by Facebook, but Google+ takes a different approach: organising friends in circles is a central feature; the whole experience is centred around attempting to mirror the social relations of real life. Google’s promotional video explains the centrality of emulating “real life relationships” (Google). Effectively, Facebook and Google+ have adopted two different systemic approaches to dealing with the same issue. Facebook places the burden of organising a homogeneous mass of “friends” into lists on the user as an afterthought of connecting with another user. In contrast, Google+ builds organisation into the act of connecting. Whilst Google+’s approach is more intuitive and designed to facilitate social networking that more accurately reflects how real life social relationships are structured, it suffers from forcing direct correlation between an account and the account holder. That is, use of Google+ mandates bringing online the offline. Google+ operates a real names policy and on the weekend of 23 July 2011 suspended a number of accounts for violation of Google’s Community Standards. A suspension notice posted by Violet Blue reads: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Open Source technologist Kirrily Robert polled 119 Google+ users about their experiences with the real names policy. The results posted to her on blog reveal that users desire pseudonymity, many for reasons of privacy and/or safety rather than the lack of integrity thought by Zuckerberg. boyd argues that Google’s real names policy is an abuse of power and poses danger to those users employing “nicks” for reasons including being a government employment or the victim of stalking, rape or domestic abuse. A comprehensive list of those at risk has been posted to the Geek Feminism Wiki (ironically, the Wiki utilises “Connect”, Facebook’s attempt at a single sign on solution for the Web that connects users’ movements with their Facebook profile). Facebook has a culture of real names stemming from its early adopters drawn from trusted communities, and this culture became a norm for that service (boyd). But as boyd also points out, “[r]eal names are by no means universal on Facebook.” Google+ demands real names, a demand justified by rhetoric of designing a social networking system that is more like real life. “Real”, in this case, is represented by one’s given name—irrespective of the authenticity of one’s pseudonym or the complications and dangers of using one’s given name. Conclusion There is a multiplicity of issues concerning social networks and identities, privacy and safety. This paper has outlined the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate zones of social context. Where some earlier research into the social Internet has had a positive (even utopian) feel, the contemporary Internet is increasingly influenced by powerful and competing corporations. As a result, the experience of the Internet is not necessarily as flexible as Turkle or Rheingold might have envisioned. Rather than conducting identity experimentation or exercising multiple personnae, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by the monolithic service providers such as Facebook and Google+. This is not purely an indictment of Facebook or Google’s corporate drive, though they are obviously implicated, but has as much to do with the new social practice of “being online.” So, while there are myriad benefits to participating in this new social context, as Poole noted, the “cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself.” Areas for further exploration include the implications of Facebook positioning itself as a general-purpose user authentication tool whereby users can log into a wide array of Websites using their Facebook credentials. If Google were to take a similar action the implications would be even more convoluted, given the range of other services Google offers, from GMail to the Google Checkout payment service. While the monolithic centralisation of these services will have obvious benefits, there will be many more subtle problems which must be addressed. References Blue, Violet. “Google Plus Deleting Accounts en Masse: No Clear Answers.” zdnet.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/56›. boyd, danah. “Real Names Policies Are an Abuse of Power.” zephoria.org (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html›. Cashmore, Pete. “MySpace Hits 100 Million Accounts.” mashable.com (2006). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://mashable.com/2006/08/09/myspace-hits-100-million-accounts›. Dibble, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Facebook. “Fact Sheet.” Facebook (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistic›. Geek Feminism Wiki. “Who Is Harmed by a Real Names Policy?” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy› Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Google. “The Google+ Project: Explore Circles.” Youtube.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPeAdpe_A8›. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Marinucci, Mimi. “You Can’t Front on Facebook.” Facebook and Philosophy. Ed. Dylan Wittkower. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2010. 65–74. Novak, Peter. “Privacy Commissioner Reviewing Google Buzz.” CBC News: Technology and Science (2010). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/02/16/google-buzz-privacy.html›. Poole, Christopher. Keynote presentation. South by SouthWest. Texas, Austin, 2011. Robards, Brady. “Negotiating Identity and Integrity on Social Network Sites for Educators.” International Journal for Educational Integrity 6.2 (2010): 19–23. Robert, Kirrily. “Preliminary Results of My Survey of Suspended Google Accounts.” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-suspended-google-accounts/›. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Ruch, Adam. “The Decline of Pseudonymity.” Posthumanity. Eds. Adam Ruch and Ewan Kirkland. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.net Press, 2010: 211–220. Sellhorn, Augusto. “Facebook Friend Lists Suck When Compared to Google+ Circles.” sellmic.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles›. Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology and Behavior 7 (2004): 321–326. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Van Gelder, Lindsy. “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover.” Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices Ed. Rob Kling. New York: Academic Press, 1996: 533–46.

Cultural Studies has tended to prioritise the domain of leisure and consumption over work as an area for meaning making, in many ways defining everyday life in opposition to work. Greg Noble, a cultural researcher who examined work in the context of the early computerisation of Australian universities made the point that "discussions of everyday life often make the mistake of assuming that everyday life equates with home and family life, or leisure" (87). This article argues for the need within Cultural Studies to focus on work and media as a research area of everyday life. With the growth of flexible and creative labour and the widespread uptake of an array of new media technologies used for work, traditional ways to identify and measure the space and time of work have become increasingly flawed, with implications for how we account for work and negotiate its boundaries. New approaches are needed to address the complex media environments and technological practices that are an increasing part of contemporary working life. Cultural Studies can make a significant impact towards this research agenda by offering new ways to analyse the complex interrelations of space, time and technology in everyday work practice. To further this goal, a new material practices account of work termed Officing is introduced, developed through my doctoral research on professionals' daily use of information and communication technology (ICT). This approach builds on the key cultural concepts of "bricolage" and "appropriation" combined with the idea of "articulation work" proposed by Anselm Strauss, to support the analysis of the office workplace as a contingent and provisional arrangement or process. Officing has a number of benefits as a framework for analysing the nature of work in a highly mediated world. Highlighting the labour that goes into stabilising work platforms makes it possible to assess the claims of productivity and improved work-life balance brought about by new mobile media technologies; to identify previously unidentified sources of time pressure, overwork and intensification and ultimately, to contribute to the design of more sustainable work environments. The Turn Away from Work Work held a central position in social and cultural analysis in the first half of the twentieth century but as Strangleman observed, there was a marked shift away from the study of work from the mid 1970s (3.1). Much of the impulse for this shift came from critiques of the over-emphasis on relations of production and the workplace as the main source of meaning and value (5.1). In line with this position, feminist researchers challenged the traditional division of labour into paid and unpaid work, arguing that this division sustained the false perception of domestic work as non-productive (cf. Delphy; Folbre). Accompanying these critiques were significant changes in work itself, as traditional jobs literally began to disappear with the decline of manufacturing in industrialised countries (6.1). With the turn away from work in academia and the changes in the nature of work, attention shifted to the realm of the market and consumption. One of the important contributions of Cultural Studies has been the focus on the role of the consumer in driving social and technological change and processes of identity formation. Yet, it is a major problem that work is largely marginalised in cultural research of everyday life, especially since, in most industrialised nations, we are working in new ways, in rapidly changing conditions and more than ever before. Research shows that in Australia there has been a steady increase in the average hours of paid work and Australians are working harder (cf. Watson, Buchanan, Campbell and Briggs; Edwards and Wajcman). In the 2008 Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) Skinner and Pocock found around 55 per cent of employees frequently felt rushed or pressed for time and this was associated with long working hours, work overload and an overall poor work–life interaction (8). These trends have coincided with long-term changes in the type and location of work. In Australia, like many other developed countries, information-based occupations have taken over manufacturing jobs and there has been an increase in part-time and casual work (cf. Watson et al.). Many employees now conduct work outside of the traditional workplace, with the ABS reporting that in 2008, 24 per cent of employees worked at least some hours at home. Many social analysts have explained the rise of casual and flexible labour as related to the transition to global capitalism driven by the expansion of networked information processes (cf. Castells; Van Dijk). This shift is not simply that more workers are producing ideas and information but that the previously separated spheres of production and consumption have blurred (cf. Ritzer and Jurgenson). With this, entirely new industries have sprung up, predicated on the often unpaid for creative labour of individuals, including users of media technologies. A growing chorus of writers are now pointing out that a fragmented, polarised and complex picture is emerging of this so-called "new economy", with significant implications for the quality of work (cf. Edwards and Wajcman; Fudge and Owens; Huws). Indeed, some claim that new conditions of insecure and poor quality employment or "precarious work" are fast becoming the norm. Moreover, this longer-term pattern runs parallel to the production of a multitude of new mobile media technologies, first taken up by professionals and then by the mainstream, challenging the notion that activities are bound to any particular place or time. Reinvigorating Work in Social and Cultural Analysis There are moves to reposition social and cultural analysis to respond to these various trends. Work-life balance is an example of a research and policy area that has emerged since the 1990s. The boundary between the household and the outside world has also been subject to scrutiny by cultural researchers, and these critically examine the intersection between work and consumption, gender and care (cf. Nippert-Eng; Sorenson and Lie; Noble and Lupton, "Consuming" and "Mine"; Lally). These responses are examples of a shift away from what Urry has dubbed "structures and stable organisations" to a concern with flows, movements and the blurring of boundaries between life spheres (5). In a similar vein, researchers recently have proposed alternative ways to describe the changing times and places of employment. In their study of UK professionals, Felstead, Jewson and Walters proposed a model of "plural workscapes" to explain a major shift in the spatial organisation of work (23). Mobility theorists Sheller and Urry have called for the need to "develop a more dynamic conceptualisation of the fluidities and mobilities that have increasingly hybridised the public and private" (113). All of this literature has reinforced a growing concern that in the face of new patterns of production and consumption and with the rise of complex media environments, traditional models and measures of space and time are inadequate to account for contemporary work. Analyses that rely on conventional measures of work based on hourly units clearly point to an increase in the volume of work, the speed of work and to the collision (cf. Pocock) of work and life but fall down in accounting for the complex and often contradictory role of technology. Media technologies are "Janus-faced" as Michael Arnold has suggested, referring to the two-faced Roman god to foreground the contradictory effects at the centre of all technologies (232). Wajcman notes this paradox in her research on mobile media and time, pointing out that mobile phones are just as likely to "save" time as to "consume" it (15). It was precisely this problematic of the complex interactions of the space, time and technology of work that was at stake in my research on the daily use of ICT by professional workers. In the context of changes to the location, activity and meaning of work, and with the multiplying array of old and new media technologies used by workers, how can the boundary and scope of work be determined? What are the implications of these shifting grounds for the experience and quality of work? Officing: A Material Practices Account of Office Work In the remaining article I introduce some of the key ideas and principles of a material practices account developed in my PhD, Officing: Professionals' Daily ICT Use and the Changing Space and Time of Work. This research took place between 2006 and 2007 focusing in-depth on the daily technology practices of twenty professional workers in a municipal council in Sydney and a unit of a global telecommunication company taking part in a trial of a new smart phone. Officing builds on efforts to develop a more accurate account of the space and time of work bringing into play the complex and highly mediated environment in which work takes place. It extends more recent practice-based, actor-network and cultural approaches that have, for some time, been moving towards a more co-constitutive and process-oriented approach to media and technology in society. Turning first to "bricolage" from the French bricole meaning something small and handmade, bricolage refers to the ways that individuals and groups borrow from existing cultural forms and meanings to create new uses, meanings and identities. Initially proposed by Levi-Strauss and then taken up by de Certeau, bricolage has been a useful concept within subculture and lifestyle studies to reveal the creative work performed on signs and meaning systems in forming cultural identities (cf. O'Sullivan et al.). Bricolage is also an important concept for understanding how meanings and uses are inscribed into forms in use rather than being read or activated off their design. This is the process of appropriation, through which both the object and the person are mutually shaped and users gain a sense of control and ownership (cf. Noble and Lupton; Lally; Silverstone and Haddon). The concept of bricolage highlights the improvisational qualities of appropriation and its status as work. A bricoleur is thus a person who constructs new meanings and forms by drawing on and assembling a wide range of resources at hand, sourced from multiple spheres of life. One of the problems with how bricolage and appropriation has been applied to date, notwithstanding the priority given to the domestic sphere, is the tendency to grant individuals and collectives too much control to stabilise the meanings and purposes of technologies. This problem is evident in the research drawing on the framework of "domestication" (cf. Silverstone and Haddon). In practice, the sheer volume of technologically-related issues encountered on a daily basis and the accompanying sense of frustration indicates there is no inevitable drift towards stability, nor are problems merely aberrational or trivial. Instead, daily limits to agency and attempts to overcome these are points at which meanings as well as uses are re-articulated and potentially re-invented. This is where "articulation work" comes in. Initially put forward by Anselm Strauss in 1985, articulation work has become an established analytical tool for informing technology design processes in such fields as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Workplace Studies. In these, articulation work is narrowly defined to refer to the real time activities of cooperative work. It includes dealing with contingencies, keeping technologies and systems working and making adjustments to accommodate for problems (Suchman "Supporting", 407). In combination with naturalistic investigations, this concept has facilitated engagement with the increasingly complex technological and media environments of work. It has been a powerful tool for highlighting practices deemed unimportant but which are nevertheless crucial for getting work done. Articulation work, however, has the potential to be applied in a broader sense to explain the significance of the instability of technologies and the efforts to overcome these as transformative in themselves, part of the ongoing process of appropriation that goes well beyond individual tasks or technologies. With clear correspondences to actor-network theory, this expanded definition provides the basis for a new understanding of the office as a temporary and provisional condition of stability achieved through the daily creative and improvisational activities of workers. The office, then, is dependent on and inextricably bound up in its ongoing articulation and crucially, is not bound to a particular place or time. In the context of the large-scale transformations in work already discussed, this expanded definition of articulation work helps to; firstly, address how work is re-organised and re-rationalised through changes to the material conditions of work; secondly, identify the ongoing articulations that this entails and thirdly; understand the role of these articulations in the construction of the space and time of work. This expanded definition is achieved in the newly developed concept of officing. Officing describes a form of labour directed towards the production of a stable office platform. Significantly, one of the main characteristics of this work is that it often goes undetected by organisations as well as by the workers that perform it. As explained later, its "invisibility" is in part a function of its embodiment but also relates to the boundless nature of officing, taking place both inside and outside the workplace, in or out of work time. Officing is made up of a set of interwoven activities of three main types: connecting, synchronising and configuring. Connecting can be understood as aligning technical and social relations for the performance of work at a set time. Synchronising brings together and coordinates different times and temporal demands, for example, the time of "work" with "life" or the time "out in the field" with time "in the workplace". Configuring prepares the space of work, making a single technology or media environment work to some planned action or existing pattern of activity. To give an example of connecting: in the Citizens' Service Centre of the Council, Danielle's morning rituals involved a series of connections even before her work of advising customers begins: My day: get in, sit down, turn on the computer and then slowly open each software program that I will need to use…turn on the phone, key in my password, turn on the headphones and sit there and wait for the calls! (Humphry Officing, 123) These connections not only set up and initiate the performance of work but also mark Danielle's presence in her office. Through these activities, which in practice overlap and blur, the space and time of the office comes to appear as a somewhat separate and mostly invisible structure or infrastructure. The work that goes into making the office stable takes place around the boundary of work with implications for how this boundary is constituted. These efforts do not cluster around boundaries in any simple sense but become part of the process of boundary making, contributing to the construction of categories such as "work" and "life". So, for example, for staff in the smart phone trial, the phone had become their main source of information and communication. Turning their smart phone off, or losing connectivity had ramifications that cascaded throughout their lifeworld. On the one hand, this lead to the breakdown of the distinction between "work" and "life" and a sense of "ever-presence", requiring constant and vigilant "boundary work" (cf. Nippert-Eng). On the other hand, this same state also enabled workers to respond to demands in their own time and across multiple boundaries, giving workers a sense of flexibility, control and of being "in sync". Connecting, configuring and synchronising are activities performed by bodies, producing an embodied transformation. In the tradition of phenomenology, most notably in the works of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and more recently Ihde, embodiment is used to explain the relationship between subjects and objects. This concept has since been developed to be understood as not residing in the body but as spread through social, material and discursive arrangements (cf. Haraway, "Situated" and Simians; Henke; Suchman, "Figuring"). Tracing efforts towards making the office stable is thus a way of uncovering how the body, as a constitutive part of a larger arrangement or network, is formed through embodiment, how it gains its competencies, social meanings and ultimately, how workers gain a sense of what it means to be a professional. So, in the smart phone trial, staff managed their connections by replying immediately to their voice, text and data messages. This immediacy not only acted as proof of their presence in the office. It also signalled their commitment to their office: their active participation and value to the organisation and their readiness to perform when called on. Importantly, this embodied transformation also helps to explain how officing becomes an example of "invisible work" (cf. Star and Strauss). Acts of connecting, synchronising and configuring become constituted and forgotten in and through bodies, spaces and times. Through their repeated performance these acts become habits, a transparent means through which the environment of work is navigated in the form of skills and techniques, configurations and routines. In conclusion, researching work in contemporary societies means confronting its marginalisation within cultural research and developing ways to comprehend and measure the interaction of space, time and the ever-multiplying array of media technologies. Officing provides a way to do this by shifting to an understanding of the workplace as a contingent product of work itself. The strength of this approach is that it highlights the creative and ongoing work of individuals on their media infrastructures. It also helps to identify and describe work activities that are not neatly contained in a workplace, thus adding to their invisibility. The invisibility of these practices can have significant impacts on workers: magnifying feelings of time pressure and a need to work faster, longer and harder even as discrete technologies are utilised to save time. In this way, officing exposes some of the additional contributions to the changing experience and quality of work as well as to the construction of everyday domains. Officing supports an evaluation of claims of productivity and work-life balance in relation to new media technologies. In the smart phone trial, contrary to an assumed increase in productivity, mobility of work was achieved at the expense of productivity. Making the mobile office stable—getting it up and running, keeping it working in changing environments and meeting expectations of speed and connectivity—took up time, resulting in an overall productivity loss and demanding more "boundary work". In spite of their adaptability and flexibility, staff tended to overwork to counteract this loss. This represented a major shift in the burden of effort in the production of office forms away from the organisation and towards the individual. Finally, though not addressed here in any detail, officing could conceivably have practical uses for designing more sustainable office environments that better support the work process and the balance of work and life. Thus, by accounting more accurately for the resource requirements of work, organisations can reduce the daily effort, space and time taken up by employees on their work environments. In any case, what is clear, is the ongoing need to continue a cultural research agenda on work—to address the connections between transformations in work and the myriad material practices that individuals perform in going about their daily work. References Arnold, Michael. "On the Phenomenology of Technology: The 'Janus-Faces' of Mobile Phones." Information and Organization 13.4 (2003): 231–56. Australian Bureau of Statistics. "6275.0 - Locations of Work, Nov 2008." Australian Bureau of Statistics, 8 May 2009. 20 May 2009 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/6275.0›. Bauman, Zygmunt. Freedom. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996. Chesters, Jennifer, Janeen Baxter, and Mark Western. "Paid and Unpaid Work in Australian Households: Towards an Understanding of the New Gender Division of Labour." Familes through Life - 10th Australian Institute of Families Studies Conference, 9-11th July 2008, Melbourne: AIFS, 2008. Delphy, Christine. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women's Oppression. Amherst MA: U of Massachusetts, 1984. Edwards, Paul, and Judy Wajcman. The Politics of Working Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Felstead, Alan, Nick Jewson, and Sally Walters. Changing Places of Work. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Folbre, Nancy. "Exploitation Comes Home: A Critique of the Marxian Theory of Family Labor." Cambridge Journal of Economics 6.4 (1982): 317-29. Haraway, Donna. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective." Feminist Studies 14.3 (1988): 575-99. –––. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London, Free Association Books, 1991. Henke, Christopher. "The Mechanics of Workplace Order: Toward a Sociology of Repair." Berkeley Journal of Sociology 44 (2000): 55-81. Humphry, Justine. Officing: Professionals' Daily ICT Use and the Changing Space and Time of Work. Dissertation, University of Western Sydney. 2010. Lally, Elaine. At Home with Computers. Oxford, New York: Berg, 2002. Nippert-Eng, Christena E. Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Noble, Greg. "Everyday Work." Interpreting Everyday Culture. Ed. Fran Martin. New York: Hodder Arnold, 2004. 87-102. Noble, Greg, and Deborah Lupton. "Consuming Work: Computers, Subjectivity and Appropriation in the University Workplace." The Sociological Review 46.4 (1998): 803-27. –––. "Mine/Not Mine: Appropriating Personal Computers in the Academic Workplace." Journal of Sociology 38.1 (2002): 5-23. O'Sullivan, Tim, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery, and John Fiske. Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1994. Pocock, Barbara. The Work/Life Collision: What Work Is Doing to Australians and What to Do about It. Sydney: The Federation P, 2003. Ritzer, George, and Nathan Jurgenson. "Production, Consumption, Prosumption." Journal of Consumer Culture 10.1 (2010): 13-36. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. "Mobile Transformations of 'Public' and 'Private' Life." Theory, Culture & Society 20.3 (2003): 107-25. Silverstone, Roger, and Leslie Haddon. "Design and the Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life." Communication by Design: The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies. Eds. Roger Silverstone and Robin Mansell. Oxford: U of Oxford P, 1996. 44-74. Skinner, Natalie, and Barbara Pocock. "Work, Life and Workplace Culture: The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) 2008." Adelaide: The Centre for Work and Life, Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia 2008 ‹http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/default.asp›.Sorenson, Knut H., and Merete Lie. Making Technology Our Own? Domesticating Technologies into Everyday Life. Oslo: Scandinavian UP, 1996.Star, Susan L. "The Sociology of the Invisible: The Primacy of Work in the Writings of Anselm Strauss." Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. 265-83. Star, Susan L., and Anselm Strauss. "Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work." Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8 (1999): 9-30. Strangleman, Timothy. "Sociological Futures and the Sociology of Work." Sociological Research Online 10.4 (2005). 5 Nov. 2005 ‹http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/4/strangleman.html›.Strauss, Anselm. "Work and the Division of Labor." The Sociological Quarterly 26 (1985): 1-19. Suchman, Lucy A. "Figuring Personhood in Sciences of the Artificial." Department of Sociology, Lancaster University. 1 Nov. 2004. 18 Jun. 2005 ‹http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/suchman-figuring-personhood.pdf›–––. "Supporting Articulation Work." Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices. Ed. Rob Kling. San Diego: Academic P, 1995. 407-423.Urry, John. Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge, 2000. Van Dijk, Jan. The Network Society: Social Aspects of New Media. London: Thousand Oaks, 2006. Wajcman, Judy. "Life in the Fast Lane? Towards a Sociology of Technology and Time." The British Journal of Sociology 59.1 (2008): 59-77.Watson, Ian, John Buchanan, Iain Campbell, and Chris Briggs. Fragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Life. Sydney: Federation P, 2003.

The structuring of a film's plot as the trajectory of the goals and desires of a single protagonist can be seen as the most critical development in cinematic narrative. In addition to its commodity implications via the star system and its centrality to a range of important film theories about fantasy and pleasure, the single protagonist is the linchpin of the cinema's ability to transmit messages that confirm the most basic myths about the power of the individual in society. While Hollywood's use of the single protagonist as a model for the self is particularly detrimental in the United States, the international dominance of American cinema means that this narrative convention can affect the formation of the self around the world. As a result, the single protagonist is the element that is most often critiqued by filmmakers and theorists who want cinema to be more politically engaged. In fact, one way of identifying a film that is aggressively political is to examine its treatment of the protagonist function. In Potemkin, for example, Sergei Eisenstein substitutes a group protagonist for Hollywood's individual so that he can demonstrate the unity of the people against their oppressors. Roberto Rossellini's neo-realist films Roma città aperta and Paisà likewise contain structures that are meant to undermine traditional Hollywood modes of narration since both films use what I call a serial protagonist. These strategies have become noticeably common, as multi-protagonist films have appeared in France, Hong Kong, and in the United States. As is typical, however, a cinematic strategy that trumpets political engagement in Europe is reduced to a stylish ornament in Hollywood. In American multi-protagonist films, the single protagonist is jettisoned, not to make a political statement, but in order to emphasise emotion over intellect, to encourage the audience not to think, but to feel. The two main strategies for accomplishing this goal are narrative fragmentation and disrupted character attachment. There are basically two kinds of multi-protagonist films. Margrit Tröhler calls them "group films" and "mosaic films." Group films feature an ensemble, a single large group such as a family or a gang whose stories are linked spatially to some central meeting place. Mosaic films, on the other hand, present a number of small groups, couples, or single characters. Initially, these people are linked only insofar as they happen to live in the same city at the same time, though eventually, as the narrative goes on, their stories become enmeshed, largely through coincidence. As a further breakdown, I would separate the "mosaic films" into action films and emotive films. Amores Perros and Go would be examples of multi-protagonist action films, where the most intense episodes in the film are active and violent; Magnolia and Happiness are examples of multi-protagonist emotive films, films in which the moments of greatest intensity are reactive and emotional. These intense moments, which occur as a series rather than as the result of cause-and-effect, are assumed to provide the major source of pleasure for spectators. Magnolia, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson in 1999, is perhaps the most striking of all the recent group of American multi-protagonist emotive films. Like Pulp Fiction and American Beauty, Magnolia was meant to bridge the gap between independent film and mainstream studio production. From its inception, Magnolia was planned as a quality production, and Anderson sold himself to New Line as their entrée into the prestige market. New Line, "the only major studio that has never had an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture" (Hirschberg 55), thought that Anderson would be their Quentin Tarantino and gave him total creative control. Michael De Luca, head of production at New Line, agrees with Anderson that there is a link between films like Magnolia and the films of the New American Cinema on the 1970s: "People who grew up on the 70s movies now have power around town" (Hirschberg 55), explaining why we are seeing so many experimental and edgy films since the turn of the century. The other thing that these people grew up on was TV, and narrative forms developed explicitly for television have become increasingly common in mainstream American cinema. Classic film theory analysed the spectator/protagonist relationship as one based on identification and resulting in momentary coherence and empowerment. Because the viewing practices associated with television are so different from those supported by classic cinema, these new TV-influenced films can be expected to create a different model for the self. The narrative structure that these millennial multi-protagonist films most closely resemble is that of the American daytime soap opera. Ironically, despite the low esteem in which soap operas are held, their episodic narrative structure and emphasis on emotions rather than logic directly shape much of cinematic storytelling today. Also ironically, whenever a non-soap opera text adopts soap practices, that text is seen as doing something daring. For example, TV series like Hill St. Blues that adopted soap operas' ensemble casts and arc narrative structure were labeled "quality television" (Feuer et al.). In a similar way, the fragmented narratives of multi-protagonist films like Magnolia are seen as stylish and experimental. However, the strategy is risky, since adoption of these narrative structures disrupts the strong bond that the single protagonist is expected to secure and may undermine viewers' pleasure in the film if they are not accustomed to soap-opera conventions. Whether it is a segment, a day's episode, or the entire run of the programme, the most striking aspect of soap-opera narrative is the fact it begins and ends in medias res. Emphasis on the middle of a story means that less attention is given to its beginning and end. Another way to say this is that soap operas focus most of their attention on the present. The focus on the present means that, although the characters in Magnolia clearly have pasts, they do not have histories. We do not know why Jimmy Gator molested his daughter, why Earl Partridge deserted his dying wife and 14-year-old son, what has happened to Stanley's mother, whether his father is successful in his career, or why Jim Kurring has become a cop. This lack of history makes it difficult to make moral judgements about them. The single character in Magnolia who explicitly attempts to create a history for himself is Frank Mackey, the male-empowerment guru played by Tom Cruise. Mackey says that a focus on the past is an excuse for not progressing in the present, further thematising the importance of the present. Soap narratives are created specifically for a viewing situation that incorporates a range of institutionally required ruptures -- commercials, promos, and other imbedded messages. As a result, soaps incorporate devices designed to sustain interest during these enforced breaks. The most typical of these strategies is the narrative gap created by an interrupted action or an unanswered question. On a daytime soap, we may only have to wait five minutes or so before returning to a particular narrative thread, but films with longer running times often extend that period considerably. For example, Gwenovier asks Frank why he would lie about the facts of his background. We do not return to Frank for over thirteen minutes. Soap-opera viewers are comfortable with these often silly narrative breaks because they know that the narrative line will eventually pick up exactly where it left off. That is not always the case in these films, however, and, indeed, Frank changes the subject. These lengthy interruptions clearly pose a challenge to active spectatorship as well as to audience tolerance. Since soap operas are eternal middles, the end of a story is always construed as a new beginning. Happy couples are presumed to be boring, and so no relationship is coded as permanent and impregnable. This pressure to resist closure creates a problem for narrative construction in multi-protagonist films, many of which have to go to great lengths to create anything like an ending. Generally chance or coincidence must be involved, a break with an important classical convention of narrative construction. Robert Altman needed an earthquake in Short Cuts, and P. T. Anderson needed frogs to rain down from the skies in order to begin to end Magnolia. Interestingly, while the open ending has been linked to the importance of the sequel in the New Hollywood, none of these multi-protagonist films has been the basis of a sequel. Soap operas have huge casts, and often characters will not appear every day. As a result, soaps are marked by diffuse viewer-character attachment. To ensure that the viewer will stay involved with the widest range of characters, the most effective soap stories present events from the perspectives of all parties to a conflict. As a result, on most soaps, while characters may do bad things from time to time, they are rarely represented as out-and-out villains. Like daytime soap operas, there are no villains in multi-protagonist emotive films. The wickedest character in Magnolia is the beloved game-show host who may have abused his young daughter. The film tries to ameliorate our sense of disgust by withholding this information until near the end of the film, focusing our attention instead on the facts that he is dying of cancer and that his daughter, a shrill and unattractive cocaine addict, cannot stand the sight of him. As a result, characters are not obviously coded in ways that make it easy for us to make moral judgments about them. Moreover, while the characters are single-mindedly going about their business, we are continually distracted and directed toward someone else's story. Far from being victims relentlessly carried along by the plot, the characters in these films burst into and disrupt the narratives of others, demanding our attention. The spectator must therefore contend not only with narrative ruptures but also with the need to reacquaint him- or herself with the characters and to continually renegotiate his or her relationship with them. This relationship will be affected not only by what the character was doing when we last met him or her, but on what kind of experience we have had during the intervening action. Two of the most useful ways of conceptualising the process by which we interact with characters in film -- those of Murray Smith and Carl Plantinga -- are put at a disadvantage by the multi-protagonist film. Both of these cognitive approaches describe the stages that spectators go through in deciding who the characters are and how we feel about what they do, and both reject psychoanalytic identification as part of their model. Although I ordinarily find their approaches highly useful, studying the multi-protagonist film leads me to conclude that their approaches are applicable to these films only with great difficulty. Both Smith and Plantinga ground their analyses on the conscious, intellectual, and voluntary conclusions that we make about the personalities and activities of the characters in films. Both men emphasise the power that narrative has in the formation of these emotional responses, and both minimise the involuntary and autonomic responses that derive from cinematic techniques rather than from the narrative. However, the fragmented nature of the narrative in the multi-protagonist film, the difficulty that characters have in dominating either our consciousness or their own worlds, and the diffusion of interest keep the process from working as Smith and Plantinga describe. For example, Murray Smith suggests that character attachment occurs in three stages: recognition, alignment, and allegiance. Each of these stages is compromised in the experience of viewing a multi-protagonist film. Recognition is the name given to the stage in which we notice various traits of the character and arrange them into some kind of coherent personality, much as we do when we meet people in real life. Magnolia takes advantage of this process to set traps for us: since the characters have no histories, if we stereotype them, we will fall into a trap. For example, Phil Parma, the male nurse, includes several sex magazines in his grocery order. While we might assume that Phil wants the magazines only to "read the articles," he uses them to get in touch with Frank, who advertises in them. However, since we know nothing of Phil's history, we cannot exonerate him: he may have remembered seeing Frank's ad in a previous issue of the magazine, or his seeing the advertisement now could simply be the kind of serendipitous accident thematised by the film. Alignment, the next phase in the character-attachment process, is likewise compromised by the multi-protagonist film. A film's investment in aligning us to a character is seen as a function of the quantity of time we spend with the character, of the degree of narrative restriction, of the representational strategies used with the character, and of the degree of access that we are given to that character's mental and emotional states. Unlike films with single protagonists, no character dominates screen time or narration in a multi-protagonist film. Nor is one character particularly favored cinematically: all the main characters are given close-ups, camera movements, and compositional prominence. In Magnolia, Jim the cop could be said to dominate the narrative since the primary action of the film begins and ends with him, he is presented as the film's moral centre, and a voiceover allows us access to his thoughts. But, as a figure representing law and order, and thus as a vehicle for the imposition of narrative control, he is a failure. He loses his gun, never realises that Claudia is high on cocaine, and allows Donnie to return the money that he stole from the furniture store where he used to work. Moreover, the narrational authority of Jim's voiceover is undermined: voiceover shots segue seamlessly into shots in which he is shown clearly talking out loud to himself. While this is a common soap-opera technique, it is uncommon in cinema and is likely to make us wonder whether Jim is OK. Finally, allegiance occurs when we weigh everything that we know about the character against his or her actions and make a moral judgment about him or her. Smith calls this "the structure of sympathy" and sees our feelings as falling along a continuum from sympathy to antipathy. Since there are no villains, it is likely that, with the exception of Jimmy Gator, we have a certain amount of sympathy for all the characters in Magnolia. That said, it is unlikely that we really like any of them either. Thus, I would argue that, if one does derive pleasure from the experience of seeing a multi-protagonist film like Magnolia, empathy is likely to be one's primary response. Both Plantinga and Smith marginalise empathy since both see it as an involuntary response to the film's cinematic techniques rather than as a product of the conscious processing of a film's narrative. However, it is for that very reason that I see empathy as the desired response in the multi-protagonist film. The fragmented narrative and the difficulties that it causes for character attachment make any other response problematic. Like the characters in the film, we are not supposed to think, just to feel. These films (and the daytime soaps) thematise several key aspects of life as we live it now: First, the plenitude of these films is such that they cannot be brought to an ending in the classical Hollywood sense; they do not end, they simply stop, and their stopping place is construed as a new beginning. Second, like the characters in Magnolia, our real lives are ruled by chance in ways that Hollywood used to deny. Second, even though the past remains an important narrative element -- three different voices in Magnolia say that "We may think we're done with the past, but the past is not done with us" -- the intensity of the emotions expressed by the characters tells us that the tensions of the present moment are really all that matter. Multi-protagonist films present several advantages to their producers and creators (e.g., the role of chance makes plot construction easier, a star doesn't have to carry the entire picture, the film can appeal to a broader demographic, the structure is critically marked as daring), but they also compromise the film's ability to represent the power of the individual, the theme that is central in all mainstream American films. Unfortunately, the American multi-protagonist film does not interrogate that theme or even address its absence directly. By presenting the spectator with a string of narrative fragments, these films create a series of sensational episodes in which people's emotions explode instead of buildings. The emotive blockbuster supports rather than critiques the view of the self as isolated, solipsistic, and focused on personal rather than social distress. References Epstein, Seymour. "Controversial Issues in Emotion Theory." In P. Shaver, ed. Review of Personality and Social Psychology: emotions, Relationships, and Health. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1994: 66–68. Feuer, Jane, Paul Kerr, and Tise Vahimagi. MTM: "Quality Television." London: BFI, 1984. Hirschberg, Lynn. "His Way." [Profile of Paul Thomas Anderson] New York Times Magazine (19 December 1999): 52–56. Plantinga, Carl. "Affect, Cognition, and the Power of Movies." Post Script 13:1 (Fall 1993): 10–29. Smith, Murray. "Altered States: Character and Emotional Response in the Cinema." Cinema Journal 33:4 (Summer 1994): 34–56. Smith, Murray. "Cognition, Emotion, and Cinematic Narrative." Post Script 13:1 (Fall 1993): 30–45. Tröhler, Margrit. "Les films à protagonistes multiples et la logique des possibles." Iris 29 (Spring 2000): 85–102. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Carmago, Sandy. "'Mind the Gap'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Carmago.html &gt. Chicago Style Carmago, Sandy, "'Mind the Gap'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Carmago.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Carmago, Sandy. (2002) 'Mind the Gap'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Carmago.html &gt ([your date of access]).

This article is about refugees’ and migrants’ dreams of home and family and stems from an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, “A Hand Up: Disrupting the Communication of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency” (LP140100935), with Partner Organisation St Vincent de Paul Society (WA) Inc. (Vinnies). A Vinnies-supported refugee and migrant support centre was chosen as one of the hubs for interviewee recruitment, given that many refugee families experience persistent and chronic economic disadvantage. The de-identified name for the drop-in language-teaching and learning social facility is the Migrant and Refugee Homebase (MARH). At the time of the research, in 2018, refugee and forced migrant families from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan constituted MARH’s primary membership base. MARH provided English language classes alongside other educational and financial support. It could also organise provision of emergency food and was a conduit for furniture donated by Australian families. Crucially, MARH operated as a space in which members could come together to build shared community.As part of her role, the researcher was introduced to Sara (de-identified), a mother-tongue Arabic speaker and the centre’s coordinator. Sara had personal experience of being a refugee, as well as being MARH’s manager, and she became both a point of contact for the researcher team, an interpreter/translator, and an empathetic listener as refugees shared their stories. Dreams of home and family emerged throughout the interviews as a vital part of participants’ everyday lives. These dreams and hopes were developed in the face of what was, for some, a nightmare of adversity. Underpinning participants’ sense of agency, subjectivity and resilience, Badiou argues (93, as noted in Jackson, 241) that hope can appear as a basic form of patience or perseverance rather than a dream for justice. Instead of imagining an improvement in personal circumstances, the dream is one of simply moving forward rather than backward. While dreams of being reunited with family are rooted in the past and project a vision of a family which no longer exists, these dreams help fashion a future which once again contains a range of possibilities.Although Sara volunteered her time on the research project as part of her commitment to Vinnies, she was well-known to interviewees as a MARH staff member and, in many cases, a friend and confidante. While Sara’s manager role implies an imbalance of power, with Sara powerful and participants comparatively less so, the majority of the information explored in the interviews pertained to refugees’ experiences of life outside the sphere in which MARH is engaged, so there was limited risk of the data being sanitised to reflect positively upon MARH. The specialist information and understandings that the interviewees shared positions them as experts, and as co-creators of knowledge.Recruitment and Methodological ApproachThe project researcher (Jaunzems) met potential contributors at MARH when its members gathered for a coffee morning. With Sara’s assistance, the researcher invited MARH members to take part in the research project, giving those present the opportunity to ask and have answered any questions they deemed important. Coffee morning attendees were under no obligation to take part, and about half chose not to do so, while the remainder volunteered to participate. Sara scheduled the interviews at times to suit the families participating. A parent and child from each volunteer family was interviewed, separately. In all cases it was the mother who volunteered to take part, and all interviewees chose to be interviewed in their homes. Each set of interviews was digitally recorded and lasted no longer than 90 minutes. This article includes extracts from interviews with three mothers from refugee families who escaped war-torn homelands for a new life in Australia, sometimes via interim refugee camps.The project researcher conducted the in-depth interviews with Sara’s crucial interpreting/translating assistance. The interviews followed a traditional approach, except that the researcher deferred to Sara as being more important in the interview exchange than she was. This reflects the premise that meaning is socially constructed, and that what people do and say makes visible the meanings that underpin their actions and statements within a wider social context (Burr). Conceptualising knowledge as socially constructed privileges the role of the decoder in receiving, understanding and communicating such knowledge (Crotty). Respecting the role of the interpreter/translator signified to the participants that their views, opinions and their overall cultural context were valued.Once complete, the interviews were sent for translation and transcription by a trusted bi-lingual transcriber, where both the English and Arabic exchanges were transcribed. This was deemed essential by the researchers, to ensure both the authenticity of the data collected and to demonstrate “trust, understanding, respect, and a caring connection” (Valibhoy, Kaplan, and Szwarc, 23) with the participants. Upon completion of the interviews with volunteer members of the MARH community, and at the beginning of the analysis phase, researchers recognised the need for the adoption of an interpretive framework. The interpretive approach seeks to understand an individual’s view of the world through the contexts of time, place and culture. The knowledge produced is contextualised and differs from one person to another as a result of individual subjectivities such as age, race and ethnicity, even within a shared social context (Guba and Lincoln). Accordingly, a mother-tongue Arabic speaker, who identifies as a refugee (Al-Hameed), was added to the project. All authors were involved in writing up the article while authors two, three and four took responsibility for transcript coding and analysis. In the transcripts that follow, words originally spoken in Arabic are in intalics, with non-italcised words originally spoken in English.Discrimination and BelongingAya initially fled from her home in Syria into neighbouring Jordan. She didn’t feel welcomed or supported there.[00:55:06] Aya: …in Jordan, refugees didn’t have rights, and the Jordanian schools refused to teach them [the children…] We were put aside.[00:55:49] Interpreter, Sara (to Researcher): And then she said they push us aside like you’re a zero on the left, yeah this is unfortunately the reality of our countries, I want to cry now.[00:56:10] Aya: You’re not allowed to cry because we’ll all cry.Some refugees and migrant communities suffer discrimination based on their ethnicity and perceived legitimacy as members of the host society. Although Australian refugees may have had searing experiences prior to their acceptance by Australia, migrant community members in Australia can also feel themselves “constructed in the public and political spheres as less legitimately Australian than others” (Green and Aly). Jackson argues that both refugees and migrants experiencethe impossibility of ever bridging the gap between one’s natal ties to the place one left because life was insupportable there, and the demands of the nation to which one has travelled, legally or illegally, in search of a better life. And this tension between belonging and not belonging, between a place where one has rights and a place where one does not, implies an unresolved relationship between one’s natural identity as a human being and one’s social identity as ‘undocumented migrant,’ a ‘resident alien,’ an ‘ethnic minority,’ or ‘the wretched of the earth,’ whose plight remains a stigma of radical alterity even though it inspires our compassion and moves us to political action. (223)The tension Jackson refers to, where the migrant is haunted by belonging and not belonging, is an area of much research focus. Moreover, the label of “asylum seeker” can contribute to systemic “exclusion of a marginalised and abject group of people, precisely by employing a term that emphasises the suspended recognition of a community” (Nyers). Unsurprisingly, many refugees in Australia long for the connectedness of the lives they left behind relocated in the safe spaces where they live now.Eades focuses on an emic approach to understanding refugee/migrant distress, or trauma, which seeks to incorporate the worldview of the people in distress: essentially replicating the interpretive perspective taken in the research. This emic framing is adopted in place of the etic approach that seeks to understand the distress through a Western biomedical lens that is positioned outside the social/cultural system in which the distress is taking place. Eades argues: “developing an emic approach is to engage in intercultural dialogue, raise dilemmas, test assumptions, document hopes and beliefs and explore their implications”. Furthermore, Eades sees the challenge for service providers working with refugee/migrants in distress as being able to move beyond “harm minimisation” models of care “to recognition of a facilitative, productive community of people who are in a transitional phase between homelands”. This opens the door for studies concerning the notions of attachment to place and its links to resilience and a refugee’s ability to “settle in” (for example, Myers’s ground-breaking place-making work in Plymouth).Resilient PrecariousnessChaima: We feel […] good here, we’re safe, but when we sit together, we remember what we went through how my kids screamed when the bombs came, and we went out in the car. My son was 12 and I was pregnant, every time I remember it, I go back.Alongside the dreams that migrants have possible futures are the nightmares that threaten to destabilise their daily lives. As per the work of Xavier and Rosaldo, post-migration social life is recreated in two ways: the first through participation and presence in localised events; the second by developing relationships with absent others (family and friends) across the globe through media. These relationships, both distanced and at a distance, are dispersed through time and space. In light of this, Campays and Said suggest that places of past experiences and rituals for meaning are commonly recreated or reproduced as new places of attachment abroad; similarly, other recollections and experience can trigger a sense of fragility when “we remember what we went through”. Gupta and Ferguson suggest that resilience is defined by the migrant/refugee capacity to “reimagine and re-materialise” their lost heritage in their new home. This involves a sense of connection to the good things in the past, while leaving the bad things behind.Resilience has also been linked to the migrant’s/refugee’s capacity “to manage their responses to adverse circumstances in an interpersonal community through the networks of relationships” (Eades). Resilience in this case is seen through an intersubjective lens. Joseph reminds us that there is danger in romanticising community. Local communities may not only be hostile toward different national and ethnic groups, they may actively display a level of hostility toward them (Boswell). However, Gill maintains that “the reciprocal relations found in communities are crucially important to their [migrant/refugee] well-being”. This is because inclusion in a given community allows migrants/refugees to shrug off the outsider label, and the feeling of being at risk, and provides the opportunity for them to become known as families and friends. One of MAHR’s central aims was to help bridge the cultural divide between MARH users and the broader Australian community.Hope[01:06: 10] Sara (to interviewee, Aya): What’s the key to your success here in Australia?[01:06:12] Aya: The people, and how they treat us.[01:06:15] Sara (to Researcher): People and how they deal with us.[01:06:21] Aya: It’s the best thing when you look around, and see people who don’t understand your language but they help you.[01:06:28] Sara (to Researcher): She said – this is nice. I want to cry also. She said the best thing when I see people, they don’t understand your language, and I don’t understand theirs but they still smile in your face.[01:06:43] Aya: It’s the best.[01:06:45] Sara (to Aya): yes, yes, people here are angels. This is the best thing about Australia.Here, Sara is possibly shown to be taking liberties with the translation offered to the researcher, talking about how Australians “smile in your face”, when (according to the translator) Aya talked about how Australians “help”. Even so, the capacity for social connection and other aspects of sociality have been linked to a person’s ability to turn a negative experience into a positive cultural resource (Wilson). Resilience is understood in these cases as a strength-based practice where families, communities and individuals are viewed in terms of their capabilities and possibilities, instead of their deficiencies or disorders (Graybeal and Saleeby in Eades). According to Fozdar and Torezani, there is an “apparent paradox between high-levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia in the labour market and everyday life” (30) on the one hand, and their reporting of positive well-being on the other. That disparity includes accounts such as the one offered by Aya.As Wilson and Arvanitakis suggest,the interaction between negative experiences of discrimination and reports of wellbeing suggested a counter-intuitive propensity among refugees to adapt to and make sense of their migration experiences in unique, resourceful and life-affirming ways. Such response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors indicate a similar resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from negative migration experiences and associated emotions. … However, resilience is not expressed or employed uniformly among individuals or communities. Some respond in a resilient manner, while others collapse. On this point, an argument could be made that collapse and breakdown is a built-in aspect of resilience, and necessary for renewal and ongoing growth.Using this approach, Wilson and Arvanitakis have linked resilience to hope, as a “present- and future-oriented mode of situated defence against adversity”. They argue that the term “hope” is often utilised in a tokenistic way “as a strategic instrument in increasingly empty domestic and international political vocabularies”. Nonetheless, Wilson and Arvanitakis believe hope to be of vital academic interest due to the prevalence of war and suffering throughout the world. In the research reported here, the authors found that participants’ hopes were interwoven with dreams of being reunited with their families in a place of safety. This is a common longing. As Jackson states,so it is that migrants travel abroad in pursuit of utopia, but having found that place, which is also no-place (ou-topos), they are haunted by the thought that utopia actually lies in the past. It is the family they left behind. That is where they properly belong. Though the family broke up long ago and is now scattered to the four winds, they imagine a reunion in which they are together again. (223)There is a sense here that with their hopes and dreams lying in the past, refugees/migrants are living forward while looking backwards (a Kierkegaardian concept). If hope is thought to be key to resilience (Wilson and Arvanitakis), and key to an individual’s ability to live with a sense of well-being, then perhaps a refugee’s past relations (familial) impact both their present relations (social/community), and their ability to transform negative experiences into positive experiences. And yet, there is no readily accessible way in which migrants and refugees can recreate the connections that sustained them in the past. As Jackson suggests,the irreversibility of time is intimately connected with the irreversibility of one’s place of origin, and this entwined movement through time and across space proves perplexing to many migrants, who, in imagining themselves one day returning to the place from where they started out, forget that there is no transport which will convey them back into the past. … Often it is only by going home that is becomes starkly and disconcertingly clear that one’s natal village is no longer the same and that one has also changed. (221)The dream of home and family, therefore and the hope that this might somehow be recreated in the safety of the here and now, becomes a paradoxical loss and longing even as it is a constant companion for many on their refugee journey.Esma’s DreamAccording to author three, personal dreams are not generally discussed in Arab culture, even though dreams themselves may form part of the rich tradition of Arabic folklore and storytelling. Alongside issues of mental wellbeing, dreams are constructed as something private, and it generally breaks social taboos to describe them publicly. However, in personal discussions with other refugee women and men, and echoing Jackson’s finding, a recurring dream is “to meet my family in a safe place and not be worried about my safety or theirs”. As a refugee, the third author shares this dream. This is also the perspective articulated by Esma, who had recently had a fifth child and was very much missing her extended family who had died, been scattered as refugees, or were still living in a conflict zone. The researcher asked Sara to ask Esma about the best aspect of her current life:[01:17:03] Esma: The thing that comforts me here is nature, it’s beautiful.[01:17:15] Sara (to the Researcher): The nature.[01:17:16] Esma: And feeling safe.[01:17:19] Sara (to the Researcher): The safety. ...[01:17:45] Esma: Life’s beautiful here.[01:17:47] Sara (to the Researcher): Life is beautiful here.[01:17:49] Esma: But I want to know people, speak the language, have friends, life is beautiful here even if I don’t have my family here.[01:17:56] Sara (to the Researcher): Life is so pretty you only need to improve the language and have friends, she said I love my life here even though I don’t have any family or community here. (To Esma:) I am your family.[01:18:12] Esma: Bring me my siblings here.[01:18:14] Sara (to Esma): I just want my brothers here and my sisters.[01:18:17] Esma: It’s a dream.[01:18:18] Sara (to Esma): it’s a dream, one day it will become true.Here Esma uses the term dream metaphorically, to describe an imagined utopia: a dream world. In supporting Esma, who is mourning the absence of her family, Sara finds herself reacting and emoting around their shared experience of leaving siblings behind. In doing so, she affirms the younger woman, but also offers a hope for the future. Esma had previously made a suggestion, absorbed into her larger dream, but more achievable in the short term, “to know people, speak the language, have friends”. The implication here is that Esma is keen to find a way to connect with Australians. She sees this as a means of compensating for the loss of family, a realistic hope rather than an impossible dream.ConclusionInterviews with refugee families in a Perth-based migrant support centre reveals both the nightmare pasts and the dreamed-of futures of people whose lives have experienced a radical disruption due to war, conflict and other life-threatening events. Jackson’s work with migrants provides a context for understanding the power of the dream in helping to resolve issues around the irreversibility of time and circumstance, while Wilson and Arvanitakis point to the importance of hope and resilience in supporting the building of a positive future. Within this mix of the longed for and the impossible, both the refugee informants and the academic literature suggest that participation in local events, and authentic engagement with the broader community, help make a difference in supporting a migrant’s transition from dreaming to reality.AcknowledgmentsThis article arises from an ARC Linkage Project, ‘A Hand Up: Disrupting the Communication of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency’ (LP140100935), supported by the Australian Research Council, Partner Organisation St Vincent de Paul Society (WA) Inc., and Edith Cowan University. The authors are grateful to the anonymous staff and member of Vinnies’ Migrant and Refugee Homebase for their trust in and support of this project, and for their contributions to it.ReferencesBadiou, Alan. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Trans. Ray Brassier. 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