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1

Oliver, Antoni, Christopher A. Hunter, Rafel Prohens, and Josep Lluis Rosselló. "An improved methodology to compute surface site interaction points using high density molecular electrostatic potential surfaces." Journal of Computational Chemistry 39, no. 28 (2018): 2371–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcc.25574.

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2

Prohens, Rafel, and Christopher A. Hunter. "Computational screens can speed up the discovery of pharmaceutical cocrystals." ADMET and DMPK 6, no. 4 (2018): 284–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.5599/admet.641.

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The calculation of Surface Site Interaction Points for cocrystal computational screens in combination with efficient experimental cocrystallization techniques has been applied successfully to several drug compounds. The basics of this combined approach are briefly reviewed in this communication.
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3

Nosenko, Vladimir, Aleksandr Fetisov, Sergey Nosenko, and Valeria Puzyrkova. "Morphology and Chemical Composition of Silicon Carbide Surface in Interaction with Titanium Alloy under Micro-Scratching Conditions." MATEC Web of Conferences 329 (2020): 02010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/202032902010.

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The article describes features of the wear site morphology formation during micro-scratching of a titanium alloy by a silicon carbide crystal in comparison with a corundum crystal. The initial shape of the crystal top and the rate of micro-scratching were assumed to be constant. No lubricating or cooling process media were used. External factors: micro-scratch depth and cutting path length. The chemical composition of wear sites was studied using micro-x-ray spectral analysis. The content of chemical elements in the surface layer of silicon carbide and adhered metal was studied at separate points and by area scanning. The accelerating voltage of the excitation electrons was changed in the range from 5 to 20 kV. The concentration of chemical elements on the surface of the wear site was determined immediately after micro-scratching and after removing the adhered metal by etching. The regularities of changes in the concentration of chemical elements depending on the accelerating voltage of the excitation electrons were determined.
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4

Ge, Gang, and Jian Min Liu. "Effects of Adjacent Ground Treatment on Site Seismic Response." Applied Mechanics and Materials 90-93 (September 2011): 1576–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.90-93.1576.

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The effect of adjacent soil improvement on ground motion is studied using finite element method, when seismic wave is introduced from the single layer on bedrock. The influence of ground motion on soil reinforcement is analyzed; the impacts of the reinforcement zone width, depth, elastic modulus, and the soil improvement interval on response of the ground motion are also investigated. Study shows: for the same site, when the distance between two adjacent foundation consolidation interval is less than 3 to 4 times the width of the reinforcement area, the interaction acceleration response amplitude of various points on the surface of the two adjacent reinforcement area increased significantly than the single block; within the interval , increasing one of the two adjacent foundation’s width, depth, and the other foundation surface, the horizontal acceleration response will Subsequently enlarged; when the interval between the reinforcement area is greater than the range, this effect is negligible.
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5

Harman, Christine, Lilin Zhong, Li Ma, et al. "A View of the E2-CD81 Interface at the Binding Site of a Neutralizing Antibody against Hepatitis C Virus." Journal of Virology 89, no. 1 (2014): 492–501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/jvi.01661-14.

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ABSTRACTHepatitis C virus (HCV) glycoprotein E2 is considered a major target for generating neutralizing antibodies against HCV, primarily due to its role of engaging host entry factors, such as CD81, a key cell surface protein associated with HCV entry. Based on a series of biochemical analyses in combination with molecular docking, we present a description of a potential binding interface formed between the E2 protein and CD81. The virus side of this interface includes a hydrophobic helix motif comprised of residues W437LAGLF442, which encompasses the binding site of a neutralizing monoclonal antibody, mAb41. The helical conformation of this motif provides a structural framework for the positioning of residues F442 and Y443, serving as contact points for the interaction with CD81. The cell side of this interface likewise involves a surface-exposed hydrophobic helix, namely, the D-helix of CD81, which coincides with the binding site of 1D6, a monoclonal anti-CD81 antibody known to block HCV entry. Our illustration of this virus-host interface suggests an important role played by the W437LAGLF442helix of the E2 protein in the hydrophobic interaction with the D-helix of CD81, thereby facilitating our understanding of the mechanism for antibody-mediated neutralization of HCV.IMPORTANCECharacterization of the interface established between a virus and host cells can provide important information that may be used for the control of virus infections. The interface that enables hepatitis C virus (HCV) to infect human liver cells has not been well understood because of the number of cell surface proteins, factors, and conditions found to be associated with the infection process. Based on a series of biochemical analyses in combination with molecular docking, we present such an interface, consisting of two hydrophobic helical structures, from the HCV E2 surface glycoprotein and the CD81 protein, a major host cell receptor recognized by all HCV strains. Our study reveals the critical role played by hydrophobic interactions in the formation of this virus-host interface, thereby contributing to our understanding of the mechanism for antibody-mediated neutralization of HCV.
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6

Pandey, Vishnudatt, Gargi Tiwari, and Rajendra Prasad Ojha. "A Comparative Study of Binding of Different Drugs on gp120: Insight from Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study." Oriental Journal of Chemistry 34, no. 6 (2018): 2954–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojc/340635.

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HIV-I cellular infection triggered by CD4 receptor protein and viral envelop glycoprotein gp120 binding event. CD4:gp120 surface is directed by the contact points of a hydrophobic gp120 cavity capped by Phe43CD4 and ionic bonds residues Arg59CD4 and Asp368gp120. The binding sites originated by gp120 and CD4 interaction leads to the entry of HIV-I into the host membrane, where, gp120 and a CD4 binding site becomes the main mark for plenty of drug uncovering program. Here, we took the crystal structure of small-molecule of gp120 in a complex that concurrently pursues both of the hotspots of gp120 binding sites. All ligands in our study are small molecules that are able to obstruct the protein-protein interactions between CD4 and gp120. This study aims at the thermodynamical insights of the ligand binding in CD4 binding sites using Molecular Dynamics Simulations Study and calculation of binding free energy. The physical of binding of drugs distinctly indicates a hydrophobic and electrostatics interaction motivated binding of ligands which explicitly mark CD4 binding sites.
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7

Wu, X. R., and T. T. Sun. "Molecular cloning of a 47 kDa tissue-specific and differentiation-dependent urothelial cell surface glycoprotein." Journal of Cell Science 106, no. 1 (1993): 31–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jcs.106.1.31.

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Despite the fact that bladder epithelium has many interesting biological features and is a frequent site of carcinoma formation, relatively little is known about its biochemical differentiation. We have shown recently that a 47 kDa glycoprotein, uroplakin III (UPIII), in conjunction with uroplakins I (27 kDa) and II (15 kDa), forms the asymmetric unit membrane (AUM)--a highly specialized biomembrane characteristic of the apical surface of bladder epithelium. Deglycosylation and cDNA sequencing revealed that UPIII contains up to 20 kDa of N-linked sugars attached to a core protein of 28.9 kDa. The presence of an N-terminal signal peptide sequence and a single transmembrane domain located near the C terminus, plus the N-terminal location of all the potential N-glycosylation sites, points to a type I (N-exo/C-cyto) configuration. Thus the mass of the extracellular domain (20 kDa plus up to 20 kDa of sugar) of UPIII greatly exceeds that of its intracellular domain (5 kDa). Such an asymmetrical mass distribution, a feature shared by the other two major uroplakins, provides a molecular explanation as to why the luminal leaflet of AUM is almost twice as thick as the cytoplasmic one. The fact that of the three major proteins of AUM only UPIII has a significant cytoplasmic domain suggests that this molecule may play an important role in AUM-cytoskeleton interaction in terminally differentiated urothelial cells.
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8

Aray, Yosslen, and Jesús Rodríguez. "Study of NO and CO dissociation on the (100) Cu surface using density functional theory and the topological analysis of the electronic density and its Laplacian." Canadian Journal of Chemistry 74, no. 6 (1996): 1014–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/v96-114.

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Molecular orbital ab initio Hartree–Fock, post-Hartree–Fock at the MP2 and QCISD levels, and density functional theory calculations of the dipole moment, the topology of the electronic density, ρ(r), and its Laplacian, [Formula: see text], for CO and NO molecules are reported. The results obtained confirm that density functional methods provide remarkably good electronic properties and a good description of the topology of ρ(r) and [Formula: see text]. The Becke exchange functional with the correlation functional of Lee, Yang, and Parr was used to calculate the electronic density of the (100) Cu surface. Topological analysis of ρ(r) shows that the crystal graph corresponds to square pyramids between the atoms of the top of the surface and the atoms of the second layer The topological analysis of [Formula: see text] shows that the atomic graph of the Cu surface exhibits one (3,−3) local charge concentration surrounded by four (3,+1) local charge depletion points. Additionally, there is a (3,+3) local depletion in the midpoint between each of four contiguous Cu atoms corresponding to the active site for the adsorption of the (3,−3) local charge concentration on the C atom of the CO or the N atom of the NO molecule. The larger value of the [Formula: see text] at the nonbonded charge concentration on the atoms and the geometrical configuration of these critical points favor the interaction of the NO over the CO molecule with the (100) Cu surface. This result is in accord with the known reaction barriers for these molecules. Key words: density functional theory, Laplacian of the electronic density, (100) Cu surface, carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide, molecular graph, atomic graph.
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9

Zeigler, K. E., P. Hogan, C. Hughes, and A. Kurota. "Native American lithic procurement along the international border in the boot heel region of southwestern New Mexico." Solid Earth 2, no. 1 (2011): 75–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/se-2-75-2011.

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Abstract. Multidisciplinary field projects can be very useful to a more fundamental understanding of the world around us, though these projects are not as common as they should be. In particular, the combination of archeology and geology combines our understanding of human behavior and human use of the landscape with an intimate knowledge of geologic processes and the materials available for human use in order to gain a broader understanding of human-Earth interaction. Here we present data from a cross-disciplinary project that uses a common dataset, archeological artifacts, to explore the anthropological and geologic implications of useage patterns. Archeological excavations and surveys conducted by the Office of Contract Archeology in 2007 along the route of the proposed international border fence reveal patterns of use of geologic materials by Archaic, Formative and Protohistoric Native Americans in the Boot Heel of southwestern New Mexico. Thousands of artifacts were recorded in multiple sites from Guadalupe Pass in the southern Peloncillo Mountains to the Carrizalillo Hills west of Columbus. We identified the lithologies of artifacts, ranging from projectile points to groundstones, and then constructed material movement maps based on either known procurement sites ("quarries") or outcrops identified as the closest source to a given site for each lithology. Not unexpectedly, the majority of the rock types utilized by native peoples are local siliceous volcanic materials. However, several artifacts constructed from obsidian were transported into the region from northern Mexico and eastern Arizona, indicating long-distance travel and/or trade routes. We also examine useage pattern difference between Archaic, Formative and Protohistoric sites. Additionally, a dramatic change in distribution of sources for geologic materials occurs between one pre-Spanish site and one post-Spanish site that are adjacent to one another.
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10

Didier, Andrea, Richard Dietrich, Stephanie Gruber, et al. "Monoclonal Antibodies Neutralize Bacillus cereus Nhe Enterotoxin by Inhibiting Ordered Binding of Its Three Exoprotein Components." Infection and Immunity 80, no. 2 (2011): 832–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/iai.05681-11.

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ABSTRACTThe Nhe enterotoxin fromBacillus cereusis known to induce cytotoxicity on Vero and CaCo-2 cells by ordered binding of its single components NheA, NheB, and NheC. This study aimed to elucidate functional sites on NheB by identifying the epitopes of the neutralizing monoclonal antibodies 1E11 and 2B11. The binding regions of both antibodies were determined by using recombinant NheB fragments and synthetic peptides. The antigenic site of antibody 1E11 was located within the amino acids 321 to 341 of NheB, whereas reactivity of antibody 2B11 was dependent on the presence of amino acids 122 to 150 and on conformation. Both antibodies were able to bind simultaneously to NheB and did not interfere with target cell binding as shown by immunofluorescence microscopy. A set of neutralization assays revealed that antibody 2B11 most likely interfered with the interaction between NheB and NheC both on the epithelium cell surface and in solution. In contrast, antibody 1E11 inhibited association between NheA and cell-bound NheB in a competitive manner, and effectively neutralized Nhe cytotoxicity on a variety of human cell lines. This distinct mechanism further supports that NheA is the key component during the Nhe mode of action and the C-terminal epitope recognized by antibody 1E11 points to an important functional region of NheB.
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11

Buchard, V., C. Brogniez, F. Auriol, et al. "Comparison of OMI ozone and UV irradiance data with ground-based measurements at two French sites." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 8, no. 16 (2008): 4517–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-8-4517-2008.

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Abstract. Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), launched in July 2004, is dedicated to the monitoring of the Earth's ozone, air quality and climate. OMI is the successor of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instruments and provides among other atmospheric and radiometric quantities the total column of ozone (TOC), the surface ultraviolet (UV) irradiance at several wavelengths, the erythemal dose rates and the erythemal daily doses. The main objective of this work is to compare OMI data with data from ground-based instruments in order to use OMI products (collection 2) for scientific studies. The Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique (LOA) located in Villeneuve d'Ascq (VdA) in the north of France performs solar UV measurements using a spectroradiometer. The site of Briançon in the French Southern Alps is also equipped with a spectroradiometer operated by Interaction Rayonnement Solaire Atmosphère (IRSA). The OMI total ozone column data is obtained from the OMI-TOMS and OMI-DOAS algorithms. The comparison between the TOC retrieved with ground-based measurements and OMI-TOMS data shows good agreement at both sites for all sky conditions with a relative difference for most of points better than 5%. For OMI-DOAS data, the agreement is generally better than 7% and these data show a significant dependence on solar zenith angle. Comparisons of spectral UV on clear sky conditions are also satisfying with relative differences smaller than 10% except at solar zenith angles larger than 65°. On the contrary, results of comparisons of the erythemal dose rates and erythemal daily doses for clear sky show that OMI overestimates surface UV doses at VdA by about 15% and that on cloudy skies, the bias increases. At Briançon, such a bias is observed if data corresponding to snow-covered surface are excluded.
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12

Wang, Beinan, Ellen Kraig, and David Kolodrubetz. "Use of Defined Mutants To Assess the Role of theCampylobacter rectus S-Layer in Bacterium-Epithelial Cell Interactions." Infection and Immunity 68, no. 3 (2000): 1465–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/iai.68.3.1465-1473.2000.

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ABSTRACT Campylobacter rectus is a periodontal pathogen with a 150-kDa protein on its cell surface. This protein forms a paracrystalline lattice, called the S-layer, surrounding the outer membrane of this gram-negative bacterium. To initiate a genetic analysis of the possible role of the S-layer in the initial interaction of C. rectus with host epithelial cells, C. rectus strains lacking the S-layer protein gene (crsA) were constructed by allelic exchange mutagenesis. Surprisingly, the lack of the S-layer had only a minor effect on the interaction of C. rectus with HEp-2 epithelial cells; CrsA+ cells were 30 to 50% more adherent than were CrsA− bacteria. Since the host cell expression of cytokines appears to play an important role in the pathogenesis of periodontal diseases, the effect of the S-layer on the epithelial cell cytokine response was also examined by quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Although there were no changes in the mRNA levels for the anti-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-1 receptor agonist (IL-1ra), IL-13, and transforming growth factor β, the expression and secretion of the proinflammatory cytokines IL-6, IL-8, and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) were significantly induced by both wild-type C. rectus and CrsA− bacteria. Interestingly, the kinetics of cytokine induction differed for the CrsA+ and CrsA−bacteria. At early time points, the HEp-2 cells challenged with CrsA− bacteria produced higher levels of IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α mRNA and protein than did cells challenged with CrsA+ bacteria. We conclude that C. rectus may help initiate periodontitis by increasing the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and that the S-layer may temper this response to facilitate the survival of C. rectus at the site of infection.
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13

Sison, Edward Allan R., Daniel Magoon, Li Li, et al. "POL5551, a Novel and Potent CXCR4 Antagonist, Enhances Sensitivity to Chemotherapy in an in Vivo Model of High-Risk (HR) Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)." Blood 124, no. 21 (2014): 3707. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v124.21.3707.3707.

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Abstract Background: Interaction between surface receptor CXCR4 (s-CXCR4) and chemokine SDF-1 (CXCL12) is critical in signaling between leukemic blasts and the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment. We previously demonstrated: 1) chemotherapy-induced upregulation of s-CXCR4 in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and ALL enhances stromal protection from chemotherapy-induced apoptosis; 2) the FDA-approved CXCR4 inhibitor plerixafor reverses stromal protection and chemotherapy resistance both in vitro in stromal co-cultures of pre-B cell ALL cell lines and in vivo in xenografts of primary samples of infant MLL-rearranged (MLL-R) ALL; 3) the novel Protein Epitope Mimetic POL5551, a selective and potent antagonist of CXCR4, blocks the SDF-1-binding site of CXCR4, inhibits SDF-1-induced chemotaxis, and reverses stromal-mediated protection from chemotherapy in vitro in pre-B and T ALL cell lines. Here, we further characterize the effects of POL5551 (POL) on surface adhesion molecule expression in ALL, and its in vivo effects in a xenograft model of HR pediatric ALL. In Vitro Methods/Results: We have previously shown that POL inhibits 12G5 antibody binding to s-CXCR4 in ALL cell lines, suggesting an overlapping of the two binding sites. We sought to verify these results using primary samples of pediatric ALL. We treated 3 pre B and 3 T cell ALL primary samples with a dose range of POL and measured s-CXCR4 by FACS at multiple time points. POL inhibition of 12G5 binding was potent (average IC50 at 2 hours pre B 8.3 nM, T 1.4 nM), rapid (<1 hour) and sustained (>24 hours). Further, POL was significantly more potent at inhibiting 12G5 binding than plerixafor (average IC50 at 2 hours pre B 18.4 nM, T 8.4 nM). To further characterize POL’s effects in ALL, we treated 2 pre B and 2 T cell ALL cell lines with POL or vehicle control and then treated with SDF-1α or vehicle control. Treatment with POL inhibited SDF-1α-induced phosphorylation of ERK1/2 in a dose-dependent manner. In parallel, we measured POL-induced compensatory upregulation of the alternative surface adhesion molecules CXCR7 and VLA-4 (CD49d), and found that POL led to increased CXCR7 expression at early time points that began to decrease after 24 hours. We did not find a consistent effect of POL on CD49d surface expression. Xenograft Methods/Results: Infant MLL-R ALL primary samples (n=4) were transplanted into sublethally irradiated NSG mice. After 2 weeks, mice were treated on days 1-3 of 2 consecutive weeks with 1) vehicle control (C), 2) POL (5 mg/kg SC), 3) AraC (200 mg/kg IP), or 4) POL followed by AraC 4 hours later (POL+AraC). One week after treatment, cells were harvested from BM, spleen, and peripheral blood (PB). Leukemic blasts were defined as human CD19+ and CD45+. Overall leukemic burden (average % blasts in BM+spleen+PB) did not differ between mice treated with either C (56.2%) or POL (49.5%, p=0.12). However, treatment with AraC (36.7%, p=3E-07) or POL+AraC (26.3%, p=4E-15) significantly decreased total leukemic burden compared to C. Notably, POL+AraC significantly decreased total leukemic burden compared to AraC alone (p=0.001), demonstrating that POL increased overall sensitivity to AraC. When analyzed by organ-specific leukemic burden, POL+AraC resulted in decreased leukemic burden compared to AraC alone in BM (42.8 vs. 49.8%, p=0.27), spleen (16.9 vs. 30.8%, p=0.002), and PB (19.3 vs. 29.6%, p=0.008). Interestingly, AraC and POL+AraC led to significantly increased CXCR7 expression (blasts from BM p<0.01, spleen p<0.04, and PB p<0.03 vs. C) as well as a trend toward increased CD49d expression compared to C. Conclusions: POL5551 is a potent antagonist of s-CXCR4 in pediatric ALL cell lines and primary samples. Surface expression of adhesion molecules in ALL blasts is dynamic and affected by anti-leukemic therapy. Importantly, POL5551 enhances sensitivity to AraC in a xenograft model of infant MLL-R ALL, a HR subtype of pediatric ALL. Our findings support the continued development of BM microenvironment-targeted agents as a therapeutic strategy for pediatric ALL. Disclosures Romagnoli: Polyphor Ltd.: Employment. Douglas:Polyphor Ltd.: Employment. Tuffin:Polyphor Ltd.: Employment. Zimmermann:Polyphor Ltd.: Employment.
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14

Chase, Julie M., Jeffrey W. Leong, Rizwan Romee, and Todd A. Fehniger. "Cytokine Activation Induces CD25 Expression and a Signaling-Competent High-Affinity IL-2 Receptor On CD56dim Human NK Cells." Blood 120, no. 21 (2012): 2159. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v120.21.2159.2159.

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Abstract Abstract 2159 Introduction. NK cells are innate immune lymphocytes important for host defense against infection, and also mediate anti-tumor responses. NK cell effector functions are triggered by ligand-mediated engagement of activating receptors and by cytokine stimulation. Human NK cells may be divided into developmental and functional CD56bright and CD56dim subsets with distinct biology. Both NK subsets have constitutive expression of CD122 (IL-2/15Rβ) and CD132 (γc), allowing for responsiveness to IL-15 and high doses (1 nM) of IL-2. The high affinity heterotrimeric IL-2 receptor is formed by CD122, CD132, and CD25 (IL-2Rα), allowing for responses to very low (10 pM) concentrations of IL-2. Previous studies demonstrated that resting CD56bright, but not CD56dim, NK cells constitutively express a functional high-affinity IL-2Rαβγ, as picomolar concentrations of IL-2 result in proliferation and co-stimulate IFN-γ production. We hypothesized that cytokine activation, which occurs at the site of an inflammatory response or interaction with a priming dendritic cell, may induce the expression of CD25 on CD56dimNK cells, allowing for enhanced responsiveness to IL-2. Methods. Purified normal donor NK cells (>95% CD56+CD3-) were cultured for 16h in media containing various cytokines, including IL-15 (100ng/mL) + IL-18 (50ng/mL), IL-15 (100ng/mL) + IL-12 (10ng/mL) or low dose IL-15 (1ng/mL) as a control (to support survival). Following stimulation, cells were washed and analyzed for surface expression of CD25 by antibody staining and flow cytometry. To assess the functional capacity of an induced IL-2Rα chain, NK cells were purified and treated with cytokines as above, washed extensively and replated in media devoid of all cytokines. At 3d after initial stimulation, cultures were briefly (15min) stimulated with IL-2 (10pM, 100pM and 1nM) or IL-15 (100ng/mL) to induce phosphorylation of STAT5. Cells were immediately fixed, permeablized, and assessed for intracellular phosphoSTAT5 by flow cytometry. Results. Pretreatment with IL-15 + IL-18 or IL-12 + IL-18, but no single cytokine, induced marked upregulation of CD25 on both CD56bright as well as CD56dim NK cells, with 93.6 ±1.9% of CD56bright and 97.7 ±1.2% (n=4) of CD56dim NK cells positive for CD25 expression immediately following the initial 16h stimulation with IL-15+18, compared to 20.7 ±6.8 and 3.6 ±1.4% for control treated (low dose IL-15) CD56bright and CD56dim NK. In preliminary experiments, CD25 appears to be markedly upregulated at the mRNA level, following treatment with IL-15+18. While kinetic analyses revealed that the absolute surface receptor expression was maximal at time points early after stimulation, 75.8 ±4.1% of CD56bright and 84.9 ±5.7% (n=4) of CD56dimNK cells pretreated with IL-15+18 retained CD25 surface expression at 7d post-stimulation. Importantly, CD25 induced on both CD56dim and CD56bright NK cells resulted in a signaling-competent high affinity IL-2 receptor, as stimulation with low dose IL-2 at 3d following initial cytokine pre-activation revealed increased production of phosphoSTAT5, versus control treated NK cells. The greatest enhancement was noted in CD56dim NK cells, showing an 8-fold increase in responsiveness to low dose (10pM) IL-2 stimulation (48.2±7.9% pSTAT5+ in IL-15+18 pretreated cells vs. 5.8±2.4% in control treated cells, p<0.02). Cytokine-pretreated CD56bright NK cells demonstrated no enhancement in phosphoSTAT5 following stimulation with low dose IL-2 (10pM) (27.6 ±8.3% in IL-15+18 pretreated vs. 26.0 ±6.4% in control) at this time-point. However, these results are in agreement with published data, which describe expression of CD25 on resting CD56bright but not CD56dimNK cells. Conclusions. Here, we report the induction of CD25, and a signal-competent high-affinity component of the IL-2 receptor, on CD56dim human NK cells, following cytokine pre-activation. These results have implications for the function of both CD56bright and CD56dim NK cells in the context of inflammation and potential for cross-talk with IL-2-producing T cells during an adaptive immune response. In addition, since rhIL-2 is clinically available and used following NK cell adoptive transfer in leukemia patients, these data provides a rationale for low dose IL-2 following allogeneic NK cell pre-activation with combinations of IL-15, IL-12, and IL-18. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
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15

Pantazatos, Dennis, Christopher Gessner, Virgil Woods, and Gary E. Gilbert. "Effect of Membrane Binding Upon Intramolecular Dynamics of the Factor VIII C2 Domain." Blood 114, no. 22 (2009): 3168. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v114.22.3168.3168.

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Abstract Abstract 3168 Poster Board III-109 Factor VIII functions as a membrane-bound cofactor in the Factor Xase complex. Binding to a phospholipid membrane enhances activity of the factor VIIIa-factor IXa complex approx. 100,000-fold. While membrane binding increases the net affinities of factor VIIIa for factor IXa and factor X, the major effect of membrane binding is upon the catalytic activity of the assembled complex. The mechanism through which activity is enhanced remains largely unknown. The C2 domain of factor VIII contains the major membrane-binding function. The x-ray crystal structures of the C2 domain and, subsequently, of intact factor VIII have enabled hypotheses about the mechanism of membrane binding and the enhancement of activity. Identified functional motifs of the C2 domain include two pairs of hydrophobic, membrane-interactive amino acids at the tips of “spikes,” on the lower end of the C2 domain and a putative factor IXa-binding peptide on an upper surface. Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (DXMS) has proven to be an effective method for characterizing protein conformational change induced by ligand interaction. Amide backbone hydrogens of a protein readily exchange with those in the solvent, contingent upon physical contact of the solvent hydrogen with the amide hydrogen. Therefore the exchange rate in a particular region of the protein is dependent on amide hydrogen solvent accessibility. DXMS is performed by isotopic labeling of a protein at various time points with deuterium oxide (D2O) followed by quenching the exchange and proteolysis to produce overlapping peptides spanning the length of the sequence. The degree of labeling is assessed using liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry analysis. Using this analysis a stability map of the protein can be determined that represents changes in global and local structural dynamics in bound and unbound conditions. We have utilized DXMS to characterize the dynamics of the factor VIII C2 domain (fVIII-C2) in solution and when bound to phospholipid vesicles. fVIII-C2 was produced in E. coli and purified by immobilized metal affinity chromatography and ion exchange chromatography. Preliminary studies indicated that digestion on serial pepsin and V8 protease columns produced peptides spanning the entire fVIII-C2 structure, with overlapping peptides spanning the membrane-interactive “spikes” and the putative factor IXa-interactive peptide. Exchange was rapid on the membrane-interactive spikes in the absence of phospholipid vesicles, confirming flexibility of these structures. Upon binding of fVIII-C2 to phospholipid vesicles, the exchange rate decreased particularly in spike 3 (from 73% to 49% at 10s labeling, upon addition of phospholipid vesicles). The extent of the region with slowed exchange implied increased structural rigidity in addition to any solvent protection that occurs upon immersion of the hydrophobic side chains into the membrane. A marked decrease in exchange rate was also observed in the putative FIXa binding peptide (from 85% to 21% at 10s labeling, upon addition of phospholipid vesicles), while the exchange rates of most of the peptides from the core beta-barrel of fVIII-C2 were not significantly affected. These observations indicate that membrane engagement alters the mobility of membrane interactive spikes and suggest that membrane binding has an allosteric effect on the putative factor IXa binding site. Membrane-induced allosteric changes in the factor VIII C2 domain may contribute to the major enhancement of factor VIIIa-factor IXa activity that occurs upon membrane binding. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
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16

Lu, Genmin, Joyce Lin, John T. Curnutte, and Pamela B. Conley. "Reversal of Heparin-Induced Anticoagulation By Andexanet Alfa, a Universal Antidote for Factor Xa Inhibitors." Blood 126, no. 23 (2015): 2329. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood.v126.23.2329.2329.

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Abstract Background: Unfractionated heparin is used in the management of venous thromboembolism, stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation as well as in cardiac surgeries (e.g., valve replacement and other procedures requiring cardiopulmonary bypass). Bleeding is the major complication that may result from these therapies. Although protamine sulfate can be used to neutralize heparin, its administration can cause severe hypotensive and anaphylactic reactions. Andexanet alfa (AnXa) is a recombinant modified human fXa under development for the reversal of both direct and antithrombin III (ATIII)-dependent indirect fXa inhibitors. We previously reported nonclinical and Phase 2 clinical data in healthy subjects with enoxaparin, a low molecular weight heparin (LMWH). Here we report new in vitro data demonstrating that AnXa can also effectively reverse anticoagulation of unfractionated heparin. Methods: Inhibition of human fXa or thrombin (IIa) by ATIII in the presence of heparin was studied in an enzymatic assay in buffered solution. The reaction mixture contained fXa or IIa (20 nM), ATIII (200 nM), different amounts of unfractionated heparin and AnXa. At different time points, a small aliquot of the reaction mixture was taken and quenched into a 96-well assay plate containing protamine (50 µg/mL) and a chromogenic substrate (100 µM) for fXa (Spectrozyme-Xa) or IIa (S2238). Residual fXa or IIa activity was measured in a plate reader by monitoring the initial rate of substrate cleavage at 405 nm. Reversal of heparin anti-fXa and anti-IIa activities by AnXa in human plasma was evaluated using modified anti-fXa and anti-IIa chromogenic assays. Reversal of heparin-induced clotting prolongation of human plasma was measured by a 96-well format turbidity assay using an aPTT reagent and Ca2+. The reversal effect of AnXa on heparin anticoagulation and clot formation was further characterized by thromboelastography (TEG) in human plasma or whole blood. Reversal of heparin was compared to enoxaparin. Protamine sulfate was included as a control. Di-arginine piperazine (PER977), a positively charged small molecule, was also tested for comparison. Results: AnXa dose-dependently reversed the anti-fXa activity of heparin in the enzymatic assay and in human plasma. Interestingly, AnXa was also able to reverse the heparin anti-IIa activity in the same assays. In the enzymatic assay with IIa and ATIII, heparin accelerated the reaction of IIa inhibition by ~1000-fold. AnXa dose-dependently reversed the IIa inhibition to its basal level seen without heparin. The reversal effect of AnXa on IIa inhibition could be blocked by addition of a small molecule direct fXa inhibitor (e.g. rivaroxaban) in the same enzymatic assay. This suggests that interaction of AnXa with the primary binding site on the surface of heparin-activated ATIII (i.e., the reactive center loop (RCL)) might play a major role in the anti-IIa reversal as binding to the RCL was the minimal requirement for the inhibition of both fXa and IIa by ATIII. In human plasma, AnXa reversed the anti-IIa activity of heparin (0.8 IU/mL) with an estimated EC50 comparable to anti-fXa reversal (anti-fXa:126 nM; anti-IIa: 131nM). These results indicate that AnXa was able to compete with not only fXa, but also IIa, for binding to heparinized-ATIII and reverse both the anti-fXa and anti-IIa activities of heparin. In addition, AnXa dose-dependently and completely reversed prolongation of clotting by heparin (0.8 IU/mL) in human plasma as measured by the turbidity assay as well as parameters of heparin (1.0 IU/mL) anticoagulation as measured by TEG in either plasma or whole blood. As expected, protamine sulfate (5-10 µg/mL) neutralized heparin (1.0 IU/mL) anticoagulation in plasma in the TEG assay. At higher concentrations, protamine prevented clot formation, consistent with protamine's known anticoagulant effect when overdosed. No reversal activity was observed by PER977 in the same TEG assays using either plasma or whole blood. Conclusions: The current and previously reported data demonstrate that AnXa could be a universal fXa inhibitor antidote to reverse a broad range of newer direct oral fXa inhibitors, ATIII-dependent indirect inhibitors, such as fondaparinux and enoxaparin, as well as unfractionated heparin. The mechanism for reversal of ATIII-dependent inhibitors by AnXa is distinct from other positively charged molecules that bind directly to heparin. Disclosures Lu: Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Employment. Lin:Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Employment. Curnutte:Sea Lane Biotechnologies: Consultancy; 3-V Biosciences: Equity Ownership; Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Employment. Conley:Portola Pharmaceuticals, Inc.: Employment.
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17

Vargas Jiménez, Carlos A. "Letter from the editor." Earth Sciences Research Journal 19, no. 2 (2015): 95–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/esrj.v19n2.54601.

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<p>Earth Sciences Research Journal presents its latest issue, Volume 19, number 2, with a positive balance in the eve of 2016 and with the challenges for the future editions. During the last two decades, we have published more than 200 papers in all the spectrum of Earth Sciences. We expect we will be here for many years more. ESRJ is now part of international databases, and we hope to improve our numbers thanks to the tireless word we do every day for our readers. We have accomplished the principal objectives for an international publication -punctuality in our volumes, respect for the authors and the spotlight on the scientific quality. For a fair editorial process, we are part of the open access and its policies of pair blind-review. The time of the operations has been reduced, and the international participation increased.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">For the coming years, ESRJ would reach a better visibility thanks to the publication of top-quality scientific articles, which allows us to be part of the central positions in international databases and providing researchers with fundamental elements of their work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">To make possible this goal, we want to call authors to put lights on scientific quality and editorial quality. Your help is essential for us. We want to encourage researchers to pick up ESRJ as a platform for their works, but also to check the authors' guidelines as a first step to saving efforts and time during processes. Needles to say the importance of manuscript parts, English level and images readability to the acceptation of submissions.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">As a complementary strategy, we would like to invite our authors to create profiles in one of the available platforms, not only as an introduction to the ESRJ editorial team but also as a promotion of your work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Several challenges we have gripped during the work of the last years, for that reason we have adopted the principles of ethic and best practices in our procedure protocols. This decision would be a tool giving papers’ authors a warranty of complete respect for their work and to readers a quality signature that our contents have been verified for their use.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">In this adoption of best-practices procedures, many submitted papers have been rejected for having a not proper citation; this fault needs to be eradicated from all journals promoting scientific contents.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">A glimpse of the numbers of ESRJ points the international collaboration as one of the biggest challenges for the future issues. International Collaboration accounts for the articles that have been produced by researchers from several countries. It's not a call to improve the rates, but the scientific quality would be feed for the interaction of researchers facing different realities.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Early 2016, ESRJ will publish a special issue with the selected papers of the International Conference on Earth and Environmental Sciences by the University Malaya. This special issue on Frontiers in Earth Sciences will publish articles on the most outstanding discoveries across a broad research spectrum in the field. The mission of Frontiers in Earth Sciences is to provide an introduction to some of the current advanced concepts, problems, and controversies that are at the forefront of Earth Sciences and to obtain a view of how the different parts of the Earth behave and interact.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">As it has been a costume in this letter from the editor, the following paragraphs will introduce the works of the current issue. Our first paper deals with the problem of recovering Moho surface from satellite gradiometry data considering the non-isostatic corrections.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The second manuscript presents a case study on the application of electromagnetic and GPR measurements to a suspicious metal-contaminated site. While subsurface pollution is very harmful to nature-beings and finally human, detection of its extent in surface and more in depth is considerably challenging.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The following work analyzes the Earthquake light phenomenon based in the Christchurch earthquakes occurred in 2010 and 2011, with testimonies related from people who observed or recorded the lights.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">In the seismotectonic field is presented a paper showing the Strain rate in the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ), that is one of the most important fault zones of Turkey. Another Turkish submission tried to determine seismic specifications of the Bitlis province in Lake Van basin and used probabilistic seismic hazard analysis for the determination of local site-specific spectra.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Also from Turkey, a paper examines the performance of a single base RTK station compared with similar systems and presenting a complete exposure of values and challenges of the system.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">A contribution from Iran analyzes the magmatic evolution and compositional characteristics of tertiary volcanic rocks associated with the manganese mineralization in a mine located in Central Iran.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Also from in Iran, a paper assesses the stability of the rock slopes with various rock mass qualities. The manuscript discusses the combination of RMR and SMR systems to evaluate rock slope stability.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">From Latin America, a paper makes a contribution to the knowledge of the Tatui Formation, in Brazil, emphasized in Paleontology and Paleoenvironmental considerations.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">We hope you find useful these contents.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Carlos Vargas</p><p class="MsoNormal">Editor in Chief,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Earth Sciences Research Journal.</p>
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18

Reynolds, Derek P., Maria Chiara Storer, and Christopher A. Hunter. "An empirical model for solvation based on surface site interaction points." Chemical Science, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d1sc03392a.

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A rule-based approach for assignment of Surface Site Interaction Points (SSIP) based on the chemical structure of a molecule provides a straightforward spreadsheet method for accurate calculation of solvation free energies.
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19

Kitabatake, Makoto, and J. E. Greene. "Simulations of Low-Energy Ion/Surface Interaction Effects During Epitaxial Film Growth." MRS Proceedings 223 (1991). http://dx.doi.org/10.1557/proc-223-9.

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ABSTRACTMolecular dynamics simulations were used to follow low-energy ion/surface interactions including kinetic energy redistribution in the lattice as a function of time, projectile and lattice atom trajectories, and the nature, number, and depth of residual defects. The simulations were carried out using the Tersoff many-body potential for Si. Irradiation events were initiated with 10 and 50 eV Si atoms incident normal to the Si(001)2×l surface at an array of points in the primitive surface unit cell. Ion-induced epitaxial growth was observed due to both Si projectiles and Si lattice atoms coming to rest at epitaxial positions through direct deposition as well as site exchange occurring via diffusional and collisional processes. 36 simulations of 10 eV (50 eV) Si bombardment resulted in an average stopping position of 0.5 Å (1.6 Å) below the surface, 10 (13) epitaxial events, 7 (24) exchange events between the projectile and a lattice atom, and the formation of 15 (63) interstitials and 0 (36) vacancies. The interstitials preferentially diffuse toward the surface and are annealed out over times corresponding to monolayer deposition at typical Si MBE growth temperatures.
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20

Marrero Diaz de Villegas, Ruben, Cristina Seki, Nora M. Mattion, and Guido A. König. "Functional and in silico Characterization of Neutralizing Interactions Between Antibodies and the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Immunodominant Antigenic Site." Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8 (May 7, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.554383.

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Molecular knowledge of virus–antibody interactions is essential for the development of better vaccines and for a timely assessment of the spread and severity of epidemics. For foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) research, in particular, computational methods for antigen–antibody (Ag–Ab) interaction, and cross-antigenicity characterization and prediction are critical to design engineered vaccines with robust, long-lasting, and wider response against different strains. We integrated existing structural modeling and prediction algorithms to study the surface properties of FMDV Ags and Abs and their interaction. First, we explored four modeling and two Ag–Ab docking methods and implemented a computational pipeline based on a reference Ag–Ab structure for FMDV of serotype C, to be used as a source protocol for the study of unknown interaction pairs of Ag–Ab. Next, we obtained the variable region sequence of two monoclonal IgM and IgG antibodies that recognize and neutralize antigenic site A (AgSA) epitopes from South America serotype A FMDV and developed two peptide ELISAs for their fine epitope mapping. Then, we applied the previous Ag–Ab molecular structure modeling and docking protocol further scored by functional peptide ELISA data. This work highlights a possible different behavior in the immune response of IgG and IgM Ab isotypes. The present method yielded reliable Ab models with differential paratopes and Ag interaction topologies in concordance with their isotype classes. Moreover, it demonstrates the applicability of computational prediction techniques to the interaction phenomena between the FMDV immunodominant AgSA and Abs, and points out their potential utility as a metric for virus-related, massive Ab repertoire analysis or as a starting point for recombinant vaccine design.
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21

Arimori, Takao, Naoyuki Miyazaki, Emiko Mihara, et al. "Structural mechanism of laminin recognition by integrin." Nature Communications 12, no. 1 (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24184-8.

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AbstractRecognition of laminin by integrin receptors is central to the epithelial cell adhesion to basement membrane, but the structural background of this molecular interaction remained elusive. Here, we report the structures of the prototypic laminin receptor α6β1 integrin alone and in complex with three-chain laminin-511 fragment determined via crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy, respectively. The laminin-integrin interface is made up of several binding sites located on all five subunits, with the laminin γ1 chain C-terminal portion providing focal interaction using two carboxylate anchor points to bridge metal-ion dependent adhesion site of integrin β1 subunit and Asn189 of integrin α6 subunit. Laminin α5 chain also contributes to the affinity and specificity by making electrostatic interactions with large surface on the β-propeller domain of α6, part of which comprises an alternatively spliced X1 region. The propeller sheet corresponding to this region shows unusually high mobility, suggesting its unique role in ligand capture.
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22

Wu, Zheyang, Chun Yang, and Dalin Tang. "In Vivo Serial MRI-Based Models and Statistical Methods to Quantify Sensitivity and Specificity of Mechanical Predictors for Carotid Plaque Rupture: Location and Beyond." Journal of Biomechanical Engineering 133, no. 6 (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4004189.

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It has been hypothesized that mechanical risk factors may be used to predict future atherosclerotic plaque rupture. Truly predictive methods for plaque rupture and methods to identify the best predictor(s) from all the candidates are lacking in the literature. A novel combination of computational and statistical models based on serial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was introduced to quantify sensitivity and specificity of mechanical predictors to identify the best candidate for plaque rupture site prediction. Serial in vivo MRI data of carotid plaque from one patient was acquired with follow-up scan showing ulceration. 3D computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) models using both baseline and follow-up data were constructed and plaque wall stress (PWS) and strain (PWSn) and flow maximum shear stress (FSS) were extracted from all 600 matched nodal points (100 points per matched slice, baseline matching follow-up) on the lumen surface for analysis. Each of the 600 points was marked “ulcer” or “nonulcer” using follow-up scan. Predictive statistical models for each of the seven combinations of PWS, PWSn, and FSS were trained using the follow-up data and applied to the baseline data to assess their sensitivity and specificity using the 600 data points for ulcer predictions. Sensitivity of prediction is defined as the proportion of the true positive outcomes that are predicted to be positive. Specificity of prediction is defined as the proportion of the true negative outcomes that are correctly predicted to be negative. Using probability 0.3 as a threshold to infer ulcer occurrence at the prediction stage, the combination of PWS and PWSn provided the best predictive accuracy with (sensitivity, specificity) = (0.97, 0.958). Sensitivity and specificity given by PWS, PWSn, and FSS individually were (0.788, 0.968), (0.515, 0.968), and (0.758, 0.928), respectively. The proposed computational-statistical process provides a novel method and a framework to assess the sensitivity and specificity of various risk indicators and offers the potential to identify the optimized predictor for plaque rupture using serial MRI with follow-up scan showing ulceration as the gold standard for method validation. While serial MRI data with actual rupture are hard to acquire, this single-case study suggests that combination of multiple predictors may provide potential improvement to existing plaque assessment schemes. With large-scale patient studies, this predictive modeling process may provide more solid ground for rupture predictor selection strategies and methods for image-based plaque vulnerability assessment.
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23

Bhartia, Rohit, Luther W. Beegle, Lauren DeFlores, et al. "Perseverance’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) Investigation." Space Science Reviews 217, no. 4 (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00812-z.

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AbstractThe Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) is a robotic arm-mounted instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover. SHERLOC has two primary boresights. The Spectroscopy boresight generates spatially resolved chemical maps using fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy coupled to microscopic images (10.1 μm/pixel). The second boresight is a Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON); a copy of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) that obtains color images from microscopic scales (∼13 μm/pixel) to infinity. SHERLOC Spectroscopy focuses a 40 μs pulsed deep UV neon-copper laser (248.6 nm), to a ∼100 μm spot on a target at a working distance of ∼48 mm. Fluorescence emissions from organics, and Raman scattered photons from organics and minerals, are spectrally resolved with a single diffractive grating spectrograph with a spectral range of 250 to ∼370 nm. Because the fluorescence and Raman regions are naturally separated with deep UV excitation (<250 nm), the Raman region ∼ 800 – 4000 cm−1 (250 to 273 nm) and the fluorescence region (274 to ∼370 nm) are acquired simultaneously without time gating or additional mechanisms. SHERLOC science begins by using an Autofocus Context Imager (ACI) to obtain target focus and acquire 10.1 μm/pixel greyscale images. Chemical maps of organic and mineral signatures are acquired by the orchestration of an internal scanning mirror that moves the focused laser spot across discrete points on the target surface where spectra are captured on the spectrometer detector. ACI images and chemical maps (< 100 μm/mapping pixel) will enable the first Mars in situ view of the spatial distribution and interaction between organics, minerals, and chemicals important to the assessment of potential biogenicity (containing CHNOPS). Single robotic arm placement chemical maps can cover areas up to 7x7 mm in area and, with the < 10 min acquisition time per map, larger mosaics are possible with arm movements. This microscopic view of the organic geochemistry of a target at the Perseverance field site, when combined with the other instruments, such as Mastcam-Z, PIXL, and SuperCam, will enable unprecedented analysis of geological materials for both scientific research and determination of which samples to collect and cache for Mars sample return.
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24

Jaramillo, George Steve. "Enabling Capabilities: Innovation and Development in the Outer Hebrides." M/C Journal 20, no. 2 (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1215.

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Image 1: View from Geodha Sgoilt towards the sea stacks, Uig, Isle of Lewis. Image credit: George Jaramillo.IntroductionOver the cliffs of Mangerstadh on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, is a small plot of land called Geodha Sgoilt that overlooks the North Atlantic Ocean (Image 1). On the site is a small dirt gravel road and the remnants of a World War II listening station. Below, sea stacks rise from the waters, orange and green cliff sides stand in defiance to the crashing waves. An older gentleman began to tell me of what he believed could be located here on the site. A place where visitors could learn of the wonders of St Kilda that contained all types of new storytelling technologies to inspire them. He pointed above the ruined buildings, mentioning that a new road for the visitors’ vehicles and coaches would be built. With his explanations, you could almost imagine such a place on these cliffs. Yet, before that new idea could even be built, this gentleman and his group of locals and incomers had to convince themselves and others that this new heritage centre was something desired, necessary and inevitable in the development of the Western Isles.This article explores the developing relationships that come about through design innovation with community organisations. This was done through a partnership between an academic institution and a non-profit heritage community group as part of growing study in how higher education design research can play an active partner in community group development. It argues for the use of design thinking and innovation in improving strategy and organisational processes within non-profit organisations. In this case, it looks at what role it can play in building and enabling organisational confidence in its mission, as well as, building “beyond the museum”. The new approach to this unique relationship casts new light towards working with complexities and strategies rather than trying to resolve issues from the outset of a project. These enabling relationships are divided into three sections of this paper: First it explores the context of the island community group and “building” heritage, followed by a brief history of St Kilda and its current status, and designation as a World Heritage site. Second, it seeks the value of developing strategy and the introduction of the Institute of Design Innovation (INDI). This is followed by a discussion of the six-month relationship and work that was done that elucidates various methods used and ending with its outcomes. The third section reflects upon the impacts at the relationship building between the two groups with some final thoughts on the partnership, where it can lead, and how this can represent new ways of working together within community groups. Building HeritageCurrent community research in Scotland has shown struggles in understanding issues within community capability and development (Barker 11; Cave 20; Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 23) though most focus on the land tenure and energy (McMorran 21) and not heritage groups. The need to maintain “resilient” (Steiner 17) communities has shown that economic resilience is of primary importance for these rural communities. Heritage as economic regenerator has had a long history in the United Kingdom. Some of these like the regeneration of Wirksworth in the Peak District (Gordon 20) have had great economic results with populations growing, as well as, development in the arts and design. These changes, though positive, have also adversely impacted the local community by estranging and forcing lower income townspeople to move away due to higher property values and lack of work. Furthermore, current trends in heritage tourism have managed to turn many rural regions into places of historic consumption (Ronström 7) termed “heritagisation” (Edensor 35). There is thus a need for critical reflection within a variety of heritage organisations with the increase in heritage tourism.In particular, existing island heritage organisations face a variety of issues that they focus too much on the artefactual or are too focused to strive for anything beyond the remit of their particular heritage (Jacuniak-Suda, and Mose 33; Ronström 4). Though many factors including funding, space, volunteerism and community capability affect the way these groups function they have commonalities that include organisational methods, volunteer fatigue, and limited interest from community groups. It is within this context that the communities of the Outer Hebrides. Currently, projects within the Highlands and islands focus on particular “grassroots” development (Cave 26; Robertson 994) searching for innovative ways to attract, maintain, and sustain healthy levels of heritage and development—one such group is Ionad Hiort. Ionad Hiort Ionad Hiort is a community non-profit organisation founded in 2010 to assist in the development of a new type of heritage centre in the community of Uig on the Isle of Lewis (“Proposal-Ionad Hiort”). As stated in their website, the group strives to develop a centre on the history and contemporary views of St Kilda, as well as, encouraging a much-needed year-round economic impetus for the region. The development of the group and the idea of a heritage centre came about through the creation of the St Kilda Opera, a £1.5 million, five-country project held in 2007, led by Scotland’s Gaelic Arts agency, Proiseact nan Ealan (Mckenzie). This opera, inspired by the cliffs, people, and history of St Kilda used creative techniques to unite five countries in a live performance with cliff aerobatics and Gaelic singing to present the island narrative. From this initial interest, a commission from the Western Isles council (2010), developed by suggestions and commentary from earlier reports (Jura Report 2009; Rebanks 2009) encouraged a fiercely contentious competition, which saw Ionad Hiort receive the right to develop a remote-access heritage centre about the St Kilda archipelago (Maclean). In 2013, the group received a plot of land from the local laird for the establishment of the centre (Urquhart) thereby bringing it closer to its goal of a heritage centre, but before moving onto this notion of remote-heritage, a brief history is needed on the archipelago. Image 2: Location map of Mangerstadh on the Isle of Lewis and St Kilda to the west, with inset of Scotland. Image credit: © Crown Copyright and Database Right (2017). Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence).St KildaSt Kilda is an archipelago about 80 kilometres off the coast of the Outer Hebrides in the North Atlantic (Image 2). Over 2000 years of habitation show an entanglement between humans and nature including harsh weather, limited resources, but a tenacity and growth to develop a way of living upon a small section of land in the middle of the Atlantic. St Kilda has maintained a tenuous relationship between the sea, the cliffs and the people who have lived within its territory (Geddes, and Gannon 18). Over a period of three centuries beginning in the eighteenth century an outside influence on the island begin to play a major role, with the loss of a large portion of its small (180) population. This population would later decrease to 100 and finally to 34 in 1930, when it was decided to evacuate the final members of the village in what could best be called a forced eviction.Since the evacuation, the island has maintained an important military presence as a listening station during the Second World War and in its modern form a radar station as part of the Hebridean Artillery (Rocket) Range (Geddes 14). The islands in the last thirty years have seen an increase in tourism with the ownership of the island by the National Trust of Scotland. The UNESCO World Heritage Organisation (UNESCO), who designated St Kilda in 1986 and 2004 as having outstanding universal value, has seen its role evolve from not just protecting (or conserving) world heritage sites, but to strategically understand sustainable tourism of its sites (“St Kilda”). In 2012, UNESCO selected St Kilda as a case study for remote access heritage conservation and interpretation (Hebrides News Today; UNESCO 15). This was partly due to the efforts of 3D laser scanning of the islands by a collaboration between The Glasgow School of Art and Historic Environment Scotland called the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV) in 2009.The idea of a remote access heritage is an important aspect as to what Ionad Hiort could do with creating a centre at their site away from St Kilda. Remote access heritage is useful in allowing for sites and monuments to be conserved and monitored “from afar”. It allows for 3D visualisations of sites and provides new creative engagements with a variety of different places (Remondino, and Rizzi 86), however, Ionad Hiort was not yet at a point to even imagine how to use the remote access technology. They first needed a strategy and direction, as after many years of moving towards recognition of proposing the centre at their site in Uig, they had lost a bit of that initial drive. This is where INDI was asked to assist by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the regional development organisation for most of rural Scotland. Building ConfidenceINDI is a research institute at The Glasgow School of Art. It is a distributed, creative collective of researchers, lecturers and students specialising in design innovation, where design innovation means enabling creative capabilities within communities, groups and individuals. Together, they address complex issues through new design practices and bespoke community engagement to co-produce “preferable futures” (Henchley 25). Preferable futures are a type of future casting that seeks to strive not just for the probable or possible future of a place or idea, but for the most preferred and collectively reached option for a society (McAra-McWilliam 9). INDI researches the design processes that are needed to co-create contexts in which people can flourish: at work, in organisations and businesses, as well as, in public services and government. The task of innovation as an interactive process is an example of the design process. Innovation is defined as “a co-creation process within social and technological networks in which actors integrate their resources to create mutual value” (Russo‐Spena, and Mele 528). Therefore, innovation works outside of standard consultancy practices; rather it engenders a sense of mutual co-created practices that strive to resolve particular problems. Examples include the work that has looked at creating cultures of innovation within small and medium-sized enterprises (Lockwood 4) where the design process was used to alter organisational support (Image 3). These enterprises tend to emulate larger firms and corporations and though useful in places where economies of scale are present, smaller business need adaptable, resilient and integrated networks of innovation within their organisational models. In this way, innovation functioned as a catalyst for altering the existing organisational methods. These innovations are thus a useful alternative to existing means of approaching problems and building resilience within any organisation. Therefore, these ideas of innovation could be transferred and play a role in enabling new ways of approaching non-profit organisational structures, particularly those within heritage. Image 3: Design Council Double Diamond model of the design process. Image credit: Lockwood.Developing the WorkIonad Hiort with INDI’s assistance has worked together to develop a heritage centre that tries to towards a new definition of heritage and identity through this island centre. Much of this work has been done through local community investigations revolving around workshops and one-on-one talks where narratives and ideas are held in “negative capability” (McAra-McWilliam 2) to seek many alternatives that would be able to work for the community. The initial aims of the partnership were to assist the Uig community realise the potential of the St Kilda Centre. Primarily, it would assist in enabling the capabilities of two themes. The first would be, strategy, for Ionad Hiort’s existing multi-page mission brief. The second would be storytelling the narrative of St Kilda as a complex and entangled, however, its common views are limited to the ‘fall from grace’ or ‘noble savage’ story (Macdonald 168). Over the course of six months, the relationship involved two workshops and three site visits of varying degrees of interaction. An initial gathering had InDI staff meet members of Ionad Hiort to introduce members to each other. Afterwards, INDI ran two workshops over two months in Uig to understand, reflect and challenge Ionad Hiort’s focus on what the group desired. The first workshop focused on the group’s strategy statement. In a relaxed and facilitated space in the Uig Community Hall, the groups used pens, markers, and self-adhesive notes to engage in an open dialogue about the group’s desires. This session included reflecting on what their heritage centre could look like, as well as what their strategy needed to get there. These resulted in a series of drawings of their ‘preferred’ centre, with some ideas showing a centre sitting over the edge of the cliffs or one that had the centre be an integral component of the community. In discussing that session, one of members of the group recalled:I remember his [one of INDI’s staff] interrogation of the project was actually pretty – initially – fairly brutal, right? The first formal session we had talking about strategy and so on. To the extent that I think it would be fair to say he pissed everybody off, right? So much so that he actually prompted us to come back with some fairly hard hitting ripostes, which, after a moment’s silence he then said, ‘That’s it, you’ve convinced me’, and at that point we kind of realised that that’s what he’d been trying to do; he’d been trying to really push us to go further in our articulation of what we were doing and … why we were doing it in this particular way than we had done before. (Participant A, 2016).The group through this session found out that their strategy could be refined into a short mission statement giving a clear focus as to what they wanted and how they wanted to go about doing it. In the end, drawings, charts, stories (Image 4) were drawn to reflect on what the community had discussed. These artefacts became a key role-player in the following months of the development of the group. Image 4: View of group working through their strategy workshop session. Image credit: Fergus Fullarton-Pegg (2014). The second set of workshops and visits involved informal discussion with individual members of the group and community. This included a visit to St Kilda with members from INDI, Ionad Hiort and the Digital Design Studio, which allowed for everyone to understand the immensity of the project and its significance to World Heritage values. The initial aims thus evolved into understanding the context of self-governance for distributed communities and how to develop the infrastructure of development. As discussed earlier, existing development processes are useful, though limited to only particular types of projects, and as exemplified in the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Western Isles Council commission, it tends to put communities against each other for limited pots of money. This existing system can be innovated upon by becoming creative liaisons, sharing and co-creating from existing studies to help develop more effective processes for the future of Ionad Hiort and their ‘preferable future’. Building RelationshipsWhat the relationship with GSA has done, as a dialogue with the team of people that have been involved, has been to consolidate and clarify our own thinking and to get us to question our own thinking across several different aspects of the whole project. (Participant A, 2016)As the quote states, the main notion of using design thinking has allowed Ionad Hiort to question their thinking and challenge preconceptions of what a “heritage centre” is, by being a critical sounding board that is different from what is provided by consultants and other stakeholders. Prior to meeting INDI, Ionad Hiort may have been able to reach their goal of a strategy, however, it would have taken a few more years. The work, which involved structured and unstructured workshops, meetings, planning events, and gatherings, gave them a structured focus to move ahead with their prospectus planning and bidding. INDI enabled the compression and focus of their strategy making and mission strategy statement over the course of six months into a one-page statement that gave direction to the group and provided the impetus for the development of the prospectus briefs. Furthermore, INDI contributed a sense of contemporary content to the historic story, as well as, enable the community to see that this centre would not just become another gallery with café. The most important outcome has been an effective measure in building relationships in the Outer Hebrides, which shows the changing roles between academic and third sector partnerships. Two key points can be deemed from these developing relationships: The first has been to build a research infrastructure in and across the region that engages with local communities about working with the GSA, including groups in North Uist, Barra and South Uist. Of note is a comment made by one of the participants saying: “It’s exciting now, there’s a buzz about it and getting you [INDI] involved, adding a dimension—we’ve got people who have got an artistic bent here but I think your enthusiasm, your skills, very much complement what we’ve got here.” (Participant B, 2016). Second, the academic/non-profit partnership has encouraged younger people to work and study in the area through a developing programme of student research activity. This includes placing taught masters students with local community members on the South Uist, as well as, PhD research being done on Stornoway. These two outcomes then have given rise to interest in not only how heritage is re-developed in a community, but also, encourages future interest, by staff and students to continue the debate and fashion further developments in the region (GSAmediacentre). Today, the cliffs of Mangerstadh continue to receive the pounding of waves, the blowing wind and the ever-present rain on its rocky granite surface. The iterative stages of work that the two groups have done showcase the way that simple actions can carve, change and evolve into innovative outcomes. The research outcomes show that through this new approach to working with communities we move beyond the consultant and towards an ability of generating a preferable future for the community. In this way, the work that has been created together showcases a case study for further island community development. We do not know what the future holds for the group, but with continued support and maintaining an open mind to creative opportunities we will see that the community will develop a space that moves “beyond the museum”. AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Ionad Hiort and all the residents of Uig on the Isle of Lewis for their assistance and participation in this partnership. For more information on their work please visit http://www.ionadhiort.org/. The author also thanks the Highlands and Islands Enterprise for financial support in the research and development of the project. Finally, the author thanks the two reviewers who provided critical commentary and critiques to improve this paper. ReferencesBarker, Adam. “Capacity Building for Sustainability: Towards Community Development in Coastal Scotland.” Journal of Environmental Management 75.1 (2005): 11-19. Canavan, Brendan. “Tourism Culture: Nexus, Characteristics, Context and Sustainability.” Tourism Management 53 (2016): 229-43. ———. “The Extent and Role of Domestic Tourism in a Small Island: The Case of the Isle of Man.” Journal of Travel Research 52.3 (2012): 340-52. Cape, Ruth. Exploring Growth and Empowerment of Communities in the Western Isles. Stornoway, 2013. Bullen, Elizabeth, Simon Robb, and Jane Kenway. “‘Creative Destruction’: Knowledge Economy Policy and the Future of the Arts and Humanities in the Academy.” Journal of Education Policy 19.1 (2004): 3–22. Brown, Tim, and Jocelyn Wyatt. “Design Thinking for Social Innovation.” Stanford Social Innovation Review Winter (2010): 30-35. <https://ssir.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation>.Briscoe, Gerard, and Mark Plumbley. Creating Cultures of Innovation: The Digital Creative Industries. <https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/11403/Creating%20Cultures%20of%20Innovation.pdf?sequence=7>.Edensor, Tim. Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics, and Materiality. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Geddes, George. The Magazine and Gun Emplacement, St Kilda A Conservation Statement. Edinburgh, 2008. Geddes, George, and Angela Gannon. St Kilda: The Last and Outmost Isle. Edinburgh: Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, 2015. Gordon, Michel, and Arthur Percival. The Wirksworth Story: New Life for An Old Town. Wirksworth: Civic Trust, 1984. GSAmediacentre. “The Glasgow School of Art Contributes to St Kilda Centre Symposium in Stornoway.” GSA Media Centre, The Glasgow School of Art, 17 Aug. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.gsapress.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-glasgow-school-of-art-contributes.html>.Henchley, Norman. "Making Sense of Future Studies." Alternatives 7.2 (1978): 24-28. Jacuniak-Suda, Marta, and Ingo Mose. “Social Enterprises in the Western Isles (Scotland) – Drivers of Sustainable Rural Development ?” Europa Regional 19.2011.2 (2014): 23-40. Lockwood, Joseph, Madeline Smith, and Irene McAra-McWilliam. “Work-Well: Creating a Culture of Innovation through Design.” International Design Management Research Conference, Boston, 2012. 1-11. McAra-McWilliam, Irene. “Impossible Things? Negative Capability and the Creative Imagination.” Creativity or Conformity Conference, Cardiff, 2007. 1-8. <https://www.academia.edu/1246770/Impossible_things_Negative_Capability>.McKenzie, Steven. "Opera Celebrates St Kilda History." BBC News 23 Jun. 2007. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6763371.stm>.McMorran, Rob, and Alister Scott. “Community Landownership: Rediscovering the Road to Sustainability.” Lairds: Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management (2013): 20-31. Maclean, Diane. “Bitter Strife over St Kilda Visitor Centre.” The Caledonian Mercury 29 Jan. 2010. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.caledonianmercury.com/2010/01/29/bitter-strife-over-st-kilda-visitor-centre/001383>.News Editor. “Double Boost for St Kilda Project.” Hebrides News Today 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.hebridestoday.com/2013/11/double-boost-for-st-kilda-project/>.Portschy, Szabolcs. “Design Partnerships between Community-Engaged Architecture and Academic Education Programs.” Pollack Periodica 10.1 (2015): 173-180.“Proposal – Ionad Hiort.” Ionad Hiort. 6 Apr. 2017 <http://www.ionadhiort.org/the-proposal>. Rebanks, James. “World Heritage Status: Is There Opportunity for Economic Gain? Research and Analysis of the Socio-Economic Impact Potential of UNESCO World Heritage Site Status.” 2009. <http://icomos.fa.utl.pt/documentos/2009/WHSTheEconomicGainFinalReport.pdf>.Robertson, Iain James McPherson. “Hardscrabble Heritage: The Ruined Blackhouse and Crofting Landscape as Heritage from Below.” Landscape Research 40.8 (2015): 993–1009. Ronström, Owe. “Heritage Production in the Island of Gotland.” The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures 2.2 (2008): 1-18. Russo‐Spena, Tiziana, and Cristina Mele. “‘Five Co‐s’ in Innovating: A Practice‐Based View.” Ed. Evert Gummesson. Journal of Service Management 23.4 (2012): 527-53. “St Kilda.” World Heritage Centre. UNESCO. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/387/>.Steiner, Artur, and Marianna Markantoni. “Unpacking Community Resilience through Capacity for Change.” Community Development Journal 49.3 (2014): 407-25.Shortall, S. “Rural Development in Practice: Issues Arising in Scotland and Northern Ireland.” Community Development Journal 36.2 (2001): 122-33. UNESCO. Using Remote Access Technologies: Lessons Learnt from the Remote Access to World Heritage Sites – St Kilda to Uluru Conference. London, 2012. Urquhart, Frank. “St Kilda Visitor Centre in Hebrides Step Closer.” People Places, The Scotsman 20 Nov. 2013. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/st-kilda-visitor-centre-in-hebrides-step-closer-1-3195287>. Watson, Amy. “Plans for St Kilda Centre at Remote World Heritage Site.” People Places, The Scotsman 16 Aug. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/plans-for-st-kilda-centre-at-remote-world-heritage-site-1-4204606>.
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Brennan-Horley, Chris. "Reappraising the Role of Suburban Workplaces in Darwin’s Creative Economy." M/C Journal 14, no. 4 (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.356.

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IntroductionTraditionally, suburbs have been conceived as dormitory – in binary opposition to the inner-city (Powell). Supporting this stereotypical view have been gendered binaries between inner and outer city areas; densely populated vs. sprawl; gentrified terraces and apartment culture vs. new estates and first home buyers; zones of (male) production and creativity against (female) sedate, consumer territory. These binaries have for over a decade been thoroughly criticised by urban researchers, who have traced such representations and demonstrated how they are discriminatory and incorrect (see Powell; Mee; Dowling and Mee). And yet, such binaries persist in popular media commentaries and even in academic research (Gibson and Brennan-Horley). In creative city research, inner-city areas have been bestowed with the supposed correct mix of conditions that may lead to successful creative ventures. In part, this discursive positioning has been borne out of prior attempts to mapthe location of creativity in the city. Existing research on the geography of creativity in the city have relied on proxy data forms: mapping data on firms and/or employment in the creative industry sectors (e.g. Gibson, Murphy and Freestone; Markusen et al.; Watson). In doing so, the focus has rested on “winners” – i.e. headquarters of major arts and cultural institutions located in inner city/CBD locations, or by looking for concentrations of registered creative businesses. Such previous studies are useful because they give some indication of the geographical spread and significance of creative activities in cities, and help answer questions about the locational preferences of creative industries, including their gravitational pull towards each other in an agglomerative sense (Scott). However, such studies rely on (usually) one proxy data source to reveal the presence of creative activities, rather than detail how creativity is itself apparent in everyday working lives, or embedded in the spaces, networks and activities of the city. The latter, more qualitative aspects of the lived experience of creativity can only at best be inferred from proxy data such as employment numbers and firm location. In contrast, other researchers have promoted ethnographic methods (Drake; Shorthose; Felton, Collis and Graham) including interviewing, snowballing through contacts and participant observation, as means to get ‘inside’ creative industries and to better understand their embeddedness in place and networks of social relations. Such methods provide rich explanation of the internal dynamics and social logics of creative production, but having stemmed from text-based recorded interviews, they produce data without geographical co-ordinates necessary to be mapped in the manner of employment or business location data – and thus remain comparatively “aspatial”, with no georeferenced component. Furthermore, in such studies relational interactions with material spaces of home, work and city are at best conveyed in text form only – from recorded interviews – and thus cannot be aggregated easily as a mapped representation of city life. This analysis takes a different tack, by mapping responses from interviews, which were then analysed using methods more common in mapping and analysing proxy data sources. By taking a qualitative route toward data collection, this paper illustrates how suburbs can actually play a major role in creative city economies, expanding understandings of what constitutes a creative workplace and examining the resulting spatial distributions according to their function. Darwin and the Creative Tropical City Project This article draws on fieldwork carried out in Darwin, NT a small but important city in Australia’s tropical north. It is the government and administration capital of the sparsely populated Northern Territory and continues to grapple with its colonial past, a challenging climate, small population base and remoteness from southern centres. The city’s development pattern is relatively new, even in Australian terms, only dating back to the late 1970s. After wholesale destruction by Cyclone Tracy, Darwin was rebuilt displaying the hallmarks of post-1970 planning schemes: wide ring-roads and cul-de-sacs define its layout, its urban form dominated by stout single-story suburban dwellings built to withstand cyclonic activity. More recently, Darwin has experienced growth in residential tower block apartments, catering to the city’s high degree of fly-in, fly-out labour market of mining, military and public service workers. These high rise developments have been focussed unsurprisingly on coastal suburbs with ample sections of foreshore. Further adding to its peculiar layout, the geographic centre is occupied by Darwin Airport (a chief military base for Australia’s northern frontier) splitting the northern suburbs from those closer to its small CBD, itself jutting to the south on a peninsula. Lacking then in Darwin are those attributes so often heralded as the harbingers of a city’s creative success – density, walkability, tracts of ex-industrial brownfields sites ripe for reinvention as creative precincts. Darwin is a city dominated by its harsh tropical climate, decentralised and overtly dependant on private car transport. But, if one cares to look beyond the surface, Darwin is also a city punching above its weight on account of the unique possibilities enabled by transnational Asian proximity and its unique role as an outlet for indigenous creative work from across the top of the continent (Luckman, Gibson and Lea). Against this backdrop, Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries (CTC), a federally funded ARC project from 2006 to 2009, was envisaged to provide the evidential base needed to posit future directions for Darwin’s creative industries. City and Territory leaders had by 2004 become enchanted by the idea of ‘the creative city’ (Landry) – but it is questionable how well these policy discourses travel when applied to disparate examples such as Darwin (Luckman, Gibson and Lea). To provide an empirical grounding to creative city ideas and to ensure against policy fetishism the project was developed to map the nature, extent and change over time of Darwin’s creative industries and imagine alternate futures for the city based on a critical appraisal of the applicability of national and international creative industry policy frameworks to this remote, tropical location (Lea et al.). Toward a Typology of Darwin’s Creative Workplaces This article takes one data set gathered during the course of the CTC project, based around a participatory mapping exercise, where interviewees responded to questions about where creative industry activities took place in Darwin by drawing on paper maps. Known as mental maps, these were used to gather individual representations of place (Tuan), but in order to extend their applicability for spatial querying, responses were transferred to a Geographic Information System (GIS) for storage, collation and analysis (Matei et al.). During semi-structured interviews with 98 Darwin-based creative industry practitioners, participants were provided with a base map of Darwin displaying Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries and roads for mark up in response to specific questions about where creative activities occurred (for more in depth discussion of this method and its varied outputs, refer to Brennan-Horley and Gibson). The analysis discussed here only examines answers to one question: “Where do you work?” This question elicited a total of 473 work locations from 98 respondents – a fourfold increase over statistics gleaned from employment measures alone (Brennan-Horley). Such an increase resulted from participants identifying their everyday work practices which, by necessity, took place across multiple locations. When transferring the spatial location of workplaces into the GIS, each site was coded depending on whether it was cited by the interviewee as their “major” or primary place of work, or if the place being discussed played a secondary or “minor” role in their creative practice. For example, an artist’s studio was categorised as major, but other minor sites also featured in their mental maps, for example, galleries, supply locations and teaching sites. Each worksite was then assigned to one of four categories: Front, Back, Networking and Supply (Table 1). In a similar fashion to McCannell’s work on the “front and back regions” of tourist towns (597), the creative industries, predicated on the production and exchange of texts, objects and ideas also display front spaces of sorts – sites that facilitate interactions between practitioner and audiences, spaces for performance and consumption. Operating behind these front spaces, are sites where creative endeavours take place – perhaps not as so readily seen or engaged with by wider publics. For example, a rehearsal room, artist’s studio or a theatre company’s office may not be key sites of interaction between creator and audience but remain nonetheless important sites of creative work. However, a binary of Front versus Back could not encapsulate the variety of other everyday, prosaic work sites evident in the data. Participants indicated on their maps visits to the post office to send artworks, going to Bunnings to buy paint (and inadvertently networking with others), through to more fleeting spaces such as artist materials fossicked from parklands to photoshoot locations. These supply sites (each themselves positioned along a continuum of “creative” to “mundane”) were typified as supply locations: sites that act as places to gather inputs into the creative process. Finally, sites where meetings and networking took place (more often than not, these were indicated by participants as occurring away from their major work place) were assigned under a heading of networking spaces. Table 1: A typology of creative workplaces Space Definition Coded examples Front A space for consumption/exchange of creative goods, outputs or expertise. Performance space, Market, Gallery, Client Location, Shopfront, Cinema, Exhibition space, Museum, Festival space Back A site of production, practice or business management Office, Studio, Rehearsal Space, Teaching Space, Factory, Recording Studio Networking A space to meet clients or others involved in creative industries Meeting places Supply Spaces where supplies for creative work are sourced Supplier, Photoshoot Location, Story Location, Shoot Location, Storage Coding data into discrete units and formulating a typology is a reductive process, thus a number of caveats apply to this analysis. First there were numerous cases where worksites fell across multiple categories. This was particularly the case with practitioners from the music and performing arts sector whose works are created and consumed at the same location, or a clothing designer whose studio is also their shopfront. To avoid double counting, these cases were assigned to one category only, usually split in favour of the site’s main function (i.e. performance sites to Front spaces). During interviews, participants were asked to locate parts of Darwin they went to for work, rather than detail the exact role or name for each of those spaces. While most participants were forthcoming and descriptive in their responses, in two percent of cases (n=11) the role of that particular space was undefined. These spaces were placed into the “back” category. Additionally, the data was coded to refer to individual location instances aggregated to the SLA level, and does not take into account the role of specific facilities within suburbs, even though certain spaces were referred to regularly in the transcripts. It was often the case that a front space for one creative industry practitioner was a key production site for another, or operated simultaneously as a networking site for both. Future disaggregated analyses will tease out the important roles that individual venues play in Darwin’s creative economy, but are beyond this article’s scope. Finally, this analysis is only a snapshot in time, and captures some of the ephemeral and seasonal aspects of creative workplaces in Darwin that occurred around the time of interviewing. To illustrate, there are instances of photographers indicating photo shoot locations, sites that may only be used once, or may be returned to on multiple occasions. As such, if this exercise were to be carried out at another time, a different geography may result. Results A cross-tabulation of the workplace typology against major and minor locations is given in Table 2. Only 20 per cent of worksites were designated as major worksites with the remaining 80 per cent falling into the minor category. There was a noticeable split between Back and Front spaces and their Major/Minor designation. 77 per cent of back spaces were major locations, while the majority of Front spaces (92 per cent) fell into the minor category. The four most frequently occurring Minor Front spaces – client location, performance space, markets and gallery – collectively comprise one third of all workplaces for participants, pointing to their important role as interfacing spaces between creative output produced or worked on elsewhere, and wider publics/audiences. Understandably, all supply sites and networking places were categorised as minor, with each making up approximately 20 per cent of all workplaces. Table 2: creative workplaces cross tabulated against primary and secondary workplaces and divided by creative workplace typology. Major Minor Grand Total Back Office 44 1 45 Studio 22 - 22 Rehearsal Space 7 11 18 Undefined - 11 11 Teaching Space 3 1 4 Factory 1 - 1 Recording Studio 1 - 1 Leanyer Swamp 1 - 1 Back space total 79 24 103 Front Client Location - 70 70 Performance Space 2 67 69 Market 1 11 12 Gallery 3 8 11 Site - 8 8 Shopfront 1 3 4 Exhibition Space - 3 3 Cinema 2 1 3 Museum 1 1 2 Shop/Studio 1 - 1 Gallery and Office 1 - 1 NightClub 1 - 1 Festival space - 1 1 Library 1 - 1 Front Space total 14 173 187 Networking Meeting Place - 94 94 Networking space total - 94 94 Supply Supplier - 52 52 Photoshoot Location - 14 14 Story Location - 9 9 Shoot Location - 7 7 Storage - 4 4 Bank - 1 1 Printer - 1 1 Supply Space total - 88 88 Grand Total 93 379 472 The maps in Figures 1 through 4 analyse the results spatially, with individual SLA scores provided in Table 3. The maps use location quotients, representing the diversion of each SLA from the city-wide average. Values below one represent a less than average result, values greater than one reflecting higher results. The City-Inner SLA maintains the highest overall percentage of Darwin’s creative worksites (35 per cent of the total) across three categories, Front, Back and especially Networking sites (60 per cent). The concentration of key arts institutions, performance spaces and CBD office space is the primary reason for this finding. Additionally, the volume of hospitality venues in the CBD made it an amenable place to conduct meetings away from major back spaces. Figure 1: Back spaces by Statistical Local Areas Figure 2: Front spaces by Statistical Local Areas Figure 3: Networking sites, by Statistical Local Areas Figure 4: Supply sites by Statistical Local Areas However this should not deter from the fact that the majority of all worksites (65 per cent) indicated by participants actually reside in suburban locations. Numerically, the vast majority (70 per cent) of Darwin’s Front spaces are peppered across the suburbs, with agglomerations occurring in The Gardens, Fannie Bay, Nightcliff and Parap. The Gardens is the location for Darwin’s biggest weekly market (Mindl Beach night market), and a performance space for festivals and events during the city’s long dry season. Mirroring more the cultures of its neighbouring SE Asian counterparts, Darwin sustains a vibrant market culture unlike that of any other Australian capital city. As the top end region is monsoonal, six months of the year is guaranteed to be virtually rain free, allowing for outdoor activities such as markets and festivals to flourish. Markets in Darwin have a distinctly suburban geography with each of the three top suburban SLAs (as measured by Front spaces) hosting a regular market, each acting as temporary sites of networking and encounter for creative producers and audiences. Importantly, over half of the city’s production sites (Back spaces) were dispersed across the suburbs in two visible arcs, one extending from the city taking in Fannie Bay and across to Winnellie via Parap, and through the northern coastal SLAs from Coconut Grove to Brinkin (Figure 1). Interestingly, 85 per cent of all supply points were also in suburban locations. Figure 4 maps this suburban specialisation, with the light industrial suburb of Winnellie being the primary location for Darwin’s creative practitioners to source supplies. Table 3: Top ten suburbs by workplace mentions, tabulated by workplace type* SLA name Front Back Networking Supply Workplace total Inner City/CBD City - Inner 56 (29.9%) 35 (36%) 57 (60.6%) 13 (14.8%) 162 (34.3%) Inner City Total 56 (29.9%) 35 (36%) 57 (60.6%) 13 (14.8%) 162 (34.3%) Top 10 suburban The Gardens 30 (16%) 3 (2.9%) 6 (6.4%) 5 (5.7%) 44 (9.3%) Winnellie 3 (1.6%) 7 (6.8%) 1 (1.1%) 24 (27.3%) 35 (7.4%) Parap 14 (7.5%) 4 (3.9%) 6 (6.4%) 9 (10.2%) 33 (7%) Fannie Bay 17 (9.1%) 5 (4.9%) 4 (4.3%) 2 (2.3%) 28 (5.9%) Nightcliff 14 (7.5%) 7 (6.8%) 2 (2.1%) 4 (4.5%) 27 (5.7%) Stuart Park 4 (2.1%) 8 (7.8%) 4 (4.3%) 4 (4.5%) 20 (4.2%) Brinkin 1 (0.5%) 8 (7.8%) 9 (9.6%) 2 (2.3%) 20 (4.2%) Larrakeyah 5 (2.7%) 5 (4.9%) 1 (1.1%) 3 (3.4%) 14 (3%) City - Remainder 5 (2.7%) 2 (1.9%) 0 (0%) 6 (6.8%) 13 (2.8%) Coconut Grove 3 (1.6%) 4 (3.9%) 1 (1.1%) 4 (4.5%) 12 (2.5%) Rapid Creek 3 (1.6%) 6 (5.8%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 9 (1.9%) Suburban Total** 131 (70.1%) 67 (65%) 37 (39.4%) 75 (85%) 310 (65.7%) City-Wide Total 187 103 94 88 472 *All percentages calculated from city- wide total **Suburban total row includes all 27 suburbs, not just top tens Discussion There are two key points to take from this analysis. First, the results show the usefulness of combining in-depth qualitative research with GIS mapping methods. Interviewing creative workers about where activities in their working days (or nights) take place, rather than defaulting to incomplete industry statistics can reveal a more comprehensive view of where creative work manifests in the city. Second, the role that multiple, decentred and often suburban facilities played as sites of supply, production and consumption in Darwin’s creative economy leads theories about the spatiality of creativity in the city in new directions. These results clearly show that the cultural binaries that theorists have assumed shape perceptions of the city and its suburbs do not appear in this instance to be infusing the everyday nature of creative work in the city. What was revealed by this data is that creative work in the city creates a variegated city produced through practitioners’ ordinary daily activities. Creative workers are not necessarily resisting or reinventing ideas of what the suburbs mean, they are getting on with creative work in ways that connect suburbs and the city centre in complex – and yet sometimes quite prosaic – ways. This is not to say that the suburbs do not present challenges for the effective conduct of creative work in Darwin – transport availability and lack of facilities were consistently cited problems by practitioners – but instead what is argued here is that ways of understanding the suburbs (in popular discourse, and in response in critical cultural theory) that emanate from Sydney or Los Angeles do not provide a universal conceptual framework for a city like Darwin. By not presuming that there is a meta-discourse of suburbs and city centres that everyone in every city is bound to, this analysis captured a different geography. In conclusion, the case of Darwin displayed decentred and dispersed sites of creativity as the norm rather than the exception. Accordingly, creative city planning strategies should take into account that decentralised and varied creative work sites exist beyond the purview of flagship institutions and visible creative precincts. References Brennan-Horley, Chris. “Multiple Work Sites and City-Wide Networks: A Topological Approach to Understanding Creative Work.” Australian Geographer 41 (2010): 39-56. ———, and Chris Gibson. “Where Is Creativity in the City? Integrating Qualitative and GIS Methods.” Environment and Planning A 41 (2009): 2295–2614.Collis, Christy, Emma Felton, and Phil Graham. “Beyond the Inner City: Real and Imagined Places in Creative Place Policy and Practice.” The Information Society 26 (2010): 104-112. Dowling, Robyn, and Kathy Mee. “Tales of the City: Western Sydney at the End of the Millennium.” Sydney: The Emergence of a World City. Ed. John Connell. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 2000. Drake, Graham. “‘This Place Gives Me Space’: Place and Creativity in the Creative Industries.” Geoforum 34 (2003): 511–524. Felton, Emma, Christy Collis and Phil Graham. “Making Connections: Creative Industries Networks in Outer-Suburban Locations.” Australian Geographer 41 (2010): 57-70. Gibson, Chris, and Chris Brennan-Horley. “Goodbye Pram City: Beyond Inner/Outer Zone Binaries in Creative City Research.” Urban Policy and Research 24 (2006): 455–71. ———, Peter Murphy, and Robert Freestone. “Employment and Socio-Spatial Relations in Australia's Cultural Economy.” Australian Geographer 33 (2002): 173-189. Landry, Charles. The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators. London: Comedia/Earthscan, 2000. Lea, Tess, Susan Luckman, Chris Gibson, Donal Fitzpatrick, Chris Brennan-Horley, Julie Willoughby-Smith, and Karen Hughes. Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries. Darwin: Charles Darwin University, 2009. Luckman, Sue, Chris Gibson, and Tess Lea. “Mosquitoes in the Mix: How Transferable Is Creative City Thinking?” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography (2009): 30, 47-63. Markusen, Ann, Gregory Wassall, Douglas DeNatale, and Randy Cohen. “Defining the Creative Economy: Industry and Occupational Approaches.” Economic Development Quarterly 22 (2008): 24-45. Matei, Sorin, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and Jack Qiu. “Fear and Misperception of Los Angeles Urban Space: A Spatial-Statistical Study of Communication-Shaped Mental Maps.” Communication Research 28 (2001): 429-463. McCannell, Dean. “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.” The American Journal of Sociology 79 (1973): 589-603. Mee, Kathy. “Dressing Up the Suburbs: Representations of Western Sydney.” Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia Eds. Katherine Gibson and Sophie Watson. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1994. 60–77. Powell, Diane. Out West: Perceptions of Sydney’s Western Suburbs. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993. Shorthose, Jim. “Accounting for Independent Creativity in the New Cultural Economy.” Media International Australia 112 (2004): 150-161. Scott, Allen J. The Cultural Economy of Cities. London: Sage, 2000. Tuan, Yi-Fu. “Images and Mental Maps.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 65 (1975): 205-213. Watson, Allan. “Global Music City: Knowledge and Geographical Proximity in London’s Recorded Music Industry.” Area 40 (2008): 12–23.
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Gibson, Prue. "Body of Art and Love." M/C Journal 15, no. 4 (2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.474.

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The phenomenological experience of art is one of embodied awareness. Now more than ever, as contemporary art becomes more interactive and immersive, our perceptions of embodiment are useful tools to gauge the efficacy of visual art as a stimulus for knowledge, new experience and expression. Art has a mimetic and interactive relationship with the world. As Schopenhauer said, “The world is my representation” (3). So which takes effect first: the lungful of excited breath or the synapses, is it the miasmic smell of dust on whirring video projectors or the emotion? When we see great art (in this instance, new media work), do we shudder, then see and understand it? Or do we see, tremble and, only then, know? “Art unleashes and intensifies...Art is of the animal” (Grosz, Chaos 62-3). Are our bodies reacting in response to the physical information at hand in the world? “Why do you like Amy?” I asked my six year old son, who was in love at the time. “I like her face,” he said. Was this a crude description of infantile love or an intuitive understanding of how all kinds of passion begin with the surface of the face? Peter Sloterdijk writes about the immersion and mimicry, the life and death mutualism of faces, of gazing on another’s face. He says, “Both of these, self-knowledge as well as self-completion, are operations in a sphere of illusory bipolarity that, like an ellipse, only formally possess two focal points” (205). It seems to me that this desire for the love, beauty and knowledge of another is mutual; a reciprocal narrative thrust, the same existential motivation. Elizabeth Grosz writes about the first emotions of the newborn child and the immediate expressiveness of the face, with those of the parents. She refers to Alphonso Lingis to develop this connection between emotion and bodily expression as: “the pleasure and pains the body comes to articulate: human infants laugh and weep before they can speak.” (Grosz, Chaos 51) To be acknowledged, to see a reflection of one’s own face in that of another’s face as an expression of love, is a craving common to all humans.Art, like new love, has the ability to set our hearts aflutter, lips aquiver, our palms turned upwards in awe, our eyes widened in surprise. “The reverie of love defies all attempts to record it” (Stendhal 63). We are physically drawn to great works, to their immediacy, to their sudden emerging determination and tangibility (Menke). Our perceptions are entangled, our attitudes are affected, our imaginations are piqued and our knowledge and memory are probed.So what happens next? Once our hearts are pounding and our legs are wobbling, then what? As our unconscious experience becomes conscious (as the result of our brain letting our body know and then identifying and analysing the data), we start to draw associations and allow the mind and the body to engage with the world. The significance of what we see, an art object worthy of love for instance, is interpreted or distinguished by our memory and our personal accumulation of information over our lives. When we are away from the object, we perceive the art work to be dispassionate, inanimate and impassive. Yet standing before the object, our perception shifts and we consider the art work to be alive and dynamic. I believe the ability to ‘fall’ for an art work reflects the viewer’s heart-breaking longing to ensnare the beauty (or ugliness) that has so captured his or her soul. Like the doppelganger who doesn’t recognise its own double, its own shadow, the viewer falls in love (Poe 1365). This perverse perception of love (perverse because we usually associate love as existing between humans) is real. Philosopher Paul Crowther writes about the phenomenology of visual art. Where I am talking about a romantic longing, a love of the love itself, the face falling for the face, the body falling for the body, bodily, Crowther breaks down the physical patterns of perceiving art. Though he does not deny the corporeal reality of the experience, he talks of the body operations discriminating at the level of perception, drawing on memories and future expectations and desire (Crowther, Phenomenology 62). Crowther says, “Through the painting, the virtual and the physical, the world and the body, are shown to inhabit one another simultaneously and inseparably” (Phenomenology 75). I am not sure that these experiences occur simultaneously or even in tandem. While we perceive the experience as full and complex and potentially revelatory, one element more likely informs the next and so on, but in a nanosecond of time. The bodily senses warn the heart which warns the mind. The mind activates the memories and experiences before alerting us to the world and the context and finally, the aesthetic judgement.Crowther’s perception of transcendence operates when reality is suspended in the mode of possibility. This informs my view that love of art functions as an impossibility of desire’s end, gratification must be pushed back every time. What of Crowther’s corporeal imagination? This is curious: how can we imagine with our bodies (as opposed to our mind and spirit)? This idea is virtual, in time and space outside those we are used to. This is an imagination that engages instantly, in a self-conscious way. Crowther refers to the virtually immobilised subject matter and the stationary observer and calls it a “suspension of tense” (Phenomenology 69). However I am interested in the movement of the spectator around the art work or in synchronicity with the artwork too. This continues the face to face, body to body, encounter of art.Crowther also writes of phenomenological depth as a condition of embodiment which is of significance to judgement; phenomenological depth is “shown through ways in which the creation of visual artworks embodies complex relations between the human subject and its objects of perception, knowledge, and action” (Phenomenology 9). Although Crowther is leaning on the making of the artwork more heavily than the viewers’ perception of it in this account, it relates well to the Australian artists and twins Silvana and Gabriella Mangano, whose action performances, presented in three-screened, large-scale video were represented in the 2012 Sydney Biennale. The Mangano twins collaborate on video performance works which focus on their embodied interpretations of the act of drawing. In the Mangano sisters’ 2001 Drawing 1, the twins stand beside a wall of paper, facing each other. While maintaining eye contact, they draw the same image on the wall, without seeing what mark they are making or what mark the other is making. This intuitive, physical, corporeal manifestation of their close connection becomes articulated on paper. Its uncanny nature, the shared creativity and the performative act of collaborative drawing is riveting. The spectator is both excluded and incorporated in this work. Such intimacy between siblings is exclusive and yet the participation of the spectator is necessary, as witnesses to this inexplicable ability to know where the other’s drawing will move next. The sisters are face to face but the spectator and the artwork also function in a face to face encounter; the rhythmic fluidity of movement on the video screen surface is the face of the artwork.When experiencing the Mangano works, we become aware of our own subjective physical experiences. Also, we are aware of the artists’ consciousness of their heightened physical relations with each other, while making the work. I am writing in an era of digital video and performance art, where sound, movement, space and shifts of temporality must be added to more traditional formalist criteria such as form, surface, line and colour. As such, our criteria for judgement of this new surge of highly technical (though often intuitively derived) work and the immersive, sometimes interactive, experiences of the audience have to change at the same pace. One of the best methods of aesthetic critique to use is the concept of embodiment, the perceptual forces at work when we are conscious of the experience of art. As I sit at my desk, I am vaguely aware of my fingers rattling across the keyboard and of my legs crossed beneath me. I am conscious of their function, as an occupied space within which my consciousness resides. “I know where each of my limbs is through a body image in which all are included. But the notion of body image is ambiguous,” (102) says Merleau-Ponty, and this is a “Continual translation into visual language of the kinaesthetic and articular impressions of the moment” (102). Mark Johnson reiterates this dilemma: “We are aware of what we see, but not of our seeing.” (5) This doesn’t only relate to the movement of the Mangano twins’ muscles, postures and joint positions in their videos. It also relates to the spectator’s posture and straining, our recoiling and absorption. If I lurch forward (Lingis 174) to see the video image of the twins as they walk across a plain in El Bruc, Spain, using Thonet wooden chairs as stilts in their 2009 work The Surround, and if my eyes widen, if my hands unclench and open, and if I touch my cheek in wonder, then, is this embodied reaction a legitimate normative response? Is this perception of the work, as a beautiful and desirable experience, an admissible form of judgement? If I feel moved, if my heart races, my skin prickles, does that mean the effect is as important as other technical, conceptual or formalist categories of success? Does this feeling refer to the possibility of new intelligence? An active body in a bodily space (Merleau-Ponty 104) as opposed to external space can be perceived because of darkness needed for the ‘theatre’ of the performance. Darkness is often the cue for audiences that there is performative information at work. In the Manganos’ videos in Spain (they completed several videos during a residency in El Bruc Spain), the darkness was the isolated and alienating landscape of a remote plain. In their 2010 work Neon, which was inspired by Atsuko Tanaka’s 1957 Electric Dress, the movement and flourish of coloured neon paper was filmed against a darkened background, which is the kind of theatre space Merleau-Ponty describes: the performative cue. In Neon the checkered and brightly coloured paper appeared waxy as the sisters moved it around their half-hidden bodies, as though blown by an imaginary wind. This is an example of how the black or darkened setting works as a stimulant for understanding the importance of the body at work within the dramatic space. This also escalates the performative nature of the experience, which in turn informs the spectator’s active reaction. Merleau-Ponty says, “the laying down of the first co-ordinates, the anchoring of the active body in an object, the situation of the body in the face of its tasks. Bodily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop its parts instead of spreading them out” (115) The viewer, however, is not disembodied, despite the occasional sensation of hallucination in the face of an artwork. The body is present, it is in, near, around and sometimes below the stimulus. Many art experiences are immersive, such as Mexican, Rafael Lorenzo Hemmer, and Dane, Olafur Eliasson, whose installations explore time, light and sound and require audience participation. The participant’s interaction causes an effect upon the artwork. We are more conscious of ourselves in these museum environments: we move slowly, we revolve and pause, with hands on hip, head cocked to the side. We smile, frown, sense, squint, laugh, listen and touch. Traditional art (such as painting) may not invite such extremes of sensory multiplicity, such extremes of mimicking movement and intimate immersion. “The fact that the self exists in such an horizon of past and possible experiences means that it can never know itself sufficiently as just this immediately given physical body. It inhabits that body in the sense of being able, as it were, to wander introspectively through memory and imagination to places, times and situations other than those of its present embodiment” (Crowther, Phenomenology 178). Crowther’s point is important in application to the discussion of embodiment as a normative criteria of aesthetic judgement. It is not just our embodied experience that we bring to the magistrate’s court room, for judgement, but our memory and knowledge and the context or environment of both our experience and the experience that is enacted in relation to the art work. So an argument for embodiment as a criteria for normative judgements would not function alone, but as an adjunct, an add-on, an addition to the list of already applied criteria. This approach of open honesty and sincerity to art is similar to the hopefulness of new love. This is not the sexualised perception, the tensions of eroticism, which Alphonso Lingis speaks of in his Beauty and Lust essay. I am not talking about how “the pattern of holes and orifices we sense in the other pulls at the layout of lips, fingers, breasts, thighs and genitals” nor “the violent emotions that sense the obscenity in anguish” (175-76), I am instead referring to a G-rated sense of attachment, a more romantic attitude of compassion, desire, empathy and affection. Those movements made by the Mangano twins in their videos, in slow motion, sometimes in reverse, in black and white, the actions and postures that flow and dance, peak and drop, swirl and fall: the play of beauty within space, remind me of other languorous mimetic accents taken from nature. I recall the rhythms of poetry I have read, the repetitions of rituals and patterns of behaviour in nature I have witnessed. This knowledge, experience, memory and awareness all contribute to the map of love which is directing me to different points in the performance. These contributors to my embodied experience are creating a new whole and also a new format for judgement. Elizabeth Grosz talks about body maps when she says, “the body is thus also a site of resistance...for it is capable of being self-marked, self-represented in alternative ways” (Inscriptions and Body Maps 64). I’m interested less in the marking and more in the idea of the power of bodily participation. This is power in terms of the personal and the social as transformative qualities. “Art reminds us of states of animal vigour,” Nietsche says (Grosz, Chaos 63). Elizabeth Grosz continues this idea by saying that sensations are composites (75) and that art is connected to sexual energies and impulses, to a common impulse for more (63). However I think there is a mistake in attributing sexuality, as prescribed by Lingis and Grosz, despite my awe and admiration for them both, to the impulses of art. They might seem or appear to be erotic or sexual urges but are they not something a little more fleeting, more abstract, more insouciant? These are the desires at close hand but it is what those desires really represent that count. Philosopher John Armstrong refers to a Vuillard painting in the Courtauld Institute: “This beautiful image reminds us that sexuality isn’t just about sex; it conveys a sense of trust and comfort which are connected to tender touch” (Armstrong 135). In other words, if we assume there is a transference of Freudian sexual intensity or libido to the art work, perhaps it is not the act of sex we crave but a more elaborate desire, a desire for old-fashioned love, respect and honour.Sue Best refers to the word communion to describe the rapturous transport of being close to the artwork but always kept at a certain distance (512). This relates to the condition of love, of desiring an object but never attaining it. This is arrested pleasure, otherwise known as torture. But the word communion also gives rise, for me, to an idea of religious communion, of drinking the wine and bread as metaphor for Christ’s blood and body. This concept of embodied virtue or pious love, of becoming one with the Lord has repetitions or parallels with the experience of art. The urge to consume, intermingle or become physically entangled with the object of our desire is more than a philosophical urge but a spiritual urge. It seems to me that embodiment is not just the physical realities and percepts of experience but that they stand, mnemonically and mimetically, for more abstract urges and desires, hopes and ambitions, outside the realm of the gallery space, the video space or the bodily space. Crowther says, “Art answers this psychological/ontological need. ...through the complex and ubiquitous ways in which it engages the imagination” (Defining Art 238). While our embodied or perceptual experiences might seem slight or of less importance at first, they gather weight when added to knowledge and desire. Bergson said, “But there is, in this necessary poverty of our conscious perception, something that is positive, that foretells spirit: it is in the etymological sense of the word, discernment” (31). This art love is an aspiration for more, for hopes and expectation that the art work I fall for will enlighten me, will enrich my experience. This art work reminds me of all the qualities and principles I crave, but know in my heart are just beyond my fingertips. Perhaps we can consider the acknowledgement of art love as, not only a means of discernment but also as a legitimate purpose, that is, to be bodily, emotionally and intellectually changed and to gain further knowledge.ReferencesArmstrong, John. Conditions of Love. London: Penguin, 2002.Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. New York: Dover Philosophical Classics, 2004.Best, Sue. “Rethinking Visual Pleasure: Aesthetics and Affect.” Theory and Psychology 17 (2007): 4.Crowther, Paul. The Phenomenology of Visual Art. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.---. Defining Art: Creating the Canon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007.Menke, Christoph, Daniel Birnbaum, Isabell Graw and Daniel Loick. The Power of Judgement: A Debate on Aesthetic Critique. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010.Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.---. “Inscriptions and Body-Maps: Representations and the Corporeal.” Feminine/Masculine and Representation. Eds. Terry Threadgold and Anne Granny-France. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990. 62-74. Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.Lingis, Alphonso. “Beauty and Lust.” Journal of Phenomenological Pyschology 27 (1996): 174-192.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge Classics, 2002.Poe, Edgar Allen. “William Wilson: A Tale.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: Nortin, 1985.Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. New York: Dover, 1969.Sloterdijk, Peter. Bubbles, Spheres 1. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2011.Stendhal. Love. London: Penguin, 2004.
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27

Al-Natour, Ryan J. "The Impact of the Researcher on the Researched." M/C Journal 14, no. 6 (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.428.

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Doing research is always risky, personally, emotionally, ideologically, and politically, just because we never know for sure just what results our work will have. (Becker 253) Howard Becker accurately captures the various problematic dimensions that researchers encounter. Numerous personal, emotional, ideological and political dimensions impact research projects in sometimes unpredictable ways. In this paper, I examine some of the many impacts that researchers can have on their own projects. In much of the literature on qualitative research that examines interviews, focus groups and similar methodologies, scholars identify that a variety of factors influence the interactions between researchers and their projects. The academic debates regarding the insider/outsider positions of research are significant here. I will draw attention to the complexity of the researcher/researched relationship and argue that, in light of complexity, researchers can find themselves in predicaments where they are just as much part of the research data as their participants. Ultimately, I aim to contribute to an existing rich literature that deals with these issues concerning the relationship between the researcher and the researched. In this paper, I discuss my own experiences researching the Camden controversy and conclude with a number of suggestions for researchers to consider in similar predicaments. It is from these experiences that I aim to highlight the impact researchers have on their data and the complex relationships between researchers and "the researched". Further, it is through my experiences and observations that I address the theme of "impact" of research in the wider community. Insider/Outsider Debates Scholars often debate how researchers impact their projects. In the past 30 years, academics have focused on how researchers interact as "insiders" or "outsiders" (Naples 84; Coloma 15; Smith 137). Ultimately, these debates focus on the positionalities of researchers, and how these positions impact projects. A number of thought-provoking questions surface in these debates, regarding the distance/closeness between the researcher and participant/s. Scholars interested in this relationship often ponder if this distance/closeness affects the richness and quality of the data. Commonly, issues regarding the researcher's gender, "race" and class are topical in these discourses. Young points out that an assumption grew from these debates, which concludes that researchers who do not share these categories with their participants work find it more difficult to gain their participant's trust (187). From this perspective, women interviewing men hold outsider positions as women, "non-whites" interviewing "whites" hold outsider positions as "non-whites", and so on. Such a view leads to a rigid dichotomisation of the insider vs. outsider binary, which scholars have recently challenged (190). Academics now argue that researchers experience insider/outsider placements and various signifiers mark insiders/outsiders (Young 191; Sin 479) beyond the "race"/sex/class categories. These include sexuality, "race", education, gender, ethnicity, language and class (Coloma 14) to name the most common. Further, these markers are dependent upon the socio-political context of the time of research (Naples 83); thus researchers hold fluid insider/outsider positions. As the next generation of cultural researchers, I argue that we should acknowledge the increasingly complicated positions, influences, and relationships that manifest themselves in the stories of the researchers and the researched. We are never truly outsiders, yet never wholly insiders either; however, we are always partial in examining our research results (see Clifford 7). Yet the various insider/outsider positions generate a number of challenges for researchers. I unpack some of these positions and challenges in discussing a recent project I researched called the Camden controversy. The Camden Controversy In 2007-2009, a controversy over a proposed Islamic school took place in Camden, an area located on the greater Sydney fringe. In October 2007, an Islamic charity proposed a Muslim school in the area and within weeks, a local rally against the school took place involving thousands of local residents. A second anti-school rally occurred months later, where some local residents sported the Australian flag, publicly vilified Muslims claiming the school threatened the "nation". A local anti-school group was formed and two white supremacist groups supported locals against the school. Several extreme-right politicians also campaigned against the school which included former One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, and leader of the Christian Democrats, Fred Nile. Additionally, two pigs heads with an Australian flag and a wooden crucifix were placed on the proposed site. In the end, the Camden Council rejected the application and the Land and Environment Court rejected the Quranic Society's appeal (for more information, see Al-Natour 573-85). I began researching this controversy in 2008, watching the above events unfold. One of my research methods included interviews with local residents. As a non-local, male researcher of Arab descent (specifically, Palestinian Greek Orthodox Christian and a culturally Islamic background), some interviews were challenging. In some cases, interviewees talked of the controversy as though they responded directly to my "Arabness". In other cases, interviewees positioned me as an outsider to the area. At other times, interviewees sub-typed me from "other Muslims" and I was granted some form of insider status. In various complicated ways, my experiences reflect how researchers become the "researched". To articulate these experiences, I discuss my interactions with only two participants (due to article length restrictions) with very different positions on the school. Case Study 1: Grace Grace is a 38 year old Catholic woman of mixed European heritage who is working in a clothing store in Camden. The interview took place with two of her co-workers in the room. Grace is opposed to the idea of a school in Camden. At the beginning, Grace was understandably suspicious about talking to a stranger about the controversy. Grace: So if there is anything I don't wanna answer, I'll just say 'no comment'.[Researcher]: That's ok, that's fine.Grace: So are you a Muslim? Is that why you're doing ya project here?[Researcher]: I'm not Muslim. No.Grace: (puzzled) are you sure?[Researcher]: Umm. I am an Arab though, but not Muslim. If that's what you're asking?Grace: Oh. Well, I can be an Arab too. See! [grabs a pair of men's underwear from a nearby clothing rack and places the underwear on her head] See! Gee wiz, I am one of those Arab ladies! (Interview, 17 July 2009) While her co-workers laughed in the background, Grace began to speak in a gibberish tongue, perhaps imitating "Arabic" (perhaps the men's underwear is supposed to mock a woman's headscarf). This incident may have been a performance for her co-workers, and may not have occurred if the interview did not have an audience. In this situation, Grace's audience and the interviewer influence her "underwear performance". Perhaps there was a look of shock on my face, as Grace then began to explain that she was doing me a favour by participating in the interview and claimed that an Arab would not have agreed because Arabs "are very rude". Again, Grace discusses Arabs perhaps realising her actions were not appropriate at the time. Conceptually, this incident highlights how the interviewee responds to the researcher's ethnicity and her "joke". In the presence of Grace and her co-workers, the performance highlights their "insider" statuses. The vilifying "Arab" clothing and languages were almost like a bonding performance, something that came up as a result of Grace's interaction with an Arab researcher. The interview is a place where Grace negotiates her position on the school and a variety of other issues that she relates to the researcher. She talked about headscarves worn by Muslim women: I don't know why they wear it as they stand out, there's lots of people that wear long skirts, that's fine, but you ["Muslims"] should mingle. I feel comfortable with you [the researcher], because you are not a covering-up-Muslim, but if you're wearing a head thing, I think that I would be uncomfortable, I mean I would think you had a machine gun [laughs]. The fluidity of the researcher's insider/outsider statuses becomes defined as Grace thinks about the school and Muslims. In the case of hijab, Grace uses the "Muslim" researcher to portray Islamic headscarves as outsider items. In the interview, we talked of Catholic nuns and Grace commented that nuns rarely wear headgear anymore. She agrees with modesty, yet defines her position on hijab by expressing her feelings of the researcher. The interview is a place where Grace considers her positions on Muslims, and the researcher in this case influences Grace as she communicates her viewpoints in light of her interviewer. Case Study 2: Andrew Andrew is a 43 year old resident of Anglo-Maltese heritage. He works in the Camden area and supported the proposal for an Islamic school—which would have been only 5 minutes drive from his workplace: [Researcher]: I can see it's [Camden is] different from other areas. It's like a country town.Andrew: I wouldn't say it's a country town anymore. It's not Orange Parks or Bathurst [rural areas]. It's on the outskirts, beginning of the rural area. I have lived here for 8 years. (Interview, 5 Oct. 2009) The differences of opinion on Camden here illustrate broad positions of the insider/outsider researcher (myself). Here, the researcher states their observations of the area as an outsider to Camden. Andrew responds to the researcher and positions himself with a sense of authority as a local. In terms of the contents of the interview, it is obvious that the researcher's dialogue influences the shape of the data. In other parts of the interview, Andrew found common insider ground with the researcher: France has got the highest population of Muslims, I dunno what the statistics are here, but France holds the most Muslim immigrants, they let them in to mix. I mean, look at you, you have mixed in, you even got your ear pierced! Kids mix in, what about the footballer, El-Masri, but look at him, he has mixed in! Everyone loves him! Here, the researcher has insider status when Andrew discusses how Muslims "mix in". Also, the researcher becomes part of the project, as the interview uses the interviewer's items (ear piercing) and a Lebanese-Australian retired footballer (Hazem El-Masri) as evidence of Islamic integration into Australian society. Here, the researcher's appearance specifically impacts the research, unlike the previous instance which focuses on dialogue between the researcher and researched. Given that the literature on qualitative methodologies focuses on the impact of the researcher's "race", ethnicity and so on, it is obvious that these factors relate to the interview itself. As my quote from Becker at the beginning highlights, research results are unpredictable, often to the point where researchers have unforeseen experiences with their participants. Conceptually, we need to think about impact as a complicated process when we reflect upon our projects and make sense of the researcher/researched relationships. Dealing with "Impact" Issues In both insider/outsider positions, the interviews with Grace and Andrew epitomise some instances that show how researchers cannot be separated from their data. Though both participants held different positions on the school, both demonstrated the complicated impact that researchers have on their projects. Further, they challenge the conventional views of qualitative methodology, which see research as a one way process where researchers interview participants and merely (and "objectively") obtain data. In light of the contemporary academic debates regarding the positionality of the researcher, I suggest that the complexities facing researchers destroy the strictly "insider" vs. "outsider" understandings of qualitative research. Though I reach this point by specifically focusing on interviews as research methodologies, I will also point out that even beyond the context of an interview, merely finding research participants and documenting field notes can be challenging. In my case, my Arab identity influenced the ways some residents responded when I asked them whether they would participate in an interview about the school. In some field notes, I documented some of these hostile instances when I approached people in public places and requested their participation in my project: Anonymous Male Resident 1: Look, I don't wanna do the interview, it's not that I am racist, I just can't stand the rag heads, they aren't normal!... in fact if it were up to me, I would probably exterminate them all (laughs). (Field notes, 9 Oct. 2009)Anonymous Male Resident 2: I saw your people on TV last night... the ones that sound like turkeys, Gobble Gobble. (Field notes, 31 July 2009) In these circumstances, prospective-participants frame the researcher as an outsider. Their refusals to participate show us how residents feel towards a researcher, and how these "feelings" impact upon their project. In my case, this meant it was difficult to find some participants, making the researcher's accessibility to interview participants and the obtaining of data a result of their insider/outsider statuses. In researching "race", Duneier suggests that the researcher should hold a "humble commitment" to be open in the field and be aware of their own social position (100). Becker asks how a researcher should react to the challenges of racism. It becomes a practice of balancing two binary opposing ideals: one rejects racist views, and the other which seeks to understand a particular expression/view of racism, which ultimately benefits knowledge. Thus, the researcher is faced with remembering the purpose of the research project—the pursuit of knowledge, not the debates with participants (Becker 247-49). Similarly, Ezzy argues the task of qualitative researchers is "not to attempt to solve political and moral issues, nor to avoid them, but to be aware of and engage with the potential political and moral implications of their writings" (157). In dealing with the various challenges of the project, I had to transform into the "researcher". My role was not to accuse participants of being "racists", rather to map out how certain views, which could be categorised as "racist", made up the qualitative research experience and would impact the fieldwork journey. As a researcher, my job was to investigate the Islamic school controversy in Camden. It was as though I needed to temporarily disregard (not compromise) other parts of my identities and focus on extracting information. It was an opportunity to pinpoint how particulars of my identity—gender, ethnicity, religion, skin colour, appearance, age, and so on, impacted upon the data collection process and the content. Conclusion: Way Forward? Throughout this article, I have argued that the complicated researcher/researched relationships result in the researchers becoming part of the research itself. Given how challenging this process is for researchers, I finish this article by suggesting some thought-provoking strategies and ideas for the next generation of cultural researchers. Given that all research projects vary, the researcher's impact processes also vary. It is also worth pointing out that in some circumstances, the "outsider" researcher can work for the project, where participants might feel the need to explain and elaborate on particular topics they feel the researcher does not know much about. Thus, attributing "positive" or "negative" feelings on the "insider" or "outsider" researcher is, at times, flawed and pointless. Whether the researcher is predominantly positioned as the insider, or the outsider, or remarkably changes between the two consistently, I would suggest a number of issues to help handle the impact of such predicaments on the research project in a way that can benefit the generation of knowledge. These issues include debriefing, strengthening, positioning, limiting and self-challenging topics. These suggestions would vary from one project to another, operating as a guide that should not be "set in stone". While it is difficult at times to determine how the researcher may impact the research data, it is important for researchers to be conscious of mapping out these challenges on their fieldwork journeys. Debrief with fellow scholars: Confidential discussions with supervisors, fellow researchers and other academics are processes that can enable researchers to make sense of these challenging predicaments (as long as the researcher is mindful of the ethical details involved). Debriefing can help release any emotional baggage or frustrations attained by these experiences. Sharing opinions on these instances can be helpful, particularly in identifying any overbearing biases of the researcher in making sense of their data. Furthermore, in circumstances where the researcher is working alone on a project, debriefing can remove a sense of isolation that can be accumulated by a lonely fieldwork project (particularly in the case of a doctoral project!). View the project as an exercise in building your research skills: Any research project, no matter how challenging or demanding is an opportunity to make sense of the world around us. Fieldwork also provides a chance to build character and strengthen the researcher's skills. Being in control of certain behaviours as researchers can be seen as a strength. This is not to say that the researcher compromises their values for the sake of research. Rather, the researcher has a particular role which needs to be seen in a professional light. Be wary of your own expectations and biases: This relates to the previous topic on character building and strengthening the researcher. As Becker argues (as quoted at the beginning), we cannot predict our research results. Researchers should not walk into their fields attempting to manipulate or predict their research results. The project itself could be extremely challenging where the researcher might expect to be "insider"/"outsider" in unexpected situations. Research results may not always be as hypothesised or generally expected. Therefore, researchers should be prepared to be challenged in terms of their own understandings of racism, sexism and other issues (again, depending on the project). Also, Rosaldo points out, "social analysts can rarely, if ever, become detached observers" (Rosaldo 169). Given that scholars challenge the idea of an "objective" researcher, it is best to acknowledge any forms of biases and how they influence the process of collecting and analysing data. Identify the complicated positionality of the researcher: The complicated insider/outsider positions of the researcher need to be acknowledged when examining the data. The researcher needs to be mindful of how they are approached by participants. Furthermore, the researcher should keep in mind that such positions are not fixed but are changing constantly, sometimes instantly and other times gradually. These different positions need to be seen as interrelated. Also, the researcher should remember there are different levels of being the insider and outsider, and both these positions can work for and against the process of collecting data. Map out the limitations of the project: The research field (which does not necessarily refer to an actual physical environment), in some circumstances, can be volatile and dangerous for some researchers. In the case of my own project, an Arab female researcher would have different experiences, some of which could include violence (according to the Isma report conducted by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Arab women are more likely to experience racially-motivated violence than Arab men—see HREOC). I would advise that researchers are mindful of their "fields". Further, I recommend that research is conducted in public places, particularly if they are about contentious issues. Do not give personal details and if a particular topic inflames the participant during the interview to the point where you feel threatened, change the topic to something a lot less "inflammatory". Notes The names of these participants in this article are pseudonyms. Also, their positions on the school do not represent opponents/supporters of the school. Nor do they represent the Camden community. Further, my experiences interviewing these participants are not reflective of all the interviews I conducted in Camden. References Al-Natour, Ryan J. "Folk Devils and the Proposed Islamic School in Camden." Continuum 24.4 (2010): 573-85. Becker, Howard. "Afterword: Racism and the Research Process." Racing Research, Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies. Eds. F.W.Twine and J.W. Warren. New York: New York UP, 2000. 247-54. Clifford, James. "Introduction." Writing Culture. Eds. J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus. California: U of California P, 1986.1-26. Coloma, Roland Sintos. "Border Crossing Subjectivities and Research: Through the Prism of Feminists of Color." Race, Ethnicity and Education 11.1 (2008):11-27. Duneier, Mitchell. "Three Rules I Go By in My Ethnographic Research on Race and Racism." Researching Race and Racism. Eds. M. Bulmer and J. Solomos. London: Routledge, 2004. 92-103. Ezzy, Douglas. Qualitative Analysis: Practice and Innovation. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2002. Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC). Isma – Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. 2004. 9 Nov. 2011 ‹http://www.hreoc.gov.au/racial_discrimination/isma/report/pdf/ISMA_complete.pdf›. Naples, Nancy. "A Feminist Revisiting of the Insider/Outsider Debate: The 'Outsider Phenomenon' in Rural Iowa." Qualitative Sociology 19.1 (1996): 83-106. Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon P. 1993. Sin, Chih Hoong. "Ethnic-Matching in Qualitative Research: Reversing the Gaze on 'White Others' and 'White' as 'Other'." Qualitative Research 7.4 (2007): 477-99. Smith, Linda T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Dunedin: U of Otago P, 1999. Young, Alford. "Experiences in Ethnographic Interviewing about Race." Researching Race and Racism. Eds. M. Bulmer and J. Solomos. London: Routledge, 2004. 187-202.
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28

Pedersen, Isabel, and Kirsten Ellison. "Startling Starts: Smart Contact Lenses and Technogenesis." M/C Journal 18, no. 5 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1018.

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On 17 January 2013, Wired chose the smart contact lens as one of “7 Massive Ideas That Could Change the World” describing a Google-led research project. Wired explains that the inventor, Dr. Babak Parviz, wants to build a microsystem on a contact lens: “Using radios no wider than a few human hairs, he thinks these lenses can augment reality and incidentally eliminate the need for displays on phones, PCs, and widescreen TVs”. Explained further in other sources, the technology entails an antenna, circuits embedded into a contact lens, GPS, and an LED to project images on the eye, creating a virtual display (Solve for X). Wi-Fi would stream content through a transparent screen over the eye. One patent describes a camera embedded in the lens (Etherington). Another mentions medical sensing, such as glucose monitoring of tears (Goldman). In other words, Google proposes an imagined future when we use contact lenses to search the Internet (and be searched by it), shop online, communicate with friends, work, navigate maps, swipe through Tinder, monitor our health, watch television, and, by that time, probably engage in a host of activities not yet invented. Often referred to as a bionic contact, the smart contact lens would signal a weighty shift in the way we work, socialize, and frame our online identities. However, speculative discussion over this radical shift in personal computing, rarely if ever, includes consideration of how the body, acting as a host to digital information, will manage to assimilate not only significant affordances, but also significant constraints and vulnerabilities. At this point, for most people, the smart contact lens is just an idea. Is a new medium of communication started when it is launched in an advertising campaign? When we Like it on Facebook? If we chat about it during a party amongst friends? Or, do a critical mass of people actually have to be using it to say it has started? One might say that Apple’s Macintosh computer started as a media platform when the world heard about the famous 1984 television advertisement aired during the American NFL Super Bowl of that year. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad entails an athlete running down a passageway and hurling a hammer at a massive screen depicting cold war style rulers expounding state propaganda. The screen explodes freeing those imprisoned from their concentration camp existence. The direct reference to Orwell’s 1984 serves as a metaphor for IBM in 1984. PC users were made analogous to political prisoners and IBM served to represent the totalitarian government. The Mac became a something that, at the time, challenged IBM, and suggested an alternative use for the desktop computer that had previously been relegated for work rather than life. Not everyone bought a Mac, but the polemical ad fostered the idea that Mac was certainly the start of new expectations, civic identities, value-systems, and personal uses for computers. The smart contact lens is another startling start. News of it shocks us, initiates social media clicks and forwards, and instigates dialogue. But, it also indicates the start of a new media paradigm that is already undergoing popular adoption as it is announced in mainstream news and circulated algorithmically across media channels. Since 2008, news outlets like CNN, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Asian International News, United News of India, The Times of London and The Washington Post have carried it, feeding the buzz in circulation that Google intends. Attached to the wave of current popular interest generated around any technology claiming to be “wearable,” a smart contact lens also seems surreptitious. We would no longer hold smartphones, but hide all of that digital functionality beneath our eyelids. Its emergence reveals the way commercial models have dramatically changed. The smart contact lens is a futuristic invention imagined for us and about us, but also a sensationalized idea socializing us to a future that includes it. It is also a real device that Parviz (with Google) has been inventing, promoting, and patenting for commercial applications. All of these workings speak to a broader digital culture phenomenon. We argue that the smart contact lens discloses a process of nascent posthuman adaptation, launched in an era that celebrates wearable media as simultaneously astonishing and banal. More specifically, we adopt technology based on our adaptation to it within our personal, political, medial, social, and biological contexts, which also function in a state of flux. N. Katherine Hayles writes that “Contemporary technogenesis, like evolution in general, is not about progress ... rather, contemporary technogenesis is about adaptation, the fit between organisms and their environments, recognizing that both sides of the engagement (human and technologies) are undergoing coordinated transformations” (81). This article attends to the idea that in these early stages, symbolic acts of adaptation signal an emergent medium through rhetorical processes that society both draws from and contributes to. In terms of project scope, this article contributes a focused analysis to a much larger ongoing digital rhetoric project. For the larger project, we conducted a discourse analysis on a collection of international publications concerning Babak Parviz and the invention. We searched for and collected newspaper stories, news broadcasts, YouTube videos from various sources, academic journal publications, inventors’ conference presentations, and advertising, all published between January 2008 and May 2014, generating a corpus of more than 600 relevant artifacts. Shortly after this time, Dr. Parviz, a Professor at the University of Washington, left the secretive GoogleX lab and joined Amazon.com (Mac). For this article we focus specifically on the idea of beginnings or genesis and how digital spaces increasingly serve as the grounds for emergent digital cultural phenomena that are rarely recognized as starting points. We searched through the corpus to identify a few exemplary international mainstream news stories to foreground predominant tropes in support of the claim we make that smart contacts lenses are a startling idea. Content producers deliberately use astonishment as a persuasive device. We characterize the idea of a smart contact lens cast in rhetorical terms in order to reveal how its allure works as a process of adaptation. Rhetorician and philosopher, Kenneth Burke writes that “rhetorical language is inducement to action (or to attitude)” (42). A rhetorical approach is instrumental because it offers a model to explain how we deploy, often times, manipulative meaning as senders and receivers while negotiating highly complex constellations of resources and contexts. Burke’s rhetorical theory can show how messages influence and become influenced by powerful hierarchies in discourse that seem transparent or neutral, ones that seem to fade into the background of our consciousness. For this article, we also concentrate on rhetorical devices such as ethos and the inventor’s own appeals through different modes of communication. Ethos was originally proposed by Aristotle to identify speaker credibility as a persuasive tactic. Addressed by scholars of rhetoric for centuries, ethos has been reconfigured by many critical theorists (Burke; Baumlin Ethos; Hyde). Baumlin and Baumlin suggest that “ethos describes an audience’s projection of authority and trustworthiness onto the speaker ... ethos suggests that the ethical appeal to be a radically psychological event situated in the mental processes of the audience – as belonging as much to the audience as to the actual character of a speaker” (Psychology 99). Discussed in the next section, our impression of Parviz and his position as inventor plays a dramatic role in the surfacing of the smart contact lens. Digital Rhetoric is an “emerging scholarly discipline concerned with the interpretation of computer-generated media as objects of study” (Losh 48). In an era when machine-learning algorithms become the messengers for our messages, which have become commodity items operating across globalized, capitalist networks, digital rhetoric provides a stable model for our approach. It leads us to demonstrate how this emergent medium and invention, the smart contact lens, is born amid new digital genres of speculative communication circulated in the everyday forums we engage on a daily basis. Smart Contact Lenses, Sensationalism, and Identity One relevant site for exploration into how an invention gains ethos is through writing or video penned or produced by the inventor. An article authored by Parviz in 2009 discusses his invention and the technical advancements that need to be made before the smart contact lens could work. He opens the article using a fictional and sensationalized analogy to encourage the adoption of his invention: The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse. It can see millions of colors, adjust easily to shifting light conditions, and transmit information to the brain at a rate exceeding that of a high-speed Internet connection.But why stop there?In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field—virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes. Identity building is made to correlate with smart contact lenses in a manner that frames them as exciting. Coming to terms with them often involves casting us as superhumans, wielding abilities that we do not currently possess. One reason for embellishment is because we do not need digital displays on the eyes, so the motive to use them must always be geared to transcending our assumed present condition as humans and society members. Consequently, imagination is used to justify a shift in human identity along a future trajectory.This passage above also instantiates a transformation from humanist to posthumanist posturing (i.e. “the cyborg”) in order to incent the adoption of smart contact lenses. It begins with the bold declarative statement, “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse,” which is a comforting claim about our seemingly human superiority. Indexing abstract humanist values, Parviz emphasizes skills we already possess, including seeing a plethora of colours, adjusting to light on the fly, and thinking fast, indeed faster than “a high-speed Internet connection”. However, the text goes on to summon the Terminator character and his optic feats from the franchise of films. Filmic cyborg characters fulfill the excitement that posthuman rhetoric often seems to demand, but there is more here than sensationalism. Parviz raises the issue of augmenting human vision using science fiction as his contextualizing vehicle because he lacks another way to imbricate the idea. Most interesting in this passage is the inventor’s query “But why stop there?” to yoke the two claims, one biological (i.e., “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse”) and one fictional (i.e. Terminator, Vernor Vinge characters). The query suggests, Why stop with human superiority, we may as well progress to the next level and embrace a smart contact lens just as fictional cyborgs do. The non-threatening use of fiction makes the concept seem simultaneously exciting and banal, especially because the inventor follows with a clear description of the necessary scientific engineering in the rest of the article. This rhetorical act signifies the voice of a technoelite, a heavily-funded cohort responding to global capitalist imperatives armed with a team of technologists who can access technological advancements and imbue comments with an authority that may extend beyond their fields of expertise, such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, or medicine. The result is a powerful ethos. The idea behind the smart contact lens maintains a degree of respectability long before a public is invited to use it.Parviz exhumes much cultural baggage when he brings to life the Terminator character to pitch smart contact lenses. The Terminator series of films has established the “Arnold Schwarzenegger” character a cultural mainstay. Each new film reinvented him, but ultimately promoted him within a convincing dystopian future across the whole series: The Terminator (Cameron), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow), Terminator Salvation (McG) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor) (which appeared in 2015 after Parviz’s article). Recently, several writers have addressed how cyborg characters figure significantly in our cultural psyche (Haraway, Bukatman; Leaver). Tama Leaver’s Artificial Culture explores the way popular, contemporary, cinematic, science fiction depictions of embodied Artificial Intelligence, such as the Terminator cyborgs, “can act as a matrix which, rather than separating or demarcating minds and bodies or humanity and the digital, reinforce the symbiotic connection between people, bodies, and technologies” (31). Pointing out the violent and ultimately technophobic motive of The Terminator films, Leaver reads across them to conclude nevertheless that science fiction “proves an extremely fertile context in which to address the significance of representations of Artificial Intelligence” (63).Posthumanism and TechnogenesisOne reason this invention enters the public’s consciousness is its announcement alongside a host of other technologies, which seem like parts of a whole. We argue that this constant grouping of technologies in the news is one process indicative of technogenesis. For example, City A.M., London’s largest free commuter daily newspaper, reports on the future of business technology as a hodgepodge of what ifs: As Facebook turns ten, and with Bill Gates stepping down as Microsoft chairman, it feels like something is drawing to an end. But if so, it is only the end of the technological revolution’s beginning ... Try to look ahead ten years from now and the future is dark. Not because it is bleak, but because the sheer profusion of potential is blinding. Smartphones are set to outnumber PCs within months. After just a few more years, there are likely to be 3bn in use across the planet. In ten years, who knows – wearables? smart contact lenses? implants? And that’s just the start. The Internet of Things is projected to be a $300bn (£183bn) industry by 2020. (Sidwell) This reporting is a common means to frame the commodification of technology in globalized business news that seeks circulation as much as it does readership. But as a text, it also posits how individuals frame the future and their participation with it (Pedersen). Smart contacts appear to move along this exciting, unstoppable trajectory where the “potential is blinding”. The motive is to excite and scare. However, simultaneously, the effect is predictable. We are quite accustomed to this march of innovations that appears everyday in the morning paper. We are asked to adapt rather than question, consequently, we never separate the parts from the whole (e.g., “wearables? smart contact lenses? Implants”) in order to look at them critically.In coming to terms with Cary Wolf’s definition of posthumanism, Greg Pollock writes that posthumanism is the questioning that goes on “when we can no longer rely on ‘the human’ as an autonomous, rational being who provides an Archimedean point for knowing about the world (in contrast to “humanism,” which uses such a figure to ground further claims)” (208). With similar intent, N. Katherine Hayles formulating the term technogenesis suggests that we are not really progressing to another level of autonomous human existence when we adopt media, we are in effect, adapting to media and media are also in a process of adapting to us. She writes: As digital media, including networked and programmable desktop stations, mobile devices, and other computational media embedded in the environment, become more pervasive, they push us in the direction of faster communication, more intense and varied information streams, more integration of humans and intelligent machines, and more interactions of language with code. These environmental changes have significant neurological consequences, many of which are now becoming evident in young people and to a lesser degree in almost everyone who interacts with digital media on a regular basis. (11) Following Hayles, three actions or traits characterize adaptation in a manner germane to the technogenesis of media like smart contact lenses. The first is “media embedded in the environment”. The trait of embedding technology in the form of sensors and chips into external spaces evokes the onset of The Internet of Things (IoT) foundations. Extensive data-gathering sensors, wireless technologies, mobile and wearable components integrated with the Internet, all contribute to the IoT. Emerging from cloud computing infrastructures and data models, The IoT, in its most extreme, involves a scenario whereby people, places, animals, and objects are given unique “embedded” identifiers so that they can embark on constant data transfer over a network. In a sense, the lenses are adapted artifacts responding to a world that expects ubiquitous networked access for both humans and machines. Smart contact lenses will essentially be attached to the user who must adapt to these dynamic and heavily mediated contexts.Following closely on the first, the second point Hayles makes is “integration of humans and intelligent machines”. The camera embedded in the smart contact lens, really an adapted smartphone camera, turns the eye itself into an image capture device. By incorporating them under the eyelids, smart contact lenses signify integration in complex ways. Human-machine amalgamation follows biological, cognitive, and social contexts. Third, Hayles points to “more interactions of language with code.” We assert that with smart contact lenses, code will eventually govern interaction between countless agents in accordance with other smart devices, such as: (1) exchanges of code between people and external nonhuman networks of actors through machine algorithms and massive amalgamations of big data distributed on the Internet;(2) exchanges of code amongst people, human social actors in direct communication with each other over social media; and (3) exchanges of coding and decoding between people and their own biological processes (e.g. monitoring breathing, consuming nutrients, translating brainwaves) and phenomenological (but no less material) practices (e.g., remembering, grieving, or celebrating). The allure of the smart contact lens is the quietly pressing proposition that communication models such as these will be radically transformed because they will have to be adapted to use with the human eye, as the method of input and output of information. Focusing on genetic engineering, Eugene Thacker fittingly defines biomedia as “entail[ing] the informatic recontextualization of biological components and processes, for ends that may be medical or nonmedical (economic, technical) and with effects that are as much cultural, social, and political as they are scientific” (123). He specifies, “biomedia are not computers that simply work on or manipulate biological compounds. Rather, the aim is to provide the right conditions, such that biological life is able to demonstrate or express itself in a particular way” (123). Smart contact lenses sit on the cusp of emergence as a biomedia device that will enable us to decode bodily processes in significant new ways. The bold, technical discourse that announces it however, has not yet begun to attend to the seemingly dramatic “cultural, social, and political” effects percolating under the surface. Through technogenesis, media acclimatizes rapidly to change without establishing a logic of the consequences, nor a design plan for emergence. Following from this, we should mention issues such as the intrusion of surveillance algorithms deployed by corporations, governments, and other hegemonic entities that this invention risks. If smart contact lenses are biomedia devices inspiring us to decode bodily processes and communicate that data for analysis, for ourselves, and others in our trust (e.g., doctors, family, friends), we also need to be wary of them. David Lyon warns: Surveillance has spilled out of its old nation-state containers to become a feature of everyday life, at work, at home, at play, on the move. So far from the single all-seeing eye of Big Brother, myriad agencies now trace and track mundane activities for a plethora of purposes. Abstract data, now including video, biometric, and genetic as well as computerized administrative files, are manipulated to produce profiles and risk categories in a liquid, networked system. The point is to plan, predict, and prevent by classifying and assessing those profiles and risks. (13) In simple terms, the smart contact lens might disclose the most intimate information we possess and leave us vulnerable to profiling, tracking, and theft. Irma van der Ploeg presupposed this predicament when she wrote: “The capacity of certain technologies to change the boundary, not just between what is public and private information but, on top of that, between what is inside and outside the human body, appears to leave our normative concepts wanting” (71). The smart contact lens, with its implied motive to encode and disclose internal bodily information, needs considerations on many levels. Conclusion The smart contact lens has made a digital beginning. We accept it through the mass consumption of the idea, which acts as a rhetorical motivator for media adoption, taking place long before the device materializes in the marketplace. This occurrence may also be a sign of our “posthuman predicament” (Braidotti). We have argued that the smart contact lens concept reveals our posthuman adaptation to media rather than our reasoned acceptance or agreement with it as a logical proposition. By the time we actually squabble over the price, express fears for our privacy, and buy them, smart contact lenses will long be part of our everyday culture. References Baumlin, James S., and Tita F. Baumlin. “On the Psychology of the Pisteis: Mapping the Terrains of Mind and Rhetoric.” Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Eds. James S. Baumlin and Tita F. Baumlin. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. 91-112. Baumlin, James S., and Tita F. Baumlin, eds. Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994. Bilton, Nick. “A Rose-Colored View May Come Standard.” The New York Times, 4 Apr. 2012. Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993. Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950. Cameron, James, dir. The Terminator. Orion Pictures, 1984. DVD. Cameron, James, dir. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Artisan Home Entertainment, 2003. DVD. Etherington, Darrell. “Google Patents Tiny Cameras Embedded in Contact Lenses.” TechCrunch, 14 Apr. 2014. Goldman, David. “Google to Make Smart Contact Lenses.” CNN Money 17 Jan. 2014. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012. Hyde, Michael. The Ethos of Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Leaver, Tama. Artificial Culture: Identity, Technology, and Bodies. New York: Routledge, 2012. Losh, Elizabeth. Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes. Boston: MIT Press. 2009. Lyon, David, ed. Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digital Discrimination. New York: Routledge, 2003. Mac, Ryan. “Amazon Lures Google Glass Creator Following Phone Launch.” Forbes.com, 14 July 2014. McG, dir. Terminator Salvation. Warner Brothers, 2009. DVD. Mostow, Jonathan, dir. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Warner Brothers, 2003. DVD. Parviz, Babak A. “Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens.” IEEE Spectrum, 1 Sep. 2009. Pedersen, Isabel. Ready to Wear: A Rhetoric of Wearable Computers and Reality-Shifting Media. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press, 2013. Pollock, Greg. “What Is Posthumanism by Cary Wolfe (2009).” Rev. of What is Posthumanism?, by Cary Wolfe. Journal for Critical Animal Studies 9.1/2 (2011): 235-241. Sidwell, Marc. “The Long View: Bill Gates Is Gone and the Dot-com Era Is Over: It's Only the End of the Beginning.” City A.M., 7 Feb. 2014. “Solve for X: Babak Parviz on Building Microsystems on the Eye.” YouTube, 7 Feb. 2012. Taylor, Alan, dir. Terminator: Genisys. Paramount Pictures, 2015. DVD. Thacker, Eugene “Biomedia.” Critical Terms for Media Studies. Eds. W.J.T Mitchell and Mark Hansen, Chicago: Chicago Press, 2010. 117-130. Van der Ploeg, Irma. “Biometrics and the Body as Information.” Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digital Discrimination. Ed. David Lyon. New York: Routledge, 2003. 57-73. Wired Staff. “7 Massive Ideas That Could Change the World.” Wired.com, 17 Jan. 2013.
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Kennedy, Ümit. "Exploring YouTube as a Transformative Tool in the “The Power of MAKEUP!” Movement." M/C Journal 19, no. 4 (2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1127.

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IntroductionSince its launch in 2005, YouTube has fast become one of the most popular video sharing sites, one of the largest sources of user generated content, and one of the most frequently visited sites globally (Burgess and Green). As YouTube’s popularity has increased, more and more people have taken up the site’s invitation to “Broadcast Yourself.” Vlogging (video blogging) on YouTube has increased in popularity, creating new genres and communities. Vlogging not only allows individuals to create their own mediated content for mass consumption—making it a site for participatory culture (Burgess and Green; Jenkins) and resembling contemporary forms of entertainment such as reality television—but it also allows individuals to engage in narrative and identity forming practices. Through filming their everyday lives, and presenting themselves on camera, YouTubers are engaging in a process of constructing and presenting their identity online. They often form communities around these identities and continue the practice in dialogue and collaboration with their communities of viewers on YouTube. Because of YouTube’s mass global reach, the ability to create one’s own mediated content and the ability to publicly play with and project different self representations becomes a powerful tool allowing YouTubers to publicly challenge social norms and encourage others to do the same. This paper will explore these features of YouTube using the recent “The Power of MAKEUP!” movement, started by NikkieTutorials, as an example. Through a virtual ethnography of the movement as developed by Christine Hine—following the people, dialogue, connections, and narratives that emerged from Nikkie’s original video—this paper will demonstrate that YouTube is not only a tool for self transformation, but has wider potential to transform norms in society. This is achieved mainly through mobilising communities that form around transformative practices, such as makeup transformations, on YouTube. Vlogging as an Identity Forming Practice Vlogging on YouTube is a contemporary form of autobiography in which individuals engage in a process of documenting their life on a daily or weekly basis and, in doing so, constructing their identity online. Although the aim of beauty vlogs is to teach new makeup techniques, demonstrate and review new products, or circulate beauty-related information, the videos include a large amount of self-disclosure. Beauty vloggers reveal intimate things about themselves and actively engage in the practice of self-representation while filming. Beauty vlogging is unique to other vlogging genres as it almost always involves an immediate transformation of the physical self in each video. The vloggers typically begin with their faces bare and “natural” and throughout the course of the video transform their faces into how they want to be seen, and ultimately, who they want to be that day, using makeup. Thus the process of self-representation is multi-dimensional as not only are they presenting the self, but they are also visually constructing the self on camera. The construction of identity that beauty vloggers engage in on YouTube can be likened to what Robert Ezra Park and later Erving Goffman refer to as the construction and performance of a mask. In his work Race and Culture, Park states that the original meaning of the word person is a mask (249). Goffman responds to this statement in his work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, saying the mask is “our truer self, the self we would like to be” (30). Beauty vloggers are engaging in the process of constructing their mask—their truer self and the self they would like to be—both through their performance on YouTube, and through the visual transformation that takes place on camera. Their performance on YouTube not only communicates a desired identity, but through their performance they realise this identity. The process of filming and the visual process of constructing or transforming the self on camera through makeup brings the subject into being. Scholarship in the fields of Life Writing and Digital Media including Autobiography, Automedia and Persona Studies has acknowledged and explored the ways narratives and identities—both online and offline—are constructed, created, shaped, chosen, and invented by the individual/author (Garner; Bridger; Eakin; Maguire; Poletti and Rak; Marshall; Smith and Watson). It is widely accepted that all representations of the self are constructed. Crucially, it is the process of documenting or communicating the self that is identity forming (Richardson; Bridger), as the process, including writing, filming, and posting, brings the subject or self into being (Neuman). The individual embodies their performance and realises the self through it. Park and Goffman argue that we all engage in this process of performing and realising the self through the roles we play in society. The significance of the beauty vlogger performance and transformation is the space in which it occurs and the community that it fosters. YouTube as a Transformative Tool and MirrorThe space in which beauty vloggers play with and transform the self on camera is significant as digital technologies such as YouTube invite exploration of the self. Networked digital media (Meikle and Young) invite multiplicity, heterogeneity, and fragmentation in/of identity performances (Bolter; Gergen; Turkle, "Parallel Lives"). These technologies create opportunities for defining and re-defining the self (Bolter 130), as they allow people to present a more multi-mediated self, using both audio-visual components and text (Papacharissi 643).YouTube, in particular, allows the individual to experiment with the self, and document an ongoing transformation, through film (Kavoori). Many scholars have described this ongoing process of identity construction online using the metaphor of “the mirror” (see Kavoori; Raun; and Procter as recent examples). In his research on trans gender vlogging on YouTube, Tobias Raun explores the theme of the mirror. He describes vlogging as a “transformative medium for working on, producing and exploring the self” (366). He argues the vlog acts as a mirror allowing the individual to try out and assume various identities (366). He writes, the mirroring function of the vlog “invites the YouTuber to assume the shape of a desired identity/representation, constantly assuming and evaluating oneself as an attractive image, trying out different ‘styles of the flesh’ (Butler 177), poses and appearances” (367). In reference to trans gender vlogging, Raun writes, “The vlog seems to serve an important function in the transitioning process, and is an important part of a process of self-invention, serving as a testing ground for experimentations with, and manifestations of (new) identities” (367). The mirror (vlog) gives the individual a place/space to construct and perform their mask (identity), and an opportunity to see the reflection and adjust the mask (identity) accordingly. An important feature of the vlog as a mirror is the fact that it is less like a conventional mirror and more like a window with a reflective surface. On YouTube the vlog always involves an audience, who not only watch the performance, but also respond to it. This is in keeping with Goffman’s assertion that there is always an audience involved in any performance of the self. On YouTube, Raun argues, “the need to represent oneself goes hand in hand with the need to connect and communicate” (Raun 369). Networked digital media such as YouTube are inherently social. They invite participation (Smith; Sauter)and community through community building functions such as the ability to like, subscribe, and comment. Michael Strangelove refers to YouTube as a social space, “as a domain of self-expression, community and public confession” (4). The audience and community are important in the process of identity construction and representation as they serve a crucial role in providing feedback and encouragement, legitimising the identity being presented. As Raun writes, the vlog is an opportunity “for seeing one’s own experiences and thoughts reflected in others” (366). Raun identifies that for the trans gender vloggers in his study, simply knowing there is an audience watching their vlogs is enough to affirm their identity. He writes the vlog can be both “an individual act of self validation and . . . a social act of recognition and encouragement” (368). However, in the case of beauty vlogging the audience do more than watch, they form communities embodying and projecting the performance in everyday life and thus collectively challenge social norms, as seen in the “The Power of MAKEUP!” movement. Exploring the “The Power of MAKEUP!” MovementOn 10 May 2015, Nikkie, a well-known beauty vlogger, uploaded a video to her YouTube channel NikkieTutorials titled “The Power of MAKEUP!” Nikkie’s video can be watched here. In her video Nikkie challenges “makeup shaming,” arguing that makeup is not only fun, but can “transform” you into who you want to be. Inspired by an episode of the reality television show RuPaul’s Drag Race, in which the competing drag queens transform half of their face into “glam” (drag), and leave the other half of their face bare (male), Nikkie demonstrates that anyone can use makeup as a transformative tool. In her video Nikkie mirrors the drag queen transformations, transforming half her face into “glam” and leaving the other half of her face bare, as shown in Figure 1. In only transforming half of her face, Nikkie emphasises the scope of the transformation, demonstrating just how much you can change your appearance using only makeup on your face. Nikkie’s video communicates that both a transformed “glam” image and an “unedited” image of the self are perfectly fine, “there are no rules” and neither representations of the self should bring you shame. Figure 1: thumbnail of Nikkie’s videoNikkie’s video started a movement and spread throughout the beauty community on YouTube as a challenge. Other famous beauty vloggers, and everyday makeup lovers, took on the challenge of creating YouTube videos or posting pictures on Instagram of their faces half bare and half transformed using makeup with the tag #thepowerofmakeupchallenge. Since its release in May 2015, Nikkie’s video has been watched over thirty million times, has been liked over five hundred and thirty thousand times, and has received over twenty three thousand comments, many of which echo Nikkie’s experience of “makeup shaming.” “The power of makeup” video went viral and was picked up not only by the online beauty community but also by mainstream media with articles by Huffington Post, Yahoo.com, Marie Claire, BuzzFeed, DailyLife, POPSUGAR, Enews, Urbanshowbiz, BoredPanda, and kickvick among others. On Instagram, thousands of everyday makeup lovers have recreated the transformation and uploaded their pictures of the finished result. Various hashtags have been created around this movement and can be searched on Instagram including #thepowerofmakeupchallenge, #powerofmakeupchallenge, #powerofmakeup. Nikkie’s Instagram page dedicated to the challenge can be seen here. “The power of makeup” video is a direct reaction against what Nikkie calls “makeup shaming”—the idea that makeup is bad, and the assumption that the leading motivation for using makeup is insecurity. In her video Nikkie also reacts to the idea that the made-up-girl is “not really you,” or worse is “fake.” In the introduction to her video Nikkie says,I’ve been noticing a lot lately that girls have been almost ashamed to say that they love makeup because nowadays when you say you love makeup you either do it because you want to look good for boys, you do it because you’re insecure, or you do it because you don’t love yourself. I feel like in a way lately it’s almost a crime to love doing your makeup. So after last weeks RuPaul’s Drag Race with the half drag half male, I was inspired to show you the power of makeup. I notice a lot that when I don’t wear makeup and I have my hair up in a bun and I meet people and I show them picture of my videos or, or whatever looks I have done, they look at me and straight up tell me “that is not you.” They tell me “that’s funny” because I don’t even look like that girl on the picture. So without any further ado I’m going to do half my face full on glam—I’m truly going to transform one side of my face—and the other side is going to be me, raw, unedited, nothing, me, just me. So let’s do it.In her introduction, Nikkie identifies a social attitude that many of her viewers can relate to, that the made-up face isn’t the “real you.” This idea reveals an interesting contradiction in social attitude. As this issue of Media/Culture highlights, the theme of transformation is increasingly popular in contemporary society. Renovation shows, weight loss shows, and “makeover” shows have increased in number and popularity around the world (Lewis). Tania Lewis attributes this to an international shift towards “the real” on television (447). Accompanying this turn towards “the real,” confession, intimacy, and authenticity are now demanded and consumed as entertainment (Goldthwaite; Dovey; King). Sites such as YouTube are arguably popular because they offer real stories, real lives, and have a core value of authenticity (Strangelove; Wesch; Young; Tolson). The power of makeup transformations are challenging because they juxtapose a transformation against the natural, on the self. By only transforming half their face, the beauty vloggers juxtapose the “makeover” (transformation) with “authenticity” (the natural). The power of makeup movement is therefore caught between two contemporary social values. However, the desire for authenticity, and the lack of acceptance that the transformed image is authentic seems to be the main criticism that the members of this movement receive. Beauty vloggers identify a strong social value that “natural” is “good” and any attempt to alter the natural is taboo. Even in the commercial world “natural beauty” is celebrated and features heavily in the marketing and advertising campaigns of popular beauty, cosmetic, and skincare brands. Consider Maybelline’s emphasis on “natural beauty” in their byline “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline.” This is not the way the members of “the power of makeup” movement use and celebrate makeup. They use and celebrate makeup as a transformative and identity forming tool, and their use of makeup is most often criticised for not being natural. In her recreation of Nikkie’s video, Evelina Forsell says “people get upset when I’m not natural.” Like Nikkie, Evelina reveals she often receives the criticism that “the person with a full on face with makeup is not you.” Evelina’s video can be watched here.“The power of makeup” movement and its participants challenge this criticism that the made-up self is not the “real” self. Evelina directly responds to this criticism in her video, stating “when I have a full face of makeup . . . that’s still me, but a more . . . creative me, I guess.” The beauty vloggers in this movement use makeup and YouTube as extensions of the self, as tools for self-expression, self-realisation, and ongoing transformation. Beauty vloggers are demonstrating that makeup is a tool and extension of the self that allows them to explore and play with their self-representations. In the same way that technology enables the individual to extend and “reinvent him/herself online” (Papacharissi 645), so does makeup. And in the same way that technology becomes an extension of the self, or even a second self (Turkle, The Second Self; Vaast) so does makeup. Makeup is a tool and technique of the self. Vlogging is about storytelling (Kavoori), but it is also collective—it’s about telling collective stories (Raun 373) which can be seen in various vlogging genres. As Geert Lovink suggests, YouTube is one of the largest databases of global shared experience. YouTube’s global popularity can be attributed to Strangelove’s assertion that “there’s nothing more interesting to real people . . . than authentic stories told about other real people” (65). Individuals are drawn to Nikkie’s experience, seeing themselves reflected in her story. Famous beauty vloggers on YouTube, and everyday beauty lovers, find community in the collective experience of feeling shame for loving makeup and using makeup to transform and communicate their identity. Effectively, the movement forms communities of practice (Wenger) made up of hundreds of people brought together by the shared value and use of makeup as a transformative tool. The online spaces where these activities take place (mainly on YouTube and Instagram) form affinity spaces (Gee) where the community come together, share information, learn and develop their practice. Hundreds of YouTubers from all over the world took up Nikkie’s invitation to demonstrate the power of makeup by transforming themselves on camera. From well-established beauty vloggers with millions of viewers, to amateur beauty lovers with YouTube channels, many people felt moved by Nikkie’s example and embodied the message, adapting the transformation to suit their circumstances. The movement includes both men and women, children and adults. Some transformations are inspirational such as Shalom Blac’s in which she talks about accepting the scars that are all over her face, but also demonstrates how makeup can make them disappear. Shalom has almost five million views on her “POWER OF MAKEUP” video, and has been labelled “inspirational” by the media. Shalom Blac’s video can be watched here and the media article labelling her as “inspirational” can be viewed here. Others, such as PatrickStarrr, send a powerful message that “It’s okay to be yourself.” Unlike a traditional interpretation of that statement, Patrick is communicating that it is okay to be the self that you construct, on any given day. Patrick also has over four million views on his video which can be watched here. During her transformation, Nikkie points out each feature of her face that she does not like and demonstrates how she can change it using makeup. Nikkie’s video is primarily a tutorial, educating viewers on different makeup techniques that can manipulate the appearance of their natural features into how they would like them to appear. These techniques are also reproduced and embodied through the various contributors to the movement. Thus the tutorial is an educational tool enabling others to use makeup for their own self representations (see Paul A. Soukup for an overview of YouTube as an educational tool). A feminist perspective may deconstruct the empowering, educational intentions of Nikkie’s video, insisting that conceptions of beauty are a social construct (Travis, Meginnis, and Bardari) and should not be re-enforced by encouraging women (and men) to use make-up to feel good. However, this sort of discourse does not appear in the movement, and this paper seeks to analyse the movement as its contributors frame and present it. Rather, “the power of makeup” movement falls within a postfeminist framework celebrating choice, femininity, independence, and the individual construction of modern identity (McRobbie; Butler; Beck, Giddens and Lash). Postfeminism embraces postmodern notions of identity in which individuals are “called up to invent their own structures” (McRobbie 260). Through institutions such as education young women have “become more independent and able,” and “‘dis-embedded’ from communities where gender roles were fixed” (McRobbie 260). Angela McRobbie attributes this to the work of scholars such as Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck and their emphasis on individualisation and reflexive modernisation. These scholars take a Foucauldian approach to identity construction in the modern age, where the individual must choose their own structures “internally and individualistically” (260), engaging in an ongoing process of self-monitoring and self-improvement, and resulting in the current self-help culture (McRobbie). In addition to being an educational and constructive tool, Nikkie’s video is also an exercise in self-branding and self-promotion(see Marwick; Duffy and Hund; and van Nuenen for scholarship on self-branding). Through her ongoing presence on YouTube, presenting this video in conjunction with her other tutorials, Nikkie is establishing herself as a beauty vlogger/guru. Nikkie lists all of the products that she uses in her transformation below her video with links to where people can buy them. She also lists her social media accounts, ways that people can connect with her, and other videos that people might be interested in watching. There are also prompts to subscribe, both during her video and in the description bar below her video. Nikkie’s transformation is both an ongoing endeavour to create her image and public persona as a beauty vlogger, and a physical transformation on camera. There is also a third transformation that takes place because her vlog is in the public sphere and consequently mobilises a movement. The transformation is of the way people talk about and eventually perceive makeup. Nikkie’s video aims to end makeup shaming and promote makeup as an empowering tool. With each recreation of her video, with each Instagram photo featuring the transformation, and with each mainstream media article featuring the movement, #thepowerofmakeup movement community are transforming the image of the made-up girl—transforming the association of makeup with presenting an inauthentic identity—in society. ConclusionThe “The Power of MAKEUP!” movement, started by NikkieTutorials, demonstrates one way in which people are using YouTube as a transformative tool, and mirror, to document, construct, and present their identity online, using makeup. Through their online transformation the members of the movement not only engage in a process of constructing and presenting their identity, but they form communities who share a love of makeup and its transformative potential. By embodying Nikkie’s original message to rid makeup shaming and transform the self into a desired identity, the movement re-enforces the “made-up” image of the self as real and authentic, and challenges conceptions that the “made-up” image is “fake” and inauthentic. Ultimately, this case study explores YouTube as a site that allows individuals to play with, construct, and present their identity. YouTube is a tool with which, and a space in which, people can transform themselves, and in doing so create communities which can work together to publicly challenge social norms.References Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge, England: Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers, 1994. Bolter, Jay David. "Virtual Reality and the Redefinition of Self." Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment. Eds. Ronald L. 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Mills, Brett. "Those Pig-Men Things." M/C Journal 13, no. 5 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.277.

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Abstract:
Since its return in 2005 the science fiction series Doctor Who (BBC1) has featured many alien creatures which bear a striking similarity to non-human Earth species: the Judoon in “Smith and Jones” (2007) have heads like rhinoceroses; the nurses in “New Earth” (2006) are cats in wimples; the Tritovores in “Planet of the Dead” (2009) are giant flies in boilersuits. Yet only one non-human animal has appeared twice in the series, in unrelated stories: the pig. Furthermore, alien races such as the Judoon and the Tritovores simply happen to look like human species, and the series offers no narrative explanation as to why such similarities exist. When the pig has appeared, however, it has instead been as the consequence of experimentation and mutation, and in both cases the appearance of such porcine hybrids is signalled as horrific, unsettling and, in the end, to be pitied. The fact that the pig has appeared in this way twice suggests there is something about the human understanding of this animal which means it can fulfil a role in fiction unavailable to other Earth species. The pig’s appearance has been in two stories, both two-parters. In “Aliens of London”/“World War Three” (2005) a spaceship crashes into London’s Thames river, and the pilot inside, thought to be dead, is sent to be scientifically examined. Alone in the laboratory, the pathologist Doctor Sato is startled to find the creature is alive and, during its attempt to escape, it is shot by the military. When the creature is examined The Doctor reveals it is “an ordinary pig, from Earth.” He goes on to explain that, “someone’s taken a pig, opened up its brain, stuck bits on, then they’ve strapped it in that ship and made it dive-bomb. It must have been terrified. They’ve taken this animal and turned it into a joke.” The Doctor’s concern over the treatment of the pig mirrors his earlier reprimand of the military for shooting it; as he cradles the dying creature he shouts at the soldier responsible, “What did you do that for? It was scared! It was scared.” On the commentary track for the DVD release of this episode Julie Gardner (executive producer) and Will Cohen (visual effects producer) note how so many people told them they had a significant emotional reaction to this scene, with Gardner adding, “Bless the pig.” In that sense, what begins as a moment of horror in the series becomes one of empathy with a non-human being, and the pig moves from being a creature of terror to one whose death is seen to be an immoral act. This movement from horror to empathy can be seen in the pig’s other appearance, in “Daleks in Manhattan”/“Evolution of the Daleks” (2007). Here the alien Daleks experiment on humans in order to develop the ability to meld themselves with Earthlings, in order to repopulate their own dwindling numbers. Humans are captured and then tested; as Laszlo, one of the outcomes of the experimentation, explains, “They’re divided into two groups: high intelligence and low intelligence. The low intelligence are taken to becomes Pig Slaves, like me.” These Pig Slaves look and move like humans except for their faces, which have prolonged ears and the pig signifier of a snout. At no point in the story is it made clear why experimentations on low intelligence humans should result in them looking like pigs, and a non-hybrid pig is not seen throughout the story. The appearance of the experiments’ results is therefore not narratively explained, and it does not draw on the fact that “in digestive apparatus and nutrient requirements pigs resemble humans in more ways than any mammal except monkeys and apes, which is why pigs are much in demand for [human] medical research” (Harris 70); indeed, considering the story is set in the 1930s such a justification would be anachronistic. The use of the pig, therefore, draws solely on its cultural, not its scientific, associations. These associations are complex, and the pig has been used to connote many things in Western culture. Children’s books such as The Sheep-Pig (King-Smith) and Charlotte’s Web (White) suggest the close proximity of humans and pigs can result in an affinity capable of communication. The use of pigs to represent Poles in Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (Spiegelman), on the other hand, has been read as offensive, drawing on the animal’s association with dirt and greed (Weschler). These depictions are informed by debates about pigs in the real world, whereby an animal which, as mentioned above, is similar enough to humans to be useful in medical research can also, for the food industry, go through a slaughtering process described by Bob Torres as “horribly cruel” (47). Such cruelty can only be justified if the boundaries between the pig and the human are maintained, and this is why pig-human representations are capable of being shocking and horrific. The hybrid nature of the human-pig creature draws on the horror trope that Noël Carroll refers to as “fusion” which works because it “unites attributes held to be categorically distinct” such as “inside/outside, living/dead, insect/human, flesh/machine” (43). He explains that this is why characters in horror narratives do not find such creatures simply fearful, but also “repellent, loathsome, disgusting, repulsive and impure” (54); their failure to conform to accepted cultural categories destabilises assumed norms and, perhaps most horrifically, undermines ‘the human’ as a stable, natural and superior category. As Donna Haraway notes, “‘The species’ often means the human race, unless one is attuned to science fiction, where species abound” (18). Science fiction therefore commonly plays with ideas of species because it is often interested in “the image of the scientist ‘playing god’” (Jones 51) and the horrific outcomes of “the total severing of scientific concerns from ethical concerns” (53). That the result of human/non-human experimentation should be regarded as horrific is evidence of the need to maintain the distinctions between humans and other creatures; after all, a pig/human can only be thought of as horrific if it as assumed that there is something unnatural about the destabilisation of the human category. And it is precisely the human which matters in this equation; it is not really as if anyone cares about the pig’s categorical stability in all of this. In both these stories, the appearance of the pig-creature is narratively structured to be surprising and shocking, and is withheld from the audience for as long as possible. The first appearance of a Pig Slave in “Daleks in Manhattan” constitutes that episode’s pre-credits cliff-hanger, with the creature appearing out of the shadows and bearing down upon the camera, directly towards the audience viewing at home. At this point, the audience has no idea why such a creature exists; the meaning of the pig-human hybrid is contained purely in its visual appearance, with the horrific fact of its contradictory appearance perhaps drawing on the pig’s historical association with evil and the Devil (Sillar and Meyler 82). Similarly, in “Aliens of London” we see Sato’s shocked reaction to the pig far earlier than we actually see the creature ourselves, and Sato’s scream is clearly intended to construct what we have yet to encounter as horrific. The Doctor’s search for the creature is similarly signalled, as he roams dimly-lit corridors trying to find it, following the trail of the grunts and noises that it makes. That the pig might constitute a horrific—or at least unsettling—site for humans is unsurprising considering the cultural roles it has often played. There is, after all, an “opposition between civilization and piggishness” (Ashley, Hollows, Jones and Taylor 2) in which (incorrect) assumptions about pigs’ filthy behaviour helps mark out humanity’s cleaner and more civilised way of living. While this is true of all human/non-human interactions, it is argued that the pig occupies a particular role within this system as it is a “familiar beast” (4) because for centuries it has been a domesticated animal which has often lived alongside humans, usually in quite close proximity. In that sense, humans and pigs are very similar. Demarcating the human as a stable and natural “conceptual category ... in which we place all members of our own species and from which we exclude all non-members” (Milton 265-66) has therefore required the denigration of non-humans, at least partly to justify the dominion humans have decided they have the right to hold over other creatures such as pigs. The difficulties in maintaining this demarcation can be seen in the documentary The Private Life of Pigs (BBC2 2010) in which the farmer Jimmy Docherty carries out a number of tests on animals in order to better understand the ‘inner life’ of the pig. Docherty acknowledges the pig’s similarity to humans in his introductory piece to camera; “When you look in their piggy little eyes with their piggy little eyelashes you see something that reflects back to you—I don’t know—it makes you feel there’s a person looking back.” However, this is quickly followed by a statement which works to reassert the human/non-human boundary; “I know we have this close relationship [with pigs], but I’m often reminded that just beneath the surface of their skin, they’re a wild animal.” Perhaps the most telling revelation in the programme is that pigs have been found to make certain grunting noises only when humans are around, which suggests they have developed a language for ‘interacting’ with humans. That Docherty is uncomfortably startled by this piece of information shows how the idea of communication troubles ideas of human superiority, and places pigs within a sphere hitherto maintained as strictly human. Of course, humans often willingly share domestic spaces with other species, but these are usually categorised as pets. The pet exists “somewhere between the wild animal and the human” (Fudge 8), and we often invest them with a range of human characteristics and develop relationships with such animals which are similar, but not identical, to those we have with other humans. The pig, however, like other food animals, cannot occupy the role afforded to the pet because it is culturally unacceptable to eat pets. In order to legitimise the treatment of the pig as a “strictly utilitarian object; a thing for producing meat and bacon” (Serpell 7) it must be distinguished from the human realm as clearly as possible. It is worth noting, though, that this is a culturally-specific process; Dwyer and Minnegal, for example, show how in New Guinea “pigs commonly play a crucial role in ceremonial and spiritual life” (37-8), and the pig is therefore simultaneously a wild animal, a source of food, and a species with which humans have an “attachment” (45-54) akin to the idea of a pet. Western societies commonly (though not completely) have difficulty uniting this range of animal categories, and analogous ideas of “civilization” often rest on assumptions about animals which require them to play specific, non-human roles. That homo sapiens define their humanity in terms of civilization is demonstrated by the ways in which ideas of brutality, violence and savagery are displaced onto other species, often quite at odds with the truth of such species’ behaviour. The assumption that non-human species are violent, and constitute a threat, is shown in Doctor Who; the pig is shot in “Aliens of London” for assumed security reasons (despite it having done nothing to suggest it is a threat), while humans run in fear from the Pig Slaves in “Evolution of the Daleks” purely because of their non-human appearance. Mary Midgley refers to this as “the Beast Myth” (38) by which humans not only reduce other species to nothing other than “incarnations of wickedness, … sets of basic needs, … crude mechanical toys, … [and] idiot children” (38), but also lump all non-human species together thereby ignoring the specificity of any particular species. Midgley also argues that “man shows more savagery to his own kind than most other mammal species” (27, emphasis in original), citing the need for “law or morality to restrain violence” (26) as evidence of the social structures required to uphold a myth of human civilization. In that sense, the use of pigs in Doctor Who can be seen as conforming to centuries-old depictions of non-human species, by which the loss of humanity symbolised by other species can be seen as the ultimate punishment. After all, when the Daleks’ human helper, Mr Diagoras, fears that the aliens are going to experiment on him, he fearfully exclaims, “What do you mean? Like those pig-men things? You’re not going to turn me into one of those? Oh, God, please don’t!” In the next episode, when all the Pig Slaves are killed by the actions of the Doctor’s companion Martha, she regrets her actions, only to be told, “No. The Daleks killed them. Long ago”, for their mutation into a ‘pig-man thing’ is seen to be a more significant loss of humanity than death itself. The scene highlights how societies are often “confused about the status of such interspecies beings” (Savulescu 25). Such confusion is likely to recur considering we are moving into a “posthumanist” age defined by the “decentering of the human” (Wolfe xv), whereby critiques of traditional cultural categories, alongside scientific developments that question the biological certainty of the human, result in difficulties in defining precisely what it is that is supposedly so special about homo sapiens. This means that it is far too easy to write off these depictions in Doctor Who as merely drawing on, and upholding, those simplistic and naturalised human/non-human distinctions which have been criticised, in a manner similar to sexism and racism, as “speciesist” (Singer 148-62). There is, after all, consistent sympathy for the pig in these episodes. The shooting of the pig in “Aliens of London” is outrageous not merely because it gives evidence of the propensity of human violence: the death of the pig itself is presented as worth mourning, in a manner similar to the death of any living being. Throughout the series the Doctor is concerned over the loss of life for any species, always aiming to find a non-violent method for solving conflicts and repeatedly berating other characters who resort to bloodshed for solutions. Indeed, the story’s narrative can be read as one in which the audience is invited to reassess its own response to the pig’s initial appearance, shifting from fear at its alien-ness to sympathy for its demise. This complication of the cultural meanings of pigs is taken even further in the two-part Dalek story. One of the key plots of the story is the relationship between Laszlo, who has been transmuted into a Pig Slave, and his former lover Tallulah. Tallulah spends much of the story thinking Laszlo has disappeared, when he has, in fact, gone into hiding, certain that she will reject him because of his post-experimentation porcine features. When they finally reunite, Laszlo apologises for what has happened to him, while Tallulah asks, “Laszlo? My Laszlo? What have they done to you?” At the end of the story they decide to try re-establishing their relationship, despite Laszlo’s now-complicated genetic make-up. In response to this Martha asks the Doctor, “Do you reckon it’s going to work, those two?” The Doctor responds that while such an odd pairing might be problematic pretty much anywhere else, as they were in New York they might just get away with it. He reflects, “That’s what this city’s good at. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, and maybe the odd Pig Slave Dalek mutant hybrid too.” While there is an obvious playfulness to this scene, with the programme foregrounding the kinds of narrative available to the science fiction genre, it is also clear that we are invited to find this a good narrative conclusion, a suitable resolution to all that has preceded it. In that sense, the pig and the human come together, dissolving the human/non-human divide at a stroke, and this is offered to the audience as something to be pleased about. In both narratives, then, the pig moves from being understood as alien and threatening to something if not quite identical to human, then certainly akin to it. Certainly, the narratives suggest that the lives, loves and concerns of pigs—even if they have been experimented upon—matter, and can constitute significant emotional moments in primetime mainstream family television. This development is a result of the text’s movement from an interest in the appearance of the pig to its status as a living being. As noted above, the initial appearances of the pigs in both stories is intended to be frightening, but such terror is dependent on understanding non-human species by their appearance alone. What both of these stories manage to do is suggest that the pig—like all non-human living things, whether of Earth or not—is more than its physical appearance, and via acknowledgment of its own consciousness, and its own sense of identity, can become something with which humans are capable of having sympathy; perhaps more than that, that the pig is something with which humans should have sympathy, for to deny the interior life of such a species is to engage in an inhuman act in itself. This could be seen as an interesting—if admittedly marginal—corrective to the centuries of cultural and physical abuse the pig, like all animals, has suffered. Such representations can be seen as evoking “the dreaded comparison” (Spiegel) which aligns maltreatment of animals with slavery, a comparison that is dreaded by societies because to acknowledge such parallels makes justifying humans’ abusive treatment of other species very difficult. These two Doctor Who stories repeatedly make such comparisons, and assume that to morally and emotionally distinguish between living beings based on categories of species is nonsensical, immoral, and fails to acknowledge the significance and majesty of all forms of life. That we might, as Gardner suggests, “Bless the pig”—whether it has had its brain stuffed full of wires or been merged with a human—points towards complex notions of human/non-human interaction which might helpfully destabilise simplistic ideas of the superiority of the human race. References Ashley, Bob, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor. Food and Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Dwyer, Peter D. and Monica Minnegal. “Person, Place or Pig: Animal Attachments and Human Transactions in New Guinea.” Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies. Ed. John Knight. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005. 37-60. Fudge, Erica. Pets. Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008. Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Harris, Marvin. “The Abominable Pig.” Food and Culture: A Reader. Ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 67-79. Jones, Darryl. Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film. London: Arnold, 2002. King-Smith, Dick. The Sheep-Pig. London: Puffin, 1983. Midgley, Mary. Beast and Man. London and New York: Routledge, 1979/2002. Milton, Kay. “Anthropomorphism or Egomorphism? The Perception of Non-Human Persons by Human Ones.” Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Intimacies. Ed. John Knight. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005. 255-71. Savulescu, Julian. “Human-Animal Transgenesis and Chimeras Might be an Expression of our Humanity.” The American Journal of Bioethics 3.3 (2003): 22-5. Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Sillar, Frederick Cameron and Ruth Mary Meyler. The Symbolic Pig: An Anthology of Pigs in Literature and Art. Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1961. Singer, Peter. “All Animals are Equal.” Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Ed. Tom Regan and Peter Singer. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1989. 148-62. Spiegel, Marjorie. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. London and Philadelphia: Heretic Books, 1988. Speigelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986/1991. Torres, Bob. Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights. Edinburgh, Oakland and West Virginia: AK Press, 2007. Weschler, Lawrence. “Pig Perplex.” Lingua France: The Review of Academic Life 11.5 (2001): 6-8. White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. London: Harper Collins, 1952. Wolfe, Cary. What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
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