Journal articles on the topic 'University of Science and Technology, Kumasi. Faculty of Architecture'

Introduction: This article discusses the causes of depression among university students and how it affects their academic life. It also looks at how students understand and define the concept of depression since research evidence points to the fact that arriving at a consensual definition for depression can be difficult due to the varying experiences among individuals influencing its definition. Methods: Data was collected through in-depth interviews with undergraduate students in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Faculty of Social Sciences and review of various literatures on depression. Findings: The study revealed that majority of the students viewed depression as a long period of sadness where one feels hopeless and worthless; few viewed depression as a long period of sadness and isolation. Students understood the concept based on their personal experiences. It also indicates that loss of a loved one, financial crisis and unmet expectations in their academic work were the causes of depression among university students. It also confirmed that depression affects students’ academic life in a number of ways which includes inability to study and poor academic achievements. Conclusion: The study concludes by acknowledging that students are able to cope with their depression on their own, yet it recommends that the counseling unit of the university be made easily approachable and strengthened, students encouraged to seek guidance and counseling.

Abstract
 
 Purpose of the study: To analyse students’ perceptions of Arabic language learning for science purposes in USIM.
 Problem of the study: The existing Arabic module in the Higher Education Institution in Malaysia did not discuss the topic related to Science in Arabic language learning for science students, except in USIM. Using the existing modules, researchers analysed respondents' perceptions of Arabic Language for Science Purpose.
 Methodology: This study applies a quantitative approach which involves 169 science students at the Islamic Science University of Malaysia (USIM) as respondents and randomly selected. The data were analysed descriptively by looking at the percentage and mean score by using SPSS Statistics 25.
 Main Findings: The descriptive analysis findings demonstrate that the overall mean of interest was 3.72, the mean of the module was 3.78, the mean of the use of scientific terms was 3.49 and the mean of the learning duration was 3.08. The findings showed that using the specific module of Arabic Language for Science had successfully nurtured students' interest in Arabic and able to introduce them to scientific terms in Arabic. This study could be a measurement of the use of Arabic language modules that contain specific content based on "Specific Purposes" for Institutions of Higher Learning in Malaysia.
 Applications of this study: This study involves science students who have studied the subjects (اللغة العربية للعلوم) using the Arabic Language for Science Purpose module within a semester from Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Science and Technology and Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at USIM
 Novelty/Originality of this study: This study could be a measurement of the use of Arabic language modules that contain specific content based on the "Specific Purposes" for Institute of Higher Learning and the Private Higher Learning Institution (IPTS) in Malaysia.

This study explores visual arts students’ perceptions of their assessment experience in a public university in Ghana which offers undergraduate degree programmes across the disciplines in Visual Art. A convenient sampling technique was used to pool 600 volunteered respondents out of a student’s population of 2,618 from the Faculty of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University Science & Technology, Kumasi. Data was collected during the second semester of 2015/2016 academic year using a face validated 20 item five-point Likert scale Students’ Assessment Experience Questionnaire with reliability estimate of .744. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics and one-way MANOVA analysis. The findings of the study pointed to the significant difference between the various visual art departments in their satisfaction with the assessment delivery and experience. The results did not show significant gap between student`s perceptions of assessment experience across the disciplines (departmental) level. There was no significant difference between students in their total satisfaction with the assessment delivery and assessment experience. However there were significant difference along receiving of feedback and assessment of artworks. Based on the findings, it is recommended that innovative assessment practices should be encouraged across the disciplines to foster creativity and deepen life-long skills among the students.

Abstract Professor Jerzy Sadowski – outstanding Polish scientist, a specialist in acoustics – construction, industrial, architectural and environmental – passed away on 28th July 2014. Professor Jerzy Sadowski was born on 18th December 1924 in Augustów, in northeastern Poland. In 1946 he commenced studies at the Gdańsk University of Technology – initially at the Faculty of Architecture, to switch later to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. The life of Jerzy Sadowski as a student was as complicated as the post-war history of Poland. Due to his involvement in an activity of illegal student organization, he was expelled from the university in 1949, with a ban on any further tertiary education. The ban had been lifted after a certain time which allowed him to recommence further studies, this time at the Warsaw University of Technology the Faculty of Communications, where in 1952 he obtained the diploma and title of Master of Science and Engineer. He received a lot of help from Professor Ignacy Malecki, the nestor of Polish acoustics. This certainly contributed to kindling the young engineer’s interest in acoustics, as a field of both knowledge and very important practical applications.

Major changes in the organisation of the teaching process at universities in Poland had to be introduced in response to the current pandemic situation and threat of further spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus. This article presents the results of the research conducted at the Faculty of Architecture, Poznan University of Technology in view of the pilot, experimental entrance exam that excludes the evaluation of drawing skills of candidates for architectural studies in the 2020/21 recruitment process. The purpose of the research was to find a correlation between the quality of candidates accepted for the BSc (engineer) programme studies, evaluated on the basis of their drawing skills demonstrated during the entrance exam and the learning outcomes of graduates. For that purpose, the authors hereof have carried out an analysis with the use of the Spearman Rank Correlation formula. The comparative analysis has shown that candidates whose drawing skills were evaluated highly during the entrance exam did not necessarily rank as the top grade scoring graduates of the first degree study programme, and thus, it has further been shown that good drawing skills at the beginning of the study programme do not guarantee top learning results at the end of the studies. In effect, the research should become a starting point for a discussion in Poland on whether there are any justified grounds for entrance exams in drawing or whether a portfolio of works may replace it and be an effective recruitment criterion.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that describes a system of computing devices, digital machines, objects, animals or people that are interrelated. Each of the interrelated 'things' are given a unique identifier and the ability to transfer data over a network that does not require human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Examples of IoT in practice include a human with a heart monitor implant, an animal with a biochip transponder (an electronic device inserted under the skin that gives the animal a unique identification number) and a car that has built-in sensors which can alert the driver about any problems, such as when the type pressure is low. The concept of a network of devices was established as early as 1982, although the term 'Internet of Things' was almost certainly first coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999. Since then, IoT devices have become ubiquitous, certainly in some parts of the world. Although there have been significant developments in the technology associated with IoT, the concept is far from being fully realised. Indeed, the potential for the reach of IoT extends to areas which some would find surprising. Researchers at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Hosei University in Japan, are exploring using IoT in the agricultural sector, with some specific work on the production of melons. For the advancement of IoT in agriculture, difficult and important issues are implementation of subtle activities into computers procedure. The researchers challenges are going on.

The topic of this article is cardboard as a construction material for temporary architecture: a case study of the Zbigniew Herbert Exhibition Pavilion. The Pavilion was designed and built by a group of 18 students at the course ProtoLAB at the Faculty of Architecture at Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in July 2018. The project focused on constructing Pavilion components out of paper tubes and corrugated cardboard, which have been proven to be a promising building material. Wood-based materials also were used to strengthen the construction. The design of the Pavilion aimed to use the geometry of the components to minimize the amount of metal used to connect elements. The article focuses on the problems of paper’s strength, stability, connections, impregnation, and the way they have been solved during the building process. It also discusses the topic of the possibility of using the unimpregnated cardboard in outdoor constructions. The structure was then evaluated after 5 months of being used and exposed to diverse weather conditions. Damages in the Pavilion elements are mentioned in the paper and the probable reasons why they have appeared are explained. Conclusions from this article may be useful when designing similar objects in the future.

Purpose – This article, a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal, aims to impart the combined technological, business, and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization, and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. Design/methodology/approach – The interviewee is Dr Rodney Brooks, the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab; Founder, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Chairman of Rethink Robotics. Dr Brooks shares some of his underlying principles in technology, academia and business, as well as past and future challenges. Findings – Dr Brooks received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991-2008) of iRobot Corp (Nasdaq: IRBT). Dr Brooks is the former Director (1997-2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He founded Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) in 2008. Originality/value – While at MIT, in 1988, Dr Brooks built Genghis, a hexapodal walker, designed for space exploration (which was on display for ten years in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.). Genghis was one of the first robots that utilized Brooks’ pioneering subsumption architecture. Dr Brooks’ revolutionary behavior-based approach underlies the autonomous robots of iRobot, which has sold more than 12 million home robots worldwide, and has deployed more than 5,000 defense and security robots; and Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, the world’s first interactive production robot. Dr Brooks has won the Computers and Thought Award at the 1991 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the 2008 IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production, the 2014 Robotics Industry Association’s Engelberger Robotics Award for Leadership and the 2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award.

<p>Computer software has come to replace the manual form of designing in both architectural education and practice. The use of drawing boards had been employed in architectural education and practice for a long time. Since the first half of the twentieth century, computer hardware and corresponding software have seen dramatic change and development manufactured and tailored to meet the demand of changing technological and human needs. Architecture has had its fair share since the advent of computers and has seen major milestone changes in its integration into the profession. In the last century, architectural education in Ghana has also witnessed this revolution. From the year 2000 and thereon since Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) was introduced in the Department of Architecture (DOA) in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) there has been tremendous improvement in the CAAD tools used in architectural design education. There is therefore the need to evaluate the CAAD software used by the students and faculty. This paper looked at the existence and the mode in which CAAD software is applied in the department, the predominant software used by students and the mode of acquisition of the software. The findings proved that CAAD is taught as part of the curriculum in the DOA and has helped improve architectural design education over the years. However, the full potential and benefit of CAAD use has not been realized as a result of challenges faced by students and faculty in teaching, learning and acquisition of software.</p>

The revitalization is one of the most essential processes associated with transformations of urban structures in the 20th and 21st centuries. Revitalization actions, carried out in Polish cities at the beginning of the 21st century, concern mainly postindustrial areas and buildings. The most known revitalization operations in Poland have been carried out in Lodz and Poznan. The authors of the article will present analyses concerning revitalization problems of some old factories in Bialystok – former significant centre of the textile industry in Poland in the end of 19th and first half of the 20th century. The authors will present significant architectural, spatial and economical effects of such transformations.
 The research was carried out in the frame of scientific project No. S/WA/2/2016 at the Bialystok University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and financed from science research sources by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Temporary pavilions play an important role as experimental fields for architects, designers, and engineers, in addition to providing exhibition spaces. Novel structural and formal solutions applied in pavilions also can give them an unusual appearance that attracts the eyesight of spectators. In this article, the authors explore the possibility of combining structural novelty, visual attractiveness, and low cost in the design and construction of a temporary pavilion. For that purpose, an innovative structural system and design approach was applied, i.e., a membrane structure was designed in Rhino and Grasshopper environments with the use of the Kiwi!3D IsoGeometric analysis tool. The designed pavilion, named Obverse/Reverse, was built in Opole, Poland, for the occasion of World Architecture Day in July 2019. The design and the construction were performed by the authors in cooperation with students belonging to the Humanization of Urban Environment organization from the Faculty of Architecture Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. The resultant pavilion proved the potential of obtaining a low-budget but visually attractive architectural solution with the adaption of parametrical design tools and some scientific background with innovative structural systems.

Planning problems have been with us ever since human beings realized that their wellbeing is very closely linked to the quality of their settlements and the environment. Over the last century this has led to the worldwide emergence of built environment education in general, and planning in particular. In many African universities planning education is a rapidly growing phenomenon reaching its maturity in terms of structure and number of programs. This development has been most significant in those countries that underwent rapid urbanization and environmental changes similar to those occurring in Botswana. The first Urban and Regional Planning Programme at the University of Botswana was established in 1993 as part of the Department of Environmental Science at the Faculty of Science. The continued growth and expansion of the planning profession world-wide as well as in Botswana, and its interdisciplinary ties with allied built-environment disciplines, have reached the point at which the University of Botswana is ready to continue with a new internationally recognized planning school. There is a belief that a combined (spatial and specialist) accredited planning programme should support local and regional interests, focusing on the Southern African Region, while acknowledging global standards and innovation in teaching, research, and technology.

Bibliographical Notes: Kouroush Jenab is a senior member of IEEE, received the B.Sc. degree from the IE Department at Isfahan University of Technology (1989), the M.Sc. degree from the IE Department at Tehran Polytechnic (1992), and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ottawa (2005). He served as a senior engineer/manager in auto, and high-tech industries for 18 years. He joined the National Research Council Canada as a research officer where he participated in several international research projects. In 2006, he joined the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University, Toronto as assistant professor. Currently, Dr. Jenab is Faculty of the College of Aeronautics at Embry-riddle Aeronautical University, FL, USA. He has published over 110 papers in international scientific journals based on his experiences in industries.Nikita Ottosen is a current Systems Engineering graduate student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. She received her undergraduate degree from ERAU in Aeronautics and is currently working as an Assistant Campus Director at the Crestview, FL campus. She gained valuable knowledge previously working for the Boeing Company and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, known as The Port of Seattle, in Seattle, Washington. During her time at The Port of Seattle she worked alongside the Wildlife Management department to conduct a study on effective wildlife management strategies. Her study will become a part of a future Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) publication, sponsored by the FAA’s Transportation Research Board of the National Academies.Saeid Moslehpour is a full professor and department chair in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture at the University of Hartford. He holds Ph.D. (1993) from Iowa State University and Bachelor of Science (1989) and Master of Science (1990) degrees from University of Central Missouri. His research interests include failure analysis, logic design, CPLDs, FPGAs, Embedded electronic system testing and distance learning.

The introduction of parametric tools has made a strong shift within a traditional approach to urban planning and building design, including the creation of a design awareness zone where environmental issues are concerned. This approach also uses sufficient data to be used already at the concept stage and provides initial interdisciplinary solutions. Analyses from the very initial stages allow the inclusion of smart energy choices influencing the massing, architectural features, proportions, flexibility of design, and economics. This is only a threshold; there is still a place for further development and more accurate analyses leading to the construction of buildings and urban areas with a stronger input of sustainable solutions, as existing approaches have certain limitations. This path has been followed in several research grants conducted at the Faculty of Architecture Warsaw University of Technology, and later on developed as a co-operation area with various stakeholders. Outside the general state of art, this paper will include two case studies which were provided as a concept design for prospective investors. Both locations are in the Warsaw Downtown Area, and analyses include algorithmic models dealing with the optimisation of the buildings’ forms, urban scale sun radiation levels, shadow and wind analyses indicating use of sunlight energy and wind as alternative energy sources. One of the case studies contains Pareto Front including both single- and multi-criteria optimization methods for analysing energy and economic efficiency issues, pointing out the best case solutions.

The Department of Building Materials and Products of the Kharkiv National University of Construction and Architecture in 2020 celebrates its ninetieth anniversary. She counts her age since 1930, when the Kharkov Civil Engineering Institute was founded, separated from the construction faculty of the Kharkov Institute of Technology. Construction materials science, as the main general educational and fundamental discipline for future specialists of all construction specialties and architects, absorbs various sciences, disciplines and contacts a wide range of materials, products, technologies. The highly qualified team of the teaching staff and educational support personnel of the Department of Building Materials and Products has been providing high-quality training for the construction industry for 90 years. The staff of the department, relying on their educational, pedagogical and scientific experience, adjust and create new work programs, taking as a basis the primary fundamental knowledge and requirements for the modernization of vocational education in Ukraine. Today the department has the opportunity to carry out experiments to assess the quality of common building materials. Thanks to the constant contacts of the department with industrial and trade organizations, the collection of samples and brochures of new domestic and foreign finishing materials (ceramics, polymer products, dry building mixtures, etc.) has been almost completely updated and is constantly updated during practical training. The friendly and creative team of the department is optimistic about the 90th anniversary of the department and KNUSA.

Norway has experienced a substantial influx of students in the 21st century. The number of students with foreign citizenship has increased from just over 5,000 in 2000 to more than 23,000 in 2018, as seen in Figure 1 (DBH, 2020). This growth may seem like a paradox, given that Norway has few well-known higher education institutions, high living expenses, a language not widely understood, and a geographical location at the northern fringes of Europe.
 Figure 1: Number of Bachelor and Master Students in Norway with Foreign Citizenship 2000–2018
 So why do students choose Norway? A deliberate policy for internationalization of higher education developed is an important factor. From the 1980s, internationalization has increasingly become an integral part of national higher education policies as well as included as strategies of higher education institutions (Wiers-Jenssen & Sandersen, 2017). The main rationale for encouraging student mobility is educational; mobility is seen a tool for quality enhancement in higher education. However, economic, cultural,and political rationales are also present. The fact that the vast majority of higher education institutions are public partly explains why internationalization policies quite efficiently has trickled down from the national to the institutional level. 
 Most Norwegian higher education institutions do not charge tuition fees. This has gradually become a comparative advantage, as an increasing number of neighboring countries have introduced fees for students from outside Europe. Hence, there may be economic rationales for choosing Norway as a study destination, despite high costs of living. Students from developing countries may qualify for funding from the Norwegian government, while students from other countries have to cover all expenses themselves.
 Higher education institutions have economic incentives other than tuition fees for attracting international students. A reform in Norwegian higher education implemented in 2003 introduced a performance-based funding system (Frölich, 2006). Higher education institutions are rewarded for the number of credit points awarded, implying a stronger focus on attracting students in general. A significant increase in the number of courses and programs in English has facilitated recruitment of international students (Wiers-Jenssen, 2019). 
 International students cited courses in English and absence of tuition fees as the most frequently reported motives for studying in Norway (Diku, 2019a; Wiers-Jenssen, 2019). The latter is particularly important for students undertaking a full degree in Norway. Features of Norway, such as peaceful, safe, and technologically advanced society and unspoiled countryside are also accentuated. As these characteristics were present also before the number of international students started to grow, such motives must be understood in relation to conditions that have changed, such as availability of courses in English. Beautiful scenery and safety would have limited attractional value if courses in English were not offered.
 Quality is a less highlighted reason for choosing Norway as a study destination. But even if perceived quality is not a main attraction, international students in general give positive assessments of the quality of their education (Diku, 2019a). They cope quite well with academic demands, and their main challenges seem to be dealing with the high living expenses and limited interaction with Norwegians. The latter represents a challenge also for higher education institutions, as a major rationale for recruiting international students is to enhance “internationalization at home” (exposing Norwegian students and faculty to perspectives from abroad). If interaction is scarce, so is the exchange of ideas and perspectives.
 Foreign students in Norway consist of three groups (see Figure 2): (a) students who come to undertake a full postgraduate degree (international graduate students), corresponding to the definition of international students used in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, 2020) statistics; (b) students who come for a shorter study of 3 months or more (international exchange students); and (c)students who come for study sojourn of less than three months or who have come to Norway for other reasons, including (labor) migrants, refugees and more. In total, these three groups constituted 8.7% of total enrollments in Norwegian higher education institutions in 2018 (own calculation based on DBH).
 Figure 2: Bachelor and Master students in Norway with Foreign Citizenship, 2018: Number and Type of Students
 PhD students are not included in the figures mentioned above, and an exact numberof current doctoral students cannot be estimated. However, the number of foreign citizens completing a PhD was 657 in 2018, 42 per cent of all PhD graduates (Research Council of Norway, 2019). Hence, the proportion of foreign citizens is far higher at the doctorate level than at the bachelor and master level. This is in line with the situation in most European and North American countries (OECD, 2019).
 The largest universities (University of Oslo and Norwegian University of Science and Technology) attract the highest number of international students. These are also among the few Norwegian higher education institution found on international ranking lists. However, some small specialized higher education institutions such as the Academy of Fine Art, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, and the Norwegian Academy of Music have higher proportions of international students.
 The majority of international students originate from Europe and Asia (Diku, 2019b). China, Nepal, Sweden and Germany are currently the major sending countries of full degree students. Exchange students are mainly Europeans, and many of these come through the European Union student exchange program ERASMUS. European exchange students are often attracted by the “exoticness” of studying in the northern fringes of Europe. The majority of full degree students are enrolled in master programs, while exchange students are in bachelor programs. Science and technology is the most popular field of study, and clearly more popular among international students than Norwegian students (Diku, 2019b).
 More than half of the international students report being interested in living and working in Norway upon graduation (Diku, 2019a). However, updated statistics on the number that actually settle in Norway are currently not available. While obtaining a residence permit in Norway is quite straightforward for those who are originate from countries in the European Economic Area, students from other countries generally face more barriers. Some countries see recruitment of international students as an instrument for so-called skilled migration, but Norway does not have an explicit policy on this. On the contrary, government policies have encouraged students to leave upon graduation, in order to avoid poaching highly skilled individuals from countries that already experience high emigration. As a part of foreign aid policy, students from developing countries have received grants for studying in Norway, on condition that they return to their home country.
 The last couple of years, the number of international students in Norway has ceased to grow (cf. Figure 1). The reasons for this are not clear. It may be that a (temporary) point of saturation is reached. Still, the overall picture shows a remarkable growth in the last two decades. This illustrates that a small country with weak traditions for inward mobility may be able to attract international students if higher education institutions and national policies match well. Further, it shows that institutional policies can attract international students as much as economic policies.

At the moment the Faculty of Architecture in Delft counts over 3000 students. Yearly 600 first year fresh students were admitted until September 2011. A numerus clausus has already reduced this number to 450 and seems to work as a preventative measure. The current Delft agenda for the revision of the BSc curriculum is a triple one. The actualization of the ‘building assignment’ in the contemporary perspective of the profession is the first reason for reviewing the programme. Sustainability and the shifted economic situation are changing the upcoming practice in scale, strategy and programme. Virtual techniques and division of labor (specialization) are developing topics. The second reason for reflection is about shaking up ‘design education methodology’, which could be considered as periodical maintenance. The third and in fact leading reason for change comes from the political pressure to improve the ‘study success ‘ of our students. In the Netherlands only 20 % of the university grade students in technology succeeds to obtain the diploma for the three years BSc in four years’ time. The situation at our faculty is even worse: 17%. The aim is to improve this percentage up to 70%. The BSc curriculum will be restructured thoroughly from September 2013. A national fund to promote and improve academic education in technology (WO Sprint) gave us the opportunity to carry out a comparative study on the curricula of schools of architecture as a mirror for our programme. Since 30 % of our MSc programme is composed of international students an European perspective is obvious. Moreover, the final attainment level of the curricula is becoming a European matter. For the comparison we decided to select schools of architecture which are comparable to ours: education into a Bachelor of Science (not a Bachelor in Arts), number of students and culture. The questions we hope to answer are: What are the generalities and particularities, the similarities and differences of curricula in Architecture? Which is the main content of the curricula? What is the main structure of the study programme? Which are the main (didactical) principles structuring the programme? Special attention is given to the content, structure and organisation of design education. Curricula are complex matters. Most course programmes are a result of ‘faculty tradition’ and the backgrounds are not always explicit: for this comparison the principles were mainly interpreted from practice. Data were collected from a questionnaire, course-descriptions, visitation reports and interviews with visiting teachers and international students studying in Delft. The curricula are mapped in diagrams, providing a very clear visual overview . The similarities and differences between schools of architecture are presented by a series of polarities as a range, structured in three categories: profile, programme structure, didactical principles.

The Ternopil Educational Communication Center was developed with NATO funding to improve computing for the universities of Ternopil, Ukraine. It provides high speed access for all of Ternopil’s universities to the Internet and the World Wide Web. It enables high speed communication within Ternopil, and between institutions in Ternopil using the UarNet and URAN networks. It provides an integration of on-line library services, and it supports such activities as video conferencing, distance education, and class to class participation. The universities of Ternopil and the University of Maine are developing programs and projects to involve students and faculty both in Ukraine and the US.

Aims: The study aims to identifying the microorganisms associated with post-harvest rot of frafra potatoes in Bongo-soe, Upper east region of Ghana.
 Place and Duration of Study: Department of Horticulture and the Pathology laboratory of the Faculty of Agriculture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. The Solenostemon rotundifolius tubers were stored at the Horticulture Department laboratory whiles rot identification was carried out at the Pathology laboratory of the Faculty of Agriculture. The Tubers were stored from 2nd November, 2012 to 22nd March 2013.
 Methodology: Four hundred (400) tubers of black cultivar and four hundred (400) tubers of a brown cultivar of Solenostemon rotundifolius tubers showing visible signs of rot during the storage were collected. Pieces of diseased tissues from the margin of the necrotic collected and immersed in 10% commercial bleach solution for sterilisation, for one minute. These were then blotted dry and plated on Potato Dextrose Agar PDA. The plates were sealed with a cellotape until growth occurred.
 Results: The microorganisms identified to be responsible for causing rot in Solenostemon rotundifolius tubers were six in number. Colletotrichum gloeosporioides was identified to be responsible for 30.76% of rots observed, followed by Aspergillus niger, 23.07%, Curvularia lunata, 19.23%, Aspergillus flavus, 11.54%, Trichoderma sp and Penicillium sp both recorded 7.70% of rots observed. The percentage incidence of Aspergillus niger (15.38%), Curvularia lunata (11.54%) and Aspergillus flavus (7.69%) was higher in the black cultivar as compared with the brown cultivar which had percentage incidence of 7.69%, 7.69% and 3.85% respectively. Also, the percentage incidence of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (15.38%) and Penicillium sp (3.85%) was the same in both the black and brown cultivars of Solenostemon rotundifolius tubers used in this study.
 Conclusion: The activities of the damaging microorganisms can be reduced by controlling mechanical injury during harvesting, transportation and storage of Solenostemon rotundifolius tubers should be prevented or reduced because they pave the way for tuber infection by the rot causing microorganisms.

This study was conducted to assess the growth, yield and cost effectiveness of okra-cowpea intercropping system at the Plantation Section of Faculty of Agriculture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, during the major rainy season of 2017. The okra was planted on 1st May, 2017 and the cowpea introduced at varying planting dates i.e. at the same time, 1, 2, 3 and 4 WAP. Sole okra and cowpea served as control. The experimental plots were laid out in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with seven (7) treatments and replicated three (3) times. The data collected were analyzed using the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the treatment means separated by least significance difference (LSD) at 5% probability. Results showed that time of introduction of the cowpea caused a reduction (P < 0.05) in the growth and yield of the component crops. The partial equivalent ratio of cowpea planted at the same time with okra and one week later was greater (P < 0.05) than the component okra whiles that of okra was greater than cowpea in 2, 3 and 4 weeks. The Land Equivalent Ratio of all the intercrops was greater than 1 showing that intercropping okra with cowpea was beneficial. The highest Gross Monetary Returns, Land Equivalent Ratio and Monetary Equivalent Ratio of GHȻ 7,039.40, 1.75 and 1.31, respectively were recorded in okra intercropped with cowpea 2 WAP. Okra sown with cowpea at the same time recorded a disadvantage (0.84) in Monetary Equivalent Ratio. To ensure higher yield and economic returns, cowpea could be introduced into okro 2 weeks after planting okro.

AbstractA special interdisciplinary project course was offered in the Fall of 2006 within the Carnegie Institute of Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. The course was open to students from across the university, it drew participants from Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering and Public Policy, Materials Science and Engineering, Architecture, the School of Design. This multidisciplinary collection of students formed the necessary knowledge base to approach the various tasks of the project. Each student was to rely on their academic experience and talents to contribute to the work, while simultaneously learning from those in other disciplines. The participating material science and engineering were juniors acquainted with fundamental of materials. Some students were taking courses involving steel making process and steel mechanical properties concurrently. Students in civil and mechanical engineering and architecture are familiar with structural design and construction processes. Students in engineering and public policy and environmental engineering have experience with life cycle assessment and environmental impacts. The collaborative group experience introduced students to how disciplines interact in the real world, encouraging them to pursue their own interests in broader areas.The project consisted of three efforts assessing life cycle impact in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and economic costs of equivalent products made from both steel and wood The first effort involved comparison of steel products versus wood products in existing designs. The second, looked at the optimization of steel products to improve design options and the third tried to identifying opportunities to leverage the use of steel materials in green building design and construction, based on certification requirements established by the US Green Building Council and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.At Carnegie Mellon, the Green Design Initiative researchers have been leaders in life cycle assessment methodology development and assessment, and have a history of merging students and faculty from across the university into research teams. This multidisciplinary project was good example of how common topics can be exploited to provide excellent discovery opportunities for undergraduate engineering programs.

‘Every space has become ad space’. Steve Hayden, Wired Magazine, May 2003. Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) dictum that media technologies constitute a sensory extension of the body shares a conceptual affinity with Ernst Jünger’s notion of ‘“organic construction” [which] indicates [a] synergy between man and machine’ and Walter Benjamin’s exploration of the mimetic correspondence between the organic and the inorganic, between human and non-human forms (Bolz, 2002: 19). The logo or brand is co-extensive with various media of communication – billboards, TV advertisements, fashion labels, book spines, mobile phones, etc. Often the logo is interchangeable with the product itself or a way or life. Since all social relations are mediated, whether by communications technologies or architectonic forms ranging from corporate buildings to sporting grounds to family living rooms, it follows that there can be no outside for sociality. The social is and always has been in a mutually determining relationship with mediating forms. It is in this sense that there is no outside. Such an idea has become a refrain amongst various contemporary media theorists. Here’s a sample: There is no outside position anymore, nor is this perceived as something desirable. (Lovink, 2002a: 4) Both “us” and “them” (whoever we are, whoever they are) are all always situated in this same virtual geography. There’s no outside …. There is nothing outside the vector. (Wark, 2002: 316) There is no more outside. The critique of information is in the information itself. (Lash, 2002: 220) In declaring a universality for media culture and information flows, all of the above statements acknowledge the political and conceptual failure of assuming a critical position outside socio-technically constituted relations. Similarly, they recognise the problems inherent in the “ideology critique” of the Frankfurt School who, in their distinction between “truth” and “false-consciousness”, claimed a sort of absolute knowledge for the critic that transcended the field of ideology as it is produced by the culture industry. Althusser’s more complex conception of ideology, material practices and subject formation nevertheless also fell prey to the pretence of historical materialism as an autonomous “science” that is able to determine the totality, albeit fragmented, of lived social relations. One of the key failings of ideology critique, then, is its incapacity to account for the ways in which the critic, theorist or intellectual is implicated in the operations of ideology. That is, such approaches displace the reflexivity and power relationships between epistemology, ontology and their constitution as material practices within socio-political institutions and historical constellations, which in turn are the settings for the formation of ideology. Scott Lash abandons the term ideology altogether due to its conceptual legacies within German dialectics and French post-structuralist aporetics, both of which ‘are based in a fundamental dualism, a fundamental binary, of the two types of reason. One speaks of grounding and reconciliation, the other of unbridgeability …. Both presume a sphere of transcendence’ (Lash, 2002: 8). Such assertions can be made at a general level concerning these diverse and often conflicting approaches when they are reduced to categories for the purpose of a polemic. However, the work of “post-structuralists” such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and the work of German systems theorist Niklas Luhmann is clearly amenable to the task of critique within information societies (see Rossiter, 2003). Indeed, Lash draws on such theorists in assembling his critical dispositif for the information age. More concretely, Lash (2002: 9) advances his case for a new mode of critique by noting the socio-technical and historical shift from ‘constitutive dualisms of the era of the national manufacturing society’ to global information cultures, whose constitutive form is immanent to informational networks and flows. Such a shift, according to Lash, needs to be met with a corresponding mode of critique: Ideologycritique [ideologiekritik] had to be somehow outside of ideology. With the disappearance of a constitutive outside, informationcritique must be inside of information. There is no outside any more. (2002: 10) Lash goes on to note, quite rightly, that ‘Informationcritique itself is branded, another object of intellectual property, machinically mediated’ (2002: 10). It is the political and conceptual tensions between information critique and its regulation via intellectual property regimes which condition critique as yet another brand or logo that I wish to explore in the rest of this essay. Further, I will question the supposed erasure of a “constitutive outside” to the field of socio-technical relations within network societies and informational economies. Lash is far too totalising in supposing a break between industrial modes of production and informational flows. Moreover, the assertion that there is no more outside to information too readily and simplistically assumes informational relations as universal and horizontally organised, and hence overlooks the significant structural, cultural and economic obstacles to participation within media vectors. That is, there certainly is an outside to information! Indeed, there are a plurality of outsides. These outsides are intertwined with the flows of capital and the imperial biopower of Empire, as Hardt and Negri (2000) have argued. As difficult as it may be to ascertain the boundaries of life in all its complexity, borders, however defined, nonetheless exist. Just ask the so-called “illegal immigrant”! This essay identifies three key modalities comprising a constitutive outside: material (uneven geographies of labour-power and the digital divide), symbolic (cultural capital), and strategic (figures of critique). My point of reference in developing this inquiry will pivot around an analysis of the importation in Australia of the British “Creative Industries” project and the problematic foundation such a project presents to the branding and commercialisation of intellectual labour. The creative industries movement – or Queensland Ideology, as I’ve discussed elsewhere with Danny Butt (2002) – holds further implications for the political and economic position of the university vis-à-vis the arts and humanities. Creative industries constructs itself as inside the culture of informationalism and its concomitant economies by the very fact that it is an exercise in branding. Such branding is evidenced in the discourses, rhetoric and policies of creative industries as adopted by university faculties, government departments and the cultural industries and service sectors seeking to reposition themselves in an institutional environment that is adjusting to ongoing structural reforms attributed to the demands by the “New Economy” for increased labour flexibility and specialisation, institutional and economic deregulation, product customisation and capital accumulation. Within the creative industries the content produced by labour-power is branded as copyrights and trademarks within the system of Intellectual Property Regimes (IPRs). However, as I will go on to show, a constitutive outside figures in material, symbolic and strategic ways that condition the possibility of creative industries. The creative industries project, as envisioned by the Blair government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) responsible for the Creative Industry Task Force Mapping Documents of 1998 and 2001, is interested in enhancing the “creative” potential of cultural labour in order to extract a commercial value from cultural objects and services. Just as there is no outside for informationcritique, for proponents of the creative industries there is no culture that is worth its name if it is outside a market economy. That is, the commercialisation of “creativity” – or indeed commerce as a creative undertaking – acts as a legitimising function and hence plays a delimiting role for “culture” and, by association, sociality. And let us not forget, the institutional life of career academics is also at stake in this legitimating process. The DCMS cast its net wide when defining creative sectors and deploys a lexicon that is as vague and unquantifiable as the next mission statement by government and corporate bodies enmeshed within a neo-liberal paradigm. At least one of the key proponents of the creative industries in Australia is ready to acknowledge this (see Cunningham, 2003). The list of sectors identified as holding creative capacities in the CITF Mapping Document include: film, music, television and radio, publishing, software, interactive leisure software, design, designer fashion, architecture, performing arts, crafts, arts and antique markets, architecture and advertising. The Mapping Document seeks to demonstrate how these sectors consist of ‘... activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the potential for wealth and job creation through generation and exploitation of intellectual property’ (CITF: 1998/2001). The CITF’s identification of intellectual property as central to the creation of jobs and wealth firmly places the creative industries within informational and knowledge economies. Unlike material property, intellectual property such as artistic creations (films, music, books) and innovative technical processes (software, biotechnologies) are forms of knowledge that do not diminish when they are distributed. This is especially the case when information has been encoded in a digital form and distributed through technologies such as the internet. In such instances, information is often attributed an “immaterial” and nonrivalrous quality, although this can be highly misleading for both the conceptualisation of information and the politics of knowledge production. Intellectual property, as distinct from material property, operates as a scaling device in which the unit cost of labour is offset by the potential for substantial profit margins realised by distribution techniques availed by new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their capacity to infinitely reproduce the digital commodity object as a property relation. Within the logic of intellectual property regimes, the use of content is based on the capacity of individuals and institutions to pay. The syndication of media content ensures that market saturation is optimal and competition is kept to a minimum. However, such a legal architecture and hegemonic media industry has run into conflict with other net cultures such as open source movements and peer-to-peer networks (Lovink, 2002b; Meikle, 2002), which is to say nothing of the digital piracy of software and digitally encoded cinematic forms. To this end, IPRs are an unstable architecture for extracting profit. The operation of Intellectual Property Regimes constitutes an outside within creative industries by alienating labour from its mode of information or form of expression. Lash is apposite on this point: ‘Intellectual property carries with it the right to exclude’ (Lash, 2002: 24). This principle of exclusion applies not only to those outside the informational economy and culture of networks as result of geographic, economic, infrastructural, and cultural constraints. The very practitioners within the creative industries are excluded from control over their creations. It is in this sense that a legal and material outside is established within an informational society. At the same time, this internal outside – to put it rather clumsily – operates in a constitutive manner in as much as the creative industries, by definition, depend upon the capacity to exploit the IP produced by its primary source of labour. For all the emphasis the Mapping Document places on exploiting intellectual property, it’s really quite remarkable how absent any elaboration or considered development of IP is from creative industries rhetoric. It’s even more astonishing that media and cultural studies academics have given at best passing attention to the issues of IPRs. Terry Flew (2002: 154-159) is one of the rare exceptions, though even here there is no attempt to identify the implications IPRs hold for those working in the creative industries sectors. Perhaps such oversights by academics associated with the creative industries can be accounted for by the fact that their own jobs rest within the modern, industrial institution of the university which continues to offer the security of a salary award system and continuing if not tenured employment despite the onslaught of neo-liberal reforms since the 1980s. Such an industrial system of traditional and organised labour, however, does not define the labour conditions for those working in the so-called creative industries. Within those sectors engaged more intensively in commercialising culture, labour practices closely resemble work characterised by the dotcom boom, which saw young people working excessively long hours without any of the sort of employment security and protection vis-à-vis salary, health benefits and pension schemes peculiar to traditional and organised labour (see McRobbie, 2002; Ross, 2003). During the dotcom mania of the mid to late 90s, stock options were frequently offered to people as an incentive for offsetting the often minimum or even deferred payment of wages (see Frank, 2000). It is understandable that the creative industries project holds an appeal for managerial intellectuals operating in arts and humanities disciplines in Australia, most particularly at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which claims to have established the ‘world’s first’ Creative Industries faculty (http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/). The creative industries provide a validating discourse for those suffering anxiety disorders over what Ruth Barcan (2003) has called the ‘usefulness’ of ‘idle’ intellectual pastimes. As a project that endeavours to articulate graduate skills with labour markets, the creative industries is a natural extension of the neo-liberal agenda within education as advocated by successive governments in Australia since the Dawkins reforms in the mid 1980s (see Marginson and Considine, 2000). Certainly there’s a constructive dimension to this: graduates, after all, need jobs and universities should display an awareness of market conditions; they also have a responsibility to do so. And on this count, I find it remarkable that so many university departments in my own field of communications and media studies are so bold and, let’s face it, stupid, as to make unwavering assertions about market demands and student needs on the basis of doing little more than sniffing the wind! Time for a bit of a reality check, I’d say. And this means becoming a little more serious about allocating funds and resources towards market research and analysis based on the combination of needs between students, staff, disciplinary values, university expectations, and the political economy of markets. However, the extent to which there should be a wholesale shift of the arts and humanities into a creative industries model is open to debate. The arts and humanities, after all, are a set of disciplinary practices and values that operate as a constitutive outside for creative industries. Indeed, in their creative industries manifesto, Stuart Cunningham and John Hartley (2002) loath the arts and humanities in such confused, paradoxical and hypocritical ways in order to establish the arts and humanities as a cultural and ideological outside. To this end, to subsume the arts and humanities into the creative industries, if not eradicate them altogether, is to spell the end of creative industries as it’s currently conceived at the institutional level within academe. Too much specialisation in one post-industrial sector, broad as it may be, ensures a situation of labour reserves that exceed market needs. One only needs to consider all those now unemployed web-designers that graduated from multi-media programs in the mid to late 90s. Further, it does not augur well for the inevitable shift from or collapse of a creative industries economy. Where is the standing reserve of labour shaped by university education and training in a post-creative industries economy? Diehard neo-liberals and true-believers in the capacity for perpetual institutional flexibility would say that this isn’t a problem. The university will just “organically” adapt to prevailing market conditions and shape their curriculum and staff composition accordingly. Perhaps. Arguably if the university is to maintain a modality of time that is distinct from the just-in-time mode of production characteristic of informational economies – and indeed, such a difference is a quality that defines the market value of the educational commodity – then limits have to be established between institutions of education and the corporate organisation or creative industry entity. The creative industries project is a reactionary model insofar as it reinforces the status quo of labour relations within a neo-liberal paradigm in which bids for industry contracts are based on a combination of rich technological infrastructures that have often been subsidised by the state (i.e. paid for by the public), high labour skills, a low currency exchange rate and the lowest possible labour costs. In this respect it is no wonder that literature on the creative industries omits discussion of the importance of unions within informational, networked economies. What is the place of unions in a labour force constituted as individualised units? The conditions of possibility for creative industries within Australia are at once its frailties. In many respects, the success of the creative industries sector depends upon the ongoing combination of cheap labour enabled by a low currency exchange rate and the capacity of students to access the skills and training offered by universities. Certainly in relation to matters such as these there is no outside for the creative industries. There’s a great need to explore alternative economic models to the content production one if wealth is to be successfully extracted and distributed from activities in the new media sectors. The suggestion that the creative industries project initiates a strategic response to the conditions of cultural production within network societies and informational economies is highly debateable. The now well documented history of digital piracy in the film and software industries and the difficulties associated with regulating violations to proprietors of IP in the form of copyright and trademarks is enough of a reason to look for alternative models of wealth extraction. And you can be sure this will occur irrespective of the endeavours of the creative industries. To conclude, I am suggesting that those working in the creative industries, be they content producers or educators, need to intervene in IPRs in such a way that: 1) ensures the alienation of their labour is minimised; 2) collectivising “creative” labour in the form of unions or what Wark (2001) has termed the “hacker class”, as distinct from the “vectoralist class”, may be one way of achieving this; and 3) the advocates of creative industries within the higher education sector in particular are made aware of the implications IPRs have for graduates entering the workforce and adjust their rhetoric, curriculum, and policy engagements accordingly. Works Cited Barcan, Ruth. ‘The Idleness of Academics: Reflections on the Usefulness of Cultural Studies’. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (forthcoming, 2003). Bolz, Norbert. ‘Rethinking Media Aesthetics’, in Geert Lovink, Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, 18-27. Butt, Danny and Rossiter, Ned. ‘Blowing Bubbles: Post-Crash Creative Industries and the Withering of Political Critique in Cultural Studies’. Paper presented at Ute Culture: The Utility of Culture and the Uses of Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies Association of Australia Conference, Melbourne, 5-7 December, 2002. Posted to fibreculture mailing list, 10 December, 2002, http://www.fibreculture.org/archives/index.html Creative Industry Task Force: Mapping Document, DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport), London, 1998/2001. http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/mapping.html Cunningham, Stuart. ‘The Evolving Creative Industries: From Original Assumptions to Contemporary Interpretations’. Seminar Paper, QUT, Brisbane, 9 May, 2003, http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/research/cirac/documen... ...ts/THE_EVOLVING_CREATIVE_INDUSTRIES.pdf Cunningham, Stuart; Hearn, Gregory; Cox, Stephen; Ninan, Abraham and Keane, Michael. Brisbane’s Creative Industries 2003. Report delivered to Brisbane City Council, Community and Economic Development, Brisbane: CIRAC, 2003. http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/research/cirac/documen... ...ts/bccreportonly.pdf Flew, Terry. New Media: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Frank, Thomas. One Market under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Hartley, John and Cunningham, Stuart. ‘Creative Industries: from Blue Poles to fat pipes’, in Malcolm Gillies (ed.) The National Humanities and Social Sciences Summit: Position Papers. Canberra: DEST, 2002. Hayden, Steve. ‘Tastes Great, Less Filling: Ad Space – Will Advertisers Learn the Hard Lesson of Over-Development?’. Wired Magazine 11.06 (June, 2003), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/ad_spc.html Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Lash, Scott. Critique of Information. London: Sage, 2002. Lovink, Geert. Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002a. Lovink, Geert. Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002b. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. McRobbie, Angela. ‘Clubs to Companies: Notes on the Decline of Political Culture in Speeded up Creative Worlds’, Cultural Studies 16.4 (2002): 516-31. Marginson, Simon and Considine, Mark. The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. Sydney: Pluto Press, 2002. Ross, Andrew. No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Rossiter, Ned. ‘Processual Media Theory’, in Adrian Miles (ed.) Streaming Worlds: 5th International Digital Arts & Culture (DAC) Conference. 19-23 May. Melbourne: RMIT University, 2003, 173-184. http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Rossiter.pdf Sassen, Saskia. Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Wark, McKenzie. ‘Abstraction’ and ‘Hack’, in Hugh Brown, Geert Lovink, Helen Merrick, Ned Rossiter, David Teh, Michele Willson (eds). Politics of a Digital Present: An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory. Melbourne: Fibreculture Publications, 2001, 3-7, 99-102. Wark, McKenzie. ‘The Power of Multiplicity and the Multiplicity of Power’, in Geert Lovink, Uncanny Networks: Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, 314-325. Links http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Rossiter.pdf http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/ http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/research/cirac/documents/THE_EVOLVING_CREATIVE_INDUSTRIES.pdf http://www.creativeindustries.qut.com/research/cirac/documents/bccreportonly.pdf http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/mapping.html http://www.fibreculture.org/archives/index.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/ad_spc.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rossiter, Ned. "Creative Industries and the Limits of Critique from " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/11-creativeindustries.php>. APA Style Rossiter, N. (2003, Jun 19). Creative Industries and the Limits of Critique from . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/11-creativeindustries.php>

IntroductionIt has been nearly half a century since the appearance of Susan Sontag’s landmark essay “The Imagination of Disaster.” The critic wrote of the public fascination with science fiction disaster films, claiming that, on the one hand “from a psychological point of view, the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ from one period in history to another [but, on the other hand] from a political and moral point of view, it does” (224). Even if Sontag is right about aspects of the imagination of disaster not changing, the types, frequency, and magnitude of disasters and their representation in media and popular culture suggest that dynamic conditions prevail on both counts. Disaster has become a significantly urban phenomenon, and highly publicised “worst case” scenarios such as Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake highlight multiple demographic, cultural, and environmental contexts for visualising cataclysm. The 1950s and 60s science fiction films that Sontag wrote about were filled with marauding aliens and freaks of disabused science. Since then, their visual and dramatic effects have been much enlarged by all kinds of disaster scenarios. Partly imagined, these scenarios have real-life counterparts with threats from terrorism and the war on terror, pan-epidemics, and global climate change. Sontag’s essay—like most, if not all of the films she mentions—overlooked the aftermath; that is, the rebuilding, following extra-terrestrial invasion. It ignored what was likely to happen when the monsters were gone. In contrast, the psychological as well as the practical, social, and economic aspects of reconstruction are integral to disaster discourse today. Writing about how architecture might creatively contribute to post-conflict (including war) and disaster recovery, for instance, Boano elaborates the psychological background for rebuilding, where the material destruction of dwellings and cities “carries a powerful symbolic erosion of security, social wellbeing and place attachment” (38); these are depicted as attributes of selfhood and identity that must be restored. Similarly, Hutchison and Bleiker (385) adopt a view evident in disaster studies, that disaster-struck communities experience “trauma” and require inspired responses that facilitate “healing and reconciliation” as well as material aid such as food, housing, and renewed infrastructure. This paper revisits Sontag’s “The Imagination of Disaster,” fifty years on in view of the changing face of disasters and their representation in film media, including more recent films. The paper then considers disaster recovery and outlines the difficult path that “creative industries” like architecture and urban planning must tread when promising a vision of rebuilding that provides for such intangible outcomes as “healing and reconciliation.” We find that hopes for the seemingly positive psychologically- and socially-recuperative outcomes accompanying the prospect of rebuilding risk a variety of generalisation akin to wish-fulfilment that Sontag finds in disaster films. The Psychology of Science Fiction and Disaster FilmsIn “The Imagination of Disaster,” written at or close to the height of the Cold War, Sontag ruminates on what America’s interest in, if not preoccupation with, science fiction films tell us about ourselves. Their popularity cannot be explained in terms of their entertainment value alone; or if it can, then why audiences found (and still find) such films entertaining is something that itself needs explanation.Depicted in media like photography and film, utopian and dystopian thought have at least one thing in common. Their visions of either perfected or socially alienated worlds are commonly prompted by criticism of the social/political status quo and point to its reform. For Sontag, science fiction films portrayed both people’s worst nightmares concerning disaster and catastrophe (e.g. the end of the world; chaos; enslavement; mutation), as well as their facile victories over the kinds of moral, political, and social dissolution the films imaginatively depicted. Sontag does not explicitly attribute such “happy endings” to wish-fulfilling phantasy and ego-protection. (“Phantasy” is to be distinguished from fantasy. It is a psychoanalytic term for states of mind, often symbolic in form, resulting from infantile wish-fulfilment, desires and instincts.) She does, however, describe the kinds of fears, existential concerns (like annihilation), and crises of meaning they are designed (purpose built) to allay. The fears are a product of the time—the down and dark side of technology (e.g. depersonalisation; ambivalence towards science, scientists, and technology) and changes wrought in our working and personal lives by urbanisation. In short, then as now, science fictions films were both expressions of deep and genuine worries and of the pressing need to inventively set them to rest.When Sontag claims that “the imagination of disaster does not greatly differ” (224) from one period to another, this is because, psychologically speaking, neither the precipitating concerns and fears (death, loss of love, meaninglessness, etc.), nor the ways in which people’s minds endeavour to assuage them, substantively differ. What is different is the way they are depicted. This is unsurprisingly a function of the political, social, and moral situations and milieus that provide the context in which the imagination of disaster unfolds. In contemporary society, the extent to which the media informs and constructs the context in which the imagination operates is unprecedented.Sontag claims that there is little if any criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears the films depict (223). Instead, fantasy operates so as to displace and project the actual causes away from their all too human origins into outer space and onto aliens. In a sense, this is the core and raison d’etre for such films. By their very nature, science fiction films of the kind Sontag is discussing cannot concern themselves with genuine social or political criticism (even though the films are necessarily expressive of such criticism). Any serious questioning of the moral and political status quo—conditions that are responsible for the disasters befalling people—would hamper the operation of fantasy and its production of temporarily satisfying “solutions” to whatever catastrophe is being depicted.Sontag goes on to discuss various strategies science fiction employs to deal with such fears. For example, through positing a bifurcation between good and evil, and grossly oversimplifying the moral complexity of situations, it allows one to “give outlet to cruel or at least amoral feelings” (215) and to exercise feelings of superiority—moral and otherwise. Ambiguous feelings towards science and technology are repressed. Quick and psychologically satisfying fixes are sought for these by means of phantasy and the imaginative construction of invulnerable heroes. Much of what Sontag says can straightforwardly be applied to catastrophe in general. “Alongside the hopeful fantasy of moral simplification and international unity embodied in the science fiction films lurk the deepest anxieties about contemporary existence” (220). Sontag writes:In the films it is by means of images and sounds […] that one can participate in the fantasy of living through one’s own death and more, the death of cities, the destruction of humanity itself. Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects in art. In science fiction films disaster is rarely viewed intensively; it is always extensive. It is a matter of quality and ingenuity […] the science fiction film […] is concerned with the aesthetics of disaster […] and it is in the imagery of destruction that the core of a good science fiction film lies. (212–13)In science fiction films, disaster, though widespread, is viewed intensively as well as extensively. The disturbances constitutive of the disaster are moral and emotional as well as material. People are left without the mental or physical abilities they need to cope. Government is absent or useless. We find ourselves in what amounts to what Naomi Zack (“Philosophy and Disaster”; Ethics for Disaster) describes as a Hobbesian second state of nature—where government is inoperative and chaos (moral, social, political, personal) reigns. Science fiction’s way out is to imaginatively construct scenarios emotionally satisfying enough to temporarily assuage the distress (anomie or chaos) experienced in the film.There is, however, a tremendous difference in the way in which people who face catastrophic occurrences in their lives, as opposed to science fiction, address the problems. For one thing, they must be far closer to complex and quickly changing realities and uncertain truths than are the phantastic, temporarily gratifying, and morally unproblematic resolutions to the catastrophic scenarios that science fiction envisions. Genuine catastrophe, for example war, undermines and dismantles the structures—material structures to be sure but also those of justice, human kindness, and affectivity—that give us the wherewithal to function and that are shown to be inimical to catastrophe as such. Disaster dispenses with civilization while catastrophe displaces it.Special Effects and Changing StorylinesScience fiction and disaster film genres have been shaped by developments in visual simulation technologies providing opportunities for imaginatively mixing fact and fiction. Developments in filmmaking include computer or digital techniques for reproducing on the screen what can otherwise only be imagined as causal sequences of events and spectacles accompanying the wholesale destruction of buildings and cities—even entire planets. Indeed films are routinely promoted on the basis of how cinematographers and technicians have advanced the state of the art. The revival of 3-D movies with films such as Avatar (2009) and Prometheus (2012) is one of a number of developments augmenting the panoramas of 1950s classics featuring “melting tanks, flying bodies, crashing walls, awesome craters and fissures in the earth, plummeting spacecraft [and] colourful deadly rays” (Sontag 213). An emphasis on the scale of destruction and the wholesale obliteration of recognisable sites emblematic of “the city” (mega-structures like the industrial plant in Aliens (1986) and vast space ships like the “Death Star” in two Star Wars sequels) connect older films with new ones and impress the viewer with ever more extraordinary spectacle.Films that have been remade make for useful comparison. On the whole, these reinforce the continuation and predictability of some storylines (for instance, threats of extra-terrestrial invasion), but also the attenuation or disappearance of other narrative elements such as the monsters and anxieties released by mid-twentieth century atomic tests (Broderick). Remakes also highlight emerging themes requiring novel or updated critical frameworks. For example, environmental anxieties, largely absent in 1950s science fiction films (except for narratives involving colliding worlds or alien contacts) have appeared en masse in recent years, providing an updated view on the ethical issues posed by the fall of cities and communities (Taylor, “Urban”).In The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and its remakes (1956, 1978, 1993), for example, the organic and vegetal nature of the aliens draws the viewer’s attention to an environment formed by combative species, allowing for threats of infestation, growth and decay of the self and individuality—a longstanding theme. In the most recent version, The Invasion (2007), special effects and directorial spirit render the orifice-seeking tendrils of the pod creatures threateningly vigorous and disturbing (Lim). More sanctimonious than physically invasive, the aliens in the 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still are fed up with humankind’s fixation with atomic self-destruction, and threaten global obliteration on the earth (Cox). In the 2008 remake, the suave alien ambassador, Keanu Reeves, targets the environmental negligence of humanity.Science, including science as fiction, enters into disaster narratives in a variety of ways. Some are less obvious but provocative nonetheless; for example, movies dramatising the arrival of aliens such as War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005) or Alien (1979). These more subtle approaches can be personally confronting even without the mutation of victims into vegetables or zombies. Special effects technologies have made it possible to illustrate the course of catastrophic floods and earthquakes in considerable scientific and visual detail and to represent the interaction of natural disasters, the built environment, and people, from the scale of buildings, homes, and domestic lives to entire cities and urban populations.For instance, the blockbuster film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) runs 118 minutes, but has an uncertain fictional time frame of either a few weeks or 72 hours (if the film’s title is to taken literally). The movie shows the world as we know it being mostly destroyed. Tokyo is shattered by hailstones and Los Angeles is twisted by cyclones the likes of which Dorothy would never have seen. New York disappears beneath a mountainous tsunami. All of these events result from global climate change, though whether this is due to human (in) action or other causes is uncertain. Like their predecessors, the new wave of disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow makes for questionable “art” (Annan). Nevertheless, their reception opens a window onto broader political and moral contexts for present anxieties. Some critics have condemned The Day After Tomorrow for its scientific inaccuracies—questioning the scale or pace of climate change. Others acknowledge errors while commending efforts to raise environmental awareness (Monbiot). Coincident with the film and criticisms in both the scientific and political arena is a new class of environmental heretic—the climate change denier. This is a shadowy character commonly associated with the presidency of George W. Bush and the oil lobby that uses minor inconsistencies of science to claim that climate change does not exist. One thing underlying both twisting facts for the purposes of making science fiction films and ignoring evidence of climate change is an infantile orientation towards the unknown. In this regard, recent films do what science fiction disaster films have always done. While freely mixing truths and half-truths for the purpose of heightened dramatic effect, they fulfil psychological tasks such as orchestrating nightmare scenarios and all too easy victories on the screen. Uncertainty regarding the precise cause, scale, or duration of cataclysmic natural phenomena is mirrored by suspension of disbelief in the viability of some human responses to portrayals of urban disaster. Science fiction, in other words, invites us to accept as possible the flight of Americans and their values to Mexico (The Day After Tomorrow), the voyage into earth’s molten core (The Core 2003), or the disposal of lava in LA’s drainage system (Volcano 1997). Reinforcing Sontag’s point, here too there is a lack of criticism of the real social and political conditions that bring about the fears depicted in the films (223). Moreover, much like news coverage, images in recent natural disaster films (like their predecessors) typically finish at the point where survivors are obliged to pick up the pieces and start all over again—the latter is not regarded as newsworthy. Allowing for developments in science fiction films and the disaster genre, Sontag’s observation remains accurate. The films are primarily concerned “with the aesthetics of destruction, with the peculiar beauties to be found in wreaking havoc, in making a mess” (213) rather than rebuilding. The Imagination of Disaster RecoverySontag’s essay contributes to an important critical perspective on science fiction film. Variations on her “psychological point of view” have been explored. (The two discourses—psychology and cinema—have parallel and in some cases intertwined histories). Moreover, in the intervening years, psychological or psychoanalytical terms and narratives have themselves become even more a part of popular culture. They feature in recent disaster films and disaster recovery discourse in the “real” world.Today, with greater frequency than in the 1950s and 60s films arguably, representations of alien invasion or catastrophic global warming serve to background conflict resolutions of a more quotidian and personal nature. Hence, viewers are led to suspect that Tom Cruise will be more likely to survive the rapacious monsters in the latest The War of the Worlds if he can become less narcissistic and a better father. Similarly, Dennis Quaid’s character will be much better prepared to serve a newly glaciated America for having rescued his son (and marriage) from the watery deep-freezer that New York City becomes in The Day After Tomorrow. In these films the domestic and familial comprise a domain of inter-personal and communal relations from which victims and heroes appear. Currents of thought from the broad literature of disaster studies and Western media also call upon this domain. The imagination of disaster recovery has come to partly resemble a set of problems organised around the needs of traumatised communities. These serve as an object of urban governance, planning, and design conceived in different ways, but largely envisioned as an organic unity that connects urban populations, their pasts, and settings in a meaningful, psychologically significant manner (Furedi; Hutchison and Bleiker; Boano). Terms like “place” or concepts like Boano’s “place-attachment" (38) feature in this discourse to describe this unity and its subjective dimensions. Consider one example. In August 2006, one year after Katrina, the highly respected Journal of Architectural Education dedicated a special issue to New Orleans and its reconstruction. Opening comments by editorialist Barbara Allen include claims presupposing enduring links between the New Orleans community conceived as an organic whole, its architectural heritage imagined as a mnemonic vehicle, and the city’s unique setting. Though largely unsupported (and arguably unsupportable) the following proposition would find agreement across a number of disaster studies and resonates in commonplace reasoning:The culture of New Orleans is unique. It is a mix of ancient heritage with layers and adaptations added by successive generations, resulting in a singularly beautiful cultural mosaic of elements. Hurricane Katrina destroyed buildings—though not in the city’s historic core—and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but it cannot wipe out the memories and spirit of the citizens. (4) What is intriguing about the claim is an underlying intellectual project that subsumes psychological and sociological domains of reasoning within a distinctive experience of community, place, and memory. In other words, the common belief that memory is an intrinsic part of the human condition of shock and loss gives form to a theory of how urban communities experience disaster and how they might re-build—and justify rebuilding—themselves. This is problematic and invites anachronistic thinking. While communities are believed to be formed partly by memories of a place, “memory” is neither a collective faculty nor is it geographically bounded. Whose memories are included and which ones are not? Are these truly memories of one place or do they also draw on other real or imagined places? Moreover—and this is where additional circumspection is inspired by our reading of Sontag’s essay—does Allen’s editorial contribute to an aestheticised image of place, rather than criticism of the social and political conditions required for reconstruction to proceed with justice, compassionately and affectively? Allowing for civil liberties to enter the picture, Allen adds “it is necessary to enable every citizen to come back to this exceptional city if they so desire” (4). However, given that memories of places and desires for their recovery are not univocal, and often contain competing visions of what was and should be, it is not surprising they should result in competing expectations for reconstruction efforts. This has clearly proven the case for New Orleans (Vederber; Taylor, “Typologies”)ConclusionThe comparison of films invites an extension of Sontag’s analysis of the imagination of disaster to include the psychology, politics, and morality of rebuilding. Can a “psychological point of view” help us to understand not only the motives behind capturing so many scenes of destruction on screen and television, but also something of the creative impulses driving reconstruction? This invites a second question. How do some impulses, particularly those caricatured as the essence of an “enterprise culture” (Heap and Ross) associated with America’s “can-do” or others valorised as positive outcomes of catastrophe in The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon), highlight or possibly obscure criticism of the conditions which made cities like New Orleans vulnerable in the first place? The broad outline of an answer to the second question begins to appear only when consideration of the ethics of disaster and rebuilding are taken on board. If “the upside” of “the down” wrought by Hurricane Katrina, for example, is rebuilding of any kind, at any price, and for any person, then the equation works (i.e., there is a silver lining for every cloud). If, however, the range of positives is broadened to include issues of social justice, then the figures require more complex arithmetic.ReferencesAllen, Barbara. “New Orleans and Katrina: One Year Later.” Journal of Architectural Education 60.1 (2006): 4.Annan, David. Catastrophe: The End of the Cinema? London: Lorrimer, 1975.Boano, Camillo. “‘Violent Space’: Production and Reproduction of Security and Vulnerabilities.” The Journal of Architecture 16 (2011): 37–55.Broderick, Mick, ed. Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. London: Kegan Paul, 1996.Cox, David. “Get This, Aliens: We Just Don’t Care!” The Guardian 15 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/dec/15/the-day-the-earth-stood-still›. Furedi, Frank. “The Changing Meaning of Disaster.” Area 39.4 (2007): 482–89.Heap, Shaun H., and Angus Ross, eds. Understanding the Enterprise Culture: Themes in the Work of Mary Douglas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992. 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New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.———. “Philosophy and Disaster.” Homeland Security Affairs 2, article 5 (April 2006): ‹http://www.hsaj.org/?article=2.1.5›.FilmographyAlien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Brandywine Productions, 1979.Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. Brandywine Productions, 1986.Avatar. Dir. James Cameron. Lightstorm Entertainment et al., 2009.The Core. Dir. Jon Amiel. Paramount Pictures, 2003.The Day after Tomorrow. Dir. Roland Emmerich. 20th Century Fox, 2004.The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Dir. Don Siegel. Allied Artists, 1956; also 1978 and 1993.The Invasion. Dirs. Oliver Hirschbiegel and Jame McTeigue. Village Roadshow et al, 2007.Prometheus. Dir. Ridley Scott. Scott Free and Brandywine Productions, 2012Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1977.Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Dir. George Lucas. Lucasfilm, 1983.Volcano. Dir. Mick Jackson. 20th Century Fox, 1997.War of the Worlds. Dir. George Pal. Paramount, 1953; also Steven Spielberg. Paramount, 2005.Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to Oenone Rooksby and Joely-Kym Sobott for their assistance and advice when preparing this article. It was also made possible in part by a grant from the Australian Research Council.