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1

Liu, Hua Qiang, Fei Zhang, Shi Yin, and Xin Li. "Study and Application of SSC Model on Hot Rolling Wide Strip Mill." Advanced Materials Research 572 (October 2012): 131–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.572.131.

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According to cutting loss of the head and the tail of hot rolling wide strip mill for the loss of width, the control conditions, the control mode and control model of short stroke control (SSC) of the rough mill are researched and given by dynamical changing the rough mill roll gap for SSC simulation and basing on infinite element method (FEM) analysis and results. When the SSC model is put into use in the field, the width difference of the head and the tail with the body of the strip are decreased. Therefore, the SSC model greatly improves the control accuracy of strip head and tail, and achieves the desired results.
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2

Canner, Judith E., Archana J. McEligot, María-Eglée Pérez, Lei Qian, and Xinzhi Zhang. "Enhancing Diversity in Biomedical Data Science." Ethnicity & Disease 27, no. 2 (April 20, 2017): 107. http://dx.doi.org/10.18865/ed.27.2.107.

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<p class="Default">The gap in educational attainment separating underrepresented minorities from Whites and Asians remains wide. Such a gap has sig­nificant impact on workforce diversity and in­clusion among cross-cutting Biomedical Data Science (BDS) research, which presents great opportunities as well as major challenges for addressing health disparities. This article pro­vides a brief description of the newly estab­lished National Institutes of Health Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) diversity initiatives at four universities: California State University, Monterey Bay; Fisk University; University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus; and California State University, Fullerton. We em­phasize three main barriers to BDS careers (ie, preparation, exposure, and access to resources) experienced among those pioneer programs and recommendations for possible solutions (ie, early and proactive mentoring, enriched research experience, and data sci­ence curriculum development). The diversity disparities in BDS demonstrate the need for educators, researchers, and funding agencies to support evidence-based practices that will lead to the diversification of the BDS workforce. <em></em></p><p class="Default"><em>Ethn Dis. </em>2017;27(2):107-116; doi:10.18865/ed.27.2.107.</p>
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3

Cheng, Fan, Kang Yang, and Lei Zhang. "A Structural SVM Based Approach for Binary Classification under Class Imbalance." Mathematical Problems in Engineering 2015 (2015): 1–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2015/269856.

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Class imbalance situations, where one class is rare compared to the other, arise frequently in machine learning applications. It is well known that the usual misclassification error is not suitable in such settings. A wide range of performance measures such as AM and QM have been proposed for this problem. However, due to computational difficulties, few learning techniques have been developed to directly optimize for AM or QM metric. To fill the gap, in this paper, we present a general structural SVM framework for directly optimizing AM and QM. We define the loss functions oriented to AM and QM, respectively, and adopt the cutting plane algorithm to solve the outer optimization. For the inner problem of finding the most violated constraint, we propose two efficient algorithms for the AM and QM problem. Empirical studies on the various imbalanced datasets justify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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Muniappan, A., M. Ajithkumar, V. Jayakumar, C. Thiagarajan, and M. Sreenivasulu. "Utility approach for multi target streamlining of process parameters in wire EDM." MATEC Web of Conferences 172 (2018): 04006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201817204006.

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This paper depicts the improvement of multireaction enhancement system utilizing utility technique to foresee and select the ideal setting of machining parameters in wire electro-release machining (WEDM) process. Investigations were arranged utilizing Taguchi's L27 orthogonal exhibit. A wide range of Wire EDM control variables such as pulse on time duration, pulse off time duration, servo voltage along with wire feed rate were judged for investigation. Multi reaction enhancement was performed for both cutting pace (CS) and surface unpleasantness (SR) utilizing utility idea to discover the ideal procedure parameter setting. The level of essentialness of the machining parameters for their impact on the CS and SR were controlled by utilizing investigation of fluctuation (ANOVA). In present study utility approach method used to optimize the process parameter in wire EDM of magnesium Al6061/SiC/Graphite hybrid composite with zinc covered brass wire electrode. The approach depicted here is relied upon to be profoundly useful to assembling enterprises, and furthermore different territories, for example, aviation, car and apparatus making businesses. The parameters corresponding to experiment run number 7 are pulse on time 108 units (Level 1), pulse off time 60 units (Level 3), peak current 230 units (Level 3), gap set voltage 60 units (Level 3), wire feed 3 units (Level 1) and wire tension 4 units (Level 1) are the best combination to achieve better surface roughness and cutting speed.
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Newberry, Sterling P. "A new microtome approach and its relation to 3D imaging." Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America 49 (August 1991): 410–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424820100086350.

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A continuing concern of this laboratory is to improve techniques for acquiring and displaying 3D images of structure over a wide range of magnification from a single, identical piece of tissue. One of the major problems is to slice the sample thin enough in one dimension that ultra structure can be preserved. Slicing is not a serious drawback because computer reconstruction techniques permit us to put the slice images together for comparison with the next lower level of magnification all the way down to the whole specimen. Reembedding techniques have also helped to bridge the gap between magnification levels. Ironically it is at the first level of slicing that thickness prevents adequate preservation making the specimen very difficult to section. For brain tissue the Vibratome® has become the preferred microtome but it does not handle many softer and harder tissues and even neuroscientist tend to prefix their tissue. There still appears to be need for improved methods of cutting a variety of fresh tissues.
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6

Abrahamsson, Pekka, Goetz Botterweck, Hadi Ghanbari, Martin Gilje Jaatun, Petri Kettunen, Tommi J. Mikkonen, Anila Mjeda, et al. "Towards a Secure DevOps Approach for Cyber-Physical Systems." International Journal of Systems and Software Security and Protection 11, no. 2 (July 2020): 38–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijsssp.2020070103.

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With the expansion of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) across critical and regulated industries, systems must be continuously updated to remain resilient. At the same time, they should be extremely secure and safe to operate and use. The DevOps approach caters to business demands of more speed and smartness in production, but it is extremely challenging to implement DevOps due to the complexity of critical CPSs and requirements from regulatory authorities. In this study, expert opinions from 33 European companies expose the gap in the current state of practice on DevOps-oriented continuous development and maintenance. The study contributes to research and practice by identifying a set of needs. Subsequently, the authors propose a novel approach called Secure DevOps and provide several avenues for further research and development in this area. The study shows that, because security is a cross-cutting property in complex CPSs, its proficient management requires system-wide competencies and capabilities across the CPSs development and operation.
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7

Ponte, Cristina, Maria João Leote de Carvalho, and Susana Batista. "Exploring European childrenʼs self-reported data on online aggression." Communications 46, no. 3 (September 1, 2021): 419–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/commun-2021-0050.

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Abstract To address the topic of children’s online aggression, this article explores a subsample from the EU Kids Online dataset (2017–2019) of 1404 children, aged 9–16, who reported having engaged in aggressive acts online in the previous year. Through a cluster analysis, respondents were classified into three groups. Findings emphasize the risk factors for aggression and how they relate to age-specific developmental tasks. Boys predominate, but the gender gap is not as wide as in offline contexts. For almost half of the children, aggression goes hand in hand with victimization. All the clusters share high levels of emotional deprivation. A sense of lacking social support, from both adults and peers, becomes more relevant among those children with high and more problematic engagement in online aggression. Results confirm that online aggression must be considered within the complex and fluid offline–online continuum cutting across the social contexts in which children grow.
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8

M. Taufan and Arida Susilowati. "The Study of Silviculture System for Selective Cutting and Line Planting (TPTJ) and Indonesian Selective Cutting and Planting (TPTI) Application at PT Intracawood Manufacturing Bulungan Regency, North Kalimantan." Journal of Sylva Indonesiana 3, no. 01 (February 21, 2020): 46–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.32734/jsi.v3i01.1985.

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Selective Cutting and Line Planting (TPTJ) silvicultural systems and Indonesian Selective Cutting and Planting (TPTI) are two of the five silvicultural systems that have been determined by the Ministry of Forestry Regulation No. P.11 / Menhut-II / 2009 juncto P.65 / Menhut-II / 2014 concerning silvicultural systems in the area of timber forest product utilization permits (IUPHHK) in production forests. Three other silvicultural systems based on the regulation are the Gap Logging silviculture system, the Fully Made Rejuvenation System, and the Multi Silviculture System. This study aims to examine the implementation of the TPTJ and TPTI systems in the PT Intracawood Manufacturing (PT Intraca) area, Bulungan Regency, North Kalimantan. The methodology of this research is through the approach of growth analysis, comparison of stand increment, observation of environmental conditions, interviews and literature study. Based on the field research, it was found that the diameter increments of Shorea leprosula, Shorea dasyphila, and Shorea parvifolia were greater in the TPTJ system compared to TPTI. However, the TPTI silviculture system at PT Intraca is easier to apply in the field than the TPTJ silviculture system. The TPTJ system has become less effective because planting in the TPTJ system has been carried out by making a 3-meter wide track with a length of approximately 1 km in a plot and if there is potential for the wood to become ineffective. In the area of PT Intraca, to improve the effectiveness of the TPTJ system a mosaic system is used where the planting path is made only in areas with less potential and representative for planting. The types of plants planted in the TPTJ system are far superior, perspective, and are faster than the types of plants in the TPTI system. Planting/enrichment in the TPTI system is easier because it does not need to make a planting path. Planting with seedlings from the extraction is only a transfer from the growth of tillers from areas with an excessive potential for tillers.
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9

Myo, H. H. S., K. V. Jayachandran, and K. L. Khin. "On a new species of Macrobrachium Spence Bate (Decapoda: Palaemonidae) from Ayeyarwady River, Myanmnar." Journal of Threatened Taxa 13, no. 1 (January 26, 2021): 17529–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.11609/jott.6287.13.1.17529-17536.

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Macrobrachium myanmarum sp. nov. was found from near Min Kun (local name Min Gon) at Mandalay, Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River (22.043N & 96.043E), Myanmar. It is a small-sized prawn showing close relation with Arachnochium kulsiense (Jayachandran et al. 2007) and A. mirabile (Kemp 1917). This species can at once be identified from both the species by the characters: medium-sized and highly-elevated and arched rostrum, extending as far as distal segment of antennular peduncle or behind, upper margin with 11–15 teeth of which three (rarely 4) teeth post-orbital; ventral margin without teeth (rarely one); second chelate legs unequal, right leg larger (sometimes left); major leg in which carpus with proximal part narrow and distal end broadened, subequal to merus, palm and fingers; propodus slightly more than the combined length of merus and carpus; fingers very slender, almost equal to palm, fixed finger a bit shorter than movable finger, cutting edges with 2–6 weak denticles at proximal cutting edges, distal denticle situated at about 1/3rd distance from base; ischium, merus, carpus, propodus, palm and dactylus in the ratio 9.62 : 19.25 : 24.06: 47.06 : 23.53 : 23.53, respectively (related to the total length of pereopod); minor leg with minute tubercles in larger specimens; ischium, merus, carpus, propodus, palm and fingers in the ratio 13.1 : 23.68 : 22.37 : 40.8 : 15.8 : 25.0, respectively (related to total length of pereopod); palm slightly swollen and shorter than fingers, fingers slender and curved with a wide gap when closed. Maximum size recorded for the species is 56mm male and 44mm female.
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10

Salau, T. A. O., and S. A. Oke. "The application of fractal box dimensions in predicting the emission characteristics of colliding sawdust particles for sustainable sawmilling." South Pacific Journal of Natural and Applied Sciences 30, no. 1 (2012): 18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sp12002.

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The prediction of emission characteristics of sawdust particles immediately after the cutting operation from the interaction of band saw?s blade and plank is a growing research area. Still, a wide gap exists with respect to understanding the behaviour of sawdust particles as they collide with one another. Previous efforts have focused on non-collision states of sawdust particles. However, in real life, collision of particles must occur, with several particles colliding after the cutting operation. This paper establishes a new perspective of the fractal properties of sawdust particles in motion as a motivation to understanding how to control its toxicity of effects on sawmill workers and maintain sustainable sawmilling activities. In particular, the possibility of predicting the fractal dimension of the randomly moving sawdust particles in sawmills that is generated as fractal curves using the combination of probabilities and theoretical fractal dimensions is investigated for the first time. Cases were established on the possible representations of the theory and practice. As an example, four cases were designed around varied number of fractal pattern combinations drawn out of five and fifty different probabilities combinations, ten different random number generating seed values and maximum of four fractal curves generation iterations as driven parameters. Preliminary study of the differences between theoretical fractal box dimension recorded a maximum absolute percentage error of 7.24% for fractal curve associated with fractal pattern five (i.e. Koch 5). In all the cases studied, average absolute percentage error decreases between 3.52 � 1.18 and 1.51 � 1.14 while the correlation coefficient (R2) decreases between 0.9315 and 0.7365 from case 1 to case 4, respectively. It is concluded that the model is a good predictor of sawdust particle emission at colliding states from cutting operation. This is reflected in the fact that the higher the number of fractal patterns (generators) in a study case, the smaller the correlation coefficient between average estimated fractal box dimension and predicted fractal dimension of the sawdust particles in motion in the sawmill.
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11

Deaconescu, Andrea, and Tudor Deaconescu. "Particularities of Plane Surface Lapping." Applied Mechanics and Materials 809-810 (November 2015): 9–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.809-810.9.

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Modelling of the lapping process proves a complex undertaking because of the different forms of the abrasive particles in the working area, the wide dispersion of their dimensions, the modifications of their shape and dimensions during processing. The paper proposes the spherical model of the abrasive grain, based on the known fact that a good quality of the processed surfaces requires compact grains, with a dimensional ratio as close as possible to 1:1:1. Based on the adopted model the distribution of tensions at the grain-workpiece contact is determined, as well as the penetration depths of the abrasive grains into the workpiece and the transfer object, respectively. For this certain initial conditions are necessary, like Hertzian contact between the abrasive grain and the processed surface and the neglecting of strain hardening. Taking into consideration the known fact that only the large abrasive grains participate in the actual cutting process while the rest remain suspended in the gap between workpiece and tool, as well as their dimensional distribution and concentration in the lapping slurry, the volume of abrasive material required for processing was determined by statistical methods.
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12

Vahdati, Mehrdad, and Ali Shokuhfar. "Design of Moving Components of an Ultra Precision Machine Tool for Nanometric Machining." Materials Science Forum 553 (August 2007): 232–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/msf.553.232.

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Ultra precision machines are used for very precise machining as well as small parts. Due to their application, the accuracy of products has been upgraded in recent years. Thus, dimensional accuracies could be compared with surface texture dimensions like roughness and etc. In order to attain dimensions with surface texture accuracy, usually micro/nano meter, it is necessary to adopt ordinary machining technologies with micro/nano techniques. This measuring by adoption leads to nano-machining. Nano-machining researches deal with all three basic components of, machine tools, work piece, and cutting tool, which have fundamental importance for development of this technique. Despite of wide range of possible researches, only part of design points of ultra precision machines have been considered in this report. Air operated systems, like air slide table, and air spindle are examples of ultra precision machine tool components. These two components have been analyzed for some of their characteristics. Experiments have been planed to extract the relationship between stiffness, employing some of the effective parameters such as air pressure and air gap. The results describe the performance condition of air table and air spindle under different loadings.
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Mouralova, Katerina, Tomas Prokes, Libor Benes, and Josef Bednar. "The Influence of WEDM Parameters Setup on the Occurrence of Defects When Machining Hardox 400 Steel." Materials 12, no. 22 (November 15, 2019): 3758. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma12223758.

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The unconventional technology wire electrical discharge machining is a highly used technology for producing precise and indented shaped parts of all materials that are at least electrically conductive. Its wide use makes this technology applicable in almost all branches of industry, even in the automotive industry, where the abrasion resistant material under investigation Hardox 400 steel is widely used for the manufacturing of truck bodies. The aim of this study was a comprehensive analysis of the machinability of this material using WEDM employing a 33−round experiment. Based on the change in machine parameters (pulse off time, gap voltage, discharge current, pulse on time, and wire feed), the cutting speed, the topography of machined surfaces, and the chemical composition of the workpiece surface, the morphology and condition of the subsurface layer including lamella production and a subsequent determination of the distribution of individual elements in the given area were analyzed. It has been found that during the machining of this steel, many defects occur in the subsurface layer of the material in the form of cracks with a depth of up to 22 µm and burned cavities. However, by appropriately adjusting the machine parameters, it was possible to completely remove these cracks.
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Blinov, D. S., and I. S. Chunosov. "FEATURES OF MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY FOR THIN-WALLED PARTS." Spravochnik. Inzhenernyi zhurnal, no. 283 (October 2020): 15–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.14489/hb.2020.10.pp.015-026.

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In Russia, there is a tendency to revive the machine tool industry. From here, research in the field of mechanical engineering technology becomes relevant. The most popular research in the field of mechanical engineering technology is research on improving the manufacturing technology of thin-walled parts based on more reliable calculations. Axisymmetric thin-walled parts are very widely used in mechanical engineering, and they can be divided into rings and shells depending on the ratio of length to diameter. The objects of research in the article, which is staged in the cycle of works, are rings. The review and analysis of devices for installing thin-walled parts and methods for calculating errors from the action of fixing forces and cutting forces showed that standard cartridges are most often used for installing rings, and in the calculations of fixing forces are assumed to be concentrated (applied at a point). The work offers special devices–mandrels with wide cams, which are advisable to use when installing rings in mass production. The rings have a tolerance for the diameter of the base hole, which is intended to be used in the study. The purpose of the study is to develop an engineering method for calculating the shape error in the cross section of a thin-walled ring fixed by three wide mandrel сams, taking into account the width of the contact area and the initial radial gap between the diameter of the workpiece hole and the diameter of the working cylindrical surface of the cam. The tasks that will allow you to achieve the goal, the initial data, and a number of assumptions to simplify the study are identified.
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Blinov, D. S., and I. S. Chunosov. "FEATURES OF MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY FOR THIN-WALLED PARTS." Spravochnik. Inzhenernyi zhurnal, no. 283 (October 2020): 15–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.14489/hb.2020.10.pp.015-026.

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In Russia, there is a tendency to revive the machine tool industry. From here, research in the field of mechanical engineering technology becomes relevant. The most popular research in the field of mechanical engineering technology is research on improving the manufacturing technology of thin-walled parts based on more reliable calculations. Axisymmetric thin-walled parts are very widely used in mechanical engineering, and they can be divided into rings and shells depending on the ratio of length to diameter. The objects of research in the article, which is staged in the cycle of works, are rings. The review and analysis of devices for installing thin-walled parts and methods for calculating errors from the action of fixing forces and cutting forces showed that standard cartridges are most often used for installing rings, and in the calculations of fixing forces are assumed to be concentrated (applied at a point). The work offers special devices–mandrels with wide cams, which are advisable to use when installing rings in mass production. The rings have a tolerance for the diameter of the base hole, which is intended to be used in the study. The purpose of the study is to develop an engineering method for calculating the shape error in the cross section of a thin-walled ring fixed by three wide mandrel сams, taking into account the width of the contact area and the initial radial gap between the diameter of the workpiece hole and the diameter of the working cylindrical surface of the cam. The tasks that will allow you to achieve the goal, the initial data, and a number of assumptions to simplify the study are identified.
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16

Meng, Zhaozong, Zhipeng Wu, and John Gray. "Microwave sensor technologies for food evaluation and analysis: Methods, challenges and solutions." Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control 40, no. 12 (September 20, 2017): 3433–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142331217721968.

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Microwave sensor technology is widely accepted as a non-destructive and hygienic means for food evaluation and analysis. However, its applications concentrate on in-lab investigations, which are not widely applied for on-line measurement in food industry. Motivated by the rapid progress of microwave technologies and the lack of on-line measurement systems in industry, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of microwave sensors for food measurement, define the technological gap, and suggest the potential solutions. With a brief introduction to the fundamentals, classification and analysis of the traditional methods and technologies are presented, followed by a discussion of calibration and decision-making methods. Based on the analysis of the cutting-edge microwave sensing technologies, the limitations and challenges facing the present studies are identified. Then, focusing on some new emerging technologies including Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits, antenna array and System on Chip Ultra-Wide Band pulse-based time domain systems, the feasibility and prospective of potential solutions in this particular area are suggested. In addition, integration of emerging Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and new design concepts of the sensor system concerning the practical use for smart manufacturing are also illustrated. The potentiality of the suggested new emerging technologies and integration of ICT to satisfy future digitised industry will be inspirational and of interest to researchers of both microwave engineering and food sectors.
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Morales, Jesús, Ricardo Vázquez-Martín, Anthony Mandow, David Morilla-Cabello, and Alfonso García-Cerezo. "The UMA-SAR Dataset: Multimodal data collection from a ground vehicle during outdoor disaster response training exercises." International Journal of Robotics Research 40, no. 6-7 (April 6, 2021): 835–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/02783649211004959.

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This article presents a collection of multimodal raw data captured from a manned all-terrain vehicle in the course of two realistic outdoor search and rescue (SAR) exercises for actual emergency responders conducted in Málaga (Spain) in 2018 and 2019: the UMA-SAR dataset. The sensor suite, applicable to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), consisted of overlapping visible light (RGB) and thermal infrared (TIR) forward-looking monocular cameras, a Velodyne HDL-32 three-dimensional (3D) lidar, as well as an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and two global positioning system (GPS) receivers as ground truth. Our mission was to collect a wide range of data from the SAR domain, including persons, vehicles, debris, and SAR activity on unstructured terrain. In particular, four data sequences were collected following closed-loop routes during the exercises, with a total path length of 5.2 km and a total time of 77 min. In addition, we provide three more sequences of the empty site for comparison purposes (an extra 4.9 km and 46 min). Furthermore, the data is offered both in human-readable format and as rosbag files, and two specific software tools are provided for extracting and adapting this dataset to the users’ preference. The review of previously published disaster robotics repositories indicates that this dataset can contribute to fill a gap regarding visual and thermal datasets and can serve as a research tool for cross-cutting areas such as multispectral image fusion, machine learning for scene understanding, person and object detection, and localization and mapping in unstructured environments. The full dataset is publicly available at: www.uma.es/robotics-and-mechatronics/sar-datasets .
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Vichare, P., A. Nassehi, and S. Newman. "A unified manufacturing resource model for representation of computerized numerically controlled machine tools." Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture 223, no. 5 (January 26, 2009): 463–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1243/09544054jem1363.

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The capability of any manufacturing system primarily depends on its available machine tools. Thus machine tool representation is a vital part of modelling any manufacturing system. With the rapid advances in computerized numerically controlled (CNC) machines, machine tool representation has become a more challenging task than ever before. Today's CNC machine tools are more than just automated manufacturing machines, as they can be considered multi-purpose, multi-tasking, and hybrid machining centres. This paper presents a versatile methodology for representing such state-of-the-art CNC machining system resources. A machine tool model is a conceptual representation of the real machine tool and provides a logical framework for representing its functionality in the manufacturing system. There are several commercial modelling tools available in the market for modelling machine tools. However, there is no common methodology among them to represent the wide diversity of machine tool configurations. These modelling tools are either machine vendor specific or limited in their scope to represent machine tool capability. In addition, the current information models of STEP-NC, namely ISO 14649, can only describe machining operations, technologies, cutting tools, and product geometries. However, they do not support the representation of machine tools. The proposed unified manufacturing resource model (UMRM) has a data model which can fill this gap by providing machine specific data in the form of an EXPRESS schema and act as a complementary part to the STEP-NC standard to represent various machine tools in a standardized form. UMRM is flexible enough to represent any type of CNC machining centre. This machine tool representation can be utilized to represent machine tool functionality and consequential process capabilities for allocating resources for process planning and machining.
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Woziwoda, Beata, and Dominik Kopeć. "Changes in the silver fir forest vegetation 50 years after cessation of active management." Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae 84, no. 2 (2015): 177–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.5586/asbp.2015.024.

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Knowledge of the vegetation and the monitoring of its changes in preserved areas is an essential part of effective conservation policy and management. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of traditional methods of conservation of silver fir forests. The study analyses the changes in the structure and species composition of a temperate forest excluded from the commercial silvicultural management for 50 years, and since then protected as a nature reserve. The study is based on a comparative analysis of phytosociological reléves made on permanent plots in 1961, 1982, 1994 and 2011. PCA and ecological indicator values were analyzed, as well as characteristic species based on an indicator value (IndVal) index. Results revealed significant and dynamic changes in the forest structure and composition. The mixed coniferous-broadleaved forest with <em>Abies alba</em> and diverse ground flora, considered in the 1960s as valuable and worthy of conservation, was found to have been anthropogenically transformed and unstable. Significant reduction in the human impact was followed by spontaneous regeneration of oak–hornbeam forest. However, the directional process of changes in vegetation was modified by such silvicultural treatments as selective cutting of trees and gap creation, all intended for silver fir maintenance. The results show that <em>Carpinus betulus</em> effectively outcompeted <em>Pinus sylvestris</em>, <em>Picea abies</em>, <em>Quercus robur</em> and <em>A. alba</em>. Changes in the forest overstory and understory caused temporal changes in the habitat conditions reflected in changes in the ground vegetation composition. The proportion of light-demanding and oligotrophic species significantly decreased, while the contribution of species with a wide ecological amplitude, i.e. more shade-tolerant and nutrient-demanding – increased. The share of <em>A. alba</em> was reduced. Species defined in this study as most valuable, should be actively protected, or selection of conservation targets should be re-evaluated.
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Cañadas, Alvaro Gustavo, Diana Rade, Joffre Andrade Candell, José Ciro Hernández-Díaz, Carlos Molina Hidrovo, Marcos Zambrano, and Christian Wehenkel. "Gap edge attributes in Neotropical rainforest, Ecuador." Revista de Biología Tropical 66, no. 1 (December 13, 2017): 149. http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/rbt.v66i1.27612.

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In many parts of the world, forestry objectives are now shifting from focusing on maximum production to a wider perspective that includes biodiversity preservation and ecosystem functioning. To achieve these targets, managers are increasingly designing cutting regimes that imitate natural disturbances, with the aim of generating a more naturally structured forest. In many old-growth forests, tree fall gaps caused by tree death constitute the dominant type of disturbance. The application of gap dynamics theory appears to be a promising option for tropical forest management and conservation. In the present study of a tree species-rich and old-growth Ecuadorian Neotropical forest, we assessed the spatial distribution of gaps and gap size in relation to: i) tree number at the gap edge, ii) number of tree species at the gap edge, iii) number of tree species per stem at the gap edge, iv) species similarity, v) species evenness at the gap edge, vi) size differentiation at the gap edge, vii) gap isolation and viii) species mingling at the gap edge. Understanding natural gap processes in these forests is crucial for establishing new forestry practices in these forests to mimic natural processes of disturbance. Our results demonstrated that the spatial distribution of gaps was random. Various gap attributes were strongly associated with gap size. The number of tree species per stem at the gap edge was negatively correlated to the gap size. Gap sizes up to 50 m2 were mostly sufficient to generate tree species-rich forest stands. Assuming that our results were representative for an old-growth neotropical rainforest in Ecuador, our study remarks the following management recommendations: 1) Rainforests have a very complex spatial and diversity structure and logging activities should preferably be omitted because of adverse effects. 2) If logging is inevitable, this should mimic a random choice of trees and tree species, to prevent special selection of tree dimension and species; and a random distribution of trees to be logged, to produce gaps smaller than 50 m2 and never larger than 400 m2. Additionally, we suggest cutting not more than 5 % of the tree biomass per 10-20 years period, to preclude stronger alterations of ecosystem processes, and the reduction of existing dead wood from the ecosystem.
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Harirforoush, R., J. Olson, and P. Wild. "Indications of the onset of fiber cutting in low consistency refining using a refiner force sensor: The effect of pulp furnish." Nordic Pulp & Paper Research Journal 33, no. 1 (May 23, 2018): 58–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/npprj-2018-3013.

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Abstract Detection of the onset of fiber cutting is beneficial in low consistency refining as it may prevent reduction of average fiber length, optimize fiber quality improvements by operating at gaps just wider than the critical gap, avoid decreasing the strength properties of paper, and increase energy efficiency. The objective of this study is to understand the effect of pulp furnish on measured bar forces and, more specifically, on the detection of fiber cutting. Bar forces, i. e. forces applied to pulp fibers by the refiner bars, are measured with a custom-designed piezoelectric force sensor. Trials were conducted with an AIKAWA 16-in. single-disc refiner using hemlock/balsam softwood thermomechanical pulp, SPF softwood thermomechanical pulp, northern bleached softwood kraft pulp, and aspen hardwood thermomechanical pulp at 3.0 to 3.5 % consistency at rotational speeds of 1200 and 1400 rpm. The power of the time domain signal of the measured forces is introduced as an indicator of the onset of fiber cutting. Our results show that this new fiber cutting metric is a sensitive and reliable metric for determination of fibre cutting for a range of pulp furnishes. The study suggests that the refiner force sensor has potential to be exploited for in-process detection of fiber cutting.
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Pa, Pai Shan. "Design of Simultaneous Ultrasonic Effects in Grinding and Electrofinishing on Taper Hole." Key Engineering Materials 416 (September 2009): 228–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/kem.416.228.

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The current study involves the use of ultrasonic vibration of the electrolyte to assist in removing electrolytic product and cuttings from the machining gap in the surface finish process of grinding and electro-finishing the inside surface of a tapered hole. The design of the finish-tool includes a taper grinding-tool joined to an electrode. In the experiment, the finish-tool is gradually fed into the taper hole and the electrode is used with continuous or pulsed direct current. The experimental results show that a high current together with ultrasonic vibration is effective in material removal and in the improvement of the finishing effect. The average effect of the ultrasonic vibration is greater than that of the pulsed current while the machining time need not be longer than the off-time. The finishing effect is better with a wide gap between the grinding-tool and the electrode. A high rotational speed of the finish-tool guides and discharges the dregs and cuttings efficiently and also improves the finish. The simultaneous use of ultrasonics with grinding and electro-finishing (SUGEF) also shortens the time it takes make the inside wall of the tapered hole smooth and bright.
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Li, Zhen, Jianha Wang, Zhengcheng Suen, Fei Cu, and Nan Li. "Study of Sporotrichosis by TEM and SEM." Proceedings, annual meeting, Electron Microscopy Society of America 48, no. 3 (August 12, 1990): 200–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424820100158546.

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Sporotrichosis is a common infective mycosis that is caused by Sporotrichum schenckii, a dimorphic fungus. The ultrastructures of primary skin in sporotrichosis in human tissue were observed under a transmission electron microscope (TME) and a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results are reported below.The primary skin lesions were obtained from patients with sporotrichosis by biopsy. TEM and SEM specimens were prepared by routine methods and refrigeration cutting. Under the TEM, the gap between epidermic kerationcytes was wider than normal and the amount of desmasome decreased. Infiltrations of Langerhans’s cells, granulocytes, lymphocytes, macrophage, and plasma cells were observed in the epidermis. Relicts of S. schenckii were found in the gap of stratum granulosum. A number of inflammatory cells infiltrated into the dermis. Spores of S. schenckii were phagocyted by histiocyte in a shallow layer of the dermis.
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Mullally, Hannah L., David S. Buckley, James A. Fordyce, Beverly Collins, and Charles Kwit. "Bee Communities across Gap, Edge, and Closed-Canopy Microsites in Forest Stands with Group Selection Openings." Forest Science 65, no. 6 (June 11, 2019): 751–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/forsci/fxz035.

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Abstract As insect pollinator populations continue to decline, it is essential to understand the impacts of anthropogenic activities, including forest management, on pollinator communities. Although multiple studies have shown that clearcutting is beneficial for bees, other less intense, selective silvicultural methods that result in disproportionate increases in edge habitat within stands are less well understood. We investigated bee community characteristics across microsites (center of cut, edge of cut, and closed-canopy forest) in three mixed-mesophytic forest stands subjected to group selection cuttings. Results revealed bee communities in the center of cuts and their edges to differ from those in forest microsites, and their diversity measures were higher than in forest microsites. Within-stand edge microsites did not differ from their cut centers in terms of their communities or their diversity. Finally, center of cut and edge microsites combined, and forest microsites, were characterized by different indicator species, thereby exemplifying differences between these two microsite groupings. These results suggest that group selection harvests support differing communities of bees across microsites and sustain a wide range of bee species, and that edges within these forest stands behaved more like extensions of canopy gap openings despite differences in forest physiognomy.
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Tsujimori, Tatsuki. "Omphacite-diopside vein in an omphacitite block from the Osayama serpentinite melange, Sangun-Renge metamorphic belt, southwestern Japan." Mineralogical Magazine 61, no. 409 (December 1997): 845–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1180/minmag.1997.061.409.07.

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AbstractOmphacite (Jd46.1–52.0Ae0–8.4Aug48.0–51.2) and diopside (Jd4.3–6.3Ae0–0.4Aug93.6–95.6) coexist in a vein cutting an omphacitite block in a serpentinite melange of the Oeyama ophiolite, central Chugoku Mountains. The compositional gap between omphacite and diopside is significantly wider than for other omphacitediopside pairs reported in the literature. The intergrowth texture of the omphacite-diopside vein suggests that the clinopyroxene pair was contemporaneously crystallized in the fracture from a Ca-bearing, alkali-rich fluid in a sub-solvus condition. Such a fluid may have been introduced from the surrounding serpentinized clinopyroxene-bearing harzburgite. The stability of omphacite and Al-rich pumpellyite in the matrix and the omphacite-diopside vein indicate that the earlier matrix recrystallization and later fracture filling may have both taken place under high-P-T condition during the melange-forming stage.
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Kondori, Alireza Amoli, Kambiz Abrari Vajari, Mohammad Feizian, Antonio Montagnoli, and Antonino Di Iorio. "Gap Size in Hyrcanian Forest Affects the Lignin and N Concentrations of the Oriental Beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky) Fine Roots but Does Not Change Their Morphological Traits in the Medium Term." Forests 12, no. 2 (January 26, 2021): 137. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/f12020137.

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Research Highlights: Fine roots play an important role in plant growth as well as in carbon (C) and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Gaining a wider knowledge of their dynamics under forest gap opening would improve our understanding of soil carbon input and below-ground carbon stock accumulation. Single-tree selection is increasingly recognized as an alternative regime of selection cutting sustaining biodiversity and carbon stock, along with timber production, among ecosystem functions. However, the fine root response in terms of morphological and chemical composition to the resulting harvest-created gaps remains unclear. Background and Objectives: This paper investigates the effect in the medium term (i.e., 6 years after logging) of differently sized harvest-created gaps on fine root dynamics and chemical composition. Materials and Methods: A total of 15 differently sized gaps (86.05–350.7 m2) and the adjacent 20 m distant closed canopies (control) were selected in a temperate Fagus orientalis forest (Hyrcanian region, Iran). Eight soil cores were collected at the cardinal points of the gap edge, including four facing the gap area—the same at the adjacent intact forest. Results: For the selected edge trees, the different size of gaps, the core position, and the tree orientation did not affect the investigated morphological traits, except for the slightly higher specific root length (SRL) for the larger fine root fraction (1–2 mm) in the side facing the gap area. Differently, the investigated chemical traits such as N concentration and cellulose:lignin ratio significantly increased with increasing gap size, the opposite for C:N ratio and lignin. Moreover, N concentration and C:N significantly decreased and increased with the fine root diameter, respectively. Conclusions: This work highlighted that, in the medium term and within the adopted size range, artificial gap opening derived from single-tree selection practice affected the chemistry rather than the biomass and morphology of gap-facing fine roots of edge trees. The medium term of six years after gap creation might have been long enough for the recovery of the fine root standing biomass to the pre-harvest condition, particularly near the stem of edge trees. A clear size threshold did not come out; nevertheless, 300 m2 may be considered a possible cut-off determining a marked change in the responses of fine roots.
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GRIFFIN, CARL J. "‘Cut down by some cowardly miscreants’: Plant Maiming, or the Malicious Cutting of Flora, as an Act of Protest in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rural England." Rural History 19, no. 1 (April 2008): 29–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0956793307002294.

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AbstractSince the publication of Hobsbawm and Rudé'sCaptain Swingour understanding of the role(s) of covert protests in Hanoverian rural England has advanced considerably. Whilst we now know much about the dramatic practices of incendiarism and animal maiming and the voices of resistance in seemingly straightforward acquisitive acts, one major gap remains. Despite the fact that almost thirty years have passed since E. P. Thompson brought to our attention that under the notorious ‘Black Act’ the malicious cutting of trees was a capital offence, no subsequent research has been published. This paper seeks to address this major lacuna by systematically analysing the practices and patterns of malicious attacks on plants (‘plant maiming’) in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century southern England. It is shown that not only did plant maiming take many different forms, attacking every conceivable type of flora, but also that it was universally understood and practised. In some communities plant maiming was the protestors' weapon of choice. As a social practice it therefore embodied wider community beliefs regarding the defence of plebeian livelihoods and identities.
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V., Panasyuk,. "The substantiation of the technical solution for improving the application of chemical plant protection products using pneumohydraulic sprayers." Mehanization and electrification of agricultural, no. 9(108) (2019): 51–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.37204/0131-2189-2019-9-6.

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Purpose. Improving the effectiveness of plant protection products when growing crops due to the pneumohydraulic device that ensures their uniform application to the sheet surface. Methods. Analytical and Experimental. Results. Laboratory studies of the process of spraying plants with nozzles with a pneumohydraulic system determined the quality indicators of the process with pressure in injection communication 0.4 MPa – droplet coating density of 19–46 pcs/cm2 for the weighted average droplet diameters in the different experimental variants was within 304–543 microns. These indicators were compared with those for the standard, anti-drift and injection nozzles in which the droplet coating density was 23–59 pcs/cm2 and the weighted average droplet diameters were in the range of 350–485 microns. The obtained analytical dependence of the influence of lateral air flow and air pressure in the pneumohydraulic system on the amount of deposited sprayed liquid. The annual economic effect from the introduction of this technical device with pneumohydraulic spraying system is 10434 UAH. Conclusions 1. The tendencies development technical means of chemical protection plants are determined: the use of sprayers with monodispersed cutting by drops adapted to weather conditions, which allow the operator to work in a wider range of speeds like wind (up to 9 m/s) and the speed of the unit (up to 30 km/h). To improve the quality of spraying, devices with air supply to the nozzles are used to control the dispersion of the spray depending on weather conditions. 2. It was established that with increasing pressure of air from 0.12 MPa there is a decrease in the diameter of the droplets. And at a pressure more than 0.25 MPa, the cutting is equivalent to a standard small-gap slot sprayer. During researches, it was discovered that the air pressure could be influenced by the dispersion of droplet cutting. Keywords: pneumatic hydraulic spray, model sketches, laboratory tests, performance indicators, analytical fluidity, fluid pressure, air pressure.
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Akintunde, A. R., I. H. Saidu, M. A. Oguntoye, H. K. Mohammed, A. Mustapha, J. Jibrin, I. Haruna, et al. "Growth performance of starter broiler starter chicks fed soaked and fermented baobab (Adansonia digitata) seed meal based diets." Nigerian Journal of Animal Production 48, no. 1 (February 28, 2021): 69–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.51791/njap.v48i1.2892.

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Means of cutting down cost of feed resources in order to bridge the wide gap between demand and supply of animal protein in livestock production is a great concern in the poultry industry. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of feeding diets containing soaked and fermented Baobab seed meal (BSM) on the growth performance of broiler starter chicks. A total of 150, one-day old chicks were randomly distributed into five treatment groups. Treatments were replicated three times with 10 chicks per replicate in a completely randomized design (CRD). The dietary groups were designated as T1 for control (0 % BSM), T2 (7.5 % SBSM), T3 (15.0% SBSM), T4 (22.5% FBSM) and T5 (30 % FBSM). Parameters monitored include final weight, weight gain, feed intake, feed conversion ratio, feed cost per kg gain (N) and mortality (%) The experiment lasted for 4 weeks. The results showed that the dietary treatments had significant (P<0.05) effect on all the parameters measured. Final weight and total weight gain were similar and significantly (P<0.05) higher in birds fed diets T2 and T4 when compared to other dietary treatments. However, birds in T5 group had the least significant (P<0.05) values 366.67 and 217.34 g/bird respectively. Daily weight gain (7.76 g/bird/day), total and daily feed intake (873.33 g and 31.19 g/bird/day) of birds followed similar trend and were significantly (P<0.05) lower in T5 group compared to other treatments. Feed conversion ratio of birds fed diet T5 had significantly (P<0.05) higher value (4.29) when compared to those in other treatment groups. Feed cost per kg gain (N) was significantly (P<0.05) lower and similar in birds fed T2, T3 and T4 when compared to values obtained in the control group (N253.27) and T5 (N 327.52). Mortality (%) only occurred in birds fed T5. It was therefore concluded that inclusion of 22.5% fermented baobab seed meal in broiler diets improved performance and had no negative effect on the health status of birds. Des moyens de réduire le coût des ressources alimentaires afin de combler le defi posé à cause de la demande et l'approvisionnement en protéines animales dans la production animale est une grande préoccupation dans l'industrie avicole. Cette étude a été menée pour étudier l'effet des regimes alimentaires contenant de la farine de graines de baobab trempée et fermentée (le 'BSM') sur les performances de croissance des poussins de départ. Un total de 150 poussins âgés d'un jour ont été répartis au hasard en cinq groupes de traitement. Les traitements ont été répliqués trois fois avec 10 poussins par réplique dans une conception complètement randomisée (le 'CRD'). Les groupes diététiques ont été désignés comme T1 pour le contrôle (0% BSM), T2 (7,5% SBSM), T3 (15,0% SBSM), T4 (22,5% FBSM) et T5 (30% FBSM). Les paramètres surveillés comprennent le poids final, le gain de poids, la prise alimentaire, le taux de conversion alimentaire, le coût de l'alimentation par kg de gain (N) et la mortalité (%). L'expérience a duré 4 semaines. Les résultats ont montré que les traitements diététiques avaient un effet significatif (P <0,05) sur tous les paramètres mesurés. Le poids final et le gain de poids total étaient similaires et significativement (P<0,05) plus élevés chez les oiseaux nourris avec les régimes T2 et T4 par rapport aux autres traitements diététiques. Cependant, les oiseaux du groupe T5 avaient les valeurs les moins significatives (P <0,05) 366,67 et 217,34 g / oiseau respectivement. Le gain de poids quotidien (7,76 g / oiseau / jour), l'apport alimentaire total et quotidien (873,33 g et 31,19 g / oiseau / jour) des oiseaux ont suivi une tendance similaire et étaient significativement (P<0,05) inférieurs dans le groupe T5 par rapport aux autres traitements. Le rapport de conversion alimentaire des oiseaux nourris au régime alimentaire T5 avait une valeur significativement plus élevée (P <0,05) (4,29) par rapport à ceux des autres groupes de traitement. Le coût de l'alimentation par kg de gain (N) était significativement (P <0,05) plus faible et similaire chez les oiseaux nourris T2, T3 et T4 par rapport aux valeurs obtenues dans le groupe témoin (N253,27) et T5 (N 327,52). La mortalité (%) n'est survenue que chez les oiseaux nourris au T5. Il a donc été conclu que l'inclusion de farine de graines de baobab fermentée à 22,5% dans les régimes alimentaires des poulets de chair améliorait les performances et n'avait aucun effet négatif sur l'état de santé des oiseaux.
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Wen, Jun, Haifeng Hou, Metin Kozak, Fang Meng, Chung-En Yu, and Wei Wang. "The missing link between medical science knowledge and public awareness: implications for tourism and hospitality recovery after COVID-19." European Journal of Management and Business Economics 30, no. 2 (May 14, 2021): 230–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ejmbe-11-2020-0329.

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PurposeAs the world grapples with the pervasive effects of the coronavirus pandemic, a notable disconnect has emerged in the public's understanding of scientific and medical research. Particularly, the travel industry has become unquestionably vulnerable amid the COVID-19 outbreak; this pandemic has interrupted the industry's operations with devastating economic consequences. This paper aims to highlight the importance of deconstructing barriers between medical science and public awareness related to COVID-19, taking tourism as a case in point. It also discusses the role of interdisciplinary research in facilitating the tourism and hospitality industry's recovery and alleviating tourists' uncertainties in the wake of COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThis paper offers a synthesis of news coverage from several media outlets, framed within the literature on knowledge transformation across disciplines. This framing focuses on the medical sciences (e.g. public health) and social sciences (e.g. tourism management) to identify gaps between medical scientific knowledge and public awareness in the context of COVID-19. The authors' experience in public health and tourism management further demonstrates a missing link between academic research and the information made available in public health and everyday settings. A potential research agenda is proposed accordingly.FindingsThis paper summarizes how salient issues related to knowledge transfer can become intensified during a global pandemic, such as medical research not being communicated in plain language, which leads some citizens to feel apathetic about findings. Reporting on the prevalence and anticipated consequences of disease outbreaks can hence be difficult, especially early in the development of diseases such as COVID-19.Research limitations/implicationsBy assuming a cross-disciplinary perspective on medical/health and social science research, this paper encourages academic and practical collaboration to bring medical research to the masses. This paper also outlines several research directions to promote public health, safety and sustainability through tourism.Practical implicationsThis paper highlights that it is essential for medical knowledge to be disseminated in a manner that promotes public understanding. The tourism and hospitality industry can benefit from an essential understanding of medical findings, particularly during this pandemic. Without a firm grasp on COVID-19's origins and treatment, the tourism and hospitality industry will likely struggle to recover from this catastrophe.Social implicationsTaking COVID-19 as a case in point, this study advocates leveraging the strengths of disparate domains to bring medical findings to a wider audience and showcase cutting-edge developments for the greater good. This study also emphasizes the importance of engaging the general public in reputable scientific research findings to increase public awareness in a professional and accurate manner.Originality/valueThis paper presents a unique and critical discussion of the gap between medical science knowledge and public awareness, as well as its implications for tourism and hospitality recovery after COVID-19, with a focus on applying medical scientific knowledge to post-pandemic industry recovery.
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Kabir, Abuzar, and Victoria Samanidou. "Fabric Phase Sorptive Extraction: A Paradigm Shift Approach in Analytical and Bioanalytical Sample Preparation." Molecules 26, no. 4 (February 6, 2021): 865. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules26040865.

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Fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE) is an evolutionary sample preparation approach which was introduced in 2014, meeting all green analytical chemistry (GAC) requirements by implementing a natural or synthetic permeable and flexible fabric substrate to host a chemically coated sol–gel organic–inorganic hybrid sorbent in the form of an ultra-thin coating. This construction results in a versatile, fast, and sensitive micro-extraction device. The user-friendly FPSE membrane allows direct extraction of analytes with no sample modification, thus eliminating/minimizing the sample pre-treatment steps, which are not only time consuming, but are also considered the primary source of major analyte loss. Sol–gel sorbent-coated FPSE membranes possess high chemical, solvent, and thermal stability due to the strong covalent bonding between the fabric substrate and the sol–gel sorbent coating. Subsequent to the extraction on FPSE membrane, a wide range of organic solvents can be used in a small volume to exhaustively back-extract the analytes after FPSE process, leading to a high preconcentration factor. In most cases, no solvent evaporation and sample reconstitution are necessary. In addition to the extensive simplification of the sample preparation workflow, FPSE has also innovatively combined the extraction principle of two major, yet competing sample preparation techniques: solid phase extraction (SPE) with its characteristic exhaustive extraction, and solid phase microextraction (SPME) with its characteristic equilibrium driven extraction mechanism. Furthermore, FPSE has offered the most comprehensive cache of sorbent chemistry by successfully combining almost all of the sorbents traditionally used exclusively in either SPE or in SPME. FPSE is the first sample preparation technique to exploit the substrate surface chemistry that complements the overall selectivity and the extraction efficiency of the device. As such, FPSE indeed represents a paradigm shift approach in analytical/bioanalytical sample preparation. Furthermore, an FPSE membrane can be used as an SPME fiber or as an SPE disk for sample preparation, owing to its special geometric advantage. So far, FPSE has overwhelmingly attracted the interest of the separation scientist community, and many analytical scientists have been developing new methodologies by implementing this cutting-edge technique for the extraction and determination of many analytes at their trace and ultra-trace level concentrations in environmental samples as well as in food, pharmaceutical, and biological samples. FPSE offers a total sample preparation solution by providing neutral, cation exchanger, anion exchanger, mixed mode cation exchanger, mixed mode anion exchanger, zwitterionic, and mixed mode zwitterionic sorbents to deal with any analyte regardless of its polarity, ionic state, or the sample matrix where it resides. Herein we present the theoretical background, synthesis, mechanisms of extraction and desorption, the types of sorbents, and the main applications of FPSE so far according to different sample categories, and to briefly show the progress, advantages, and the main principles of the proposed technique.
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Houwing, Maite E., Marit Buddenbaum, Thijs C. J. Verheul, Anne P. J. de Pagter, Jan A. Hazelzet, and Marjon H. Cnossen. "Improving Access to Healthcare for Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease Patients and Their Families." Blood 134, Supplement_1 (November 13, 2019): 4835. http://dx.doi.org/10.1182/blood-2019-129892.

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Introduction Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a severe inherited red blood cell disorder with high morbidity requiring integrated comprehensive care. There are not many chronic diseases that primarily affect those from an often impoverished, minority background. Care delivery is complicated by disparities in healthcare regarding access. Cultural mismatches between providers and families also play a role. Healthcare access can be defined as the degree of fit between patients and the healthcare system (1, 2), and is described by four overlapping dimensions: physical accessibility, affordability, information accessibility and non-discrimination (3, 4). This qualitative study focuses on the challenges regarding the right to healthcare for children and adolescents with SCD and their families. The aims of this study were to (a) map the various perspectives and initiatives of SCD healthcare professionals, while focusing on existing best practices and lessons learned and (b) to provide practical recommendations relevant for high-income countries to improve accessibility of healthcare in SCD. Methods This qualitative study consisted of semi-structured, in-depth interviews which were conducted from February 1st to May 1st 2019 with SCD healthcare professionals, including (pediatric) hematologists, nurses, and psychosocial staff. Participants were affiliated with the SCORE (Sickle Cell Outcome REsearch) consortium which includes all SCD comprehensive care centers in the Netherlands (Fig 1). We identified eligible participants within SCORE and recruited participants using a combination of maximum variation and snowball sampling. Interviews occurred privately and were audio-recorded. The audio-recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using the NVivoâ qualitative analysis software. Results Twenty-four healthcare professionals from different clinical sites participated in the study (Fig 1). Transcripts were coded into the four dimensions of health care access. Content analyses of the four dimensions in turn, revealed seven themes associated with best practices on topics related to improving accessibility of health care for children and adolescent SCD patients and their families (Fig 2). These themes included: 1) Cutting invisible costs: addressing the financial burden of a child with SCD; 2) Same-day appointments: reducing the amount of hospital visits; 3) Specialized and shared care: bridging the gap; 4) Optimizing methods of verbal and written communication: enabling mutual understanding between patients and healthcare professionals; 5) Building strong digital connections: improving the use of e-health while watching out for pitfalls; 6) Tools for patient empowerment and resilience: being aware of (self) stigmatization; and 7) Changing society: towards compassion and public awareness. Discussion The United Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child is the most widely signed and ratified human rights treaty and safeguards the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. This right must be interpreted broadly, paying attention to all factors that may affect the realization of this right (5). Equity of access to healthcare for all patient populations requires the appreciation of intersecting vulnerabilities. This qualitative study provides best practices and solution-based recommendations from a grassroots-level to improve access to healthcare for children and adolescents with SCD and their families. Healthcare professionals experience a unique combination of intersecting vulnerabilities that characterize SCD patients and hampers their overall access to necessary healthcare. The seven key recommendations address these obstacles across all four dimensions of accessibility. Holistic implementation would positively impact the access to the highest attainable standard of healthcare for pediatric SCD patients and their families. These recommendations are built on local best practices that deserve wider implementation. They are especially relevant in the organization of SCD care, but all physicians will recognize these experiences with regard to healthcare in vulnerable patient populations in general. Disclosures Cnossen: Pfizer: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Bayer: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Novo Nordisk: Research Funding; Nordic Pharma: Research Funding; CSL Behring: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Sobi: Research Funding; Baxter: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Shire: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Takeda: Other: Travel Grants, Research Funding; Roche: Other: Travel Grants; NWO: Other: Governmental grants , ZonMW, Innovation fund and Nationale Wetenschapsagenda 2018.
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Djohan, Tjut Sugandawaty, P. M. Laksono, Esti Anantasari, Angga N. Utama, and Krisni Suhesthiningsih. "KONDISI HUTAN BAKAU TEBANGAN MASYARAKAT DAN INDUSTRI PULP DI BATU AMPAR KALIMANTAN BARAT." Jurnal Kawistara 5, no. 2 (October 19, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.22146/kawistara.7590.

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The purpose of this research was to study tree cutting of mangrove forest by the local people of Batu Ampar and the pulp industry at Kapuas river estuary. At each site the rapid measurement methods were established using quadrate plots of 20m x 20m and 5m x 5m, each with 2 replicates. The results revealed that the local people only cut the selective trees of Rhizophora apiculata and Bruguiera gymnorhiza with diameter of 20-25 cm2 at 0.25 ha wide, which created gap canopy as small disturbace to the mangrove forest. This area of gap canopy immediately was colonized and dominated by R. apiculata. The mangrove tree cuttings created the phase gap generations. This forest recovered quickly, thus the small distrurbance maintained the mangrove tree species diversity. The Rhizophora roots were habitat for nusery grown of larval shrimps, crabs, and fishes. The pulp industry cut all of the mangrove species wich created big disturbance and huge gap area. The forest also recovered quickly, but was dominated by Xylocarpus granatum. Thus, the big disturbance by the pulp industry caused the shifted species of the mangrove forest species from Rhizophora and Bruguiera to Xylocarpus. The roots of Xylocarpus tree were not habitat forthelarval shrimps, crabs, and fishes, which decreased the fisherman catch. The forest rehabilitation of industrial cutting was planted regularly with Rhizophora, and created many current canals which proned to the erosion. Thus the pulp industry of mangrove forest cutting threatened nursery habitat and species diversity at the mangrove forest of Batu Ampar.
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"Effect of fiber flocculation and filling design on refiner loadability and refining characteristics." BioResources 3, no. 2 (March 17, 2008): 403–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.15376/biores.3.2.403-424.

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The loadability of a pulp refiner was studied using refiner data such as gap movement, total power, no-load power, and net refining power. Two different types of pulp and three different types of refiner filling were used in the study. The floc formation and floc size of each pulp was studied in a flow channel simulating filling grooves. The loadability of the pulp refiner was linked to refining effects such as fiber shortening, and internal and external fibrillation. The trapping point of the refiner, and therefore refiner loadability, was found to be more related to fiber characteristics such as fiber length and coarseness, while being less dependent on refining consistency in the range of 2.0-5.5%. The data on the formation of flocs and floc size was used to explain the trapping of fibers between refiner bars and the refiner gap width. Filling design characteristics such as groove width and cutting speed affect the gap width and trapping of flocs inside the refiner. Fillings with high cutting speed tend to break flocs composed of long and short fibers at the same rate and therefore both types of floc maintain the same gap width. On the other hand, wide-groove fillings with lower cutting speed have a gentler effect and the differences in fiber characteristics are easily reflected in the gap width and trapping point. Fillings with low cutting speed have a greater straightening effect than fiber cutting, whereas narrow-bar fillings have a more noticeable effect on fiber cutting, external fibrillation, and fiber swelling.
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Moghaddam, Ali H., Boris Kutschelis, Frank Holz, Tomas Börjesson, and Romuald Skoda. "Three-Dimensional Flow Simulation of a Twin-Screw Pump for the Analysis of Gap Flow Characteristics." Journal of Fluids Engineering 144, no. 3 (September 15, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4051730.

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Abstract Unsteady three-dimensional flow simulations on a twin-screw pump are performed for an assessment of the radial, circumferential, and flank gap flow effect on the pump performance. By means of the overset grid technique, rigid computational grids around the counter-rotating spindles yield a high cell quality and a high spatial resolution of the gap backflow down to the viscous sublayer in terms of y+&lt;1. An optimization of the hole-cutting process is performed on a generic gap flow and transferred to the complex moving gaps in the pump. Grid independence is ensured, and conservation properties of the overset grid interpolation technique are assessed. Simulation results are validated against measured pump characteristics. Pump performance in terms of pressure build-up along the flow path through the spindles and volume flow rate is presented for a wide range of spindle speed and pump head. Flow rate fluctuations are found to depend on head but hardly on speed. By a profound assessment of the respective radial, circumferential, and flank gap contribution to the total backflow, the importance of the most complex flank gap is pointed out. Backflow rate characteristics in dependence on the pump head and the pump speed are presented.
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Hong Lien, Le Thi, Nguyen Thi Thao, and Vu Ngoc Tuoc. "Structural, Electronic and Mechanical Properties of Few-layer Porous Nanosheet from Spheroidal Cage-like ZnO Polymorph." VNU Journal of Science: Mathematics - Physics 36, no. 4 (October 7, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.25073/2588-1124/vnumap.4517.

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The low-dimensional II-VI group semiconductors have recently emerged as interesting candidate materials for the tailoring of two dimensional (2D) layered structures. Herein, a series of the cage-like nanoporous composed of spheroidal hollow cages (ZnO)12, cutting from the high symmetrical cubic SOD cage-like polymorph as building block, is proposed. We have performed the density-functional tight binding (DFTB+) calculations on the structural, electronic and mechanical properties of this few-layer SOD-cage-block nanosheet series, to investigate the effects of structural modification and sheet thickness on their structural, electronic, and mechanical properties. Optimized geometries, formation energy, phonon spectra, electronic band structure, and elastic tensor calculation has ensured the energetically, dynamical and mechanical stability for the sheets. Furthermore, the theoretically found nanosheet series possess an intrinsic wide direct band gap preserving from wurtzite tetragonal-based bonding. This high symmetry wide bandgap semiconductor nanosheet series and their derivatives are expected to have broad applications in photocatalysis, and biomedicine.
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"9.G. Workshop: Evaluation of scale-up of health systems interventions: what and how? Lessons for scale-up projects." European Journal of Public Health 30, Supplement_5 (September 1, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckaa165.466.

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Abstract Objectives Non-communicable diseases (NCD) are a major challenge for health systems across the globe. Although effective interventions for prevention, detection and control exist, these do not reach all people in need, especially the poor and most vulnerable. Scale-up strategies are developed to increase universal access to those interventions, addressing demand-side and supply-side barriers and to facilitate integration in the health system. While there are useful frameworks to conceptualise and operationalise scale-up of NCD interventions, there is a knowledge gap on what and how to evaluate. This session addresses that knowledge gap, presenting evaluation methods for scale-up from four large multi-country research projects. The objectives are: To increase knowledge on four dimensions of scale-up evaluation: 1) contextualisation of methods; 2) implementation evaluation; 3) cost-evaluation and 4) use of health information systemsTo present methods and results of implementation research on NCDs as an example for other chronic diseasesTo illustrate how contextualisation, implementation and evaluation varies across different stages of scale-upTo stimulate learning by experience through small-group discussion with session participants This workshop provides added value through the four coherent presentations combined with small group interactions on the same topics. It allows the audience to link the case study lessons to their own research and wider application. Format Four different elements of scale-up evaluation are addressed: 1) Contextualisation of evaluation methods from a common framework; 2) Implementation evaluation at operational level; 3) Cost-evaluation of NCD interventions; and 4) Large-scale evaluation through routine health information systems (HIS). Case studies from four large-scale Horizon2020 funded research projects in 14 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia will be presented, each case focusing on one dimension. Cross-cutting themes of adaptation and transferability of methods will also be addressed. After the presentations, there will be an interactive session to promote experience-based learning in small-group discussions. Presentations Self-Management Approach and Reciprocal Learning for Type 2 Diabetes (SMART2D)Scaling-up Packages of Interventions for cardiovascular disease prevention in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa (SPICES)Scaling-Up NCD Interventions in South-East Asia (SUNI-SEA)The Scale-Up of Diabetes and Hypertension Care (SCUBY) The presentations will provide the introduction to subsequent small-table discussions, around the following questions: How to measure and monitor implementation and outcome of intervention scale-up?How to generate transferrable lessons from cross-country studies?How to conduct cross-setting evaluation of the effect and cost of NCD interventions? Key messages The global scale-up of NCD interventions calls for robust evaluation methods of effect, implementation and cost. Evaluation methods need to be fit to the country context and health information systems.
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Bond, Sue. "The Secret Adoptee's Cookbook." M/C Journal 16, no. 3 (June 22, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.665.

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There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisements (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale & Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. & A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.
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39

Turnock, Julie. "Painting Out Pop." M/C Journal 2, no. 4 (June 1, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1764.

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Film directors in American cinema have used the artist (painter, singer, thespian, writer, etc.) as a vehicle for auteurist identification in feature bio-pics for decades. The portrayal of the protagonists in these films usually falls victim to the "Van Gogh" syndrome, that is, the insistance on the creative inner turmoil, the solitary, misunderstood genius, and brave rebellion of its central character. This approach, however, breaks down completely when confronted with the void that is the historical figure known as "Andy Warhol." The popular image of Warhol, his studied superficiality, unapologetic commercialism, and outright catatonic demeanour, is completely disruptive to the traditional humanist artist biography. It is unsurprising, then, that recent film protagonists within the more traditional bio-pic framework found Warhol a figure that needed to be contained, neutralised, discredited, and even shot. Mainstream cinematic narrative has added little to the conventions of the artist biography since the Renaissance. Renaissance painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari appropriated the Petrarchian edifying "Great Lives" model to ennoble and sanitise the often problematic and distasteful personalities who populated the Italian art world. This approach prevailed over the next several hundred years, and was expanded upon by the intellectual figures of the Romantic period (who were very aware of Vasari's work). The Romantics contributed to the profile of a proper artist the following traits: misunderstood intellectual fury, dark psychological depths, and flouting of social convention. The bio-pic genre, especially as it relates to biographies of artists, also lauds humanistic "greatness" as its standard of significance. The bio-pic absolutely relies on a strong central figure, who can be shown in about two hours to have some substantial educational value, worthy of the expense of the film-makers and the attention of the viewer. In the mid-1990s, not long after his unexpected death in 1987, a character called "Andy Warhol" appeared in supporting roles in a number of feature films. The Doors (1991), Basquiat (1996), and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) all feature an Andy Warhol character grounded squarely in various popular myths. All of the three 90s feature films which include Warhol in a substantial speaking role explicitly contrast him against another artist-figure. This other artist is presented as somehow preferable to Warhol, whether in conviction, authenticity, or validity of vision. The artist in question, Basquiat/Morrison/Solanas, predictably serves as the film-makers' lens through which the past is refracted (though more problematically in the case of Solanas). Warhol is outward sign of Basquiat's slide, the danger of fame-mongering for Morrison, and Valerie Solanas's misogynist nemesis. In each case, the more valorised figure is at first twinned with Warhol when drawn into his orbit. Eventually, the film's narrative contrasts the main subject against what the diegetic Warhol represents. In each case, Warhol becomes a metonymic representation of a larger organising factor: the economic/personality-driven entertainment industry, phallocentric hegemony, art's dead end, etc. The demonisation of Warhol in recent bio-pics is a good starting point for examining how his image is being interpreted by the mainstream media. It is clear that in this particular forum, Warhol's impact is understood only negatively. The purpose of this study will be to demonstrate how uncomfortable the creative arts world in general, and narrative film-making in particular, is with the "empty" legacy of Warhol and his Factory, and how the reactions against it illustrate a fear of Warhol's anti-humanist, subject-less project. It is fascinating that in the feature films, Warhol appears solely as a character in other people's stories rather than as the focus of biographical treatment. Warhol's very conscious emptying-out project has made nearly impossible any effort to deal with him and his legacy in any traditional narrative manner. Warhol's public persona -- simple, boring, derivative, and unheroic -- is directly at odds with the conventional "artist-hero" subjects necessary to the bio pic genre. This type is seen most typically in the old potboilers The Agony and the Extasy, about Michelangelo, and Lust for Life, about Van Gogh, as well as the more recent Artemisia about Artemisia Gentileschi. The very fact of Andy's posthumous film career fits neatly into his performative œuvre as a whole, and is easily interpreted as an extension of his life-long project. Warhol's entire self-imaging stratagem steadfastly affirmed that there is no center to illuminate -- no "real" Andy Warhol behind the persona. Warhol constantly disavowed any "meaning" beyond the surface of his art works, and ascribed it no value beyond market price. He preferred methods and forms (advertising, silk-screening, and film-making) that were easy for his Factory workers to execute and endlessly duplicate after his vague orders. Further, he ascribed no importance to his own bodily shell as "artist Andy Warhol". In an act of supreme self-branding, Warhol sent actors to impersonate him at lectures (most famously at University of Utah, who demanded he return the lecture fee), since he was only a packaged, reproducible product himself. In Warhol's art, there is no hand-made integrity, no originality, no agonised genius in a garret. He displays none of the traits that traditionally have allowed artists to be called geniuses. Warhol's studio's automation, the laying bare of the cheapest and slickest aspects of the culture industry, has long been the most feared facet of Warhol's artistic legacy. It is beside the point to argue that Warhol's meaninglessness is thematised to the degree that it has meaning. Warhol's erasure of all humanistic "aura" clearly remains threatening to a great number of artists, who rely heavily on such artistic stereotypes. Basquiat In 1996's Basquiat, painter/director Julian Schnabel used the dead painter as a proxy for telling his "I was there" version of the 80s New York art scene. In Schnabel's rather heavy-handed morality tale, young African-American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat's meteoric burn-out career is treated as a metaphor for the 80s art world as a whole. Schnabel clearly knows his Vasari. His film's scenario is a barely modified adaptation of humanist/romantic artist mythology. Traces of Vasari's tale of Cimabue's discovery of Giotto, as well as Van Gogh's various misunderstood artist scenarios are laboriously played out. In fact, the first words in the film invoke the Van Gogh cliché, foregrounding Schnabel's myth-making impulse. They are art critic Rene Ricard's, speaking over Basquiat waking up in a cardboard box in Central Park: "everyone wants to get on the Van Gogh boat. ... No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another Van Gogh, ... When you first see a new picture, you have to be very careful. You might be staring at Van Gogh's ear." This quote sets the tone for Basquiat's art world experience narrative, trotting out every single Van Gogh-inspired legend (with heroin abuse standing in for the cut-off ear) to apply to Basquiat. In fact, the film veritably thematises Romantic cliché. The film's main project is the mythologisation of Jean-Michel and by extension Schnabel. However, by foregrounding the Van Gogh/Basquiat connection in such self-conscious terms, it seems the viewer is supposed to find it "ironic". (The irony is really that this po-mo window dressing is otherwise deeply at odds with the rest of the film's message.) The film suggests that Basquiat is both worthy of the allusion to the great humanistic tradition, and that his special case ("the first great black painter") changes all the rules and makes all clichés inapplicable. Schnabel's art, which is usually described as "Neo-Abstract Expressionist", and particularly his market value, relies heavily on the aura created by previous artists in the macho heroic mold. His paintings take up Pollock's "all over" effect but with de Kooning's jauntier color. He also fastens found objects, most famously broken plates, in a pastiche of Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Like Warhol, Schnabel often borrows recognisable motifs. However, instead of advertising and popular culture, Schnabel's come from a more elevated tradition; Old Master paintings appropriated from "legitimate" art history. Needless to say, Julian Schnabel himself has much invested in reaffirming the artist-genius myth that is threatening to be deconstructed by a good number of art critics and historians. Schnabel's agenda is specifically art historical, though no less political. Schnabel, through Basquiat, restores the artist to his proper place as individual creator challenging the outmoded conventions of established art. Warhol, portrayed as the quintessential post-modern artist, represents all that has gone wrong in the art world: superficiality, mass production, commodification, popular culture influence, and the erasure of art history and deep significance. In spite of the film's self-consciousness about the phoniness of the gallery scene, Basquiat's lionisation by it validates a retrograde concept of "pure" artist's vision. Schnabel is attacking what he sees as the deadening effect of post-modernism that threatens Schnabel's own place in art history. Basquiat's escalating drug problem and alliance late in the film with Warhol signals that he has followed the wrong direction, that he is hitting a dead end. The character Milo (Gary Oldman), the Schnabel manqué, sets up the contrast to illustrate Basquiat's slide. Milo is aligned with all that is exemplary in establishment virtues of hearth and home (doting fatherhood, settled domesticity, good living). The wholesome hand-made integrity of Milo/Schnabel's art, in line with traditional definitions of artistic greatness, is deeply at odds with the affected commercialism of Warhol's work. Schnabel's artistic influences show up clearly in his very marked progressive view of art history and clearly named privileged pantheon. In the film, Schnabel is at pains to insert Basquiat and himself into this tradition. The very first scene of the film sees Jean-Michel as a child with his mother at the MOMA, where she is in tears in front of Picasso's Guernica. In the narrative, this is quickly followed by Ricard's Van Gogh quote above. As an adult, Jean-Michel enacts Rauschenberg's edict, to "narrow the gap between art and life". This is illustrated by Jean-Michel not restricting his artistic output to work on canvas in a studio. He graffitis walls, signs table tops à la Rauschenberg, and makes designs on a diner countertop in maple syrup. Later, Jean-Michel is shown painting in his studio walking around the canvas on the floor, in an all-over technique, mirroring the familiar Hans Namuth film of Jackson Pollock. Aligning Jean-Michel with the pre-Warhol, and especially Abstract Expressionist artists, positions Basquiat and Schnabel together against the "dead end" of Warhol's version of Pop. Basquiat and the director have inherited the "right" kind of art, and will be the progenitors of the next generation. Warhol as a "dead end" leads to a discussion of the relationship between artists' procreative sexuality and their art. In the film, Warhol is assumed to be asexual (rather than homosexual), and this lack of virility is clearly linked to the sterility, transitoriness, and barrenness of his art. Schnabel/Milo and Basquiat, in their marked heterosexuality, are the "fathers" of the next generation. In Basquiat's collaboration with Warhol, even Andy understands his own impotence. Warhol says, "I can't teach you anything, you're a natural, are you kidding me?", and most importantly, "you paint out everything I do, Jean-Michel". By privileging Jean-Michel's art (and his own) over Warhol's, Schnabel is clearly trying to paint out the mutation of the Warholisation of art, and paint in his own art historical eugenics. The Doors In a less substantial role but in a similar vein, Warhol also appears briefly in Oliver Stone's 1991 The Doors, as part of a brief "rising fame" montage of New York incidents. Like Schnabel, Stone has a lot to lose from investment in Warhol's spiritual and aesthetic emptiness. Though brief, Warhol's appearance in the film, like in Basquiat, serves as a cautionary tale for its hero. The contrast made between the vacuous Factory crowd and the "authentic" Doors presages the dominant trope for the Warhol character that Schnabel would expand upon later. The Factory sequence dramatises the glamour and seductiveness of the hollow side of fame that may lead Morrison off his spiritual-quest path. The Native American shaman who Jim sees at pivotal points in his life appears at the Factory, warning him not to take the wrong path represented by Warhol. The Doors are at a pivotal moment, the onset of fame, and must act carefully or risk ending up as meaningless as Warhol. Stone's chronicling of the 60s relies heavily on what could be called the humanist ideal of the power of the individual to effect change, raise consciousness, and open minds. Via Stone's simple reductiveness, Warhol represents here the wrong kind of counter-culture, the anti-hippie. By emulating Warhol, the Doors follow the wrong shaman. To Stone, Warhol's superficiality represents all that is dangerous about celebrity and entertainment: the empty, mind-destroying cocaine high of the masses. I Shot Andy Warhol The film I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) problematises the idea put forth in the other films of Warhol as artistic anti-Christ, simply because the film's subject is much more difficult to heroise, and like Warhol does not fit snugly into bio-pic conventions. Like Basquiat, the film also takes the point of view of a protagonist at the edge of Warhol's sphere of influence, here radical feminist and S.C.U.M. (the Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto scribe Valerie Solanas, in order to criticise what Warhol represents. Unlike the previous films, here Warhol's character is central to the narrative. Although Warhol clearly represents something very negative to the Solanas character, the film never fully endorses its subject's point of view. That Warhol deserved and needed to be shot for any reason beyond Solanas's personal demons is never established. Perhaps this ambivalence is a flaw of the film, but it is also telling about the problematic legacies of feminism and Pop, two movements that have led to challenges of the hero-artist ideal. In this film, the relationship between Warhol and the main protagonist is extremely complex. Andy and his crowd are presented as clearly odious. Though Valerie comes off as more interesting and sympathetic, she is also still clearly an unhinged oddball spewing specious ideology. Within the film, Valerie's attraction to the Factory scene seems to stem from something her friend, transvestite Candy Darling, says: "if anyone can make you a star, Andy Warhol can". Valerie desperately wants attention for her radicalism (and likely for other psychological reasons, which make radicalism attractive to her, as well), and sees Andy's power for "star-making", especially among the more marginal of society, as something from which she can profit. Valerie's mistake seems to be in confusing the artistic avant-garde with the politically radical. Valerie finds kinship in Warhol's androgyny and lack of enthusiasm for sex, but does not realise immediately that Andy is interested in her play Up Your Ass primarily for its titillation and shock value, and is entirely uninterested in it from a content standpoint. The content/emptiness conflict in Valerie and Andy's "artistic visions" becomes one of the major thematics in the film. Though like Solanas, he finds community with margin-dwellers, Andy is portrayed as far too implicated in and dependent on the so-called culture industry in order to be "Andy Warhol -- Superstar". Andy's interest in the low-life that Valerie represents is, of course, wholly superficial, which enrages her. She sees no worthy theoretical position in the banal contentlessness of Andy's circle. Valerie's manifesto and dramatic works have almost an excess of content. They work to kick people in the balls to get them to open their eyes and see the appalling conditions around them. The Warhol here, like in The Doors, wants people to see empty banality, but has no interest in effecting change. Valerie's play, as read simultaneously in the lesbian coffee shop and at Andy's studio, dramatises this divergence. When Warhol and crowd read the script with dull inflection, inert on the couch, one can imagine the very words being put to use in a Warhol film. When Valerie and friends perform those same words, the passionate engagement and deep meaningfulness -- at least to Valerie -- capture her urgent commitment to her ideas. As Valerie gets more desperate to disseminate her ideas, and thus begins to further alienate the Factory crowd, she starts to see Andy as in fact the bodily symbol of the "man" she wants cut up. Not only does he represent the patriarch of the art world who has dismissed her and has invalidated her vision, but also more broadly the hierarchy and deep structure of Andy's world parallels the consumeristic and image-driven society at large. If Valerie wants to live with integrity within her own code, the "man" must be deposed. On top of the personal gratification she would receive in this act, Solanas would also finally find a world-wide audience for her views. Now we can understand why, when asked by the press why she shot Andy, Valerie tells them "he had too much control over my life." Unhappily, instead of women rising up against their male oppressors to take up their rightful place of superiority, Solanas gets labeled a "lunatic" by the same media and larger establishment which (in this film) proclaim Warhol a genius. Solanas dissolves into a bit-player in the Andy Warhol story. One of the major interests of this film is that it excerpts a player from the limits of that "master narrative" story and allows them their own subjecthood. I Shot Andy Warhol, with its assertive quotational title, seems to want to reinscribe subjecthood to one of the most truly radical of Andy's superstars, reclaiming the value of Valerie's polemics from the emptiness of her anecdotal role in Warhol's biography. Though Valerie clearly sees Andy as her nemesis, the film constructs him as a boring, ineffectual, self-absorbed effete. The great weakness of the film is that their conflict begins to look like a midget wrestling contest. Since both are competing for higher freakdom, the broader implications of either of their projects are only rarely glimpsed. It should be clear by now that for so many, fictional Warhol is not just a problematic figure, but nearly a monstrous one. The film-makers clearly show what elements of Warhol's representative strategy they find so threatening. Schnabel and Stone have the most to lose in the replacement of their value systems (genius investment and 60s macho spirituality) by what they perceive as postmodern de-centredness, and therefore need to attack that threat the most forcefully. Less conservatively, for Harron, Warhol's Pop objectification of everyone, including women, seems to threaten women's hard-won subjectivity through feminism. Warhol, Morrison, Basquiat and Solanas were all artists who played heavily on their roles as outsiders to mainstream society. These films build the film-makers' soapbox on the "right" way to be alienated, bourgeois-hating, and rebellious, and the films assume a sympathetic viewing audience. Even though the interest in Warhol and his flashy milieu probably got at least two of these films made in the first place, it seems clear that even the more independently-minded film establishment would rather align themselves with the romanticised artist bio-pic subject than the black hole they fear Warhol personifies. Perhaps the character Andy Warhol is put to most appropriate use when he is only glimpsed, such as in the films Death Becomes Her, where he appears as one of the party guests for people who have taken the magic potion to live forever, and as part of the 70s glam wallpaper in 54. This kind of "product placement" use of Warhol most succinctly encapsulates the vacant banality he espoused. In these films, Warhol is unburdened by other artists' attempts to fill him up with meaning. Warhol is taken at his word. His easily recognisable and reproducible bodily shell is hollow and superficial, just as he said it was. Warhol, Morrison, Basquiat and Solanas were all artists who played heavily on their roles as outsiders to mainstream society. These films build the film-makers' soapbox on the "right" way to be alienated, bourgeois-hating, and rebellious, and the films assume a sympathetic viewing audience. Even though the interest in Warhol and his flashy milieu probably got at least two of these films made in the first place, it seems clear that even the more independently-minded film establishment would rather align themselves with the romanticised artist bio-pic subject than the black hole they fear Warhol personifies. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Julie Turnock. "Painting Out Pop: "Andy Warhol" as a Character in 90s Films." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php>. Chicago style: Julie Turnock, "Painting Out Pop: "Andy Warhol" as a Character in 90s Films," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Julie Turnock. (1999) Painting out pop: "Andy Warhol" as a character in 90s films. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/warhol.php> ([your date of access]).
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40

Thomas, Peter. "Anywhere But the Home: The Promiscuous Afterlife of Super 8." M/C Journal 12, no. 3 (July 15, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.164.

Full text
Abstract:
Consumer or home use (previously ‘amateur’) moving image formats are distinguished from professional (still known as ‘professional’) ones by relative affordability, ubiquity and simplicity of use. Since Pathé Frères released its Pathé Baby camera, projector and 9.5mm film gauge in 1922, a distinct line of viewing and making equipment has been successfully marketed at nonprofessional use, especially in the home. ‘Amateur film’ is a simple term for a complex, variegated and longstanding set of activities. Conceptually it is bounded only by the negative definition of nonprofessional (usually intended as sub-professional), and the positive definition of being for the love of the activity and motivated by personal passion alone. This defines a field broad enough that two major historians of US amateur film, Patricia R. Zimmermann and Alan D. Kattelle, write about different subjects. Zimmermann focuses chiefly on domestic use and ‘how-to’ literature, while Kattelle unearths the collective practices and institutional structure of the Amateur Ciné Clubs and the Amateur Ciné League (Zimmerman, Reel Families, Professional; Kattelle, Home Movies, Amateur Ciné). Marion Norris Gleason, a test subject in Eastman Kodak’s development of 16mm and advocate of amateur film, defined it as having three parts, the home movie, “the photoplay produced by organised groups”, and the experimental film (Swanson 132). This view was current at least until the 1960s, when domestic documentation, Amateur Ciné clubs and experimental filmmakers shared the same film gauges and space in the same amateur film magazines, but paths have diverged somewhat since then. Domestic documentation remains committed to the moving image technology du jour, the Amateur Ciné movement is much reduced, and experimental film has developed a separate identity, its own institutional structure, and won some legitimacy in the art world. The trajectory of Super 8, a late-coming gauge to amateur film, has been defined precisely by this disintegration. Obsolescence was manufactured far more slowly during the long reign of amateur film gauges, allowing 9.5mm (1922-66), 16mm (1923-), 8mm (1932-), and Super 8 (1965-) to engage in protracted format wars significantly longer than the life spans of their analogue and digital video successors. The range of options available to nonprofessional makers – the quality but relative expense of 16mm, the near 16mm frame size of 9.5mm, the superior stability of 8mm compared to 9.5mm and Super 8, the size of Super 8’s picture relative to 8mm’s – are not surprising in the context of general competition for a diverse popular market on the usual basis of price, quality, and novelty. However, since analogue video’s ascent the amateur film gauges have all comprehensibly lost the battle for the home use market. This was by far the largest section of amateur film and the manufacturers’ overt target segment, so the amateur film gauges’ contemporary survival and significance is as something else. Though all the gauges from 8mm to 16mm remain available today to the curious and enthusiastic, Super 8’s afterlife is distinguished by the peculiar combination of having been a tremendously popular substandard to the substandard (ie, to 16mm, the standardised film gauge directly below 35mm in both price and quality), and now being prized for its technological excellence. When the large scale consumption that had supported Super 8’s manufacture dropped away, it revealed the set of much smaller, apparently non-transferable uses that would determine whether and as what Super 8 survived. Consequently, though Super 8 has been superseded many times over as a home movie format, it is not obsolete today as an art medium, a professional format used in the commercial industry, or as an alternative to digital video and 16mm for low budget independent production. In other words, everything it was never intended to be. I lately witnessed an occasion of the kind of high-fetishism for film-versus-video and analogue-versus-digital that the experimental moving image world is justifiably famed for. Discussion around the screening of Peter Tscherkassky’s films at the Xperimenta ‘09 festival raised the specifics and availability of the technology he relies on, both because of the peculiarity of his production method – found-footage collaging onto black and white 35mm stock via handheld light pen – and the issue of projection. Has digital technology supplied an alternative workflow? Would 35mm stock to work on (and prints to pillage) continue to be available? Is the availability of 35mm projectors in major venues holding up? Although this insider view of 35mm’s waning market share was more a performance of technological cultural politics than an analysis of it, it raised a series of issues central to any such analysis. Each film format is a gestalt item, consisting of four parts (that an individual might own): film stock, camera, projector and editor. Along with the availability of processing services, these items comprise a gauge’s viability (not withstanding the existence of camera-less and unedited workflows, and numerous folk developing methods). All these are needed to conjure the geist of the machine at full strength. More importantly, the discussion highlights what happens when such a technology collides with idiosyncratic and unintended use, which happens only because it is manufactured on a much wider scale than eccentric use alone can support. Although nostalgia often plays a role in the advocacy of obsolete technology, its role here should be carefully qualified and not overstated. If it plays a role in the three main economies that support contemporary Super 8, it need not be the same role. Further, even though it is now chiefly the same specialist shops and technicians that supply and service 9.5mm, 8mm, Super 8, and 16mm, they are not sold on the same scale nor to the same purpose. There has been no reported Renaissances of 9.5mm or 8mm, though, as long term home movie formats, they must loom large in the memories of many, and their particular look evokes pastness as surely as any two-colour process. There are some specifics to the trajectory of Super 8 as a non-amateur format that cannot simply be subsumed to general nostalgia or dead technology fetishism. Super 8 as an Art Medium Super 8 has a longer history as an art medium than as a pro-tool or low budget substandard. One key aspect in the invention and supply of amateur film was that it not be an adequate substitute for the professional technology used to populate the media sphere proper. Thus the price of access to motion picture making through amateur gauges has been a marginalisation of the outcome for format reasons alone (Zimmermann, Professional 24; Reekie 110) Eastman Kodak established their 16mm as the acceptable substandard for many non-theatrical uses of film in the 1920s, Pathé’s earlier 28mm having already had some success in this area (Mebold and Tepperman 137, 148-9). But 16mm was still relatively expensive for the home market, and when Kiyooka Eiichi filmed his drive across the US in 1927, his 16mm camera alone cost more than his car (Ruoff 240, 243). Against this, 9.5mm, 8mm and eventually Super 8 were the increasingly affordable substandards to the substandard, marginalised twice over in the commercial world, but far more popular in the consumer market. The 1960s underground film, and the modern artists’ film that was partly recuperated from it, was overwhelmingly based on 16mm, as the collections of its chief distributors, the New York Film-Makers’ Co-op, Canyon Cinema and the Lux clearly show. In the context of experimental film’s longstanding commitment to 16mm, an artist filmmaker’s choice to work with Super 8 had important resonances. Experimental work on 8mm and Super 8 is not hard to come by, even from the 1960s, but consider the cultural stakes of Jonas Mekas’s description of 8mm films as “beautiful folk art, like song and lyric poetry, that was created by the people” (Mekas 83). The evocation of ‘folk art’ signals a yawning gap between 8mm, whose richness has been produced collectively by a large and anonymous group, and the work produced by individual artists such as those (like Mekas himself) who founded the New American Cinema Group. The resonance for artists of the 1960s and 1970s who worked with 8mm and Super 8 was from their status as the premier vulgar film gauge, compounding-through-repetition their choice to work with film at all. By the time Super 8 was declared ‘dead’ in 1980, numerous works by canonical artists had been made in the format (Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman, Carolee Schneemann, Anthony McCall), and various practices had evolved around the specific possibilities of this emulsion and that camera. The camcorder not only displaced Super 8 as the simplest to use, most ubiquitous and cheapest moving image format, at the same time it changed the hierarchy of moving image formats because Super 8 was now incontestably better than something. Further, beyond the ubiquity, simplicity and size, camcorder video and Super 8 film had little in common. Camcorder replay took advantage of the ubiquity of television, but to this day video projection remains a relatively expensive business and for some time after 1980 the projectors were rare and of undistinguished quality. Until the more recent emergence of large format television (also relatively expensive), projection was necessary to screen to anything beyond very small audience. So, considering the gestalt aspect of these technologies and their functions, camcorders could replace Super 8 only for the capture of home movies and small-scale domestic replay. Super 8 maintained its position as the cheapest way into filmmaking for at least 20 years after its ‘death’, but lost its position as the premier ‘folk’ moving image format. It remained a key format for experimental film through the 1990s, but with constant competition from evolving analogue and digital video, and improved and more affordable video projection, its market share diminished. Kodak has continued to assert the viability of its film stocks and gauges, but across 2005-06 it deleted its Kodachrome Super 8, 16mm and slide range (Kodak, Kodachrome). This became a newsworthy Super 8 story (see Morgan; NYT; Hodgkinson; Radio 4) because Super 8 was the first deletion announced, this was very close to 8 May 2005, which was Global Super 8 Day, Kodachrome 40 (K40) was Super 8’s most famous and still used stock, and because 2005 was Super 8’s 40th birthday. Kodachome was then the most long-lived colour process still available, but there were only two labs left in the world which could supply processing- Kodak’s Lausanne Kodachrome lab in Switzerland, using the authentic company method, and Dwayne’s Photo in the US, using a tolerable but substandard process (Hodgkinson). Kodak launched a replacement stock simultaneously, and indeed the variety of Super 8 stocks is increasing year to year, partly because of new Kodak releases and partly because other companies split Kodak’s 16mm and 35mm stock for use as Super 8 (Allen; Muldowney; Pro8mm; Dager). Nonetheless, the cancelling of K40 convulsed the artists’ film community, and a spirited defence of its unique and excellent properties was lead by artist and activist Pip Chodorov. Chodorov met with a Kodak executive at the Cannes Film Festival, appealed to the French Government and started an online petition. His campaign circular read: EXPLAIN THE ADVANTAGES OF K40We have to show why we care specifically about Kodachrome and why Ektachrome is not a replacement. Kodachrome […] whose fine grain and warm colors […] are often used as a benchmark of quality for other stocks. The unique qualities of the Kodachrome image should be pointed out, and especially the differences between Kodachrome and Ektachrome […]. What great films were shot in Kodachrome, and why? […] What are the advantages to the K-14 process and the Lausanne laboratory? Is K40 a more stable stock, is it more preservable, do the colors fade resistant? Point out differences in the sensitometry curves, the grain structure... There was a rash of protest screenings, including a special all-day programme at Le Festival des Cinemas Différents de Paris, about which Raphaël Bassan wrote This initiative was justified, Kodak having announced in 2005 that it was going to stop the manufacturing of the ultra-sensitive film Kodachrome 40, which allowed such recognized artists as Gérard Courant, Joseph Morder, Stéphane Marti and a whole new generation of filmmakers to express themselves through this supple and inexpensive format with such a particular texture. (Bassan) The distance Super 8 has travelled culturally since analogue video can be seen in the distance between these statements of excellence and the attributes of Super 8 and 8mm that appealed to earlier artists: The great thing about Super 8 is that you can switch is onto automatic and get beyond all those technicalities” (Jarman)An 8mm camera is the ballpoint of the visual world. Soon […] people will use camera-pens as casually as they jot memos today […] and the narrow gauge can make finished works of art. (Durgnat 30) Far from the traits that defined it as an amateur gauge, Super 8 is now lionised in terms more resembling a chemistry historian’s eulogy to the pigments used in Dark Ages illuminated manuscripts. From bic to laspis lazuli. Indie and Pro Super 8 Historian of the US amateur film Patricia R. Zimmermann has charted the long collision between small gauge film, domesticity and the various ‘how-to’ publications designed to bridge the gap. In this she pays particular attention to the ‘how-to’ publications’ drive to assert the commercial feature film as the only model worthy of emulation (Professional 267; Reel xii). This drive continues today in numerous magazines and books addressing the consumer and pro-sumer levels. Alan D. Kattelle has charted a different history of the US amateur film, concentrating on the cine clubs and their national organisation, the Amateur Cine League (ACL), competitive events and distribution, a somewhat less domestic part of the movement which aimed less at family documentation more toward ‘photo-plays’, travelogues and instructionals. Just as interested in achieving professional results with amateur means, the ACL encouraged excellence and some of their filmmakers received commissions to make more widely seen films (Kattelle, Amateur 242). The ACL’s Ten Best competition still exists as The American International Film and Video Festival (Kattelle, Amateur 242), but its remit has changed from being “a showcase for amateur films” to being open “to all non-commercial films regardless of the status of the film makers” (AMPS). This points to both the relative marginalisation of the mid-century notion of the amateur, and that successful professionals and others working in the penumbra of independent production surrounding the industry proper are now important contributors to the festival. Both these groups are the economically important contemporary users of Super 8, but they use it in different ways. Low budget productions use it as cheap alternative to larger gauges or HD digital video and a better capture format than dv, while professional productions use it as a lo-fi format precisely for its degradation and archaic home movie look (Allen; Polisin). Pro8mm is a key innovator, service provider and advocate of Super 8 as an industry standard tool, and is an important and long serving agent in what should be seen as the normalisation of Super 8 – a process of redressing its pariah status as a cheap substandard to the substandard, while progressively erasing the special qualities of Super 8 that underlay this. The company started as Super8 Sound, innovating a sync-sound system in 1971, prior to the release of Kodak’s magnetic stripe sound Super 8 in 1973. Kodak’s Super 8 sound film was discontinued in 1997, and in 2005 Pro8mm produced the Max8 format by altering camera front ends to shoot onto the unused stripe space, producing a better quality image for widescreen. In between they started cutting professional 35mm stocks for Super 8 cameras and are currently investing in ever more high-quality HD film scanners (Allen; Pro8mm). Simultaneous to this, Kodak has brought out a series of stocks for Super 8, and more have been cut down for Super 8 by third parties, that offer a wider range of light responses or ever finer grain structure, thus progressively removing the limitations and visible artefacts associated with the format (Allen; Muldowney; Perkins; Kodak, Motion). These films stocks are designed to be captured to digital video as a normal part of their processing, and then entered into the contemporary digital work flow, leaving little or no indication of the their origins on a format designed to be the 1960s equivalent of the Box Brownie. However, while Super 8 has been used by financially robust companies to produce full-length programmes, its role at the top end of production is more usually as home movie footage and/or to evoke pastness. When service provider and advocate OnSuper8 interviewed professional cinematographer James Chressanthis, he asserted that “if there is a problem with Super 8 it is that it can look too good!” and spent much of the interview explaining how a particular combination of stocks, low shutter speeds and digital conversion could reproduce the traditional degraded look and avoid “looking like a completely transparent professional medium” (Perkins). In his history of the British amateur movement, Duncan Reekie deals with this distinction between the professional and amateur moving image, defining the professional as having a drive towards clarity [that] eventually produced [what] we could term ‘hyper-lucidity’, a form of cinematography which idealises the perception of the human eye: deep focus, increased colour saturation, digital effects and so on. (108) Against this the amateur as distinguished by a visible cinematic surface, where the screen image does not seem natural or fluent but is composed of photographic grain which in 8mm appears to vibrate and weave. Since the amateur often worked with only one reversal print the final film would also often become scratched and dirty. (108-9) As Super 8’s function has moved away from the home movie, so its look has adjusted to the new role. Kodak’s replacement for K40 was finer grained (Kodak, Kodak), designed for a life as good to high quality digital video rather than a film strip, and so for video replay rather than a small gauge projector. In the economy that supports Super 8’s survival, its cameras and film stock have become part of a different gestalt. Continued use is still justified by appeals to geist, but the geist of film in a general and abstract way, not specific to Super 8 and more closely resembling the industry-centric view of film propounded by decades of ‘how-to’ guides. Activity that originally supported Super 8 continues, and currently has embraced the ubiquitous and extremely substandard cameras embedded in mobile phones and still cameras for home movies and social documentation. As Super 8 has moved to a new cultural position it has shed its most recognisable trait, the visible surface of grain and scratches, and it is that which has become obsolete, discontinued and the focus of nostalgia, along with the sound of a film projector (which you can get to go with films transferred to dvd). So it will be left to artist filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky, talking in 1995 about what Super 8 was to him in the 1980s, to evoke what there is to miss about Super 8 today. Unlike any other format, Super-8 was a microscope, making visible the inner life of images by entering beneath the skin of reality. […] Most remarkable of all was the grain. While 'resolution' is the technical term for the sharpness of a film image, Super-8 was really never too concerned with this. Here, quite a different kind of resolution could be witnessed: the crystal-clear and bright light of a Xenon-projection gave us shapes dissolving into the grain; amorphous bodies and forms surreptitiously transformed into new shapes and disappeared again into a sea of colour. Super-8 was the pointillism, impressionism and the abstract expressionism of cinematography. (Howath) Bibliography Allen, Tom. “‘Making It’ in Super 8.” MovieMaker Magazine 8 Feb. 1994. 1 May 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/making_it_in_super_8_3044/›. AMPS. “About the American Motion Picture Society.” American Motion Picture Society site. 2009. 25 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.ampsvideo.com›. Bassan, Raphaël. “Identity of Cinema: Experimental and Different (review of Festival des Cinémas Différents de Paris, 2005).” Senses of Cinema 44 (July-Sep. 2007). 25 Apr. 2009 ‹http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/44/experimental-cinema-bassan.html›. Chodorov, Pip. “To Save Kodochrome.” Frameworks list, 14 May 2005. 28 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw29/0216.html›. Dager, Nick. “Kodak Unveils Latest Film Stock in Vision3 Family.” Digital Cinema Report 5 Jan. 2009. 27 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/Kodak-Vision3-film›. Durgnat, Raymond. “Flyweight Flicks.” GAZWRX: The Films of Jeff Keen booklet. Originally published in Films and Filming (Feb. 1965). London: BFI, 2009. 30-31. Frye, Brian L. “‘Me, I Just Film My Life’: An Interview with Jonas Mekas.” Senses of Cinema 44 (July-Sep. 2007). 15 Apr. 2009 ‹http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/44/jonas-mekas-interview.html›. Hodgkinson, Will. “End of the Reel for Super 8.” Guardian 28 Sep. 2006. 20 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/sep/28/1›. Horwath, Alexander. “Singing in the Rain - Supercinematography by Peter Tscherkassky.” Senses of Cinema 28 (Sep.-Oct. 2003). 5 May 2009 ‹http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/tscherkassky.html›. Jarman, Derek. In Institute of Contemporary Arts Video Library Guide. London: ICA, 1987. Kattelle, Alan D. Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979. Hudson, Mass.: self-published, 2000. ———. “The Amateur Cinema League and its films.” Film History 15.2 (2003): 238-51. Kodak. “Kodak Celebrates 40th Anniversary of Super 8 Film Announces New Color Reversal Product to Portfolio.“ Frameworks list, 9 May 2005. 23 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw29/0150.html›. ———. “Kodachrome Update.” 30 Jun. 2006. 24 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw32/0756.html›. ———. “Motion Picture Film, Digital Cinema, Digital Intermediate.” 2009. 2 Apr. 2009 ‹http://motion.kodak.com/US/en/motion/index.htm?CID=go&idhbx=motion›. Mekas, Jonas. “8mm as Folk Art.” Movie Journal: The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971. Ed. Jonas Mekas. Originally Published in Village Voice 1963. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Morgan, Spencer. “Kodak, Don't Take My Kodachrome.” New York Times 31 May 2005. 4 Apr. 2009 ‹http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E1DF1F39F932A05756C0A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2›. ———. “Fans Beg: Don't Take Kodachrome Away.” New York Times 1 Jun. 2005. 4 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/technology/31iht-kodak.html›. Muldowney, Lisa. “Kodak Ups the Ante with New Motion Picture Film.” MovieMaker Magazine 30 Nov. 2007. 6 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/cinematography/article/kodak_ups_the_ante_with_new_motion_picture_film/›. New York Times. “Super 8 Blues.” 31 May 2005: E1. Perkins, Giles. “A Pro's Approach to Super 8.” OnSuper8 Blogspot 16 July 2007. 13 Apr. 2009 ‹http://onsuper8.blogspot.com/2007/07/pros-approach-to-super-8.html›. Polisin, Douglas. “Pro8mm Asks You to Think Big, Shoot Small.” MovieMaker Magazine 4 Feb. 2009. 1 May 2009 ‹http://www.moviemaker.com/cinematography/article/think_big_shoot_small_rhonda_vigeant_pro8mm_20090127/›. Pro8mm. “Pro8mm Company History.” Super 8 /16mm Cameras, Film, Processing & Scanning (Pro8mm blog) 12 Mar. 2008. 3 May 2009 ‹http://pro8mm-burbank.blogspot.com/2008/03/pro8mm-company-history.html›. Radio 4. No More Yellow Envelopes 24 Dec. 2006. 4 May 2009 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/m6yx0/›. Reekie, Duncan. Subversion: The Definitive History of the Underground Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. Sneakernet, Christopher Hutsul. “Kodachrome: Not Digital, But Still Delightful.” Toronto Star 26 Sep. 2005. Swanson, Dwight. “Inventing Amateur Film: Marion Norris Gleason, Eastman Kodak and the Rochester Scene, 1921-1932.” Film History 15.2 (2003): 126-36 Zimmermann, Patricia R. “Professional Results with Amateur Ease: The Formation of Amateur Filmmaking Aesthetics 1923-1940.” Film History 2.3 (1988): 267-81. ———. Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.
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41

Lorenzo-Gomez, J. Daniel, Pedro Núñez-Cacho, Alfredo De Massis, and Josip Kotlar. "Introduction to the Special Issue." European Journal of Family Business 9, no. 2 (May 22, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.24310/ejfbejfb.v9i2.9241.

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Innovation in family firms is still a controversial issue within the academic community and poses some unique challenges for family business owners and managers. This special issue on innovation in family firms results from the cooperation of both academic and business guest editors, in a pioneering initiative that is not usual in academic journals. Indeed, a key feature of this Special Issue has been the collaboration with two family business leaders, who have been involved in the editorial process together with the academics. The two business editors that we involved are Antonio Gallardo, Vicepresident of Almiralland former director of FBN-Family Business Network,andIgnacio Osborne, CEO of the Osborne Groupand Chairman of the Spanish Family Firm Institute. In order to introduce the six papers that make up this special issue on innovation in family firms, we as academic editors are pleased to include some comments from the business editors that emerged during our interactions with the aim to make a step forward toward bridging the gap between research and practice on family business innovation, acknowledging the different perspectives and approaches adopted by academics and practitioners. As the business editor Mr. Osborne points: “Innovation issues in family firms are nowadays more important than ever, due to the rapid developments that are occurring in the business world and its corresponding technologies”. Despite being a topic analyzed by a number of authors over time (Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis, 2017; Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020 in this issue; Chrisman, Chua, De Massis, Frattini and Wright, 2015), the study of innovation in family business still requires a greater volume of research to provide answers to the needs of family businesses. The distinctive nature of family firms results in a complex influence on the innovation process (De Massis, Frattini and Lichtenthaler, 2013), which is reflected in mixed research findings. For instance, the conclusions of the published research offer sometimes contradictory results, since family businesses can be considered innovative (Aronoff, 1998; Craig and Moores, 2006) or conservative (Sharma, Chrisman, y Chua, 1997; Zahra, Hayton y Salvato, 2004; Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007), with several studies that can support whatever of the two options. Family businesses present a number of characteristics that, a priori, seem to favor innovation, such as long-term orientation (Tagiuri and Davis, 1996; Ward and Aronoff, 1994), the desire for continuity through the following generations (Miroshnychenko et al., 2020; Gallo, 1995), patient capital (De Massis, Audretsch, Uhlaner and Kammerlander, 2018; Sirmon and Hitt, 2003), and the long tenure of their main leaders (Lorenzo, 2020). The replacement of the prior generation by the next generation implies the access of younger people to the leadership of the company, who also often present a greater level of qualification (De Massis et al., 2008; Cabrera-Suárez, 2011). Young and qualified leaders would provide a new momentum to the firm, by means of the renewal of the firm (Núñez-Cacho and Lorenzo, 2020). Likewise, the successors receive an important legacy by means of the values of the family business (Erdogan et al., 2020), such as effort, perseverance, austerity, excellence, long-term orientation and entrepreneurial spirit, as basic foundations of their way of understanding business activity (Bermejo, 2008). Accordingly, the new generation managers could be in the best conditions to reinvent the company, since they know the business from within and they also provide the new vision of a person with a working life ahead. Another factor that favors the renewal impulse of the next generation is the familial support to carry out a prolonged tenure over time, which will not be as conditioned by short-term results as in other types of companies, by the so-called patient capital (Sirmon and Hitt, 2003) of the family business (Lorenzo, 2020). But, even if these ideal conditions are met in a specific family firm, it is not guaranteed that the company realizes the innovation it needs. Therefore, it is needed to shed more light about the determinants and conditions for innovation. The editors of this special issue selected a number of papers to reflect the state-of-the-art on this topic, indicating some of the most promising research lines on innovation. According to the business editor Mr. Gallardo, “A very important aspect emerging from this special issue is that the papers published in it reveal that external contributions to the internal know-how of the family and the business are often vital to help produce the changes needed by a family firm for innovation to take place”. Innovation in the family business has been a phenomenon of great interest to researchers, especially in the last decade. This is highlighted in the article that opens this special issue by presenting a complete bibliometric review of the literature on innovation in family businesses. Generally, researchers have noted that the influence of the family is the factor that makes this type of businesses different from the other ones (Habbershon and Williams, 1999; Lorenzo and Núñez-Cacho, 2012). However, in order to conclude that this is really true, it is necessary to identify the nature of these differences and determine how and why they affect the innovative behavior of the family business. The paper Innovation on family businesses: A holistic bibliometric(Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020) offers an overview of the research field through an analysis of 207 articles that were published between 1994 and 2017. The authors complement other recent reviews such as those by Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis (2017) and Calabrò, Vecchiarini, Gast, Campopiano, De Massis and Kraus (2019), and reflect about the take-off of research on innovation that takes place since 2009. In the study two differentiated periods are highlighted: An initial one that covers the years 1994 to 2009, and one of expansion from 2010 to 2017. In addition, they identify the most influential journals, the most referenced articles, the most productive scholars -namely, De Massis, Frattini, Craig, Chrisman, Fang, Kotlar and Nordqvist appear as the most productive and referenced ones- and the main lines of research developed, providing a clear and synthetic map of innovation research in family businesses today. This paper approaches innovation from a more theoretical perspective, and also presents the lines of research that are currently being developed. These lines include the internal factors of the family business and its influence on innovation, as well as external factors, among others advances in research in the subject. The paper An Analysis of Open Innovation Determinants: The Case Study of Singapore based Family owned Enterprises, by Koh, Kong and Timperio (2020, this issue) analyzes the drivers of open innovation by studying cases of family businesses in Singapore. The authors highlight the external determinants and catalysts of innovation projects, such as family and business culture, access to external funds, government support for initiatives, market dynamics and partnership between companies. In addition to these six external determinants, there are two other factors that have a great influence on open innovation. First, family capital, which is the main source of financing for innovative initiatives. Second, a strong external network, supported by Singapore's legal and regulatory framework that fosters innovation, promotes the development of an enabling business environment so that the spirit of innovation can truly thrive. Most of the surveyed companies’ managers mentioned process innovation as the most critical aspect, and also organizational innovation. Process innovation is considered superior by the companies included in the sample due to their capabilities to drive product innovation, marketing and organizational structure (and people). Organizational innovation is also considered of utmost importance, due to the need to adopt technologies such as digitalization, robotics or automation, which require an adequate organizational structure. Some ideas from the surveyed managers highlight these statements, like: "The correct processes create the necessary conditions to shape the products, as well as the marketing and organization structures," as well as "Having cutting-edge processes underway is a key differentiator." This study also reflects the need to establish new financing mechanisms adapted to the peculiarities of innovation processes. External capital injection and stimulus policies are necessary, although not sufficient, since they must be combined with the determinants of the internal functioning of family businesses. The relevance of the external network is also highlighted in the paper Collaborative innovation in the family SME: conceptualization, goals, and success factors, by Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue), which analyzes the strategy of collaborative innovation that seeks the creation of knowledge, new product designs and Improving the efficiency of the production process. Among the conditions of collaborative innovation, four groups stand out: The composition of the management team (in terms of family members percentage and number of generations involved in management), abilities (cognitive factors, absorption capacity and trajectory in innovation), attitudes, and legacy preservation, (referring to socio-emotional wealth and internal behavior). These factors of small and medium family businesses play a crucial role in the successful design and implementation of collaborative innovation. The main contributions of this paper can be summarized in the need for establish solid bases to deepen in the future the study of collaborative innovation. Moreover, a second contribution refers to the identification of the distinguishing characteristics of family SMEs. Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue) also propose the analysis of the possible moderating effects of firm size and the sector to refine the impact of the variables in this model, looking to achieve excellence in collaborative innovation. As business reviewer, Mr. Osbornehave highlighted collaborative innovation as one of the relevant issues in order to reinforce the role of innovation in their companies. Absorptive capacity is another aspect of great interest to researchers. There are numerous factors that condition it, some of them are features of the family character that make the behavior of family businesses paradoxical (Kotlar et al. 2020). The paper titled A mediating model of innovative capacity between absorptive capacity and family business performanceby Hernández-Perlines, Ariza-Montes and Araya-Castillo (2020, this issue) addresses the issue about absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity is related to the identification, assimilation and exploitation of new knowledge by the company. Those family businesses that have these capabilities improve their performance. In addition, this effect is enhanced by the innovative capacity of the company, which acts as a mediator between absorption capacity and the company's performance, reinforcing this relationship. Thus, family business managers should focus their efforts on providing their organizations with the necessary skills to absorb and exploit knowledge. This will be easier if the company has developed innovative capabilities. In this sense, the business editor Mr. Gallardo points that: “There is also the possibility of establishing an advisory council with external collaborators that serves as a contrast to the company's board, in which oftentimes the weight of the family is too decisive.” The last two papers in this special issue address the role of family involvement in relation to innovation. Does too much love hinder innovation? Family involvement and firms' innovativeness in family-owned Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), by Filippo Ferrari (2020, this issue) reflects on the role of family cohesion and its flexibility in the process of innovation, drawing upon the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) which is applied in a sample of Italian family businesses. The study indicates that unbalanced families show the lowest levels of innovation, although family cohesion and flexibility do not show a significant correlation with the overall level of organizational innovation. Flexibility shows a positive correlation with the process and behavioral innovation, which can be explained by the demand for new forms and organizational routines to deal with process innovation. Here the author suggests some human resources practices that promote flexibility, such as labor rotation (Ortega, 2001), or the development of a horizontal internal career (Ichniowsky et al. 1996, 1997, 1999). Families that lack cohesion show a negative correlation with strategic innovation and process innovation. Ferrari (2020, this issue) considers as disconnected family systems those in which family members are not cohesive and have little family loyalty. On the other hand, innovation in processes is encouraged with new ideas through contributions in terms of new ways of doing things. According to the authors, the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) offers a framework that can diagnose the extent to which family systems are balanced and how the effects of balanced or unbalanced family dynamics can affect the family business (Daspit et al. 2018). Business reviewers were especially interested on the conclusions of this paper, and also pointed that it would be necessary more research on that kind of negative influences stemmed from lack of cohesion within the business family. Entrepreneurial orientation and product innovation: The moderating role of family involvement in management, by Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) addresses a classic concept closely linked to the study of innovation such as entrepreneurial orientation. The relationships between this variable and product innovation, incremental innovation and radical innovation are examined. The influence of family performance on the company is also analyzed. In their conclusions, Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) point out that family involvement weakens the positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation in product innovation, especially in case of radical innovation. Therefore, the family business must be aware of these weaknesses to correct them, professionalizing with non-family managers and including their participation in innovation decisions. This conclusion is stressed by both business editors, Mr. Osborne and Mr. Gallardo, who point out that: “Having a network of external collaborators, some of them generalists and others specialized in specific problems, is nowadays practically indispensable.” Finally, the academic editors sincerely appreciate the contributions of two prominent Spanish businessmen, who have contributed to enrich this special issue with a business perspective, which helps to overcome the division that is sometimes perceived between the academic world and the business one. Both Antonio Gallardo and Ignacio Osborne represent the entrepreneurial vision that they have been able to maintain in their families and in their companies for generations. We all know how challenging it is for a family business to be entrepreneurial across generations (e.g., De Massis, Eddleston and Rovelli, 2020). Last but now least, we want to express our gratitude to the editor of the European Journal of Family Business, Professor Vanesa Guzmán for her collaboration and contributions. The Osborne Group, founded in 1772, is one of the oldest family businesses in Europe. The group evolved from the original business of raising and exporting wines from Jerez to a wider food and beverage group which includes quality wines from various Spanish designations of origin, premium spirits, and products derived from Iberian pork, with a growing international acceptance, entering markets as demanding as China. Ignacio Osborne, a member of the sixth family generation, is the current president of the company since 2017, after 21 years as CEO. The company has been especially innovative in marketing, creating the symbol of the bull in the 50s, which has become a symbol that identifies the Spanish, transcending its initial origin as a reference for the winery. Almirallis a pharmaceutical company founded in 1943. It is currently run by the second generation, which are giving way to the third. Although innovation is an essential requirement to compete in pharmaceutics, Almirall has managed to develop some well-known products in Spain, as Almax and Cleboril, becoming one of most innovative companies in the industry. Antonio Gallardo is honorary vice president of his company, which he chaired for 26 years. In addition, he was also president of the Family Council and the Family Office, as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Family Business Network and vice president of the Family Business Institute.
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42

Lawson, Jenny. "Food Confessions: Disclosing the Self through the Performance of Food." M/C Journal 12, no. 5 (December 13, 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.199.

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At the end of the episode “Crowd Pleasers,” from her television series Nigella Feasts, we see British food writer and television cook Nigella Lawson in her nightgown opening her fridge in the dark. The fridge light reveals the remnant dishes of chili con carne that she prepared earlier on in the programme. She scoops up a dollop of soured cream and chili onto a spoon and shovels it into her mouth, nods approvingly and then picks up the entire chili dish. She eats another mouthful, utters a satisfied “umm” sound, closes the fridge door and walks away, taking the dish of chili with her. This recurring scenario at the end of Nigella’s programmes is paradoxically constructed as a private moment to be witnessed by many viewers. It resembles acts of secret eating, personal food habits and offers a glimpse of the performed self, adding to Nigella’s persona. Throughout Nigella’s programmes there is a conscious tension between the private and public. This tension is confounded by Nigella’s acknowledgement of, and direct address to, the viewers, characterised by the knowing look she gives to the camera when she tastes her food, licks her fingers as she cooks, or reveals her secret chocolate stash in her store cupboard; the overt performance of supposedly surreptitious gestures. Through her look-back at the camera Nigella performs both sin and confession, communicating her guilty-pleasure as she self-consciously reveals this pleasure to the viewers. At the start of her performance Table Occasions (2000), solo artist Bobby Baker explains that there are strict rules that she must follow, the most important being that she must not walk on the floor. Baker then hosts a dinner party (for imaginary guests), balancing on top of the table and chairs wearing high-heeled shoes. When the ‘meal’ is finished Baker breaks her rule; she gets down from the table and walks freely across the performance space, giving the audience a knowing look of mock-surprise, as if everyone was seduced into believing in the compulsory nature of her rule (Table Occasions).In this performance Baker confesses her anxiety and discomfort in the act of playing the host. By breaking rules of common etiquette as well as her own abstract rules, she performatively constructs her “sins” and her “confessions.” Baker’s look-back at the audience reveals her self-conscious “confessing self.” Confessing the SelfAs a practitioner-researcher working in the field of autobiography, developing from artists such as Baker, my practice attempts to articulate the impact that popular cultural performances of food may have upon current notions of food, identity and the self. I seek to use food as a vehicle for investigating and revealing multiple versions of self. The “confessing subject” in contemporary performance practice has been discussed extensively by Deirdre Heddon, particularly as a means of “questioning the subject of confession” (Daily 230). This paper is concerned with acts of disclosure (and confession) that occur through food in popular culture and performance practice. My particular focus will be my durational performance work If I knew you were coming I’d have baked a cake, commissioned by the Alsager Arts Centre Gallery, as part of the Curating Knowledge Residency Programme initiated by gallery curator Jane Linden. I will explore strategies of performative disclosure through food in both live and mediated contexts, in order to investigate Heddon’s distinction between “confessional performance art” and “the gamut of currently available mass-mediated confessional opportunities” (Daily 232). My aim is to explore a current cultural relationship between food, confession and autobiography through the lens of performance. My concern lies in the performance of self and the ways in which the self is disclosed through food and I use Nigella’s and Baker’s performances, as confessional/autobiographical material, to develop my argument. Although operating in different mediums, Baker (as performance artist), and Nigella (as media personality), both use food to perform the self and employ autobiographical strategies to reveal aspects of their personal domestic lives to their audience.It is necessary to acknowledge that Nigella is first and foremost a commodity and her programmes function as part mediation of her cooking brand, along with her cookbooks and cookware. Intentionality aside, I am interested in the ways in which Nigella engages her viewers, which is culturally indicative of the wider phenomenon of the celebrity chef and strategies of performative disclosure operating through food. My argument rests on the premise that Nigella’s strategies are similar to those used by Baker resulting in a slippage in Nigella’s position between Heddon’s opposing categories. Nigella not only adopts a confessional, intimate and personal mode of address but also uses it to construct her persona, lifestyle and perform a version of her autobiography. Gabrielle Helms, in analysing reality TV programmes such as Big Brother, observes that Through the use of direct camera address, the confession creates the sense of immediacy and urgency needed to establish a special ‘live’ relationship between speaker and audience, one that remains unattainable in written confession (53).Nigella also establishes a “live” relationship with her audience through her personal and direct camera address. Yet Nigella’s programmes are only reflective of her supposed actual domestic life. We witness fragmented images of her pampering in her bedroom, carefully choosing vegetables from a market stall and taking her children to school. The seamless flow of these constructed “life” images perform a mock-autobiography of Nigella’s life. Baker’s practice is rooted in the domestic and through her use of food in performance she communicates her ‘everyday’ experiences as a wife, mother and artist. Baker’s work belongs to a field of resistant arts practice through which she discloses her often painful and difficult relationship to femininity and the domestic. Baker has stated “food is like my own language” (Iball 75), and it is a highly visceral, visual language that she uses to communicate her autobiographical material. Lucy Baldwin describes that Baker’s “taboos collect around the visceral qualities of food: its proximity to the body and to emotions, and its ability to represent what we would rather forget” (37). Baker often uses foods in ways that invoke the internal body. In Drawing on a Mother’s Experience, she narrates personal stories of motherhood whilst marking foodstuffs onto a sheet to map out her memories and experiences. In Baker’s final moment she rolls herself up in the sheet, The foodstuffs begin to bleed through the second skin of the sheet. Gradually, this seepage takes on the appearance of internal organs-a mapping of capillaries and veins, a tacit revelation of interior matters (Baldwyn 51). The blending of both food and memories marked onto Baker’s body discloses a fluid, unstable identity. As Claire MacDonald states Baker “allows the self to operate as a site where the meanings of identity can be contested” (191). By nature, autobiographical performance problematises notions of identity and self and there is always a tension between the real and the fictional. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have stated that:Autobiographical acts[…]cannot be understood as individualist acts of a sovereign subject, whole and entire unto itself. And the representation produced cannot be taken as a guarantee of a ‘true self’, authentic, coherent, and fixed (11). Baker’s construction of “self” is multi-faceted, sitting in between the fictional and the “real.” Using food, Baker layers together the pieces of “Bobby,” past and present, onto her live body and unites her “self” with her other “selves” in an intimate and ‘real’ shared experience with a live audience; the weaving of a complex, engaging and moving autobiography. My interest is to further explore how food can be used to disclose and contest identity. Food ExposuresFood is inherent in social and public events, in meal times and celebrations, yet food is also kept behind closed doors and inside domestic kitchens constituting the stuff of private lives. Crossing the realms of private and public, food has become a vehicle for spectacle and entertainment in media culture and is used to reveal identities, subjectivities and personal histories. Cooking programmes belong to the hybrid reality TV genre, frequently termed “infotainment.” Signe Hansen has usefully observed that “when we watch shows like Big Brother, Survivor or Temptation Island, our position as consumers is exactly that of watching Jamie Oliver [or] Nigella Lawson” (55). Helms has also argued that reality TV shows “focus on auto/biographical performance,” and asks, “are the lives represented on these shows, and the ways they are represented, reflections of contemporary understandings of self and identity?” (46). In this vein, I propose that the lives represented in food media such as Nigella’s are also constructed through the autobiographical, and Nigella’s particular relationship with food furthers a trend of self-disclosure that capitulates into abject voyeurism. Television chefs each have their own unique, “hypertrophied personality” (Govan and Rebellato 36). Nigella’s persona is characterised through her personal and casual address, which bridges the gap between “food expert” (performer) and “novice” (viewer) previously circumscribed by food experts like Delia Smith. Hansen fittingly observes that “the experience of befriending, of coming to ‘know,’ the person behind the persona is one of the particularities of today’s media climate” (55). Nigella allows us to “know” her better by revealing her greed, laziness, messiness and lack of self-control. She reveals her personal relationship to recipes, such as those originating from her grandmother, or cooking utensils that hold sentimental value, like her mother’s wooden spoon. The glimpses of self that Nigella exposes through food are framed as confession and privilege her viewers with “inside knowledge.” Although the fictional/real tension prevails, it is the performance of autobiography that is significant here. The mock-autobiographical address entices viewers and transforms what is essentially an advertisement into a particular practice of visual engagement, one that is founded upon the pleasures of witnessing and consuming disclosures. In the case of reality TV an element of guilty pleasure remains on the part of the viewer, who is learning about someone’s private life without having to reciprocate[…]By observing others from a position of omniscience, viewers can live vicariously and can engage without having to take responsibility[…]they can move between attraction and revulsion without consequences for themselves (Helms 55).Both Nigella and Baker embody “attraction and revulsion” to different ends—in Kitchen show (1991), Baker performs thirteen actions that each result in a “mark” being left on her body. Baker’s sixth action is opening a fresh tub of margarine, confessing her delight in the “satisfying nipple peak in the centre.” Baker then subverts her desire, smearing the margarine onto her face, crossing between “attraction” and “revulsion.” Baker’s marks “defamiliarize the ordinary and everyday to provoke new […] disturbing insights” (Blumberg 197).In contrast to the sanitised aesthetic trope of cooking programmes, in which ingredients are pre-prepared and separated into glass bowls, “the hallucination of hygiene” (Govan and Rebellato 37), Nigella gets her hands dirty and heightens moments when her body comes into contact with food. In her “Comfort Food” episode from Nigella Bites, she aggressively pierces the insides of the lemon declaring, “I quite like this ritual disembowelling of the lemon.” Her fingertips often disappear into her mouth as she licks and tastes the food that she “disembowels.” Using Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Emma Govan and Dan Rebellato acknowledge the precariousness of the boundaries of the body, stating that “the passages into and out of the body are always dangerous sites for the self” (33). Nigella crosses the boundaries of etiquette and hygiene and exposes an open, wanting body that is both “repulsive” and “attractive”. Her persona is also characterised through the trope of consumer seduction, in terms of her adopting a flirtatious manner and playful aligning of cooking acts with sexual pleasure. She seductively describes the “wonderful primrose emulsion” colour of the lemon sauce, which matches her own yellow T-shirt, thus presenting her self as food, becoming both desirable and consumable. However, Nigella’s sexualised gluttony borders on the grotesque; risotto made, Nigella confesses that, “in theory, this would be enough supper for two, in practice, I rather feel, one”. She eats it immediately, standing in the kitchen eagerly taking in large spoonfuls whilst glancing knowingly at the camera. Bakhtin’s notion of the “grotesque body,” Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones and Ben Taylor point out “is frequently associated with food. It is a devouring body, a body in the process of over-indulging, eating, drinking, vomiting and defecating” (43) and Nigella renders her own body grotesque. However, in contrast to Baker, the grotesque in this context functions to seduce a consumer audience and perpetuate the voyeuristic gaze. Nigella is part of a culture in which the abject (improper) body and taboo eating habits are fetishised through media constructions of self. Self DisclosuresElspeth Probyn draws attention to the trend of media food disclosures, “listen carefully to the new generation of television chefs, and one will hear them tiptoeing along a fine line that threatens to collapse into terrifying public intimacy” (20). This rather unnerving concern resonates with Heddon’s observation of a current “cultural omnipresence of autobiography” (Autobiography 161). Heddon suggests that “if we were confessing animals in the 1970s, we have by now surely mutated into monsters” (Autobiography 160) and questions the implications for performance, asking if “a resistant autobiographical practice is even any longer a possibility?” (Autobiography 161). Heddon posits Irene Gammel’s term “confessional interventions” as a potential self-conscious, subversion strategy that autobiographical performance practice can adopt. For Heddon, Baker “refuses the voyeuristic gaze” by only confessing “the mundane” and never allowing us access to one true version of self,Baker’s ‘secrets’ are not only moments of refusal, or moments of ‘privacy in public’, they also perform spaces in which I, in the role of spectator, can bring myself into (the) ‘play’ as I fill in her gaps with my own stories. Who then is the confessing subject here? (Autobiography 164).In my practice I am seeking to use autobiography to “strategically play with the mode of confession” (Autobiography 163) and pass comment on the ways that food functions in popular culture as a vehicle for disclosure, and perpetuates the voyeuristic gaze. My interventionist strategy then, is to investigate how notions of the self can be represented through performative acts of disclosure, in which versions of the self are manipulated, revisited and retold. All performance is citational and I would argue that a deliberate, self-conscious acknowledgement of that citation is a useful means to problematise the mock confessional, whilst maintaining an autobiographical mode of address. Heddon has also acknowledged that,In the performance of autobiography, the always already fictional nature of the autobiographical mode is made explicit. Such an acceptance and revelation of the constructed nature of the autobiography is vital in its connection to the constructed nature of ‘identity’ and the ‘self’ (Glory 2).This strategy is evident in both Nigella’s and Baker’s performances if we return once again to their knowing look-back at the audience/camera. Their looks re-play their own citational context and communicate a “knowingness” that they are ‘playing’ themselves, and in doing so they refuse the very possibility of an ‘autobiography’. If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a CakeMy performance work investigated how cakes and baking could be used to create and perform a version of my autobiography. The work existed both as a performative durational process and an artwork that communicated through predominantly non-verbal means. Using cake decorating techniques I designed a large cake sculpture consisting of a number of cakes that were representative of significant occasions, relationships and memories throughout my life. The sculpture was baked, decorated and assembled over five days in the gallery and spectators were invited to witness each stage of my process. The sculpture featured cakes from my past, such as memorable birthday cakes. Other cakes were newly created to represent memories in which there was no cake present to that occasion, such as saying farewell to my family home. All of the cakes were used in new ways to disclose a version of my autobiography. The work simultaneously constituted and represented a number of autobiographical processes. Firstly, prior to the project I underwent cake decorating tuition over a period of ten weeks and the performance acted as documentation of this learning process; secondly, through the act of baking and decorating I engaged in processes of revisiting and remembering personal experiences; and finally the cake sculpture became a living autobiography of my durational time in the gallery and the physical experience of creating the artwork. As a keen baker my interest in cakes has developed into my artistic practice. Here I want to briefly propose the significance of cakes (in British culture) as mediators and markers of identities and relationships. Cakes are used to signify and commemorate occasions and social rituals. Cakes function as rewards and treats, and they mark the pivotal moment of a meal or end of a celebration. Cakes are shared between friends and they are present in the personal and particular experience of those individuals. A cake is not just a cake; as a symbol a cake can hold associations, memories and feelings and act as mediators for social interaction. Probyn raises an idea introduced by Nigella that “baking equates with the ‘ability to be part of life’” (5) and from my own experiences I can recall how cakes somehow enabled me to feel part of life, as a child baking in the kitchen, thinking, doing, creating, making decisions and mistakes, that impacted upon my relationships and connection to time and place. My performance investigated how cakes could be used to perform versions of self and here, I will unpick the strategies of performative disclosure (as a means of “confessional intervention”) that were used to construct multiple representations of the self and explore the dialogic relationship between them. In doing so I will disclose my own intentions, experiences and discoveries in order to problematise my role as both subject and creator of the work. Baking My AutobiographyProgramme notes were displayed at the entrance to the gallery and provided a map of the space outlining the function of each room. These notes were written as if addressing the spectators directly and contextualised the work through confessing my deliberate re-appropriation of Nigella’s “domestic goddess” persona: Hello, my name is Jenny and I want to be a Domestic Goddess. Welcome to my world of cakes and baking. Here in the gallery I am attempting to bake my autobiography. I have designed a large cake-sculpture that I will be baking and creating during the week. Every part of my cake has been individually constructed using memories and experiences from my past. Each area of the gallery is devoted to a particular part of my process… The entrance to the gallery opened up into a small corridor space that I titled “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame.” Hanging on the wall in chronological order were five portrait photographs of historical British female food personalities including, Mrs Beeton, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson. The fifth and last photograph was of me. I deliberately wrote “myself” into a visual narrative of significant female cooks, with their own cooking styles. From the outset I attempted to situate my autobiography within a culture of self-referentiality (see fig. 1). Figure 1. Image: Rory Francis. “The Domestic Goddess Hall of Fame”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The other areas in the gallery included a kitchen where I baked the cakes; a cake cooling room, where the finished cakes cooled, assisted by portable fans; a cake decorating corner where I conducted the sugar craft and exhibited an array of equipment and materials; and a display room, in which the finished cakes were arranged into the final sculpture. The audience were invited to participate in various activities, such as licking the bowl, assisting me with simple baking tasks and receiving a decorating demonstration. On the final day the finished cake sculpture was cut-up and offered to the audience who shared in the communal eating of my-life-in-cake (see fig. 2 and fig.3).Figure 2. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “The Cake Cooling Room and The Sugar Craft Corner”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Figure 3. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson.” The Kitchen”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. The isolating and displaying of each process revealed the mechanics behind both the artwork and the experiences of cake decorating. Yet the unveiling of these processes in the citational space of a gallery was intended to point up the construction of “personal” domestic space. Although I welcomed the audience into “my kitchen” and lived and breathed the duration of the project, there was no mistaking that this space was a gallery and bore no “real” resemblance to my (domestic) self or my autobiography, in the same way that Nigella’s domestic mise-en-scene, constitutes both her kitchen and her studio. In keeping with Heddon’s advocated “confessional intervention” the spectators were not presented with a clear autobiographical narrative. Rather, the cakes were used alongside structuring devices to present a collection of experiences that could be revisited, manipulated and retold; devices I devised in accordance with Daniel Schachter’s notion that,Memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves […] we construct our autobiographies from fragments of experience that change over time (qtd. in Smith and Watson 9). The durational nature of the project meant that audience members witnessed my cakes at varying stages of development and on the first morning there were no completed cakes present in the display room. However, three diagrammatic drawings were displayed on the walls depicting different versions of what the final sculpture may look like; technical drawings of top and side projections and a more personal mapping of fragmented stories and memories (see fig. 4). Figure 4. Image: Rory Francis. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Side Projection Scale 1:4.5”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. Twenty-two nametags were carefully positioned on the display table indicating where the finished cakes would eventually be placed. The names of each cake were indicative of an event or memory such as, “The Big Pink Sofa” or “Failed Mother’s Day” and performatively framed each cake within a personal narrative. Each cake had its own song, which the audience could play out loud on an Ipod at any point during the process, whether they were looking at the finished cake or just its nametag and a blank space. The songs were designed to locate my memories within a shared cultural frame of reference that although specific to my memory, would evoke associations personal to the viewers allowing the possibility of other self-narratives to arise from the work. The audience were also invited to take part in the continual documenting of my process. A plasma TV screen in the corner of the gallery that I titled “Cake Moments,” displayed a continual loop of photographs of past cakes from my life. The audience were instructed to take photographs of any interesting “cake moments” they encountered during their stay and at the end of each day these were added to the display. Like the cake sculpture, this collection of photographs built up over the five days. Many visitors chose to photograph themselves interacting in some way with the cakes and baking materials, thus becoming part of my autobiography. The photographs looped in random order and blurred together personal life shots with the constructed shots from the gallery, fictionalising the audience participation and potentially disrupting any singular notion of self (see fig. 5).These interactive features performatively disclosed fragments of personal memory and served to involve the audience in the self-conscious authoring of my autobiography. Whatever the stage of the process, the audience were encouraged to fill in the gaps with their own self-narratives. To return to Heddon’s question, “Who then is the confessing subject here?” (164). I find a possible answer lies inside my cakes. The UndisclosableMy memories, like a cake, were beaten and mixed together and like the icing, bled into each other to create a fluid yet fragmented autobiography. The finished cake sculpture combined an array of colours, textures, tastes, shapes and images. Some cakes were inscribed with photographs, personal texts, quirky features (a tower of custard cream biscuits) and disturbing details (a red gash cutting through a cake’s surface or a deliberately burnt black “Failed Mother’s Day” heart) (see fig. 6) Figure 5. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake Sculpture”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. As an artistic tool I found the layered form of a cake enabled me to represent multiple versions of memories and disclose complex feelings (albeit highly subjective) through a visually expressive and creative art form. In keeping with Bakhtinian dialogism, in which the self is only constructed through the interrelationship with the other, I performatively disclosed a version of my autobiography that was not located somewhere inside me, but somewhere in between both mine and the audience’s subjectivities. As Michael Holquist has expounded from Bakhtin:In order to see ourselves, we must appropriate the vision of others[…]the Bakhtinian just-so story of subjectivity is the tale of how I get my self from the other: it is only the other’s categories that will let me be an object for my own perception. (28)This inter-relationship between “self” and “other” was epitomised through the act of communal ingestion and the spirit of event-ness that comes with the territory of food. Once cut up, dismembered and eaten the cakes revealed all, in the same way that my process had exposed in its duration and excess the mess, my exhaustion, the remnants of congealed icing and the smudges and stains on my aprons. Yet in concealing nothing, the work inherently refused to disclose. Once the cakes passed through the mouth of the “other” they gave way to that “other”, that “self”, revealing only cake and sugar. The mouth machine is central to the articulation of different orders that go beyond the division of public and private: the tongue sticks out, draws in food, objects and people. In eating we constantly take in and spit out things, people, selves. (Probyn 21)In giving my cakes and “myself” to the spectators, I relinquished ownership of both my cakes and the artwork. I looked on as my cakes were eaten and destroyed, redirecting the voyeuristic gaze towards the audience and the private, personal, undisclosable experience of ingestion (see fig. 7)I started out baking myself, but I ended up baking you, and then together we ate each other. Figure 6. Image: Anonymous Audience Member. Performer: Jenny Lawson. “Cake and Sugar”. If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake. 2009. ReferencesAshley, Bob, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones, and Ben Taylor, eds. Food and Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.Baldwyn, Lucy. “Blending In: The Immaterial Art of Bobby Baker’s Culinary Events.” The Drama Review 40.4 (1996): 37–55.Blumberg, Marcia. “Domestic Place as Contestatory Space: The Kitchen as Catalyst and Crucible.” New Theatre Quarterly 55.33 (1998): 195–201. Govan, Emma, and Dan Rebellato. “Foodscares!” Performance Research: On Cooking 4.1 (1999): 31–40. Hansen, Signe. “Society of the Appetite: Celebrity Chefs Deliver Consumers.” Food Culture & Society 11.1 (2008): 50–67. Heddon, Deirdre. Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.––– . “Daily Life 5 Box Story.” Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life. Ed. Michele Barrett. Oxon: Routledge, 2007.––– . “Glory Box: Tim Miller's Autobiography of the Future.” New Theatre Quarterly 19.3 (2003): 243–256.Helms, Gabrielle. “Reality TV Has Spoken: Auto/Biography Matters.” Tracing the Autobiographical. Eds. Marlene Kadar, Linda Warley, Jeanne Perreault and Susanna Egan. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2005.Holquist, Michael. Bakhtin and His World. London: Routledge, 1990.Iball, Helen. “Melting Moments: Bodies Upstaged by the Foodie Gaze.” Performance Research: On Cooking 4.1 (1999): 70–81.Kitchen Show. Dir. Bobby Baker & Paloa Balon Brown. Videocassette, 1991.MacDonald, Claire. “Assumed Identities: Feminism, Autobiography and Performance Art.” The Uses of Autobiography. Ed. Julia Swindells. London: Taylor and Francis, 1995.Nigella Bites. Dir. Dominic Cyriax. DVD. Pabulum and Flashback Television. Channel Four Television Corporation, 2002.Nigella Feasts. Dir. Dominic Cyriax. DVD. North Pacific Ltd/Pabulum Productions Ltd., 2006. Probyn, Elspeth. Carnal Appetites: Food Sex Identities. London: Routledge, 2000.Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. “Introduction: Mapping Women’s Self-Representation at Visual/Textual Interfaces.” Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002.Table Occasions. Dir. Bobby Baker and Paloa Balon Brown, Videocassette, 2000.
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