Doppelgangers

This paper explores a series of artworks entitled Doppelgngers, wherein found objects are paired with detailed copies. Within this body of work I duplicate a range of scrap papers including envelopes and short notes with distinctly torn edges exhibiting haphazard and idiosyncratic features that are not likely to occur twice. Each original object within these pairs is explored as a document and a site where various forms of information reside from written text on its surface, to the material information revealed by the condition of the physical object itself. Each small mark is copied stroke-by-stroke, approximating appearance and informational content as a means of exploring the limits of sameness and the potential for difference between two like objects. The notion of copying is explored as a process-based phenomenon integrating careful observation and making

Rekonstruksi Kertas Sobek Berbasis Corner Point (Studi Kasus: Sobekan Digital)

Kertas merupakan media yang digunakan sebagai wadah untuk menampung kreatifitas, gagasan, dan catatan penting yang telah digunakan sejak jaman dahulu. Banyak catatan berharga yang berada di atas kertas seperti surat perjanjian, catatan sejarah, laporan, dan lain sebagainya. Dokumen berharga tersebut bisa saja rusak entah karena sengaja ataupun tidak sengaja. Penyebab rusaknya dokumen ada bermacam-macam dan salah satunya adalah akibat sobek. Tugas akhir ini menggunakan corner point yang diperoleh menggunakan Harris Corner Detection sebagai solusi untuk merekonstruksi kertas yang sobek. Selisih sudut dan jarak antar corner point dibandingkan dengan threshold tertentu untuk menentukan kandidat pasangan sobekan. Persentase pasangan corner kandidat tersebut dibandingkan dengan decision threshold untuk memastikan bahwa pasangan sobekan tersebut merupakan pasangan yang tepat atau bukan. Affine Transform digunakan untuk merekonstruksi dan menggabungkan pasangan sobekan kertas dengan dibantu oleh RANSAC. Berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan, pasangan sobekan dapat ditentukan dengan membandingkan besar sudut dan jarak antar titik pembentuk sudut tersebut yang dihasilkan oleh Harris Corner Detection. Decision threshold yang dibentuk berdasarkan persentase pasangan corner yang cocok mampu memilah sobekan yang berpasangan dan sobekan yang tidak memiliki pasangan sehingga sistem mampu merekonstruksi kertas dengan baik

The spiral-locked letters of Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots

This article presents evidence about the use of the 'spiral lock', a highly secure letterlocking mechanism used by Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and other letter-writers in early modern Europe, to secure their correspondence shut. After explaining the concept of letterlocking, a centuries-old communication security technique, we demonstrate how the spiral lock worked, using photographs, vector drawings, and videos alongside textual descriptions, and show both how the lock was made and how to recognize it in an archive. The findings are set in multiple contexts: letterlocking as a new field of study; new digital humanities research in the life and letters of Mary, Queen of Scots; and a major exhibition at the British Library on the intersecting lives of the two queens

Aid, Conditionality, and War Economies

When natural resource revenues provide an important motive and/or means for armed conflict, the transition from war peace faces three challenges: (i) ensuring that the benefits and costs of natural resource exploitation are distributed so as to ease rather than exacerbate social tensions; (ii) channeling revenues to peaceful and productive purposes; and (iii) promoting accountability and transparency in natural resource management. Aid conditionality can help to address these challenges provided that three prerequisites are met: (i) there are domestic parties with sufficient authority and legitimacy to strike and implement aid-for-peace bargains; (ii) donor governments and agencies make peace their top priority, putting this ahead of other geopolitical, commercial, and institutional goals; and (iii) the aid 'carrot' is substantial enough to provide an incentive for pro-peace policies. Case studies of Cambodia, Angola, and Afghanistan illustrate both the scope and limitations of peace conditionality in such settings.war; natural resources; foreign aid; conditionality

Aid, Conditionality, and War Economies

When natural resource revenues provide an important motive and/or means for armed conflict, the transition from war peace faces three challenges: (i) ensuring that the benefits and costs of natural resource exploitation are distributed so as to ease rather than exacerbate social tensions; (ii) channeling revenues to peaceful and productive purposes; and (iii) promoting accountability and transparency in natural resource management. Aid conditionality can help to address these challenges provided that three prerequisites are met: (i) there are domestic parties with sufficient authority and legitimacy to strike and implement aid-for-peace bargains; (ii) donor governments and agencies make peace their top priority, putting this ahead of other geopolitical, commercial, and institutional goals; and (iii) the aid ‘carrot’ is substantial enough to provide an incentive for pro-peace policies. Case studies of Cambodia, Angola, and Afghanistan illustrate both the scope and limitations of peace conditionality in such settings.

Salvage rites: making memory on a Montana homestead

The preservation of selected sites and artefacts privileges certain forms of cultural memory. Other material cultures, no longer useful and deemed unworthy of preservation, accumulate in overlooked places. Abandoned in a state of unfinished disposal, these objects and structures can generate unpredictable and unruly effects. Such degraded materialities may trigger apprehensions of cultural memory in a mode unfamiliar to the museum or the heritage park. This study takes up the residual material culture of a homestead in Western Montana to explore how history and memory are made, and remade, through interactions between people and things. Theories of performativity and intersubjectivity inform a move away from a broadly representational or semiotic understanding of material culture. In this study, experimental methodologies access the different ways in which material engagements animate the potential effects of a given artefact. One approach explores the potential for inclusive, artful inventory practice. Another engages in a process of associative storytelling which assembles disparate objects in constellations of meaning. A third approach observes the way in which sensory or haptic memory arises out of embodied action and practical reclamation. Finally, the thesis considers the nature of cultural memory and the processes of decay that obscure certain residues of knowledge even as they expose others. In conclusion, the thesis considers the social and political implications of such non-essentialist encounters with memory and materiality. The thesis argues that these active, creative encounters with objects open up the possibility for an ethical relation to the past-a salvage both of cultural artefacts and of overlooked histories

Migration of the Antarctic Polar Front through the mid-Pleistocene transition: evidence and climatic implications

The Antarctic Polar Front is an important biogeochemical divider in the Southern Ocean. Laminated diatom mat deposits record episodes of massive flux of the diatom Thalassiothrix antarctica beneath the Antarctic Polar Front and provide a marker for tracking the migration of the Front through time. Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1091, 1093 and 1094 are the only deep piston cored record hitherto sampled from the sediments of the circumpolar biogenic opal belt. Mapping of diatom mat deposits between these sites indicates a glacial-interglacial front migration of up to 6 degrees of latitude in the early / mid Pleistocene. The mid Pleistocene transition marks a stepwise minimum 7 degree northward migration of the locus of the Polar Front sustained for about 450 kyr until an abrupt southward return to a locus similar to its modern position and further south than any mid-Pleistocene locus. This interval from a “900 ka event” that saw major cooling of the oceans and a ?13C minimum through to the 424 ka Mid-Brunhes Event at Termination V is also seemingly characterised by 1) sustained decreased carbonate in the subtropical south Atlantic, 2) reduced strength of Antarctic deep meridional circulation, 3) lower interglacial temperatures and lower interglacial atmospheric CO2 levels (by some 30 per mil) than those of the last 400 kyr, evidencing less complete deglaciation. This evidence is consistent with a prolonged period lasting 450 kyr of only partial ventilation of the deep ocean during interglacials and suggests that the mechanisms highlighted by recent hypotheses linking mid-latitude atmospheric conditions to the extent of deep ocean ventilation and carbon sequestration over glacial-interglacial cycles are likely in operation during the longer time scale characteristic of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. The cooling that initiated the “900 ka event” may have been driven by minima in insolation amplitude related to eccentricity modulation of precession that also affected low latitude climates as marked by threshold changes in the African monsoon system. The major thresholds in earth system behaviour through the Mid-Pleistocene Transition were likely governed by an interplay of the 100 kyr and 400 kyr eccentricity modulation of precession

Remains, debris and ruins of the war setting from decontamination issues and disposal to the configuration of new landscapes-

This study is structured on the analysis of the definition of ruins and rubbles and then shows the real present state, through cartographic, historical, urban and territorial surveys of different stories of cities destroyed by acts of war (since the Second World War until the most recent conflicts: the Balkans with the siege of Sarajevo and the war in Lebanon with the 'destruction' of Beirut). The study was divided in parts relating to the material dimension of the destroyed city and the intrinsic spatial conformation, as results of acts of war such as: hills of rubble and modifying coastal lines as a result of piles of inert materials and also general waste. So the city gained a renewed post-war image, a different spatial identity and another orography that, now, asks to be revealed. Following the war, in effect, what remains is nothing more that a collection of urban materials often without any value that, in their physical state, occupy space and reveal other, unexpected urban and territorial pictures. However, 'rubble' take a meaning in ‘urban design’, take an active role in ‘geographical plane’ and show an alternative means to describe the overlapping and solidification of historical signs

The use of natural stone as an authentic building material for the restoration of historic buildings in order to test sustainable refurbishment: Case study

This study deals with the integrated process of conservation and restoration of architectural heritage and sustainability. The objective of the research was to define adequate methodologies for the structural restoration of historic buildings, their re-use, and sustainable refurbishment in accordance with modern requirements and conservation standards while maintaining the original visual character by using natural stone as an authentic building material. The main research method was the in-situ observation of the historic structures during the restoration and adaptive re-use, the analysis, and evaluation of the research findings regarding energy efficiency improvements and energy saving in the Haybarn complex within the monastery Hilandar, Mount Athos, Greece. Due to its cultural and natural values, Mount Athos has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The research included the damaged and abandoned agricultural structures that belong to the Haybarn complex and the analysis of the obtained results after the restoration had finished and the abandoned premises had been turned into guest rooms for the visitors of Hilandar monastery. The result section states the findings of the research arranged as recommendations for historic building restoration and re-use, emphasizing their new function in accordance with modern comfort requirements and environmental protection standards. The main contribution of this study is the analysis of the research findings and the possibilities of energy refurbishment of the restored historic buildings, through the use of natural stone as authentic local construction material, in accordance with energy efficiency measures and principles, conservation requirements and cultural heritage conservation standards