Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

What difference does it make who is speaking?

Thesis (M.A. (Fine Art))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Art, 2016This thesis examines the concept of authorship in literary and artistic practice by travelling the concept of authorship from literature to artistic practice. To achieve this the thesis will be guided by the questions, ʻwhat is an author?ʼ, ʻwhen is authorship?ʼ and more importantly the title question, what difference does it make who is speaking? To unpack these questions and those that will follow, my research will begin by thinking through the idea of authorship and authorial voice in literature and to identify the ways in which this is performed in artistic practice. Additionally the thesis will explore the authorship and authority, particularly how the author uses the power of language to impose authority over the reader and the West language still holds power the postcolonial subject or authors. In retaliation of this authority, the thesis also looks at how postcolonial writers/artists have developed a language of power. This analysis will be directed by a selection of theorists, writers and artists. Theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault whose questions on authorship are the bases of my research and Miek Bal Traveling Concepts in the Humanities, Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology, Ngugi Wa Thiongo Writers in Politics, Walter Benjamin The Task of the Translator and Jean Fisherʼs Embodied Subversion as well as other supporting reading. In addition to that, investigating methods of writing in Dambudzo Marecheraʼs novella House of Hunger and Willimam S. Burroughs The Naked Lunch and how these ideas are reflected by artistic practice .To help envisage the idea of the ʻartist as authorʼ I look very closely at specific works of three postcolonial artist and their relationship with language. I have selected works by artists Kemang Wa Lehulereʼs Some Deleted Scenes Too, Tracey Roseʼs Span I, and Danh Voʼs Last letter of Saint Théophane Vénard to his father before he was decapitated copied by Phung Vo as well as drawing from my own practice.MT201

Psr1p interacts with SUN/sad1p and EB1/mal3p to establish the bipolar spindle

Regular Abstracts - Sunday Poster Presentations: no. 382During mitosis, interpolar microtubules from two spindle pole bodies (SPBs) interdigitate to create an antiparallel microtubule array for accommodating numerous regulatory proteins. Among these proteins, the kinesin-5 cut7p/Eg5 is the key player responsible for sliding apart antiparallel microtubules and thus helps in establishing the bipolar spindle. At the onset of mitosis, two SPBs are adjacent to one another with most microtubules running nearly parallel toward the nuclear envelope, creating an unfavorable microtubule configuration for the kinesin-5 kinesins. Therefore, how the cell organizes the antiparallel microtubule array in the first place at mitotic onset remains enigmatic. Here, we show that a novel protein psrp1p localizes to the SPB and plays a key role in organizing the antiparallel microtubule array. The absence of psr1+ leads to a transient monopolar spindle and massive chromosome loss. Further functional characterization demonstrates that psr1p is recruited to the SPB through interaction with the conserved SUN protein sad1p and that psr1p physically interacts with the conserved microtubule plus tip protein mal3p/EB1. These results suggest a model that psr1p serves as a linking protein between sad1p/SUN and mal3p/EB1 to allow microtubule plus ends to be coupled to the SPBs for organization of an antiparallel microtubule array. Thus, we conclude that psr1p is involved in organizing the antiparallel microtubule array in the first place at mitosis onset by interaction with SUN/sad1p and EB1/mal3p, thereby establishing the bipolar spindle.postprin

Approaching algorithmic power

Contemporary power manifests in the algorithmic. Emerging quite recently as an object of study within media and communications, cultural research, gender and race studies, and urban geography, the algorithm often seems ungraspable. Framed as code, it becomes proprietary property, black-boxed and inaccessible. Framed as a totality, its becomes overwhelmingly complex, incomprehensible in its operations. Framed as a procedure, it becomes a technique to be optimised, bracketing out the political. In struggling to adequately grasp the algorithmic as an object of study, to unravel its mechanisms and materialities, these framings offer limited insight into how algorithmic power is initiated and maintained. This thesis instead argues for an alternative approach: firstly, that the algorithmic is coordinated by a coherent internal logic, a knowledge-structure that understands the world in particular ways; second, that the algorithmic is enacted through control, a material and therefore observable performance which purposively influences people and things towards a predetermined outcome; and third, that this complex totality of architectures and operations can be productively analysed as strategic sociotechnical clusters of machines. This method of inquiry is developed with and tested against four contemporary examples: Uber, Airbnb, Amazon Alexa, and Palantir Gotham. Highly profitable, widely adopted and globally operational, they exemplify the algorithmic shift from whiteboard to world. But if the world is productive, it is also precarious, consisting of frictional spaces and antagonistic subjects. Force cannot be assumed as unilinear, but is incessantly negotiated—operations of parsing data and processing tasks forming broader operations that strive to establish subjectivities and shape relations. These negotiations can fail, destabilised by inadequate logics and weak control. A more generic understanding of logic and control enables a historiography of the algorithmic. The ability to index information, to structure the flow of labor, to exert force over subjects and spaces— these did not emerge with the microchip and the mainframe, but are part of a longer lineage of calculation. Two moments from this lineage are examined: house-numbering in the Habsburg Empire and punch-card machines in the Third Reich. Rather than revolutionary, this genealogy suggests an evolutionary process, albeit uneven, linking the computation of past and present. The thesis makes a methodological contribution to the nascent field of algorithmic studies. But more importantly, it renders algorithmic power more intelligible as a material force. Structured and implemented in particular ways, the design of logic and control construct different versions, or modalities, of algorithmic power. This power is political, it calibrates subjectivities towards certain ends, it prioritises space in specific ways, and it privileges particular practices whilst suppressing others. In apprehending operational logics, the practice of method thus foregrounds the sociopolitical dimensions of algorithmic power. As the algorithmic increasingly infiltrates into and governs the everyday, the ability to understand, critique, and intervene in this new field of power becomes more urgent

Developing the Yeast Disaggregase Hsp104 as a Treatment for Polyglutamine Disease in Drosophila

There is currently no cure for neurodegenerative disease or the underlying burden of protein aggregation that is associated with symptom development. A novel approach to combat this accumulation of misfolded protein species is surprisingly found in a protein disaggregase in yeast, the heat shock protein Hsp104. To investigate whether Hsp104 can be introduced into an animal system and harnessed to attack disease-associated protein inclusions, we created a transgenic Drosophila model expressing Hsp104 and investigated whether this would mitigate toxicity and alter the load of protein accumulations. We found that Hsp104 indeed suppressed toxicity of a disease-associated protein fragment containing an expanded polyglutamine tract. However, we found that Hsp104 worsened toxicity of the full-length pathogenic polyglutamine protein, and this coincided with increased accumulation of amyloid inclusions. This aberrant activity of Hsp104 depended on intact domains in the non-polyglutamine stretches of the protein, and this negative interaction could be prevented by mutation to these neighboring domains. These results indicate that knowing the precise protein state of a disease environment is critical in evaluating potential therapeutics. Moreover, we sequentially activated Hsp104 after the onset of protein aggregation and start of tissue degeneration, to find that Hsp104, but not Hsp70, significantly suppressed progressive degeneration. Thus, the unique ability of Hsp104 to tackle pre-existing amyloid conformers may offer a novel opportunity to reverse disease progression once underway

Ferocious Logics

Contemporary power manifests in the algorithmic. And yet this power seems incomprehensible: understood as code, it becomes apolitical; understood as a totality, it becomes overwhelming. This book takes an alternate approach, using it to unravel the operations of Uber and Palantir, Airbnb and Amazon Alexa. Moving off the whiteboard and into the world, the algorithmic must negotiate with frictions—the ‘merely’ technical routines of distributing data and running tasks coming together into broader social forces that shape subjectivities, steer bodies, and calibrate relationships. Driven by the imperatives of capital, the algorithmic exhausts subjects and spaces, a double move seeking to both exhaustively apprehend them and exhaust away their productivities. But these on-the-ground encounters also reveal that force is never guaranteed. The irreducibility of the world renders logic inadequate and control gives way to contingency

Radio After Radio: Redefining radio art in the light of new media technology through expanded practice

I have been working in the field of radio art, and through creative practice have been considering how the convergence of new media technologies has redefined radio art, addressing the ways in which this has extended the boundaries of the art form. This practice-based research explores the rich history of radio as an artistic medium and the relationship between the artist and technology, emphasising the role of the artist as a mediator between broadcast institutions and a listening public. It considers how radio art might be defined in relation to sound art, music and media art, mapping its shifting parameters in the digital era and prompting a consideration of how radio appears to be moving from a dispersed „live‟ event to one consumed „on demand‟ by a segmented audience across multiple platforms. Exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice focuses upon the productive tensions which characterise the artist‟s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the proliferation of new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media. Switch Off takes as its overarching theme the possible futures for FM radio, incorporating elements from eight „trace‟ stations, produced as a series of radio actions investigating these tensions. Interviews have been conducted with case study subjects Vicki Bennett, Anna Friz, LIGNA, Hildegard Westerkamp and Gregory Whitehead, whose work was chosen as being exemplary of the five recurrent facets of radio arts practice I have identified: Appropriation, Transmission, Activism, Soundscape and Performance. These categories are derived from the genealogy of experimental radiophonic practice set out in Chapter One