Between a White Cube, Black Box, and Warehouse: Constructing Spaces for Contemporary Art throughout the Recent Museum Building Boom

Since the 1990s, museum buildings and the art housed inside them have undergone dramatic changes. Once canonical structures, they have evolved to more suitably contain new art forms and reflect the expanding and dynamic purposes of the museum. Museum architecture constructs the meanings and values of institutions as its primary and most tangible symbol. It commands a specific approach for display rhetoric and dictates the ways users and curators make use of space. What is the relationship between the latest museum building boom and contemporary art? What specific architectural strategies are employed by museums and architects to suit contemporary art? This paper examines the recent trends in museum construction in order to explore the ways in which new museums have reshaped the museum experience and dialogue between users and contemporary art.Desde la década de 1990 los edificios de los museos y el arte alojado en ellos han sufrido cambios dramáticos. Las estructuras canónicas han evolucionado para contener de manera más adecuada nuevas formas de arte y reflejar los propósitos dinámicos y en expansión del museo. La arquitectura del museo manifiesta los significados y valores de la propia institución como su símbolo principal y más tangible, presenta un enfoque específico para mostrar la retórica y dicta las formas en que los usuarios y los curadores hacen uso del espacio. ¿Cuál es la relación entre el último auge de la construcción de museos y el arte contemporáneo? ¿Qué estrategias arquitectónicas específicas emplean los museos y arquitectos para adaptarse al arte contemporáneo? Este artículo examina las tendencias recientes en la construcción de museos para explorar las formas en que los nuevos espacios han reformulado la experiencia y el diálogo entre los usuarios y el arte contemporáneo

Symmetry Origin of Nonlinear Monopole

We revisit the non-linear BPS equation: the Dirac monopole of the Born-Infeld theory in the B-field background. The rotation used in our previous papers to discuss the scalar field by transforming the BPS equation into a linear one is extended to the case of gauge field. We also find that this transformation is a symmetry of the action. Moreover using the Legendre-dual formalism we present a simple expression of the BPS equation.Comment: 29 pages, 1 fugur

Power dynamics in software platform ecosystems

In software platform ecosystems, the technological and structural peculiarities vest the platform owner with an extremely powerful position that puts any complementor at the mercy of the platform owner's actions. Paradoxically, it is the self-determination and proactivity of the complementors that determine the ecosystem's success through their surprising outside innovations. This study addresses this power paradox by unpacking the power dynamics between platform owners and complementors. Based on an exploratory multiple-case study of six platform partnerships, we find that power in platform ecosystems unfolds as a reciprocal process of three interlocking cycles, in which both the platform owner and the complementors take an active role. The modus operandi of power in platform ecosystems is a “central power cycle” in which the complementors repeatedly evaluate whether to accept or reject the platform owner's domination power. Thriving partnerships sustain this central power cycle over time, which requires that the platform owner and the complementors dynamically adapt their wielding of power to the changing needs of the partnership (partnership adaptation cycle) or the ecosystem (ecosystem redefinition cycle). For the platform owner, this entails the occasional use of manipulation to favour a particular partnership or redefining the ecosystem's framework and sporadically wielding coercion in favour of the broader ecosystem. For the complementor, this entails over-subjectification to entice the platform owner to wield its power in favour of their partnership. Our findings have important implications for platform ecosystem and power theory, as well as managerial practice

Predictive powers of chiral perturbation theory in Compton scattering off protons

We study low-energy nucleon Compton scattering in the framework of baryon chiral perturbation theory (B$\chi$PT) with pion, nucleon, and $\Delta$(1232) degrees of freedom, up to and including the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). We include the effects of order $p^2$, $p^3$ and $p^4/\varDelta$, with $\varDelta\approx 300$ MeV the $\Delta$-resonance excitation energy. These are all "predictive" powers in the sense that no unknown low-energy constants enter until at least one order higher (i.e, $p^4$). Estimating the theoretical uncertainty on the basis of natural size for $p^4$ effects, we find that uncertainty of such a NNLO result is comparable to the uncertainty of the present experimental data for low-energy Compton scattering. We find an excellent agreement with the experimental cross section data up to at least the pion-production threshold. Nevertheless, for the proton's magnetic polarizability we obtain a value of $(4.0\pm 0.7)\times 10^{-4}$ fm$^3$, in significant disagreement with the current PDG value. Unlike the previous $\chi$PT studies of Compton scattering, we perform the calculations in a manifestly Lorentz-covariant fashion, refraining from the heavy-baryon (HB) expansion. The difference between the lowest order HB$\chi$PT and B$\chi$PT results for polarizabilities is found to be appreciable. We discuss the chiral behavior of proton polarizabilities in both HB$\chi$PT and B$\chi$PT with the hope to confront it with lattice QCD calculations in a near future. In studying some of the polarized observables, we identify the regime where their naive low-energy expansion begins to break down, thus addressing the forthcoming precision measurements at the HIGS facility.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, RevTeX4, revised version published in EPJ

Changing the Definition of the Situation: Toward a Theory of Sociological Intervention

The sociological intervention is identified as (1) directed at the operational definition of the situation and (2) taking into account the multiple, interacting layers of social participation framing human predicaments and their resolution. These are further differentiated, employing case examples, in terms of mode of attack—direct, indirect, or cooperative—and level of social context at which the intervention is directed—the personal, group, organizational, or social world being described here as quantum levels of interest. While others may conduct such interventions, the sociological intervention is characterized as the special domain of the clinical sociologist

The Malleable Politics of Activation Reform: the ‘Hartz’ Reforms in Comparative Perspective

In this paper we compare the Hartz reforms in Germany with three other major labor market activation reforms carried out by center-left governments. Two of the cases, Britain and Germany, involved radically neoliberal “mandatory” activation policies, whereas in the Netherlands and Ireland radical activation change took a very different “enabling” form. Two of the cases, Ireland and Germany, were path deviant, Britain and the Netherlands were path dependent. We explain why Germany underwent “mandatory” and path deviant activation by focusing on two features of the policy discourse. First, the coordinative (or elite level) discourse was “ensilaged” sealing policy formation off from dissenting actors and, until belatedly unwrapped for enactment, from the wider communicative (legitimating) discourse. This is what the British and German cases had in common and the result was reform that viewed long term unemployment as personal failure rather than market failure. Second, although the German policy-making system lacked the “authoritative” features that facilitated reform in the British case, and the Irish policymaking system lacked the “reflexive” mechanisms that facilitated reform in the Dutch case, in both Germany and Ireland the communicative discourses were reshaped by novel institutional vehicles (the Hartz Commission in the German case, FÁS in the Irish case) that served to fundamentally alter systemconstitutive perceptions about policy. In the Irish and German cases “government by commission” created a realignment of advocacy coalitions with one coalition acquiring a new, ideologically-dominant and path deviating narrative. The findings suggest that major reform of labor market and welfare state policy may be much more malleable than previously thought

Changing the Definition of the Situation: Toward a Theory of Sociological Intervention

The sociological intervention is identified as (1) directed at the operational definition of the situation and (2) taking into account the multiple, interacting layers of social participation framing human predicaments and their resolution. These are further differentiated, employing case examples, in terms of mode of attack — direct, indirect, or cooperative — and level of social context at which the intervention is directed — the personal, group, organizational, or social world being described here as quantum\u27\u27 levels of interest. While others may conduct such interventions, the sociological intervention is characterized as the special domain of the clinical sociologist

From Linearity to Circulation. How TV Flow Is Changing in Networked Media Space

This article discusses the evolution of the concept of flow from the producer-controlled phase to the user-controlled phase, thus proposing the concept of circulation as a new framework for understanding the new TV ecosystem. The multiplication of screens (from the traditional TV set to handheld mobile devices) has made TV content accessible anytime and anywhere and, furthermore, has provided an interactive space where the digital life of content is managed by the audiences on social media. Such multiplication of screens has created forms of TV consumption that lead to the deconstruction and subsequent reformulation of the concepts of space, time and medium. This article examines this ongoing process, beginning with observations of audience consumption practices that are analysed using Osservatorio Social TV 2015, an Italian research project