Avoidance - Avoidance

A book documenting the Avoidance-Avoidance project: Avoidance—Avoidance combines a performed play staged amongst exhibited art works. The play has had 10 iterations in 6 countries using 12 actors and has been performed in 5 languages. Each presentation comprises a new edited site-specific script and a new body of accompanying artworks that act as both autonomous artworks and stage devices. The play centres on two characters based on the film director Mary Ellen Bute and her real-life lover and cinematographer Ted Nemeth. The dialogue is a love story which comments on the methods of concealment that are used both in our personal intimate relationships and more broadly speaking in politics where ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ are a valuable currency

Noise of Placards - The Proximity of Protest

This chapter takes a walk through a politicized sonorous landscape to analyze the blurred sound of protest aimed against globalization amidst a background of active consumerism. Using a temporal, physical, and geographically shifting figure such as a walk, I aim to identify varying stages of proximity relating to the words that are shouted or sung by a protesting crowd, and particularly how these proximities affect the symbolic identity of these words of protest. The essay is part of the book The Tigers Mind by Beatrice Gibson

The Figure of Speech: The Politics of Contemporary Chatter

This thesis focuses on informal linguistic transactions that operate in relation to, and as part of spectacle in contemporary society. In contrast to presenting such transactions as a subordinated public, exchanging meaningless chatter, these communicative acts are seen to be a formalization of language revealing processes, networks, and territories that have positive possibilities for the public engaged in these communications. Using examples such as the act of communication evident in the recent exponential growth of web 2.0 (on-line social networking), the sound of language represented in the murmur of political demonstrations, and the audibility of voices on the underground network, this thesis builds upon and extends discussions that have asserted the political resistance inherent in rumour, gossip, idle talk, and hearsay. This specific analysis focuses upon both our physical, corporeal, and virtual relations to chatter within the developing systems of new technology that transfer the majority of today’s informal exchanges—investigating the sounds, repetitions, occupation of networks, and gestures of communication rather than the exchange of specific content. Using a methodology that acknowledges the ephemeral, transgressive and fluid nature of its subject, this project uses regular first person narrated sections supporting theoretical discussion, refuses the ‘permanence’ of visual illustration, and is directly informed by concerns within my art practice. Responding to the ideas inherent to my art practice—concerning the form and presentation of information presented (by the media and political authorities) to the public from which a political cognition is constructed, both text and practice elements of this project focus on an abstract, formal reading of contemporary communication. These abstract experiences of communication and collective action are acknowledged as an integral reading of contemporary politics, and that this sphere should be activated, extended and expanded upon in order to discover the positive possibilities inherent within it

The Two Scene

Solo exhibition at Mendes Wood DM Gallery, Sao Paolo (Avoidance-avoidance script 9) as part of Avoidance-Avoidance project (2012-2017). Avoidance—Avoidance combines a performed play staged amongst exhibited art works. The play has had 10 iterations in 6 countries using 12 actors and has been performed in 5 languages. Each presentation comprises a new edited site-specific script and a new body of accompanying artworks that act as both autonomous artworks and stage devices. The play centres on two characters based on the film director Mary Ellen Bute and her real-life lover and cinematographer Ted Nemeth. The dialogue is a love story which comments on the methods of concealment that are used both in our personal intimate relationships and more broadly speaking in politics where ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ are a valuable currency

A Dance with Supports

Solo event (script 7) as part of Avoidance-Avoidance project. Play performed in the Museo Mario Marini, with re-arranged plinths from Museum storage as set. Avoidance—Avoidance combines a performed play staged amongst exhibited art works. Each presentation comprises a new edited site-specific script and a new body of accompanying artworks that act as both autonomous artworks and stage devices. The play centres on two characters based on the film director Mary Ellen Bute and her real-life lover and cinematographer Ted Nemeth. The dialogue is a love story which comments on the methods of concealment that are used both in our personal intimate relationships and more broadly speaking in politics where ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ are a valuable currency

Is That Crystal Clear or Did I say Too Much? (Avoidance-Avoidance script

Solo exhibition as part of Avoidance-Avoidance project (script 8). Includes paintings, digital video, sculpture, drawing and a play. Avoidance—Avoidance combines a performed play staged amongst exhibited art works. Each presentation comprises a new edited site-specific script and a new body of accompanying artworks that act as both autonomous artworks and stage devices. The play centres on two characters based on the film director Mary Ellen Bute and her real-life lover and cinematographer Ted Nemeth. The dialogue is a love story which comments on the methods of concealment that are used both in our personal intimate relationships and more broadly speaking in politics where ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ are a valuable currency

The sound of placards

This piece follows two demonstrations from London and Los Angeles. A decade apart, the protests are described at first hand (London) and via mediated sources such as uploaded videos to twitter (Los Angeles). In this article, I build upon the resistant capability of organization within networks of communication and isolate one of the products of this organization; the street protest, in terms of its sonorous form in contrast to both its physical (numbers of protesters, critical mass), or symbolic presence (slogans, placards, banners). Using first person narrative, and examples such as the jangling of keys (Wenceslas Square, Prague, 1989), I take this murmur and buzzing of voices that declare a political intention as an opportunity to ask what the political identity of this public becomes when its symbolic meaning is ‘denatured’ (Barthes)

The figure of speech : the politics of contemporary chatter

This thesis focuses on informal linguistic transactions that operate in relation to, and as part of spectacle in contemporary society. In contrast to presenting such transactions as a subordinated public, exchanging meaningless chatter, these communicative acts are seen to be a formalization of language revealing processes, networks, and territories that have positive possibilities for the public engaged in these communications. Using examples such as the act of communication evident in the recent exponential growth of web 2.0 (on-line social networking), the sound of language represented in the murmur of political demonstrations, and the audibility of voices on the underground network, this thesis builds upon and extends discussions that have asserted the political resistance inherent in rumour, gossip, idle talk, and hearsay. This specific analysis focuses upon both our physical, corporeal, and virtual relations to chatter within the developing systems of new technology that transfer the majority of today’s informal exchanges—investigating the sounds, repetitions, occupation of networks, and gestures of communication rather than the exchange of specific content. Using a methodology that acknowledges the ephemeral, transgressive and fluid nature of its subject, this project uses regular first person narrated sections supporting theoretical discussion, refuses the ‘permanence’ of visual illustration, and is directly informed by concerns within my art practice. Responding to the ideas inherent to my art practice—concerning the form and presentation of information presented (by the media and political authorities) to the public from which a political cognition is constructed, both text and practice elements of this project focus on an abstract, formal reading of contemporary communication. These abstract experiences of communication and collective action are acknowledged as an integral reading of contemporary politics, and that this sphere should be activated, extended and expanded upon in order to discover the positive possibilities inherent within it.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Neuromatch Academy: a 3-week, online summer school in computational neuroscience

Neuromatch Academy (https://academy.neuromatch.io; (van Viegen et al., 2021)) was designed as an online summer school to cover the basics of computational neuroscience in three weeks. The materials cover dominant and emerging computational neuroscience tools, how they complement one another, and specifically focus on how they can help us to better understand how the brain functions. An original component of the materials is its focus on modeling choices, i.e. how do we choose the right approach, how do we build models, and how can we evaluate models to determine if they provide real (meaningful) insight. This meta-modeling component of the instructional materials asks what questions can be answered by different techniques, and how to apply them meaningfully to get insight about brain function