Archive Film Collage and the Mediation of Marginalised Places

As a range of creative practices are applied in archival research, digital technologies are shaping how emerging methods contribute to the mediation of history. Specifically, digital imaging techniques provide new ways to reconfigure the contents of image and film archives. In this context, this paper presents a specific form of visual research and film production employing animation and digital compositing. It describes how this approach has been used to negotiate Welsh identity through the materials of the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales. Digital compositing, used within visual effects, usually aims to erase the independence and separateness of image components produced at different locations and at different times. As they are subsumed into new, seamless wholes, the borders between images are obscured. Alternatively, experimental approaches to compositing can work to foreground the contrast and collision of its elements. In the fragmented aesthetic of collage, the photographic, as evidence of factual existence, provides an ontological link to events. The creative manipulation of this historical data is practised through layering and juxtaposition. In this way, compositing and collage engage the dialectical tension between the factual and the constructed. The interrelationship of indexical and the iconic, and the denotative and the connotative, generates new inferences and meanings. The paper asks what can be known through the synthesis of fact and creative intervention? How does this relate to notions of the visible and knowable? And what is the role of digital technology in revealing historical truths

A Deeper Picture: A Realist Semiotics of Non-Fiction Film

This paper will present a new approach to visual research and non-fictional archive film as a practical form of critical realism. The process described aims to reveal the non-empirical structures and causal mechanisms that have generated recorded events at the empirical level. An underpinning principle of this work is that the complexity of reality can be better understood through the dialectic between facts and creative mediation. Photographic archive film is the factual material used, the intervention of film collage and montage is the site of mediation. Through this, an imagined sense of a non-empirical, complex whole is inferred through the temporal and spatial composition of image parts. In non-fictional contexts, the inferences produced address the real causes of events that can only be known theoretically and conceptually. The visual research aligns film collage processes with the operation of abduction, abstraction and retroduction in the visual field. The system developed has adapted the critical realist approach to semiotics (Bhaskar, 1993; Nellhaus, 1998; Cashell; 2009), establishing a realist form of thematic analysis, visual metonym and metaphor (Lewis, 1996; Schilbrack, 2014) that further extends a semiotics of ontological depth

Rebirth: a light and sound show. Animation projection mapped onto the windows of Strutt’s North Mill

Rebirth is a series of looped abstracted animations, made by Poynton and Shore, with sound by Bosward, that was projected onto the windows of the first floor and basement of Strutt’s North Mill Belper as part of the celebrations to mark the museum’s Summer Opening event. The work references the elemental forces that helped shape the mill including fire, water and iron. Strutt’s North Mill was built in 1804 and is one of the oldest surviving examples of an industrialised, iron framed ‘fire proof’ building. Animation sequences were constructed using a convoluted and slow process that draws on both digital and analogue practices. In constructing a ‘slow animation’ sequence the actual animation or movement is made visible to the animator. Through an engagement with a range of machine processes (both analogue and digital) the work is able to foreground the artificial nature of animation, commenting on both animation’s craft legacy and its constructed nature

Integrated Case-based Applied Pathology (ICAP): a model for learning and teaching of Veterinary Pathology

The Faculty of Veterinary Science, through its Teaching Innovations Unit, has made a significant effort to incorporate enquiry-based learning into veterinary science teaching. This has often involved judicious use of e-learning capabilities. This application shows innovation occurring over four years (2002-2005) with ongoing enhancements made annually to both online and face to face aspects of the Veterinary Pathology unit of study and demonstrates the impact on student learning. The innovation, called Integrated Case-based Applied Pathology (ICAP), is delivered in semester five of the veterinary science undergraduate curriculum at the University of Sydney. A key feature of this innovation is that its sustainable development has provided a conceptual framework for e-learning and blended learning throughout the Veterinary Science and Animal and Veterinary Bioscience curricula

Optimization of a whole blood gamma interferon assay for the detection of sheep infected with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis

The capacity of a commercially available gamma interferon (IFNγ) assay to detect infected sheep early in the pathogenesis of Johne's disease enables the removal of such animals from the flock before bacterial shedding and pasture contamination. However, nonspecific IFNγ responses in the assay have meant that to achieve high-test specificity, there has been a reduction in sensitivity. Although the optimal conditions for the use of the assay in cattle have been well documented, there have been few studies optimizing the assay for use in sheep. The current study details the effect of anticoagulant, duration of incubation, cell concentration, blood storage temperature, time of stimulation of cells with antigen relative to time of sample collection, and temperatures during transit on IFNγ synthesis. Maximal IFNγ synthesis occurred with incubation periods of 48 hr in blood collected into heparinized tubes. Decreasing the leukocyte population by diluting the total peripheral blood leukocyte concentration was associated with a decreasing IFNγ response. Conversely, concentrating the peripheral blood concentration 2-fold resulted in an increase in the IFNγ production. In field studies, immediate incubation of blood samples with antigen at 37°C resulted in larger IFNγ responses; however, significantly lower IFNγ values were obtained if the samples were transported at ambient temperature. The results of this study indicate that optimization of the IFNγ assay may enable increased synthesis of IFNγ during the stimulation phase of the assay and that future work may determine whether this translates to increased sensitivity of the assay in detecting early infections in sheep. Bovigam assay, gamma interferon, Johne's disease, paratuberculosis, sheepResearch was funded by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA

Enzyme-linked immunospot: an alternative method for the detection of interferon gamma in Johne's disease

Abstract. To date, the sensitivity of the interferon gamma (IFN-c) enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect Johne’s disease (JD) has been poor, especially in the early stages of disease. To improve the sensitivity of IFN-c detection in the early stages of infection, an alternate assay needs to be developed. The enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay is a highly sensitive technique for the detection of cytokines and has the potential to improve the diagnosis of JD. Of the variables examined, choice of capture antibody and the method by which the peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated significantly affected the ability to enumerate IFN-c–secreting cells. The ELISPOT assay was as sensitive as or better than the IFN-c ELISA at detecting ovine JD and could also detect disease at early time points postinoculation. The IFN-c ELISPOT could distinguish infected from unexposed animals; however, neither the IFN-c ELISA nor the ELISPOT assay could distinguish between sheep experimentally infected with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis and those exposed to the bacterium but diagnosed as uninfected at necropsy. Key words: Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; enzyme-linked immunospot assay; interferon gamma; Johne’s disease; paratuberculosis; sheep

From Pillar to Post (and back again): animation projection mapped onto the basement pillars of Strutt’s North Mill, Belper for a Museums at Night Event.

From Pillar to Post (and back again) was projected onto eight of the monumental mill-stone grit piers in the basement of Strutt’s North Mill - the pillars are all that is left of Jedediah Strutt’s first mill of 1786 that burnt down in 1803 – they form the foundation of the ‘new’ mill built in 1804. The abstract animation was composed of short sequences of choreographed blocks of light and colour that was mapped on to the blocky rectangular geometry of the pillars. The animation playback was synched to an audio track using Isadora software. Visitors were able to walk between the pillars affecting the animation by breaking the projection light beam and changing the animation sequences by adding their own audio in the form of shouting, clapping and stamping. Pillar to Post (and back again) created an immersive animation that the audience were able to walk into and affect by interrupting the audio track by making random sounds that changed the order and play of the animation. The audience were able to perform the animation

Extremity and excess : proceedings of the 2011 University of Salford College of Arts and Social Sciences postgraduate research conference

The essays gathered in this volume explore the difficulties of classifying and conceptualizing the extreme and the excessive. Uniting a broad selection of new research (initially presented as part of the University of Salford’s annual College of Arts and Social Sciences Conference 2011), the collection queries some of the premises surrounding these topics: ideas that are most often presented as a counterpoint to a perceived ‘normality’. Both terrorism/responses to terrorist threat and the grotesque within horror cinema are represented whilst perhaps reflecting that which is deemed outside of the general parameters of acceptability and decency. Yet there is also a focus on subjects that may, at first, be seen as less radical. From alternative representations of authorship to new technology’s attempts at ‘realness’, prose as hysteria through to melodramatic depictions of war and, finally, approaches that aim to challenge the more commonplace critical strategies employed in the assessment of both fine art and fine artists, this collection will be of particular interest to students and scholars prepared to look beyond a concept that may hint at the merely shocking and engage with a more widely interpreted and nuanced critique of extremity and excess

The shape of my thoughts

An immersive multimedia Installation consisting of multi-channel Ambisonics surround-sound audio and animated 3D projection. Our intention was to produce a multimedia installation incorporating the animation of avian-like murmuration events synchronised to sound and music. The primary objective was to construct an audio/visual experience that loosely expresses an absent narrative. We wanted to explore the dynamics of multidisciplinary collaboration observing and recording the exchanges and expressive negotiations between composers and animators to produce an immersive expressive design. The piece employed large-scale digital projection and ambisonic surround sound. The installation was also displayed as part of the at ‘Nature Connections’ Festival in September 2015 and was featured on BBC’s Autumn Watch red button content. More recently, the piece was presented at the The International Festival for Innovations in Music Production and Composition at Leeds College of Music. The piece is the first installment of a planned trilogy of works that will extend and develop the collaborative experimentation with animation and sound in the production of immersive installation and performance

Q Fever Knowledge, Attitudes and Vaccination Status of Australia’s Veterinary Workforce in 2014

Q fever, caused by Coxiella burnetii, is a serious zoonotic disease in humans with a worldwide distribution. Many species of animals are capable of transmitting C. burnetii, and consequently all veterinary workers are at risk for this disease. An effective Q fever vaccine has been readily available and used in Australia for many years in at-risk groups, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has recently also called for the use of this vaccine among at-risk groups in Europe. Little is known about attitudes towards this vaccine and vaccine uptake in veterinary workers. This study aimed to determine the Q fever vaccination status of veterinarians and veterinary nurses in Australia and to assess and compare the knowledge and attitudes towards Q fever disease and vaccination of each cohort. An online cross-sectional survey performed in 2014 targeted all veterinarians and veterinary nurses in Australia. Responses from 890 veterinarians and 852 veterinary nurses were obtained. Binary, ordinal and multinomial logistic regression were used to make comparisons between the two cohorts. The results showed that 74% of veterinarians had sought vaccination compared to only 29% of veterinary nurses. Barriers to vaccination among those not vaccinated did not differ between cohorts, and included a lack of perceived risk, financial expense, time constraints, and difficulty in finding a vaccine provider. Poor knowledge and awareness of Q fever disease and vaccination were additional and notable barriers for the veterinary nursing cohort, suggesting veterinary clinics and veterinarians may not be meeting their legal responsibility to educate staff about risks and risk prevention. Further evaluation is needed to identify the drivers behind seeking and recommending vaccination so that recommendations can be made to improve vaccine uptake