THE THING Hamburg:A Temporary Democratization of the Local Art Field

THE THING Hamburg was an experimental Internet platform whose vocation was to contribute to the democratization of the art field, to negotiate new forms of art in practice, and to be a site for political learning and engagement. We, the authors, were actively involved in the project on various levels. In this paper, we trace the (local) circumstances that led to the emergence of the project and take a look at its historical precursor, we reflect on the organizational form of this collectively-run and participatory platform, and we investigate the role locality can play in the development of political agency. As a non-profit Internet platform built with free software, the project also invites a reflection of the role technology can play for the creation of independent experimental spaces for social innovation and how they make a difference against the backdrop of corporate social media. Relating the project to both the conceptual innovations of the Russian avant-garde as well as media-utopian projections shows that THE THING Hamburg stands in the tradition of an art that expands its own field by invoking a self-issued social assignment. Challenging the norms and in stitutions of the art field does not remain an exercise in self-referentiality; it rather redefines the role of art as an agent for political learning and how the use of technology in society at large can be emancipatory. And just as small projects like the THE THING Hamburg draw on old utopias for their contemporary negotiations of art, they equally produce more questions than they provide answers

Hypervelocity impacts on thin brittle targets: experimental data and SPH simulations

The meteoroids and debris environment play an important role in the reduction of spacecraft life time. Ejecta or secondary debris, are produced when a debris or a meteoroid impact a spacecraft surface. These ejecta can contribute to a modification of the debris environment: either locally by the occurrence of secondary impacts on the component of complex and large space structures, or at long distance by formation of small orbital debris. This double characteristic underlines the necessity to model the damages caused by an HVI as well as the material ejection caused by the impact. Brittle materials are particularly sensitive to hypervelocity impacts because they produce features larger than those observed on ductile targets and the ejected fragments total mass including ejectas and spalls is in the order of 100 times bigger than the impacting mass. The main aim of this paper is to study the damaging and ejection processes that occur during hypervelocity impacts on thin brittle targets (dp = 500 microns for velocities ranging from 1 to 5 km/s). The two stage light gas gun “MICA” available at CEA-CESTA has been used to impact thin fused silica debris shields and the impacted samples have been analysed with environmental SEM microscopy and perthometer. Experimental characterization of ejected matter has also been performed on the MICA facility. The severe deformations occurring in any hypervelocity impact event are best described by meshless methods since they offer clear advantages for modeling large deformations and failure of solids as compared to mesh-based methods. Numerical simulation using the SPH method of Ls-Dyna and the Johnson Holmquist material model adapted for fused silica were performed at ENSICA. The results of these calculations are compared to experimental data obtained with MICA. Experimental data include the damage features in the targets (front and back spalled zone, perforation hole and cracks observed in the target) and the clouds and fragments ejected during the impact

On the Network of Railroads that Could be Built Today in France

Revue des deux mondes, April, 1838, Series 17 March 4, vol. 14 — 1838/06, pp. 163-200, from an address made to the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, 10 and 17 March. Pages 163-170 translated by ©Steven Rowa

Liberty in the United States of America

The American people are renowned for being free, they love to be and they are, but how do they understand liberty? How is it practiced? That is what I want to seek to say here. The subject is very large, and I am forced to divide it up. I am occupied here with political liberty, I want to speak of the law that the American possesses and exercises to take part in the governing of his country, his state, his county, his commune. This subject has also been well treated with such a great superiority and with such elaboration by Monsieur de Tocqueville that it would be rash to go there. The liberty of which I propose to speak is the object of political liberty: it is the buckler of liberty — alas! — a buckler as hard to handle as that borne by the mighty Ajax

The Mediterranean System

Articles extracted from The Globe. Paris. At the Office of the Globe, Rue Monsigny, No. 6. March 1832. Translated by Steven Rowan, [email protected]

Penetration and cratering experiments of graphite by 0.5-mm diameter steel spheres at various impact velocities

Cratering experiments have been conducted with 0.5-mm diameter AISI 52100 steel spherical projectiles and 30-mm diameter, 15-mm long graphite targets. The latter were made of a commercial grade of polycrystalline and porous graphite named EDM3 whose behavior is known as macroscopically isotropic. A two-stage light-gas gun launched the steel projectiles at velocities between 1.1 and 4.5 km s 1. In most cases, post-mortem tomographies revealed that the projectile was trapped, fragmented or not, inside the target. It showed that the apparent crater size and depth increase with the impact velocity. This is also the case of the crater volume which appears to follow a power law significantly different from those constructed in previous works for similar impact conditions and materials. Meanwhile, the projectile depth of penetration starts to decrease at velocities beyond 2.2 km s 1. This is firstly because of its plastic deformation and then, beyond 3.2 km s 1, because of its fragmentation. In addition to these three regimes of penetration behavior already described by a few authors, we suggest a fourth regime in which the projectile melting plays a significant role at velocities above 4.1 km s 1. A discussion of these four regimes is provided and indicates that each phenomenon may account for the local evolution of the depth of penetration

Meshless modelling of dynamic behaviour of glasses under intense shock loadings: application to matter ejection during high velocity impacts on thin brittle targets

The purpose of this study is to present a new material model adapted to SPH modelling of dynamic behaviour of glasses under shock loadings. This model has the ability to reproduce fragmentation and densification of glasses under compression as well as brittle tensile failure. It has been implemented in Ls-Dyna software and coupled with a SPH code. By comparison with CEA-CESTA experimental data the model has been validated for fused silica and Pyrex glass for stress level up to 35GPa. For Laser MegaJoule applications, the present material model was applied to 3D high velocity impacts on thin brittle targets with good agreement in term of damages and matter ejection with experimental data obtained using CESTA’s double stage light gas gun

Letters on North America

The basis of this completely fresh translation is the third edition of Michel Chevalier, Lettres sur l’Amérique du Nord, used in the version published in Brussels in 1838 by Hauman et Cie., Société belge de librairie, in three volumes, and compared by me with the 1836 Paris edition. To increase the practical use of the text, the “Notes” originally placed at the end of each volume have been moved to follow the “Letter” to which they refer. For the same reason the footnotes of the author have been preserved at the bottom of the page (and have been made continuous for the whole book). This makes the author’s whole approach more understandable and opens up many of Chevalier’s insights. The notes have never been translated before. I do not agree with the brilliant John William Ward that they are unnecessary for understanding the whole work. The notes clarify Chevalier’s thoughts at the time, both on America and on Europe. It makes the entire book available in English for the first time. I compared the Belgian edition with the first Paris edition of 1836 in order to understand changes the text underwent. The results of that may be seen in the table of contents and at the head of the notes themselves. In Chevalier’s extensive discussions of Andrew Jackson’s attacks on the Second Bank of the United States, I have used an initial capital (Bank) to designate the Bank of the United States, while a lower-case initial letter is used for other American banks. The reader should note that Chevalier occasionally uses the word “democracy” as a direct synonym for the Democratic Party. When that is clear, the word is capitalized. The party continued to speak of itself as “The Democracy” into the twentieth century. The basic measures of distance and weight used in the text are metric, with only occasional references to English or American units. Prices have also been left in francs. The use of gold as a medium of value permits the conversion of a United States Dollar into 5.33 French francs, and the league (lieu), an archaic unit of distance, was officially converted at the time into four kilometers. This translation is uniform with my own translation of Chevalier’s History and Description of the Routes of Communication of the United States (1840-1843), which I have also completed and is to be published by the Saint Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. To view the Carte des États-unis d\u27Amérique map visit the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/item/gm70002851