Eco-aesthetic dimensions: Herbert Marcuse, ecollogy and art

In his last book, The Aesthetic Dimension (1978), Marcuse argued that a concern for aesthetics is justified when political change is unlikely. But the relation between aesthetics and politics is oblique: “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness … of the men and women who could change the world.” (p. 33). Marcuse also linked his critique of capitalism to environmentalism in the early 1970s: “the violation of the Earth is a vital aspect of the counterrevolution.” (Ecology and Revolution, in The New Left and the 1960s, Collected Papers 3, 2005, p. 173). This article revisits Marcuse’s ideas on aesthetics and ecology, and reviews two recent art projects which engage their audiences in ecological issues: The Jetty Project (2014) by Wolfgang Weileder—which used recycled material and community participation to construct a temporary monument within a wider conservation project on the Tyne, N-E England—and Fracking Futures by HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen)—which turned the interior of the gallery at FACT, Liverpool, into what appeared to be a fracking site. The aim is not to evaluate the projects, nor to test the efficacy of Marcuse’s ideas, more to ask again whether art has a role in a shift of attitude which might contribute to dealing with the political and economic causes of climate change

Highly efficient polymer solar cells cast from non-halogenated xylene/anisaldehyde solution

Several high performance polymer:fullerene bulk-heterojunction photo-active layers, deposited from the non-halogenated solvents o-xylene or anisole in combination with the eco-compatible additive p-anisaldehyde, are investigated. The respective solar cells yield excellent power conversion efficiencies up to 9.5%, outperforming reference devices deposited from the commonly used halogenated chlorobenzene/1,8-diiodooctane solvent/additive combination. The impact of the processing solvent on the bulk-heterojunction properties is exemplified on solar cells comprising benzodithiophene-thienothiophene co-polymers and functionalized fullerenes (PTB7:PC71BM). The additive p-anisaldehyde improves film formation, enhances polymer order, reduces fullerene agglomeration and shows high volatility, thereby positively affecting layer deposition, improving charge carrier extraction and reducing drying time, the latter being crucial for future large area roll-to-roll device fabrication. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015

Manuel Sacristán at the Onset of Ecological Marxism after Stalinism

Thirty-one years ago, in 1985, Manuel Sacristán died in Barcelona at the age of 59. After the publication in 2014 of a volume with some of his writings translated into English (Llorente 2014), it is time to help non-Spanish-speaking readers to know more about him. Yet it is not easy to explain to generations born after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 that Manuel Sacristán was a most important Marxist philosopher and at the same time one of the few pioneers introducing political ecology and antinuclear peace movement during the last quarter of the 20th century in Spain. Many people believe that Marxism, environmentalism and pacifism are views that exclude each other. Most of what has been said and done on behalf of Marxism since Stalin took over the leadership of the Communist Party of the USSR in the 1930s, up to its dissolution in 1991, contributes to sustaining this belief. The fast industrialization of the Old Russian Empire undertaken by the Soviet State was nowhere near taking into account ecological sustainability. Its socio-environmental impact turned out to be comparable or even worse than the ones caused by capitalist industrialization

Leadership and the Australian Greens

This paper examines the inherent tension between a Green political party’s genesis and official ideology and the conventional forms and practices of party leadership enacted in the vast bulk of other parties, regardless of their place on the ideological spectrum. A rich picture is painted of this ongoing struggle through a case study of the Australian Greens with vivid descriptions presented on organisational leadership issues by Australian state and federal Green members of parliaments. What emerges from the data is the Australian Green MPs’ conundrum in retaining an egalitarian and participatory democracy ethos while seeking to expand their existing frame of leadership to being both more pragmatic and oriented towards active involvement in government

Adaptive Robotic Control Driven by a Versatile Spiking Cerebellar Network

The cerebellum is involved in a large number of different neural processes, especially in associative learning and in fine motor control. To develop a comprehensive theory of sensorimotor learning and control, it is crucial to determine the neural basis of coding and plasticity embedded into the cerebellar neural circuit and how they are translated into behavioral outcomes in learning paradigms. Learning has to be inferred from the interaction of an embodied system with its real environment, and the same cerebellar principles derived from cell physiology have to be able to drive a variety of tasks of different nature, calling for complex timing and movement patterns. We have coupled a realistic cerebellar spiking neural network (SNN) with a real robot and challenged it in multiple diverse sensorimotor tasks. Encoding and decoding strategies based on neuronal firing rates were applied. Adaptive motor control protocols with acquisition and extinction phases have been designed and tested, including an associative Pavlovian task (Eye blinking classical conditioning), a vestibulo-ocular task and a perturbed arm reaching task operating in closed-loop. The SNN processed in real-time mossy fiber inputs as arbitrary contextual signals, irrespective of whether they conveyed a tone, a vestibular stimulus or the position of a limb. A bidirectional long-term plasticity rule implemented at parallel fibers-Purkinje cell synapses modulated the output activity in the deep cerebellar nuclei. In all tasks, the neurorobot learned to adjust timing and gain of the motor responses by tuning its output discharge. It succeeded in reproducing how human biological systems acquire, extinguish and express knowledge of a noisy and changing world. By varying stimuli and perturbations patterns, real-time control robustness and generalizability were validated. The implicit spiking dynamics of the cerebellar model fulfill timing, prediction and learning functions.European Union (Human Brain Project) REALNET FP7-ICT270434 CEREBNET FP7-ITN238686 HBP-60410

Highly doped InAsSb plasmonic arrays for mid-infrared biosensing

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