Happy-Accident: The Vessel interview

The Vessel is the persona that via unaccounted for acceptance of aléa, entered into the world of Dr Mikey Georgeson. Upon becoming the mouth-piece of the performance pop-art group, David Devant and his Spirit Wife, they began to weave an emerging story of themselves as a spiritual conduit into life as an artist in Brighton. This interview agitates the stasis discursive, returning repetition of pre-given information into the repetition of a ritual extra-embodied encounter. What things mean in retrospect can be communicated as intentional when (according to the interviewee) meaning is in believing in the actual occasion of enchanting. Now thirty years later, this interview gathers thoughts about what happened when the natural consecutive forming of life circumstances was disrupted to produce a deviation of being. Catherine Malabou’s, Ontology of the Accident has given them some way of accounting for the sudden appearance of this conduit for a dead magician, A form born of the accident, born by accident, a kind of accident. A funny breed. A monster whose apparition cannot be explained as any genetic anomaly. A new being comes into the world for a second time, out of a deep cut that opens in a biography

The Dewey Decimal Dowsing Project: Meaning Inside the Event

My art practise is shaped by a desire to encounter felt understanding through a processual methodology. My keynote speeches delivered as made-up Professor Kimey Peckpo, are an experiment in transmitting affect within a region of ritual as an intra-relational part of the world. My research into vibrant matter (Jane Bennet) and agential realism (Karen Barad) have contextualised an intuitive idea to help students expand personal agency via an intra-relational encounter with apparatus (books) and specific region (library). I developed the Dewey Decimal project in which students are asked to transform their names into a number using numerology. Upon locating this number’s shelf in the library students dowse using water divining tools for three books. An object is made to verify the new knowledge and a report presented using a simple format of Title, Apparatus, Method, Result and Conclusion. Synchronicity abounds and students as a collective frequently report a strong sense of connection to the material and this is the agency the project seeks to promote. A processual methodology entangles a performative form of ritual event with classical epistemology. Through speculative art practice I have become aware of how this whimsical means of helping art students engage with the library has resonant implications to how attunement to non-linguistic frequencies of matter is fundamental to intuitive agency. The ritual creates a performative entanglement helping students to make materially vital research as a form of what Barad calls onto-epistem-ology. Dowsing and divination then are a means of augmenting intuition as an extra-embodied way of making meaning inside the event

The Vision of the Absurd Aesthetic Machines, Entanglement and Affect

The Vision of the Absurd is the culmination of five years research into how my fine art practice creates an affective encounter that can be more effectively and dynamically shared in the public realm. Central to this process was my early intuition that art has an excess that delivers understanding outside of conceptual cognition. Which is to say, art operates through material and aesthetic registers that need to be given space to reconnect audiences with the artist in shared experiences of discovery. The subsequent development of a series of aesthetic machines were all concerned with promoting these other modes of thought (Whitehead, 1968) and working with concepts that can become abstract material for expression (Zepke 2010). My initial sense that the non-linear causality of the absurd could move my art towards a more affective frequency was further shaped by my encounter with non-representational theory (Thrift, 2007) and put into practice in my role as the co-curator of Sensorium/Affect and Social media conferences at UEL between 2016-19. Furthermore, by experiencing artists who similarly placed digital moving images within a structure of haptic material vitality, such as Pipilotti Rist and Laure Prouvost, I found that the concept of the abstract machine (Zepke 2010) allowed my practice to radiate outwards as a kind of an aesthetic ontological experience (Debaise 2017). This ontological perspective becomes a significant means of exploring non-hierarchical smooth spaces (Deleuze and Guattari 2003) which activate a sense of my various creative capacities and form an absurd woven tapestry that celebrates creative abundance and destabilises the conceptual nature of interdisciplinary tactics

Putting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into practice: A review of implementation, monitoring, and finance

In January 2016, after two years of international negotiations, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into effect. The SDGs are the successors to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and represent an ambitious but potentially flawed agenda for sustainable development through to 2030. This review assesses the legacy of the MDGs, the development of the SDGs, and the international framework to put the SDGs into practice. We propose dividing the framework for SDG delivery into three key areas: implementing the goals and the SDG agenda (Implementation); monitoring, evaluation, and review (Monitoring); and increasing and improving global finance flows for sustainable development (Finance). This review identifies the challenges faced by the international community for making the SDGs an effective platform for equitable and sustainable development across these three areas. Proposed approaches and solutions are discussed and further research is suggested. This review concludes that further critical attention to the “Implementation”, “Monitoring”, and “Finance” framework is vital to ensure accountability and transparency from an ever‐growing number of state and non‐state development actors. This review also seeks to further the potential for greater links between development theory, development geography, and development actors and institutions to improve development under the SDGs and increase engagement from geography on the SDGs. This framework points towards a basis for critical engagement on the sustainability, equality, and quality of development, while challenging the primacy of economic growth‐based paradigms in SDG implementation

Distribution of climate suitability for viticulture in the United Kingdom in 2100

Changes in temperature of the second half of the 20th Century led to significant changes in the areas of the UK suitable for high-quality viticulture. A warming climate and acceptable rainfall levels (although not without a number of risks to harvest yields) has made it possible for UK wine producers to produce high quality sparkling wine in the so-called ‘golden triangle’ south of London. As the climate continues to change over the course of the 21st century through to 2100, the possibilities for UK viticulture will again continue to shift. While rising temperatures bring warmer growing seasons that may create potential opportunities for grape varieties that are currently widely planted in Europe to be grown in the UK, as well as having the potential to reduce the risk of spring frosts that inhibit bud growth, warmer climate conditions in the UK also bring a number of threats to UK wine growers. Chief amongst these threats are the increases in rainfall and the increasing risk of extreme weather events. For the long-term development of UK viticulture, it is important to assess a range of possible climate futures for 2100. The potential for significant changes to climatic conditions will require long term changes in strategy, skills and human capital development and significant further research to mitigate risks and identify potential opportunities from adapting UK viticulture to climate change. We have analysed one potential climate change scenario based on three key variables for growing high quality wine grapes, based on a ‘middle-of-the-road’ projection of changing temperatures and rainfall for the UK for 2100 due to climate change. Overall our findings suggest that, according to our estimates, that the UK may become an ‘intermediate climate’ wine region by 2100. It is currently a marginal, coolclimate region. However, some of the areas of the south of England may become either too hot, too wet, or both, to grow quality wine grapes in 2100

Estimating the scale of the US green economy within the global context

Article Open Access Published: 15 October 2019 Estimating the scale of the US green economy within the global context Lucien Georgeson & Mark Maslin Palgrave Communications volume 5, Article number: 121 (2019) | Download Citation Article metrics 2020 Accesses 194 Altmetric Metricsdetails Abstract The green economy has previously been defined and measured in various, but limited, ways. This article presents an estimation of the scale of and employment in the US Green Economy using a data triangulation approach that uses many sources of data and multiple types of data. This can give a suggestion of the green economy’s role in economic development and employment at the country level. It also makes it possible to compare the scale of ‘green jobs’ to employment in fossil fuel-related sectors, and to compare the US green economy to other economies. Through the Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services Sector (LCEGSS) dataset, the US green economy is estimated to represent $1.3 trillion in annual sales revenue and to employ nearly 9.5 million workers; both of which have grown by over 20% between 2012/13 and 2015/16. Comparison with China, OECD members and the G20 countries suggests that the US is estimated to have a greater proportion of the working age population employed (4%) and higher sales revenue per capita in the green economy. Estimated values for other countries suggests that they too have significant production and consumption in the green economy and the US should consider, as other economies are, developing energy, environmental and educational policies relevant to the green economy to remain competitive in these areas. Given the shortcomings of other data sources, this information can contribute to understanding the potential impact of changes to federal-level policies on economic sectors that are vital to combating climate change and protecting the environment

Global disparity in the supply of commercial weather and climate information services

Information about weather and climate is vital for many areas of decision-making, particularly under conditions of increasing vulnerability and uncertainty related to climate change. We have quantified the global commercial supply of weather and climate information services. Although government data are sometimes freely available, the interpretation and analysis of those data, alongside additional data collection, are required to formulate responses to specific challenges in areas such as health, agriculture, and the built environment. Using transactional data, we analyzed annual spending by private and public organizations on commercial weather and climate information in more than 180 countries by industrial sector, region, per capita, and percentage of GDP (gross domestic product) and against the country's climate and extreme weather risk. There are major imbalances regarding access to these essential services between different countries based on region and development status. There is also no relationship between the level of climate and weather risks that a country faces and the level of per capita spending on commercial weather and climate information in that country. At the international level, action is being taken to improve access to information services. With a better understanding of the flows of commercial weather and climate information, as explored in this study, it will be possible to tackle these regional and development-related disparities and thus to increase resilience to climate and weather risks

Industrial legislation in Australia in 2018

© 2019, Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA), SAGE Publications Ltd, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. It has been a quiet year like last year for the passing of federal industrial legislation (due to a number of factors, including the political turmoil of the federal coalition government and their lack of an overall labour law reform agenda). This article examines key federal industrial legislative developments including the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). The article identifies that the federal Act contains much weaker compliance measures than the counterpart New South Wales legislation also passed in 2018 – the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (NSW). Also, although the Coalition government has attempted to continue to prosecute its case for further union governance measures, this agenda has been less successful than in previous years, with key government Bills not yet passed by the Parliament. The stagnation in the federal Parliament continues to motivate certain State Parliaments to address worker exploitation, and the article goes on to examine key State industrial legislation passed in 2018 including the Victorian labour hire licensing statute. In light of the continuing dominant position of the federal Labor opposition in opinion polls and an impending federal election in 2019, the article concludes by briefly considering the federal Labor opposition's agenda for industrial legislation

Adaption reveals a neural code for the visual location of orientation change

We apply an adaptation technique to explore the neural code for the visual location of textures defined by modulation of orientation over space. In showing that adaptation to textures modulated around one orientation shifts the perceived location of textures modulated around a different orientation, we demonstrate the existence of a neural code for the location of orientation change that generalises across orientation content. Using competitive adaptation, we characterise the neural processes underlying this code as single-opponent for orientation, that is with concentric excitatory/inhibitory receptive areas tuned to a single orientation.<br /

DroneHack Journalism: Educating & Inspiring Journalists in the Capacities & Possibilities of Unmanned Aerial Systems

The use of drones for journalism or newsgathering has been growing steadily over the past few years. The recent rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (also known as drones) as consumer products, along with the increasing civilian applications being developed has sparked interest in people outside the aviation industry – including journalists. Drone journalism as a practice and discipline is still relatively new. However, they offer great journalistic potential. Current practice is based on visual media. Primarily this comprises photographs and video, but virtual reality and spherical (360) video is starting to be explored. However, other non-visual drone payloads offer great potential for sensor and data journalism. DroneHack has been developed as an event to bring those with technological skills and know-how together with those with real-world needs, in order to generate ideas and rapidly prototype the next generation of civilian drone applications. It also provides an opportunity to raise awareness of regulations around drones and their use. This paper describes the DroneHack Journalism event which took place in January 2017 in conjunction with journalism.co.uk and Trinity Mirror in Manchester, United Kingdom. The paper also explains what a DroneHack is, how it was developed as a format and the origins and influences as well as an overview of previous DroneHacks and concludes with some possible directions which future DroneHacks could take