SCIRIA Openmind seminar series, after effects or velvet revolution in modern culture

SCIRIA ‘OpenMind’ was a regular seminar series for University of the Arts London staff, MA and PhD students and the public. The seminars were hosted at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design. The footage, audio and flyers offer an insight into the research processes and activities of SCIRIA members, associates and external speakers

A Manifesto of Nodalism

This paper proposes the notion of Nodalism as a means describing contemporary culture and of understanding my own creative practice in electronic music composition. It draws on theories and ideas from Kirby, Bauman, Bourriaud, Deleuze, Guatarri, and Gochenour, to demonstrate how networks of ideas or connectionist neural models of cognitive behaviour can be used to contextualize, understand and become a creative tool for the creation of contemporary electronic music

Capability in the digital: institutional media management and its dis/contents

This paper explores how social media spaces are occupied, utilized and negotiated by the British Military in relation to the Ministry of Defence’s concerns and conceptualizations of risk. It draws on data from the DUN Project to investigate the content and form of social media about defence through the lens of ‘capability’, a term that captures and describes the meaning behind multiple representations of the military institution. But ‘capability’ is also a term that we hijack and extend here, not only in relation to the dominant presence of ‘capability’ as a representational trope and the extent to which it is revealing of a particular management of social media spaces, but also in relation to what our research reveals for the wider digital media landscape and ‘capable’ digital methods. What emerges from our analysis is the existence of powerful, successful and critically long-standing media and reputation management strategies occurring within the techno-economic online structures where the exercising of ‘control’ over the individual – as opposed to the technology – is highly effective. These findings raise critical questions regarding the extent to which ‘control’ and management of social media – both within and beyond the defence sector – may be determined as much by cultural, social, institutional and political influence and infrastructure as the technological economies. At a key moment in social media analysis, then, when attention is turning to the affordances, criticisms and possibilities of data, our research is a pertinent reminder that we should not forget the active management of content that is being similarly, if not equally, effective

Digital afx: digital dressing and affective shifts in Sin City and 300

In Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, 2005) and 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006) extensive post-production work has created stylised colour palettes, manipulated areas of the image, and added or subtracted elements. Framing a discussion around the terms ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’, this paper argues that the digital technologies used in Sin City and 300 modify conventional interactions between representational and aesthetic dimensions. Brian Massumi suggests affective imagery can operate through two modes of engagement. One mode is embedded in a meaning system, linked to a speci?c emotion. The second is understood as an intensi?cation whereby a viewer reacts but that reaction is not yet gathered into an alignment with meaning. The term ‘digital afx’ is used to describe manipulations that produce imagery allowing these two modes of engagement to coexist. Digital afx are present when two competing aesthetic strategies remain equally visible within sequences of images. As a consequence the afx mingle with and shift the content of representation

Software Takes Command

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century to create, store, distribute and interact with cultural artifacts. It has become our interface to the world, to others, to our memory and our imagination - a universal language through which the world speaks, and a universal engine on which the world runs. What electricity and combustion engine were to the early 20th century, software is to the early 21st century. Offering the the first theoretical and historical account of software for media authoring and its effects on the practice and the very concept of 'media,' the author of The Language of New Media (2001) develops his own theory for this rapidly-growing, always-changing field. What was the thinking and motivations of people who in the 1960 and 1970s created concepts and practical techniques that underlie contemporary media software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Final Cut and After Effects? How do their interfaces and tools shape the visual aesthetics of contemporary media and design? What happens to the idea of a 'medium' after previously media-specific tools have been simulated and extended in software? Is it still meaningful to talk about different mediums at all? Lev Manovich answers these questions and supports his theoretical arguments by detailed analysis of key media applications such as Photoshop and After Effects, popular web services such as Google Earth, and the projects in motion graphics, interactive environments, graphic design and architecture. Software Takes Command is a must for all practicing designers and media artists and scholars concerned with contemporary media

Small Big Data: Using multiple data-sets to explore unfolding social and economic change

Bold approaches to data collection and large-scale quantitative advances have long been a preoccupation for social science researchers. In this commentary we further debate over the use of large-scale survey data and official statistics with ‘Big Data’ methodologists, and emphasise the ability of these resources to incorporate the essential social and cultural heredity that is intrinsic to the human sciences. In doing so, we introduce a series of new data-sets that integrate approximately 30 years of survey data on victimisation, fear of crime and disorder and social attitudes with indicators of socio-economic conditions and policy outcomes in Britain. The data-sets that we outline below do not conform to typical conceptions of ‘Big Data’. But, we would contend, they are ‘big’ in terms of the volume, variety and complexity of data which has been collated (and to which additional data can be linked) and ‘big’ also in that they allow us to explore key questions pertaining to how social and economic policy change at the national level alters the attitudes and experiences of citizens. Importantly, they are also ‘small’ in the sense that the task of rendering the data usable, linking it and decoding it, required both manual processing and tacit knowledge of the context of the data and intentions of its creators

Securities Laws: The Exclusivity of the Private Right of Action under Section 18 of the 1934 Act and Its Relationshp to Rule 10b-5

Ross v. A.H. Robins, 607 F.2d 545 (2d Cir. 1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 946 (1980). The issue resolved in Ross v. A.H. Robins concerns the viability of an action filed under section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and rule l0b-5 when section 18 of the same Act contains an express civil remedy. Section 18 imposes liability for making “any statement in any … document filed …; which statement was... false and misleading with respect to any material fact” to one who relies upon such statement and purchases or sells securities at a price affected by the statement. Section 10(b) and rule l0b-5 make it “unlawful for any person, … to make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact … in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.” To decide this issue the Second Circuit Court of Appeals first examined the legislative history of the 1933 and 1934 Securities Exchange Acts. The court also examined the differences between the two sections to determine the exclusivity of section 18. The court concluded that section 18 did not provide an exclusive remedy. Thus section 10(b) and rule l0b-5 could be used. Finally, the court examined rule 9(b), of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to determine the sufficiency of the pleadings of the plaintiffs