Unfinished. Jonathan Monk e l'Afghanistan di Alighiero Boetti.

Per il progetto Untitled and Unfinished (Afghanistan) l’artista Jonathan Monk ha organizzato insieme alla gallerista Sonia Rosso una spedizione in Afghanistan, presso i laghi di Band-E-Amir, sulle cui acque Alighiero Boetti avrebbe voluto che le sue ceneri venissero disperse dopo la morte, azione che tuttavia non è mai avvenuta. Tra le difficoltà dovute alla situazione politica e a vari problemi logistici, nel 2004 Mustafa Sahibzada, un ragazzo Afghano incaricato dall'artista, seguendo le istruzioni sul luogo e riguardo alla tipologia di materiali da raccogliere, ha potuto realizzare filmati e fotografie, che hanno permesso a Monk di produrre cinque film in formato 16mm, ciascuno corredato da 16 fotografie scattate durante il percorso per raggiungere i laghi. Questo articolo si propone di ricostruire il progetto dietro l’operazione artistica, contestualizzandolo nel dibattito contemporaneo attorno alle riletture dell'Afghanistan di Alighiero Boetti.Jonathan Monk organized, for the Untitled and Unfinished (Afghanistan)project and together with gallerist Sonia Rosso, an expedition to Afghanistan to find the Band-E-Amir lakes, where Alighiero Boetti would have liked his ashes to be scattered after his death, an action which never took place. Among the difficulties due to the political situation and various logistical problems, in 2004, Jonathan Monk had entrusted the documentation of the lakes to Sahibzada Mustafa, an Afghan boy, who,following precise instructions about the place and about the types of materials to be collected, was able to take many films and pictures and send them to the artist, who produced five films depicting the lakes in 16mm, with a strictly fixed camera shot, each one accompanied by 16 photographs taken during the route to the lakes.This article aims to retrace the project behind the artistic operation, putting the work in the context of the contemporary debate about Alighiero Boetti's Afghanistan

Unbuilt art. Appunti per un dibattito sul non realizzato

L’articolo si propone di affrontare e ricostruire il dibattito intorno al tema del non realizzato nell’arte contemporanea. In relazione al museo digitale MoRE, l’obiettivo è quello di individuare specifiche linee di ricerca e prospettive, spesso interdisciplinari, che hanno posto le basi per un progetto di ricerca, guardando al dibattito legato al ruolo del progetto e alla sua messa in discussione come a più recenti pratiche curatoriali, per arrivare a una definizione del non realizzato.This article wants to take on and reconstruct the debate that, from the fifties until today, was built around the theme of the unrealised in contemporary art. In relation to the digital museum MoRE, the goal is to identify specific lines of research and perspectives, often interdisciplinary ones, who have laid the foundation for a research project, looking at the debate regarding the role of the project and how it’s been questioned, and at the same time at some more recent curatorial practices, to define what the unrealised is

Feste in Brianza. Le grafiche di Ettore Sottsass e gli eventi nella falegnameria di Renzo Brugola

Within the design career of Ettore Sottsass, in the second half of the Sixties, it is possible to find three apparently surprising projects: three invitations for as many parties, organized in the carpentry shop of one of his collaborators and friends, Renzo Brugola. This article aims to reconstruct the context of these works and the respective parties, starting from the designer’s archives, to try to focus on their importance with respect to the pacifist cultural scene called “beat” and the counterculture of which Sottsass and his wife Fernanda Pivano were entertainers

Flow network indices signal a directional change in ecosystems: Evidence from a small mountain lake (Lake Santo, northern Italy)

Empirical evidence of the theoretically expected trends of ecosystem development is scarce so far. In this research, we used long-term empirical data about the plankton community of a small mountain lake (Lake Santo, northern Apennines, Italy) to reconstruct its developmental trajectory during a period comprised between early 1970 s and 2010 s. We exploited these data to build yearly ecological networks and from their configuration of energy flows we computed network information indices. The trends of these indices enlighten about the developmental trajectory of this ecosystem during the period covered by the data set. In particular, they indicate that Lake Santo evolved in the direction of increasing stability at the expense of efficiency in energy transfer. We compared these results with current hypotheses about the directionality of ecosystem development, which are rooted in ecosystem theory, and discussed the possibility that, counter to some theoretical models of ecosystem development, Lake Santo followed an unimpeded direction of development rather than a trajectory typical of an ecosystem under stress. Finally, the long-term trends of flow network indices provided insights about the health status of the ecosystem

Understanding Social–Ecological Systems using Loop Analysis

The sustainable management of social–ecological systems (SESs) requires that we understand the complex structure of relationships and feedbacks among ecosystem components and socioeconomic entities. Therefore, the construction and analysis of models integrating ecological and human actors is crucial for describing the functioning of SESs, and qualitative modeling represents an ideal tool since it allows studying dependencies among variables of diverse types. In particular, the qualitative technique of loop analysis yields predictions about how a system’s variables respond to stress factors. Different interaction types, scarce information about functional relationships among variables, and uncertainties in the values of the parameters are the rule rather than exceptions when studying SESs. Accordingly, loop analysis seems to be perfectly suitable to investigate them. Here, we introduce the key aspects of loop analysis, discuss its applications to SESs, and suggest it enables making the first steps toward the integration of the three dimensions of sustainability

Spazio e percezione nella ricerca di Massimo Bartolini

This paper aims at providing a thorough examination of one possible interpretations of the relationship between art and senses within the field of contemporary visual arts, through a specifically identified case study: Massimo Bartolini’s works. In particular, a selected number of works based on synaesthesia has been chosen (Casa di Francesca Sorace, 1993; Mixing Parfums, 2000; El Jardì de Roses, la Font de Pedres, 2007; La strada di sotto, 2011): these projects concern environmental distortion aiming to redefine the perception of space questioning the usual and established modalities of fruition

Model-based clustering reveals vitamin D dependent multi-centrality hubs in a network of vitamin-related proteins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nutritional systems biology offers the potential for comprehensive predictions that account for all metabolic changes with the intricate biological organization and the multitudinous interactions between the cellular proteins. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks can be used for an integrative description of molecular processes. Although widely adopted in nutritional systems biology, these networks typically encompass a single category of functional interaction (<it>i.e</it>., metabolic, regulatory or signaling) or nutrient. Incorporating multiple nutrients and functional interaction categories under an integrated framework represents an informative approach for gaining system level insight on nutrient metabolism.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We constructed a multi-level PPI network starting from the interactions of 200 vitamin-related proteins. Its final size was 1,657 proteins, with 2,700 interactions. To characterize the role of the proteins we computed 6 centrality indices and applied model-based clustering. We detected a subgroup of 22 proteins that were highly central and significantly related to vitamin D. Immune system and cancer-related processes were strongly represented among these proteins. Clustering of the centralities revealed a degree of redundancy among the indices; a repeated analysis using subsets of the centralities performed well in identifying the original set of 22 most central proteins.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Hierarchical and model-based clustering revealed multi-centrality hubs in a vitamin PPI network and redundancies among the centrality indices. Vitamin D-related proteins were strongly represented among network hubs, highlighting the pervasive effects of this nutrient. Our integrated approach to network construction identified promiscuous transcription factors, cytokines and enzymes - primarily related to immune system and cancer processes - representing potential gatekeepers linking vitamin intake to disease.</p