Complicating Authorship: Contemporary artists’ names

From Duchamp's drag as Rrose Sélavy, photographed by Man Ray, through to contemporary artist Bob and Roberta Smith, the artist's pseudonym has served as a political tool challenging traditionally inherent concepts pertaining to authorship: gendered notions of genius, singular attribution, the scarcity model and notions of intellectual property, all of which are perpetuated by the art market. These facets of an art practice are not yet well recognised or documented because the artists’ complex authorships defy the economy that would otherwise benefit from writing their ‘biography’. This article explores the agency of the pseudonym over a sustained period of time through two case studies in particular: the Guerrilla Girls, an all-female collective working anonymously, and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, the first British performance artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Through their practices, this article will reflect on how pseudonymous artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share recognition, and how a name might aid ‘artivism’. There exist artists more dissident, but the fact that both these case studies work within the financially incentivised infrastructures of the artworld helps demonstrate how a pseudonym might critique, challenge and reshape the parameters of authorship from the inside out. This article concludes that contemporary artists’ name/namelessness is inherently political

Outcomes and impacts of workplace literacy programmes in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy (Business) in Communication Management, at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Current government focus of initiatives and funding for foundation learning incorporating workplace literacy suggests that there is a link between skill investment and workplace productivity. Workbase: The New Zealand Centre for Workforce Development, claims that the link between literacy skills for participation in the workforce and increased productivity is very direct (Workbase, 2006c, p.2). The results of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) in 1996 found an estimated 40 per cent of New Zealand adults lack the literacy skills needed for everyday demands of their work role (Workbase, 2006c). These results coupled with current low unemployment rates have provided impetus to address workplace literacy needs. Providing workplace literacy programmes requires employers to overcome a number of obstacles ranging from costs of skill investment and the practicality of implementation to philosophical questions of whether the company perceives skill investment of employees as part of their responsibility. Employers also need to be able to derive benefits for the organisation. This research focused on how workplace literacy programme participants and management representatives were experiencing workplace literacy programmes. Sixteen programme participants and nine management representatives from five companies described their experiences and their perceptions of programme outcomes and the impacts in the organisation. The programme participants took part in individual interview sessions which incorporated a self-assessment questionnaire on their perceived progress. A separate interview was held with each of the management representatives. The results identified that workplace literacy programmes were having generally positive outcomes and impacts. Increased self-confidence of the programme participants was a recurring theme along with academic literacy skill gain and other non-academic outcomes such as changes in attitudes and increased participation in the workforce. Impacts in the workplace were perceived by management as more accurate documentation, increased efficiency, increased independence, an improved flow of work and increased productivity. Programme participants were invited to also talk about prior academic learning experiences and their perceptions of effective learning. From the prior academic experiences were descriptions of students feeling alienated from the system, lacking self-confidence, falling behind and leaving school at an early age. In contrast they talked positively about their experiences on the workplace literacy programmes and identified key ingredients as a positive tutor-student relationship, a meaningful programme and an environment where they felt safe and were treated with respect. The challenge that educators, researchers, government officials, policy makers, employers and schools currently face is the need to address low literacy levels effectively. Early detection at school, accessibility of programmes, further learning after leaving school, workplace support and encouragement, effective programmes and delivery are all implications from this research. This research discussed the link between investing in people skills in the workplace and increased workplace productivity. It also highlighted a link between workplace literacy programmes and a healthier and more functional society; an area recommended for further follow-up research. Two other areas of recommended follow up research were best practice for workplace literacy programmes and research at schools to identify potential low achieving students

Death of the Artist: Art World Dissidents and their Alternative Identities

There exists a series of contemporary artists who continually defy the traditional role of the artist/author, including Art & Language, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Lucky PDF. In Death of the Artist, Nicola McCartney explores their work and uses previously unpublished interviews to provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic authorship. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a pseudonym aid 'artivism'? Most strikingly, she demonstrates how an alternative identity can challenge the art market and is symptomatic of greater cultural and political rebellion. As such, this book exposes the art world's financially incentivised infrastructures, but also examines how they might be reshaped from within. In an age of cuts to arts funding and forced self-promotion, this offers an important analysis of the pressing need for the artistic community to construct new ways to reinvent itself and incite fresh responses to its work

Fashioning contemporary art: a new interdisciplinary aesthetics in art-design collaborations

A surge in creative collaboration between fine artists and fashion designers might be troubling the art world, but these mergers have prompted little debate within academic research in the visual arts. Various artists now work directly with fashion designers, and though often derided by the art press, the growth of inter-disciplinary collaboration reflects a shift in how art is perceived, especially in relation to popular culture. This discussion considers historical moments when fashion and art found common cause, but we view the distinctive qualities of recent collaborative ventures as an entrenchment of postmodernist aesthetics in both realms. Since the mid-twentieth century, art-fashion interplays have disorganised disciplinary boundaries, but they also illustrate the unsettling effects of neoliberalism on cultural production. By exploring the fashioning of contemporary art through the work of various artists and designers, including Matthew Barney, Vanessa Beecroft and Yayoi Kusama, we ask whether shared concerns in art and design around power, spectacle and the somatic might signal the emergence of a new interdisciplinary aesthetics

Quality of life outcomes for people with serious mental illness living in supported accommodation: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Michele Harrison - ORCID 0000-0001-6088-2998 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6088-2998Replaced AM with VoR 2020-05-25Purpose: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of Quality of Life (QoL) outcomes for people with serious mental illness living in three types of supported accommodation.Method: Studies were identified that described QoL outcomes for people with serious mental illness living in supported accommodation in 6 electronic databases. We applied a random-effects model to derive the meta-analytic results.Results: 13 studies from 7 countries were included, with 3276 participants receiving; high support (457), supported housing (1576) and floating outreach (1243). QoL outcomes related to wellbeing, living conditions and social functioning were compared between different supported accommodation types. Living condition outcomes were better for people living in supported housing ( = -0.31; CI = [-0.47; -0.16]) and floating outreach ( = -0.95; CI = [-1.30; -0.61]) compared to high support accommodation, with a medium effect size for living condition outcomes between supported housing and floating outreach ( = -0.40; CI = [-0.82; 0.03]), indicating that living conditions are better for people living in floating outreach. Social functioning outcomes were significant for people living in supported housing compared to high support ( = -0.37; CI = [-0.65; -0.09]), with wellbeing outcomes not significant between the three types of supported accommodation.Conclusion: There is evidence that satisfaction with living conditions differs across supported accommodation types. The results suggest there is a need to focus on improving social functioning and wellbeing outcomes for people with serious mental illness across supported accommodation types.https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-020-01885-x55pubpu

Epigenetic Contributions to Clinical Risk Prediction of Cardiovascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is among the leading causes of death worldwide. The discovery of new omics biomarkers could help to improve risk stratification algorithms and expand our understanding of molecular pathways contributing to the disease. Here, ASSIGN-a cardiovascular risk prediction tool recommended for use in Scotland-was examined in tandem with epigenetic and proteomic features in risk prediction models in ≥12 657 participants from the Generation Scotland cohort.METHODS: Previously generated DNA methylation-derived epigenetic scores (EpiScores) for 109 protein levels were considered, in addition to both measured levels and an EpiScore for cTnI (cardiac troponin I). The associations between individual protein EpiScores and the CVD risk were examined using Cox regression (n cases≥1274; n controls≥11 383) and visualized in a tailored R application. Splitting the cohort into independent training (n=6880) and test (n=3659) subsets, a composite CVD EpiScore was then developed. RESULTS: Sixty-five protein EpiScores were associated with incident CVD independently of ASSIGN and the measured concentration of cTnI ( P&lt;0.05), over a follow-up of up to 16 years of electronic health record linkage. The most significant EpiScores were for proteins involved in metabolic, immune response, and tissue development/regeneration pathways. A composite CVD EpiScore (based on 45 protein EpiScores) was a significant predictor of CVD risk independent of ASSIGN and the concentration of cTnI (hazard ratio, 1.32; P=3.7×10 - 3; 0.3% increase in C-statistic). CONCLUSIONS: EpiScores for circulating protein levels are associated with CVD risk independent of traditional risk factors and may increase our understanding of the etiology of the disease.</p

Refining epigenetic prediction of chronological and biological age

Background Epigenetic clocks can track both chronological age (cAge) and biological age (bAge). The latter is typically defined by physiological biomarkers and risk of adverse health outcomes, including all-cause mortality. As cohort sample sizes increase, estimates of cAge and bAge become more precise. Here, we aim to develop accurate epigenetic predictors of cAge and bAge, whilst improving our understanding of their epigenomic architecture. Methods First, we perform large-scale (N = 18,413) epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) of chronological age and all-cause mortality. Next, to create a cAge predictor, we use methylation data from 24,674 participants from the Generation Scotland study, the Lothian Birth Cohorts (LBC) of 1921 and 1936, and 8 other cohorts with publicly available data. In addition, we train a predictor of time to all-cause mortality as a proxy for bAge using the Generation Scotland cohort (1214 observed deaths). For this purpose, we use epigenetic surrogates (EpiScores) for 109 plasma proteins and the 8 component parts of GrimAge, one of the current best epigenetic predictors of survival. We test this bAge predictor in four external cohorts (LBC1921, LBC1936, the Framingham Heart Study and the Women’s Health Initiative study). Results Through the inclusion of linear and non-linear age-CpG associations from the EWAS, feature pre-selection in advance of elastic net regression, and a leave-one-cohort-out (LOCO) cross-validation framework, we obtain cAge prediction with a median absolute error equal to 2.3 years. Our bAge predictor was found to slightly outperform GrimAge in terms of the strength of its association to survival (HRGrimAge = 1.47 [1.40, 1.54] with p = 1.08 × 10−52, and HRbAge = 1.52 [1.44, 1.59] with p = 2.20 × 10−60). Finally, we introduce MethylBrowsR, an online tool to visualise epigenome-wide CpG-age associations. Conclusions The integration of multiple large datasets, EpiScores, non-linear DNAm effects, and new approaches to feature selection has facilitated improvements to the blood-based epigenetic prediction of biological and chronological age

Development and validation of DNA Methylation scores in two European cohorts augment 10-year risk prediction of type 2 diabetes

This is the author accepted manuscriptAvailability of Data and Material: According to the terms of consent for Generation Scotland participants, access to data must be reviewed by the Generation Scotland Access Committee. Applications should be made to [email protected]. All code is available with open access at the following Gitlab repository: https://github.com/marioni-group MethylPipeR (version 1.0.0) is available at: https://github.com/marioni-group/MethylPipeR MethylPipeR-UI is available at: https://github.com/marioni-group/MethylPipeR-UI. The informed consents given by KORA study participants do not cover data posting in public databases. However, data are available upon request from KORA Project Application Self Service Tool (https://epi.helmholtz-muenchen.de/). Data requests can be submitted online and are subject to approval by the KORA Board.Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) presents a major health and economic burden that could be alleviated with improved early prediction and intervention. While standard risk factors have shown good predictive performance, we show that the use of blood-based DNA methylation information leads to a significant improvement in the prediction of 10-year T2D incidence risk. Previous studies have been largely constrained by linear assumptions, the use of CpGs one-at43 a-time, and binary outcomes. We present a flexible approach (via an R package, MethylPipeR) based on a range of linear and tree-ensemble models that incorporate time-to-event data for prediction. Using the Generation Scotland cohort (training set ncases=374, ncontrols=9,461; test set ncases=252, ncontrols=4,526) our best-performing model (Area Under the Curve (AUC)=0.872, Precision Recall AUC (PRAUC)=0.302) showed notable improvement in 10-year onset prediction beyond standard risk factors (AUC=0.839, PRAUC=0.227). Replication was observed in the German-based KORA study (n=1,451, ncases = 142, p=1.6x10-5 49 ).Wellcome TrustChief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health DirectoratesScottish Funding Counci

Epigenetic contributions to clinical risk prediction of cardiovascular disease

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is among the leading causes of death worldwide. The discovery of new omics biomarkers could help to improve risk stratification algorithms and expand our understanding of molecular pathways contributing to the disease. Here, ASSIGN—a cardiovascular risk prediction tool recommended for use in Scotland—was examined in tandem with epigenetic and proteomic features in risk prediction models in ≥12 657 participants from the Generation Scotland cohort. METHODS: Previously generated DNA methylation–derived epigenetic scores (EpiScores) for 109 protein levels were considered, in addition to both measured levels and an EpiScore for cTnI (cardiac troponin I). The associations between individual protein EpiScores and the CVD risk were examined using Cox regression (ncases≥1274; ncontrols≥11 383) and visualized in a tailored R application. Splitting the cohort into independent training (n=6880) and test (n=3659) subsets, a composite CVD EpiScore was then developed. RESULTS: Sixty-five protein EpiScores were associated with incident CVD independently of ASSIGN and the measured concentration of cTnI (P&lt;0.05), over a follow-up of up to 16 years of electronic health record linkage. The most significant EpiScores were for proteins involved in metabolic, immune response, and tissue development/regeneration pathways. A composite CVD EpiScore (based on 45 protein EpiScores) was a significant predictor of CVD risk independent of ASSIGN and the concentration of cTnI (hazard ratio, 1.32; P=3.7×10−3; 0.3% increase in C-statistic). CONCLUSIONS: EpiScores for circulating protein levels are associated with CVD risk independent of traditional risk factors and may increase our understanding of the etiology of the disease