Prácticas artísticas difractivas: la informática y los complicados enredos entre el arte contemporáneo convencional y el arte de los nuevos medios

Adoptem la noció de difracció proposada per Karen Barad (2007) per reavaluar les relacions entre l'art contemporani convencional (ACC) i l'art dels nous mitjans (ANM), sobre les quals s'ha discutit durant molts anys com a part d'un debat un xic controvertit. La nostra lectura difractiva posa en relleu diferències, grans i petites però conseqüents, entre aquestes pràctiques artístiques. No suavitzarem les tensions que destaquen en anteriors debats sobre ANM i MCA, sinó que utilitzarem el terme de Barad, «embolic», per suggerir que hi ha «embolics» generatius, així com diferències productives, entre aquestes pràctiques. Ampliem el debat considerant quines diferències importen, per a qui (artistes, galeristes, científics) i com aquestes diferències emergeixen a través d'intraaccions materials i discursives. Propugnem un nou terme, «pràctiques artístiques difractives», i suggerim que aquestes pràctiques artístiques van més enllà de la bifurcació d’ANM i MCA per a reconfigurar parcialment les pràctiques entre art, informàtica i humanitats.We engage with Karen Barad’s notion of diffraction (2007) to re-evaluate the relations between mainstream contemporary art (MCA) and new media art (NMA) that have been discussed for many years as part of a somewhat contentious debate. Our diffractive reading highlights both large and small but consequential differences between these art practices. We do not smooth over the tensions highlighted in earlier discussions of NMA and MCA. Instead we use Barad’s term ‘entanglement’ to suggest that there are generative ‘entanglements’, as well as productive differences, between these practices. We extend the debate by considering which differences matter, for whom (artists, gallerists, scientists) and how these differences emerge through material-discursive intra-actions. We argue for a new term, diffractive art practices, and suggest that such art practices move beyond the bifurcation of NMA and MCA to partially reconfigure the practices between art, computation and humanities.Adoptamos la noción de difracción propuesta por Karen Barad (2007) para reevaluar las relaciones entre el arte contemporáneo convencional (ACC) y el arte de los nuevos medios (ANM), sobre las que se ha discutido durante muchos años como parte de un debate algo controvertido. Nuestra lectura difractiva pone de relieve diferencias, grandes y pequeñas pero consecuentes, entre estas prácticas artísticas. No suavizamos las tensiones puestas de relieve en anteriores debates acerca de ANM y MCA, sino que utilizamos el término de Barad, «enredo», para sugerir que existen «enredos» generativos, así como diferencias productivas, entre dichas prácticas. Ampliamos el debate considerando qué diferencias importan, para quién (artistas, galeristas, científicos) y cómo dichas diferencias emergen a través de intra-acciones materiales y discursivas. Propugnamos un nuevo término, «prácticas artísticas difractivas», y sugerimos que dichas prácticas artísticas van más allá de la bifurcación de ANM y MCA para reconfigurar parcialmente las prácticas entre arte, informática y humanidades

From Citizen Sensing to Collective Monitoring: Working through the Perceptive and Affective Problematics of Environmental Pollution

Citizen sensing, or the practice of monitoring environments through low-cost and do-it-yourself (DIY) digital technologies, is often structured as an individual pursuit. The very term citizen within citizen sensing suggests that the practice of sensing is the terrain of one political subject using a digital device to monitor her or his environment to take individual action. Yet in some circumstances, citizen sensing practices are reworking the sites and distributions of environmental monitoring toward other configurations that are more multiple and collective. What are the qualities and capacities of these collective modes of sensing, and how might they shift the assumed parameters—and effectiveness—of citizen sensing? We engage with Simondon’s writing to consider how a “perceptive problematic” generates collectives for feeling and responding to events (or an “affective problematic”), here through the ongoing event of air pollution. Further drawing on writing from Stengers, we discuss how the “work” of citizen sensing involves much more than developing new technologies, and instead points to the ways in which new practices, subjects, milieus, evidence, and politics are worked through as perceptive and affective commitments to making sense of and addressing the problem of pollution.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 313347

Pretty in Plastic: Aesthetic authenticity in Barbie Land

Our report critically applies aesthetic authenticity as a theoretical lens to interrogate the multimodal reproduction of gendered relations in the Barbie (2023) movie. Recent research has focused on how the aesthetic authenticity stakes are being continually elevated, such that this requires ongoing labour and continual renegotiation. It is not surprising that even Barbie finds this exhausting! We offer an analysis of character arcs across the movie, before exploring how a plastic doll enables conceptual insight regarding aesthetic authenticity. We discuss how the movie reconfirms neoliberal postfeminist perspectives on how women should seek their happy ever after. Finally, we consider the implications of representations of patriarchy and matriarchy before setting out suggestions for future research and concluding our report

Mapping policy understandings of gender & sexuality: thematic analysis

This second report from the Breaking Binaries Research (BBR) programme extends and develops our first report which offered a preliminary review of mapping understandings of genders and sexualities across policy data (Pritchard et al., 2023). As in our first report, we focus on the implications of these understandings for entrepreneurs and small businesses in relation to how diversity is constructed by policy makers. We define gender and sexuality diversity as including all those who self-identify as not conforming to binary identities and/or bodies, and those who identify in various, and sometimes multiple ways, as part of LGBTQIA+ and non-binary communities. Policy makers labelling of these identities, especially the use of pre-given categories, is problematic (Guyan, 2022). Within the overarching initialisms or acronyms, like LGBTQIA+, sit host of diverse, and in most cases, intersecting communities, which are oversimplified and little understood

Mapping policy understandings of gender & sexuality: preliminary review

As part of the wider Breaking Binaries Research (BBR) programme, in this project we aim to map understandings of gender and sexuality diversity across various government policy documents within the UK. We focus on the implications of these understandings for entrepreneurs and small businesses in relation to how diversity is constructed by policy makers. Policy documents provide a visual and written summary with varying focus ranging from statements, directives, advisories and guidance, plans and reviews. Such policies represent a political ideological articulation of how prevailing values intersect with understandings of diverse identities (Ahl & Marlow, 2021). We define gender and sexuality diversity as including all those who self-identify as not conforming to binary identities and/or bodies, and those who identify in various, and sometimes multiple, ways as part of LGBTQIA+ communities. Policy makers labelling of these identities, especially the use of pre-given categories, is problematic (Guyan, 2022) but little is known about the use of different terms and associated understandings. Our initial focus is therefore a mapping exercise to explore both visual and textual data to shed light on policy understandings of these aspects of diversity

Critter Compiler

This chapter unravels how execution holds — in enduring states — semi-living microbes in sites of petrochemical waste. By referring to semi-living I am not signalling a life sustained through technological means (Catts and Zurr 2002), but a living constrained and held in injured states by computation. I ask what type of activity is this execu- tion that derives from injury and how we might speculate on execution otherwise? Through ethnographic and speculative engagements with Critter Chips I will show how execution can be described as propelling semi-life, outlining how computation exploits the potential of microbial injury and death. I follow this with a discussion of the artwork Critter Compiler, a fabulation (Haraway 2013) that engages with contemporary microbial computing. Critter Compiler is a prototype for a microbial novella writer and a response to Rosi Braidotti’s call for experiments that “are non-profit and actualise the virtual possibilities of an expanded relational self that functions in a nature-culture continuum” (2013, 61). The artwork takes as its starting point toxic execution, and as a speculative experiment performs (or executes) these processes otherwise

Thinking with the Animal-Hacker

In the depths of the Cumbria hills a dairy cow changes its route to stare deep into the camera lens of the ‘Environmental Virtual Observatory’ (EVO) (www.evo-uk.org). Downstream at 15 minute intervals organic matter is pushed through turbidity probes, sometimes causing the computation to glitch and upload its own movement into a data storage warehouse. In this muddy, messy situation of the EVO there is something lurking, something which might be described as the ‘Animal-Hacker’ the non-human animal, an entity that exploits the computational ecology, reconfigures it in an act of what Donna Haraway would describe as “worlding”

Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer

This article contributes to critical discussions questioning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship by examining the experiences of men and women entrepreneurs who have recently become employers in South Wales, the United Kingdom. Our research uses a co-creative visual method based in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore transitions from entrepreneur to entrepreneur-employer in everyday contexts. Findings demonstrate how initial emancipatory experiences become increasingly bounded when becoming an entrepreneur-employer. This exposes a Catch-22 of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation as a symptom of neoliberal entrepreneurial discourses that constrain what entrepreneurs are encouraged to do: grow. We find a plurality of particular emancipations, but conclude that within a developed context entrepreneurship, and more specifically, becoming an entrepreneur-employer is a relational step through which perceived constraints become more readily experienced and emancipation never fully realised

Chromatin compaction in Cornelia de Lange syndrome

Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (CdLS) is a multisystem genetic disorder caused by mutations in the cohesin complex. It is believed that cohesin is able to regulate gene expression with CTCF by holding chromatin in topological complexes, such as active chromatin hubs, and that CdLS is caused by loss of these complexes causing aberrant gene expression. In order to determine if loss of these complexes in CdLS resulted in a general change in the compaction of chromatin, I undertook a series of analyses of the nucleus in CdLS patient lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs), compared to wildtype, and later in RNAi knockdown models of CdLS. By fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) I studied the chromatin compaction of different regions of the genome, and found that in some, but not all, CdLS cell lines, gene-rich regions have less compact chromatin compared to wildtype. RNAi knockdown of two proteins that are mutated in CdLS, NIPBL and SMC1, also resulted in decompaction of regions of the genome, however these were different regions than in the patient LCLs, perhaps due to variation between cell lines. This change was not due to the interaction between cohesin and CTCF, as I found that knockdown of CTCF did not result in changes in chromatin compaction. I have also looked at the published data for gene expression in CdLS, and in mouse and Drosophila models of CdLS, and have found no correlation between the genes misexpressed in CdLS in the three species, nor between three cell lines of the same species. These data suggest that the variation in chromatin compaction observed in CdLS may not be due to an interaction between cohesin and CTCF, and that cohesin can act independently of CTCF to regulate gene expression