Past-present -future

Double Exposures is a new collaborative venture between Manuel Vason and forty of the most visually arresting artists working with performance in the UK. Ten years after his first, groundbreaking book, Exposures, Vason has produced another extraordinary body of work, which sets out new ways of bridging performance and photography. For Double Exposures, Vason has worked with two groups of artists, using two distinct types of collaboration, to produce a series of double images. Artists who had previously worked with Vason were invited to create two images, one of their own practice and another, where they took on the role of the photographer, shaping an image with Vason’s body. A second group of new collaborators were invited to create a performance, which could be captured in two photographs. All the images exist as doubles – pairs – diptychs. Double Exposures includes commissioned essays on photography and performance by David Bate, David Evans, Dominic Johnson, Lois Keidan, Alice Maude-Roxby, Adrien Sina, Chris Townsend, and Joanna Zylinska and an interview with Helena Blaker. Themes explored include the body, the diptych, documentation, encounters, identity, mediation and the relationship between photography and performance. In photography, a ‘double exposure’ can be accidental or deliberate. Both types permeate Double Exposures, making it Manuel Vason’s most ambitious project to date. Double Exposures collaborators: Aaron Williamson, Áine Phillips, Alexandra Zierle & Paul Carter, Alistair MacLennan, Ansuman Biswas, Brian Catling, David Hoyle, Dickie Beau, Eloise Fornieles, Elvira Santamaría Torres, Ernst Fischer, Florence Peake, Franko B, Giovanna Maria Casetta, Harold Offeh, Helena Goldwater, Helena Hunter, Hugo Glendinning, Iona Kewney, jamie lewis hadley, Joshua Sofaer, Julia Bardsley, Katherine Arianello, Lucille Acevedo-Jones & Rajni Shah, Mad for Real, Marcia Farquhar, Marisa Carnesky, Martin O'Brien, Mat Fraser, Michael Mayhew, Mouse, Nando Messias, Nicola Canavan, Noëmi Lakmaier, Oreet Ashery, Rita Marcalo, Ron Athey, Sinead O'Donnell, Stacy Makishi, The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein, the vacuum cleaner Published with the support of Arts Council England Reviews 'Manuel Vason is to Performance Art what Robert Capa is to war photography.' – Franko B, artist 'Manuel Vason's images exist somewhere between portraiture, performance documentation, and documentary - or perhaps, his images are fashion shots, but the bodies are clothed in performance.' – Tracy Warr, independent curator, editor of The Artist's Body 'Manuel Vason's startling and stylised images, powerfully reproduced in Encounters, violently force bodily abjection into the arena of the sublime. Not since the era of Caravaggio and Bernini has pain been so exquisitely and beautifully rendered - here, through Vason's capacity to connect, via the red-hot wire of aesthetic reduction, to the bodies that wield and convey it.' – Amelia Jones 'Photography stages what it records; and subjects perform on that stage. In this age of the complicit auto-branding of the ‘Selfie’, it’s a relief to be reminded that the self and the camera are less knowable than we might think. In this book Manual Vason’s collaborative photographs along with a range of nimble writers reopen for us all the uncertainties and possibilities, the trapdoors and escape hatches that make the self and the camera such wild companions.' – David Campany, writer, curator and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster, Londo

The performance document: assimilations of gesture and genre

Artist or activist actions and performances often take place just once and are intended to be experienced live. These actions are recorded and disseminated through photography and video taken from a range of perspectives, from paid-up and pre-briefed “professional” photographers or videographers through to spontaneously taken images by audience members or passers-by. Inevitably “documentation” is never neutral and these records are infused with the stylistic intervention and conventions of the photographer in question. Within our conversation, we locate the performance document as the site of a potential two-way assimilation of gesture and stylistic attributes of diverse photographic conventions. In our co-writing, we track parallel analyses of photographs taken by commercial photographer Françoise Masson of the 1970s actions of artist Gina Pane and the utilization of photographs within the contemporary lens-based practice of Dinu Li, in which gesture and conventions are assimilated and move fluidly backwards and forwards between political propaganda, film, documentary, and domestic photography

Effects of whole-tree harvesting on site productivity and species composition of a northern hardwood forest

Whole-tree harvesting is widely used in the northeastern United States to supply biomass energy plants with fuel, but questions remain regarding its long-term sustainability. To assess its effects on the northern hardwood forests that make up a significant portion of northern New England, we conducted two regeneration surveys in 2010 and 2011 covering thirty-three small clearcuts. We measured whole-tree (WTH) and conventionally harvested (CH) sites in New Hampshire and Maine, and compared the productivity and species composition of the 10-14 year old regeneration. No significant difference was observed in height, diameter or calculated biomass of stems \u3e 2m in height. Despite several weak patterns in individual species abundance, overall species composition did not significantly vary between WTH and CH sites. We conclude that no significant effects of residue removal from whole-tree harvesting are observed within our sample of northern hardwood sites as this point in their stand development

Can they live again? : an analysis of small churches within the church of the Nazarene who transitioned to vitality from the death spiral

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1378/thumbnail.jp

Reconfigurable Computing for Speech Recognition: Preliminary Findings

Continuous real-time speech recognition is a highly computationally-demanding task, but one which can take good advantage of a parallel processing system. To this end, we describe proposals for, and preliminary findings of, research in implementing in programmable logic the decoder part of a speech recognition system. Recognition via Viterbi decoding of Hidden Markov Models is outlined, along with details of current implementations, which aim to exploit properties of the algorithm that could make it well-suited for devices such as FPGAs. The question of how to deal with limited resources, by reconfiguration or otherwise, is also addressed

Beginning the 21st century with advanced Automatic Parts Identification (API)

Under the direction of the NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, the development and commercialization of an advanced Automated Parts Indentification (API) system is being undertaken by Rockwell International Corporation. The new API system is based on a variable sized, machine-readable, two-dimensioanl matrix symbol that can be applied directly onto most metallic and nonmetallic materials using safe, permanent marking methods. Its checkerboard-like structure is the most space efficient of all symbologies. This high data-density symbology can be applied to products of different material sizes and geometries using application-dependent, computer-driven marking devices. The high fidelity markings produced by these devices can then be captured using a specially designed camera linked to any IBM-compatible computer. Applications of compressed symbology technology will reduce costs and improve quality, productivity, and processes in a wide variety of federal and commercial applications

Polypyrrole RVC biofuel cells for powering medical implants

© 2017 IEEE. Batteries for implanted medical devices such as pacemakers typically require surgical replacement every 5 to 10 years causing stress to the patient and their families. A Biofuel cell uses two electrodes with enzymes embedded to convert sugar into electricity. To evaluate the power producing capabilities of biofuel cells to replace battery technology, polypyrrole electrodes were fabricated by compression with Glucose oxidase and Laccase. Vitreous carbon was added to increase the conductivity, whilst glutaraldehyde acted as a crosslinking molecule. A maximum open circuit potential of 558.7 mV, short circuit current of 1.09 mA and maximum power of 0.127 mW was obtained from the fuel cells. This was able to turn on a medical thermometer through a TI BQ25504 energy harvesting circuit, hence showing the powering potential for biomedical devices

Performance and Photography: Theatre of Photography

The Theatre of Photography research group convened by Wiebke Leister explores staging practices that engage both the camera and its visual histories into modes of theatre production, thus stressing how photography is performative, as such, when giving and enhancing the condition of the resulting images, i.e. scenarios that only exist for the camera. Including who is staged in those frames – the fame of the proscenium arch, the view finder of the camera and the border of the photographic image – and who or what might exist beyond it, off-frame, as if it had never been staged. In particular the relationship between model and photographer, which meanders between recording, reacting to cues, acting out and re-enacting, and how these translate to audiences. Invaded participants include a range of practitioners, theorists and historians approaching the subject from different photography, theatre and performance angles. The first meeting was held on 15th May 2015, 2:00- 6:00pm at the Swedenborg Society as part of the Moose on the Loose Research festival. Successive events on 12th February 2016 and 8th July 2016 to further discuss the intersection of photography and theatre, to take their multiple encounters as an opportunity to consider and rethink the often overused or misconceived concepts of ‘performance’

Determining the effect of a variable rupture velocity on the generation of high-frequency ground motion during an earthquake

Understanding the source of high-frequency ground motion (10-50 Hz) that occurs during an earthquake is not only important from a theoretical standpoint, but from a practical standpoint as well. From the theoretical viewpoint, it can lead to improved understanding of the earthquake-source processes, correct interpretations of seismic data, and more accurate simulations of earthquake ground motions. From the practical view, knowledge of the source of high frequencies is important for earthquake engineering and the seismic-hazard prediction. The generally accepted mechanism for producing high frequencies is any change in the rupture velocity, whether smooth and consistent or abrupt and random. Here, we aim to thoroughly test this hypothesis with numerical simulations based on both the representation integral of elasticity and near-line source approximation in order to determine the true source of high-frequency ground motion. Our simulation results, based on both the representation integral and near-line source model, show that a rupture velocity varying in a consistent, non-random way does not preferentially produce high-frequency radiation. The regularity of the rupture velocity artificially causes a destructive-interference effect to occur, which suppresses these frequencies. Our results further indicate that high frequencies are only produced when the rupture is traveling with a randomly varying velocity. The highly variable and randomized rupture velocity eliminates the destructive interference caused by assuming a regular velocity law, and removes the artificial suppression, resulting in an elevated high-frequency content. We conclude that, contrary to the common assumption, not any change in the rupture velocity leads to the generation of high frequencies during earthquakes. If the velocity law is smooth and regular, the resulting radiation is fully controlled by the artificially induced interference phenomena. In reality, earthquake ruptures will always have a random component in their velocities, eliminating the artificial factors forming the radiation. It thus should be expected that realistic ruptures will always produce an elevated high-frequency content relative to their smooth counterparts. Attributing the preferential generation of high frequencies to any change in rupture velocity is incorrect