The Evolving Human and Dream-like, Screen-based Media

With rare exceptions, film theorists have traditionally focussed on culturally symbolic criticism in a persistent denial of the biological function and benefit of film-going. There has been a recent reversal of this trend, however, with the development of a cognitive theory of film, which Nicolas Tredell describes as an approach whereby "A film can be regarded as a simulation of a (possible) real-life situation that engages the viewer’s intellect, emotions and body, and that involves a complex negotiation between fiction and reality" (2002: 259). One aspect of this attempt to include science in the understanding of film has been neoteric work by William Evans on the evolutionary aspects of film-going. He argues that "humans have evolved to prefer television and film to print media [… because] it seems real to us [and because] humans are hardwired to attend and respond to visual stimuli, especially when visual stimuli include other people [...] engaging in salient behaviour" (2005: 200-201). But this elegantly simple explanation of the evolutionary significance of film and other screen-based media needs further elaboration. Firstly, Evans fails to consider the evolutionary benefits that accrue from Revonsuo's 2005 theory of the threat rehearsal function of film-going, in that films are like dreams. Secondly, in emphasizing the reality of the screen's moving image, he neglects to consider why humans attend to unrealistic film such as animations, which I argue are even more dream-like than non-animated films, using the example of Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940). Thirdly, he omits consideration of the evolutionary function of a film auteur who is assigned the virtual status of tribal elder. Hence I make a tendentious claim regarding the evolutionary benefit of film-goers assigning the status of 'auteur' to an individual writer/director, despite the well known collaborative nature of film-making, and (dare I say) the out-of-fashion Barthesian notion of the death of the author. Regarding Disney once again, one notes the absence of certain genres of cinema in his otherwise heterogeneous body of work: he has never made a war film or action movie. Such exclusions, only apparent when the huge oeuvre he has helmed are considered as a single text emanating from an individual author, generate an understanding of the Disney worldview, in which family values are prioritised and prompts attitudes toward this auteurial individual akin to meaning-seeking villagers genuflecting to a wise tribal elder as he offers advice for survival of the species in the evolutionary struggle for survival of the fittest. In addressing these three omissions, my paper aims to gain credibility for a more comprehensive evolutionary theory of film

Sounds of silence: an interview with Rolf de Heer

Rolf de Heer's twelfth feature film, "Dr. Plonk" (starring Nigel Lunghi, Paul Blackwell and Magda Szubanski), premiered on closing night of the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival recently. Already feted as South Australian of the Year, De Heer received the Don Dunstan award on opening night to rapturous applause from his home town crowd. D. Bruno Starrs interviewed Australia's most successful non-mainstream film-maker about the black and white, silent slap-stick comedy three days before its inaugural screening

"Dance me to my song" (Rolf de Heer 1997): The story of a disabled dancer

Rolf de Heer’s "Dance Me To My Song" (1997) is a film with very little traditional dancing, being the story of a wheelchair-bound young lady who suffers from cerebral palsy. Two years before she died, real-life aphasic star and co-writer, Heather Rose, was the keynote speaker at the Pacific Rim Disability Conference in 2000 at which she said: "I wanted to create a screenplay, but not just another soppy disability film, I wanted to make a hot sexy film, which showed the real world." For Heather and other disabled persons, the real world does not necessarily preclude dancing. Thus, despite her twisted body and drooling visage, Heather’s story culminates in a joyous jig of triumph as the indomitable redhead dances in her wheelchair with the able-bodied Eddy, whose sexual affections she has won notwithstanding the best efforts of her emotionally stunted and jealous carer, Madelaine. In contrast to Paul Darke's 1998 conception of the "normality drama" genre of the disabled film, Heather has created a disabled character superior to her able-bodied antagonist. As de Heer has done in other films, he has given a voice to those who might otherwise not be heard: in Heather's case via her electric voice synthesizer. This paper argues that de Heer has found a second voice for Heather via Laban's language of dance, and in doing so has expanded understandings of quality of life for the disabled, as per the social model of disability rather than the medical model of disability. The film reinforces Petra Kupper’s notion that a new literacy in dance needs to be learned in which students "understand dance not only as a manipulation of the body in time and space, but also as a manipulation of the concept of 'the body' in its framework of 'normality', 'health', 'wholeness', 'intelligence', 'control' and 'art'." (2000: 128). Furthermore, Heather proves herself superior in the film-making industry by successfully assuming primary credit for the film. The ambivalent status regarding the screen-writing role for "Dance Me To My Song" creates a space in which authorship is contestable, although its other candidate, director de Heer, willingly concedes the credit to Rose, and this paper concludes that not only is Heather Rose the deserving author of this film, the film itself is deserving of a new genre label, that of "disability dance drama"

Filmic Eco-warnings and Television: Rolf de Heer’s Epsilon (1995) and Dr. Plonk (2007)

The possibility is considered that Australian film-maker Rolf de Heer has followed Epsilon (1995) with another filmic eco-warning, Dr. Plonk (2007), in which, as Mark J. Lacy despairs, heroic "dynamic individuals" unhelpfully "reinforce a (neo)liberal imaginary" (2001: 636), thus obliging Judith Hess Wright's allegation that genre films maintain the social status quo by offering "absurd solutions to economic and social conflicts" (2003: 42). But rather than 'shouting' the message that a messianic hero-figure can save the world as in his first eco-politically correct film, it is argued that de Heer has subsequently made a silent film in which the saviour fails: the eponymous Dr. Plonk is imprisoned and makes a subtle, unspoken plea to the audience to get out from in front of their television sets and save the world from ecological apocalypse themselves. De Heer has expressed considerable disdain towards television but this paper suggests that to maximise reception of their eco-warnings the eco-conscious film-maker needs to recognise the potential of interactive television and other new media technologies to increase voter turnout and to effect the aversion of global apocalypse through audiences taking individual responsibility

His ... or her ... suicide

A short one-act play in the absurdist tradition. This short play was published in issue 14 of "Antithesis" by the Department of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne in 2004 (pp. 151-155)

Optical microrheology using rotating laser-trapped particles

We demonstrate an optical system that can apply and accurately measure the torque exerted by the trapping beam on a rotating birefringent probe particle. This allows the viscosity and surface effects within liquid media to be measured quantitatively on a micron-size scale using a trapped rotating spherical probe particle. We use the system to measure the viscosity inside a prototype cellular structure.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. v2: bibliographic details, minor text correction

The Role of Solid Friction in the Sedimentation of Strongly Attractive Colloidal Gels

We study experimentally and theoretically the sedimentation of gels made of strongly aggregated colloidal particles, focussing on the long time behavior, when mechanical equilibrium is asymptotically reached. The asymptotic gel height is found to vary linearly with the initial height, a finding in stark contrast with a recent study on similar gels [Manley \textit{et al.} 2005 \textit{Phys. Rev. Lett.} \textbf{94} 218302]. We show that the asymptotic compaction results from the balance between gravity pull, network elasticity, and solid friction between the gel and the container walls. Based on these ingredients, we propose a simple model to account for the dependence of the height loss on the initial height and volume fraction. As a result of our analysis, we show that the static friction coefficient between the gel and the container walls strongly depends on volume fraction: the higher the volume fraction, the weaker the solid friction. This nonintuitive behavior is explained using simple scaling arguments.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to JSTA

Microrheology, stress fluctuations and active behavior of living cells

We report the first measurements of the intrinsic strain fluctuations of living cells using a recently-developed tracer correlation technique along with a theoretical framework for interpreting such data in heterogeneous media with non-thermal driving. The fluctuations' spatial and temporal correlations indicate that the cytoskeleton can be treated as a course-grained continuum with power-law rheology, driven by a spatially random stress tensor field. Combined with recent cell rheology results, our data imply that intracellular stress fluctuations have a nearly $1/\omega^2$ power spectrum, as expected for a continuum with a slowly evolving internal prestress.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Improved source localization with LIGO India

A global network of advanced gravitational wave interferometric detectors is under construction. These detectors will offer an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity over the initial detectors and will usher in the era of gravitational wave astronomy. In this paper, we evaluate the benefits of relocating one of the advanced LIGO detectors to India.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in proceedings of ICGC2011 conference. Localization figures update

Donor–acceptor co-adsorption ratio controls the structure and electronic properties of two-dimensional alkali–organic networks on Ag(100)

P.T.P.R. and P.J.B. acknowledge financial support from Diamond Light Source and EPSRC. G.C. acknowledges financial support from the EU through the ERC Grant “VISUAL-MS” (Project ID: 308115). B.S. and R.J.M. acknowledge doctoral studentship funding from the EPSRC and the National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF). R.J.M. acknowledges financial support via a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/S016023/1).The results are presented of a detailed combined experimental and theoretical investigation of the influence of coadsorbed electron-donating alkali atoms and the prototypical electron acceptor molecule 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) on the Ag(100) surface. Several coadsorption phases were characterized by scanning tunneling microscopy, low-energy electron diffraction, and soft X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Quantitative structural data were obtained using normal-incidence X-ray standing wave (NIXSW) measurements and compared with the results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations using several different methods of dispersion correction. Generally, good agreement between theory and experiment was achieved for the quantitative structures, albeit with the prediction of the alkali atom heights being challenging for some methods. The adsorption structures depend sensitively on the interplay of molecule–metal charge transfer and long-range dispersion forces, which are controlled by the composition ratio between alkali atoms and TCNQ. The large difference in atomic size between K and Cs has negligible effects on stability, whereas increasing the ratio of K/TCNQ from 1:4 to 1:1 leads to a weakening of molecule–metal interaction strength in favor of stronger ionic bonds within the two-dimensional alkali–organic network. A strong dependence of the work function on the alkali donor–TCNQ acceptor coadsorption ratio is predicted.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe