Mystery, magic and truth : faith and reason explored in Renaissance art : might philosophy and religion be used as a vehicle for better art history teaching and learning? : a thesis submitted to Massey University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education (Adult Education)

Consisting of two parts, an epistemic and pedagogic, this thesis is designed for teaching and learning about philosophy and religion using art history. By studying philosophy and religion in art works a student might be led to gaining a better understanding about faith and reason and by studying the philosophical and religious componants a teacher might gain a better focus on art history teaching and learning in general

Where do I end and you begin

From 1997 to 2016 I worked in collaboration with artist Emma Ruston exhibiting nationally and internationally. Projects with Ruston combined large-scale sculptural constructions or reconstructions of specific objects or spaces, that referred to historical and cultural events. In order to critically examine ideas of collaboration and participation, artists and cultural producers were invited to participate in projects. As part of the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme, Edinburgh Art Festival in partnership with City Art Centre presented Where do I end and you begin a major international exhibition of art selected by five curators from Commonwealth countries. Over 20 international artists were invited to explore and interrogate the ideas, ideals and myths which underpin notions of community, common-wealth, and the commons. The exhibition featured work by Amar Kanwar, Antonia Hirsch, Arpita Singh, Brian Jungen and Duane Linklater, Derek Sullivan, Gavin Hipkins, Kay Hassan, Kushana Bush, Mary Evans, Mary Sibande, Masooma Syed, Naeem Mohaiemen, Pascal Grandmaison, Rebecca Belmore, Shannon Te Ao, Shilpa Gupta, Steve Carr, Tam Joseph, Uriel Orlow, Yvonne Todd. My project with Ruston Stop Thief! (a new commission) included- a large tent like structure Flaghall made up of hundreds of hand-stitched imaginary national flags and formed the fulcrum for two further works: Conquest, Colonialism and the Commons, a 20 minute video lecture we commissioned by Edinburgh based writer and activist Andy Wightman. Presented inside the Flaghall the video explored the ‘historic interconnections’ between Britain’s colonial past and land ownership in contemporary Scotland; The second work Stop Thief! (readings), involved ‘collective readings’ compiled from texts which link ‘corporate financers, witches, scapegoats, stories of forests, and the commons. Performed simultaneously by eight actors occupying the four floors of Edinburgh’s Art Centre, the ‘readers’ words spilled out from Flaghall across the entire exhibition, as a metaphorical reference to land grabs and stolen commons. The exhibition was accompanied by a full colour catalogue with essays by the curators

Informed baseline subtraction of proteomic mass spectrometry data aided by a novel sliding window algorithm

Proteomic matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation (MALDI) linear time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) may be used to produce protein profiles from biological samples with the aim of discovering biomarkers for disease. However, the raw protein profiles suffer from several sources of bias or systematic variation which need to be removed via pre-processing before meaningful downstream analysis of the data can be undertaken. Baseline subtraction, an early pre-processing step that removes the non-peptide signal from the spectra, is complicated by the following: (i) each spectrum has, on average, wider peaks for peptides with higher mass-to-charge ratios (m/z), and (ii) the time-consuming and error-prone trial-and-error process for optimising the baseline subtraction input arguments. With reference to the aforementioned complications, we present an automated pipeline that includes (i) a novel `continuous' line segment algorithm that efficiently operates over data with a transformed m/z-axis to remove the relationship between peptide mass and peak width, and (ii) an input-free algorithm to estimate peak widths on the transformed m/z scale. The automated baseline subtraction method was deployed on six publicly available proteomic MS datasets using six different m/z-axis transformations. Optimality of the automated baseline subtraction pipeline was assessed quantitatively using the mean absolute scaled error (MASE) when compared to a gold-standard baseline subtracted signal. Near-optimal baseline subtraction was achieved using the automated pipeline. The advantages of the proposed pipeline include informed and data specific input arguments for baseline subtraction methods, the avoidance of time-intensive and subjective piecewise baseline subtraction, and the ability to automate baseline subtraction completely. Moreover, individual steps can be adopted as stand-alone routines.Comment: 50 pages, 19 figure

Modern history vol.III

The exhibition Modern History Vol.III was one of three related group exhibitions realised at different venues across the North West in 2015. The exhibitions were curated by Lynda Morris, Professor of Art History and Curation at Norwich University of the Art. Artists featured included: Pavel Buchler, Rosalind Nashabibi & Lucy Skaer, David Osbaldeston, Conrad Atkinson, Lubaina Himid, Magda Stawarska-Bevan. The purpose of the exhibitions was to offer alternative perspectives on cultural, social, and political change, from different generations of artists based in the North West of England. To present a microcosm of dialogues occurring, articulating how these are intertwined with the world today. The guiding principle behind the exhibitions was that history is easily forgotten, and efforts should be made to remember it. Modern History Vol III addressed national and international, social and political issues post-1969. I presented a work, produced with artist Emma Rushton, which had previously been shown in solo exhibitions in the Netherlands (2007) and Germany (2009). The film work Will Someone Stop You...? consisted of edited archival footage (colour, 17mins) and a wall text, addressing the illegal flight of West German Mathias Rust in to Moscow’s Red Square in May 1987. A publication was produced, featuring documentation of work in the exhibition along with an introductory essay Modern History by Lynda Morris and exhibition essay The Owl of Minerva by Richard Parry, Curator, Grundy Art Gallery. The exhibitions were funded by Arts Council England, with support from Lancashire City Council and Manchester School of Art and took place between April and November 2015. Modern History Vol.1, Grundy Gallery, Blackpool, (25 April - Saturday 13 June 2015); Modern History Vol. 2, The Atkinson, Southport (18 August-8 November 2015); Modern History Vol. 3, at Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre ((19 September-21 November 2015)

Fear of the surplus

Fear of the Surplus was the inaugural exhibition of the Tetley Art Centre in Leeds. The solo exhibition, was a collaboration between myself and artist Emma Rushton. Responding to the context of the Tetley, which until its transformation into an art space, had been a place of work (Tetley Brewery), and current government rhetoric surrounding work and welfare the exhibition established a discursive space where conflicting ideas about labour, work systems and possible alternatives could be debated. For the exhibition, a large a hand crafted and painted ‘stage’ structure was installed in the main space. Over six weeks the stage was the setting for a programme of talks by a group of invited speakers – authors, activists, academics, theorists, organisers and campaigners, to unpick ideas of work – what it is, why and how we do it, its values and rewards and the conflicting ideas and issues which surround it. Fear of the Surplus was also understood as referring to capitals inability to address the redistribution of wealth and resources generated by all, through work, in its many different forms, waged and unwaged. The opening night of the project featured a continuous reading of Ivor Southwood’s book Non-Stop Inertia from the ‘stage’ by five actors. The following six weeks of the exhibition included talks by; philosopher Nina Power - When we say “work”, what do we mean? When we say “worker”, who do we not mean?; economist Guy Standing - The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class; academic Diane Morgan - Crisis? What “crisis”? “Living labour” NOW! ; author Lynsey Hanley – On self-improvement; sociologist Zygmunt Bauman – Dread of scarcity, Fears of abundance; anarchist Dónal O’Driscoll – When the machine took over, Ellul, Marcuse and the reshaping of work; Radical Routes organiser Cath Muller - Let’s build a co-operative society; union activist Andy Pearson – Unite the union; cultural theorist Mark Fisher – De-Privatising Stress. A new site-specific wall text Scapegoat was commissioned for the project and remained in the gallery for 6 months. The project culminated with a presentation by five actors of The Making of the English Working Class - update - readings from the classic text along with selected quotes and chapters written by speakers contributing to Fear of the Surplus

Lincoln voices artists residency

Lincoln Voices – Artist’s Research Residency, was a part-time artists residency based in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lincoln. I undertook the residency with my then collaborative artistic partner, artist Emma Rushton. During the research residency Rushton and I became aware of the unique areas of common lands that border the city centre, West Common, South Common and Cow Paddle Common and to research their history. We also connected with people who uses the commons, including those who have written about them (John Bennett, Phil Grimshaw) and activists who have fought to keep them safe (Mick Commons, Sally Davies and George Wolfendon). Aiming to raise public awareness of these important spaces and their relationship to the Magna Carta, we organised two free public lectures at historically significant sites in Lincoln. Andy Whitman, a specialist in Land rights, democracy and economics gave a public talk at West Common on March 2016. In June 2015, the renowned historian Prof. Peter Linebaugh, author of the Magna Carta Manifesto, gave a lecture at the Victorian Prison of Lincoln’s Castle, home of historic documents Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest. The intention of the lectures was also to present alternative ‘counter narratives’ to a series of ‘official’ lectures taking place at Lincoln’s Cathedral. Peter Linebaughs talk “The Future of the Charters of Liberty in the 21st Century: From homo idioticus to femina communis” was presented on Monday 8th June 2015, the 800 anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta. Linebaugh presented his lecture in the hall of Lincoln Prison from behind a lecturn and purpose built stage we constructed for the site and event. Both lectures were filmed by University of Lincoln’s Media unit and Linebaugh’s lecture was archived on the arts website ThisisTomorrow

Behaviour of modified insulator surface material under electric stress

Performance of electrical insulators is strongly dependent on their surface properties. In practice manufactures and utilities are using different means to improve them. New materials the insulators or coatings have been used in electric power systems. Also new technologies are tested to modifL insulators glaze, mainly plasma processes. During these processes some changes in the constitution of glaze has to be done and then a new hydrophobic layer is created. Some electrical and physical properties of modified (silicon rubber and fluorourethane coatings, plasma technology) and non-modified real insulators glaze have been presented. These investigations have shown that plasma processes are able to improve the surface properties of the glaze. Since the electrohydrodynamic behaviour of water droplets on the outdoor electrical insulation surface is very important, observations have been done by using a high-speed photo camera

Effects of Surface Modification of Polypropylene Foil on Polymer - Oil Interaction

Physico-chemical interactions between the impregnating oil and the polypropylene foil (PP) are of great concern. Such phenomena like swelling and dissolution of polymer films into the oil can detonate the electrical properties of the oil - polymer system. It was found that the swelling control could be attained by the application of the effective diffusion barrier at the PP surface. Formation of thin polymer coatings in radio-frequency discharges was used for this purpose. The effect of surface modification of the PP film on the polymer-oil interaction phenomena were investigated

Knowledge Organisation and its Role in Multimedia Information Retrieval

Various kinds of knowledge organisation (such as thesauri) are routinely used to label or tag multimedia content such as images and music, to support information retrieval i.e. user search for such content. In this paper we outline why this is the case, in particular focusing on the semantic gap between content and concept based multimedia retrieval. We survey some indexing vocabularies used for multimedia retrieval, and argue that techniques such as thesauri will be needed for the foreseeable future in order to support users in their need for multimedia content. In particular we argue that Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) techniques are not mature enough to solve the problem of indexing multimedia conceptually, and will not be able to replace human indexers for the foreseeable future