The Arena Spectacular from Ben Hur Live to Isles of Wonder: Adaptation, Post-cinema and the Postcivil

What is an ‘arena spectacular’ and why has this genre of live entertainment gained international popularity in the twenty-first century? This study looks at three arena spectaculars: Ben Hur Live, Batman Live and Walking with Dinosaurs Live – all adapted from film or TV productions and performed in London’s O2 Arena between 2007 and 2012. I contextualise the shows with the work of Cirque du Soleil, the Millennium Dome and the city of Las Vegas. However, I argue that the format reached its fullest expression in Britain with the opening ceremony to the London 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder. This study proposes that there are specific affective and economic factors within neoliberal and post-cinematic society that make the spatialised, live and ‘unmediated’ performance of a known image or hypertext into an attractive commodity. The arena spectacular should be understood via post-cinematic image-making and the fluidity with which images move from screen, to site and back will be explored here as a commercial process of ‘remediation’. An aggregate of older devices and media that seems to be defined in heterotopic contradistinction to a digital media regime, this format can be explained through contemporaneous qualities of public space, immaterial labour, government and consumption. This analysis is an attempt at grasping the ‘offer’ of these products – through their advertising, merchandise and the shows themselves. What is their affordance; what experiences do they allow and how does this benefit both consumers and producers? Despite their economic and cultural marginality, perhaps these entertainment productions can be seen in some ways as archetypal products of the early twenty-first century

The first total synthesis of (+)-mucosin

The first total synthesis of (+)-mucosin has been completed allowing assignment of the absolute stereochemistry of the natural product. A zirconium induced co-cyclisation was utilised to install the correct stereochemistry of the four contiguous stereocentres around the unusual bicyclo[4.3.0]nonene core

Optimizing Spatiotemporal Analysis Using Multidimensional Indexing with GeoWave

The open source software GeoWave bridges the gap between geographic information systems and distributed computing. This is done by preserving locality of multidimensional data when indexing it into a single-dimensional key-value store, using space filling curves. This means that like values in each dimension are stored physically close together in the datastore. We demonstrate the efficiencies and benefits of the GeoWave indexing algorithm to store and query billions of spatiotemporal data points. We show how this indexing strategy can be used to reduce query and processing times by multiple orders of magnitude using publicly available taxi trip data published by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. Furthermore, we demonstrate how this efficiency lends itself to analysis that would otherwise be unfeasible

The Arena Spectacular from Ben Hur Live to Isles of Wonder: Adaptation, Post-cinema and the Postcivil

What is an ‘arena spectacular’ and why has this genre of live entertainment gained international popularity in the twenty-first century? This study looks at three arena spectaculars: Ben Hur Live, Batman Live and Walking with Dinosaurs Live – all adapted from film or TV productions and performed in London’s O2 Arena between 2007 and 2012. I contextualise the shows with the work of Cirque du Soleil, the Millennium Dome and the city of Las Vegas. However, I argue that the format reached its fullest expression in Britain with the opening ceremony to the London 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder. This study proposes that there are specific affective and economic factors within neoliberal and post-cinematic society that make the spatialised, live and ‘unmediated’ performance of a known image or hypertext into an attractive commodity. The arena spectacular should be understood via post-cinematic image-making and the fluidity with which images move from screen, to site and back will be explored here as a commercial process of ‘remediation’. An aggregate of older devices and media that seems to be defined in heterotopic contradistinction to a digital media regime, this format can be explained through contemporaneous qualities of public space, immaterial labour, government and consumption. This analysis is an attempt at grasping the ‘offer’ of these products – through their advertising, merchandise and the shows themselves. What is their affordance; what experiences do they allow and how does this benefit both consumers and producers? Despite their economic and cultural marginality, perhaps these entertainment productions can be seen in some ways as archetypal products of the early twenty-first century

From Pixels to Drones: Visualising The Nation in the London 2012 and PyeongChang 2018 Olympic opening ceremonies

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1969) famously features a title page picturing a figure made up of smaller figures, vividly and memorably visualising the relationship between a state and its citizenry. Two recent Olympic opening ceremonies can be seen as also attempting this, by differing means: visualising the UK in 2012 and South Korea in 2018. I will bring together observations on the weird technical elements so heavily present within this micro-genre of large scale performance, alongside a consideration of the offering to both global and local audiences from two image-conscious nations

Dreams of Safety - an experimental video series

Conference presentation introducing my online video series 'Dreams of Safety'. In 2020, Nicholas Spice wrote that 'Covid 19 has broken out of the ghetto, that place where other people die [...] if the capitalist system is to survive, we shall need to go back to our dream of safety, and fast'. What are these ‘dreams of safety’, to which some of us would return, to slumber again? Who is the ‘we’ that the author refers to here? During the first lockdown I had a recurring fantasy: being on a long-haul flight. This is a fantasy of restriction, of disempowerment, of privilege and inaction. What ideas of safety might others have? If we are going to embrace a new reality, as the climate crisis dictates, we must grasp what the old safety was like, even if it was only an illusion. ‘Dreams of Safety’ is a new series of videos using animation, video, music and recorded interviews to think these things through. So far I have interviewed a flight attendant based in East Asia and a former employee of Madame Tussauds, Delhi, India, and used their words to build an audio visual context for our conversations. Coming from a background in experimental filmmaking, this project also draws on podcasting practices. The intention is for this to grow over time, through speaking to people with vastly different experiences of the Covid 19 pandemic but also other breaks in day-to-day realities. My video and performance involve improvisation and collaboration, with the techniques of filmmaker Peter Watkins as a major influence. I work with tension, humour, awkwardness and pathos coming from vulnerabilities visible within the work. I often work with participants to visualise a hypothetical space or environment, using acting, digital models and DIY props. I am now looking for modes of production that allow a greater range of experiences to be present within the work, without travel and large budgets – and for a mode of online dissemination that makes sense for mode of working

The Arena Spectacular from Ben Hur Live to Isles of Wonder: Adaptation, Post-cinema and the Postcivil

What is an ‘arena spectacular’ and why has this genre of live entertainment gained international popularity in the twenty-first century? This study looks at three arena spectaculars: Ben Hur Live, Batman Live and Walking with Dinosaurs Live – all adapted from film or TV productions and performed in London’s O2 Arena between 2007 and 2012. I contextualise the shows with the work of Cirque du Soleil, the Millennium Dome and the city of Las Vegas. However, I argue that the format reached its fullest expression in Britain with the opening ceremony to the London 2012 Olympics, Danny Boyle’s Isles of Wonder. This study proposes that there are specific affective and economic factors within neoliberal and post-cinematic society that make the spatialised, live and ‘unmediated’ performance of a known image or hypertext into an attractive commodity. The arena spectacular should be understood via post-cinematic image-making and the fluidity with which images move from screen, to site and back will be explored here as a commercial process of ‘remediation’. An aggregate of older devices and media that seems to be defined in heterotopic contradistinction to a digital media regime, this format can be explained through contemporaneous qualities of public space, immaterial labour, government and consumption. This analysis is an attempt at grasping the ‘offer’ of these products – through their advertising, merchandise and the shows themselves. What is their affordance; what experiences do they allow and how does this benefit both consumers and producers? Despite their economic and cultural marginality, perhaps these entertainment productions can be seen in some ways as archetypal products of the early twenty-first century

ROT

ROT is a collaborative performance made with Siôn Parkinson and Dushume (Amit Dinesh Patel). The 3 artists improvised following a video score devised by Richard Whitby, which was projected on a large temporary screen in front of the stage. Sound was produced live with a mixture of prepared electric guitar, homemade electronics, synthesisers and voice

The effect of oil sands process-affected water and model naphthenic acids on photosynthesis and growth in Emiliania huxleyi and Chlorella vulgaris

Naphthenic acids (NAs) are among the most toxic organic pollutants present in oil sands process waters (OSPW) and enter marine and freshwater environments through natural and anthropogenic sources. We investigated the effects of the acid extractable organic (AEO) fraction of OSPW and individual surrogate NAs, on maximum photosynthetic efficiency of photosystem II (PSII) (FV/FM) and cell growth in Emiliania huxleyi and Chlorella vulgaris as representative marine and freshwater phytoplankton. Whilst FV/FM in E. huxleyi and C. vulgaris was not inhibited by AEO, exposure to two surrogate NAs: (4'-n-butylphenyl)-4-butanoic acid (n-BPBA) and (4'-tert-butylphenyl)-4-butanoic acid (tert-BPBA), caused complete inhibition of FV/FM in E. huxleyi (≥10 mg L-1 n-BPBA; ≥50 mg L-1 tert-BPBA) but not in C. vulgaris. Growth rates and cell abundances in E. huxleyi were also reduced when exposed to ≥10 mg L-1 n- and tert-BPBA; however, higher concentrations of n- and tert-BPBA (100 mg L-1) were required to reduce cell growth in C. vulgaris. AEO at ≥10 mg L-1 stimulated E. huxleyi growth rate (p ≤ 0.002), yet had no apparent effect on C. vulgaris. In conclusion, E. huxleyi was generally more sensitive to NAs than C. vulgaris. This report provides a better understanding of the physiological responses of phytoplankton to NAs which will enable improved monitoring of NA pollution in aquatic ecosystems in the future

The Endofullerene HF@C 60 : Inelastic Neutron Scattering Spectra from Quantum Simulations and Experiment, Validity of the Selection Rule and Symmetry Breaking

Accurate quantum simulations of the low-temperature inelastic neutron scattering (INS) spectra of HF@C60 are reported for two incident neutron wavelengths. They are distinguished by the rigorous inclusion of symmetry-breaking effects in the treatment and having the spectra computed with HF as the guest, rather than H2 or HD, as in the past work. The results demonstrate that the precedent-setting INS selection rule, originally derived for H2 and HD in near-spherical nanocavities, applies also to HF@C60, despite the large mass asymmetry of HF and the strongly mixed character of its translation–rotation eigenstates. This lends crucial support to the theoretical prediction made earlier that the INS selection rule is valid for any diatomic molecule in near-spherical nanoconfinement. The selection rule remains valid in the presence of symmetry breaking but is modified slightly in an interesting way. Comparison is made with the recently published experimental INS spectrum of HF@C60. The agreement is very good, apart from one peak for which our calculations suggest a reassignment. This reassignment is consistent with the measured INS spectrum presented in this work, which covers an extended energy range