The disappearing frame: a practice-based investigation into composing virtual environment artworks

Through creative art making practice, research seeks to contribute a body of knowledge to an under researched area by examining how key concepts germane to computer based, interactive, three-dimensional, virtual environment artworks might be explicated, potential compositional issues characterised, and possible production strategies identified and/or proposed. Initial research summarises a range of classifications pertaining to the function of interactivity within virtual space, leading to an identification and analysis of a predominant model for composing virtual environment media, characterised as the "world as model": a methodological approach to devising interactive and spatial contexts employing visual and behavioural modes based on the physical world. Following this alternative forms of environmental organisation are examined through the development of a series of artworks beginning with Bodies and Bethlem, and culminating with Reconnoitre: a networked environment, spatially manifest through performative user input. Theoretical corollaries to the project are identified placing it within a wider critical context concerned with distinguishing between the virtual as a condition of simulation: a representation of something pre-existing, and the virtual as potential structure: a phenomena in itself requiring creative actualisation and orientated toward change. This distinction is further developed through an analysis of some existing typologies of interactive computer based art, and used to generalise two base conditions between which various possibilities for practice might be situated: the "fluid" and "formatted" virtual.

I Stood Up: Social Design in Practice

Through practice-based research, we explore how interdisciplinary design projects can function to address social issues concerning environmental and social problems. Using two case studies developed between London in the United Kingdom, and Delhi and Ahmedabad in India, we discuss the importance of engagement with the people who the design ultimately serves. Finally, we argue that design concerned with complex social problems require equally complex, multidimensional responses, informed by bodies of knowledge, practices and approaches that lie outside of traditional design approaches

Landscapes of feeling arenas of action: information visualisation as art practice

Discussing his recent artworks alongside those by Abigail Reynolds, Lucy Kimbell and Christian Nold, the author examines emerging phenomena in the digital and wider fine arts whereby information visualization practices are approached as creative media. By laying bare points of convergence and divergence between artistic and scientific approaches, the article develops a number of arguments that show how the pictures produced by information visualization may be reframed within wider aesthetic and critical frameworks. Thus the author explores how models of image production derived from processes of scientific inquiry expand possibilities for the visual arts to develop new types of hybrid images that consist of data grounded both in material realities and in symbolic and aesthetic elements

Protocol to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an environmental nutrition and physical activity intervention in nurseries (Nutrition and Physical Activity Self Assessment for Child Care - NAP SACC UK): a multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial

Background: One in seven UK children have obesity when starting school, with higher prevalence associated with deprivation. Most pre-school children do not meet UK recommendations for physical activity and nutrition. Formal childcare settings provide opportunities to deliver interventions to improve nutritional quality and physical activity to the majority of 3–4-year-olds. The nutrition and physical activity self-assessment for childcare (NAP SACC) intervention has demonstrated effectiveness in the USA with high acceptability in the UK. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the NAP SACC UK intervention to increase physical activity, reduce sedentary time and improve nutritional intake. Methods: Multi-centre cluster RCT with process and economic evaluation. Participants are children aged 2 years or over, attending UK early years settings (nurseries) for ≥ 12 h/week or ≥ 15 h/week during term time and their parents, and staff at participating nurseries. The 12-month intervention involves nursery managers working with a Partner (public health practitioner) to self-assess policies and practices relating to physical activity and nutrition; nursery staff attending one physical activity and one nutrition training workshop and setting goals to be achieved within 6 months. The Partner provides support and reviews progress. Nursery staff receive a further workshop and new goals are set, with Partner support for a further 6 months. The comparator is usual practice. Up to 56 nurseries will be stratified by area and randomly allocated to intervention or comparator arm with minimisation of differences in level of deprivation. Primary outcomes: accelerometer-assessed mean total activity time on nursery days and average total energy (kcal) intake per eating occasion of lunch and morning/afternoon snacks consumed within nurseries. Secondary outcomes: accelerometer-assessed mean daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sedentary time per nursery day, total physical activity on nursery days compared to non-nursery days, average serving size of lunch and morning/afternoon snacks in nursery per day, average percentage of core and non-core food in lunch and morning/afternoon snacks, zBMI, proportion of children who are overweight/obese and child quality-of-life. A process evaluation will examine fidelity, acceptability, sustainability and context. An economic evaluation will compare costs and consequences from the perspective of the local government, nursery and parents. Trial registration: ISRCTN33134697, 31/10/2019

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Northern Polar Studies

The Northern Polar Studies is a large-scale screen-based installation which uses data-sets from drifting buoys and satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice. This data has been used to model the retreat of the Arctic going back the 1980s by examining the age and distribution of sea ice. In animating this data visually, the work reveals an uncanny vision of phantasmagoric shapes, figures and tendrils of environmental ruination over an extended time period. In part equally fascinating and abject, the work expresses the plasticity, vulnerability and multidimensionality of environmental sites in an era of anthropogenic forcing

CODEX

CODEX is a multi-part project consisting of a number of animations displayed in installation format, and large-scale inkjet prints derived from a geographic mapping of Wikipedia’s language editions. As noted by Peg Rawes the project follows in a history of artistic and philosophical interventions into cartography, such as Agnes Denes’ map projections, which relocate scientific and technological knowledge toward an aesthetic reimagining of humanity’s relationship to the earth, or Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion maps which develop a similar ecological argument through speculative geologies (2016). Working from this critical and aesthetic tradition, but with a contemporary focus on data and algorithmic sorting, CODEX explores how a given socially constructed dataset (in this case Wikipedia) demonstrates how the dispersal of online knowledge (and thus power in a Foucauldian analysis) reflects imbalances in political and geographic power in the real world. In the project, article titles derived from this data are used to produce textual glyphs and phonemes that hint at the underlying content and structure of the data employed in the work. The effect of this is a differential texturing across the map, where major articles appear as large-scale labels and less developed but more abundant articles form topographies of varying density and in some cases phlegm like viscosity. In the prints this shows as layered, scabrous and inked surfaces that have a three-dimensional quality which could be considered as geological forms. The temporal development of article distribution on Wikipedia can be gleaned by looking at the creation dates of the articles. Animations of this editing activity shows how each language community has developed and grown at different times, and how it describes geographic space. If Buckminster Fuller or Agnes Denes’ work hints at the ‘utopian’ or redemptive power of reason and a human capacity to progress to a saner more ecologically and socially equitable future, the mappings revealed in CODEX present a less certain vision. In an era of ‘fake news’ the work’s deformations draw attention to how excessive flows of capital, technology, and material are reshaping geography, space and time, thereby inviting us to contemplate our role in a world in upheaval

Minima-Maxima

Minima-Maxima employs a time-series of climate data from the arctic between 1984 – 2012 derived from drifting buoys and satellite measurements of sea ice age. The work comes in two parts – a data driven moving image work and a physical installation showing the yearly summer-winter fluctuations of arctic sea ice age (minima-maxima) over an extended period of 25 years. The installation presents a terser set of approaches by arranging the entire data set as stacked print-outs. Organised quasi-bureaucratically, the data is opened to public scrutiny and navigation, reminding us that data is always situated and embodied in contextual, discursive and material practices that exceed a technical base. Funding for the project comes from Arts Council England and the Natural Environment Research Council. Advice for the project came from Dr Beatrix Schlarb-Ridley from the British Antarctic Survey, and Nathan Cunningham from the UK Data Archive

Political atmospherics: climate visualisations at the Manifest Data Lab

This paper presents an overview of emerging research at the Manifest Data Lab a collective of artists and climate scientists who employ climate data experimentally in public settings. We discuss one of our projects The Carbon Chronicles, a reverse-engineered climate data set, projected on prominent public buildings in London during the period of COP26. Our approach examines the potential of climate data visualisations to operate as a public form that surface issues of climate justice and historic responsibilities. We report on the project’s methodological framing, production and associated artistic strategies

Protocol to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an environmental nutrition and physical activity intervention in nurseries (Nutrition and Physical Activity Self Assessment for Child Care - NAP SACC UK): a multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial

Abstract Background One in seven UK children have obesity when starting school, with higher prevalence associated with deprivation. Most pre-school children do not meet UK recommendations for physical activity and nutrition. Formal childcare settings provide opportunities to deliver interventions to improve nutritional quality and physical activity to the majority of 3–4-year-olds. The nutrition and physical activity self-assessment for childcare (NAP SACC) intervention has demonstrated effectiveness in the USA with high acceptability in the UK. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the NAP SACC UK intervention to increase physical activity, reduce sedentary time and improve nutritional intake. Methods Multi-centre cluster RCT with process and economic evaluation. Participants are children aged 2 years or over, attending UK early years settings (nurseries) for ≥ 12 h/week or ≥ 15 h/week during term time and their parents, and staff at participating nurseries. The 12-month intervention involves nursery managers working with a Partner (public health practitioner) to self-assess policies and practices relating to physical activity and nutrition; nursery staff attending one physical activity and one nutrition training workshop and setting goals to be achieved within 6 months. The Partner provides support and reviews progress. Nursery staff receive a further workshop and new goals are set, with Partner support for a further 6 months. The comparator is usual practice. Up to 56 nurseries will be stratified by area and randomly allocated to intervention or comparator arm with minimisation of differences in level of deprivation. Primary outcomes: accelerometer-assessed mean total activity time on nursery days and average total energy (kcal) intake per eating occasion of lunch and morning/afternoon snacks consumed within nurseries. Secondary outcomes: accelerometer-assessed mean daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and sedentary time per nursery day, total physical activity on nursery days compared to non-nursery days, average serving size of lunch and morning/afternoon snacks in nursery per day, average percentage of core and non-core food in lunch and morning/afternoon snacks, zBMI, proportion of children who are overweight/obese and child quality-of-life. A process evaluation will examine fidelity, acceptability, sustainability and context. An economic evaluation will compare costs and consequences from the perspective of the local government, nursery and parents. Trial registration ISRCTN33134697, 31/10/2019