The Sculpture Question

Paper presented, and subsequent panel discussion with: Jordan Baseman, artist and Head of Sculpture, Royal College of Art; Anna Moszynska, art historian and author, Sculpture Now; Emma Hart, artist; Jon Wood, Research Curator, Henry Moore Institute, and co-editor, Modern Sculpture Reader Chair: Terry Perk, sculptor and Reader in Fine Art and Associate Head of the School of Fine Art, UCA

City government and the state in eighteenth century South Carolina

This article documents the character and development of the government in eighteenth-century Charleston, South Carolina. It argues that urban authority played a very important role in articulating the relationship between citizens and the state across the colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras. Two characteristics of this emerging authority are especially noteworthy. First, there were strong connections between governing practices in British cities and in Charleston. Efforts to order the South Carolina town were underpinned by an ideology of “internal police” that was increasingly shaping the government of towns across the British Atlantic world. Second, recognizing the importance of this doctrine relocates its origins firmly to the prerevolutionary urban environment, whereas historians had previously traced its roots to the revolutionary era.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

“Naturally cut out…for unlawful trade" : economic culture and the enforcement of the 1698 Navigation Act in the mainland colonies

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How To Do Things With Cameras

The primary site for this research is artistic production, through exhibitions and performances presented in galleries between 2008-2012. The written thesis closely examines the large body of practical work I have made through discussions with Dean Kenning, a viewer to all the artworks submitted. This is combined with a contextual analysis reflecting on the research behind and ideas provoked by this practical work. The research aims to create an encounter with the photograph or video where the lens-based image, still or moving, is not a window onto a world but operates as a presence sharing the viewer’s time and space. I name this changed manner of encounter a live mode of address. I begin the thesis by describing video and films I feel go beyond providing a description and are experienced as a presence. Through looking at the work of Spartacus Chetwynd, John Smith, Laure Provoust, and Ryan Trecartin, I locate reasons for why my concept of a live mode of address happens. I then bring together the different ways it works and greatly expand its limits and possibilities through my own art making. The thesis operates within the field of fine art yet I am challenging the consumption of lens-based images within wider visual culture. This enquiry does not set out to change how the camera works, or question our conventional understanding of what a camera does; its mission is to change how we encounter what it produces. How can I, as an artist operating with a camera - a machine that can only repeat, describe and represent things from the past - engender a live mode of address between a viewer and a lens-based artwork? It is through the production of artwork that this question is explored. In this thesis the artworks are examined in the order they were made, as each one evaluates and takes forward research and ideas present in the previous work. They build on each other to form a cohesive and staged investigation, culminating with my exhibition TO DO (2011) Matt’s Gallery. J.L. Austin’s theory of performative speech is an important theoretical tool for this thesis. In his series of lectures How To Do Things With Words, Austin asked whether words can produce a reality rather than describe one? I pitch this question not to words, but to the lens-based image and the title of my thesis How To Do Things With Cameras reflects this performative investigation. I go on to examine how the performative use of the camera impacts on a live mode of address and, through considering work by artists including Vito Acconci and John Baldessari,how this must stretch beyond the making of the work to incorporate the artwork’s installation. The major element of this PhD submission is the exhibition TO DO (2011) at Matt’s Gallery, London. Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Learning Plays’ are considered alongside production for this exhibition. TO DO (2011) produces a live mode of address and my examination of how this operates reveals a complicated exchange between the artwork and viewer. The experience of the lens-based images within TO DO (2011) are cut up, fractured, interrupted, non linear and different for each person viewing. They are without limits; they have gone beyond the frame. I describe this as being ‘lifelike’ – how we experience the world. The term lifelike is normally attached to appearances, which I outline as being the wrong target. A live mode of address hasan important relationship to lifelikeness, once lifelikeness is redefined to mean a quality of the encounter

When Crayons Meet Tibetan Living Room Walls: Early Childhood in Exile

This study aims to understand early childhood caregiving among Tibetan refugees living in Nepal. Due to the brain’s enormous developmental plasticity from ages zero to three, children’s experiences during this period are extremely important to explaining their future learnings in school, interactions with people, and engagements with their surroundings. Through interviews and observations, Tibetan parents shared their conceptions of early childhood, parent-child interaction norms, dreams for their children, and how their status as refugees in Nepal affects these. Research was conducted in two Pokhara district Tibetan settlements and one settlement in Mustang. Connected by the flow of children and adults for purposes of school and work, and under the guise of limited refugee status, conducting research in these places allowed for exploration of the ways that geographical and political contexts influence parents and children\u27s experiences of early childhood parenting. The results indicated that investments in policy level improvements, and in boosting caregiver capacities to stimulate their child’s early learning would be beneficial to meeting caregivers goals for their children’s futures

Immunology as a metaphor for computational information processing : fact or fiction?

The biological immune system exhibits powerful information processing capabilities, and therefore is of great interest to the computer scientist. A rapidly expanding research area has attempted to model many of the features inherent in the natural immune system in order to solve complex computational problems. This thesis examines the metaphor in detail, in an effort to understand and capitalise on those features of the metaphor which distinguish it from other existing methodologies. Two problem domains are considered — those of scheduling and data-clustering. It is argued that these domains exhibit similar characteristics to the environment in which the biological immune system operates and therefore that they are suitable candidates for application of the metaphor. For each problem domain, two distinct models are developed, incor-porating a variety of immunological principles. The models are tested on a number of artifical benchmark datasets. The success of the models on the problems considered confirms the utility of the metaphor

A new paradigm for SpeckNets:inspiration from fungal colonies

In this position paper, we propose the development of a new biologically inspired paradigm based on fungal colonies, for the application to pervasive adaptive systems. Fungal colonies have a number of properties that make them an excellent candidate for inspiration for engineered systems. Here we propose the application of such inspiration to a speckled computing platform. We argue that properties from fungal colonies map well to properties and requirements for controlling SpeckNets and suggest that an existing mathematical model of a fungal colony can developed into a new computational paradigm