On Heroism & The Oregon Trail

We like to think we are secret beauties. To think we are big ships. We like to think we arenoticed, in secret, by some keen eye, and it is enough. It is never enough

Hannes Zebedin: Living in Glass Houses

Catalogue essay for Hannes Zebedin exhibition at Secession, Vienna. The essay explores Zebedin's work in relationship to civic life and third sector economies

Games & Theory

‘Games & Theory’ was an international exhibition of the work of contemporary artists who share interests in play, sports and gaming. It was curated by Hammonds for the South London Art Gallery (SLG) in summer 2008. Conventionally, play is understood as unfettered creative freedom, while gaming addresses competition and strategy. The exhibition’s originality lay in the way it brought these two distinct theories into dialogue. Hammonds’s exhibition explored the proposition that, as a social practice, play can also be understood as a form of political negotiation. Taking its cue from Situationist thinking, the exhibition explored the radical potential of play as a form of resistance and expression of freedom. The exhibition was structured as a playground to test the extent to which the conventional spaces of the gallery and its immediate environment could be modified and extended. ‘Games & Theory’ also engaged with the challenge of examining the ways in which conventional art practices and objects – such as painting – could be modified by participatory practices associated with play. This was one of a series of projects curated by Hammonds at the SLG that transformed the gallery into an alternative social space. The exhibition marked the starting point of a three-year programme of ‘play’ within the SLG’s programme. Hammonds set these curatorial ideas in a critical and artistic context in an essay entitled ‘Games people play’ in the accompanying book, The Cat Came as a Tomato: Conversations on Contemporary Art and Play (2011). In it, Hammonds reflected on the ways in which art has been conventionally grouped with play to contain it outside the public/political space. The exhibition was reviewed in Frieze, Art Monthly, Time Out and Art Review (all 2008)

Three Letter Words: OMG

A magazine by 'Publish and be Damned' related to the fringes of publishing edited by myself (with Kate Phillimore and Louise O'hare). Including my interview with slash fiction founder 'Della Van Hise' and my review of 'Seeing is Believing', Kunst Werke

Thermal plumes from staged multiport diffusers in a uniform quiescent environment

The behavior of thermal plumes discharged from staged diffusers has been investigated experimentally. A staged diffuser is a type of submerged multiport diffuser characterized by an offshore orientation of the individual nozzles. It is commonly employed for the discharge of heated water from coastal power plants into the ocean because of its effective mixing capability, which does not depend on the prevailing longshore-current directions. Experiments have been performed to measure the temperature distribution of the plume in quiescent receiving water. The three-dimensional thermal field is reconstructed from the results of two groups of measurements, the centerline experiments in which the temperature in the vertical plane along the diffuser axis is measured, and the scanning experiments in which the lateral temperature profiles are measured. The emphasis is on a homogeneous ambient receiving water, but a few illustrative experiments with ambient stratification have been carried out. The number of variables associated with the problem is very large, making it difficult to perform a generic study. Nevertheless, five of the variables (the number of ports, n, the initial jet diameter, D[sub]0, the horizontal orientation of the jet, [Greek alpha], the total discharge flow rate, Q[sub]T0, and the water depth, H) have been examined. Experimental observations support the hypothesis of a near field dominated by momentum jet mixing, and an intermediate field dominated initially by turbulent mixing and eventually by gravitational spreading. H, n and D[sub]0 are the governing parameters in both the near field and the intermediate field. By coupling dimensional analysis with experimental results, several empirical relationships have been established to give a first-order approximation relating the mean characteristics of the plume to the governing parameters. It is found that the near-field dilution can be described adequately by the simple jet model with an adjustment factor based on n. The dilution in the intermediate field, however, s relatively insensitive to n. It is also concluded that the horizontal orientation of the jet +-25[degrees] to the diffuser axis, helps to spread the plume over a wider extent, thereby reducing the maximum temperature rise. Results from stratified experiments indicate that for weak stratification, the dynamics of the plume are not significantly modified