Thermal Insulative Elastomers for Clustered Large Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines

As thrust levels increase and as rocket engines fire for longer periods of time, the difficulties encountered in the protection of critical components from the effects of excessively high temperatures greatly increase. To protect these components a series of filled elastomeric composites have been evaluated. A brief discussion is presented of the problems of hot gas recirculation, radiation, and base plane heating with particular reference to large, clustered, liquid propellant rocket engines. The effect on components is discussed and an evaluation of a series of insulators based on filled elastomeric composites is presented. The evaluations are based on specialized thermal tests which were designed to simulate as far as possible, conditions during flight. The most promising of these elastomeric composites are compared to three alternative insulative systems, a filled, castable ceramic, a metal foil-silica fiber batting, and an asbestos-inconel wire mesh composite, in terms of weight, cost, and ease of fabrication and repair

Text for Christie Brown: Rara Avis exhibition leaflet

Contextualization of a new body of work by ceramicist Christie Brown with reference to pro-animal positions explored by Cixous in her text ‘Stigmata’ (1998), Derrida in ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am’ (2001) and Segarra in ‘Hélène Cixous’s Other Animal: The Half-Sunken Dog’ (2006)

Narrative Strategies, Christie Brown

Profile article on ceramicist Christie Brown and her work

A KrF-laser excited by a capacitively coupled longitudinal discharge

The performance of a KrF excimer laser, excited by a discharge produced in a quartz tube between two metallic electrodes at its end and the inner tube wall serving as a dielectric electrode, is described. The dielectric electrode is capacitively coupled to a metallic electrode surrounding the quartz tube coaxially. Laser output energies up to 0.9 mJ in pulses having a duration of 6 ns FWHM could be obtained at a driving voltage of 100 kV

The African-American Intellectual of the 1920s: Some Sociological Implications of the Harlem Renaissance

This paper deals with some of the sociological implications of a major cultural high-water point in the African American experience, the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance. The paper concentrates on the cultural transformations brought about through the intellectual activity of political activists, a multi-genre group of artists, cultural brokers, and businesspersons. The driving-wheel thrust of this era was the reclamation and the invigoration of the traditions of the culture with an emphasis on both the, African and the American aspects, which significantly impacted American and international culture then and throughout the 20th century. This study examines the pre-1920s background, the forms of Black activism during the Renaissance, the modern content of the writers\u27 work, and the enthusiasm of whites for the African American art forms of the era. This essay utilizes research from a multi-disciplinary body of sources, which includes sociology, cultural history, creative literature and literary criticism, autobiography, biography, and journalism

Book review: Seeing Things: Collected Writing on Art, Craft and Design, Alison Britton

Review of book by potter and writer Alison Britton published by Occasional Papers, 2013. ISBN: 978095696235

Participatory Art: Ceramic and social praxis

The field of contemporary ceramic art encompasses a wide range of productions; long-established concerns with functional and non-functional expressive artefacts and sculpture have more recently been joined by installation works and site-specific interventions, ephemeral and performative pieces, and participatory art projects. The contemporary critical discourses that surround art made using ceramic materials display a range of contrasting - even contradictory - understandings that underscore the complexity of the medium, as well as the differing perspectives of its fine art and craft practitioners. In this presentation my focus is on individual participatory art practices. While I acknowledge that artists coming from fine art and craft backgrounds make use of ceramic materials and processes with essentially different approaches and attitudes, I consider how each artist’s level of knowledge of the medium impacts on the kinds of activities and level of involvement extended to participants. On the basis of my findings, and taking into account Rancière’s examination of the contradictions involving the active and passive positions of the viewer/or participant, I argue that, whenever its activities centre on the ceramics field, participatory art’s aspiration to promote new kinds of emancipatory social relations would best be served by those with a ceramics training