On producing the most beautiful book in Switzerland

This 1000-word blog post was invited by the Internationalising Design History research cluster at the University of Brighton following the award of a Swiss Federal Office of Culture award for Annebella Pollen's book, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians

The Shifting Authority of Auntie: BBC4 Photography Season

It has been ten years since the BBC launched the six-part series, The Genius of Photography, described - in their own words - as “the first major television history of this ever more influential artform”. This article appraises recent contributions to photography on television in its analysis of BBC4's spring 2017’s Photography Season. The season comprised a sequence of newly-commissioned works including a three-part series on British photography, an hour-long exploration of family photography, a new edit of old material from the BBC archives, and a new instalment in the documentary series, What do Artists do all Day? featuring street photographer Dougie Wallace. The 1200-word commissioned essay for Source: The Photographic Review examines the changing moral positions of the broadcaster in relation to the photographic form over the last sixty years. The review adds to a growing body of articles by Pollen for Source since 2012, covering photography in film and exhibition as well as in art and academic publications

The rising tide of photographs: Not drowning but waving?

Concerns about the huge quantities of photographs circulating in digital networks have led some to proclaim that we are now drowning in images. This article surveys these anxieties by examining the work of artists who use photography’s scale, and juxtaposing this with other similar recent photographic practices. Placing such endeavours in historical context challenges received wisdom about the current photographic condition, thus promoting microhistorical methodologies as a means by which apocalyptic generalisations about mass practice can be nuanced.Les inquiétudes suscitées par l’immense quantité de photographies circulant dans les réseaux numériques ont incité certains à s’inquiéter d’un déluge en cours : nous serions en train de nous noyer dans les images. Cet article préconise de sonder cette anxiété en examinant le travail d’artistes dont les œuvres font usage de fonds photographiques énormes ou de stratégies analogues. Or, replacer ces ambitieuses propositions artistiques dans un contexte historique plus large nous conduit à remettre en cause maintes idées reçues que le monde contemporain entretient à l’égard de l’actuelle condition photographique. En définitive, les méthodologies microhistoriques s’avèrent de précieux outils pour contrecarrer les discours catastrophistes et nuancer les généralisations concernant les pratiques de la photographie de masse

21 Reasons Why Worthing Should Have a Public Library:An 1892 Campaign for Our Times

In the last decade, public library closures have become a regular and regrettable occurrence. Government austerity policies have radically reduced local councils’ budgets, forcing tough decisions with limited finances. Libraries are characterised as luxuries when culture is made to compete for cash with other public services. What libraries are for, and who they benefit, has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent times, and contemporary campaigns to keep libraries in operation have been vociferous and creative, employing a range of tools of protest and persuasion from poetry to posters. In 1892, in Worthing, West Sussex, a library campaign played out on the streets through similarly creative means.  In the first instance, large-scale notices appeared on hoardings all over the town. Two and a half feet high, these text-heavy bill posters used the visual style of election materials to respond to the provocation, “Why Should Worthing Have a Public Library”. Produced in a bright type by W. F. Churcher, a town councillor and the editor of the Worthing Gazette, as part of an ambitious campaign spearheaded by a young solicitor, Robert W. Charles, the poster sought to harness the growing energy of the so-called ‘public library movement’ for the benefit of the town. This 2,750-word essay, produced for the Worthing Museum & Art Gallery / University of Brighton research collaboration, Objects Unwrapped, explores the campaigns for and against public libraries in the late nineteenth century through the case study of the fortunes of one particular library in Worthing, West Sussex, UK. By examining the campaign documentation - ranging across posters, handbills, song lyrics and letters to the press - the article considers the hopes and fears ascribed to working-class reading and public knowledge, past and present

Numerical Study of Oxygen Transport in Aquaculture Tanks With Different Geometries

The transport of dissolved oxygen concentration in water for aquaculture is a core parameter affecting the quality of yielded fish. An emerging shift from offshore to land-based aquaculture presents advan- tages to marine ecosystem sustainability and the maintenance fish health. One primary engineering challenge of migrating aquaculture production to land-based facilities is developing sustainable aquatic conditions for fish. The objective of the present study is to use OpenFOAM CFD to simulate oxygen transport in differ- ent water tank geometries based on the study performed by Yin et al. (2021) as a starting point. A 5.0m diameter circular tank geometry and three rounded square tank geometries with different corner diameters (2.0m, 1.5m, 1.0m) are used in the study. The tanks are compared to see how the shape of the tank influences the oxygen transport in the water. Numerical studies are performed using a transient multi-phase CFD solver to obtain results for the four different geometries. The tanks are filled with water until a steady state is reached for the oxygen concentration. Point measurements are then extracted from the flow domain for comparing the spatial distribution of the diffused oxygen. The results of the study show that the circular water tank geometry most suited at transporting diffused oxygen in the water tank with steady radial water flow. The square tank geometries showed an overall reduction in flow velocity in the flow domain which is further diminished with smaller corner radius. Different with the circular geometry, the lack of rotational symmetry causes the momentum change of the water to create skewed flow in the square tanks. The circular geometry is considered in a mesh convergence study to determine an optimal mesh resolution for the simulation. A validation study of oxygen transport in circular tank geometry is conducted using experimental data for comparison. The comparison showed the numerical results to have a maximum difference of 9% for probes close to the inlet. Moreover, the results are valuable as a starting point for design of tank geometries and their abil- ity to circulate oxygen in aquaculture tanks. The numerical results give an insight to the physical quantities in the water flow which is important to consider in the selection of water tank designs for land-based aquaculture