THE PROPERTY OF KNOWLEDGE

We can note three phases in the tradition of the readymade and appropriation since Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel of 1913. First, they include early enactments in which the readymade posed an onto- logical challenge to artworks through the equation of commodity and art object. Second, practices in which readymades were de- ployed semantically as lexical elements within a sculpture, paint- ing, installation or projection. In a third phase, which most directly encompasses the global, the appropriation of objects, images, and other forms of content challenges sovereignty over the cultural and economic value linked to things that emerge from particular cultural properties ranging from Aboriginal painting in Australia to the ap- propriation of Mao’s cult of personality in 1990s China. This essay considers the most recent phase of the readymade in terms of its century-long history

Its All in the Mind: Mind Controlled Prosthetics

The problem with prosthetics is a longstanding problem that researchers have been working on for many years. They are attempting to create a prosthetic that acts as if it is the original limb or body part. In recent years they have discovered a technology that has assisted many of those who are greatly in need of a prosthetic, such as an amputee or someone who is “locked in”. “Locked in” refers to a person who is technically confined in his own body and has no methods of communication with the world. Brain-computer interface (BCI) has opened up a whole new world of prosthetics. It has opened doors for those who have been “locked in”. BCI assists those with severe neural disorders. BCI links the brain to a machine, allowing for actions to be performed by circumventing the damaged or missing body parts. It captures the brain signals, interprets them, translates them and transfers them as control signals to the device being used. Using this technology, targeted-muscle reinnervation (TMR) has been designed to create a prosthetic for amputees as well. Altogether, it has been established that prosthetics controlled by the mind is possible

Maternal betaine supplementation affects fetal growth and lipid metabolism of highfat fed mice in a temporal-specific manner

Background/objectives: Maternal obesity increases the risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), which results in fetal overgrowth and long-lasting metabolic dysfunctioning in the offspring. Previous studies show that maternal choline supplementation normalizes fetal growth and adiposity of progeny from obese mice. This study examines whether supplementation of betaine, a choline derivative, has positive effects on fetal metabolic outcomes in mouse progeny exposed to maternal obesity and GDM. Methods: C57BL/6J mice were fed either a high-fat (HF) diet or a control (normal-fat, NF) diet and received either 1% betaine (BS) or control untreated (BC) drinking water 4–6 weeks before timed-mating and throughout gestation. Maternal, placental, and fetal samples were collected for metabolite and gene-expression assays. Results: At E12.5, BS prevented fetal and placental overgrowth and downregulated glucose and fatty acid transporters (Glut1 and Fatp1) and the growth-promoting insulin-like growth factor 2 (Igf2) and its receptor Igf1r in the placenta of HF, glucose-intolerant dams (P \u3c 0.05). However, these effects disappeared at E17.5. At E17.5, BS reduced fetal adiposity and prevented liver triglyceride overaccumulation in HF versus NF fetuses (P \u3c 0.05). BS fetal livers had enhanced mRNA expression of microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (Mttp) (P \u3c 0.01), which promotes VLDL synthesis and secretion. Although we previously reported that maternal choline supplementation downregulated mRNA expression of genes involved in de novo lipogenesis in fetal livers, such alterations were not observed with BS, suggesting differential effects of betaine and choline on fetal gene expression. Conclusion: We propose a temporal-specific mechanism by which maternal BS influences fetal growth and lipid metabolic outcomes of HF mice during prenatal development

Joaquim Rodrigo’s Painting : A Particularity in the Portuguese Case

Capítulo da obra "RETHINKING EUROPE: ARTISTIC PRODUCTION AND DISCOURSES OF ART IN THE LATE 1940S AND 1950S.", que resultou da conferência ocorrida em 2018.In the postwar period, Portuguese art faced a politically-imposed isolation that prevented emerging artists from engaging and interacting with the rest of Europe. For these artisits, other geographical, cultural contexts were no more than remote possibilities of exchange: sometimes mythical places of an avant-garde known through magazine articles, sometimes places they had briefly visited in search of a more direct link with their time. Portugal lived in an established dictatorship known as Estado Novo (New State) that lasted until 1974. The regime's anti-modernism sought to eliminate all modern artistic practices in an attempt to preserve its traditional cultural values, strongly dominated by the government's fascist ideology. The absence of structures for the production, exhibition, and reception of modern art during the twentieth century contributed towards the lessening of modern pratices in the national context, hindering the development of knowledge updated by artists, critics, and audiences. In spite of these setbacks, overall Portuguese artists succeded in overcoming this aloofness to which the regime condemned them. Over time, these artists managed to find ways to a distant modernity - which had become predominant in the process of reconstructing a new world in the postwar period in Wetern Europe. [com o apoio à tradução da Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inframedia: infraestructural barriers and online ecologies on the Web 2.0

[EN] Collective Intelligence and our notion of glocalposition depend closely on the large existing media available on the Internet (search engines, social media, wikis...). Its digital origin and its dependency on computer science allow them to take different forms with specific relation to software design. That stated, it is important to underscore this situation encompasses our limited knowledge and phenomenological contact with the infrastructure that supports them.This presentation works as a snapshot of an ongoing personal research about networks and visibility, whose main goal is to provide a theoretical context for the future development of a new media artistic project. The whole idea revolves around some topics that focus on the notion of interface being the visible part of an infrastructure complex.The analysis is structured around four main themes: 1. Evaluation of the abstraction layers that techno-material “life” of the networks: architecture, protocols and algorithms are made of. 2. The dual meaning of “collective”, when it comes to online interaction: creation of contents by users and how this oscillate between the commons production and data collection. 3. Attention to the concept coined by James Bridle “New Aesthetics” and how the digital became autonomous in referring reality in its own terms. 4. The impact of this digital context on artistic contemporary strategies, from counter-design to complicity.[ES] Nuestra inteligencia colectiva y con ella nuestro posicionamiento “glocal” dependen estrechamente de la operación a gran escala de los media existentes en las redes (motores de búsqueda, redes sociales, Wikis etc.). El origen digital de tales medios, y su dependencia de las ciencias de la computación las hace adoptar formas distintivas en relación específica con el diseño de software. Dada esta situación, es importante señalar la condición limitada, particular a nuestro contacto fenomenológico y cognitivo con las infraestructuras de red que lo soportan.El presente trabajo trata de resumir una investigación personal sobre la visualidad en las redes, que tiene por objetivo proveer de contexto teórico a una próxima experimentación artística en el ámbito de los nuevos medios. Ésta, órbita alrededor de una serie de cuestiones que surgen en relación con la noción de “interfaz cibernética”, entendida como la parte visible de todo un complejo infraestructural.Se destacan cuatro principales focos de incidencia: 1. Valoración de la estructura en capas de abstracción funcional, propias de la gestión mediada: arquitectura, protocolos y algoritmos que componen la “vida” tecno-material de la red. 2. La doble acepción de “colectividad” en las redes: la generación de contenidos por parte de usuarios, y su oscilación entre lo procomún y la recolección de datos. 3. Atención al término acuñado por James Bridle: “New Aesthetics”, y la iniciativa de señalar la creciente autonomía de lo digital en su vocación de referir lo real desde sus propios términos. Circunstancia puesta en relación con las inquietudes de la sociología contemporánea por considerar la implicación de los agentes no-humanos en las dinámicas sociales propias de la ecología on-line. 4. Impacto sobre casos concretos: prácticas artísticas contemporáneas sujetas al contexto digital desde sus estrategias formales, sea en complicidad, o en actitud de resistencia en un ejercicio de contra-diseño.Sanchez Lopez, J. (2017). Inframedia: barreras infraestructurales y ecologías online en la Web 2.0. ANIAV - Revista de Investigación en Artes Visuales. (1):79-89. https://doi.org/10.4995/aniav.2017.7826SWORD7989

Choline Supplementation Normalizes Fetal Adiposity and Reduces Lipogenic Gene Expression in a Mouse Model of Maternal Obesity

Maternal obesity increases fetal adiposity which may adversely affect metabolic health of the offspring. Choline regulates lipid metabolism and thus may influence adiposity. This study investigates the effect of maternal choline supplementation on fetal adiposity in a mouse model of maternal obesity. C57BL/6J mice were fed either a high-fat (HF) diet or a control (NF) diet and received either 25 mM choline supplemented (CS) or control untreated (CO) drinking water for 6 weeks before timed-mating and throughout gestation. At embryonic day 17.5, HF feeding led to higher (p \u3c 0.05) percent total body fat in fetuses from the HFCO group, while the choline supplemented HFCS group did not show significant difference versus the NFCO group. Similarly, HF feeding led to higher (p \u3c 0.05) hepatic triglyceride accumulation in the HFCO but not the HFCS fetuses. mRNA levels of lipogenic genes such as Acc1, Fads1, and Elovl5, as well as the transcription factor Srebp1c that favors lipogenesis were downregulated (p \u3c 0.05) by maternal choline supplementation in the HFCS group, which may serve as a mechanism to reduce fat accumulation in the fetal liver during maternal HF feeding. In summary, maternal choline supplementation improves indices of fetal adiposity in obese dams at late gestation

Erosion and illegibility of images: ‘beyond the immediacy of the present’

The focus of this special journal issue ‘Erosion and Illegibility of Images’ is to explore the relationship of erosion and visibility through contemporary artistic practices at a moment when everything, as Latour suggests, is smashed to pieces. The essays in this issue deploy the notion of erosion as a conceptual tool in order to explore the shifting and depositing of materials, which is observed both on a formal visual level (the breaking up of the image surface) and a critical revaluation of memory, visibility and artistic tools. From an instrumentalist understanding of tools and material, I set out to explore the impact of a radical restriction and limitation of traditional skills and craftsmanship on the artistic process. While recent research has focused predominantly on art theoretical understandings of ruins, the articles collected here aim to interrogate the relationship between artists, artistic tools and the materials of production in contemporary artistic practice by putting them in conversation with each other and scrutinizing interventions such as ‘preservation’, remaking, retro-recuperations and nostalgia work of several kinds

‘It doesn’t reveal itself’: erosion and collapse of the image in contemporary visual practice

The article explores the extent to which ‘pictorial art’ resists legibility, transparency and coherence. The analysis of three artistic case studies, Idris Khan, Maria Chevska and Jane and Louise Wilson, serves to investigate established hierarchies in our perception of visual referents. In the discussion, the article inquires the means of erosion, veiling and dissemblance as ways to critique assumption of the homogeneity of the image. All artists cast a view of the external world by diverting it, defacing it and distancing themselves from the external environment. However, the distancing is never disconnected from the everyday and never succumbs to abstraction. The article argues that the crisis of the image offers a productive framework that allows artists to draw attention to the absence of logical structure and the instability of the visual sign

A Questionnaire on Materialisms

Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” and “Speculative Realism” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects—from Graham Harman and Alexander R. Galloway to Armen Avanessian and Patricia Falguières to Ed Atkins and Amie Siegel—to explore what the rewards and risks of assigning agency to objects may be, and how, or if, such new materialisms can be productive for making and thinking about art today