The Mediumship of Listening: Notes on Sound in the Silent Arts

This article is a series of excerpts from the author’s most recent book Sinister Resonance. It begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location in space is ambiguous and whose existence in time is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence both in the head, at its point of source and all around, and never entirely distinct from auditory hallucinations. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there. The history of listening must be constructed from narratives of myth and fiction, silent arts such as painting, the resonance of architecture, auditory artefacts and nature. In such contexts, sound often functions as a metaphor for mystical revelation, instability, forbidden desires, disorder, formlessness, the unknown, unconscious and extra-human, a representation of immaterial worlds. Threaded through is Marcel Duchamp’s curious observation – ‘One can look at seeing but one can’t hear hearing’ – and his concept of the infra-thin, those human experiences so fugitive that they exist only in the imaginative absences of perception

Flat time/sounding

Musical score of images and texts based on the theory of Flat Time proposed by artist John Latham, digital audio 'score' of temporal markers, live music performance of the piece. Two performances to date: Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010), and CIT Cork School of Music (2011). Small extracts from the first of these performances have been edited as Particles with the intention of using these fragments as sound markers within the Ligatus online John Latham archive

Instruments of Darkness

Performance in the Centro de Las Arts UNSAM, Buenos Aires, using vibrating and resonant objects, paper, laptop and flutes

A comparison of lead-based and lead-free bullets for shooting sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) in Australia

Context. In response to the toxic health threats posed by lead (Pb), there is currently a focus on transitioning to lead-free bullets for shooting wild animals. Aim. We aimed to quantify the killing efficiency and animal welfare outcomes of lead-based and lead-free (copper-based) bullets for ground-based shooting of sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) in Victoria, south-eastern Australia. Methods. We used shooter-collected data from recreational diurnal hunting and professional nocturnal culling during 2020–2021. Shooters recorded rifle calibre, cartridge type, bullet mass, bullet type, shooting outcomes (miss, wound or kill), shooting distance, flight distance (the distance between where the animal was shot and where it died) as an assumed positive correlate of time to incapacitation, anatomical zones struck by bullets, and frequency of bullet exit wounds. We used flight distance as our response variable, assuming that it is positively correlated with time to incapacitation. To examine the role of several predictor variables (including bullet type) potentially influencing flight distance, the dataset was reduced to those deer killed with a single thoracic shot. Key results. Our data captured shooting events involving 276 deer, with 124 deer shot at with lead-based bullets and 152 with copper-based bullets. Most (87%) of the deer were killed with a single shot. The frequency of non-fatal wounding was <4% for both bullet types and there was no distinct difference in the probability of a single shot kill for deer shot with either bullet type. For those deer killed with a single thoracic shot (n = 198), there was no evidence that bullet energy or shooting distance influenced flight distance. After accounting for differences in terminal kinetic energy, the mean flight distance of deer shot with lead-free bullets (35 m) was 56% greater than that of deer shot with lead-based bullets (22 m). Conclusions. Lead-based and lead-free bullets produced similar animal welfare outcomes for shooting sambar deer. Implications. A transition to lead-free ammunition for shooting sambar deer would have minimal impact on efficiency or animal welfare outcomes. animal welfare, culling, human dimensions, invasive species, population control, recreational hunting, toxicology, wildlife management.publishedVersio

A comparison of lead-based and lead-free bullets for shooting sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) in Australia

Context: In response to the toxic health threats posed by lead (Pb), there is currently a focus on transitioning to lead-free bullets for shooting wild animals. Aim: We aimed to quantify the killing efficiency and animal welfare outcomes of lead-based and lead-free (copper-based) bullets for ground-based shooting of sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) in Victoria, south-eastern Australia. Methods: We used shooter-collected data from recreational diurnal hunting and professional nocturnal culling during 2020–2021. Shooters recorded rifle calibre, cartridge type, bullet mass, bullet type, shooting outcomes (miss, wound or kill), shooting distance, flight distance (the distance between where the animal was shot and where it died) as an assumed positive correlate of time to incapacitation, anatomical zones struck by bullets, and frequency of bullet exit wounds. We used flight distance as our response variable, assuming that it is positively correlated with time to incapacitation. To examine the role of several predictor variables (including bullet type) potentially influencing flight distance, the dataset was reduced to those deer killed with a single thoracic shot. Key results: Our data captured shooting events involving 276 deer, with 124 deer shot at with lead-based bullets and 152 with copper-based bullets. Most (87%) of the deer were killed with a single shot. The frequency of non-fatal wounding was <4% for both bullet types and there was no distinct difference in the probability of a single shot kill for deer shot with either bullet type. For those deer killed with a single thoracic shot (n = 198), there was no evidence that bullet energy or shooting distance influenced flight distance. After accounting for differences in terminal kinetic energy, the mean flight distance of deer shot with lead-free bullets (35 m) was 56% greater than that of deer shot with lead-based bullets (22 m). Conclusions: Lead-based and lead-free bullets produced similar animal welfare outcomes for shooting sambar deer. Implications: A transition to lead-free ammunition for shooting sambar deer would have minimal impact on efficiency or animal welfare outcomes

SRPK1 maintains acute myeloid leukemia through effects on isoform usage of epigenetic regulators including BRD4.

We recently identified the splicing kinase gene SRPK1 as a genetic vulnerability of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Here, we show that genetic or pharmacological inhibition of SRPK1 leads to cell cycle arrest, leukemic cell differentiation and prolonged survival of mice transplanted with MLL-rearranged AML. RNA-seq analysis demonstrates that SRPK1 inhibition leads to altered isoform levels of many genes including several with established roles in leukemogenesis such as MYB, BRD4 and MED24. We focus on BRD4 as its main isoforms have distinct molecular properties and find that SRPK1 inhibition produces a significant switch from the short to the long isoform at the mRNA and protein levels. This was associated with BRD4 eviction from genomic loci involved in leukemogenesis including BCL2 and MYC. We go on to show that this switch mediates at least part of the anti-leukemic effects of SRPK1 inhibition. Our findings reveal that SRPK1 represents a plausible new therapeutic target against AML