Episode: Pleasure and Persuasion in Lens-based Media

The book Episode: Pleasure and Persuasion in Lens-based Media (Artwords, 2008) was edited by the research group Curating Video, founded by Joseph-Lester, Professor Amanda Beech (CalArts, California) and Matthew Poole (independent curator, California). The publication was launched at Tate Britain in 2008 alongside the conference ‘Pleasure and Persuasion in Lens-based Media’, and includes a co-written introduction and essay by Joseph-Lester with commissioned essays from Professor Norman Klein and Dr Sharon Kivland. The conference and book launch were publicised and supported by Tate Britain and Artwords Press. The conference, which was conceived by Joseph-Lester and project partners in the research group Curating Video, brought together an international field of researchers from cultural studies, visual art, psychoanalysis and political philosophy, including Professor Ahuvia Kahane, Dr Uriel Orlow and Dr Graham Harman. The ‘Image-space’ conference panel explored new contexts and issues that are crucial to understanding the experience and meaning of images. Joseph-Lester’s conference panel particularly considered how images are an architectural, physical and embodied constructs and how this experiential and immersive image space produces ideological affects. Curating Video’s partnership with Tate Britain led to a second conference in 2010, ‘The Contingency of Curation’. This served as an opportunity to test questions about the role of the curator working alongside large-scale urban regeneration programmes. The online publication is hosted by AND Publishing. The recent publication ‘RE-TAKING LA’ (Urbanomic, 2013) explored the image structure and site of LA; this project extended work with Curating Video into the politics, affect and materiality of the moving image

Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages

E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records. This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.

Analogous: Digital / Analogue Metaphors.

When discussing our understanding of the world, the term ‘analogue’ has become shorthand for anything not digital, and has become an analogy of its own. ‘Digital’ has also become an analogy for anything requiring a computer. This essay starts to investigate some of the analogies of analogue and digital media to reveal the complexity of thinking about animation

Curating the invisible: contemporary art practices and the production of meaning in Eastern Europe.

Previously in the University eprints HAIRST pilot service at http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/00000394/Article 6 of 6 in an issue devoted to the visual culture of South Eastern EuropeThis article addresses the system of art and the issue of contemporary art curatorship in the area known as ‘Eastern Europe’, with a particular emphasis on the status of curatorial practices in the postsocialist condition. The problems explored are focused firstly around the issues of the representation of Eastern Europe and contemporary Eastern European art, in terms of organizing exhibitions in the context of globalisation, and secondly the role of a contemporary art curator as compared to the role performed by a contemporary cultural manager. The question to be raised is related to ‘The Image of Eastern Europe’ within the functioning of global cultural imperialism, i.e. how do the models of contemporary artistic and especially curatorial practices respond to the up-to-date demands of cultural policy issues related to the area of the former communist/socialist countries in Eastern Europe?Postprin

Lubetkin's Lenin Memorial

This conference paper summarised my recent research on the strange story of the Lenin Memorial erected in wartime London and destroyed shortly afterwards. It placed this episode within the wider context of iconoclasm and the destruction of public art. It was based on research that will contribute to my forthcoming book on the subjec

Repository of NSF Funded Publications and Data Sets: "Back of Envelope" 15 year Cost Estimate

In this back of envelope study we calculate the 15 year fixed and variable costs of setting up and running a data repository (or database) to store and serve the publications and datasets derived from research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Costs are computed on a yearly basis using a fixed estimate of the number of papers that are published each year that list NSF as their funding agency. We assume each paper has one dataset and estimate the size of that dataset based on experience. By our estimates, the number of papers generated each year is 64,340. The average dataset size over all seven directorates of NSF is 32 gigabytes (GB). A total amount of data added to the repository is two petabytes (PB) per year, or 30 PB over 15 years. The architecture of the data/paper repository is based on a hierarchical storage model that uses a combination of fast disk for rapid access and tape for high reliability and cost efficient long-term storage. Data are ingested through workflows that are used in university institutional repositories, which add metadata and ensure data integrity. Average fixed costs is approximately $.0.90/GB over 15-year span. Variable costs are estimated at a sliding scale of$150 - $100 per new dataset for up-front curation, or$4.87 – $3.22 per GB. Variable costs reflect a 3 The total projected cost of the data and paper repository is estimated at$167,000,000 over 15 years of operation, curating close to one million of datasets and one million papers. After 15 years and 30 PB of data accumulated and curated, we estimate the cost per gigabyte at $5.56. This$167 million cost is a direct cost in that it does not include federally allowable indirect costs return (ICR). After 15 years, it is reasonable to assume that some datasets will be compressed and rarely accessed. Others may be deemed no longer valuable, e.g., because they are replaced by more accurate results. Therefore, at some point the data growth in the repository will need to be adjusted by use of strategic preservation

Artists’ books in HE teaching and learning

Learning resource, teaching collection, study collection, research collection or special collection: a historical collection of artists’ books like that at Chelsea College of Art & Design Library can (and probably, has) been used and referred to in all these different ways, at different times, responding to changes in education, audiences, users, etc. The focus on research within universities has led, over time, to a narrow view of such collections and their use primarily as research material, often to the detriment of their use in teaching and learning. With the rebalancing in recent years of the importance of these activities, seen again as central to the mission of Higher Education (HE), a re-evaluation of the use of special collections, and specifically artists’ books collections, to enhance and improve the quality of learning and teaching activities, is required