‘Dark Tourism’ and the ‘Kitschification’ of 9/11

This paper aims to interrogate the framing of New York’s Ground Zero as a ‘dark tourist’ destination, with particular reference to the entanglement of notions of kitsch in academic discussions of the events of September 11th 2001. What makes Ground Zero contentious, even scandalous, for many scholars is the presence of a conspicuous commodity culture around the site in the form of tourist souvenirs, leading to accusations of kitschification of memory and the constitution of visitors as ‘tourists of history’. Drawing upon theoretical ideas of Jacques Ranciere, Bruno Latour and W. J. T. Mitchell around image politics, the alignment of kitsch with the figure of the tourist will be questioned, along with the conviction that the so-called ‘teddy-bearification’ of 9/11 threatens the formation of dangerous political subjectivities. In attempting to rid the debates of their default settings, and reliance on essentialist notions of kitsch, it is hoped that that the way will be cleared for the sociological, ethnographic and empirical work necessary to considering the cultural and political significance of the Ground Zero souvenir economy

Dissociation of virtual photons in events with a leading proton at HERA

The ZEUS detector has been used to study dissociation of virtual photons in events with a leading proton, gamma^* p -> X p, in e^+p collisions at HERA. The data cover photon virtualities in two ranges, 0.03<Q^2<0.60 GeV^2 and 2<Q^2<100 GeV^2, with M_X>1.5 GeV, where M_X is the mass of the hadronic final state, X. Events were required to have a leading proton, detected in the ZEUS leading proton spectrometer, carrying at least 90% of the incoming proton energy. The cross section is presented as a function of t, the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex, Phi, the azimuthal angle between the positron scattering plane and the proton scattering plane, and Q^2. The data are presented in terms of the diffractive structure function, F_2^D(3). A next-to-leading-order QCD fit to the higher-Q^2 data set and to previously published diffractive charm production data is presented

SUPREMATISMO Y REVOLUCIÓN. ARTE MODERNO Y POLÍTICA CONTEMPORÁNEA

RESUMEN Este artículo examina la estética suprematista en relación con teorías políticas contemporáneas sobre la revolución y la transformación social. El punto de partida del suprematismo es la destrucción de la realidad objetiva como acto liberador. Aunque diversos autores contemporáneos del campo de la teoría política conciben el arte tcomo producción de sentimientos que actúan como puntos de partida de la acción y el compromiso. Ambas perspectivas se entrelazan en el concepto de 'revolución': la liberación de la representación totalitaria y la creación de una nueva sociedad

Soundwalking and Algorithmic Listening

Soundwalking is a listening and composition method that focuses on the exploration of the envi- ronment. With roots in the 1970s, the artistic practices that sprung from soundwalking engage both with the unmediated soundscape as well as with multiple approaches to its augmentation or the augmentation of the human sensory apparatus. Soundwalking emphasises the listener’s active and participatory role in the construction of dynamic compositions, shaped as much by the environment as by their presence and actions. Given the increasing relevance of computation in physical and public environments, the omnipresence of the metainterface, and how hybrid environments emerge from physical and virtual spaces, this paper discusses how principles and methodologies of soundwalking may allow the exploration and, ultimately, the understanding of computational environments that are increasingly sonic. This paper explores how in these contexts soundwalking can be used as a poetic and aesthetic resource, leading to the development of a listening that emphasises computation and procedurality, an algorithmic listening.</p

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

The dawn of the dead : (improbable) art after aI-zombie apocalypse

In recent years there has been growing interest in artificial neural networks (ANNs) which are quickly becoming the primary device for machine learning. Used for finding patterns in large data sets, ANNs were also recently employed in many artistic contexts: as tools for artists, semi-independent creators of content, and even as invisible "critics" which / who predict our aesthetic preferences. The aim of this paper is to speculate about the disruptive effect of these ‘alien agencies’ on the (modernist) aesthetic regime of art centred around the notion of autonomy. The author examines how neural networks and connectionist epistemologies may potentially affect the most common ways of producing, circulating, and valorising art. He claims that the possibility of automatizing creativity and art criticism may lead to the emergence of a new aesthetic regime based on forms of dynamic, distributed and probabilistic governance

Uncommon worlds: toward an ecological aesthetics of childhood in the Anthropocene

In addressing the need for a more robust engagement with aesthetics in posthumanist studies of childhood and nature, this chapter makes some tentative steps towards an ecological aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to Whitehead’s speculative philosophy. In doing so, the chapter takes an alternative theoretical approach from much of the ‘common worlds’ scholarship that has emerged in recent years, while making the case for a new aesthetics of childhood that is responsive to the accelerating social, technological, and environmental changes of the Anthropocene epoch. Our approach foregrounds the singularity of children’s aesthetic experiences as relational-qualitative ‘intensities’ that alter the fabric of nature as an extensive continuum held in common. We therefore argue that every moment in the life of a child is an uncommon and unrepeatable occasion through which the common world of nature is felt, perceived, and experienced differently. This eco-aesthetic approach is developed further through the analysis of photographs taken by children as part of the Climate Change and Me project, which has mapped children and young people’s affective responses to climate change over a period of three years in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than working with images as representations or analogic signifiers for children’s experience, we analyse how each photograph co-implicates children’s bodies and environments through affective vectors of feeling, or ‘prehensions’. This leads us to reframe aesthetic notions of image, sensibility, perception, and causality in relational terms, while also acknowledging the individuation of childhood experiences as ‘creaturely becomings’ that produce new potentials for environmental thought and behaviour

Study of deep inelastic inclusive and diffractive scattering with the ZEUS forward plug calorimeter

Deep inelastic scattering and its diffractive component, ep -> e'y*p -> e'XN, have been studied at HERA with the ZEUS detector using an integrated luminosity of 4.2 pb(-1). The measurement covers a wide range in the y*p c.m. energy W (37-245 GeV), photon virtuality Q(2) (2.2-80 GeV(2)) and mass M(X) (0.28-35 GeV). The diffractive cross section for M(X) > 2 GeV rises strongly with W; the rise is steeper with increasing Q(2). The latter observation excludes the description of diffraclive deep inelastic scattering in terms of the exchange of a single pomeron. The ratio of diffractive to total cross section is constant as a function of W, in contradiction to the expectation of Regge phenomenology combined with a naive extension of the optical theorem to y*p scattering. Above M(X) of 8 GeV, the ratio is flat with Q(2), indicating a leading-twist behaviour of the diffractive cross section. The data are also presented in terms of the diffractive structure function, F(2)(D(3)) (beta, x(P), Q(2)) of the proton. For fixed beta, the Q(2) dependence of x(P)F2(D)((3)) changes with x(P) in violation of Regge factorisation. For fixed xp, x(P,) x(P)F(2)(D(3)) rises as beta -> 0, the rise accelerating with increasing Q(2). These positive scaling violations suggest substantial contributions of perturbative effects in the diffractive DIS cross section