Seeing in: Two-fold, three-fold?

Taking Richard Wollheim’s theory that seeing pictures is a two-fold experience of perception, (between the marked surface of the physical object and something depicted in its surface), this paper analyses my recent practice of creating artworks that place painted marks directly onto photographic prints of paint marks as a means of challenging the viewer as to what exactly is being seen in the picture. This conjoined photographic / painting practice also builds on Regina-Nino Kurg’s assertion that there is, in fact, a three-fold perceptual experience in seeing pictures. That is, seeing the physical object that is the picture - its configuration, whilst simultaneously seeing the object depicted in the picture - its representation, and the subject of the picture - its figuration. The research opens debates around the perceptual differences of seeing in the photographic image, which contains both representation and figuration; seeing in the painted image, which can contain either representation or representation and figuration; and seeing in the picture comprising of both the photographic and the painted. It is at the point of physical conjunction between photograph and paint that the question of multiple-‘foldness’ becomes particularly complex, and which this paper will begin to explicate. This particular research-based practice aims to illuminate an aspect of my overarching PhD research question, ‘To what degree can an art practice of painting onto digital photographic prints illuminate the ontological relationship between representational painting and photography in the digital age’

From the surface of the image to the surface of the psyche: A practice-based research into the ontology of painting onto photographs

In his book The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard wrote, “The poetic image is a sudden salience on the surface of the psyche”; a phrase that perfectly captures the sensation I experienced when first viewing Richard Hamilton’s artwork Portrait of a woman as an artist (2007). Encountering this image created a sudden salience on my psyche due to, what was for me, the unexpected combination of media employed where the artist had painted the central figure of an otherwise completely digital photographic print. As I reflected on why one would paint onto a photograph, a potential research question began to form, which has become the locus of my practice-based PhD of painting on photographs: ‘To what degree can an art practice of painting onto digital photographic prints illuminate the ontological relationship between representational painting and photography in the digital age’? Curator and theoretician Peter Weibel notes that the first phase of the ‘post-media condition’ has given ‘the media’ equivalence, with the art of technical media, created with the aid of a technical device, having achieved the same artistic recognition as the traditional media of painting and sculpture. However, by painting onto digital photographic prints, Hamilton attempted to emphasize the medium specificity of painting in order to assert that discipline’s superior status to these other practices, with the digital and photographic being deployed by him as a means of underpinning the pre-eminence of painting in the western European tradition. Whilst Hamilton’s agenda in these few works was to foreground painting in its relation to photography and the digital, combining elements in this way chimes with contemporary artworks that embrace a fluidity of media. In particular his working in this way highlights the potential for further interrogation of dialogues between the analogue and the digital. Though contemporary artists such as Gerhard Richter, Matt Saunders, Matthew Brandt and Sharon Core engage in practices that examine the boundaries of painting and photography, painting mimetically onto digital photographic prints still remains a largely unexplored avenue of investigation. My research aims to position itself in this space, with the practice being now in the initial stages of producing photographic imagery onto which experiments with paint can be made in order to probe aspects of the ontological relationship of these two media. It is anticipated that from this juxtaposition the objective properties of painting and photography combined within single artworks, the performative nature of this practice and, ultimately, viewer engagement with such artwork can be more fully understood. Methods for explicating understandings of these relationships will involve self-reflective evaluation of the work in progress in the first instance. The work I present will investigate to what degree the act of viewing is disrupted due to a potentially anomalous combination of mediums, and whether this leads to a more reflective experience for the viewer

Protective vaccination in the horse against _Streptococcus equi_ with recombinant antigens

_Streptococcus equi_ subspecies _equi_ (_S. equi_) is a clonal, equine host-adapted pathogen of global importance that causes a highly contagious suppurative lymphodendopathy of the head and neck, more commonly known as Strangles. The disease is highly prevalent, can be severe and spread easily by visibly infected animals or by carrier animals that show no clinical signs of disease. Antibiotic treatment is usually ineffective. However, the majority of horses develop immunity to re-infection, suggesting that vaccination should be a feasible way to prevent the infection. Live attenuated vaccine strains of _S. equi_ are available but adverse reactions have been reported and they suffer from a short duration of immunity. Thus, a safe and effective vaccine against _S. equi_ is highly desirable. In this report, Welsh mountain ponies vaccinated with a combination of seven recombinant _S. equi_ proteins, were significantly protected from experimental infection by _S. equi_, resembling the spontaneous disease. The protective antigens consisted of five surface localized proteins and two IgG endopeptidases. The results from a second vaccination trial indicate that the endopeptidases were important for good protection. The similarity of _S. equi_ to other pyogenic streptococci suggests that our findings have broader implications for the prevention of streptococcal infections

A new high-precision and low-power GNSS receiver for long-term installations in remote areas

We have developed a new high-precision GNSS receiver specifically designed for long-term unattended deployments in remote areas. The receiver reports its status, and can be reprogrammed remotely, through an integrated satellite data link. It uses less power than commercially available alternatives while being equally, if not more, accurate. Data is saved locally on dual SD card slots for increased reliability. Deployments of a number those receivers in several different locations on the Antarctic Ice Sheet have shown them to robust and able to operate flawlessly at low temperatures down to −40 °C

PinR mediates the generation of reversible population diversity in Streptococcus zooepidemicus

Opportunistic pathogens must adapt to and survive in a wide range of complex ecosystems. Streptococcus zooepidemicus is an opportunistic pathogen of horses and many other animals, including humans. The assembly of different surface architecture phenotypes from one genotype is likely to be crucial to the successful exploitation of such an opportunistic lifestyle. Construction of a series of mutants revealed that a serine recombinase, PinR, inverts 114 bp of the promoter of SZO_08560, which is bordered by GTAGACTTTA and TAAAGTCTAC inverted repeats. Inversion acts as a switch, controlling the transcription of this sortase-processed protein, which may enhance the attachment of S. zooepidemicus to equine trachea. The genome of a recently sequenced strain of S. zooepidemicus, 2329 (Sz2329), was found to contain a disruptive internal inversion of 7 kb of the FimIV pilus locus, which is bordered by TAGAAA and TTTCTA inverted repeats. This strain lacks pinR and this inversion may have become irreversible following the loss of this recombinase. Active inversion of FimIV was detected in three strains of S. zooepidemicus, 1770 (Sz1770), B260863 (SzB260863) and H050840501 (SzH050840501), all of which encoded pinR. A deletion mutant of Sz1770 that lacked pinR was no longer capable of inverting its internal region of FimIV. The data highlight redundancy in the PinR sequence recognition motif around a short TAGA consensus and suggest that PinR can reversibly influence the wider surface architecture of S. zooepidemicus, providing this organism with a bet-hedging solution to survival in fluctuating environments

A Mock Data Challenge for the Einstein Gravitational-Wave Telescope

Einstein Telescope (ET) is conceived to be a third generation gravitational-wave observatory. Its amplitude sensitivity would be a factor ten better than advanced LIGO and Virgo and it could also extend the low-frequency sensitivity down to 1--3 Hz, compared to the 10--20 Hz of advanced detectors. Such an observatory will have the potential to observe a variety of different GW sources, including compact binary systems at cosmological distances. ET's expected reach for binary neutron star (BNS) coalescences is out to redshift $z\simeq 2$ and the rate of detectable BNS coalescences could be as high as one every few tens or hundreds of seconds, each lasting up to several days. %in the sensitive frequency band of ET. With such a signal-rich environment, a key question in data analysis is whether overlapping signals can be discriminated. In this paper we simulate the GW signals from a cosmological population of BNS and ask the following questions: Does this population create a confusion background that limits ET's ability to detect foreground sources? How efficient are current algorithms in discriminating overlapping BNS signals? Is it possible to discern the presence of a population of signals in the data by cross-correlating data from different detectors in the ET observatory? We find that algorithms currently used to analyze LIGO and Virgo data are already powerful enough to detect the sources expected in ET, but new algorithms are required to fully exploit ET data.Comment: accepted for publication in Physical Review D -- 18 pages, 8 figure

Soil natural capital in Europe; a framework for state and change assessment

Soils underpin our existence through food production and represent the largest terrestrial carbon store. Understanding soil state-and-change in response to climate and land use change is a major challenge. Our aim is to bridge the science-policy interface by developing a natural capital accounting structure for soil, for example, attempting a mass balance between soil erosion and production, which indicates that barren land, and woody crop areas are most vulnerable to potential soil loss. We test out our approach using earth observation, modelling and ground based sample data from the European Union’s Land Use/Cover Area frame statistical Survey (LUCAS) soil monitoring program. Using land cover change data for 2000–2012 we are able to identify land covers susceptible to change, and the soil resources most at risk. Tree covered soils are associated with the highest carbon stocks, and are on the increase, while areas of arable crops are declining, but artificial surfaces are increasing. The framework developed offers a substantial step forward, demonstrating the development of biophysical soil accounts that can be used in wider socio-economic and policy assessment; initiating the development of an integrated soil monitoring approach called for by the United Nations Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils

Interview of Carl Robinson

Wright interviews Robinson on his experiences in the mission field in the Ivory Coast. The interview was conducted in Searcy, AR