Fast and Slow Networks

Digital technologies are the accelerator pedal of contemporary visual culture. Artists, in response, are producing evermore dynamic content, framing how such technologies are reshaping our urban culture. They are also exploring through their practice, ways of socialising these technologies; making them more person orientated and relative. This project highlights how technologies of the information age mirror older, slower networks of the industrial past. Interval is interested in the collision of physical person2person networks with their digital counterparts, and has brought together a group of artists and DIY technologists to explore this conception. Interval will set out on a journey along Manchester's canal network on a barge, hosting a selection of projects in this 'mobile media' space. Live work created aboard the boat will simultaneously be streamed over a custom-built wireless network and projected inside a shipping container located at the Museum of Science and Industry. Interval's selection of mobile locations responds to our express culture; to the supermodernity of impermanence. Through making the work mobile, the audience is encouraged to slow down, to relocate from network time to 'not-work' time, get swept away over Manchester's glittering waters, and join the flotsam and jetsam of barge culture

Curatorial cultures : considering dynamic curatorial practice

The practice of curating is live and temporal. It has shifted dramatically from its anonymous backstage origin within dusty museums to a role at the forefront of modern art, and is responsible for conjuring both a synergy and a dynamic that operates across a multitude of levels. Curation is a rapidly growing practice and discourse that is fundamentally shifting the ways in which we view and receive art. Much of this shift has been influenced by the works being curated, and with a growing body of works being process-led as opposed to object-based; the practice of curation has had to evolve accordingly. This evolution also encompasses the use of alternative exhibition spaces, a movement away from white-walled galleries, and the historic agendas these imply. The increased integration of media-related artworks into mainstream art agendas has contributed to this development of the curatorial role, as it has for collectors, gallerists and archivists. Although it can be argued that performative and interactive works have been curated using traditional methods for a long time now, it is really media-practices that are demanding an alternative perspective. This paper will look at how responsive methods and approaches are called for when curating media-artworks, and how they shift the curatorial role to that of an active practitioner. It will consider curation as praxis; positioning it at a point between what is known and what will be revealed. It will refer to actual exhibition strategies employed by the author, and look to further discuss how dynamic curatorial approaches can be integrated into mainstream curatorial roles, and how these can subsequently evolve thinking on the presentation and display of contemporary art.</p

Barge culture : the ebb and flow of cultural traffic

Early moving image devices and viewing apparatus more often than not used the city as their muse. Displaying and re-representing urban views, they revealed the spaces of illusion in our everyday environment, offering prefilmic spectacles to a receptive public. Social as much as than architectural, this interest in observing our immediate environment has provided us with a rich history of the relationship between architecture and the human body. Early films such as Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera and Laing's Metropolis create an interplay between the viewer and their spatiotemporal confines. The ability in film to manipulate time through freeze framing and slowing, and the multiplication and acceleration of movement, renders time as something elastic and magical. In the structures of many modern films such as Memento and Mulholland Drive, narrative structures are played with and chopped up, representing in themselves a fracturing of thought in different space-time structures. This paper reflects on urbanism and the ways in which artists use the city, revealing abstract notions of cultural use. It presents a curated project and a selection of works which map the city in different ways. </p

Crowded-Field Astrometry with the Space Interferometry Mission - I. Estimating the Single-Measurement Astrometric Bias Arising from Confusion

The accuracy of position measurements on stellar targets with the future Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) will be limited not only by photon noise and by the properties of the instrument (design, stability, etc.) and the overall measurement program (observing strategy, reduction methods, etc.), but also by the presence of other "confusing" stars in the field of view (FOV). We use a simple "phasor" model as an aid to understanding the main effects of this "confusion bias" in single observations with SIM. This analytic model has been implemented numerically in a computer code and applied to a selection of typical SIM target fields drawn from some of the Key Projects already accepted for the Mission. We expect that less than 1% of all SIM targets will be vulnerable to confusion bias; we show that for the present SIM design, confusion may be a concern if the surface density of field stars exceeds 0.4 star/arcsec^2. We have developed a software tool as an aid to ascertaining the possible presence of confusion bias in single observations of any arbitrary field. Some a priori knowledge of the locations and spectral energy distributions of the few brightest stars in the FOV is helpful in establishing the possible presence of confusion bias, but the information is in general not likely to be available with sufficient accuracy to permit its removal. We discuss several ways of reducing the likelihood of confusion bias in crowded fields. Finally, several limitations of the present semi-analytic approach are reviewed, and their effects on the present results are estimated. The simple model presented here provides a good physical understanding of how confusion arises in a single SIM observation, and has sufficient precision to establish the likelihood of a bias in most cases.Comment: 28 pages, 20 figures, 1 table; to appear in December 2007 issue of PAS

A Qualitative Investigation into Developmental Relationships for Small Business Apparel Retailers: Networks, Mentors and Role Models

The purpose of this investigation was to gain an understanding of the use, function, and support dimensions of developmental relationships for small business apparel retailers by applying focus group data collection techniques and interpretive analysis. Data collection took place through eight focus groups with small business owners/managers in six mid-western communities. Results indicate that, indeed, networks, role models, and mentors are viewed as necessary and important mechanisms for information, support, and guidance. However, focus group participants noted a lack of access to such developmental relationships. In terms of functions performed, having a business colleague to confide in, and relate to, was of particular importance in gaining access to knowledge and support in decision-making. Gender differences in the use and perceived value of the developmental relationship were also noted. Based on the study results, four hypotheses were inductively developed and pose areas for further research investigation

Effects of harvesting methods on sustainability of a bay scallop fishery: dredging uproots seagrass and displaces recruits

Fishing is widely recognized to have profound effects on estuarine and marine ecosystems (Hammer and Jansson, 1993; Dayton et al., 1995). Intense commercial and recreational harvest of valuable species can result in population collapses of target and nontarget species (Botsford et al., 1997; Pauly et al., 1998; Collie et al. 2000; Jackson et al., 2001). Fishing gear, such as trawls and dredges, that are dragged over the seafloor inflict damage to the benthic habitat (Dayton et al., 1995; Engel and Kvitek, 1995; Jennings and Kaiser, 1998; Watling and Norse, 1998). As the growing human population, over-capitalization, and increasing government subsidies of fishing place increasing pressures on marine resources (Myers, 1997), a clear understanding of the mechanisms by which fishing affects coastal systems is required to craft sustainable fisheries management

Atmospheric radiation model for water surfaces

An atmospheric correction model was extended to account for various atmospheric radiation components in remotely sensed data. Components such as the atmospheric path radiance which results from singly scattered sky radiation specularly reflected by the water surface are considered. A component which is referred to as the virtual Sun path radiance, i.e. the singly scattered path radiance which results from the solar radiation which is specularly reflected by the water surface is also considered. These atmospheric radiation components are coded into a computer program for the analysis of multispectral remote sensor data over the Great Lakes of the United States. The user must know certain parameters, such as the visibility or spectral optical thickness of the atmosphere and the geometry of the sensor with respect to the Sun and the target elements under investigation