A Questionnaire on Materialisms

Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” and “Speculative Realism” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects—from Graham Harman and Alexander R. Galloway to Armen Avanessian and Patricia Falguières to Ed Atkins and Amie Siegel—to explore what the rewards and risks of assigning agency to objects may be, and how, or if, such new materialisms can be productive for making and thinking about art today

Mass Effect : Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century

"Since the turn of the millennium, the Internet has evolved from what was merely a new medium to a true mass medium—with a deeper and wider cultural reach, greater opportunities for distribution and collaboration, and more complex corporate and political realities. Mapping a loosely chronological series of formative arguments, developments, and happenings, Mass Effect provides an essential guide to understanding the dynamic and ongoing relationship between art and new technologies. Mass Effect brings together nearly forty contributions, including newly commissioned essays and reprints, image portfolios, and transcribed discussion panels and lectures that offer insights and reflections from a wide range of artists, curators, art historians, and bloggers. Among the topics examined are the use of commercial platforms for art practice, what art means in an age of increasing surveillance, and questions surrounding such recent concepts as “postinternet.” Other contributions analyze and document particular works by the artists of And/Or Gallery, Cory Arcangel, DIS, Cao Fei, the Radical Software Group, and others." -- Publisher's website

An anatomically accurate dielectric profile of the porcine kidney

Microwave ablation is a promising treatment for kidney cancer. Accurate knowledge of the dielectric properties of biological tissues is vital for quantifying the safety, reliability and accuracy of ablation, among other microwave medical treatments and diagnostic technologies. In dielectric studies to date, the heterogeneity within the kidney has not been considered, and the kidney has been treated as a fully homogeneous organ. Therefore, the available dielectric data of the kidney is not as thorough and accurate as it could be. For this reason, in this study, dielectric measurements are performed over a broad frequency range to quantitatively investigate the difference between the dielectric properties of various regions of the kidney and to develop an anatomically accurate dielectric profile of the kidney. All measurements are conducted on freshly excised porcine kidney samples, and confounders impacting dielectric data are controlled and related metadata recorded. The results demonstrate a considerable difference of up to 49% between the dielectric properties of different regions of the kidney. The findings in this paper suggest that the heterogeneity within the kidney should be taken into consideration in order to obtain an accurate representation of the actual dielectric properties. Additionally, a two-pole Cole-Cole model is fitted to the measured data of the different regions of the kidney and the model parameters presented for reference. The anatomically accurate dielectric profile of kidney provided in this paper will support the development of more effective and reliable microwave medical treatments