Dara Ó Briain's Science Club: The Story of the Brain
"Dara traces the brain's journey from a useless organ once ditched by Egyptian embalmers to the centre of everything that makes us human. Science journalist Alok Jha asks whether smart drugs really make you brainier, oceanographer Helen Czerski explores cutting edge therapies allowing the brain to control limbs remotely and materials scientist Mark Miodownik takes apart a smart phone."
(BBC Two, UK)
Fig.1 this animation is from Episode 5 of 6 of Dara Ó Briain's Science Club, Tuesday 04 Dec 2012 at 9pm on BBC Two, voiced by Dara Ó Briain, animated by 12Foot6, Published on YouTube on 5 Dec 2012 by BBC.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Adorno's ambitions for the constellation
"17. But I am eliciting these implications of Adorno's reservations about Gestalt because what they imply is what Adorno leaves unsaid here, namely the contrast with his ambitions for the constellation. I should caution here that Adorno sometimes uses the word 'constellation' to designate historically given, that is, already familiarized, ideological arrays or Gestalts [for example, Critical Models 138, 260]; my usage henceforth will connote 'constellation' in the sense Adorno valorizes, as a device with the potential to be turned, in somewhat the manner of the Brechtian V-effect, against such familiarizations (though just this dissident potential, of course, is what mid-century avant-gardists were seizing on in Gestalt). And as we'll see, the word's 'antithetical' reversals of meaning are themselves indices of the 'dialectical'-ness of Adorno's immanent critique. We might say that these 'antithetical' meanings--'constellation' as unconscious ideological synthesis versus 'constellation' as consciousness-raising estrangement; 'constellation' as object of critique, or as subject of it--are themselves a kind of constellation implying or encoding, concealing or de-familiarizing a narrative, that of the classic Enlightenment project summarized by Freud in the formula, 'making the unconscious conscious.' Adorno may 'repeat' an over-familiar constellation and then reliquify (or, Medusa-like, petrify) its 'congelations'; or he may present an unfamiliar and even shocking juxtaposition, whose estrangement is to provoke a new and heightened consciousness of the ideological condition in which we are entrapped. The historical image that results, ideological and critical all at once, appropriates the critical force we saw Adorno ascribing to the Benjaminian dialectical image, turning it, immanently, to estranging or defamiliarizing, sc. critical or (Hegel) 'negative' purposes."
(Steven Helmling, 2003)
Steven Helmling (2003). "Constellation and Critique: Adorno's Constellation, Benjamin's Dialectical Image", Postmodern Culture, Volume 14, Number 1, September 2003 | 10.1353/pmc.2003.0030
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Technoetic Arts: a Journal of Speculative Research
"The journal aims to provide a forum for the presentation of new ideas, projects and practices arising from the confluence of art, science, technology and consciousness research. It has a special interest in matters of mind and the extension of the senses through technologies of cognition and perception. It will document accounts of transdisciplinary research, collabora- tion and innovation in the design, theory and production of new systems and structures for life in the twenty-first century, while inviting a re-evaluation of older world-views, esoteric knowledge and arcane cultural practices. Artificial life, the promise of nanotechnology, the ecology of mixed reality environments, the reach of telematic media, and the effect generally of a post-biological culture on human values and identity, are issues central to the journal’s focus. It welcomes speculative and anticipatory approaches to research, and the unorthodox expression of ideas whenever the topic justifies such innovation. It aims to communicate to an international non-specialist readership. "
(Roy Ascott)
Roy Ascott ed. (2008) Technoetic Arts: a Journal of Speculative Research, Volume 6, Issue 1. Intellect Ltd. [http://www.scribd.com/doc/18815754/Technoetic-Arts-a-Journal-of-Speculative-Research-Volume-6-Issue-1]
Fig.1 "Urban Digital Narratives"
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Interpretive research is knowledge that is gained, or at least filtered, through social constructions such as language, consciousness, and shared meanings
"Following Klein & Myers (1999), the foundation assumption for interpretive research is that knowledge is gained, or at least filtered, through social constructions such as language, consciousness, and shared meanings. In addition to the emphasis on the socially constructed nature of reality, interpretive research acknowledges the intimate relationship between the researcher and what is being explored, and the situational constraints shaping this process. In terms of methodology, interpretive research does not predefine dependent or independent variables, does not set out to test hypotheses, but aims to produce an understanding of the social context of the phenomenon and the process whereby the phenomenon influences and is influenced by the social context (Walsham, 1995)."
(Bruce H. Rowlands, 2005)
ISSN 1477-7029 81 ©Academic Conferences Ltd Reference this paper as: Rowlands B (2005) 'Grounded in Practice: Using Interpretive Research to Build Theory' The Electronic Journal of Business Research Methodology Volume 3 Issue 1, pp 81-92, available online at www.ejbrm.com
Klein, H., & Myers, M., (1999), 'A Set of Principals for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive Field Studies in Information Systems', MIS Quarterly, Vol 23, No 1, pp 67-94.
Walsham, G., (1995), 'Interpretive Case Studies in IS Research: Nature and Method', European Journal of Information Systems, Vol 4. No 2, pp.74-81.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Big Hair: A Wig History of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France
"Historians of consumption have generally followed social theorists in emphasizing two different aspects of modernity. While social scientists emphasize long term processes of 'modernization,' such as urbanization and industrialization, cultural historians and literary critics define modernity in terms of consciousness, stressing in particular the development of a reflexive self and a heightened awareness of one's present age as new and set off from the past.(4) Both understandings of modernity underpin current historical literature on eighteenth-century Western European consumption. Highlighting socioeconomic processes of commercialization, historians argue that eighteenth-century Western Europe experienced a 'consumer revolution' as men and women freed themselves from the grip of scarcity to initiate a buying spree of historic proportions. Although its geography and periodization remain highly controversial, such a revolution is commonly represented as a step toward modern consumer society.(5) At the same time, the study of consumption, especially French consumption, has taken a cultural turn, opening new doors between the Enlightenment and late modernity. (6) Daniel Roche, whose work has defined the field, argues that the birth of consumption was an integral part of a larger cultural change in which the traditional values of a stationary Christian economy gradually gave way to the egalitarianism and individualism of modern commodity culture. For Roche, the story is principally one of emancipation: 'It is important to recognize that . . . commodities did not necessarily foster alienation; in fact, they generally meant liberation.'(7) The diffusion of fashion led to 'a new state of mind, more individualistic, more hedonistic, in any case more egalitarian and more free.'(8) Less optimistic than Roche but equally intent on establishing a connection between Enlightenment consumption and modernity, Jennifer Jones contends that the late-eighteenth-century discourse on fashion helped to produce modern, essentialized definitions of gender. As social differentiation faded from fashion commentary, gender differentiation took its place.(9)"
(Michael Kwass, p.633, The American Historical Review, 111.3)
Fig.1 FRONTISPIECE: Wigs. Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonnée des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Recueil de planches, sur les sciences, les arts libéraux, et les arts méchaniques, avec leur explication, 11 vols. (Paris, 1762–1772), s.v. "Perruquier."
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
