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We recently reported on the radio-frequency attenuation length of cold polar ice at Summit Station, Greenland, based on bi-static radar measurements of radio-frequency bedrock echo strengths taken during the summer of 2021. Those data also allow studies of (a) the relative contributions of coherent (such as discrete internal conducting layers with sub-centimeter transverse scale) vs incoherent (e.g. bulk volumetric) scattering, (b) the magnitude of internal layer reflection coefficients, (c) limits on signal propagation velocity asymmetries (‘birefringence’) and (d) limits on signal dispersion in-ice over a bandwidth of ~100 MHz. We find that (1) attenuation lengths approach 1 km in our band, (2) after averaging 10 000 echo triggers, reflected signals observable over the thermal floor (to depths of ~1500 m) are consistent with being entirely coherent, (3) internal layer reflectivities are ≈–60$\to$–70 dB, (4) birefringent effects for vertically propagating signals are smaller by an order of magnitude relative to South Pole and (5) within our experimental limits, glacial ice is non-dispersive over the frequency band relevant for neutrino detection experiments.
Technological transformation has profound and frequently unforeseen influences on art, design and media. At times technology emancipates art and enriches the quality of design. Occasionally it causes acute individual and collective problems of mediated perception. Time after time technological change accomplishes both simultaneously. This new book series explores and reflects philosophically on what new and emerging technicities do to our everyday lives and increasingly immaterial technocultural conditions. Moving beyond traditional conceptions of the philosophy of technology and of techne, the series presents new philosophical thinking on how technology constantly alters the essential conditions of beauty, invention and communication. From novel understandings of the world of technicity to new interpretations of aesthetic value, graphics and information, Technicities focuses on the relationships between critical theory and representation, the arts, broadcasting, print, technological genealogies/histories, material culture and digital technologies and our philosophical views of the world of art, design and media.
The series foregrounds contemporary work in art, design and media while remaining inclusive, both in terms of philosophical perspectives on technology and interdisciplinary contributions. For a philosophy of technicities is crucial to extant debates over the artistic, inventive and informational aspects of technology. The books in the Technicities series concentrate on present-day and evolving technological advances but visual, design-led and mass-mediated questions are emphasised to further our knowledge of their oftencombined means of digital transformation.
The editors of Technicities welcome proposals for monographs and well-considered edited collections that establish new paths of investigation.
Technological transformation has profound and frequently unforeseen influences on art, design and media. At times technology emancipates art and enriches the quality of design. Occasionally it causes acute individual and collective problems of mediated perception. Time after time technological change accomplishes both simultaneously. This new book series explores and reflects philosophically on what new and emerging technicities do to our everyday lives and increasingly immaterial technocultural conditions. Moving beyond traditional conceptions of the philosophy of technology and of techne, the series presents new philosophical thinking on how technology constantly alters the essential conditions of beauty, invention and communication. From novel understandings of the world of technicity to new interpretations of aesthetic value, graphics and information, Technicities focuses on the relationships between critical theory and representation, the arts, broadcasting, print, technological genealogies/histories, material culture and digital technologies and our philosophical views of the world of art, design and media.
The series foregrounds contemporary work in art, design and media whilst remaining inclusive, both in terms of philosophical perspectives on technology and interdisciplinary contributions. For a philosophy of technicities is crucial to extant debates over the artistic, inventive, and informational aspects of technology. The books in the Technicities series concentrate on present-day and evolving technological advances but visual, design-led and mass-mediated questions are emphasised to further our knowledge of their often-combined means of digital transformation.
The editors of Technicities welcome proposals for monographs and well-considered edited collections that establish new paths of investigation.
In the suburbs of Washington DC during the early 1980s, a familyrun travel agency provides cover for a married couple who are, in fact, KGB ‘Illegals’, Soviet agents fighting deep behind Cold War enemy lines. This is the premise of The Americans(2013–), one of the most unlikely hit television dramas of recent years. Framed by the everyday concerns of an ordinary American family, the show is at once ludicrous – the agents’ next-door neighbour is an FBI officer – and nostalgic, not just for the paraphernalia of the 1980s but for an era when commitment might mean something beyond self-interest. While initially the narrative appears to be taking shape as a drama of defection – the male agent's concern for the couple's two children leads him to wonder whether they ought to turn themselves in – the show swerves away from what might have become a conventional story of redemption through renunciation. Instead, the couple's resolve hardens and the audience is invited to root for a pair of assassins contemptuous of American freedoms (the mother despairs because her teenage daughter wants to go to church; in diners, they are appalled by the length of the menu). The United States intelligence community is hardly portrayed in a favourable light: the FBI man next door destroys his marriage by having an affair with an attractive Soviet spy, whose punishment is imprisonment in the Gulag. The senior Bureau officer is played by Richard Thomas, an actor best known as John-Boy in The Waltons, the sentimental Depression-set soap from the 1970s. The Soviets are far cooler: hardbodied, ruthless and much more effective, they are able to drop the kids off at school before disposing of a body by snapping the bones and folding it into a suitcase.
The Americansmanages to deliver a perspective on the US that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago: an unstable, inconsistent, yet occasionally direct anti-Americanism. Historical distance, of course, provides the necessary safety valve; everybody knows the Soviet Union will soon crumble.
Technological transformation has profound and frequently unforeseen influences on art, design and media. At times technology emancipates art and enriches the quality of design. Occasionally it causes acute individual and collective problems of mediated perception. Time after time technological change accomplishes both simultaneously. This new book series explores and reflects philosophically on what new and emerging technicitiesdo to our everyday lives and increasingly immaterial technocultural conditions. Moving beyond traditional conceptions of the philosophy of technology and of techne, the series presents new philosophical thinking on how technology constantly alters the essential conditions of beauty, invention and communication. From novel understandings of the world of technicity to new interpretations of aesthetic value, graphics and information, Technicities focuses on the relationships between critical theory and representation, the arts, broadcasting, print, technological genealogies/histories, material culture, and digital technologies and our philosophical views of the world of art, design and media.
The series foregrounds contemporary work in art, design and media whilst remaining inclusive, in terms of both philosophical perspectives on technology and interdisciplinary contributions. For a philosophy of technicities is crucial to extant debates over the artistic, inventive and informational aspects of technology. The books in the Technicities series concentrate on present-day and evolving technological advances but visual, design-led and mass-mediated questions are emphasised to further our knowledge of their often-combined means of digital transformation.
The editors of Technicities welcome proposals for monographs and well-considered edited collections that establish new paths of investigation.
Connects Cold War material and conceptual technologies to 21st century arts, society and culture.From futures research, pattern recognition algorithms, nuclear waste disposal and surveillance technologies, to smart weapons systems, contemporary fiction and art, this book shows that we live in a world imagined and engineered during the Cold War. Key FeaturesMakes connections between Cold War material and conceptual technologies, as they relate to the arts, society and cultureDraws on theorists such as Paul Virilio, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Friedrich Kittler, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Bernard Stiegler, Peter Sloterdijk and Carl SchmittThe contributors include leading humanities and critical military studies scholars, and practising artists, writers, curators and broadcastersContributorsJohn Beck is Professor of Modern Literature and Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster, London.Ryan Bishop is Professor of Global Arts and Politics, Director of Research and Co-Director of the Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. Ele Carpenter is a curator and writer, and senior lecturer in MFA Curating and convenor of the Nuclear Culture Research Group at Goldsmiths, University of London. Fabienne Collignon is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Sheffield. Mark Coté is Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society at King's College London.Daniel Grausam is Lecturer in the Department of English at Durham University. Ken Hollings is a writer and broadcaster, visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art and Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. Adrian Mackenzie is Professor of Technological Cultures at Lancaster University. Jussi Parikka is a media theorist and writer, and Professor of Technological Culture and Aesthetics at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton. John W. P. Phillips is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the National University of Singapore. Adam Piette is Professor of English at the University of Sheffield. James Purdon is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of St Andrews.Aura Satz is an artist and Moving Image Tutor at the Royal College of Art.Neal White is an artist and Professor of Media Art at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University.
The numerous large-scale interrelated autonomous remote sensing systems operative in the present have long genealogies in military research and development and remain influential in military, civic and corporate spheres. In fact, as these spheres have merged and blurred over the decades from the end of World War II to the present, the deployment and actions of these systems often become means for delineating the differences between these spheres and their priorities – this despite their being composed of the same sensor-based platforms of software and hardware regardless of deployer. Smart Dust, for example, constitutes the basis of polyscalar computer systems of remote sensing at micro-levels and relates to ubiquitous computing, ‘pervasive networks’ and ‘utility fogs’ as potentially transmitting endless streams of ‘real-time’ or stored data. Developed initially for DARPA, the technological R&D arm of the US Defense Department, Smart Dust started with work by Kris Pister and his team at UC Berkeley, who refer to the project as ‘autonomous sensing and communication in a cubic millimetre’ (Pister et al.). In a glimpse at the not-too-distant future, Hewlett- Packard intends to distribute a trillion of these micro-sensors from the bottom of the ocean and up into space in a project they are calling ‘the central nervous system for the earth’ (Hewlett-Packard website).
The history of remote sensing is the history of media generally, especially electric and electronic media. Remote sensing is implied in all tele-technologies and thus finds its earliest imaginary possibilities in the age of telephony, telegraphy and radio, along with the attendant avatars of subjectivity capable of experiencing sensorial phenomena at a distance. Science and technology reconfigure the imaginaries such that they can decontextualise the observing subject from the time-space constraints of the corporeal body, thus repeating Heidegger's famous dictum that the essence of technology is nothing technological: it instead resides in the immaterial, the noetic influences that render the world possible and malleable. The physical constraints of nature become those areas that certain forms of techno-scientific inquiry wish to erase or turn to their advantage, as made manifest in remote sensing systems deployed by various militaries most especially but not exclusively through opto-electronic devices operating at a distance and overcoming space to operate in a real-time of control.
This book uses large scale social and cultural trends and major world events to analyse the American comedy film. This is a historical and conceptual study discussing the comedy narrative, comic traditions, and role of visual culture. The important innovators of American film comedy and the role of visual technology within cultural politic are discussed, as well as theorists such as Freud, Baudrillard, and Derrida.
And on Fifth Avenue Harpo Marx has just lighted the fuse that projects from the behinds of a flock of expensive giraffes stuffed with dynamite. They run in all directions, sowing panic and obliging everyone to seek refuge pell-mell within the shops. All the fire-alarms of the city have just been turned on, but it is already too late. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! I salute you, explosive giraffes of New York, and all you fore-runners of the irrational – Mack Sennett, Harry Langdon, and you too, unforgettable Buster Keaton, tragic and delirious like my rotten and mystic donkeys, desert roses of Spain!
Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí(332)
Where film cameras are involved – with the rider that there is strictly no difference between film and still cameras in the virtual world – then additional considerations are taken into account; for example, if a real camera movement is made using a physical ‘rig’ – as in a crane shot, or whatever – there will be an unavoidable degree of camera shake at the beginning and end of the movement. Software has been written to simulate that shake, which moreover allows the user to specify which particular film camera, and which type of rig, is being used. The prevailing standard of realism in computer modeling is not the world as such; it is rather the world as it appears to the camera. I believe that this is an ideological artifact of a period of historical transition, and will pass. In time we will forget how physical cameras showed the world, and we will adapt our supposedly ‘natural’ vision to the new standards.
Victor Burgin, in conversation with Ryan Bishop and Sean Cubitt.