Case Study: Opening Up Memory Space: The Challenges of Audiovisual History

Author(s):  
Albert Lichtblau

The emergence of oral history was connected with a technical development—namely the possibility of recording human voices. The recording techniques developed rapidly. This article discusses the challenges faced while recording audiovisual history. In the 1980s expensive filmmaking began to be replaced by more affordable video formats, which took the technical development of oral history to a new audiovisual level. The paradigm shift generated by oral history in which historians began to generate their own primary sources announced another transformation of the way historians worked: taking leave of the written form and communicating scholarly results in audiovisual form. This article seeks to describe what the integration of the visual aspect means for oral historians in generating documents of remembrance. It elaborates on a few concrete examples of how integrating the camera's eye has shaped audiovisual history. A discussion on negotiation of remembrance followed by new methods and issues of videohistory concludes this article.

2022 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Anna-Maria Sichani ◽  
David Hendy

This article describes the computational and data-related challenges of the “Connected Histories of the BBC” project, an interdisciplinary project aiming to bring into the public realm some of the hidden treasures of the BBC's own Oral History Archive through the creation of an openly accessible, fully searchable and interconnected digital catalogue of this archive. This project stands as an interesting case study on the tensions between “computational” and “archival”, by critically designing and employing computational approaches for an historical, complex Oral History collection of scattered analogue records of various forms with an archival pre-history. From data acquisition, modeling, structuring and enhancement, metadata, data analysis procedures, to web design and legal issues, this paper discusses the various computational challenges, processes and decisions made during this project, while showcasing the principles of (re)usability, accessibility, and collaboration throughout its course.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niclas Ståhl ◽  
Göran Falkman ◽  
Alexander Karlsson ◽  
Gunnar Mathiason ◽  
Jonas Boström

<p>In medicinal chemistry programs it is key to design and make compounds that are efficacious and safe. This is a long, complex and difficult multi-parameter optimization process, often including several properties with orthogonal trends. New methods for the automated design of compounds against profiles of multiple properties are thus of great value. Here we present a fragment-based reinforcement learning approach based on an actor-critic model, for the generation of novel molecules with optimal properties. The actor and the critic are both modelled with bidirectional long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. The AI method learns how to generate new compounds with desired properties by starting from an initial set of lead molecules and then improve these by replacing some of their fragments. A balanced binary tree based on the similarity of fragments is used in the generative process to bias the output towards structurally similar molecules. The method is demonstrated by a case study showing that 93% of the generated molecules are chemically valid, and a third satisfy the targeted objectives, while there were none in the initial set.</p>


Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.


Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall ◽  
Kathryn Nasstrom

A case study of the southern oral history program is the essence of this chapter. From its start in 1973 until 1999, the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) was housed by the history department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), rather than in the library or archives, where so many other oral history programs emerged. The SOHP is now part of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, but it continues to play an integral role in the department of history. Concentrating on U.S. southern racial, labor, and gender issues, the program offers oral history courses and uses interviews to produce works of scholarship, such as the prize-winning book Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. The folks at the Institute for Southern Studies tried to combine activism with analysis, trying to figure out how to take the spirit of the movement into a new era.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Schneider

Beginning in 1944, Soviet authorities arrested former Jewish Council members of different ghettos and put them on trial for collaboration with the Axis powers. This case study examines the 1944 trials of Meir Teich and Isaak Sherf, two leading figures of the Shargorod ghetto’s Jewish administration. Drawing on trial documents, oral history interviews and memoirs, this article focuses on two aspects: how Soviet courts selectively accepted support for the partisans as mitigating circumstances, and how survivor networks among the witnesses influenced the trials. These aspects are discussed in the context of the (re-)Sovietization of formerly occupied territories, in this case Transnistria, the Romanian occupation zone.


Rural China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang Liu (刘昶) ◽  
Shiqing Bao (包诗卿) ◽  
Danqing Pei (裴丹青)

The xianggu (shiitake) mushroom industry in Xixia county, Henan, emerged and initially experienced rapid growth during the reform and opening up period. It has benefited from both the rapid expansion of the food consumption market in China and the guidance and support of the local government. After thirty years of sustained expansion, the growth of the mushroom market began to slow down and competition within the industry became fierce. Facing rich and powerful mushroom dealers, individual mushroom farmers have had to bear the brunt of market fluctuations. To break the predicament of farmers’ suffering from low prices (because of the bumper harvest paradox) and to help farmers protect their interests and gain a fair share of the industry’s profits, and thus to achieve sustained and healthy development of the mushroom industry, important institutional innovations are needed. 西峡县香菇产业在改革开放时期经历了从零开始的飞速增长,这既得益于食品消费市场的迅速扩张,也得益于地方政府的引导和扶持。在经历了三十年的持续扩张后,香菇市场增速开始放缓,业内竞争压力凸显。面对财大气粗的菇行,势孤力单的个体菇农首当其冲,受到市场的挤压。要破解菇贱伤农的困局,帮助菇农保护自己的利益和分享产业的利润,并实现香菇产业的健康持续发展,就需要在产业组织和制度上进行创新。 (This article is in English.)


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (8) ◽  
pp. 1194-1209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwan M Kraidy

Islamic State’s (IS) image-warfare presents an auspicious opportunity to grasp the growing role of digital images in emerging configurations of global conflict. To understand IS’ image-warfare, this article explores the central role of digital images in the group’s war spectacle and identifies a key modality of this new kind of warfare: global networked affect. To this end, the analysis focuses on three primary sources: two Arabic-language IS books, Management of Savagery (2004) and O’ Media Worker, You Are a Mujahid!, 2nd Edition (2016), and a video, Healing the Believers’ Chests (2015), featuring the spectacular burning of a Jordanian air force pilot captured by IS. It uses the method of ‘iconology’ within a case-study approach. I analyze IS’ doctrine of image-warfare explained in the two books and, in turn, examine how this doctrine is executed in IS video production, conceptualizing digital video as a specific permutation of moving digital images uniquely able to enact, and via repetition, to maintain, visual and narrative tension between movement and stillness, speed and slowness, that diffuses global network affect. Using a theoretical framework combining spectacle, new media phenomenology, and affect theory, the article concludes that global networked affect is projectilic, mimicking fast, lethal, penetrative objects. IS visual warfare, I argue, is best understood through the notion of the ‘projectilic image’.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lonny Baumgardner ◽  
Jamal Ahamiri ◽  
Chris Kuyken ◽  
Mohamed Farouk ◽  
Kamel Jammeli ◽  
...  

Abstract A 5-well rig-less & explosiveness abandonment campaign by 2 project partners operator and service provider was made a reality in Morocco whereby a novel method of cementing squeeze of perforations and an annular fill-up were established in one single operation. This is called LEAN abandonment and the method was masterminded as a result of intense collaboration between both partners. The method is scale-able and has full merit to target existing legacy wells for abandonment in Morocco and world-wide where appropriate. In this LEAN approach the tubing and annulus were communicating via SSD / non-explosive created tubing punch by holding backpressure on the annulus till perforations squeezed or pressure lock-up and subsequently immediately opening the annulus and releasing the annular pressure whilst continuing pumping and filling the annulus with some 800 m of cement creating the firm additional barrier. Clinical planning by operator and service provider on a establishing a new abandonment process that is opening-up further in-country and beyond opportunities was the critical success factors in this work. It led to organic improvement on a well by well basis in the campaign, it resulted in safe and successful operations and achieving abandonment objectives cementing to surface in tubing and annulus. LEAN Abandonment forms a paradigm shift. It may be different in different down-hole settings and there is no single solution however like in our case working a bottoms-up approach has resulted the lowest cost solution and having done so ways to improve overall safety and efficiency were identified. The use of non-explosive technology is a very good example.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
Yasser Elsheshtawy

This paper in its first part aims at contextualizing Abu Dhabi's urban development and understanding the factors that have governed its urban growth through a historical case study approach. Relying on archival records and primary sources five stages of urban growth are identified. Data mining of media archives allows for a first hand account of developments taking place thus grounding the depictions. The second part contextualizes this review through a case study of the Central Market project — also known as Abu Dhabi's World Trade Center. The paper concludes by elaborating on the significance of such a historical analysis as it shifts the discourse away from a focus on the ‘artificiality’ of cities in the Gulf to one that is based on a recognition about the historicity of its urban centers, however recent it may be. Additionally the pertinence of such an analysis for cities worldwide is discussed as well.


Oriens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-130
Author(s):  
Ramon Harvey

Abstract Despite recognition of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Rustughfanī (d. ca. 345/956) as the most important student of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), a sustained treatment of his theological views has not hitherto appeared. One of the challenges that has been identified in prior studies is a lack of primary sources. To overcome this obstacle, I analyse manuscripts of “Bāb al-mutafarriqāt min fawāʾid” and “al-Asʾila wa-l-ajwiba,” two texts recording al-Rustughfanī’s theological responsa, locating them within available bibliographic information and discussing the question of literary structure. I then contextualise the material within the polemical milieu of mid-fourth/tenth century Samarqand, arguing that al-Rustughfanī is the earliest figure in the Samarqandī Ḥanafī kalām tradition to self-consciously adopt the full name ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa to express his theological identity. Finally, I provide an annotated theological overview of the main doctrines found in the texts with a detailed case study on divine speech and the Qurʾān, showing how al-Rustughfanī bridges the gap between al-Māturīdī’s rationalistic kalām and the Ḥanafī traditionalism of al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953).


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