scholarly journals Dragan Živadinov's Zero-Gravity Theatre

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kornelija Ičin

This paper aims to discuss the idea of creating a zero-gravity theatre, pioneered by Dragan Živadinov, a Slovenian conceptual artist. In order to do so, the author turns to Russian philosophical (N. Fyodorov, K. Tsiolkovsky, A Chizhevsky) and artistic sources (K. Malevich), as well as the space exploration envisioned by Slovenian scientist Herman Potocnik Noordung, who influenced Živadinov's cosmokinetic art. Resisting the legacy of cosmists and supremacists, Živadinov designs his objectless antimimetic theatre with a void actor, freed from weight and expected to be replaced by a technical substitute, which emits the actor’s memory from near-equatorial orbit. This article examines the foundations of post-gravity theatre, which are based on three algorithms with the digital memory of the actor: biological (recording of body coordinates), biographical (recording of professional biography), and biomechatronic (recording of genetic structure). These will be controlled by the “umbot” both on stage and in space after the death of the actors. The author focuses on the Biomechanics Noordung production, performed in the stratosphere on board an IL‑76 MDK aircraft. Due to sudden free-fall moments, the performers experienced a state of weightlessness, interpreted as a rehearsal for the future liberation of the body from gravity. In conditions which made it possible to create a dozen modes of weightlessness, the actors could perform in a state of levitation, which was perceived as a unique abstract theatrical performance. Combining Meyerhold’s theory of biomechanics, conceived in the 1920s as a system of exercises for the actor’s body, with Noordung’s research on gravity and ways to overcome it, represented by drawings of a rotating space station, Živadinov realised the idea of theatricalising the cosmos. With this performance, Živadinov shows that an abstract work of art can become truly abstract only if it triumphs over gravity, i. e. if it loses its gravitational orientation (up, down, left, right) and manifests itself in zero gravity.

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (03) ◽  
pp. 92-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Neumann ◽  
H. Baas ◽  
R. Hefner ◽  
G. Hör

The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease often begin on one side of the body and continue to do so as the disease progresses. First SPECT results in 4 patients with hemiparkinsonism using 99mTc-HMPAO as perfusion marker are reported. Three patients exhibited reduced tracer uptake in the contralateral basal ganglia One patient who was under therapy for 1 year, showed a different perfusion pattern with reduced uptake in both basal ganglia. These results might indicate reduced perfusion secondary to reduced striatal neuronal activity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
I.M. Larina ◽  
◽  
D.N. Kashirina ◽  
K.S. Kireev ◽  
A.I. Grigoriev ◽  
...  

We performed the first ever comparative analysis of modifications in the proteome, ionogram and some other blood plasma biochemical indices of 18 male cosmonauts (44 ± 6 years of age) before and after maiden or repeated long-term missions to the Russian segment of the International space station (ISS RS). Levels of proteins, substrates and ions as well as chemical components were measured using the LC-MS-based proteomics and routine biochemical techniques. A total of 256 to 281 indices were investigated with the methods of descriptive statistic, regression analysis, and access to bioinformatics resources. It was shown that blood indices recovery from the maiden and repeated missions reflects changes in the body systems and goes at a various speed. The results of measurements made prior to launch and on day 7 after landing are dependent on the number of missions. The bioinformatics techniques showed that after maiden missions both the mediator proteins of alkaline phosphatase (AP) and blood proteins with reliably changing concentrations are associated with the bio-processes including stress, metabolism and DNA reparation, apoptosis, catabolism and proteolysis. During early re-adaptation from repeated missions the AP level was affected by bone remodeling, phosphorylation, angiogenesis and coagulation cascade suggesting a distinct and urgent trigger of the processes of bone structure and mineralization.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095715582110259
Author(s):  
Caroline D. Laurent

In recent Franco-Vietnamese literature written by descendants of immigrants, the liminality of exile is portrayed in all its complexity through migrant bodies – that of parents’ bodies – and through political and social bodies – linked to History and the Việt Kiều’s positionality in French society. The experience of external movement becomes an internal one, creating porosity between the outside and the body, self and others, places and times. This article argues that, in Minh Tran Huy’s Voyageur malgré lui and Doan Bui’s Le Silence de mon père, by representing their family’s migration, both authors present the silenced histories of the Vietnamese community in France. In order to do so, Tran Huy and Bui first focus on uncovering and writing the stories of their silent fathers: through their embodiment of exilic history, the fathers transmit the wound of their immigrant condition to their daughters. Consequently, daughters come to manifest similar bodily expressions of traumas they have not experienced and know little about. The fathers’ histories are eventually voiced and re-invested by the second generation. This shows how the unearthing of their fathers’ life stories is also about reappropriating a dual identity as well as making Asian diasporic perspectives and histories visible, notably to create new avenues of representation for French individuals of Asian descent.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Salatino ◽  
Claudio Iacono ◽  
Roberto Gammeri ◽  
Stefano T. Chiadò ◽  
Julien Lambert ◽  
...  

AbstractOrienting attention in the space around us is a fundamental prerequisite for willed actions. On Earth, at 1 g, orienting attention requires the integration of vestibular signals and vision, although the specific vestibular contribution to voluntary and automatic components of visuospatial attention remains largely unknown. Here, we show that unweighting of the otolith organ in zero gravity during parabolic flight, selectively enhances stimulus-driven capture of automatic visuospatial attention, while weakening voluntary maintenance of covert attention. These findings, besides advancing our comprehension of the basic influence of the vestibular function on voluntary and automatic components of visuospatial attention, may have operational implications for the identification of effective countermeasures to be applied in forthcoming human deep space exploration and habitation, and on Earth, for patients’ rehabilitation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 633-648
Author(s):  
Kobi Peled

A striking feature of Palestinian oral history projects is the extensive use that interviewees make of direct speech to communicate their memories—especially those born before the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. They do so irrespective of whether or not they participated in or actually heard the dialogues they wish to convey. This article seeks to characterize and explain this phenomenon. In the interviews conducted by the author—an Arabic-speaking Jew—as well as in other projects, this mode of speech is marked by ease of transition from character to character and between different points in time. It clearly gives pleasure to those engaged in the act of remembering, and it grades readily into a theatrical performance in which tone of speech and the quality of the acting become the main thing. This form of discourse sprang up from the soil of a rural oral culture and still flourishes as a prop for supporting memory, a vessel for collecting and disseminating stories, and a technique for expressing identification with significant figures from the past.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity J Callard

Geographers are now taking the problematic of corporeality seriously. ‘The body’ is becoming a preoccupation in the geographical literature, and is a central figure around which to base political demands, social analyses, and theoretical investigations. In this paper I describe some of the trajectories through which the body has been installed in academia and claim that this installation has necessitated the uptake of certain theoretical legacies and the disavowal or forgetting of others. In particular, I trace two related developments. First, I point to the sometimes haphazard agglomeration of disparate theoretical interventions that lie under the name of postmodernism and observe how this has led to the foregrounding of bodily tropes of fragmentation, fluidity, and ‘the cyborg‘. Second, I examine the treatment of the body as a conduit which enables political agency to be thought of in terms of transgression and resistance. I stage my argument by looking at how on the one hand Marxist and on the other queer theory have commonly conceived of the body, and propose that the legacies of materialist modes of analysis have much to offer current work focusing on how bodies are shaped by their encapsulation within the sphere of the social. I conclude by examining the presentation of corporeality that appears in the first volume of Marx's Capital. I do so to suggest that geographers working on questions of subjectivity could profit from thinking further about the relation between so-called ‘new’ and ‘fluid’ configurations of bodies, technologies, and subjectivities in the late 20th-century world, and the corporeal configurations of industrial capitalism lying behind and before them.


Author(s):  
Karen S. Young ◽  
K. Han Kim ◽  
Sudhakar Rajulu

Objective This study aims to identify the change in anthropometric measurements during spaceflight due to microgravity exposure. Background Comprehensive and accurate anthropometric measurements are crucial to assess body shape and size changes in microgravity. However, only limited anthropometric data have been available from the astronauts in spaceflight. Methods A new photogrammetry-based technique in combination with a tape-measure method was used for anthropometric measurements from nine crewmembers on the International Space Station. Measurements included circumference and height for body segments (chest, waist, bicep, thigh, calf). The time-dependent variations were also assessed across pre-, in-, and postflight conditions. Results Stature showed a biphasic change with up to 3% increase at the early flight phase, followed by a steady phase during the remaining flight. Postflight measurements returned to a similar level of the preflight. Other linear measurements, including acromion height, showed similar trends. The chest, hip, thigh, and calf circumferences show overall decrease during the flight up to 11%, then returned close to the preflight measurement at postflight. Conclusion The measurements from this study provide critical information for the spacesuit and hardware design. The ground-based assessments for spacesuit fit needs to be revalidated and adjusted for in-flight extravehicular activities from this data. Application These data can be useful for space suit design as well as habitat, vehicle, and additional microgravity activities such as exercise, where the body shape changes can affect fit, performance, and human factors of the overall design.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 195-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Sazima ◽  
Cristina Sazima

Several bird species feed on a variety of external parasites and epibionts, organic debris, dead and wounded tissue, clots and blood, and secretions from the body of other vertebrates (hosts or clients). We present an overview of so called cleaner birds from the Neotropics based on field records, literature, and photo survey. We found that 33 bird species in 16 families practice cleaning even if some of them do so very occasionally. The birds range from the Galápagos ground finch Geospiza fuliginosa to the widespread black vulture Coragyps atratus. Clients mostly are large herbivores such as capybaras, deer, and livestock, but also include medium-sized herbivores such as iguanas and tortoises, and carnivores such as boobies and seals - a few bird species associate with these latter marine mammals. No carnivorous terrestrial mammal client is recorded to date except for a domestic dog, from whose hair black vultures picked organic debris. Some clients adopt particular inviting postures while being cleaned, whereas others are indifferent or even disturbed by the activity of cleaner birds. Capybaras, giant tortoises, and iguanas are among the inviting clients, whereas boobies try to dislodge the 'vampire' finch Geospiza difficilis. Most of the Neotropical cleaner birds may be lumped in one broad category (omnivores that dwell in open areas and associate with large to medium-sized herbivores). A second, restricted category accommodates some species from Patagonia and the Galápagos Islands (omnivores that dwell in open areas and associate with carnivorous marine mammals, or seabirds and marine reptiles). Two still more restricted categories accommodate the following: 1) forest-dwelling cleaner birds; and 2) marine coastal cleaners. Additional records of Neotropical cleaner birds will mostly fall in the broad category.


2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Hall

<p>In this paper, I critically assess transhumanist philosophy and its influence in bioethics by turning to resources in the work of Michel Foucault. I begin by outlining transhumanism and drawing out some of the primary goals of transhumanist philosophy. In order to do so, I focus on the work of Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, two prominent contributors to this thinking. I then move to explicate Foucault&rsquo;s work, in the early iterations of the <em>Abnormal</em> lecture series, on the concept of vile sovereignty. Foucault used the concept of vile sovereignty to critique psychiatric witnesses that had been utilized in mid twentieth-century French courts of law. Turning back to transhumanism, I analyze transhumanist discourse on the basis of Foucault&rsquo;s vile sovereignty. Transhumanists promote human enhancement in a way that rejects the body&mdash;especially the disabled body&mdash;and pose the question of what lives are worth living, as well as attempt to answer it. I conclude that because of the undeserved influence and ableism of transhumanism, it is important for feminist philosophers, philosophers of disability, and other disability scholars, who collide at the nexus of bioethical debate (especially with regard to reproductive technology and the body), to work together to intervene upon transhumanist discourse.&nbsp; &nbsp;</p><p>Keywords: bioethics; enhancement; Foucault; transhumanism; ableism</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-esp.) ◽  
pp. 611-618
Author(s):  
Vânia Aparecida dos Santos ◽  
Haroldo Ferreira Araújo ◽  
Marcio Luiz Dos Santos

Os rins têm função vital, pois são responsáveis pela eliminação de toxinas, regulação do volume de líquidos e pela filtragem do sangue (filtram, por minuto, em média 20% do volume sanguíneo bombeado pelo coração). Dessa forma, a função renal é avaliada com base na filtração glomerular (FG) e sua redução é observada na doença renal crônica (DRC), quando ocorre a perda das funções reguladora, excretora e endócrina dos rins. Desequilíbrios esses que podem ser de consequência vascular, por comorbidade secundária, por doença renal secundária a drogas ou agentes tóxicos, infecções urinárias de repetição, doença de próstata, doenças policísticas renal, entre outras. Nas terapias renais substitutivas, a diálise é empregada para remover líquidos e produtos residuais urêmicos do organismo, quando o corpo não consegue mais fazê-lo. Tendo em vista que o procedimento hemodialítico tem complicações potenciais, considera-se vital  que o enfermeiro deva estar apto para intervir em tais intercorrências, portanto, ficando evidente a importância deste estudo. Objetiva-se, portanto, descrever as intervenções do enfermeiro em intercorrências clínicas durante a hemodiálise ambulatorial, bem como descrever as principais intercorrências durante as sessões de hemodiálise ambulatorial e se há protocolos específicos de intervenções do enfermeiro em intercorrências com o paciente dialítico. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de revisão integrativa da literatura, pois esta metodologia de revisão tem por propósito realizar uma dada síntese rigorosa de todas as pesquisas encontradas relacionadas a uma questão específica.   Palavras-chave: Enfermagem. Hemodiálise. Intercorrências   Abstract The kidneys have a vital function, as they are responsible for eliminating toxins, regulating the volume of fluids and filtering the blood (they filter, on average, 20% of the blood volume pumped by the heart per minute). Thus, renal function is assessed based on glomerular filtration (FG) and its reduction is seen in chronic kidney disease (CKD), when the loss of the kidneys regulatory, excretory and endocrine functions occurs. These imbalances can be of vascular consequence, secondary comorbidity, kidney disease secondary to drugs or toxic agents, recurrent urinary infections, prostate disease, polycystic kidney diseases, among others. In renal replacement therapies, dialysis is used to remove uremic fluids and waste products from the body when the body is unable to do so. Bearing in mind that the hemodialysis procedure has potential complications, it is considered nodal that the nurse must be able to intervene in such complications, therefore, the importance of this study is evident. Therefore, the objective is to describe the nurse's interventions in clinical complications during the outpatient hemodialysis, as well as to describe the main complications during the outpatient hemodialysis sessions and if there are specific protocols for the nurse interventions in complications with dialysis patients. It is an integrative literature review research, since this review methodology aims to perform a given rigorous synthesis of all the studies found related to a specific issue.   Keywords: Nursing. Hemodialysis. Complications


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document