Impulsive Synchronisation: A Conversation on Military Technologies and Audiovisual Arts

Author(s):  
Aura Satz ◽  
Jussi Parikka

Stemming from their common interest in media archeology and the idea of the air as a medium of encrypted signals, Satz and Parikka explore the themes emerging from Satz's film installation 'Impulsive Synchronisation' (2013). Satz has used various technologies as the subject of her work, including the Chladni plate, mechanical music, phonograph grooves and optical sound, looking at how such objects tap into ideas of knowledge and communication in their use of notation systems, languages or codes. Satz is also interested in bringing to the fore key female figures largely excluded from mainstream historical discourse in an ongoing engagement with the question of women’s contributions to labour, technology and scientific knowledge. The starting point for ‘Impulsive Synchronisation’ was a 'Secret Communication System' patented during World War II by Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr and American composer George Antheil. This invention of 'frequency hopping', designed to protect radio-controlled torpedoes from enemy disruption by distributing the signal over many frequencies and synchronising the transmitter and receiver in rapidly changing patterns, has become the basis for today's spread-spectrum technology. In Satz’s work, these technologies are referenced to explore visual, musical and data notation, as well as its encryption, synchronisation and decipherment.

Antiquity ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (292) ◽  
pp. 475-484
Author(s):  
George Eogan

IntroductionThroughout the 20th century there were many notable developments in Irish archaeology, both academically and administratively. Already by the middle of the century considerable change had taken place, that was a time when new attitudes and initiatives were underway. It was also a time of economic development and social adjustments in the wake of World War II. The changes that took place in archaeology during the following half-century were extensive and varied and involved most aspects of the subject. The year 1950 is, therefore, a reasonable starting-point for commencing this review but this does not imply that a new and altered archaeology had emerged. On the contrary established personnel and institutions continued to play a major role, while some longstanding research projects continued. What is offered in this paper is a brief historical review largely considered from the academic point of view, it is selective and is not intended to provide detailed information about all aspects of research and other developments that have taken place over the past half-century. However, an attempt will be made to review the causes and influences that brought about such developments, but it is not a potted history, neither is it a review of intellectual developments.


Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
M L Mojapelo

Storytelling consists of an interaction between a narrator and a listener, both of whom assign meaning to the story as a whole and its component parts. The meaning assigned to the narrative changes over time under the influence of the recipient‟s changing precepts and perceptions which seem to be simplistic in infancy and more nuanced with age. It becomes more philosophical in that themes touching on the more profound questions of human existence tend to become more prominently discernible as the subject moves into the more reflective or summative phases of his or her existence. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the metaphorical character of a story, as reflected in changing patterns of meaning assigned to the narrative in the course of the subjective receiver‟s passage through the various stages of life. This was done by analysing meaning, from a particular storytelling session, at different stages of a listener‟s personal development. Meaning starts as literal and evolves through re-interpretation to abstract and deeper levels towards application in real life.


Author(s):  
رضوان جمال الأطرش ◽  
نجوى نايف شكوكاني

        الملخّص      هدف هذا البحث إبراز إمكانية التأثر العملي بأسلوب التعليل في القرآن الكريم، ومحاولة البحث في تطبيقاته في واقع العملية التعليمية من العالم والمتعلم، بحيث لم يقتصر على الدراسة اللغوية أو الأصولية النظرية؛ وخصوصاً بعد التعريف بهذا الأسلوب وأدواته وأهميته وبيان اللوازم الخاصة للعالم والمتعلم للتأثر به، وقد تم ذلك من خلال استخدام المنهج الاستقرائي بتتبع أعمال العلماء في ذلك وتم رصد أقوال المفسرين فيما يتعلق بالأساليب البيانية وآيات التعليل ووجوه الإعجاز القرآني، ومن ثم استُخدم المنهج التحليلي لإثبات ذلك الأثر وإثبات وجود إشارات وأدلة على مظاهر التأثر؛ واستنتاج حقيقة إمكانية استمرارية البحث في كل أدوات وآيات ومواضيع ذلك الأسلوب بنفس الطريقة التي تمّ طرحُها، مما يثري هذا المجال، ويفتح العقول ويدفعها للنظر والتدبر والبحث في آي القرآن، وفي كل المناحي، منطلقةً من فكر التجديد، والإفادة من مستجدات العصر وعلومه ضمن ضوابط العقيدة الغراء والشرع الحنيف. الكلمات المفتاحية: أسلوب التعليل، أدوات أسلوب التعليل، التدبر، التعليم التقليدي، أثر.  Abstract This study intends to highlight the possible practical impact of the principles of argumentation found in the Qur’an. The study attempts to apply the principles on the actual education process of the scholars and students without limiting it to linguistic studies or theoretical principles. This was done after introducing the principles of reasoning, its tools, its importance, and disclosing the special requirements for the scholars and students in order to be influenced by the latter principles.  The work used inductive method to track the works of the scholars on the subject and observe the opinions of the Qur’an-commentators in relation to principles of explanation, verses of argument, and aspects of Qur’anic Inimitability. Analytical method was used to establish the impacts of the Qur’anic arguments; to prove the presence of signs and evidences for the manifestation of the impacts; and to make the continuity of this research possible in all the tools, verses and topics related to the principles of Qur’anic argument. Among those things that enrich this work is that it opens the minds, and pushes it to ponder and study the verses of the Qur’an. For every direction it becomes the starting point for the innovative thinking, and benefit for the new age and its sciences while maintaining the harmony with the principles of creed and the true SharÊ‘ah. Keywords: Principles of Argumentation, Tools of Argumentation Principles, Thinking, Traditional Education, Effect.


Author(s):  
Mark Douglas

The history of ethics in the Presbyterian Church has been shaped by the theological commitments of Reformed theology, the church’s ecumenical and interreligious encounters, its interactions with the wider cultures in which it functions, and its global scope. Consequently, Presbyterian ethics have become increasingly diverse, culturally diffused, ecumenically directed, and frequently divisive. That said, its history can helpfully be divided into three lengthy periods. In the first (roughly from the church’s origins in 1559 to the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century), theology, ethics, and politics are so interwound that distinguishing one from the others is difficult. In the second (roughly from the Second Great Awakening to the end of World War II), moral concerns emerge as forces that drive the church’s theology and polity. And in the third (for which proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 might be a heuristically helpful starting point), ethics increasingly functions in ways that are only loosely tethered to either Reformed theology or polity. The strength of the church’s social witness, the consistency of its global engagements, and the failings of its internecine strife are all evident during its five-hundred-year history.


1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.


1982 ◽  
Vol 19 (A) ◽  
pp. 359-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pollard

The theory of weak convergence has developed into an extensive and useful, but technical, subject. One of its most important applications is in the study of empirical distribution functions: the explication of the asymptotic behavior of the Kolmogorov goodness-of-fit statistic is one of its greatest successes. In this article a simple method for understanding this aspect of the subject is sketched. The starting point is Doob's heuristic approach to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov theorems, and the rigorous justification of that approach offered by Donsker. The ideas can be carried over to other applications of weak convergence theory.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-376
Author(s):  
Andrew Ludanyi

The fate of Hungarian minorities in East Central Europe has been one of the most neglected subjects in the Western scholarly world. For the past fifty years the subject—at least prior to the late 1980s—was taboo in the successor states (except Yugoslavia), while in Hungary itself relatively few scholars dared to publish anything about this issue till the early 1980s. In the West, it was just not faddish, since most East European and Russian Area studies centers at American, French and English universities tended to think of the territorial status quo as “politically correct.” The Hungarian minorities, on the other hand, were a frustrating reminder that indeed the Entente after World War I, and the Allies after World War II, made major mistakes and significantly contributed to the pain and anguish of the peoples living in this region of the “shatter zone.”


2001 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-123
Author(s):  
Nadia Wassef

In the light of postmodern debates in anthropology, ethnography offers anthropologists new ways of representing their objects of study. The politics involved in the production and consumption by feminist scholars and activists of women's representations in the Arab world, and Egypt specifically, provides the starting point of this article. Using an ethnographic text examining manifestations of ‘Islamic Feminism’ in Egypt, I explore problems in addressing the subject of veiling – a continuous favourite among researchers. Grappling with stereotypes, assumptions and pre-interpretations based on what we read before going to the field and the questions we formulate in our minds, I look towards strategies of engagement with research subjects where anthropologists can express their commitments to them. Research ethics and reflexivity offer no formulaic guarantees of better representations, but pave the way towards understanding one's motivations and urges ethnographers to examine the impact of their work, both on the immediate community, and with regard to larger power politics. Given the fluid nature of identities and the relative fixedness of representations, solutions do not appear in abundance. Working outside of unnecessary dichotomies and searching for incongruities presents interesting possibilities for future ethnographic research.


KronoScope ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
Carl Humphries

Abstract “Being is said in many ways,” claimed Aristotle, initiating a discussion about existential commitment that continues today. Might there not be reasons to say something similar about “having been,” or “having happened,” where these expressions denote something’s being located in the past? Moreover, if history – construed not only as an object of inquiry (actual events, etc.) but also as a way of casting light on certain matters – is primarily concerned with “things past,” then the question just posed also seems relevant to the question of what historical understanding amounts to. While the idea that ‘being’ may mean different things in different contexts has indisputable importance, the implications of other, past-temporal expressions are elusive. In what might any differences of substantive meaning encountered there consist? One starting point for responding – the one that provides the subject matter explored here – is furnished by the question of whether or not a certain way of addressing matters relating to the past permits or precludes forms of intelligibility that could be said to be ‘radically historical.’ After arguing that the existing options for addressing this issue remain unsatisfactory, I set out an alternative view of what it could mean to endorse or reject such an idea. This involves drawing distinctions and analogies connected with notions of temporal situatedness, human practicality and historicality, which are then linked to a further contrast between two ways of understanding the referential significance of what is involved when we self-ascribe a relation to a current situation in a manner construable as implying that we take ourselves to occupy a unique, yet circumstantially defined, perspective on that situation. As regards the latter, on one reading, the specific kind of indexically referring language we use – commonly labelled “de se” – is something whose rationale is exhausted by its practical utility as a communicative tool. On the other, it is viewed as capturing something of substantive importance about how we can be thought of as standing in relation to reality. I claim that this second reading, together with the line of thinking about self-identification and self-reference it helps foreground, can shed light on what it would mean to affirm or deny the possibility of radically historical forms of intelligibility – and thus also on what it could mean to ascribe a plurality of meanings to talk concerning things being ‘in the past.’


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