This Obscure Thing Called Transparency

Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today.

This Obscure Thing Called Transparency

Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today.

OpenCarrier: Breaking the User Limit for Uplink MU-MIMO Transmissions With Coordinated APs

The global IoT market is experiencing a fast growth with a massive number of IoT/wearable devices deployed around us and even on our bodies. This trend incorporates more users to upload data frequently and timely to the APs. Previous work mainly focus on improving the up-link throughput. However, incorporating more users to transmit concurrently is actually more important than improving the throughout for each individual user, as the IoT devices may not require very high transmission rates but the number of devices is usually large. In the current state-of-the-arts (up-link MU-MIMO), the number of transmissions is either confined to no more than the number of antennas (node-degree-of-freedom, node-DoF) at an AP or clock synchronized with cables between APs to support more concurrent transmissions. However, synchronized APs still incur a very high collaboration overhead, prohibiting its real-life adoption. We thus propose novel schemes to remove the cable-synchronization constraint while still being able to support more concurrent users than the node-DoF limit, and at the same time minimize the collaboration overhead. In this paper, we design, implement, and experimentally evaluate OpenCarrier, the first distributed system to break the user limitation for up-link MU-MIMO networks with coordinated APs. Our experiments demonstrate that OpenCarrier is able to support up to five up-link high-throughput transmissions for MU-MIMO network with 2-antenna APs.

Heterotopic Heritage in Hong Kong: Tai Kwun and Neo-Victorian Carceral Space

The prison is specifically identified by Michel Foucault in his essay, ‘Of Other Spaces’ (1967), as an exemplar of “heterotopias of deviation”. Reified in neo-Victorian production as a hegemonic space to be resisted, within which illicit desire, feminist politics, and alternate narratives, for example, flourish under harsh panoptic conditions, the prison nonetheless emerges as a counter-site to both nineteenth-century and contemporary social life. This article investigates the neo-Victorian prison museum that embodies several of Foucault’s heterotopic principles and traits from heterochronia to the dynamics of illusion, compensation/exclusion and inclusion that structure the relationship of heterotopic space to all space. Specifically, I explore the heritage site of the Central Police Station compound in Hong Kong, recently transformed into “Tai Kwun: the Centre for Heritage and the Arts”. Tai Kwun (“Big Station” in Cantonese) combines Victorian and contemporary architecture, carceral space, contemporary art, and postcolonial history to herald the transformation of Hong Kong into an international arts hub. Tai Kwun is an impressive example of neo-Victorian adaptive reuse, but its current status as a former prison, art museum, and heritage space complicates the celebratory aspects of heterotopia as counter-site. Instead, Tai Kwun’s spatial, historical, and financial arrangements emphasize the challenges that tourism, government funding, heritage, and the art industry pose for Foucault’s original definition of heterotopia and our conception of the politics of neo-Victorianism in the present.

Where there's smoke: digital storytelling for healing

Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab, in collaboration with Columbia’s Department of Narrative Medicine, developed Where There’s Smoke, a story and grief ritual that mixes interactive documentary, immersive theatre and online collaboration to invite healthcare providers and others into resonant conversations about life, loss and memory, and to imagine how stories can be used to create empathetic healing spaces. When Robert Weiler was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, the complexity of healthcare and ensuing grief for the family, led his son Lance, a storytelling pioneer, to realize that a straightforward story wasn’t enough to explain and explore the experience, so he created Where There’s Smoke. Where There’s Smoke premiered in 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival where it was hailed as an “absolute can’t miss” (Backstage). However, when COVID-19 submerged the world in loss, uncertainty, and isolation, Lance reimagined the piece as an online experience. He also combined the piece with protocols of Narrative Medicine as provided by faculty, Deborah Starr. The piece traces a heartbreaking journey through end-of-life care and grief, embracing grief as nonlinear and immersive, grief as an escape room with no escape. Participants sift through artwork, videos, and conversations and are provided with immersive moments for individuals, pairs and groups to have opportunities for self-discovery, unexpected intimacy, and ensuing healing. This is a personal yet universally relevant narrative, which gradually reveals itself to be something more…the possibility of immersive storytelling to create space for empathetic healing, grieving, and connecting.

Theater Structure and Techniques in Sangam Period

A country that excels in the arts is considered a civilized country. The arts created in a country play an important role in determining the cultural development of a country. Ancient Tamils have been interested in art since ancient times. They have cultivated fine arts such as music, dance, painting, sculpture and architecture. Drama is one of the arts thus nurtured. Although references to the play are found in the Sangam literature, references to their performances are scarce. On this basis it cannot be dared that the play did not take place in the Sangam period. Evidence of sporadic performance can be seen. Theatrical arrangement, lighting and curtains are a perfect complement to the plays performed in the form of koothu during the Sangam period. This article seeks to explore the concepts behind these.

What are the active ingredients of ‘arts in health’ activities? Development of the INgredients iN ArTs in hEalth (INNATE) Framework

Background: There is a scarcity of research concerning what it is about arts engagement that may activate causal mechanisms leading to effects on health and wellbeing outcomes: their active ingredients. Further, the limited studies that do exist have tended to be relevant to specific contexts and types of art forms. The aim of this study was to carry out a comprehensive mapping of potential active ingredients, construct a shared language, and propose a framework and toolkit to support the design, implementation, and evaluation of arts in health activities. Methods: Drawing upon Rapid Appraisal techniques and collaborating with 64 participants, we engaged in a three-phase process: 1) a scoping review to inform the development of an initial framework; 2) consultation on the initial framework; and 3) analysis and construction of the INNATE framework. Results: The study identified 139 potential active ingredients within the overarching categories of project, people, and contexts. Project components relate directly to the content of the arts activity itself, intrinsic to what the activity is. The people category denotes how people interact through engagement with the activity and who is involved in this interaction, including activity facilitation. Contexts relates to the activity setting comprising the aggregate of place(s), things, and surroundings. Aligning with complexity science, Ingredients may overlap, interconnect, or feed into one another to prompt mechanisms, and may not be experienced as distinct by participants. Conclusions: Our mapping exercise is the most extensive to date. In relation to arts in health activities, the INNATE framework can support with: design and implementation, such as co-producing an intervention to meet the needs of a particular population; evaluation, such as facilitating the comparison of different interventions and their efficacy; and replication, scalability, and sustainability through enabling detailed reporting and specific articulation of what an arts in health activity entails.

The impact of marketing on activities of Vietnam arts and cultural organizations

With the trend of budget reduction and autonomous operation of arts and cultural organizations, competition in this field to attract audiences is an inevitable trend. This sets out the requirements of marketing activities to bring arts to the audiences and bring the audience to arts, which is, to link arts with the audience; not only achieved the goal of establishing and meeting the audience needs, but also fulfilled the arts and cultural organizations’ task of creating arts. There have been many research perspectives on culture and arts marketing in the context of cultural integration and economic development associated with the characteristics of each country and region. In this study, the author approaches, inherits, and develops Rentschler's culture and arts marketing model to build a scale and conduct practical research in Hanoi, Vietnam. The survey subjects were identified as art practitioners (artists) with more than 3 years of working experience in 7 theaters in Hanoi. The research was carried out by qualitative method through secondary data collection, combined with the quantitative method through a survey of opinions of 200 artists.