Journal articles on the topic 'Gray tensor product'

Abstract Properties of pairs of product conjugate connections are stated with a special view towards the integrability of the given almost product structure. We define the analogous in product geometry of the structural and the virtual tensors from the Hermitian geometry and express the product conjugate connections in terms of these tensors. Some examples from the geometry of a pair of complementary distributions are discussed and for this case the above structural and virtual tensors are expressed in terms of O’Neill-Gray tensor fields.

A. Gray presented an interesting O(n) invariant decomposition of the covariant derivative of the Ricci tensor. Manifolds whose Ricci tensor satisfies the defining property of each orthogonal class are called Einstein-like manifolds. In the present paper, we answered the following question: Under what condition(s), does a factor manifold Mi,i = 1,2 of a doubly warped product manifold M =f2 M1 x f1 M2 lie in the same Einstein- like class of M? By imposing sufficient and necessary conditions on the warping functions, an inheritance property of each class is proved. As an application, Einstein-like doubly warped product space-times of type A,B or P are considered.

Algorithms to resolve multiple-qubit unitary transformations into a sequence of simple operations on one-qubit subsystems are central to the methods of quantum-circuit simulators. We adapt Householder’s theorem to the tensor-product character of multi-qubit state vectors and translate it to a combinatorial procedure to assemble cascades of quantum gates that recreate any unitary operation U acting on n-qubit systems. U may be recreated by any cascade from a set of combinatorial options that, in number, are not lesser than super-factorial of 2n, [Formula: see text]. Cascades are assembled with one-qubit controlled-gates of a single type. We complement the assembly procedure with a new algorithm to generate Gray codes that reduce the combinatorial options to cascades with the least number of CNOT gates. The combined procedure —factorization, gate assembling, and Gray ordering — is illustrated on an array of three qubits.

In the literature, tensors have been effectively used for capturing the context information in language models. However, the existing methods usually adopt relatively-low order tensors, which have limited expressive power in modeling language. Developing a higher-order tensor representation is challenging, in terms of deriving an effective solution and showing its generality. In this paper, we propose a language model named Tensor Space Language Model (TSLM), by utilizing tensor networks and tensor decomposition. In TSLM, we build a high-dimensional semantic space constructed by the tensor product of word vectors. Theoretically, we prove that such tensor representation is a generalization of the n-gram language model. We further show that this high-order tensor representation can be decomposed to a recursive calculation of conditional probability for language modeling. The experimental results on Penn Tree Bank (PTB) dataset and WikiText benchmark demonstrate the effectiveness of TSLM.

This article discusses about some isomorphic properties of tensor, star, Cartesius, and modular product operations of two fuzzy graphs. The results of research are the tensor product of two fuzzy graphs is isomorphic, and if and are complete fuzzy graphs then , , and . Full Article

Let be a graph of order n. Let be a bijection. For any vertex , the neighbor sum is called the weight of the vertex and is denoted by where N(v) is the open neighborhood of If for any two distinct vertices and then f is called a distance antimagic labelling. If the graph G admits such a labelling, then G is said to be a distance antimagic graph. This study gives a distance antimagic labelling for tensor product of two complete graph and sufficient condition so that the tensor product of a regular graph and complete graph is a distance antimagic graph.

In the present paper some aspects of tensor algebra, tensor product, exterior algebra, symmetric algebra, module of section, graded algebra, vector subbundle are studied. A Theorem 1.32. is established by using sections and fibrewise orthogonal sections of an application of Gran-Schmidt. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/dujs.v62i1.21957 Dhaka Univ. J. Sci. 62(1): 31-35, 2014 (January)

A random matrix needs large storage space and is difficult to be implemented in hardware, and a deterministic matrix has large reconstruction error. Aiming at these shortcomings, the objective of this paper is to find an effective method to balance these performances. Combining the advantages of the incidence matrix of combinatorial designs and a random matrix, this paper constructs a structured random matrix by the embedding operation of two seed matrices in which one is the incidence matrix of combinatorial designs, and the other is obtained by Gram–Schmidt orthonormalization of the random matrix. Meanwhile, we provide a new model that applies the structured random matrices to semi-tensor product compressed sensing. Finally, compared with the reconstruction effect of several famous matrices, our matrices are more suitable for the reconstruction of one-dimensional signals and two-dimensional images by experimental methods.

Colorization is a color manipulation mechanism employing user-assisted color hints for changing grayscale images into colored ones. Several colorization algorithms have been constructed, and many of these methods are able to produce appropriately colorized images given a surprisingly sparse set of hints supplied by the user. However, these color images may not in fact look realistic. Moreover, the contrast in the colorized image may not match the gradient perceived in the original grayscale image. We argue that it is this departure from the original gradient that contributes to the unreal appearance in some colorizations. To correct this, we make use of the Di Zenzo gradient of a color image derived from the structure tensor, and adjust the colorized image such that the Di Zenzo definition of the maximum-contrast gradient agrees with the gradient in the original gray image. We present a heuristic method to this end and guided by this approach devise an optimization-based method. Our gradient projection tends to result in more natural-looking images in the resulting adjusted colorization. To explore the proposed method we utilize minimalist sets of color hints and find in particular that "hotspots" of unrealistic color are subdued into regions of more realistic color. This paper is not aimed at introducing a new basic colorization but instead our method is meant to make any colorization look more realistic; we demonstrate that this is the case for several different basic methods. In fact, we even find that a very simplistic colorization algorithm can be used provided the projection proposed here is then used to make the colorization more realistic looking.

AbstractNumerical integration of the stiffness matrix in higher-order finite element (FE) methods is recognized as one of the heaviest computational tasks in an FE solver. The problem becomes even more relevant when computing the Gram matrix in the algorithm of the Discontinuous Petrov Galerkin (DPG) FE methodology. Making use of 3D tensor-product shape functions, and the concept of sum factorization, known from standard high-order FE and spectral methods, here we take advantage of this idea for the entire exact sequence of FE spaces defined on the hexahedron. The key piece to the presented algorithms is the exact sequence for the one-dimensional element, and use of hierarchical shape functions. Consistent with existing results, the presented algorithms for the integration of {H^{1}}, {H(\operatorname{curl})}, {H(\operatorname{div})}, and {L^{2}} inner products, have the {\mathcal{O}(p^{7})} computational complexity in contrast to the {\mathcal{O}(p^{9})} cost of conventional integration routines. Use of Legendre polynomials for shape functions is critical in this implementation. Three boundary value problems under different variational formulations, requiring combinations of {H^{1}}, {H(\operatorname{div})} and {H(\operatorname{curl})} test shape functions, were chosen to experimentally assess the computation time for constructing DPG element matrices, showing good correspondence with the expected rates.

Six-dimensional submanifolds of Cayley algebra equipped with an almost Hermitian structure of class W1 W2 W4 defined by means of three-fold vector cross products are considered. As it is known, the class W1 W2 W4 contains all Kählerian, nearly Kählerian, almost Kählerian, locally conformal Kählerian, quasi-Kählerian and Vaisman — Gray manifolds. The Cartan structural equations of the W1 W2 W4 -structure on such six-dimensional submanifolds of the octave algebra are obtained. A criterion in terms of the configuration tensor for an arbitrary almost Hermitian structure on a six-dimensional submanifold of Cayley algebra to belong to the W1 W2 W4 -class is established. It is proved that if a six-dimensional W1 W2 W4 -submanifold of Cayley algebra satisfies the quasi-Sasakian hypersurfaces axiom (i.e. a hypersurface with a quasi-Sasakian structure passes through every point of such submanifold), then it is an almost Kählerian manifold. It is also proved that a six-dimensional W1 W2 W4 -submanifold of Cayley algebra satisfies the eta-quasi-umbilical quasi-Sasakian hypersurfaces axiom, then it is a Kählerian manifold.

Background and ObjectivesThe glymphatic system, which is robustly enabled during some stages of sleep, is a fluid-transport pathway that clears cerebral waste products. Most contemporary knowledge regarding the glymphatic system is inferred from rodent experiments and human research is limited. Our objective is to explore the associations between human glymphatic function, sleep, neuropsychological performance, and cerebral gray matter volumes.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included individuals 60 years or older who had participated in the Integrating Systemic Data of Geriatric Medicine to Explore the Solution for Health Aging study between September 2019 and October 2020. Community-dwelling older adults were enrolled at 2 different sites. Participants with dementia, major depressive disorders, and other major organ system abnormalities were excluded. Sleep profile was accessed using questionnaires and polysomnography. Administered neuropsychological test batteries included Everyday Cognition (ECog) and the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease Neuropsychological Battery (CERAD-NB). Gray matter volumes were estimated based on MRI. Diffusion tensor imaging analysis along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) index was used as the MRI marker of glymphatic function.ResultsA total of 84 participants (mean [SD] age 73.3 [7.1] years, 47 [56.0%] women) were analyzed. Multivariate linear regression model determined that age (unstandardized β, −0.0025 [SE 0.0001]; p = 0.02), N2 sleep duration (unstandardized β, 0.0002 [SE 0.0001]; p = 0.04), and the apnea-hypopnea index (unstandardized β, −0.0011 [SE 0.0005]; p = 0.03) were independently associated with DTI-ALPS. Higher DTI-ALPS was associated with better ECog language scores (unstandardized β, −0.59 [SE 0.28]; p = 0.04) and better CERAD-NB word list learning delayed recall subtest scores (unstandardized β, 6.17 [SE 2.31]; p = 0.009) after covarying for age and education. Higher DTI-ALPS was also associated with higher gray matter volume (unstandardized β, 107.00 [SE 43.65]; p = 0.02) after controlling for age, sex, and total intracranial volume.DiscussionSignificant associations were identified between glymphatic function and sleep, stressing the importance of sleep for brain health. This study also revealed associations between DTI-ALPS, neuropsychological performance, and cerebral gray matter volumes, suggesting the potential of DTI-ALPS as a biomarker for cognitive disorders.

Actinomyces species and Arachnia propionica are slow-growing, Gram-positive bacteria which are part of the normal oral flora. Microscopically, they have a filamentous structure which gives them a fungus-like appearance. Infections caused by these bacteria are termed actinomycosis. Cervicofacial actinomycoses are usually painless, slow-growing, hard masses which can produce cutaneous fistulas, a condition commonly known as lumpy jaw. Less frequently, cervicofacial actinomycosis is an acute, tender, fluctuant mass suggestive of an acute pyogenic infection.1-4 Following are three pediatric cases of cervicofacial actinomycosis. Two cases, one of mandibular osteomyelitis and one of a paramandibular abscess, both occurred aytpically as acute woody masses without systemic illness.

Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify and/or produce specific music notes without a reference tone from the Western tonal system. Functional imaging studies show that AP is subserved by a network of interconnected neural structures including the left posterior dorsolateral frontal cortex (DLFC), the bilateral planum temporale (PT), and other brain regions. Neurophysiological studies show that AP possessors do not always require context updating during pitch identification due to possible “tonal templates”, and that AP appears to emerge at a late processing stage that is associated with multiple cognitive strategies and is facilitated by music training at early ages. Morphometry studies show decreased cortical thickness and gray matter concentration among those with AP, which may reflect increased efficiency of AP skill. Graph theoretical analyses of cortical thickness covariations show involvement of higher-order auditory processing, working memory, and semantic memory processes. Diffusion tensor imaging studies provide evidence for a neural pathway between the left posterior DLFC and the left PT, which establishes retrieval and manipulation of verbal-tonal associations. Compared to AP musicians, quasi-AP (QAP) musicians have an extensive right hemisphere network implicated in auditory working memory and show the bilateral structural characteristics of PT morphometry. Future research should confirm the definition of PT boundary and the role of (bi)lateralization of PT in AP ability, develop a standard AP test, identify genetic bases of AP, and describe relations between AP, tonal languages, and associated neural functions and structures among non-musicians with AP ability.

Francisella tularensisis a highly virulent intracellular gram-negative bacterium. The organism is usually isolated from wild and domestic animals and invertebrate. Man gets infection by direct contact with those animals or their products but the most common mode of transmission is via arthropod vectors. The disease is endemic in North America, parts of Europe, and Asia but has never been reported in Africa. A 29-year old male living in a rural area of Southern Sudan has been maintained on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis for two years. He presented to our center in May 2010 complaining of fever, dry cough, shortness of breath, and abdominal discomfort for four days. He was very ill, pale, and dehydrated. There were enlarged tender submandibular lymph nodes, but no mouth ulcers or other palpable lymph nodes. Peritonitis was excluded by effluent white blood cell count and culture. Empiric antibiotic treatment with ceftriaxon, and ciprofloxacin was started. Gram-negative coccobacilli were isolated by blood culture. The organism was identified asFrancisella tularensis. We started him on a ten-day course of gentamicin after which he improved. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first reported case of bacteremia caused byFrancisella tularensisin Sudan.

En virtud de la explosión de información producida en los últimos años, se creó la idea de que hemos transitado a un nuevo tipo de sociedad: la sociedad de la información y/o el conocimiento. En este tenor, se hace necesario plantear el significado de los términos información y conocimiento y la diferencia que existe entre ellos, pues no necesariamente una gran cantidad de información supone un mayor conocimiento. En tal sentido es fundamental que en los países latinoamericanos se reflexione sobre la información científica y académica que se produce y consume, toda vez que en muchas de nuestras instituciones estamos comprando a proveedores comerciales internacionales grandes paquetes de información especializada generada en los países más desarrollados, que no siempre cubre nuestras necesidades de información, y en cambio sí fortalece nuestra dependencia económica. Así que se requiere valorar, apoyar y promover los esfuerzos que se hacen en América Latina para organizar y difundir la información especializada que se está generando en nuestros países, si es que efectivamente se quiere formar parte de un nuevo tipo de sociedad que le de un papel privilegiado al conocimiento teórico.

El tema es la emergencia de las fake news tumultuando la cultura democrática y desacreditando el periodismo. El objetivo es proponer una reflexión sobre cómo ciertos elementos comunes al universo de la propaganda sirven para pensar en los flujos de producción de las fake news. Se considera aquí que el alineamiento de las fake news con las técnicas de la propaganda se produce en el procesamiento y almacenamiento de información, la elección del público objetivo y la consiguiente dirección de la distribución de la información adulterada, con el fin de modular el pensamiento de los seleccionados y, al final, afecta a la credibilidad periodística. Se parte de una conexión entre propaganda, algoritmos de inteligencia artificial y desorden informativo, especialmente cuando afecta a un público que, sin educación mediática, no dispone de técnicas básicas de verificación para llegar a la verdad de los hechos. Para la discusión en torno a este conjunto de fenómenos, que forma el corpus observado, se realizó una investigación bibliográfica para tensar las perspectivas teóricas que profundizan en esos temas. En los tiempos actuales, la propaganda especialmente en el campo político (con una gran ayuda del marketing digital), se ha sofisticado hasta el punto de asumir para sí la responsabilidad de proporcionar la base para la difusión de fake news y campañas de desinformación

Al tenor del creciente consenso en torno a que una agenda para el desarrollo después de 2015 demanda el abordaje de la migración internacional contemporánea con el ánimo de reducir la pobreza y la desigualdad, a la par que combatir la discriminación, la exclusión y la marginalización, se describe, de modo sucinto, cómo los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS), enmarcados en la Agenda 2030, visibilizan e incluyen a las migraciones y el refugio como temas de discusión. Para ello, se parte de una revisión documental en torno a las bases normativas y conceptuales que sustentan la relación entre la migración y el desarrollo, brindando luego un breve estatus de la situación migratoria en Iberoamérica con foco en América Latina y el Caribe –particularmente el caso de Venezuela y el éxodo por el que atraviesa en la actualidad como producto de la contracción económica, la crisis humanitaria y la conflictividad político-social–, para finalizar con una reflexión en torno a los actores convocados a hacer parte de este esfuerzo y las acciones que pueden desplegar de cara a aminorar la «migración involuntaria a gran escala» provocada por «conflictos, desastres o por motivos ambientales o económicos», la cual figura dentro de los 10 principales riesgos mundiales contemplados de manera reiterada en los informes publicados por el Foro Económico Mundial entre 2016 y 2018.

Since 2003, a new field disease has been observed on several cultivars of highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) in Buenos Aires (Baradero, Colonia Urquiza, Lima, Mercedes, and San Pedro), Entre Ríos (Concordia, Gualeguaychú, and Larroque), and Córdoba (Capilla del Monte and La Cumbre). Infected flowers turned brown to tan with a water-soaked appearance and shriveled up. Blighted flowers typically did not produce fruits; even an entire cluster of berries could be aborted. A chlorotic area, that later became necrotic and turned light brown, developed when leaves were in contact with blighted flowers. A watery rot developed on fruit occasionally before harvest but more generally after harvest. Infected tender green twigs also became blighted, with leaf tissue becoming brown to black. Older twigs and stems were also blighted. Abundant, gray mycelium with conidial masses developed on all affected tissues under moist conditions. Sections of infected leaves, twigs, stems, flowers, and fruits were surfaced sterilized with 0.2% NaOCl, plated on 2% potato dextrose agar (pH 7), and incubated at 22°C. Pure cultures formed a whitish dense mycelial mat and turned gray after 72 h. Conidia were ellipsoid, hyaline, nonseptate, and formed on botryose heads. They ranged from 5.8 to 9 × 8.1 to 13.7 μm (average 8.6 × 10.2 μm). Black, round, and irregular microsclerotia developed on 7-day-old cultures with an average size of 1.1 × 1.7 mm. Morphological characteristics agree with those described for Botrytis cinerea Pers.:Fr (1). Pathogenicity was tested on 10 12-month-old potted blueberry plants cv. O'Neal by spraying a suspension of 1 × 106 conidia per ml of sterile distilled water. Ten plants used as controls were sprayed with sterile distilled water. Each plant was covered with a transparent polyethylene bag for 48 h and incubated at 20 ± 2°C in humid chambers for 15 days. Lesions similar to those observed in the fields developed after 4 days and asexual fructifications developed after 5 days. The same pathogen was reisolated from the lesions, thus completing Koch's postulates. Water-treated plants remained symptomless. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a disease caused by B. cinerea on blueberry in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Entre Ríos provinces of Argentina. References: (1) M. V. Ellis and J. M. Waller. Sclerotinia fuckeliana (conidial state: Botrytis cinerea) No. 431 in: Descriptions of Pathogenic Fungi and Bacteria. CMI, Kew, Surrey, UK, 1974.

Recent years have seen increasing interest in the conservation and use of native breeds of livestock raised in traditional farming systems. The experience of many European countries shows that promotion of raw materials and products derived from these breeds through a labelling system has a beneficial effect on the sustainable development of rural areas, contributes to preservation of the cultural heritage of the countryside, and increases the population of the breeds. As yet no beef produced in Poland has been included on the European list of traditional and regional products. For this reason we conducted a study to evaluate selected physicochemical properties of the meat of young bulls of three native breeds, Polish Red, White-Backed and Polish Black-and- White, compared with the meat of young Simmental and Polish Holstein-Friesian bulls, during a 14-day ageing of vacuum-packed meat. The following parameters were measured in m. longissimus lumborum (MLL) taken from half carcasses of 50 young bulls (10 from each breed): pH, electrical conductivity (45 min., 24 h, 2, 7 and 14 days post mortem), colour (according to CIE L*a*b*), shear force and energy. The water-holding capacity of the meat (drip loss, cooking loss and free water by the Grau-Hamm method), TBARS value (on days 2, 7 and 14) and content of haem pigments were determined as well. The physicochemical parameters of the MLL muscle obtained from the native Polish breeds of bulls (Polish Red, White-Backed and Polish Black-and-White) had intermediate values between those of Polish Holstein- Friesian (dairy type) and Simmental (dual-purpose) cattle. No qualitative deviations, such as those associated with DFD syndrome (pH 48 h in the range of 5.51-5.72), were found in any of the samples, which indicates that the raw material is well suited to the production of beef for culinary purposes. The breed of cattle was found to significantly influence the water-holding capacity parameters. The highest (P < 0.001) drip loss was reported on the 14th day post mortem for the MLL of young bulls of the Simmental (6.89%) and Polish Red breeds (6.47%). The highest cooking loss was found on the 7th day post mortem in the MLL of young bulls of the Polish Holstein-Friesian (30.66%) and Simmental breeds (30.92%). Significantly (P < 0.01) the least favourable water-holding capacity (the largest amount of free water) was shown by the muscle of young bulls of the Simmental breed on the 2nd day post mortem (75.31 mg) and the Polish Red breed on the 7th and 14th days post mortem (67.42 mg and 60.36 mg, respectively). On the 2nd and 7th days post mortem, the most tender MLL muscle was found (according to WBSF shear force) in the Polish Holstein-Friesian (76.8 N and 69.3 N) and Polish Black-and-White breeds (89.5 N and 59.1 N). On the last, 14th day of ageing, the instrumental WBSF shear force for the breeds evaluated was definitely more homogeneous and did not differ significantly (shear force in the range of 56.3-65.7 N; P > 0.05). Compared to the muscle of native breeds, that of the Polish Holstein-Friesians showed significantly lower haem pigments (on average 35 ppm less; P < 0.01) and a lower proportion of redness (a*) (P < 0.01) on the 2nd and 7th days post mortem. The MLL muscle of young bulls of the Polish Red breed had the lowest (P < 0.01) percentage content of yellowness (b*) during the whole ageing period. Significantly (P < 0.01) lower oxidative stability (higher TBARS value) was found in the meat from young bulls of the Polish Holstein-Friesian breed (on the 2nd and 7th days post mortem) and the White-Backed breed (on the 14th day) compared to all other breeds analysed. In general, the ageing time had a positive influence on the muscle quality, as the determinants of the visual and sensory attractiveness of the meat, which are also important in the meat industry, remained stable (pH), improved (colour and water-holding capacity G-H) or became more similar among the breeds (tenderness assessed on the basis of shear force, cooking loss)....

Sous la forme de fluorure, le fluor entre dans la constitution des tissus durs comme les dents, les os et les cartilages. L’apport excessif en fluor pendant plusieurs mois ou plusieurs années lors de la période de formation des dents peut provoquer la fluorose. Certains aliments habituellement consommés au Maroc sont riches en fluor. Les traitements industriels de transformation, préparation et conservation mettent à la disposition du consommateur des aliments de coût moins chers et de compositions variables qui peuvent être nuisibles à la santé buccale. L’étude des qualités physicochimiques de différentes sources alimentaires de fluor constituées de différents thés noirs, verts, d’eaux de puits consommés par la population marocaine permet de dévoiler la corrélation entre la consommation des aliments riches en fluor et l’apparition de la fluorose dentaire. Différentes de tisanes de granules de 12 thés verts et noirs ont été préparés selon la variation de la durée d’infusion et du mode d’ébullition. Les teneurs de fluor, calcium, chlorures ont été déterminées par les méthodes spectrophotométriques sur 17 échantillons de thés verts et noirs commercialisés, thés glacés, thés de distributeur automatique, thé de buvette, thé de préparation familiale. La teneur en fluor a été déterminée sur 3 échantillons des eaux de puits, 3 eaux d’assainissement urbain de la région de Skhirat Témara afin de déterminer l’apport de fluor contenu dans l’eau de préparation des tisanes. Les analyses physicochimiques révèlent des taux de calcium de 14 à 60 mg/l, chlorures (14 à 75 mg/l) et de fluor (0,93 à 2,7 mg/l) chez les différents thés verts et noirs étudiés, thé de distributeur automatique, thé de buvette et familiale. Les analyses des taux de fluor de 3 échantillons de thés verts marquent Sultan, Menara, Dahmis et un thé noir Earl Grey révèlent des valeurs supérieures aux normes recommandées pour les enfants et les adultes. Le taux de fluor du thé de la buvette est supérieur à celui du thé de distributeur automatique et de préparation familiale. Ces résultats permettent de prévenir la population face au risque d’atteinte de la fluorose dentaire, en limitant la quantité de fluor ingérée par les aliments consommés. Les analyses des niveaux de fluor de tous les types de produits de thés et des eaux de préparation des thés permettront de disposer de mesures de protection de consommation excessive de fluor.Mots clés : Fluor, aliments, thés, Maroc, excès, risques, fluorose English Title: Physicochemical analyzes of different commercial teas and risk of excess fluorine in the population in Morocco In the form of fluoride, fluorine enters into the constitution of hard tissues such as teeth, bones and cartilage. Excessive intake of fluoride for several months or years during the period of tooth formation can cause fluorosis. Some foods usually consumed in Morocco are rich in fluorine. The industrial treatments of preparation, transformations make available to the consumer cheaper foods of variable composition which can be harmful to oral health. The study of physicochemical qualities of different food sources of fluorine consisting of different black teas, green teas and well water consumed by the population reveals a correlation between the consumption of foods rich in fluorine and the appearance of dental fluorosis. Different preparations of herbal teas from granules of 12 green and black teas were prepared according the variation of the infusion time, the boiling mode. The contents of fluorine, calcium, chlorides were determined by spectrophotometric methods on 17 samples of green and black teas from vending machines, refreshment tea, family preparation tea. The fluorine content was determined on 3 samples of well water, 3 urban sanitation water from the Skhirat Temara region in order to determine the fluorine content contained in the water for preparing herbal teas. The physicochemical analyzes reveal levels of Calcium (14 to 60 mg/l), Chlorides (14 to 75 mg/l) and fluorine (0.93 to 2.7 mg/l) in the various green and black teas studied, tea vending machine, refreshment and family tea. The analyzes of the fluoride levels of three samples of marketed green teas Sultan, Menara, Dahmis and an Earl Gray black tea reveal values higher than the recommended standards for children’s and adults. The fluoride level of the tea in the refreshment room is higher than that of the vending machine and family preparation tea. These results make it possible to warn the population facing the risk of developing dental fluorosis, by limiting the amount of fluorine ingested by the consumed food. Analyzes of fluoride levels of all types of tea products and tea preparation waters will provide measures to protect against excessive fluoride consumption. Keywords: Fluorine, foods, teas, Morocco, excess, risk, fluorosis.

Properties of metallic conjugate connections are stated by pointing out their relation to product conjugate connections. We define the analogous in metallic geometry of the structural and the virtual tensors from the almost product geometry and express the metallic conjugate connections in terms of these tensors. From an applied point of view we consider invariant distributions with respect to the metallic structure and for a natural pair of complementary distributions, the above structural and virtual tensors are expressed in terms of O'Neill–Gray tensor fields.

Abstract Background This study aimed to investigate feasible gray matter microstructural biomarkers with high sensitivity for early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) detection. We propose a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measure, “radiality”, as an early AD biomarker. It is the dot product of the normal vector of the cortical surface and primary diffusion direction, which reflects the fiber orientation within the cortical column. Methods We analyzed neuroimages from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, including images from 78 cognitively normal (CN), 50 early mild cognitive impairment (EMCI), 34 late mild cognitive impairment (LMCI), and 39 AD patients. We then evaluated the cortical thickness (CTh), mean diffusivity (MD), which are conventional AD magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) biomarkers, and the amount of accumulated amyloid and tau using positron emission tomography (PET). Radiality was projected on the gray matter surface to compare and validate the changes with different stages alongside other neuroimage biomarkers. Results The results revealed decreased radiality primarily in the entorhinal, insula, frontal, and temporal cortex with further progression of disease. In particular, radiality could delineate the difference between the CN and EMCI groups, while the other biomarkers could not. We examined the relationship between radiality and other biomarkers to validate its pathological evidence in AD. Overall, radiality showed a high association with conventional biomarkers. Additional ROI analysis revealed the dynamics of AD-related changes as stages onward. Conclusion Radiality in cortical gray matter showed AD-specific changes and relevance with other conventional AD biomarkers with high sensitivity. Moreover, radiality could identify the group differences seen in EMCI, representative of changes in early AD, which supports its superiority in early diagnosis compared to that possible with conventional biomarkers. We provide evidence of structural changes with cognitive impairment and suggest radiality as a sensitive biomarker for identifying early AD.

In this review article we have consolidated the imaging literature of patients with schizophrenia across the full spectrum of modalities in radiology including computed tomography (CT), morphologic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetoencephalography (MEG). We look at the impact of various subtypes of schizophrenia on imaging findings and the changes that occur with medical and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) therapy. Our goal was a comprehensive multimodality summary of the findings of state-of-the-art imaging in untreated and treated patients with schizophrenia. Clinical imaging in schizophrenia is used to exclude structural lesions which may produce symptoms that may mimic those of patients with schizophrenia. Nonetheless one finds global volume loss in the brains of patients with schizophrenia with associated increased cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume and decreased gray matter volume. These features may be influenced by the duration of disease and or medication use. For functional studies, be they fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET), rs-fMRI, task-based fMRI, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) or MEG there generally is hypoactivation and disconnection between brain regions. However, these findings may vary depending upon the negative or positive symptomatology manifested in the patients. MR spectroscopy generally shows low N-acetylaspartate from neuronal loss and low glutamine (a neuroexcitatory marker) but glutathione may be elevated, particularly in non-treatment responders. The literature in schizophrenia is difficult to evaluate because age, gender, symptomatology, comorbidities, therapy use, disease duration, substance abuse, and coexisting other psychiatric disorders have not been adequately controlled for, even in large studies and meta-analyses.

Abstract Background: Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) is characterized by bone fragility and increased fracture susceptibility. Most mutations occur in COL1A1 and COL1A2 genes. Rarely, mutations in BMP1 have been reported in association with OI type XIII. Disease severity is generally more severe when the mutation affects both gene products encoded by BMP1 that serve as procollagenases: bone morphogenic protein 1 and mammalian tolloid (mTLD) [1]. Clinical Case: A 7-year-old Hispanic boy, with speech and gross motor delays, sustained five bilateral tibial fractures with minimal trauma since age 2.5 years. At age 6 years, he developed severe back pain after a minor fall. Diffuse spinal osteopenia and multiple vertebral compression fractures (VCF) at T9, L1, L3 were identified radiographically, with progressive vertebral height loss in the ensuing 9 months. Fatigue was reported after walking &gt;10 min, with difficulty running and climbing stairs. There was no family history of musculoskeletal disorders. Stature was consistently between 10-15th% for age. Subtle facial dysmorphism included micrognathia and small chin, with patchy blue-gray sclerae, and normal dentition. The lumbar spine was tender to percussion. Gait was slow and antalgic with external rotation of the right hip. Laboratory evaluation revealed normal serum calcium, iPTH, magnesium, phosphate, 25-hydroxyvitamin D and alkaline phosphatase for age. P1NP was slightly high (193 µg/L, 30-110 µg/L) and CTX was slightly low (554 pg/mL, n: 574-1849 pg/mL), the latter being atypical for OI. Total hip BMD (adjusted for height Z-score) was normal (Z-score = 1.76) and adjusted femoral neck BMD was high (Z-score = 2.67). VCFs precluded assessment of lumbar spine BMD. Genomic analysis revealed a homozygous missense mutation in exon 4 of BMP1 resulting in an amino acid substitution (c. C505T; p.Arg169Cys) in both the bone morphogenetic protein 1 and mTLD gene products of BMP1. The mutation is predicted to be damaging to both proteins, and associated with this rare form of OI. Conclusion: We report a novel homozygous mutation in BMP1 identified in a child with autosomal recessive OI. Unlike most forms of OI, patients with type XIII often have normal or increased BMD [1], making a correlation between BMD and fracture risk difficult. While bisphosphonates (BP) may help reduce recurrent fractures and provide symptomatic relief, the broad phenotypic spectrum and concern for further increasing BMD complicate management. A high resolution peripheral quantitative CT scan to assess bone microarchitecture and quality may aid in the decision of BP therapy. As evidence is limited on the effectiveness of BP in this rare form of OI, it is important to consider each case individually. 1. Sangsin, A., et al., Two novel compound heterozygous BMP1 mutations in a patient with osteogenesis imperfecta: a case report. BMC Med Genet, 2017. 18(1): p. 25.

Los tratamientos de tendinopatías van en su mayoría orientados a tratar el tendón y el músculo correspondiente. Sin embargo, esta perspectiva ignora los cambios a nivel del sistema nervioso que se producen asociados al dolor. Ebonie Rio y su grupo de investigadores están especializados en el campo de las tendinopatías y neurociencias. En base a esta problemática, desarrollaron el protocolo TNT o Tendon Neuroplastic Training que se analiza en este estudio. Se piensa que existen déficits de fuerza que explican en gran parte la tendinopatía. Sin embargo, se ha observado que atletas de salto con tendinopatía rotuliana son mejores saltadores que aquellos atletas sin tendinopatía rotuliana. Esto puede deberse a que la fuerza máxima no explica la compleja interacción entre la activación y la inhibición de diferentes estructuras que se produce durante la realización de un gesto específico como puede ser saltar. En estudios se ha observado que atletas con tendinopatía rotuliana tienen mayor activación y, paradójicamente, mayor inhibición que los sujetos de control a nivel cerebral, lo que sugiere una fuerte descompensación entre vías excitatorias y vías inhibitorias en la activación muscular. Esto puede deberse a estrategias adaptativas que buscan proteger al tendón disminuyendo las demandas mecánicas a la vez que se asegura la ejecución de un gesto. Suceden, pues, cambios en el control del movimiento en estos pacientes que alteran su gesto además de reducir su variabilidad a la hora de ejecutarlo. Esto puede explicar en parte porque las tendinopatías tienden a reaparecer, puesto que estas alteraciones se mantienen en el tiempo incluso habiendo desaparecido el dolor. Estos cambios además afectan al lado contrario, aumentando el riesgo de desarrollar tendinopatía también. Se produce a nivel cerebral una inhibición del lado contrario, disminuyendo la activación muscular. Esta estrategia de alteración en el control motor se expone en este artículo con el ejemplo de un conductor novel que controla la velocidad de su vehículo con un pie en el freno y otro en el acelerador.Toda esta información indica que se debe realizar una rehabilitación que dirija gran parte de su objetivo a recuperar los niveles óptimos de control motor en las tendinopatías, sin obviar la relevancia del trabajo de fuerza dirigido a mejorar tanto la fuerza muscular como la capacidad de carga del tendón. El uso de retroalimentación visual o de un metrónomo durante la ejecución del ejercicio de fuerza dirigido a tratar tendinopatías demostraron mejorar esos patrones de activación e inhibición tanto en la extremidad afecta como en la contraria en comparación con un protocolo de fuerza sin ningún tipo de estímulo en el estudio de Leung et al. Partiendo de estos datos, se desarrolló el protocolo TNT, creando dos grupos de ejercicio con un ritmo externo auditivo. Uno de los grupos debía trabajar el ejercicio en isométrico, es decir, manteniendo una carga sin movimiento según le indicase el ritmo, realizando 5 series de 45 segundos, al 80% de su capacidad máxima de contracción. El otro grupo realizó 4 series de 8 repeticiones con 3 segundos de contracción y 4 segundos de elongación siguiendo el ritmo, al 80% de sus 8 repeticiones máximas. Tras cuatro semanas, ambos grupos redujeron el dolor significativamente, si bien el grupo de isométricos obtuvo una respuesta de analgesia más rápida. Además, ambos grupos mejoraron los niveles de inhibición a nivel neuronal, mejorando la activación. Si bien sería necesario ampliar el estudio con más sujetos y compararlo con un protocolo que no use un ritmo externo, estos resultados parecen indicar una buena reducción del dolor y mejora en el estado de activación muscular en pacientes con tendinopatía rotuliana con el protocolo TNT.

Entender las acciones que realizan otras personas es una función cognitiva fundamental en el ser humano tanto para la supervivencia como para la relación social. Desde el descubrimiento de las neuronas espejopor Giacomo Rizzolatti y su grupo de investigación en 1996, numerosos estudios dentro del campo de la neurociencia han tratado de dilucidar qué relevancia tiene nuestro sistema de neuronas espejo en las acciones motoras. Las neuronas espejo fueron descubiertas en macacos, tras observar la activación de este tipo de neuronas cuando el animal realizaba una acción motora, pero también cuando observaba realizar esa acción. Estas neuronas fueron descubiertas posteriormente en humanos, y son consideradas en la actualidad como el nexo entre las acciones que observamos y la representación motora cortical que realizamos de ellas. Es por ello que las neuronas espejo se consideran el fundamento del aprendizaje de acciones motoras o aprendizaje motor, y están ampliamente relacionadas con el aprendizaje por imitación. Sin embargo, uno de los aspectos más relevantes en torno al descubrimiento de las neuronas espejo es que la activación de estas no se produce únicamente tras la visualización de un gesto, sino que se activan cuando existe una compresión de dicho gesto. Las neuronas espejo del macaco se activaban cuando observaban a un investigador realizar un gesto para alcanzar comida, pero no lo hacían si este realizaba el gesto con un utensilio como un tenedor o realizaba el gesto sin la presencia del alimento (1). Uno de los hallazgos más relevantes en este aspecto fue descrito por Giovanni Buccino y colaboradores, que investigan acerca de las neuronas espejo y la neurociencia en el Departamento de Ciencias Médicas y Quirúrgicas en le Universidad de Catanzaro, Italia. "Las neuronas espejo se consideran el fundamento del aprendizaje de acciones motoras, y están ampliamente relacionadas con el aprendizaje por imitación ” Estos investigadores profundizaron acerca de la compresión de las acciones motoras en el sistema de neuronas espejo. Para ello, realizaron un estudio en el que participaron personas sanas que observaban diferentes acciones, y a través de imágenes de Resosnancia Magnetica Funcional, se observaban las diferentes áreas cerebrales involucradas en la compresión e interpretación de los gestos observados (2). Los participantes del estudio observaron el gesto de morder un alimento. Este gesto era realizado en primer lugar por un ser humano, en segundo lugar, por un perro y en tercer lugar por un mono. Lo que observaron en las imágenes cerebrales es que independientemente de que el gesto fuera realizado por el ser humano o por un animal, las áreas cerebrales que se activaban en los participantes eran similares. Estas áreas involucraban áreas visuales, pero, además, también se activaron la corteza parietal y la corteza motora. Estas áreas cerebrales no están relacionadas con el componente visual, sino con la representación motora de la acción, y, por tanto, con la activación del sistema neuronas espejo. “Nuestro sistema de neuronas espejo se activa ante las cosas que podemos hacer o que tenemos memorizadas en nuestros gestos motores, pero no en las que no podemos hacer ” Posteriormente, los participantes del estudio observaron otro gesto motor, en este caso una acción comunicativa, de forma que observaron a un ser humano hablando, a un perro ladrando y a un mono chillando. Lo más interesante de este estudio, es que en este caso sólo se activó el sistema de neuronas espejo en el caso de la observación del habla humana, mientras que, en el caso de la visualización del perro o el mono, únicamente se activaron áreas relacionadas con la visualización, pero no con el acto motor. Esto implica que nuestro sistema de neuronas espejo se activa ante las cosas que podemos hacer y tenemos memorizadas en nuestros gestos motores, pero no en las que no podemos hacer. En conclusión, el sistema de neuronas espejo tiene una gran relación con la compresión de acciones que vemos en los demás, así como en la intención y el contexto en el que se realizan los gestos motores, siendo por tanto un aspecto relevante en la neurorehabilitación de gestos motores en numerosos pacientes.

Editorial<p>La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS, 1948) define la salud como un estado de bienestar físico, social y mental, constructo que refleja la interacción de factores sociales, políticos, económicos, culturales y científicos.(Alcántara, 2008), aspecto que hoy se encuentra amenazada por la aparición del Coronavirus 2019 (Covid 19) que produce el Síndrome Respiratorio Agudo Severo(SARSCoV-2), (García-Iglesias et al, 2020;Del Rio y Malani, 2019; Lai et al, 2020) y que está poniendo en evidencia los factores señalados. Desde el marco político se indica que se está viviendo una tragedia griega en las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y China, con repercusiones para el mundo. Ambos gobiernos se han hecho señalamientos y acusaciones, desaprovechando una gran oportunidad de cooperación, sobre todo para generar vacunas, por lo que se hace necesario reducir tensiones entre las potencias y apoyar a las naciones pobres a luchar contra el virus(Christensen, 2020). Desde el marco socio-económico se ha señalado que la pandemia es una prueba de estrés para los gobiernos y de liderazgos para los presidentes, poniendo en evidencia la crisis en los servicios públicos, sobre todo los vinculados a salud y educación. (Malamud y Nuñez, 2020). La crisis ha afectado ampliamente la economía y el mercado laboral, tanto en la oferta, producción de bienes y servicios; como en la demanda relacionado al consumo e inversión (Organización Internacional del trabajo, 2020). Desde el plano científico, ha permitido establecer propuestas como fondos concursables, rediseñar incentivos a la carrera científica y actualizar practicas científicas en las universidades, así como mejorar la trasparencia y eficiencia del gasto público en ciencia y tecnología, además de proponer aspectos colaborativo entre países para secuenciación genética del virus, además de propiciar prácticas de ciencia abierta, formar investigadores en bioinformática y ciencia de datos; además de fortalecer las políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (Banco Interamericano del Desarrollo, 2020) Considerando la salud con sus tres componentes, es evidente como la salud física está comprometida frente al Covid-19, sobre todo en las personas que disponen factores de riesgo llegando a ser mortal. Díaz Castrillón y Toro- Montoya(2020) señalan que las tasas de mortalidad se estiman entre 1% y 3%, afectando principalmente a los adultos mayores y a las personas con comorbilidades, como hipertensión, diabetes, enfermedad cardiovascular y cáncer, a la cual también podemos agregar la obesidad (Petrova et al, 2020). Señalan. García-Iglesias, et al (2020) que muchas personas infectadas son asintomáticas; quienes expulsan grandes cantidades de virus, siendo un gran reto su control para detener la propagación de la infección. Establecen que la vigilancia epidemiológica es muy importante para controlar la propagación del virus, y el aislamiento es el medio más efectivo para bloquear la transmisión. Debido a este panorama la OMS anunció el 30 de enero del 2020 la situación de emergencia de la salud pública a nivel mundial y el 11 de marzo fue considerada como pandemia, ya que afectaba a más de un continente y donde los casos de cada país se daban por transmisión comunitaria. Amela, Cortes y Sierra (2010) indican que el aislamiento y la cuarentena son dos estrategias de salud pública no farmacológicas, que se utilizan para prevenir la propagación de una enfermedad altamente contagiosa, definiendo tres conceptos importantes: Aislamiento: separación y restricción de movimientos de las personas enfermas (casos confirmados y/o sospechosos) con el fin de prevenir la transmisión de la infección a personas susceptibles. Cuarentena: restricción de movimientos de las personas sanas que hayan estado en contacto con personas enfermas durante su periodo infeccioso. Es una medida de precaución para prevenir la posible transmisión de la infección a otras personas. Medidas de distanciamiento social: incluyen medidas en la comunidad para reducir el contacto entre la población como pueden ser: la recomendación de restringir viajes, medidas en el entorno escolar, laboral y comunitario. (p.499). En el Perú al día 24 de Agosto del 2020 se reportaron 600,438 casos positivos por covid-19 y 27,813 fallecidos por este virus, con una tasa de letalidad de 4.63%,(https://covid19.minsa.gob.pe/sala_situacional.asp). Según la Universidad de John Hopkins ocupa el sexto lugar de casos en el mundo (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html). Esta epidemia no solo está reflejando la situación de la salud pública, sino como señala Cueto (2000), citando a McNeill “las epidemias son el factor oculto y verdadero de la Historia que explica el desenlace de muchos acontecimientos”(p.17), o citando a Durey “Una epidemia magnifica la relación entre los sistemas económicos y las condiciones de existencia; ilumina dimensiones poco conocidas de las mentalidades, ideologías y creencias religiosas, e ilustra los esfuerzos y las carencias por cuidar la salud pública(p.18)”. Entonces el Covid-19 está reflejando nuestra personalidad básica, nuestras creencias, nuestra identidad cultural y aspectos psicosociales que pueden estar reflejadas en la “cultura Combi”o el “achoramiento”. A nivel regional América Latina está considerada como el epicentro de la enfermedad (https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51705060). Este problema de salud pública suscito que el Gobierno del Perú declarara el día 15 de marzo el estado de emergencia nacional y aislamiento social obligatorio, el mismo que se fue extendiendo en varias oportunidades, hasta llegar a más de 100 días. Asimismo, Llerena y Sánchez (2020), señalan que la pandemia ha puesto en evidencia una serie de problemas en el país, desde poca capacidad de gestión de gobiernos regionales, corrupción en el gasto público, violencia de género, situación vulnerable de los migrantes no sólo extranjeros sino también nacionales, así como situación critica de las industrias y emprendimientos culturales. A este panorama Maguiña (2020) expresa: “Esta nueva enfermedad (COVID-19), ha desnudado de manera cruda y real, la terrible situación sanitaria del Perú: hospitales viejos, falta de materiales, laboratorios especializados, camas, ventiladores, especialistas, y una población geriátrica abandonada, médicos mal remunerados, sin seguro médico, y como nunca, falta de equipos de bioseguridad para combatir a este nuevo flagelo.” (p.8). No cabe duda que las pandemias perturban nuestro sentido de la realidad y el orden, lo que lleva a un cambio en la forma de almacenar y metabolizar recuerdos y experiencias (Khan y Huremović, 2020). La situación descrita está generando reacciones psicológicas, como lo expresa Brooks et al., (2000): temor a la infección por virus y enfermedades, expresión de sentimientos de frustración y aburrimiento, debido a no poder satisfacer las necesidades básicas y no disponer de información y recomendaciones de actuación claras. Esta pandemia también activa nuestras actitudes hacia la muerte, revive nuestra angustia existencial, pone en juego la fortaleza física y psicológica de los equipos de salud y enfrenta a los familiares ante el duelo por haber perdido seres queridos. Así como respuestas al aislamiento social, desde uso del tiempo libre hasta la convivencia, poniendo en juego nuestra salud mental y especialmente nuestra resiliencia. Desde el ámbito de la psicología positiva podemos decir que la pandemia está poniendo en evaluación nuestras fortalezas trascendentales, las mismas que generan emociones positivas y permiten el funcionamiento óptimo del ser humano (Fredrickson, 2001), entendiéndose como virtudes y fortalezas, consideradas como rasgos positivos de personalidad, las cuales están conformadas por: sabiduría, coraje, humanidad, justicia, templanza y trascendencia (Martínez, 2006). Casali, Feraco, Ghisi y Meneghetti (2020) investigaron el papel protector de las fortalezas del carácter para mantener la salud mental y la autoeficacia durante el aislamiento social, recopilando datos de 944 encuestados italianos, mediante una encuesta en línea que investigaba las fortalezas del carácter, la angustia psicológica y la autoeficacia relacionada con Covid-19 un mes después de que comenzara el aislamiento. Los resultados pusieron en evidencia cuatro factores de fortaleza: trascendencia, interpersonal, apertura y moderación. Las fortalezas de la trascendencia establecieron una asociación inversa con la angustia psicológica y una asociación positiva con la autoeficacia, evidenciando la importancia de las fortalezas del carácter para apoyar la salud mental(menores niveles de estrés, ansiedad y depresión) y una mayor autoeficacia como una mejor forma de abordar la situación provocada por la pandemia, por tanto el eslogan italiano de Covid-19”todo va estar bien”, difundido por los medios de comunicación ayuda a tener una actitud positiva para poder manejar mejor el confinamiento y el aislamiento social, generando pensamientos esperanzadores y mejor manejo de los eventos estresantes. Se ha considerado que la salud mental es la fuerza energética más importante para el desarrollo de un país, constituyendo: “… la actitud psicológica, espiritual y social del ser humano frente a la vida, así mismo y a los demás,… ” (Perales, 1989, p.106), habiendo expresado la OMS (2013) “no hay salud sin salud mental”.(p.6). Respecto a la salud mental del personal de salud, una revisión sistematizó 13 estudios, indicándose que la salud psicológica de los profesionales sanitarios que trabajan directamente con pacientes covid 19, presentan niveles medioaltos de ansiedad, depresión, preocupación e insomnio, y en menor medida estrés. Estas reacciones psicológicas son producto de la carga y jornada laboral, unido a las restricciones de materiales de protección, sufrir aislamiento o cuarentena, ver morir a sus pacientes, y estar expuestos de forma más directa a la infección, generando miedo de contagiar a sus familiares, (García - Iglesias, et al. 2020). Lai et al (2020) efectuaron una investigación de encuestas sobre 1257 trabajadores de salud de 34 hospitales de China equipados para pacientes con COVID-19, recogiendo información desde el 29 de enero de 2020 hasta el 3 de febrero de 2020, reportándose: síntomas de depresión en 50,4%, ansiedad en 44,6%, insomnio en 34,0% y angustia 71,5%. Los trabajadores que brindaban una atención más directa, efectuando el diagnóstico, el tratamiento y el cuidado de los pacientes con COVID-19 se asociaron con un mayor riesgo de síntomas de depresión, ansiedad, insomnio y angustia. En relación a la salud mental de la población general, Becerra-García, Giménez, Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Barbeito y Calvo (2020) realizaron una investigación en una muestra de 151 personas, cuyas edades oscilaban entre los 18 y los 76 años, en el que se utilizó de forma online la versión española del Cuestionario de evaluación de síntomas-45, con la finalidad de medir síntomas psicopatológicos. Los participantes más jóvenes (18-35 años) presentaron niveles más altos de hostilidad, depresión, ansiedad y sensibilidad interpersonal que los participantes mayores (36-76 años). Los encuestados con mayor actividad o con empleo presentaron puntajes más bajos en depresión que las personas desempleadas. Los participantes que utilizaban menos de 30 minutos a informarse sobre el COVID-19 tuvieron puntuaciones más altas en hostilidad y sensibilidad interpersonal que los participantes que refirieron dedicar al menos 30 minutos. Los encuestados que practicaban deporte diariamente informaron un menor nivel de síntomas de somatización que las personas que no tenían actividad deportiva. Aquellos que tenían familiares, conocidos, con COVID-19 expresaron niveles más altos de ansiedad que aquellos que no tenían a personas cercanas infectadas. Por otro lado los participantes que vivían solos mostraron un mayor nivel de psicoticismo en comparación con aquellos que vivían con más de dos personas. Estos resultados reflejan la importancia de ciertos factores en la protección de la salud mental: tener empleo, obtener información, hacer deporte y una familia con varios miembros. Lozano (2020) describe diversos estudios efectuados en China, relacionados a la salud mental en la población general donde se identificó que el 53,8% presentaba impacto psicológico de moderado a severo. Respecto a síntomas específicos un 16,5% tenían indicadores de síntomas depresivos, el 28,8% síntomas ansiosos y un 8,1% refirió estrés. Los factores asociados con alto impacto psicológico y niveles elevados de estrés, así como síntomas de ansiedad y depresión fueron sexo femenino, ser estudiante, tener síntomas físicos específicos y una percepción pobre de la propia salud. (Wang et al.,2020). Otra investigación en el mismo país estableció que la población general presentaba un 35% de angustia, donde las mujeres presentaron mayores niveles que los varones, al igual que los grupos etarios de 18 30 años y los mayores de 60 años. (Qiu et al., 2020). Una población significativa son los estudiantes universitarios, según la UNESCO (2020) 23,4 millones de estudiantes de educación superior y a 1,4 millones de docentes en América Latina y el Caribe, han sido afectado por el Covid-19 al cerrarse los centros de educación superior. Una evaluación de los aspecto psicológicos en estudiantes universitarios de México, que estuvieron confinados por la pandemia de Covid-19, reporto síntomas de moderados a severos de estrés, problemas psicosomáticos, problemas para dormir, disfunción social en la actividad diaria y síntomas depresivos, especialmente en el grupo de las mujeres y en los estudiantes más jóvenes (18-25 años). (González Jaimes, Tejeda- Alcántara, Espinosa-Méndez y Ontiveros-Hernández, 2020). Una evaluación del impacto emocional en 3960 estudiantes universitarios de una universidad pública de Lima durante el aislamiento social identificó que las emociones positivas que predominan son: alerta, interesado en las cosas, atento, optimista y fuerte; y las emociones negativas que destacan: asustado, tenso, miedoso, nervioso y disgustado, sobresaliendo las emociones positivas a las negativas, no existiendo diferencia por sexo (Livia, Aguirre, Rondon y Lara, 2020). Huarcaya (2020) establece que en la pandemia de COVID-19 la atención se ha focalizado en los pacientes infectados y en el personal de salud, descuidándose a las poblaciones marginadas por la sociedad, como es el caso de aquellos que presentan trastornos mentales, quienes debido a su condición tienen mayor riesgo de infectarse, como resultado de su deterioro cognitivo, poca conciencia del riesgo y mínimos esfuerzos de protección personal. Si la pandemia por COVID-19 afecta a la población general de manera significativa, generándose sín¬tomas como estrés, depresión y ansiedad; esto sería mayor en las personas con problemas psicológicos, pudiendo agravar su estado. Respecto del aislamiento social Huremovic (2019) indica que las personas que están aisladas socialmente, con movilidad restringida y pobre contacto con los demás son vulnerables a presentar reacciones psicopatológicas (insomnio, ansiedad, depresión y trastorno por estrés postraumático), que van desde síntomas aislados hasta el desarrollo de un trastorno mental. Se ha establecido que la cuarentena, practicada para el control de infecciones, así como el distanciamiento social, han recibido poca atención de la psiquiatría, siendo necesario sus aportes para manejar preocupaciones, miedos y creencias irracionales sobre la enfermedad. Este aislamiento social conduce a la soledad crónica y aburrimiento, que si es lo suficientemente largo puede tener efectos perjudiciales sobre el bienestar físico y mental (Banerjee y Rai, 2020). Bezerra, Silva, Soares y Silva (2020) presentan resultados de una investigación realizada en Brasil sobre la percepción del aislamiento social durante la pandemia de COVID-19. Diseñaron un cuestionario elaborado en Google Forms, distribuido por redes sociales, aplicándole a una muestra de 16.440 sujetos. La convivencia social fue el aspecto más afectado entre las personas con mayor escolaridad e ingresos, para las personas de bajos ingresos y escolaridad lo problemas financieros provocaron el mayor impacto. Los que practican actividad física revelaron menores niveles de estrés y mayor normalidad en el sueño. Se concluye que la percepción sobre el aislamiento social varía según los ingresos, educación, edad y género. Sin embargo, la mayoría cree que es la medida de control más adecuada y están dispuestos a esperar el tiempo que sea necesario para contribuir a la lucha contra el COVID-19. La Alianza para la Protección de la Infancia en la Acción Humanitaria (2020) señala: “Enfermedades infecciosas como el COVID-19 pueden alterar los entornos donde niños, niñas y adolescentes crecen y se desarrollan. Cambios que desestabilizan a la familia, las amistades, la rutina diaria y la comunidad en general o pueden tener consecuencias negativas en el bienestar, el desarrollo y la protección de la niñez y adolescencia” (p.1), por ello el Gobierno del Perú considero a los niños, niñas y adolescentes en grupo de riesgo, restringiendo su desplazamiento fuera del domicilio de los mismos, pero no cabe duda del impacto que está generando en su salud mental, entendida como el bienestar psicológico que incluye el bienestar personal, expresado en pensamientos positivos, bienestar interpersonal, que involucra la relaciones con los demás y la capacidad de aprender (UNICEF,2020), debiendo indicarse que este impacto en la salud mental no está estudiado, considerándose la evidencia disponible como anecdótica y estudios con limitaciones en sus conclusiones(García y Cuellar –Flores, 2020). Este panorama plantea la necesidad de proteger la salud mental del personal de salud tanto como la de la población general y sujetos en riesgo, con la finalidad de garantizar el bienestar, para lo cual se hace necesario evaluar las creencias en salud, vale decir, la percepción de la susceptibilidad de sufrir una determinada enfermedad, que tal vez podríamos reflejarla como tener conciencia de poder enfermarse; la percepción que la persona es vulnerable al problema; así como la creencia que el comportamiento a adoptar, producirá un beneficio y un costo personal aceptable, aspecto que puede complementarse con lo expresado por Concha, Urrutia y Riquelme, (2012): “ … si esta explicación la llevamos al plano de la salud, las personas actuarán alineadas a sus creencias, aprendidas en un contexto cultural determinado y descartando cualquier otra alternativa de cuidado en salud que no coincida con dichas creencias.” (p.89). Otro aspecto que ha generado dificultades en la adaptación a este nuevo escenario, es el teletrabajo, el mismo que ha permitido en alguna medida, cumplir con el aislamiento social, y seguir laborando, pero puede generar dificultades en el equilibrio psicológico del trabajador. Torres (2020) describe la tensión y ansiedad causada por la emergencia sanitaria, señalando el agotamiento físico ocasionado por la combinación del aumento de la carga laboral unido con las labores domésticas, y finalmente el agotamiento visual provocado por la interacción persona-computador para la realización del teletrabajo o trabajo remoto. Es probable que existan mayores sentimientos de frustración y conductas de riesgo en grupos vulnerables, como los trabajadores informales, migrantes y trabajadoras domésticas, dadas sus condiciones laborales. Finalmente se debe evaluar el impacto del Covid 19 en la enseñanza remota, el mismo que ha puesto en evidencia el desarrollo de las competencias digitales en diversas poblaciones, sobre todo los involucrados en el ámbito educativo. Es probable que algunos estudiantes hayan incrementado sus dificultades de aprendizaje y otros lo estén desarrollando, e incrementándose comportamientos disruptivos, lo que seguramente generará deserción y bajo rendimiento académico, unido a los diversos problemas de usabilidad de los recursos tecnológicos. El Banco Mundial (2020) ha expresado que el aprendizaje se reducirá y aumentarán las deserciones escolares, en particular, entre las personas más desfavorecidas. “También puede sufrir la salud mental de los estudiantes debido al aislamiento que deben mantener durante el período de distanciamiento social y los efectos traumáticos de la crisis sobre las familias. Además, es posible que los jóvenes que no van a la escuela tengan comportamientos más peligrosos y que aumente la fertilidad adolescente” (p. 6). Se ha indicado que el impacto en la educación superior del coronavirus está vinculado a un alto índice de disminución de matrículas, y aproximadamente el 15% de estudiantes dejaron sus carreras durante la pandemia, proyectándose que en el siguiente semestre llegaría al 35% (Pérez, 2020). Harari (2018) establece que los seres humanos han estado formulándose preguntas como ¿Quién soy? ¿Qué debo hacer en la vida? ¿Cuál es el sentido de la vida?, donde cada generación necesita una respuesta nueva; este escenario descrito y condicionado por un coronavirus invita a preguntarnos: ¿Cuál es la mejor respuesta en la actualidad? Park, Peterson y Sun (2013), señalan que la razón final de la vida no es sobrevivir a la adversidad, sino florecer y crecer, que todos merecemos una vida feliz, saludable y plena, pero es necesario cuidarla, controlando las conductas de riesgo, buscando el equilibrio entre el principio del placer y la realidad. Queda en nuestra capacidad cognitiva y emocional no autodestruirnos.</p>

Introduction This article presents the trans-disciplinary encounters with and perspectives on embodiment of three creative-arts practitioners within the Deakin University research project Flows & Catchments. The project explores how creative arts participate in community and the possibility of well-being. We discuss our preparations for creative work exhibited at the 2012 Lake Bolac Eel Festival in regional Western Victoria, Australia. This festival provided a fertile time-place-space context through which to meet with one regional community and engage with scales of geological and historical time (volcanoes, water flows, first contact), human and animal roots and routes (settlement, eel migrations, hunting and gathering), and cultural heritage (the eel stone traps used by indigenous people, settler stonewalling, indigenous language recovery). It also allowed us to learn from how a festival brings to the surface these scales of time, place and space. All these scales also require an embodied response—a physical relation to the land and to the people of a community—which involves how specific interests and ways of engaging coordinate experience and accentuate particular connections of material to cultural patterns of activity. The focus of our interest in “embody” and embodiment relates to the way in which the term constantly slides from metaphor (figural connection) to description (literal process). Our research question, therefore, addresses the specific interaction of these two tendencies. Rather than eliminate one in preference to the other, it is the interaction and movement from one to the other that an approach through creative-arts practices makes visible. The visibility of these tendencies and the mechanisms to which they are linked (media, organising principle or relational aesthetic) are highlighted by the particular time-place-space modalities that each of the creative arts deploys. When looking across different creative practices, the attachments and elisions become more fine-grained and clearer. A key aim of practice-led research is to observe, study and learn, but also to transform the production of meaning and its relationship to the community of users (Barrett and Bolt). The opportunity to work collaboratively with a community like the one at Lake Bolac provided an occasion to gauge our discerning and initiating skills within creative-arts research and to test the argument that the combination of our different approaches adds to community and individual well-being. Our approach is informed by Gilles Deleuze’s ethical proposition that the health of a community is directly influenced by the richness of the composition of its parts. With this in mind, each creative-arts practitioner will emphasize their encounter with an element of community. Zones of Practice–Drawing Together (Jondi Keane) Galleries are strange in-between places, both destinations and non-sites momentarily outside of history and place. The Lake Bolac Memorial Hall, however, retains its character of place, participating in the history of memorial halls through events such as the Eel Festival. The drawing project “Stone Soup” emphasizes the idea of encounter (O’Sullivan), particularly the interactions of sensibilities shaped by a land, a history and an orientation that comprise an affective field. The artist’s brief in this situation—the encounter as the rupture of habitual modes of being (O’Sullivan 1)—provides a platform of relations to be filled with embodied experience that connects the interests, actions and observations produced outside the gallery to the amplified and dilated experience presented within the gallery. My work suggests that person-to person in-situ encounters intensify the movement across embodied ways of knowing. “Stone Soup”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Arts practice and practice-led research makes available the spectrum of embodied engagements that are mixed to varying degrees with the conceptual positioning of material, both social and cultural. The exhibition and workshop I engaged with at the Eel Festival focused on three level of attention: memory (highly personal), affection (intra-personal) and exchange (communal, non-individual). Attention, the cognitive activity of directing and guiding perception, observation and interpretation, is the thread that binds body to environment, body to history, and body to the constructs of person, family and community. Jean-Jacques Lecercle observes that, for Deleuze, “not only is the philosopher in possession of a specific techne, essential to the well-being of the community, a techne the practice of which demands the use of specialized tools, but he makes his own tools: a system of concepts is a box of tools” (Lecercle 100). This notion is further enhanced when informed by enactive theories of cognition in which, “bodily practices including gesture are part of the activity in which concepts are formed” (Hutchins 429) Creative practices highlight the role of the body in the delicate interaction between a conceptually shaped gallery “space” and the communally constructed meeting “place.” My part of the exhibition consisted of a series of drawings/diagrams characterized under the umbrella of “making stone soup.” The notion of making stone soup is taken from folk tales about travelers in search of food who invent the idea of a magical stone soup to induce cooperation by asking local residents to garnish the “magical” stone soup with local produce. Other forms of the folk tale from around the world include nail soup, button soup and axe soup. Participants were able to choose from three different types of soup (communal drawing) that they would like to help produce. When a drawing was completed another one could be started. The mix of ideas and images constituted the soup. Three types of soup were on offer and required assistance to make: Stone soup–communal drawing of what people like to eat, particularly earth-grown produce; what they would bring to a community event and how they associate these foods with the local identity. Axe soup–communal drawing of places and spaces important to the participants because of connection to the land, to events and/or people. These might include floor plans, scenes of rooms or views, or memories of places that mix with the felt importance of spaces.Heirloom soup–communal drawing of important objects associated with particular persons. The drawings were given to the festival organizer to exhibit at the following year’s festival. "Story Telling”. Photograph by Daniel Armstrong.Drawing in: Like taking a breath, the act of drawing and putting one’s thought and affections into words or pictures is focused through the sensation of the drawing materials, the size of the paper, and the way one orients oneself to the paper and the activity. These pre-drawing dispositions set up the way a conversation might occur and what the tenor of that exchange may bring. By asking participants to focus on three types of attachments or attentions and contributing to a collective drawing, the onus on art skills or poignancy is diminished, and the feeling of turning inward to access feeling and memory turns outward towards inscription and cooperation. Drawing out: Like exhaling around vowels and consonants, the movement of the hand with brush and ink or pen and ink across a piece of paper follows our patterns of engagement, the embodied experience consistent with all our other daily activities. We each have a way of orchestrating the sequence of movements that constitute an image-story. The maker of stone soup must provide a new encounter, a platform for cooperation. I found that drawing alongside the participants, talking to them, inscribing and witnessing their stories in this way, heightened the collective activity and produced a new affective field of common experience. In this instance the stone soup became the medium for an emergent composition of relations. Zones of Practice–Embodying Photographic Space (Rozalind Drummond) Photography inevitably entails a certain characterization of reality. From being “out there” the world comes to be “inside” photographs—a visual sliver, a grab, and an upload, a perpetual tumble cycle of extruded images existing everywhere yet nowhere. While the outside, the “out there” is brought within the frame of the photograph, I am interested rather in looking, through the viewfinder, to spaces that work the other way, which suggest the potential to locate a “non-space”—where the inside suggests an outside or empty space. Thus, the photograph becomes disembodied to reveal space. I consider embodiment as the trace of other embodiments that frame the subject. Mark Auge’s conception of “non-places” seems apt here. He writes about non-places as those that are lived or passed through on the way to some place else, an accumulation of spaces that can be understood and named (94). These are spaces that can be defined in everyday terms as places with which we are familiar, places in which the real erupts: a borderline separating the outside from the inside, temporary spaces that can exist for the camera. The viewer may well peer in and look for everything that appears to have been left out. Thus, the photograph becomes a recollection of what Roland Barthes calls “a disruption in the topography”—we imagine a “beyond” that evokes a sense of melancholy or of irrevocably sliding toward it (238). How then could the individual embody such a space? The groups of photographs of Lake Bolac are spread out on a table. I play some music awhile, Glenn Gould, whose performing embodies what, to me, represents such humanity. Hear him breathing? It is Prelude and Fugue No. 16 in G Minor by Bach, on vinyl; music becomes a tangible and physical presence. When we close our eyes, our ears determine a sound’s location in a room; we map out a space, by listening, and can create a measureable dimension to sound. Walking about the territory of a living room, in suburban Melbourne, I consider too a small but vital clue: that while scrutinizing these details of a photographic image on paper, simultaneously I am returning to a small town in the Western District of Victoria. In the fluid act of looking at images in a house in Melbourne, I am now also walking down a road to Lake Bolac and can hear the incidental sounds of the environment—birdcalls and human voices—elements that inhabit and embody space: a borderline, alongside the photographs. What is imprinted in actual time, what is fundamental, is that the space of a photograph is actually devoid of sound and that I am still standing in a living room in Melbourne. In Against Architecture, Denis Hollier states of Bataille, “he wrote of the psychological power of space as a fluid, boundary effacing, always displaced and displacing medium. The non-spaces of cities and towns are locations where it is possible to be lost in a collective space, a progression of thoroughfares that are transitional, delivering the individual from one point and place to another—stairwells, laneways and roadsides—a constellation of streets….” (Hollier 79). Though photographs are sound-less, sound gives access to the outside of the image. “Untitled”. Photograph by Rozalind Drummond from “Stay with me here.” 2012 Type C Digital Print. Is there an outline of an image here? The enlargement of a snapshot of a photograph does not simply render what in any case was visible, though unclear. What is the viewer to look for in this photograph? Upon closer inspection a young woman stands to the right within the frame—she wears a school uniform; the pattern of the garment can be seen and read distinctly. In the detail it is finely striped, with a dark hue of blue, on a paler background, and the wearer’s body is imprinted upon the clothing, which receives the body’s details and impressions. The dress has a fold or pleat at the back; the distinct lines and patterns are reminiscent of a map, or an incidental grid. Here, the leitmotif of worn clothing is a poetic one. The young woman wears her hair piled, vertiginous, in a loosely constructed yet considered fashion; she stands assured, looking away and looking forward, within the compositional frame. The camera offers a momentary pause. This is our view. Our eye is directed to look further away past the figure, and the map of her clothing, to a long hallway in the school, before drifting to the left and right of the frame, where the outside world of Lake Bolac is clear and visible through the interior space of the hallway—the natural environment of daylight, luminescent and vivid. The time frame is late summer, the light reflecting and reverberating through glass doors, and gleaming painted surfaces, in a continuous rectangular pattern of grid lines. In the near distance, the viewer can see an open door, a pictorial breathing space, beyond the spatial line and coolness of the photograph, beyond the frame of the photograph and our knowing. The photograph becomes a signpost. What is outside, beyond the school corridors, recalled through the medium of photography, are other scenes, yet to be constructed from the spaces, streets and roads of Lake Bolac. Zones of Practice–Time as the “Skin” of Writing, Embodiment and Place (Patrick West) There is no writing without a body to write. Yet sometimes it feels that my creative writing, resisting its necessary embodiment, has by some trick of metaphor retreated into what Jondi Keane refers to as a purely conceptual mode of thought. This slippage between figural connection and literal process alerted me, in the process of my attempt to foster place-based well-being at Lake Bolac, to the importance of time to writerly embodiment. My contribution to the Lake Bolac Eel Festival art exhibition was a written text, “Stay with me here”, conceived as my response to the themes of Rozalind Drummond’s photographs. To prepare this joint production, we mixed with staff and students at the Lake Bolac Secondary College. But this mode of embodiment made me feel curiously dis-embodied as a place-based writer. My embodiment was apparently superficial, only skin deep. Still this experience started me thinking about how the skin is actually thickly embodied as both body and where the body encounters, not only other bodies, but place itself—conceivably across many times. Skin is also the embodiment of writing to the degree that writing suggests an uncertain and queered form of embodiment. Skin, where the body reaches its limit, expires, touches other bodies or not, is inevitably implicated with writing as a fragile and always provisional, indexical embodiment. Nothing can be more easily either here or somewhere else than writing. Writing is an exhibition or gallery of anywhere, like skin in that both are un-placed in place. The one-pager “Stay with me here” explores how the instantaneous time and present-ness of Drummond’s photographs relate to the profusion of times and relations to other places immanent in Lake Bolac’s landscape and community (as evidenced, for example, in the image of a prep student yawning at the end of a long day in the midst of an ancient volcanic landscape, dreaming, perhaps, of somewhere else). To get to such issues of time and relationality of place, however, involves detouring via the notion of skin as suggested to me by my initial sense of dis-embodiment in Lake Bolac. “Stay with me here” works with an idea of skin as answer to the implied question, Where is here? It creates the (symbolic) embodiment of place precisely as a matter of skin, making skin-like writing an issue of transitory topography. The only permanent “here” is the skin. Emphasizing something valid for all writing, “here” (grammatically a context-dependent deictic) is the skin, where embodiment is defined by the constant possibility of re-embodiment, somewhere else, some time else. Reminding us that it is eminently possible to be elsewhere (from this place, from here), skin also suggests that you cannot be in two places at the one time (at least, not with the same embodiment). My skin is a sign that, because my embodiment in any particular place (any “here”) is only ever temporary, it is time that necessarily sustains my embodiment in any place whatsoever into the future. According to Henri Bergson, time must be creative, as the future hasn’t happened yet! “Time is invention or it is nothing at all” (341). The future of place, as much as of writing and of embodiment itself, is thus creatively sheathed in time as if within a skin. On Bergson’s view, time might be said to be least and greatest embodiment, for it is (dis-embodied) time that enables all future and currently un-created modes of embodiment. All of these time-inspired modes will involve a relationship to place (time can only “happen” in some version of place). And all of them will involve writing too, because time is the ultimate (dis-)embodiment of writing. As writing is like a skin, a minimal embodiment shared actually or potentially with more than one body, so time is the very possibility of writing (embodiment) into the future. “Stay with me here” explores how place is always already embodied in a relationship to other places, through the skin, and to the future of (a) place through the creativity of time as the skin of embodiment. By enriching descriptive and metaphoric practices of time, instability of place and awarenesses of the (dis-)embodied nature of writing—as a practice of skin—my text is useful to well-being as an analogue to the lived experience, in time and place, of the people of Lake Bolac. Theoretically, it weaves Bergson’s philosophy of time (time richly composed) into the fabric of Deleuze’s proposition that the health of a community is linked to the richness of the composition of its parts. Creatively, it celebrates the identity that the notion of “here” might enable, especially when read alongside and in dialogue with Drummond’s photographs in exhibition. Here is an abridged text of “Stay with me here:” “Stay with me here” There is salt in these lakes, anciently—rectilinear lakes never to be without ripple or stir. Pooling waters the islands of otherwise oceans, which people make out from hereabouts, make for, dream of. Stay with me here. Trusting to lessons delivered at the shore of a lake moves one closer to a deepness of instruction, where the water also learns. From our not being where we are, there. Stay with me here. What is perfection to water if not water? A time when photographs were born out of its swill and slosh. The image swimming knowingly to the surface—its first breaths of the perceiving air, its glimpsing itself once. The portraits of ourselves we do not dare. Such magical chemical reactions, as in, I react badly to you. Such salts! Stay with me here, elsewhere. As if one had simply washed up by chance, onto this desert island or any other place of sand and water trickling. Daring to imagine we’ll be there together. This is what I mean by… stay with me here. Notice these things—how music sounds different as one walks away; the emotional gymnastics with which you plan to impress; the skin of the eye that watches over you. Stay with me here—in your spectacular, careless brilliance. The edge of whatever it is one wants to say. The moment never to be photographed. Conclusion It is not for the artists to presume that they can empower a community. As Tasmin Lorraine notes, community is not a single person’s empowerment but “the empowerment of many assemblages of which one is part” (128). All communities, regional communities on the scale of Lake Bolac or communities of interest, are held in place by enthusiasm and common histories. We have focused on the embodiment of these common histories, which vary in an infinite number of degrees from the most literal to the most figurative, pulling from the filigree of experiences a web of interpersonal connections. Oscillating between metaphor and description, embodiment as variously presented in this article helps promote community and, by extension, individual well-being. The drawing out of sensations into forms that produce new experiences—like the drawing of breath, the drawing of a hot bath, or the drawing out of a story—enhances the permeability of boundaries opened to what touches upon them. It is not just that we can embody our values, but that we are able to craft, manifest, enact, sense and evoke the connections that take shape as our richly composed world, in which, as Deleuze notes, “it is no longer a matter of utilizations or captures, but of sociabilities and communities” (126). ReferencesAuge, Mark. Non-Places: An Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Barrett, Estelle, and Barbara Bolt. Eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: I. B. Tauris, 2007. Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1998. Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988. Hollier, Denis. Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989. Hutchins, Edwin. “Enaction, Imagination and Insight.” Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Eds. J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, and E.A. Di Paolo. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. 425–450.Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. Deleuze and Language. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.Lorraine, Tamsin. Deleuze and Guattari’s Immanent Ethics: Theory, Subjectivity and Duration. Albany: State University of New York at Albany, 2011.O’Sullivan, Simon. Art Encounters: Deleuze and Guattari—Thought beyond Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

This article reflects upon the process of the making and screening of an interactive short film called Textual @traction, which I wrote and directed. The film is 12 minutes long, 35mm film, and shows how a series of messages sent to a lost mobile phone inadvertently allows two gay men to declare their love for each other. In the form of a puzzle, the film denies sight of the crucial messages sent between the characters, messages which motivate their actions. However, through the simple use of SMS (Short Message System) text technology, the audience can receive each of these messages on their own mobile phones as they watch the film in the cinema. Billed as an interactive event with prior information for audience telephone registration, the film has been screened at cinemas, film festivals, and conferences as well as on broadcast television. To receive the text messages during the film, the phone owner is asked to send a message before the screening to a five-digit number that registers their telephone for the event. If audience members do not have a mobile phone, they must share with another audience member or try to solve the puzzle of the film without messages. Messages are sent to audience members’ mobile/cell phones from a laptop computer by a bulk SMS delivery programme, via an SMS gateway, directly to the appropriate national mobile telephone network provider, guaranteeing split-second accuracy. When appropriate and depending on the location of the screening, audience members can also choose the language of the messages when they register. Textual @traction was nominated for UK BAFTA Interactive Award 2005 and won the Best New Media: Interactive Award at the Celtic Film Festival 2005. It has been shown in a number of international film festivals, including the International Festival of New Film, in Split, Croatia 2004; the International Short Film Festival in Los Angeles 2005(Academy-listed); and the Atlantic Film Festival, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2005. It had its broadcast premier, and world-first for an interactive film, on S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru), the Welsh Language Channel with its Welsh title, ‘Caru T x’, on 25 Jan. 2006. This article addresses the audience’s experience of this interactive event, speculating on the relative audience/user positions inherent in the two technologies (cinema and mobile telephone) and on whether or not their combination can be described as a collaboration. Underpinning this speculation is the assumption that modes of representation and communication construct the subject/user in specific ways and that the Textual @traction interactive event requires of the audience member to occupy both the position of cinema viewer and of phone user alternately during the event if they are to ‘complete’ the fiction. Following on from this assumption, I have set out a number of oppositions: Live/Dead, Social/Individual, Intimate/Anonymous, and Passive/Active, against which the differences between the two technologies and the ways they construct the viewer/user are posited. These polarities also allow exploration of the various aspects of the suspension of disbelief assumed by the viewer of the film and whether the interruption to the flow of images and sounds on the cinema screen by the actions required of the viewer to retrieve and read the telephone messages dismantles that suspension by spoiling the viewer’s identification with the characters, undermining their assumptions governing the world of the film, and shattering its temporal and spatial coherence. As writer and director of the film, my initial intention was not to set out to explore these questions at all. Once the story took shape and I saw the possibility that the only dialogue in the film was that delivered by text message, it was a short step (albeit, initially, a frivolous one!) to investigate the possibility of delivering those messages to the audience during the screening of the film. I dislike reading diegetic written text on the cinema screen, believing it to be a betrayal of cinema’s essential qualities: it is a medium of pictures and sounds, not words. Of course, once it became clear that it was going to be possible to send time-specific messages to the audience members, enabling them to simultaneously read the very same message the character on screen is reading, I soon became intrigued by the potential effect this would have on the audience. Would it ‘deepen’ the process of identification with the characters? None of the characters in the film are aware of each other’s identity when they communicate and thus the narrative unfolds with dramatic irony. Would the audience’s resulting privileged knowledge in relation to the characters be enhanced by the film’s interactive dimension, because the characters are ‘unaware’ that the audience members are reading ‘their messages’? The following explores these questions and is, to a large extent, a product of observation and analysis of the interactive event, post-event, and also includes reflection on comments from audience members that have attended the event. Live/Dead Textual @traction has been constructed according to the principles of classic continuity, with every shot contributing to the narrative chain. At the end of the film, there is closure, both the conventional culmination and the objective of the classic (Hollywood) narrative, the classic continuity approach. Textual @traction, like all forms of cinema—whether classic narrative, avant-garde, multi-screen, or home movie—is a record of past events. In this film we engage with re-animated past events at twenty-four still frames a second, willingly suppressing whatever knowledge and awareness of apparatus and artifice we possess. However, while knowledge of a process of construction and presentation are suppressed, there is no necessity for the viewer to believe that the events on screen are happening as we observe them. We know these events are in the past; rather, it is the knowledge of the active arrangement of these discreet, past events (shots, scenes, sequences…) into a natural flow that we necessarily suppress. This is achievable, of course, by our unconscious operation of a complex system that organises this flow into spatial, temporal, and narrative coherence. ‘Film language’ is the term given to this internalised vocabulary we bring to bear on a film to make sense of what we see and hear—modified in each film, some more than others. It allows us to understand spatial and temporal construction, to accept ellipses, parallel action and so on. It is a very complex system, which in classical continuity is mobilised in the service of the story and rendered invisible, so that a film unfolds as if conforming to natural laws (Bazin; Metz; Monaco). I made the decision at an early stage in the development process for Textual @traction that the film would do precisely this. While I wanted the film to be challenging and ‘experimental’, I believed its potential for breaking new ground resided in the realm of the juxtaposition/collaboration of the two technologies and its impact on the viewer’s engagement with the fictional world of the story. The messages would necessarily be disruptive of a mode of presentation that is sacrosanct (at least in mainstream cinema) and I thought the tighter the narrative chain, the more apparent the effects of this juxtaposition/collaboration would be. Disruption does occur when the viewer receives a message (there are eleven in all during the 12 minutes of the film) and it is at these points that the viewer becomes phone user and the recipient of a ‘live’ communication that is time-specific. Technically, each message is sent from the bulk-messaging programme to all the registered phones at the same time so that their arrival coincides with the arrival of the ‘same message’ in the on-screen character’s phone: audience member and on-screen character then read the same message simultaneously. To achieve this, the start time of the computer programme and the start time of the film projection in the cinema have to coincide exactly. One always presumes that text messages sent to our phones originate with a person, even those that are anonymous (news and sports alerts, etc.). The assumption underlying the use of the messages in Textual @traction is that, since according to the classic narrative cinema-effect we ‘become’ each character in order to understand what motivates their actions (identifying most energetically with the protagonist), receiving the same text messages they are receiving and reading them at the same time as they are is consistent with this process of identification, although stretching it to its limits. Crucial to the achievement of identification within the classic continuity approach is the point-of view shot, and it is this element that the messages ‘substitute’ or, perhaps, ‘literalise’ in the film (Bordwell 29-33; Branigan; Gaut 260-270). Conventionally in a film, when a character looks at something that is significant to the story, the look is followed on screen by the point-of-view shot, which shows the audience what is being seen by that character. In Textual @traction, point-of-view shots are deployed in this conventional manner. Moreover, as the main character in the film is a photographer whom we see taking photographs early in the film, the act of looking and the views he sees are, in fact, clearly foregrounded in a number of shot-reverse shot sequences. However, when we see characters looking at their phones and reading the messages they’ve been sent by other characters in the film, these shots are not followed by point-of-view shots that show the messages they are reading. Instead, the spectators in the cinema ‘enact’ their own point-of-view shot as they look at the same message on their phone screens in their hands. In a ‘literal’ sense, the audience members, at these points, ‘become’ the characters. Thus, in Textual @traction there is a two-fold process that reverses the live/dead polarity of cinema. Firstly, the arrival of the message in the audience-member’s phone transforms the past event on the screen to a live one. The suspension of disbelief in the viewer is heightened in order to accept the impossibility of acquiring the same knowledge the people on screen are acquiring, at the same time. Secondly, the viewer in the cinema, when reading the messages, ‘becomes’ the fictional character, performing a live enactment of the point-of view shot that is missing on screen. In both processes, phone technology bestows its live-ness to the dead world of the film—at least momentarily, until rational thought points out its absurdity. Social/Individual While going to the cinema is a social activity, the apparatus of cinema is organised in such a way as to individuate the cinema experience. The combination of the dimming of the auditorium lights to darkness and the seating arrangement encourages the viewer to suppress the awareness of others. The experience can then become intensely private. While there are physical and aural constraints on the viewer’s behaviour, imposed mainly to guarantee other viewers’ enjoyment (including, ordinarily, the prohibition of mobile phone use!), once seated and still, the viewer feels entitled to respond to the action on the screen in whatever way appropriate: they can smile, shudder, or weep with impunity. Additionally, the optics of the lens (the cinema projector reproducing the camera’s), in conjunction with the design of the auditorium itself, continues the tradition of Renaissance perspective in providing a single vanishing point that guarantees centrality to each viewer in relation to the scene depicted however many viewers there are in the cinema, wherever they are sitting. As far as the apparatus of cinema is concerned, there is no privileged view of the visual field displayed on the screen; each viewer in the auditorium see the same view, wherever they sit, centred and interpolated individually. Text-messaging is one-to-one communication par excellence. It takes speech telephone privacy one step further: even in a situation where both sender and receiver are in public spaces, surrounded by people, two-way communication can be completely private. When every member of the audience in a screening of Textual @traction receives text messages, they receive them at the same time as everyone else, and they assume they are receiving the same message. Emphasised by the cacophony of (individually-chosen) text alerts as each message reaches its destination within split seconds of each other, the simultaneity and the common address transforms what is usually an individual and private mode of communication into a collective, social one. At the same time, the individuating effect of the cinematic apparatus is undermined. Awareness of their counterparts’ presence returns, the light from individual phone screens illuminate the viewers’/phones users’ faces as they retrieve and read their messages and they look around the auditorium to compare their reactions with those of others. In those moments, the social/individual polarity as it relates to the two technologies is reversed: the phone’s from individual to social; cinema, from individuating to collectivising. Intimate/Anonymous While the apparatus of cinema individuates, the address of cinema is anonymous, making no adjustment for the individual (Baudry; Comolli; De Lauretis). Of course, there is specificity in the address of most cinema: the various genre of commercial film, as well as the varieties of independent and avant-garde films, presume certain audiences and address these audiences on the basis of a shared set of assumptions and expectations. These include individual films’ themes, the forms of narrative (or non-narrative), its variety of characters, the pleasures the films afford, and so on. However, cinema is not discursive. It cannot by ‘adjusted’ to suit the individual. The Intimate/Anonymous polarity is one that draws out the difference between a mode of representation, in this case cinema, and a mode of communication, text messaging. The former presents a completed artefact of some kind while the latter is a technology that allows for discursive activity between sender and receiver. Of course, various forms of interactive art are necessarily making this notion of the ‘artefact’ problematic, allowing the individual viewer to organise and re-organise narratives, modify environments, and create unique assemblages of images and sounds, often enabled by sophisticated computer programmes. During such interaction, individuals may create never-to-be repeated experiences brought about by complex, randomised interfaces. Nevertheless, these are examples of interaction with the artefact and while they may be unique, they are also anonymous. If discursive activity between users is achieved in these circumstances then the technology by definition becomes a mode of communication, however mediated by technology or programming. Telephone communication is all about individual address, both in spoken and text language. A text messages is either sent to elicit a response or it is the response. Unless it is an unsolicited, anonymous message, a text message is a specific and personal missive to the individual, its specificity arising from the sender’s knowledge of the receiver. Receiving such text messages during Textual @traction (and because of the sexual tenor of some of the messages, they are especially ‘personal’)—‘sent’ to the audience members ‘unwittingly’ by the individual fictional characters on screen—transforms the address of the film from anonymous to intimate, from general to individual. The intimacy associated with text messaging enhances our identification with the on-screen characters because we are given an insight into their motivations by being (voyeuristically) included what is generally a private discourse. For those who have experienced the Textual @traction interactive event and who have expressed an opinion about it, it does seem that it was this dimension of the experience that was a particular source of pleasure. Passive/Active In mainstream cinema we enter the auditorium and we sit down to face the screen, on which the film appears. While we watch and listen we may eat and drink, shout, weep, and laugh. We can also leave if we disapprove of the film or of the behaviour of others around us. While all these activities (and more) are possible, none will impact on what is happening on the screen, nor, crucially, on the flow of information that constructs our understanding of the characters’ actions and the narrative in general. In this respect, as an audience, we are effectively passive. The receiving of messages during Textual @traction invites the audience to collaborate actively in the final form of the narrative that is the interactive event, completing the fictional world constructed by film and text messages together. The information they receive by text message enhances their understanding of both character motivation and of the narrative in general. Without their activity, the film is a puzzle. Added to the conceptual activity that this involves, there is also the physical activity and the psychological adjustment: when the audience members’ message alert sounds, they have to undertake a number of keystrokes on their keypad in order to bring the message up on the phone screen, then they have to read the message and construe the message’s relevance to the characters on screen, before returning to the cinema-screen element of the event once more. Conclusion There is no doubt that the Textual @traction interactive event strains credulity, or, to put it another way, depends on an enhancement of the suspension of disbelief normally accustomed to by a cinema audience. The notion that on-screen characters are ‘unwittingly’ sending text messages to audience members and that they are reading them ‘at the same time’ is nothing short of absurd. Absurdity and its wilful disregard by the audience, however, is no stranger to cinema, as we know. What I have attempted to do in this paper is to account for the success of the Textual @traction interactive event, despite its absurdity, by identifying three forms of collaboration that it depends on: collaboration with the text in order to complete the fiction, a collaboration between cinema as a mode of representation and messaging as a mode of communication that the audience member enables, and a collaboration between cinema/subject and telephone/subject performed by each audience member. As I have indicated, when these collaborations take place, some of the habitual characteristics of both modes are transformed or modified: text messaging becomes a social rather than a private activity, while the apparatus of cinema transforms from one that individuates to one that collectivises. In addition, the address of cinema, normally anonymous, is bestowed with intimacy by the text messaging, and finally, a normally passive audience is active in their involvement to complete the fiction. References Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Film Quarterly 28.2 (Winter 1974-5): 39-47. Bazin, André. “The Evolution of the Language of the Cinema.” What Is Cinema? Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: U of California P, 1967. 23-40. Branigan, Edward. “Formal Permutations of the Point-of-View Shot”. Screen 16.3 (1975): 54-64. Bordwell, D., J. Staiger, and K. Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, 1985. Comolli, Jean-Louis. “Technique and Ideology: Camera, Perspective, Depth of Field.” Movies and Methods Vol. II. Ed, Bill Nichols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. 40-57. De Lauretis, T., and S. Heath. The Cinematic Apparatus. London: Macmillan, 1980. Gaut, Berys. “Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film.” Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology. Ed. Noel Carroll and Jinhee Choi. London: Blackwell, 2006. Metz, Christian. Film Language. Trans. Michael Taylor. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975 [2004]. Monaco, James. How to Read a Film. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Morris, Ieuan. "Interruption/Interaction/Collaboration: A Critical Appraisal of the Textual @traction Interactive Event." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/15-morris.php>. APA Style Morris, I. (May 2006) "Interruption/Interaction/Collaboration: A Critical Appraisal of the Textual @traction Interactive Event," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/15-morris.php>.

Despite numerous critics describing him as an auteur (i.e. a film-maker who ‘does’ everything and fulfils every production role [Bordwell and Thompson 37] and/or with a signature “world-view” detectable in his/her work [Caughie 10]), Rolf de Heer appears to have declined primary authorship of Dance Me to My Song (1997), his seventh in an oeuvre of twelve feature films. Indeed, the opening credits do not mention his name at all: it is only with the closing credits that the audience learns de Heer has directed the film. Rather, as the film commences, the viewer is informed by the titles that it is “A film by Heather Rose”, thus suggesting that the work is her singular creation. Direct and uncompromising, with its unflattering shots of the lead actor and writer (Heather Rose Slattery, a young woman born with cerebral palsy), the film may be read as a courageous self-portrait which finds the grace, humanity and humour trapped inside Rose’s twisted body. Alternatively, it may be read as yet another example of de Heer’s signature interest in foregrounding a world view which gives voice to marginalised characters such as the disabled or the disadvantaged. For example, the developmentally retarded eponyme of Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is eventually able to make art as a singer in a band and succeeds in creating a happy family with a wife and two kids. The ‘mute’ girl in The Quiet Room (1996) makes herself heard by her squabbling parents through her persistent activism. In Ten Canoes (2006) the Indigenous Australians cast themselves according to kinship ties, not according to the director’s choosing, and tell their story in their own uncolonised language. A cursory glance at the films of Rolf de Heer suggests he is overtly interested in conveying to the audience the often overlooked agency of his unlikely protagonists. In the ultra-competitive world of professional film-making it is rare to see primary authorship ceded by a director so generously. However, the allocation of authorship to a member of a marginalized population re-invigorates questions prompted by Andy Medhurst regarding a film’s “authorship test” (198) and its relationship to a subaltern community wherein he writes that “a biographical approach has more political justification if the project being undertaken is one concerned with the cultural history of a marginalized group” (202-3). Just as films by gay authors about gay characters may have greater credibility, as Medhurst posits, one might wonder would a film by a person with a disability about a character with the same disability be better received? Enabling authorship by an unknown, crippled woman such as Rose rather than a famous, able-bodied male such as de Heer may be cynically regarded as good (show) business in that it is politically correct. This essay therefore asks if the appellation “A film by Heather Rose” is appropriate for Dance Me to My Song. Whose agency in telling the story (or ‘doing’ the film-making), the able bodied Rolf de Heer or the disabled Heather Rose, is reflected in this cinematic production? In other words, whose voice is enabled when an audience receives this film? In attempting to answer these questions it is inevitable that Paul Darke’s concept of the “normality drama” (181) is referred to and questioned, as I argue that Dance Me to My Song makes groundbreaking departures from the conventions of the typical disability narrative. Heather Rose as Auteur Rose plays the film’s heroine, Julia, who like herself has cerebral palsy, a group of non-progressive, chronic disorders resulting from changes produced in the brain during the prenatal stages of life. Although severely affected physically, Rose suffered no intellectual impairment and had acted in Rolf de Heer’s cult hit Bad Boy Bubby five years before, a confidence-building experience that grew into an ongoing fascination with the filmmaking process. Subsequently, working with co-writer Frederick Stahl, she devised the scenario for this film, writing the lead role for herself and then proactively bringing it to de Heer’s attention. Rose wrote of de Heer’s deliberate lack of involvement in the script-writing process: “Rolf didn’t even want to read what we’d done so far, saying he didn’t want to interfere with our process” (de Heer, “Production Notes”). In 2002, aged 36, Rose died and Stahl reports in her obituary an excerpt from her diary: People see me as a person who has to be controlled. But let me tell you something, people. I am not! And I am going to make something real special of my life! I am going to go out there and grab life with both hands!!! I am going to make the most sexy and honest film about disability that has ever been made!! (Stahl, “Standing Room Only”) This proclamation of her ability and ambition in screen-writing is indicative of Rose’s desire to do. In a guest lecture Rose gave further insights into the active intent in writing Dance Me to My Song: I wanted to create a screenplay, but not just another soppy disability film, I wanted to make a hot sexy film, which showed the real world … The message I wanted to convey to an audience was “As people with disabilities, we have the same feelings and desires as others”. (Rose, “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation”) Rose went on to explain her strategy for winning over director de Heer: “Rolf was not sure about committing to the movie; I had to pester him really. I decided to invite him to my birthday party. It took a few drinks, but I got him to agree to be the director” (ibid) and with this revelation of her tactical approach her film-making agency is further evidenced. Rose’s proactive innovation is not just evident in her successfully approaching de Heer. Her screenplay serves as a radical exception to films featuring disabled persons, which, according to Paul Darke in 1998, typically involve the disabled protagonist struggling to triumph over the limitations imposed by their disability in their ‘admirable’ attempts to normalize. Such normality dramas are usually characterized by two generic themes: first, that the state of abnormality is nothing other than tragic because of its medical implications; and, second, that the struggle for normality, or some semblance of it in normalization – as represented in the film by the other characters – is unquestionably right owing to its axiomatic supremacy. (187) Darke argues that the so-called normality drama is “unambiguously a negation of ascribing any real social or individual value to the impaired or abnormal” (196), and that such dramas function to reinforce the able-bodied audience’s self image of normality and the notion of the disabled as the inferior Other. Able-bodied characters are typically portrayed positively in the normality drama: “A normality as represented in the decency and support of those characters who exist around, and for, the impaired central character. Thus many of the disabled characters in such narratives are bitter, frustrated and unfulfilled and either antisocial or asocial” (193). Darke then identifies The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) and Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989) as archetypal films of this genre. Even in films in which seemingly positive images of the disabled are featured, the protagonist is still to be regarded as the abnormal Other, because in comparison to the other characters within that narrative the impaired character is still a comparatively second-class citizen in the world of the film. My Left Foot is, as always, a prime example: Christy Brown may well be a writer, relatively wealthy and happy, but he is not seen as sexual in any way (194). However, Dance Me to My Song defies such generic restrictions: Julia’s temperament is upbeat and cheerful and her disability, rather than appearing tragic, is made to look healthy, not “second class”, in comparison with her physically attractive, able-bodied but deeply unhappy carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy). Within the first few minutes of the film we see Madelaine dissatisfied as she stands, inspecting her healthy, toned and naked body in the bathroom mirror, contrasted with vision of Julia’s twisted form, prostrate, pale and naked on the bed. Yet, in due course, it is the able-bodied girl who is shown to be insecure and lacking in character. Madelaine steals Julia’s money and calls her “spastic”. Foul-mouthed and short-tempered, Madelaine perversely positions Julia in her wheelchair to force her to watch as she has perfunctory sex with her latest boyfriend. Madelaine even masquerades as Julia, commandeering her voice synthesizer to give a fraudulently positive account of her on-the-job performance to the employment agency she works for. Madelaine’s “axiomatic supremacy” is thoroughly undermined and in the most striking contrast to the typical normality drama, Julia is unashamedly sexual: she is no Christy Brown. The affective juxtaposition of these two different personalities stems from the internal nature of Madelaine’s problems compared to the external nature of Julia’s problems. Madelaine has an emotional disability rather than a physical disability and several scenes in the film show her reduced to helpless tears. Then one day when Madelaine has left her to her own devices, Julia defiantly wheels herself outside and bumps into - almost literally - handsome, able-bodied Eddie (John Brumpton). Cheerfully determined, Julia wins him over and a lasting friendship is formed. Having seen the joy that sex brings to Madelaine, Julia also wants carnal fulfilment so she telephones Eddie and arranges a date. When Eddie arrives, he reads the text on her voice machine’s screen containing the title line to the film ‘Dance me to my song’ and they share a tender moment. Eddie’s gentleness as he dances Julia to her song (“Kizugu” written by Bernard Huber and John Laidler, as performed by Okapi Guitars) is simultaneously contrasted with the near-date-rapes Madelaine endures in her casual relationships. The conflict between Madeline and Julia is such that it prompts Albert Moran and Errol Vieth to categorize the film as “women’s melodrama”: Dance Me to My Song clearly belongs to the genre of the romance. However, it is also important to recognize it under the mantle of the women’s melodrama … because it has to do with a woman’s feelings and suffering, not so much because of the flow of circumstance but rather because of the wickedness and malevolence of another woman who is her enemy and rival. (198-9) Melodrama is a genre that frequently resorts to depicting disability in which a person condemned by society as disabled struggles to succeed in love: some prime examples include An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957) involving a paraplegic woman, and The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) in which a strong-spirited but mute woman achieves love. The more conventional Hollywood romances typically involve attractive, able-bodied characters. In Dance Me to My Song the melodramatic conflict between the two remarkably different women at first seems dominated by Madelaine, who states: “I know I’m good looking, good in bed ... better off than you, you poor thing” in a stream-of-consciousness delivery in which Julia is constructed as listener rather than converser. Julia is further reduced to the status of sub-human as Madelaine says: “I wish you could eat like a normal person instead of a bloody animal” and her erstwhile boyfriend Trevor says: “She looks like a fuckin’ insect.” Even the benevolent Eddie says: “I don’t like leaving you alone but I guess you’re used to it.” To this the defiant Julia replies; “Please don’t talk about me in front of me like I’m an animal or not there at all.” Eddie is suitably chastised and when he treats her to an over-priced ice-cream the shop assistant says “Poor little thing … She’ll enjoy this, won’t she?” Julia smiles, types the words “Fuck me!”, and promptly drops the ice-cream on the floor. Eddie laughs supportively. “I’ll just get her another one,” says the flustered shop assistant, “and then get her out of here, please!” With striking eloquence, Julia wheels herself out of the shop, her voice machine announcing “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me”, as she departs exultantly. With this bold statement of independence and defiance in the face of patronising condescension, the audience sees Rose’s burgeoning strength of character and agency reflected in the onscreen character she has created. Dance Me to My Song and the films mentioned above are, however, rare exceptions in the many that dare represent disability on the screen at all, compliant as the majority are with Darke’s expectations of the normality drama. Significantly, the usual medical-model nexus in many normality films is ignored in Rose’s screenplay: no medication, hospitals or white laboratory coats are to be seen in Julia’s world. Finally, as I have described elsewhere, Julia is shown joyfully dancing in her wheelchair with Eddie while Madelaine proves her physical inferiority with a ‘dance’ of frustration around her broken-down car (see Starrs, "Dance"). In Rose’s authorial vision, audience’s expectations of yet another film of the normality drama genre are subverted as the disabled protagonist proves superior to her ‘normal’ adversary in their melodramatic rivalry for the sexual favours of an able-bodied love-interest. Rolf de Heer as Auteur De Heer does not like to dwell on the topic of auteurism: in an interview in 2007 he somewhat impatiently states: I don’t go in much for that sort of analysis that in the end is terminology. … Look, I write the damn things, and direct them, and I don’t completely produce them anymore – there are other people. If that makes me an auteur in other people’s terminologies, then fine. (Starrs, "Sounds" 20) De Heer has been described as a “remarkably non-egotistical filmmaker” (Davis “Working together”) which is possibly why he handed ownership of this film to Rose. Of the writer/actor who plied him with drink so he would agree to back her script, de Heer states: It is impossible to overstate the courage of the performance that you see on the screen. … Heather somehow found the means to respond on cue, to maintain the concentration, to move in the desired direction, all the myriad of acting fundamentals that we take for granted as normal things to do in our normal lives. (“Production NHotes”) De Heer’s willingness to shift authorship from director to writer/actor is representative of this film’s groundbreaking promotion of the potential for agency within disability. Rather than being passive and suffering, Rose is able to ‘do.’ As the lead actor she is central to the narrative. As the principle writer she is central to the film’s production. And she does both. But in conflict with this auteurial intent is the temptation to describe Dance Me to My Song as an autobiographical documentary, since it is Rose herself, with her unique and obvious physical handicap, playing the film’s heroine, Julia. In interview, however, De Heer apparently disagrees with this interpretation: Rolf de Heer is quick to point out, though, that the film is not a biography.“Not at all; only in the sense that writers use material from their own lives.Madelaine is merely the collection of the worst qualities of the worst carers Heather’s ever had.” Dance Me to My Song could be seen as a dramatised documentary, since it is Rose herself playing Julia, and her physical or surface life is so intense and she is so obviously handicapped. While he understands that response, de Heer draws a comparison with the first films that used black actors instead of white actors in blackface. “I don’t know how it felt emotionally to an audience, I wasn’t there, but I think that is the equivalent”. (Urban) An example of an actor wearing “black-face” to portray a cerebral palsy victim might well be Gus Trikonis’s 1980 film Touched By Love. In this, the disabled girl is unconvincingly played by the pretty, able-bodied actress Diane Lane. The true nature of the character’s disability is hidden and cosmeticized to Hollywood expectations. Compared to that inauthentic film, Rose’s screenwriting and performance in Dance Me to My Song is a self-penned fiction couched in unmediated reality and certainly warrants authorial recognition. Despite his unselfish credit-giving, de Heer’s direction of this remarkable film is nevertheless detectable. His auteur signature is especially evident in his technological employment of sound as I have argued elsewhere (see Starrs, "Awoval"). The first distinctly de Heer influence is the use of a binaural recording device - similar to that used in Bad Boy Bubby (1993) - to convey to the audience the laboured nature of Julia’s breathing and to subjectively align the audience with her point of view. This apparatus provides a disturbing sound bed that is part wheezing, part grunting. There is no escaping Julia’s physically unusual life, from her reliance on others for food, toilet and showering, to the half-strangled sounds emanating from her ineffectual larynx. But de Heer insists that Julia does speak, like Stephen Hawkings, via her Epson RealVoice computerized voice synthesizer, and thus Julia manages to retain her dignity. De Heer has her play this machine like a musical instrument, its neatly modulated feminine tones immediately prompting empathy. Rose Capp notes de Heer’s preoccupation with finding a voice for those minority groups within the population who struggle to be heard, stating: de Heer has been equally consistent in exploring the communicative difficulties underpinning troubled relationships. From the mute young protagonist of The Quiet Room to the aphasic heroine of Dance Me to My Song, De Heer’s films are frequently preoccupied with the profound inadequacy or outright failure of language as a means of communication (21). Certainly, the importance to Julia of her only means of communication, her voice synthesizer, is stressed by de Heer throughout the film. Everybody around her has, to varying degrees, problems in hearing correctly or understanding both what and how Julia communicates with her alien mode of conversing, and she is frequently asked to repeat herself. Even the well-meaning Eddie says: “I don’t know what the machine is trying to say”. But it is ultimately via her voice synthesizer that Julia expresses her indomitable character. When first she meets Eddie, she types: “Please put my voice machine on my chair, STUPID.” She proudly declares ownership of a condom found in the bathroom with “It’s mine!” The callous Madelaine soon realizes Julia’s strength is in her voice machine and withholds access to the device as punishment for if she takes it away then Julia is less demanding for the self-centred carer. Indeed, the film which starts off portraying the physical superiority of Madelaine soon shows us that the carer’s life, for all her able-bodied, free-love ways, is far more miserable than Julia’s. As de Heer has done in many of his other films, a voice has been given to those who might otherwise not be heard through significant decision making in direction. In Rose’s case, this is achieved most obviously via her electric voice synthesizer. I have also suggested elsewhere (see Starrs, "Dance") that de Heer has helped find a second voice for Rose via the language of dance, and in doing so has expanded the audience’s understandings of quality of life for the disabled, as per Mike Oliver’s social model of disability, rather than the more usual medical model of disability. Empowered by her act of courage with Eddie, Julia sacks her uncaring ‘carer’ and the film ends optimistically with Julia and her new man dancing on the front porch. By picturing the couple in long shot and from above, Julia’s joyous dance of triumph is depicted as ordinary, normal and not deserving of close examination. This happy ending is intercut with a shot of Madeline and her broken down car, performing her own frustrated dance and this further emphasizes that she was unable to ‘dance’ (i.e. communicate and compete) with Julia. The disabled performer such as Rose, whether deliberately appropriating a role or passively accepting it, usually struggles to placate two contrasting realities: (s)he is at once invisible in the public world of interhuman relations and simultaneously hyper-visible due to physical Otherness and subsequent instantaneous typecasting. But by the end of Dance Me to My Song, Rose and de Heer have subverted this notion of the disabled performer grappling with the dual roles of invisible victim and hyper-visible victim by depicting Julia as socially and physically adept. She ‘wins the guy’ and dances her victory as de Heer’s inspirational camera looks down at her success like an omniscient and pleased god. Film academic Vivian Sobchack writes of the phenomenology of dance choreography for the disabled and her own experience of waltzing with the maker of her prosthetic leg, Steve, with the comment: “for the moment I did displace focus on my bodily immanence to the transcendent ensemble of our movement and I really began to waltz” (65). It is easy to imagine Rose’s own, similar feeling of bodily transcendence in the closing shot of Dance Me to My Song as she shows she can ‘dance’ better than her able-bodied rival, content as she is with her self-identity. Conclusion: Validation of the Auteurial OtherRolf de Heer was a well-known film-maker by the time he directed Dance Me to My Song. His films Bad Boy Bubby (1993) and The Quiet Room (1996) had both screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. He was rapidly developing a reputation for non-mainstream representations of marginalised, subaltern populations, a cinematic trajectory that was to be further consolidated by later films privileging the voice of Indigenous Peoples in The Tracker (2002) and Ten Canoes (2006), the latter winning the Special Jury prize at Cannes. His films often feature unlikely protagonists or as Liz Ferrier writes, are “characterised by vulnerable bodies … feminised … none of whom embody hegemonic masculinity” (65): they are the opposite of Hollywood’s hyper-masculine, hard-bodied, controlling heroes. With a nascent politically correct worldview proving popular, de Heer may have considered the assigning of authorship to Rose a marketable idea, her being representative of a marginalized group, which as Andy Medhurst might argue, may be more politically justifiable, as it apparently is with films of gay authorship. However, it must be emphasized that there is no evidence that de Heer’s reticence about claiming authorship of Dance Me to My Song is motivated by pecuniary interests, nor does he seem to have been trying to distance himself from the project through embarrassment or dissatisfaction with the film or its relatively unknown writer/actor. Rather, he seems to be giving credit for authorship where credit is due, for as a result of Rose’s tenacity and agency this film is, in two ways, her creative success. Firstly, it is a rare exception to the disability film genre defined by Paul Darke as the “normality drama” because in the film’s diegesis, Julia is shown triumphing not simply over the limitations of her disability, but over her able-bodied rival in love as well: she ‘dances’ better than the ‘normal’ Madelaine. Secondly, in her gaining possession of the primary credits, and the mantle of the film’s primary author, Rose is shown triumphing over other aspiring able-bodied film-makers in the notoriously competitive film-making industry. Despite being an unpublished and unknown author, the label “A film by Heather Rose” is, I believe, a deserved coup for the woman who set out to make “the most sexy and honest film about disability ever made”. As with de Heer’s other films in which marginalised peoples are given voice, he demonstrates a desire not to subjugate the Other, but to validate and empower him/her. He both acknowledges their authorial voices and credits them as essential beings, and in enabling such subaltern populations to be heard, willingly cedes his privileged position as a successful, white, male, able-bodied film-maker. In the credits of this film he seems to be saying ‘I may be an auteur, but Heather Rose is a no less able auteur’. References Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Capp, Rose. “Alexandra and the de Heer Project.” RealTime + Onscreen 56 (Aug.-Sep. 2003): 21. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue56/7153›. Caughie, John. “Introduction”. Theories of Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 9-16. Darke, Paul. “Cinematic Representations of Disability.” The Disability Reader. Ed. Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Cassell, 1988. 181-198. Davis, Therese. “Working Together: Two Cultures, One Film, Many Canoes.” Senses of Cinema 2006. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/41/ten-canoes.html›. De Heer, Rolf. “Production Notes.” Vertigo Productions. Undated. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.vertigoproductions.com.au/information.php?film_id=10&display=notes›. Ferrier, Liz. “Vulnerable Bodies: Creative Disabilities in Contemporary Australian Film.” Australian Cinema in the 1990s. Ed. Ian Craven. London and Portland: Frank Cass and Co., 2001. 57-78. Medhurst, Andy. “That Special Thrill: Brief Encounter, Homosexuality and Authorship.” Screen 32.2 (1991): 197-208. Moran, Albert, and Errol Veith. Film in Australia: An Introduction. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2006. Oliver, Mike. Social Work with Disabled People. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983. Rose Slattery, Heather. “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation.” Words+ n.d. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.words-plus.com/website/stories/isaac2000.htm›. Sobchack, Vivian. “‘Choreography for One, Two, and Three Legs’ (A Phenomenological Meditation in Movements).” Topoi 24.1 (2005): 55-66. Stahl, Frederick. “Standing Room Only for a Thunderbolt in a Wheelchair,” Sydney Morning Herald 31 Oct. 2002. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683471529.html›. Starrs, D. Bruno. “Sounds of Silence: An Interview with Rolf de Heer.” Metro 152 (2007): 18-21. ———. “An avowal of male lack: Sound in Rolf de Heer’s The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2003).” Metro 156 (2008): 148-153. ———. “Dance Me to My Song (Rolf de Heer 1997): The Story of a Disabled Dancer.” Proceedings Scopic Bodies Dance Studies Research Seminar Series 2007. Ed. Mark Harvey. University of Auckland, 2008 (in press). Urban, Andrew L. “Dance Me to My Song, Rolf de Heer, Australia.” Film Festivals 1988. 6 June 2008. ‹http://www.filmfestivals.com/cannes98/selofus9.htm›.

Introduction With a deluge of mouthwatering pre-publicity, the opening of The Spotted Pig, the USA’s first self-identified British-styled gastropub, in Manhattan in February 2004 was much anticipated. The late Australian chef, food writer and restauranteur Mietta O’Donnell has noted how “taking over a building or business which has a long established reputation can be a mixed blessing” because of the way that memories “can enrich the experience of being in a place or they can just make people nostalgic”. Bistro Le Zoo, the previous eatery on the site, had been very popular when it opened almost a decade earlier, and its closure was mourned by some diners (Young; Kaminsky “Feeding Time”; Steinhauer & McGinty). This regret did not, however, appear to affect The Spotted Pig’s success. As esteemed New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni noted in his 2006 review: “Almost immediately after it opened […] the throngs started to descend, and they have never stopped”. The following year, The Spotted Pig was awarded a Michelin star—the first year that Michelin ranked New York—and has kept this star in the subsequent annual rankings. Writing Restaurant Biography Detailed studies have been published of almost every type of contemporary organisation including public institutions such as schools, hospitals, museums and universities, as well as non-profit organisations such as charities and professional associations. These are often written to mark a major milestone, or some significant change, development or the demise of the organisation under consideration (Brien). Detailed studies have also recently been published of businesses as diverse as general stores (Woody), art galleries (Fossi), fashion labels (Koda et al.), record stores (Southern & Branson), airlines (Byrnes; Jones), confectionary companies (Chinn) and builders (Garden). In terms of attracting mainstream readerships, however, few such studies seem able to capture popular reader interest as those about eating establishments including restaurants and cafés. This form of restaurant life history is, moreover, not restricted to ‘quality’ establishments. Fast food restaurant chains have attracted their share of studies (see, for example Love; Jakle & Sculle), ranging from business-economic analyses (Liu), socio-cultural political analyses (Watson), and memoirs (Kroc & Anderson), to criticism around their conduct and effects (Striffler). Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is the most well-known published critique of the fast food industry and its effects with, famously, the Rolling Stone article on which it was based generating more reader mail than any other piece run in the 1990s. The book itself (researched narrative creative nonfiction), moreover, made a fascinating transition to the screen, transformed into a fictionalised drama (co-written by Schlosser) that narrates the content of the book from the point of view of a series of fictional/composite characters involved in the industry, rather than in a documentary format. Akin to the range of studies of fast food restaurants, there are also a variety of studies of eateries in US motels, caravan parks, diners and service station restaurants (see, for example, Baeder). Although there has been little study of this sub-genre of food and drink publishing, their popularity can be explained, at least in part, because such volumes cater to the significant readership for writing about food related topics of all kinds, with food writing recently identified as mainstream literary fare in the USA and UK (Hughes) and an entire “publishing subculture” in Australia (Dunstan & Chaitman). Although no exact tally exists, an informed estimate by the founder of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and president of the Paris Cookbook Fair, Edouard Cointreau, has more than 26,000 volumes on food and wine related topics currently published around the world annually (ctd. in Andriani “Gourmand Awards”). The readership for publications about restaurants can also perhaps be attributed to the wide range of information that can be included a single study. My study of a selection of these texts from the UK, USA and Australia indicates that this can include narratives of place and architecture dealing with the restaurant’s location, locale and design; narratives of directly food-related subject matter such as menus, recipes and dining trends; and narratives of people, in the stories of its proprietors, staff and patrons. Detailed studies of contemporary individual establishments commonly take the form of authorised narratives either written by the owners, chefs or other staff with the help of a food journalist, historian or other professional writer, or produced largely by that writer with the assistance of the premise’s staff. These studies are often extensively illustrated with photographs and, sometimes, drawings or reproductions of other artworks, and almost always include recipes. Two examples of these from my own collection include a centennial history of a famous New Orleans eatery that survived Hurricane Katrina, Galatoire’s Cookbook. Written by employees—the chief operating officer/general manager (Melvin Rodrigue) and publicist (Jyl Benson)—this incorporates reminiscences from both other staff and patrons. The second is another study of a New Orleans’ restaurant, this one by the late broadcaster and celebrity local historian Mel Leavitt. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant, compiled with the assistance of the Two Sisters’ proprietor, Joseph Fein Joseph III, was first published in 1992 and has been so enduringly popular that it is in its eighth printing. These texts, in common with many others of this type, trace a triumph-over-adversity company history that incorporates a series of mildly scintillating anecdotes, lists of famous chefs and diners, and signature recipes. Although obviously focused on an external readership, they can also be characterised as an instance of what David M. Boje calls an organisation’s “story performance” (106) as the process of creating these narratives mobilises an organisation’s (in these cases, a commercial enterprise’s) internal information processing and narrative building activities. Studies of contemporary restaurants are much more rarely written without any involvement from the eatery’s personnel. When these are, the results tend to have much in common with more critical studies such as Fast Food Nation, as well as so-called architectural ‘building biographies’ which attempt to narrate the historical and social forces that “explain the shapes and uses” (Ellis, Chao & Parrish 70) of the physical structures we create. Examples of this would include Harding’s study of the importance of the Boeuf sur le Toit in Parisian life in the 1920s and Middlebrook’s social history of London’s Strand Corner House. Such work agrees with Kopytoff’s assertion—following Appadurai’s proposal that objects possess their own ‘biographies’ which need to be researched and expressed—that such inquiry can reveal not only information about the objects under consideration, but also about readers as we examine our “cultural […] aesthetic, historical, and even political” responses to these narratives (67). The life story of a restaurant will necessarily be entangled with those of the figures who have been involved in its establishment and development, as well as the narratives they create around the business. This following brief study of The Spotted Pig, however, written without the assistance of the establishment’s personnel, aims to outline a life story for this eatery in order to reflect upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining practice in New York as raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, product, brand, symbol and marketing tool, as well as, at times, purely as an animal identity. The Spotted Pig Widely profiled before it even opened, The Spotted Pig is reportedly one of the city’s “most popular” restaurants (Michelin 349). It is profiled in all the city guidebooks I could locate in print and online, featuring in some of these as a key stop on recommended itineraries (see, for instance, Otis 39). A number of these proclaim it to be the USA’s first ‘gastropub’—the term first used in 1991 in the UK to describe a casual hotel/bar with good food and reasonable prices (Farley). The Spotted Pig is thus styled on a shabby-chic version of a traditional British hotel, featuring a cluttered-but-well arranged use of pig-themed objects and illustrations that is described by latest Michelin Green Guide of New York City as “a country-cute décor that still manages to be hip” (Michelin 349). From the three-dimensional carved pig hanging above the entrance in a homage to the shingles of traditional British hotels, to the use of its image on the menu, website and souvenir tee-shirts, the pig as motif proceeds its use as a foodstuff menu item. So much so, that the restaurant is often (affectionately) referred to by patrons and reviewers simply as ‘The Pig’. The restaurant has become so well known in New York in the relatively brief time it has been operating that it has not only featured in a number of novels and memoirs, but, moreover, little or no explanation has been deemed necessary as the signifier of “The Spotted Pig” appears to convey everything that needs to be said about an eatery of quality and fashion. In the thriller Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel, when John Locke’s hero has to leave the restaurant and becomes involved in a series of dangerous escapades, he wants nothing more but to get back to his dinner (107, 115). The restaurant is also mentioned a number of times in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle in relation to a (fictional) new movie of the same name. The joke in the book is that the character doesn’t know of the restaurant (26). In David Goodwillie’s American Subversive, the story of a journalist-turned-blogger and a homegrown terrorist set in New York, the narrator refers to “Scarlett Johansson, for instance, and the hostess at the Spotted Pig” (203-4) as the epitome of attractiveness. The Spotted Pig is also mentioned in Suzanne Guillette’s memoir, Much to Your Chagrin, when the narrator is on a dinner date but fears running into her ex-boyfriend: ‘Jack lives somewhere in this vicinity […] Vaguely, you recall him telling you he was not too far from the Spotted Pig on Greenwich—now, was it Greenwich Avenue or Greenwich Street?’ (361). The author presumes readers know the right answer in order to build tension in this scene. Although this success is usually credited to the joint efforts of backer, music executive turned restaurateur Ken Friedman, his partner, well-known chef, restaurateur, author and television personality Mario Batali, and their UK-born and trained chef, April Bloomfield (see, for instance, Batali), a significant part has been built on Bloomfield’s pork cookery. The very idea of a “spotted pig” itself raises a central tenet of Bloomfield’s pork/food philosophy which is sustainable and organic. That is, not the mass produced, industrially farmed pig which produces a leaner meat, but the fatty, tastier varieties of pig such as the heritage six-spotted Berkshire which is “darker, more heavily marbled with fat, juicier and richer-tasting than most pork” (Fabricant). Bloomfield has, indeed, made pig’s ears—long a Chinese restaurant staple in the city and a key ingredient of Southern US soul food as well as some traditional Japanese and Spanish dishes—fashionable fare in the city, and her current incarnation, a crispy pig’s ear salad with lemon caper dressing (TSP 2010) is much acclaimed by reviewers. This approach to ingredients—using the ‘whole beast’, local whenever possible, and the concentration on pork—has been underlined and enhanced by a continuing relationship with UK chef Fergus Henderson. In his series of London restaurants under the banner of “St. John”, Henderson is famed for the approach to pork cookery outlined in his two books Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, published in 1999 (re-published both in the UK and the US as The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating), and Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II (coauthored with Justin Piers Gellatly in 2007). Henderson has indeed been identified as starting a trend in dining and food publishing, focusing on sustainably using as food the entirety of any animal killed for this purpose, but which mostly focuses on using all parts of pigs. In publishing, this includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, subtitled Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, John Barlow’s Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (2008). In restaurants, it certainly includes The Spotted Pig. So pervasive has embrace of whole beast pork consumption been in New York that, by 2007, Bruni could write that these are: “porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig” (Bruni). This demand set the stage perfectly for, in October 2007, Henderson to travel to New York to cook pork-rich menus at The Spotted Pig in tandem with Bloomfield (Royer). He followed this again in 2008 and, by 2009, this annual event had become known as “FergusStock” and was covered by local as well as UK media, and a range of US food weblogs. By 2009, it had grown to become a dinner at the Spotted Pig with half the dishes on the menu by Henderson and half by Bloomfield, and a dinner the next night at David Chang’s acclaimed Michelin-starred Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is famed for its Cantonese-style steamed pork belly buns. A third dinner (and then breakfast/brunch) followed at Friedman/Bloomfield’s Breslin Bar and Dining Room (discussed below) (Rose). The Spotted Pig dinners have become famed for Henderson’s pig’s head and pork trotter dishes with the chef himself recognising that although his wasn’t “the most obvious food to cook for America”, it was the case that “at St John, if a couple share a pig’s head, they tend to be American” (qtd. in Rose). In 2009, the pigs’ head were presented in pies which Henderson has described as “puff pastry casing, with layers of chopped, cooked pig’s head and potato, so all the lovely, bubbly pig’s head juices go into the potato” (qtd. in Rose). Bloomfield was aged only 28 when, in 2003, with a recommendation from Jamie Oliver, she interviewed for, and won, the position of executive chef of The Spotted Pig (Fabricant; Q&A). Following this introduction to the US, her reputation as a chef has grown based on the strength of her pork expertise. Among a host of awards, she was named one of US Food & Wine magazine’s ten annual Best New Chefs in 2007. In 2009, she was a featured solo session titled “Pig, Pig, Pig” at the fourth Annual International Chefs Congress, a prestigious New York City based event where “the world’s most influential and innovative chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers present the latest techniques and culinary concepts to their peers” (Starchefs.com). Bloomfield demonstrated breaking down a whole suckling St. Canut milk raised piglet, after which she butterflied, rolled and slow-poached the belly, and fried the ears. As well as such demonstrations of expertise, she is also often called upon to provide expert comment on pork-related news stories, with The Spotted Pig regularly the subject of that food news. For example, when a rare, heritage Hungarian pig was profiled as a “new” New York pork source in 2009, this story arose because Bloomfield had served a Mangalitsa/Berkshire crossbreed pig belly and trotter dish with Agen prunes (Sanders) at The Spotted Pig. Bloomfield was quoted as the authority on the breed’s flavour and heritage authenticity: “it took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, windows steaming from the roasting pork in the oven […] This pork has that same authentic taste” (qtd. in Sanders). Bloomfield has also used this expert profile to support a series of pork-related causes. These include the Thanksgiving Farm in the Catskill area, which produces free range pork for its resident special needs children and adults, and helps them gain meaningful work-related skills in working with these pigs. Bloomfield not only cooks for the project’s fundraisers, but also purchases any excess pigs for The Spotted Pig (Estrine 103). This strong focus on pork is not, however, exclusive. The Spotted Pig is also one of a number of American restaurants involved in the Meatless Monday campaign, whereby at least one vegetarian option is included on menus in order to draw attention to the benefits of a plant-based diet. When, in 2008, Bloomfield beat the Iron Chef in the sixth season of the US version of the eponymous television program, the central ingredient was nothing to do with pork—it was olives. Diversifying from this focus on ‘pig’ can, however, be dangerous. Friedman and Bloomfield’s next enterprise after The Spotted Pig was The John Dory seafood restaurant at the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street. This opened in November 2008 to reviews that its food was “uncomplicated and nearly perfect” (Andrews 22), won Bloomfield Time Out New York’s 2009 “Best New Hand at Seafood” award, but was not a success. The John Dory was a more formal, but smaller, restaurant that was more expensive at a time when the financial crisis was just biting, and was closed the following August. Friedman blamed the layout, size and neighbourhood (Stein) and its reservation system, which limited walk-in diners (ctd. in Vallis), but did not mention its non-pork, seafood orientation. When, almost immediately, another Friedman/Bloomfield project was announced, the Breslin Bar & Dining Room (which opened in October 2009 in the Ace Hotel at 20 West 29th Street and Broadway), the enterprise was closely modeled on the The Spotted Pig. In preparation, its senior management—Bloomfield, Friedman and sous-chefs, Nate Smith and Peter Cho (who was to become the Breslin’s head chef)—undertook a tasting tour of the UK that included Henderson’s St. John Bread & Wine Bar (Leventhal). Following this, the Breslin’s menu highlighted a series of pork dishes such as terrines, sausages, ham and potted styles (Rosenberg & McCarthy), with even Bloomfield’s pork scratchings (crispy pork rinds) bar snacks garnering glowing reviews (see, for example, Severson; Ghorbani). Reviewers, moreover, waxed lyrically about the menu’s pig-based dishes, the New York Times reviewer identifying this focus as catering to New York diners’ “fetish for pork fat” (Sifton). This representative review details not only “an entree of gently smoked pork belly that’s been roasted to tender goo, for instance, over a drift of buttery mashed potatoes, with cabbage and bacon on the side” but also a pig’s foot “in gravy made of reduced braising liquid, thick with pillowy shallots and green flecks of deconstructed brussels sprouts” (Sifton). Sifton concluded with the proclamation that this style of pork was “very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat”. Concluding remarks Bloomfield has listed Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie as among her favourite food books. Publishers Weekly reviewer called Ruhlman “a food poet, and the pig is his muse” (Q&A). In August 2009, it was reported that Bloomfield had always wanted to write a cookbook (Marx) and, in July 2010, HarperCollins imprint Ecco publisher and foodbook editor Dan Halpern announced that he was planning a book with her, tentatively titled, A Girl and Her Pig (Andriani “Ecco Expands”). As a “cookbook with memoir running throughout” (Maurer), this will discuss the influence of the pig on her life as well as how to cook pork. This text will obviously also add to the data known about The Spotted Pig, but until then, this brief gastrobiography has attempted to outline some of the human, and in this case, animal, stories that lie behind all businesses. References Andrews, Colman. “Its Up To You, New York, New York.” Gourmet Apr. (2009): 18-22, 111. Andriani, Lynn. “Ecco Expands Cookbook Program: HC Imprint Signs Up Seven New Titles.” Publishers Weekly 12 Jul. (2010) 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/43803-ecco-expands-cookbook-program.html Andriani, Lynn. “Gourmand Awards Receive Record Number of Cookbook Entries.” Publishers Weekly 27 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/44573-gourmand-awards-receive-record-number-of-cookbook-entries.html Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 2003. First pub. 1986. Baeder, John. Gas, Food, and Lodging. New York: Abbeville Press, 1982. Barlow, John. Everything But the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Batali, Mario. “The Spotted Pig.” Mario Batali 2010. 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.mariobatali.com/restaurants_spottedpig.cfm Boje, David M. “The Storytelling Organization: A Study of Story Performance in an Office-Supply Firm.” Administrative Science Quarterly 36.1 (1991): 106-126. Brien, Donna Lee. “Writing to Understand Ourselves: An Organisational History of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 1996–2010.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses Apr. 2010 http://www.textjournal.com.au/april10/brien.htm Bruni, Frank. “Fat, Glorious Fat, Moves to the Center of the Plate.” New York Times 13 Jun. 2007. 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/dining/13glut.html Bruni, Frank. “Stuffed Pork.” New York Times 25 Jan. 2006. 4 Sep. 2010 http://events.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/dining/reviews/25rest.html Bushnell, Candace. Lipstick Jungle. New York: Hyperion Books, 2008. Byrnes, Paul. Qantas by George!: The Remarkable Story of George Roberts. Sydney: Watermark, 2000. Chinn, Carl. The Cadbury Story: A Short History. Studley, Warwickshire: Brewin Books, 1998. Dunstan, David and Chaitman, Annette. “Food and Drink: The Appearance of a Publishing Subculture.” Ed. David Carter and Anne Galligan. Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. 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