Journal articles on the topic 'Vides de Sitter'

Abstract Patient safety including falls risk, is a high priority and an increasing challenge for all health care facilities. Safety risk factors include both physical factors and psychological factors. One common strategy to increase safety has been the use of “sitters.”. Studies on functions and outcomes are conflicting some have reported no differences in falls, decreases in falls and restraints, and increases in falls. A total survey sample of 22 “sitters” and 56 registered nurses conducted at a large midwestern VA facility to assess perceptions of sitters. Groups were similar in ages (41-50 years) with sitters having slightly more experience (11-20 years) versus nurses (6-10 years). Safety conditions most likely to be identified with sitter usage were delirium, elopement, and being a hospice patient. Sitters were more likely to identify falls risk, sitters 63% of time versus RN perception 30.9% (Chi Square=7.0, df=l, p=.008); dementia 59% vs 13% (Chi square=17.15, df=1, p=.001); and weakness 66.7% vs 18.2% (Chi square=16.54, df=1, p=.001). Sitters were more likely to have training in delirium 55% vs nurses, 34% (Chi sq=2.557, df=1 p=.11). Nurses identified that the use of sitters were very likely to prevent falls 29.8%, calm patients 25.2%, maintain lines 25.2%, prevent elopement 30.5% and redirect patients 29.7%. Nurses identified the following available safety strategies: alarms (67.2%), adjusting assignment (47.2%), music therapy (5.4%), use of restraints (<2%), pet therapy (<2%), and video monitoring (<1%). Implementation of safety programs must address availability of multiple strategies including: matching sitter competencies with patient populations served.

Presents the state-of-the-art Deepfake face replacement image collage method, an artificial intelligence (AI) product that can be used to create high-quality, realistic videos with a fake or replaced face, with no obvious signs of manipulation. Based on the DeepFaceLab (DFL) application, the process of creating video images of an “impossible face” is described step by step. The results of the experiments of studying the perception patterns of the moving “impossible face” and their differences in statics and dynamics are presented. The stimuli were two DFL-generated models of virtual sitters with impossible faces: a video image of a chimerical face, in which the right and left sides belong to different people, and a Tatchered face with the eyes and mouth areas rotated by 180°. It was shown that the phenomena of perception of the “impossible face”, registered earlier under static conditions (integrity of perception of the split image, distraction and inversion effect), are preserved and acquire a new content when dynamic models are exposed. In contrast to the collaged images, the original faces in statics and motion, regardless of egocentric orientation, are evaluated positively at the level of high values. Under all tested conditions the gender of the virtual sitter is determined adequately, the perceived age is overestimated. Estimates of the virtual sitter’s emotions from his video images are differentiated into basic (stable) and additional (changing) states, the ratio of which depends on the content of a particular episode. Deepfake image synthesis technology significantly expands the possibilities of psychological research of interpersonal perception. The use of digital technologies simplifies the creation of “impossible face” stimulus models necessary for in-depth study of representations of the human inner world, and creates a need for new experimental-psychological procedures corresponding to a higher level of ecological and social validity.

The objective of the research was to test the hypothesis about the relationship between the features of communicative situations and the perception of a stranger. Three types of situations were used, differing in the degree of the observer's involvement in communication: 1. looking at a photo image of the sitter, 2. watching a video with the sitter in communication, 3. communicating with the sitter “face to face”. It has been shown that the dynamics of interpersonal evaluations are multidirectional and depend rather on the diagnostic metrics used. Thus, the values of adequacy of evaluation of individual psychological features of the sitter are higher in the situation of photo perception as compared to the situations of video perception and face-to-face communication, at the same time the values of complexity of interpersonal evaluation (number of choices of neutral evaluation “0”) are lower in the situation of face-to-face communication and the situation of video perception as compared to the situation of photo perception. The study revealed the dynamics of interpersonal evaluations in different communicative situations, i.e. it was shown how situations influence the way the perception of a communication partner is formed.

The work is aimed at studying the dynamics of interpersonal perception in various situations of representation of the sitter and at different stages of the development of the situation. The study involved 126 people (74% women and 26% men) aged 18 to 60 years (M = 31.78; SD = 9.78). The subjects were randomly divided into four independent groups. Each group was shown videos, where the sitter was shown in three situations, differing in the degree of formalization of communication (passing through the entrance of the institution, passing the exam, consulting a psychologist), while the first group saw only the beginning of the situation, the second — the middle, the third — the end, and the fourth the group watched each of the videos in their entirety. It is shown that, in general, the assessments of one and the same person, in different situations of interaction, are determined not only by the appearance and behavior of the sitter, but also by the situation itself. Also, for some personal qualities, differences were found in the assessment depending on the stage of development of the communicative situation.

<p>The relevance of the study is due to the need to study the patterns of interpersonal perception using qualitative-quantitative methodology and in environmentally valid situations of human life. Three videos of interpersonal interaction were used as stimulus material. The study involved 22 people, randomly divided into two groups, one of which was presented with three stimulus videos with the participation of a sitter, and the other with the participation of a sitter. The task of the study participants was to evaluate the personal characteristics of the sitter on 21 scales of the &ldquo;Personality Differential&rdquo; method, as well as on the scale &ldquo;does not inspire confidence&rdquo;, and then provide written explanations of the ratings made on each of the scales. An inductive content analysis of verbalizations containing explanations of subjective assessments was carried out, and an empirical classification of categories of verbal units characterizing various aspects of the object of perception was constructed. As a result of the study, it was shown that perceptual situations related to different spheres of life significantly influenced the subjective assessment by observers of some personal characteristics of the person included in these situations (object of perception), as well as the ratio of categories of verbal explanations of subjective assessments. The results of the study contribute to the understanding of the processes of social perception and, in particular, the processes of perception and description by an observer of the personal characteristics of another person in different life situations of interpersonal interaction.</p>

Double Video paradigmet representerer en «lukket videosirkel» hvor mor og spedbarn sitter fysisk adskilt i hver sitt rom og kommuniserer med hverandre via video- og audio-kanaler hvor de er i en direkte interaksjon (Direkte), eller hvor mor eller spedbarnet får overført et opptak av partneren fra litt tidligere i interaksjonen (Opptak). Manipulasjonen skaper et brudd på sosial kontingens. Double Video paradigmet gjør det mulig å undersøke om spedbarn er sensitive til brudd på sosial kontingens, og om mødres interaksjonsatferd endres når spedbarna ikke lenger responderer aktivt på mors atferd. Double Video laboratoriet i Bergen bestod av 5 betingelser; Direkte 1-Opptak 1-Direkte 2-Opptak 2-Direkte 3. Våre undersøkelser av barnets blikkfokus og affektive uttrykk gir støtte for en sensitvitet til sosial kontingens hos to måneder gamle spedbarn. Resultater viser også at mødres vokaliseringer endres, avhengig av kvaliteten på interaksjonen med spedbarnet. Resultatene fra Double Video laboratoriet i Bergen gir empirisk støtte for at to måneder gamle spedbarn er sensitive til kvalitative endringer i mors atferd under interaksjon, og at mødre er avhengig av aktive bidrag fra spedbarnet for å opprettholde egen interaksjonsatferd. Dette tilbakeviser påstanden om at proto-dialog mellom spedbarn og omsorgsgiver er en enveis prosess som er drevet av omsorgsgiver.

<p>The features of expression and perception of vivid facial expressions in the system of multimodal affective states of a person are studied. The study is based on the Russian-language version of the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test (GERT) and consists of two series. The first serie of experiment was devoted to demonstration of short audio&mdash;video clips of 14 affective states expressed by specially trained actors, the second &mdash;to the same videos without sound accompaniment (intonation of voice in pseudolinguistic utterances). The subjects &mdash; 72 women in each series of the experiment, age: 18-45 years (M1=22.4 g, SD1=5.4; M2=27.47 l, SD2=5.7) - identified the states of the actors&mdash;sitters (five women and five men), using an interactive image of the Geneva Wheel of Emotions on the display screen for evaluation. The analysis of the characteristics of the accuracy and semantic structure of the expression and identification of emotional expressions, depending on the type of modality and exposure conditions, is carried out. The main expression and identification metrics of facial, prosodic and multimodal states are correlated. According to experimental data, within the framework of bimodal (face+voice) expressions of emotions, a mobile face has a higher expressive potential and is the basis of cross-modal integration.</p>

<p>The patterns of perception of a part and a whole of multimodal emotional dynamic states of people unfamiliar to observers are studied. Audio-video clips of fourteen key emotional states expressed by specially trained actors were randomly presented to two groups of observers. In one group (N=96, average age &mdash; 34, SD &mdash; 9.4l.), each audio&mdash;video image was shown in full, in the other (N=78, average age &mdash; 25, SD &mdash; 9.6l.), it was divided into two parts of equal duration from the beginning to the conditional middle (short phonetic pause) and from the middle to the end of the exposure. The stimulus material contained facial expressions, gestures, head and eye movements, changes in the position of the body of the sitters, who voiced pseudolinguistic statements accompanied by affective intonations. The accuracy of identification and the structure of categorical fields were evaluated depending on the modality and form (whole/part) of the exposure of affective states. After the exposure of each audio-video image from the presented list of emotions, observers were required to choose the one that best corresponds to what they saw. According to the data obtained, the accuracy of identifying the emotions of the initial and final fragments of audio-video images practically coincide, but significantly less than with full exposure. Functional differences in the perception of fragmented audio-video images of the same emotional states are revealed. The modes of transitions from the initial stage to the final one and the conditions affecting the relative speed of the perceptual process are shown. The uneven formation of the information basis of multimodal expressions and the heterochronous perceptogenesis of emotional states of actors are demonstrated.</p>

The article discusses the issue of understanding the nature of solitude and its reflection in art, including some aspects of solitude in the digital age. There is noted that this topic has hardly been explored in art history, including in studies on street art, which determines the relevance of this article. The author emphasizes that in art solitude is a filter through which the artist learns to see the world, transforms his/her experience into images, and enters into a dialogue with the viewer. The article examines the reflection of the issue of solitude in contemporary art on the basis of the works of the French street artist JR (he does not give his full name), in particular his video installation “Chronicles of San Francisco”. Most of JR’s creative projects focus on overcoming solitude and isolation: social, gender, race, age, cultural, etc. The author explains the choice of a video installation as the most optimal means for communication between the artist and the viewer. The article highlights the technical and technological innovation of JR’s video installation “Chronicles of San Francisco”: the artist’s approach to revealing several layers of the issue of social isolation and solitude; equalizing the objects by using the same color and light exposure; supplementing the video image with “untold stories” of the sitters via an application for mobile phones; creating the overall composition dynamics of the arrangement of the 1206 figures and the background through visualization of different types and layers of solitude. The results of the study will be useful to art historians and students studying contemporary art and street art.

This research describes a method for studying the authenticity/unauthenticity of the information re- ported by people in video images. It is based on automatic tracking of coordinates of key points of a speaker’s face using OpenFace software. When processing the data, the multiple linear regression procedure is used. It was found that the dynamics of neighboring key points in the obtained models has a multidirectional char- acter, indicating the presence of a superposition of several dynamic structures, corresponding to the characteristic complex changes in the face position and facial expressions of the sitter. Their isolation is realized by means of the principal component analysis. It is shown, that the first 11 principal components describe 99.7% of the variability of the initial data. The correlation analysis between the number of credibility/confidence statements on the set of time intervals and the principal component loadings, allows to differentiate the dynamic structures of the face, connected with the assessments of credibility of the reported information. Automated analysis of face dynamics optimizes the process of collecting empirical data on the sitter’s appearance and their semantic structuring, as well as expands the range of predictors of the assessments of the truthfulness of the messages received.

This project aims to discuss drawing as a method of bridging the void between digital imaging technologies and physical drawing in the fine art domain. It does so by investigating the role of drawing and printing in contemporary portraiture. Drawn and printed silkscreen portraits are made from a synthesis of graphite marks, digital pixels and water-based ink deposited on paper surfaces. The practice-led research described here explores the materiality of the emergent image when drawing is impressed on an electronic media trace. This investigation is timely in the context of the unprecedented impact of digital technologies on contemporary culture that tend to displace the physicality of drawing. By taking an approach to portraiture whereby artist and sitter do not meet in person, the project initiates a portrait of Ed Ruscha using the medium of video images. Digital electronic images held pixel by pixel in smartphone camera and computer hard disks are interpreted into physical drawing environments to make an expressive representation of a human form. Tactile gestural mark-making is contrasted with electronic imaging to create a pensive image where techniques are blended. The process and methodology are described, and the artistic outputs are shared across the globe through digital and analogue communication systems.

Abstract. Geotourism has become well-known all around Indonesia as many placessustain distinctive characters – from the environment, aesthetics, culture, toresidents. Keramikan, without exception, located in the borders of Kecamatan Suohand Bandar Negeri Suoh has captured many local tourists by its exceptionalgeological and scientific importance: geothermal site. However, both tourists andthe management have to struggle to enjoy this attractive geosite because of the lackof accessibility and amenity. Therefore, attempt measures were done to exaggeratethe beauty of Keramikan geothermal site as a tourism site or geosite, including a)story-based socialization for locals that they can explain many ‘whys’ inside the siteto the coming tourists, b) explaining through video the existing condition ofaccessibility and amenity as well as how the management can improve, c) postermaking and distribution to start the health and safety awareness of the public,independent tourism organization, and Keramikan workers, and the government.Although attractions are undeniably appealing for stakeholders and tourists, the factthat accessibility and amenity cannot be improved due to regulation and licenserestrictions will be the downfall for the management. Therefore, this socialization isaimed to educate as well as to address the fundamental problems to the authority.Keywords: geotourism, geosite, Keramikan Suoh, socializationAbstrak. Pesona Wisata Keramikan Suoh, Kabupaten Lampung Barat, eratkaitannya dengan peristiwa vulkanik yang hebat dan berlangsung hingga sekarang.Pengelolaan daerah wisata ini sudah dilakukan, namun perlu dorongan danpengetahuan sebagai upaya meningkatkan daya tarik pengunjung. Upayapeningkatan daya tarik dilakukan dengan menyosialisasikan kejadian KawahKeramikan dan sekitarnya dari sudut pandang geologi dan legenda setempatkepada media massa dan mitra, yaitu Kelompok Sadar Wisata, pengelola, komunitasojek, Kecamatan Suoh, dan Dinas Pariwisata Lampung Barat. Upaya ini dilengkapidengan pembuatan dan menyosialisasi video berisikan aspek atraksi, aksesibilitasdan amenitas. Mitra juga dibekali dengan manfaat-manfaat air panas sertahimbauan kesehatan dan keselamatan kepada pengunjung. Mitra mengalamipeningkatan pemahaman potensi dengan disosialisasikannya potensi pengembangankepada komunitas ojek, pengelola, dan Kelompok Sadar Wisata dari segi atraksi.Namun, pemerintah, Dinas Pariwisata, dan pengelola Wisata Keramikan Suoh tidakdapat melakukan perbaikan akses dan pengembangan fasilitas pendukung(amenitas) karena perizinan. Selain observasi lapangan, metode wawancara jugadilakukan dengan hasil aksesibilitas dan amenitas yang kurang memadai akanmengurangi minat pengunjung walaupun Wisata Keramikan Suoh memiliki atraksikuat. Solusi permasalahan ini tidak dapat langsung dijawab, tetapi potensi dan hal-hal yang menghambat pengembangan wisata sudah diangkat ke pihak-pihak yang berwenang.Kata Kunci: geowisata, Keramikan Suoh, sosialisasi

"... durch den Luxus finden Millionen Armer sich erhalten. Auch durch den Stolz, den alle schalten. Nicht minder dient der Neid sowie die Eitelkeit der Industrie. Die Sucht, sich als modern in Speisen, in Kleid und Möbeln zu erweisen, stets ein Objekt des Spottes zwar, des Handels wahre Triebkraft war. ..." so schrieb Bernard Mandeville 1705 in seiner Bienenfabel und führte damit vor genau 300 Jahren eine Argumentationsfigur ein, die den Konsum der Wohlhabenden in ein damals gänzlich neues Licht tauchte. Tatsächlich erfolgten im Lauf des 18. Jahrhunderts Veränderungen im Alltagsleben, die Historiker bereits für diese Periode in England von einer „Konsumrevolution“ sprechen lassen. Anzeichen dafür gab es im zunehmenden Verbrauch von Tee, dessen Import um das 200fache stieg und und die nationale Sitte der teatime begründete, oder im Erfolg des Manufaktur-Unternehmers Josiah Wedgwood, der die besseren Kreise mit feinem weißen Porzellan und vielfältigsten Mustern versorgte. Wie Neil McKendrick festgestellt hat, wurden aus früheren „Luxuswaren“ nunmehr „Annehmlichkeiten“ und aus diesen bald „Notwendigkeiten“. Bis dahin hatten soziale oder religiöse Normen für die einzelnen Stände geregelt, was ihnen an Unentbehrlichem oder an Überflüssigem zustand. Nur für die oberste Schicht der Gesellschaft galten Prunk und Verschwendung als angemessen. Die Standesunterschiede sollten sich in der Lebensführung abbilden und die mittleren und niedrigeren Schichten vor den Versuchungen einer leichtsinnigen Lebensführung bewahrt werden: indem man vorschrieb, wer Samt und Seide oder Schnabelschuhe tragen durfte oder aber wie viele Gäste höchstens bei einer Hochzeit einzuladen waren. Zwar dehnten sich kapitalistische Lohnarbeit und Geldwirtschaft aus, doch musste die große Masse der Bevölkerung genügsam bleiben. Viele puritanische Unternehmer begrenzten nicht nur die Kaufkraft ihrer Arbeiter durch niedrige Löhne, sondern hingen auch selbst den Idealen der Sparsamkeit und der Askese an. Ihre Gewinne investierten sie eher ins eigene Geschäft als sie für Luxus und Tand auszugeben. Theateraufführungen erschienen ihnen als frivole Vergnügungen, kostbare Kleidungsstücke als Zeichen verwerflicher Eitelkeit. Der Autor der Bienenfabel wurde von seinen Zeitgenossen daher heftig getadelt, er würde zur „Lasterhaftigkeit“ ermutigen, wogegen er sich verwahrte. Er wolle lediglich beweisen, dass die immer neuen Bedürfnisse der Reichen Gewerbe und Handel belebten: „Private Vices, Publick Benefits“.

Artikkeli tutkii poliittisten ideologioiden esittämistä Disco Elysium -pelissä (Viro 2019) epäonnistumisen tematiikan kautta. Virolaisen indie-peliyhtiö ZA/UM:n kehittämässä, fiktiiviseen maailmaan sijoittuvassa roolipelissä pelaajan tehtävänä on selvittää poliittisesti motivoitunut lynkkaus Revacholin kaupungin telakka-alueella. Tehtävää vaikeuttaa protagonistin ennen pelin alkua ottama humalaputki, jonka jäljiltä hän ei kykene muistamaan nimeään, persoonaansa tai edes maailmaansa. Artikkeli kysyy, miten absurdin humoristinen mutta synkkä peli rakentaa kuvauksia erilaisista poliittisista ideologioista (kommunismista, fasismista, kapitalismista ja sentrismistä) ja mahdollistaa pelaajan kanssakäymisen näiden ideologioiden kanssa epäonnistumisen kautta. Artikkeli pohtii epäonnistumista sekä pelimekaanisena että pelin maailmaan rakennettuna temaattisena elementtinä. Lähipeluun avulla se tuottaa analyysia pelin esittämästä maailmasta ja sen pelillisistä ratkaisuista ja kontekstualisoi sitten löydöksiään suhteessa pelin kehittäjien näkemyksiin työstään sekä pelin vastaanottoon kriitikoiden parissa. Artikkeli väittää, että pelimekaanisten ratkaisuidensa avulla peli esittää epäonnistumisen kautta näkemyksiä kuvailemistaan ideologioista ja rakentaa samalla laajempaa maailmankuvaa, jonka keskiössä on epäonnistumisen oma ideologisuus. Disco Elysium and the political ideology of failure The article explores the portrayal of political ideologies in the video game Disco Elysium (2019) through the thematic of failure. Developed by an Estonian indie game company ZA/UM, the role-playing game sets player in a fictive world and tasks him with solving a politically motivated lynching at the industrial harbor district of the city of Revachol. The mission is hindered by the protagonist’s drinking binge prior to the start of the game, which has caused him to forget his name, persona and even his world. The article questions how the absurdly humorous and yet dark game constructs its depictions of political ideologies (communism, fascism, capitalism, and centrism) and enables the player to interact with these ideologies through the notion of failure. The article examines failure as both a game mechanical and a thematical element built into the game’s world. Through the method of close-playing, it produces analysis of the world produced by the game as well as its game mechanical decisions. It then contextualizes its findings in relation to the pronouncements of the game developers regarding their work as well as the game’s reception among critics in international gaming media. The article argues that through its game mechanical decisions, the game uses failure to create arguments regarding the political ideologies it depicts. It uses these arguments to create a wider worldview, at the heart of which lies an ideology of failure.

近期因營建現場工安意外頻傳，2023年2月高雄市一處建築工地，施工人員在進行吊掛作業時，因吊車傾斜翻覆，吊臂壓到一名李姓勞工，造成職業災害；同年4月高雄市發生李姓工人正在焊接鋼筋時，遭吊車不慎碰撞，而發生工安意外；5月新北市吳姓磁磚公司老闆疑似誤觸操作堆高機，導致整個人懸空卡在機器上方，而發生憾事；因此施工人員與機具於現場作業時的安全距離與位置，常因為營建職場環境之複雜，而存有許多潛在風險，造成長期面臨職業災害的問題，包含重大公安事等發生。<br>在整個施工階段中，大多營造廠皆採用相機或攝影機等影像裝置來記錄現場的施工進度狀況，因影像資料較大、處理時間長，所以多數處於被動使用的狀態，最後僅於存查而未臻理想，所以本研究提出透過深度學習之影像辨識技術，利用卷積神經網路(CNN)具有強力的特徵提取功能，藉由濾波器(Filters)從輪廓、邊緣線條到局部特徵自動進行提取，再以全連接(Fully Connected)方式，將特徵資料輸入至整個神經網路進行訓練的一套工程現場施工危害警示系統，其對於施工影像辨識處理效果佳，達到即時監測施工現場的影像數據，並運用安全評估區塊模組快速識別潛在的危害情況，並發出警示信號，提醒工地管理人員立即採取適當的措施，確保職業安全。本研究將與營建公司合作，蒐集正在施工的建案影像和場地分析，驗證危害警示模型的可行性，並評估其對職業安全管理的實際效果，協助工地管理人員結合科技進步，運用更為有效的管理工具保障施工人員安全，減少工安意外發生，同時提高營建業的生產效率和競爭力。Recently, there has been a high frequency of construction site occupational accidents. In February 2023, at a construction site in Kaohsiung City, a crane tilted and overturned during lifting operations, causing the crane arm to press against nearby construction workers, resulting in occupational injuries. In April, a worker was welding steel bars and was accidentally struck by a crane, leading to a work safety accident. In May, the owner of a tile company in New Taipei City was suspected of mistakenly operating a forklift, causing the person to be suspended above the machine and resulting in a tragic incident. Therefore, the safety distance and positioning between construction workers and machinery during on-site operations are often compromised due to the complexity of the construction workplace environment, posing numerous latent risks and leading to long-term occupational hazard issues, including severe public safety incidents. <br>In the construction industry, cameras or video devices are commonly used to record the progress of construction activities throughout the entire construction phase. However, due to the large size of image data and time-consuming processing, these devices are often passively utilized, resulting in suboptimal outcomes where the data is merely stored for reference purposes. To address this issue, this study proposes a construction hazard warning system that leverages deep learning techniques, specifically convolutional neural networks (CNNs), known for their powerful feature extraction capabilities. By automatically extracting features from contours, edges, and local characteristics through filters and subsequently inputting the extracted features into a fully connected neural network, a practical framework for on-site construction hazard recognition is established. The system enables real-time monitoring of construction sites by processing and analyzing image data. It utilizes a safety assessment module to identify potential hazards and issue warning signals quickly, alerting site managers to take immediate actions to ensure occupational safety. In collaboration with construction companies, this research collects construction project images. It conducts site analysis to validate the feasibility of the hazard warning model and evaluate its practical effectiveness in occupational safety management. By integrating technological advancements, this research aims to assist site managers in adopting more efficient management tools, safeguarding the safety of construction personnel, reducing work-related accidents, and enhancing productivity and competitiveness in the construction industry.

Background: While it is established that video monitoring technology (compared with the use of in-person sitters) is a safe and cost-effective solution for hospitals, little is known about the impact of these approaches on nurses’ stress and well-being. Purpose: To compare the use of video monitoring technology and in-person sitters (likely a resource reallocated from nurses) for monitoring patients on nurses’ emotional labor and burnout. Method: An experience sampling method was conducted by surveying nurses twice a day for 3 weeks, resulting in 524 survey administrations provided by 74 nurses. The surveys included measures of daily video monitoring technology and in-person sitter use, emotional labor, emotional exhaustion, and nurse career commitment. Findings: There were positive effects from video monitoring technology and negative effects of in-person sitters on emotional labor and emotional exhaustion, particularly for nurses lower in commitment. Discussion: Hospital adoption of video monitoring technology has a positive impact on nurses compared with in-person sitter use.

We address the theoretical and practical problems related to the trajectory generation and tracking control of tail-sitter UAVs. Theoretically, we focus on the differential flatness property with full exploitation of actual UAV aerodynamic models, which lays a foundation for generating dynamically feasible trajectory and achieving high-performance tracking control. We have found that a tail-sitter is differentially flat with accurate (not simplified) aerodynamic models within the entire flight envelope, by specifying coordinate flight condition and choosing the vehicle position as the flat output. This fundamental property allows us to fully exploit the high-fidelity aerodynamic models in the trajectory planning and tracking control to achieve accurate tail-sitter flights. Particularly, an optimization-based trajectory planner for tail-sitters is proposed to design high-quality, smooth trajectories with consideration of kinodynamic constraints, singularity-free constraints, and actuator saturation. The planned trajectory of flat output is transformed into state trajectory in real time with optional consideration of wind in environments. To track the state trajectory, a global, singularity-free, and minimally parameterized on-manifold MPC is developed, which fully leverages the accurate aerodynamic model to achieve high-accuracy trajectory tracking within the whole flight envelope. The proposed algorithms are implemented on our quadrotor tail-sitter prototype, “Hong Hu,” and their effectiveness are demonstrated through extensive real-world experiments in both indoor and outdoor field tests, including agile SE(3) flight through consecutive narrow windows requiring specific attitude and with speed up to 10 m/s, typical tail-sitter maneuvers (transition, level flight, and loiter) with speed up to 20 m/s, and extremely aggressive aerobatic maneuvers (Wingover, Loop, Vertical Eight, and Cuban Eight) with acceleration up to 2.5 g. The video demonstration is available at https://youtu.be/2x_bLbVuyrk .

Amaç: Yürütülen çalışmanın amacı internet sitelerindeki flor konulu paylaşımların içerik analizini yapmak ve güvenilirliklerini değerlendirmektir. Gereç ve Yöntem: Google Chrome tarayıcına 2 anahtar kelime (flor vernik zararlı mı?, çocuklarda flor uygulamaları) girilmiş ve her iki terim için ilk 50 sitenin linki kaydedilmiştir. Türkçe bilgi içermeyen siteler, dublikasyon olanlar, yalnızca video kaydı veya linki olan siteler, soru-cevap forumları, bilimsel yayın ve ders notu linkleri, reklam ve pazarlama amaçlı siteler çalışma dışı bırakılmıştır ve kalan 73 site Discern güvenilirlik analizi ile içerik analizini içeren bir incelemeye tabi tutulmuştur. Elde edilen veriler SPSS 25 programı ile analiz edilmiş, p

The article presents an analysis of video recordings of the dynamics of expressions of fear, anger, disgust, surprise, joy, sadness, contempt, embarrassment, and pride from the ADFES database was performed. For the initial marking of key points, OpenFace 2.0 software was used. Principal component analysis was performed for the resulting sets of key point coordinates. Each selected principal component is characterized by explanatory power, a load vector at discrete moments in time corresponding to video frames, and a spatial vector encoding the directions of displacement of key points. It has been established that the individual unfolding of emotional expressions over time is well described by the first principal component. At the same time, the spatial consistency of the first principal component for sets of video recordings of different emotional expressions varies significantly. Emotional expressions are characterized by the following indicator of spatial consistency (ascending): contempt – 0.03, sadness – 0.26, fear – 0.47, anger – 0.56, joy – 0.73, embarrassment – 0.78, disgust – 0.81, surprise – 0.95, pride – 0.96. High spatial consistency is achieved due to the uniform execution by sitters of holistic changes in head orientation that are not included in standard descriptions of signs of emotional expressions. The dynamics of facial expression on the combined data set (12 sitters) is described by a combination of one to five principal components. Thus, in general, most of the analyzed dynamic expressions are complex in nature, including several simultaneously unfolding expressive movements. To clarify the nature of dynamic expressions, it is planned to conduct a principal component analysis with partially recorded content patterns corresponding to specific partial facial features, and perform video image reconstructions in which the dynamics of key points of the face are determined by a given set of principal components.

Objectives We aimed to investigate the value of adding a video monitoring (VM) system with falls and costs for patients at high risk. Methods We conducted a retrospective, historically controlled study of adults (≥18 y old) at high risk of fall admitted at the University of Miami Hospital and Clinics from January 1 to November 30, 2020 (pre-VM) and January 1 to November 30, 2021 (post-VM); in-person sitters were available in both periods. Fall risk assessment was conducted on admission and at every nursing shift; we defined patients as high risk if their Morse Fall Scale was ≥60. We conducted a multivariable logistic regression model to evaluate the association of period (pre- versus post-VM) with falls and performed a cost analysis. Results Our primary cohort consisted of 9,034 patients at high risk of falls, 4,207 (46.6%) in the pre-VM and 4,827 (53.4%) in the post-VM period. Fall rates were higher in the pre- than the post-VM periods (3.5% versus 2.7%, P = 0.043). After adjustment, being admitted during the post-VM period was associated with a lower odds of fall (odds ratio [95% confidence interval], 0.49 [0.37–0.64], P < 0.001). The median adjusted hospital cost (in 2020 dollars) was $1,969 more for patients who fell than for patients who did not (interquartile range, $880–$2,273). Considering start-up and ongoing costs, we estimate VM implementation to partly replace in-person monitoring has potential annual cost savings of >$800,000 for a hospital similar to ours. Conclusions Video monitoring to augment in-person sitters is an effective fall prevention initiative for patients at high risk of falls, which is likely also cost-effective.

Une approche véritablement lexicale doit situer la formation des lexèmes au croisement des séries dérivationnelles et des familles dérivationnelles. Dans celles-ci, le niveau déterminant est celui des réseaux qui associent des lexèmes étroitement reliés, en synchronie, par la forme et par le sens. La structure des réseaux dépend des caractéristiques sémantiques, référentielles et catégorielles des éléments qui les constituent. Ainsi par exemple, parmi les réseaux qui associent un nom abstrait à un nom d’humain, les réseaux action, activité, événement, pourtant assez proches, ne sont pas organisés de la même manière. Ni les réseaux statut ou les réseaux axiologiques, ou ceux qui se constituent autour d’un toponyme ou d’un ethnonyme, ou autour d’un qualifiant. La dynamique propre à chaque réseau suscite et encadre l’apparition de nouveaux termes pour remplir les cases laissées vides par le lexique existant. Considérer les lexèmes comme construits non pas sur (une base, dans une relation univoque et unidirectionnelle) mais dans (un réseau, au sein d’une famille dérivationnelle) relativise ou permet de résoudre un certain nombre de problèmes constructionnels ou morphophonologiques.

Abstract Disclosure: V. Vimalananda: None. S. Qian: None. K.A. Arao: None. A. Leibowitz: None. M. Zupa: None. J. Benzer: None. M. Zocchi: None. G. Fincke: None. M. Meterko: None. D. Berlowitz: None. K. Sitter: None. J. Wormwood: None. Background: Use of telehealth (telephone or video) for outpatient care peaked early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Use has decreased since that time but remains well above pre-pandemic levels. We described the observed levels of variation in telehealth use under this “new normal” and examined the predictors of its utilization for endocrinology outpatient care. These data can be used to develop strategies to ensure equitable access for endocrine patients to clinically appropriate modes of care. Methods: Cross-sectional study of national data from the Veterans Health Administration (VA), the largest integrated health system in the U.S. Multivariable mixed effects logistic regression models were used to identify patient-, clinician-, facility-, and Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN)-level characteristics associated with telehealth use among patients seen for outpatient endocrinology from 3/9/21 – 3/8/22. We examined two outcomes: telehealth (telephone or video) v. in-person visits, and within the subsample of telehealth visits, telephone v. video visits. Results: The dataset included 167,017 patients, 618 clinicians, 99 facilities, and 18 VISNs for visits that were in person (58%), telephone (29%), and video (13%). Intraclass correlation coefficients revealed unique variability in telehealth use accounted for by each level of the analysis (56% patient/visit, 24% clinician, 18% facility, and 2% VISN). Visits were more likely to be telehealth (v. in person) if the visit was a follow-up (v. an initial consultation: OR 1.99, 95%CI [1.93, 2.06]); the clinician was an APN (v. physician: OR 2.11, 95%CI [1.06, 2.76]); the clinician was full-time (OR 1.46, 95%CI [1.15, 1.87]); and the facility was of higher complexity (OR 3.40, 95%CI [1.51, 7.68]). Among telehealth visits, unique variability in telephone (vs. video) usage was accounted for by each level of the analysis (44% patient/visit, 24% clinician, 26% facility, and 6% VISN). Telehealth visits were significantly more likely to be telephone (v. video) for follow-up visits (vs. initial consultation: OR 2.22, 95%CI [2.09, 2.35], for moderately disabled patients with partial copays (v. patients with poverty, no copayments: OR 1.36, 95%CI [1.28,1.47]), for diabetes visits (vs. bone/mineral disorder: OR 1.30, 95%CI [1.20, 1.41], and for facilities serving a more rural population (OR 16.6, 95%CI [2.2, 123.4]). Conclusion: This study found wide variation in use of telehealth for endocrinology under the “new normal”. A significant amount of this variation may reflect uneven use among clinicians or differences in facility use of telehealth. More work is needed to investigate the range of reasons for variation at the clinician and facility level, particularly as many of those drivers may be amenable to influence by clinical leaders and could be leveraged to enhance availability of all clinically appropriate modes of care for endocrine patients. Presentation: Saturday, June 17, 2023

Patient safety is a priority in the hospital. Hospitals are always considering cost effective ways to keep patients safe and free from harm. Every year an average of 340,000 hospitalized patients are injured due to falls. Providing the best possible care attendance to prevent these incidents is very important. It is demonstrated here that, beyond medical and financial considerations, the proper selection of care attendance is an ethical decision. This decision requires considering the needs of, as well as getting input from, all the parties involved (hospitals, nurses, and patients). Unfortunately, until now, the care attendance discussion has mainly considered the hospital’s perspective and rarely that of the patient. Using a stakeholder theoretical approach taken from ethical decision making literature and the Analytic Hierarchy Process which allows the integration of multiple stakeholder perspectives and the inclusion of intangible variables (such as patient’s perceived value), we developed an evaluation framework to enable the prioritization and allocation of resources to the different care attendance approaches: care attendant (CA), continuous video monitoring (CVM), normal rounding (NR) and family visitor sitters (FVS). The decision criteria have been identified from the extant medical evidence-based literature, and expert opinions from three decision-makers (each representing a particular stakeholder’s perspective) were used to assess the criteria weights and rate the alternatives.

Patients’ substance use and possession at acute care hospitals is an understudied topic. To learn more about this topic, we queried the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) for events that occurred during calendar year 2018. We identified 106 reports from 38 acute care hospitals (excluding psychiatric, detox, and behavioral health units and facilities) where a patient possessed and/or misused a substance (e.g., heroin, oxycodone, liquor). We analyzed these reports to better understand how hospital personnel attempt to prevent in-hospital substance use and manage patients who are at risk for using a substance. We explored a range of variables, including antecedent conditions and hospital personnel’s actions post- detection of a patient’s substance use or possession. We found that a relatively low percentage of patients (26%) were identified as having a prior history of substance use, despite later using or being in possession of a substance in hospital. In our sample, patients frequently acquired the substances from visitors, more than half of the substances were consumed intravenously, and opioids were the most common substance. The most prevalent actions taken by hospital personnel were conducting searches for substances and paraphernalia, use of a patient sitter or video monitor, moving patients to a different room, and implementing visitor restrictions. Based on our findings and previous research, hospitals should consider increasing their use of substance use disorder (SUD) screening tools, pharmacotherapy, and referring patients to treatment. Overall, our results can help personnel better understand the nature of and strategies that may reduce the likelihood of in-hospital substance use. Keywords: substance use, paraphernalia, substance use disorder, in-hospital, addiction, opioid, risk mitigation, patient safety

AbstractQuantitative studies have found that although most of the general public holds negative attitudes towards people with paedophilia (PWP), a range of views exist. Nevertheless, these studies provide limited insight into the specific details or variety of attitudes or emotions. This qualitative study aimed to better understand public attitudes towards PWP by exploring how the public reacts to talks about paedophilia given by credentialled experts on social media. Seven such talks, which met our specific inclusion criteria, were selected from YouTube, and public comments on these talks were analysed. The top 100 comments of each video were selected, followed by a saturation strategy. This led to 1234 comments being coded and thematically analysed. Six key themes and eight subthemes were generated, thematically grouped into Haters (sub-themes: ‘violent’ and ‘sophisticated’), Critics (sub-themes: ‘victim erasure’ and ‘not a sexual orientation’), Fence-sitters (sub-themes: ‘ambivalent’ and ‘dispassionate arguers’) and Supporters’ (sub-themes: ‘implicit confirmers’ and ‘compassionate supporters’). These themes reflected a spectrum of views. At one pole, Haters exhibited absolute abhorrence and a desire to dismiss the speaker, whilst, at the other pole, Supporters showed empathy towards non-offending PWP and endorsed the speaker’s perspective. Extremely polarised conversations, commonly evidencing anger and sarcasm and emphasis on the concept of help, were found across dissenting voices. These findings help us better understand the variety of public attitudes and responses to expert-delivered information on paedophilia. The effects of perceived social attitudes on PWP well-being and help-seeking behaviours, which can help prevent offending, require further exploration.

Bu araştırmanın amacı Türkçe web sitelerindeki organ nakli hakkındaki bilgilerin kalitesini incelemektir. Tanımlayıcı olarak gerçekleştirilen araştırma için organ nakli, organ transplantasyonu, doku ve organ nakli, doku ve organ transplantasyonu anahtar kelimeleri Türkiye’de kullanıcı sayısı en fazla olan dört arama motoru üzerinden tarandı. Tarama sonucunda, her arama motorunda her bir anahtar kelime için ulaşılan listede ilk sıradaki 10 sayfa tespit edildi ve 4 arama motorunda (n=1640) site tarandı. Aynı olan siteler (n=1003), sponsorlu bağlantılar (n=23), video bağlantıları (n=20), görüntülenemeyen veya içeriği bulunmayan bağlantılar (n=80) elendi. Böylece araştırmanın örneklemi (n=514) olarak bulundu. Araştırmanın verileri Greene ve ark. (2005) yöntemi kullanılarak organ nakli tedavi ve bakımı hakkında araştırmacılar tarafından hazırlanan puanlama listesi referans alınarak 12.09.2021 tarihine kadar toplandı. Veriler SPSS 22 programında analiz edildi. Organ nakli konusunda internette bulunan bilgilerin %32,9’unun 2017-2021 yılları arasında güncel veriler olduğu ve yapılan taramalarda organ nakli konusunda en sık “blog ve forum” siteleriyle karşılaşıldığı (%21,4), organ nakli konusunda hazırlanan konu başlıklarına göre puanlar dağıtıldığında; oransal olarak en yeterli bilgilerin nakil yapılabilecek organlar hakkında (%74,7), en yetersiz bilginin ameliyat öncesi ve sonrasında donör ve alıcının bakımı olduğu (%91,6) belirlendi. Listedeki 20 puan üzerinden toplam ortalama puan 6,09±1,33 olarak bulundu. Araştırma bulguları organ nakli konusunda internette bulunan bilgilerin düşük kaliteli olduğunu göstermektedir. Aynı konuda daha kapsayıcı benzer araştırmaların yapılması ile mevcut durum hakkında daha fazla veriye ulaşılması mümkün olabilir.

Background: The use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) is on the rise among today’s college students. Instructors are beginning to consider the possible significance and implications of social media for education practice and provision; making it a target for further research. Aims: To know the patterns of usage and the perceived positive and negative effects of SNSs on students’ education. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Sharjah using the Quota sampling method to enroll first to third year students in the colleges of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy. Self-administered questionnaires were completed. Data was processed and analyzed using SPSS 22. Results: A total of 350 students (74% females and 26% males) participated in the study. YouTube ranked top as the SNS used most for educational purposes (52.7%), while Facebook was top choice for non-educational purposes (45.2%). Smartphones were most used to access SNSs (80.3%), which explains why 69.1% had SNSs always running on their devices. Videos (55.3%) and photos (24.3%) were the most preferred media for educational enhancement. Of our total sample, 92.2% thought that SNSs are helpful in studying mainly due to fast access to information (78.6%), easy communication (69.2%) and aiding colleague socialization (45%). Those who disagreed (8%) said that it wastes time (66.7%) and that the information is not always authentic (33.5%). Conclusion: Many students now depend greatly on SNSs to enhance their learning experience, as they believe that their positive effect on education overweights the negative. Thus, we suggest implementing SNSs in the educational process to a greater extent.

Целью работы является разработка инновационных технологий по водоотведению с подтопляемых объектов путем бурения под ними горизонтальных скважин специальной конструкции и направленности, спроектированных по простиранию водоносных пластов пространственной гидрогеологической модели, построенной по результатам комплексных исследований в водонаблюдательных скважинах, в том числе по данным видеонаблюдения. Актуальность работы заключается в том, что на сегодняшний день проблема подтопления промышленных объектов и гражданских строений продолжает находиться в фокусе внимания строительных, эксплуатирующих и контролирующих организаций, так как имеющиеся технологии и технические приемы по решению этой проблемы зачастую не дают ожидаемого положительного эффекта. Это во многом объясняется тем, что в большинстве случаев строительные работы выполняются согласно утверждённым инструкциям и стандартам, в которых отражены лишь общие, хотя и необходимые требования к различным этапам строительства. При этом так называемые инженерные изыскания часто ограничиваются, в лучшем случае, бурением одной или нескольких изыскательских скважин, что не даёт общего представления о пространственном гидрологическом строении участка под строящимся объектом в случае наличия его подтопления, как на стадии строительства, так и в процессе последующей эксплуатации, применяемые технические решения (бурение откачивающих вертикальных скважин и др.) зачастую не являются эффективными. Все это позволяет заключить, что существует необходимость в поисках новых инновационных решений проблемы подтопления, поэтому предложенные пути её решения в данной работе можно считать актуальными. Методом исследования является комплексный экспериментальный подход к изучению подземного строения путей движения водных потоков с применением различного вида оборудования и аппаратуры, а также привлечение математического аппарата для построения на этой основе пространственного изображения гидрогеологических объектов исследования с целью дальнейшего выполнения проектных работ по отведению подпочвенной воды из-под этих объектов при помощи горизонтальных скважин. Результаты работы основаны на анализе и обобщении промысловых данных и данных фотовидеофиксации, полученных в ходе проведения работ по бурению водонаблюдательных скважин и построения на этой основе пространственной гидрогеологической модели подтопляемого производственного участка. Использование данной модели при проектировании и последующей реализации способа осушения участка путём бурения нескольких горизонтальных скважин по простиранию водоносных пластов позволило достичь полного осушения данного объекта. The aim of the work is to develop innovative technologies for water disposal from flooded objects by drilling horizontal wells of a special design and direction under them, designed along the strike of aquifers of a spatial hydrogeological model, built on the basis of the results of comprehensive studies in water observation wells, including video surveillance data. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that today the problem of flooding of industrial facilities and civil buildings continues to be in the focus of attention of construction, operating and controlling organizations, since the available technologies and techniques for solving this problem often do not give the expected positive effect. This is largely due to the fact that in most cases construction work is carried out in accordance with approved instructions and standards, which reflect only general, albeit necessary, requirements for various stages of construction. At the same time, the so-called engineering surveys are often limited, at best, to the drilling of one or several exploration wells, which does not give a general idea of the spatial hydrological structure of the site under construction in the event of flooding, both at the construction stage and during subsequent operation, applied technical solutions (drilling of pumping vertical wells, etc.) are often not effective. All this allows us to conclude that there is a need to find new innovative solutions to the problem of flooding, so the proposed ways to solve it in this paper can be considered relevant. The research methods are a comprehensive experimental approach to the study of the underground structure of the water flow paths using various types of equipment and apparatus, as well as the involvement of a mathematical apparatus to build on this basis a spatial image of hydrogeological objects of study in order to further carry out design work to divert underground water from under these objects using horizontal wells. The results of the work are based on the analysis and generalization of field data and photo-video recording data obtained in the course of drilling water observation wells and building on this basis a spatial hydrogeological model of a flooded production area. The use of this model in the design and subsequent implementation of the site drainage method by drilling several horizontal wells along the strike of aquifers made it possible to achieve complete drainage of this object.

Muntlig veiledning i skriving kan være krevende for lærere siden skrivesituasjoner er komplekse, og læreren har liten mulighet til å reflektere rundt og omformulere det som blir sagt. Denne studien undersøker to læreres veiledning i oppstarten av skrivesituasjoner på barnetrinnet. Elevene på 3. trinn skriver fortellinger og har fått relativt frie oppgaver. Det viser seg at det er utfordrende for noen elever å bruke fantasien for å generere idéer, de vet ikke hva de skal skrive om. Studien undersøker de to lærernes veiledning i disse situasjonene. Den bygger på teori om stillasbygging og diskuterer på hvilken måte lærernes veiledning kan forstås som en del av en stillasbyggingsprosess. Artikkelen bygger på videoobservasjon av de to lærernes undervisning, og utdrag fra oppstartssituasjoner blir analysert med utgangspunkt i fem ulike stillasbyggingsstrategier: tilbakemelding, hint, instruksjoner/forklaringer, modellering og spørsmål. Resultatene viser at lærerne bruker ulike stillasbyggingsteknikker og i ulik grad. De stiller mange spørsmål for at elevene skal få idéer, og spørsmålene har svært ulike funksjoner. Den ene læreren stiller spørsmål for å redusere elevenes valgmuligheter, mens den andre læreren modellerer mange idéer for å vise elevene at det finnes flere muligheter. Artikkelen bidrar med kunnskap om hvordan lærere veileder elever i skriving før det finnes tekst å veilede på. En studie som denne kan gi økt bevissthet rundt det komplekse i skriveveiledning. Læreren må ha klart for seg enkeltelevenes behov eller utfordringer. Hun trenger også fagdidaktisk kunnskap som må sitte i ryggmargen, fordi det er liten tid til å tenke seg om. Nøkkelord: skriveopplæring, skriveveiledning, stillasbygging, stillasbyggingsstrategier, barnetrinnet «I don’t know what to write about!» - Teachers’ scaffolding in the start-up of writing situations AbstractOral guidance in writing may be demanding for teachers since writing situations are complex, and the teacher has little opportunity to reflect on and rephrase what is being said. This study examines two teachers’ scaffolding in the start-up of writing situations at the primary level. The pupils in 3rd grade are writing stories based on relatively free tasks. It turns out that it is challenging for some pupils to use their imagination to generate ideas, they do not know what to write about. The study examines two teachers’ scaffolding in these situations. The backdrop is scaffolding theory, and the discussion revolves around how teachers’ help can be understood as part of a scaffolding process. The article builds on video observations of the two teachers’ teaching, and excerpts from start-up situations are analyzed based on five different scaffolding strategies: feedback, hints, instructions/explanations, modeling and questioning. The results indicate the use of different scaffolding strategies to varying degrees. The teachers ask many questions which have different functions. One of the teachers asks questions to reduce the pupils’ options, while the other teacher models many ideas to show pupils that there are many opportunities. The article contributes with knowledge about teachers’ writing instruction before a text is written. This study might give increased awareness about the complexity of scaffolding in writing. The teacher has to know the individual pupil’s needs and challenges. She also needs pedagogical content knowledge, as there is little time to think and reflect in these situations. Keywords: writing, writing instruction, scaffolding, scaffolding strategies, primary school

Fig 1: Image from a secret Rangoon fashion shoot. Photograph: Myanmar Photo Archive / Lukas Birk. Introduction NOTE: Rangoon, Burma has been known as Yangon, Myanmar, since 2006. I use Rangoon and Burma for the period prior to 2006 and Yangon and Myanmar for the period thereafter. In addition, I have removed the name of any activist currently in Myanmar due to the recent policy of executing political prisoners. On 1 February 2021, Myanmar was again plunged into political turmoil when the military illegally overthrew the country’s democratically elected government. This is the third time Myanmar, formally known as Burma, has been subject to a coup d’état; violent seizures of power took place in 1962 and in 1988-90. While those two earlier military governments met with opposition spearheaded by students and student organisations, in 2021 the military faced organised resistance through a mass Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) initiated by government healthcare workers who refused to come to work. They were joined by private sector “strikes” and, perhaps most visible of all to western viewers, mass street demonstrations “led” by “Gen Z” activists—young people who had come of age during Myanmar’s brief decade of democracy. There is little doubt that the success of the CDM and associated protests is due to the widespread coverage and reach of social media as well as the creative communications skills of the country’s first “generation of digital natives”, who are sufficiently familiar and comfortable with social platforms to “participate and shape their identities in communication and dialogue with global digital media content” (Jordt et al. 12 ). The leveraging of global culture, including the use of English in protest signs, was notable in garnering international media coverage and so keeping Myanmar’s political plight front-of-mind with governments around the world. Yet this is not the whole story behind the effectiveness of these campaigns. As Lisa Brooten argues, contemporary networks are built on “decades of behind-the-scenes activism to build a multi-ethnic civil society” (East Asia Forum). The leading democracy activist, Min Ko Naing, aligned “veteran activists from previous generations with novice Gen Z activists”, declaring “this revolution represents a combination of Generations X, Y and Z in fighting against the military dictatorship’” (Jordt et al. 18). Similarly, the creative strategies used by 2021’s digital campaigners also build on protests by earlier generations of young, creative people. This paper looks at two creative protest across the generations. The first is “secret” fashion photography of the late 1970s collected in Lukas Birk’s Yangon Fashion 1979 – Fashion=Resistance. The second is the contemporary #100projectors campaign, a “projection project for Myanmar democracy movement against the military dictatorship” (in the interest of full disclosure, I took part in the #100projectors project). Drawing from the contemporary advertising principle of “segmentation”, the communications practice where potential consumers are divided into “subgroups … based on specific characteristics and needs” (WARC 1), as well as contemporary thinking on the “aesthetics” of “cosmopolitanism”, (Papastergiadis, Featherstone, and Christensen), I argue that contemporary creative strategies can be traced back to the creative tactics of resistance employed by earlier generations of protesters and their re-imagining of “national space and its politics” (Christensen 556) in the interstices of cosmopolitan Rangoon, Burma, and Yangon, Myanmar. #100projectors Myanmar experienced two distinct periods of military rule, the Socialist era between 1962 and 1988 under General Ne Win and the era under the State Law and Order Restoration Council – State Peace and Development Council between 1988 and 2011. These were followed by a semi-civilian era from 2011 to 2021 (Carlson 117). The coup in 2021 marks a return to extreme forms of control, censorship, and surveillance. Ne Win’s era of military rule saw a push for Burmanisation enforced through “significant cultural restrictions”, ostensibly to protect national culture and unity, but more likely to “limit opportunities for internal dissent” (Carlson 117). Cultural restrictions applied to art, literature, film, television, as well as dress. Despite these prohibitions, in the 1970s Rangoon's young people smuggled in illegal western fashion magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Vogue, and commissioned local tailors to make up the clothes they saw there. Bell-bottoms, mini-skirts, western-style suits were worn in “secret” fashion shoots, with the models posing for portraits at Rangoon photographic studios such as the Sino-Burmese owned Har Si Yone in Chinatown. Some of the wealthier fashionistas even came for weekly shoots. Demand was so high, a second branch devoted to these photographic sessions was opened with its own stock of costumes and accessories. Copies of these head to toe fashion portraits, printed on 12 x 4 cm paper, were shared with friends and family; keeping portrait albums was a popular practice in Burma and had been since the 1920s and 30s (Birk, Burmese Photographers 113). The photos that survive this era are collected in Lukas Birk’s Yangon Fashion 1979 – Fashion=Resistance. #100projectors was launched in February 2021 by a group of young visual and video artists with the aim of resisting the coup and demanding the return of democracy. Initially a small group of projectionists or “projector fighters”, as the title suggests they plan to amplify their voices by growing their national and international network to 100. #100projectors is one of many campaigns, movements, and fundraisers devised by artists and creatives to protest the coup and advocate for revolution in Myanmar. Other notable examples, all run by Gen Z activists, include the Easter Egg, Watermelon, Flash, and Marching Shoes strikes. The Marching Shoe Strike, which featured images of flowers in shoes, representing those who had died in protests, achieved a reach of 65.2 million in country with 1.4 million interactions across digital channels (VERO, 64) and all of these campaigns were covered by the international press, including The Guardian, Reuters, The Straits Times, and VOA East Asia Pacific Session, as well as arts magazines around the world (for example Hyperallergic, published in Brooklyn). #100projectors material has been projected in Finland, Scotland, and Australia. The campaign was written about in various art magazines and their Video #7 was screened at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in February 2022 as part of Defiant Art: A Year of Resistance to the Myanmar Coup. At first glance, these two examples seem distant in both their aims and achievements. Fashion photos, taken in secret and shared privately, could be more accurately described as a grassroots social practice rather than a political movement. While Birk describes the act of taking these images as “a rebellion” and “an escape” in a political climate when “a pair of flowers and a pair of sunglasses might just start a revolution”, the fashionistas’ photographs seem “ephemeral” at best, or what Mina Roces describes as the subtlest form of resistance or ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott in Roces 7). By contrast, #100projectors has all the hallmarks of a polished communications campaign. They have a logo and slogans: “We fight for light” and “The revolution must win”. There is a media plan, which includes the use of digital channels, encrypted messaging, live broadcasts, as well as in-situ projections. Finally, there is a carefully “targeted” audience of potential projectionists. It is this process of defining a target audience, based on segmentation, that is particularly astute and sophisticated. Traditionally, segmentation defined audiences based on demographics, geodemographics, and self-identification. However, in the online era segments are more likely to be based on behaviour and activities revealed in search data as well as shares, depending on preferences for privacy and permission. Put another way, as a digital subject, “you are what you choose to share” (WARC 1). The audience for #100projectors includes artists and creative people around the world who choose to share political video art. They are connected through digital platforms including Facebook as well as encrypted messaging. Yet this contemporary description of digital subjectivity, “you are what you choose to share”, also neatly describes the Yangon fashionistas and the ways in which they resist the political status quo. Photographic portraits have always been popular in Burma and so this collection does not look especially radical. Initially, the portraits seem to speak only about status, taste, and modernity. Several subjects within the collection are shown in national or ethnic dress, in keeping with the governments edict that Burma consisted of 135 ethnicities and 8 official races. In addition, there is a portrait of a soldier in full uniform. But the majority of the images are of men and women in “modern” western gear typical of the 1970s. With their wide smiles and careful poses, these men and women look like they’re performing sophisticated worldliness as well as showing off their wealth. They are cosmopolitan adepts taking part in international culture. Status is implicit in the accessories, from sunglasses to jewellery. One portrait is shot at mid-range so that it clearly features a landline phone. In 1970s Burma, this was an object out of reach for most. Landlines were both prohibitively expensive and reserved for the true elites. To make a phone call, most people had to line up at special market stalls. To be photographed with a phone, in western clothes (to be photographed at all), seems more about aspiration than anarchy. In the context of Ne Win’s Burma, however, the portraits clearly capture a form of political agency. Burma had strict edicts for dress and comportment: kissing in public was banned and Burmese citizens were obliged to wear Burmese dress, with western styles considered degenerate. Long hair, despite being what Burmese men traditionally wore prior to colonisation, was also deemed too western and consequently “outlawed” (Edwards 133). Dress was not only proscribed but hierarchised and heavily gendered; only military men had “the right to wear trousers” (Edwards 133). Public disrespect of the all-powerful, paranoid, and vindictive military (known as “sit tat” for military or army versus “Tatmadaw” for the good Myanmar army) was dangerous bordering on the suicidal. Consequently, wearing shoulder-length hair, wide bell bottoms, western-style suits, and “risqué” mini-skirts could all be considered acts of at least daring and definitely defiance. Not only are these photographs a challenge to gender constructions in a country ruled by a hyper-masculine army, but these images also question the nature of what it meant to be Burmese at a time when Burmeseness itself was rigidly codified. Recording such acts on film and then sharing the images entailed further risk. Thus, these models are, as Mina Roces puts it, “express[ing] their agency through sartorial change” (Roces 5). Fig. 2: Image from a secret Rangoon fashion shoot – illicit dress and hair. Photograph: Myanmar Photo Archive / Lukas Birk. Fig. 3: Image from a secret Rangoon fashion shoot. Photograph: Myanmar Photo Archive / Lukas Birk. Roces also notes the “challenge” of making protest visible in spaces “severely limited” under authoritarian regimes (Roces 10). Burma under the Socialist government was a particularly difficult place in which to mount any form of resistance. Consequences included imprisonment or even execution, as in the case of the student leader Tin Maung Oo. Ma Thida, a writer and human rights advocate herself jailed for her work, explains the use of creative tools such as metaphor in a famous story about a crab by the writer and journalist Hanthawaddy U Win Tin: The crab, being hard-shelled, was well protected and could not be harmed. However, the mosquito, despite being a far smaller animal, could bite the eyes of the crab, leading to the crab’s eventual death. ... Readers drew the conclusion that the socialist government of Ne Win was the crab that could be destabilized if a weakness could be found. (Thida 317) If the metaphor of a crab defeated by a mosquito held political meaning, then being photographed in prohibited fashions was a more overt way of making defiance and resistant “visible”. While that visibility seems ephemeral, the fashionistas also found a way not only to be seen by the camera in their rebellious clothing, but also by a “public” or audience of those with whom they shared their images. The act of exchanging portraits, what Birk describes as “old-school Instagram”, anticipates not only the shared selfie, but also the basis of successful contemporary social campaigns, which relied in part on networks sharing posts to amplify their message (Birk, Yangon Fashion 17). What the fashionistas also demonstrate is that an act of rebellion can also be a means of testing the limits of conformity, of the need for beauty, of the human desire to look beautiful. Acts of rebellion are also acts of celebration and so, solidarity. Fig. 4: Image from a secret Rangoon fashion shoot – illicit dress length. Photograph: Myanmar Photo Archive / Lukas Birk. Fig. 5: Image from a secret Rangoon fashion shoot – illicit trousers. Photograph: Myanmar Photo Archive / Lukas Birk. As the art critic and cultural theorist Nikos Papastergiadis writes, “the cosmopolitan imagination in contemporary art could be defined as an aesthetic of openness that engenders a global sense of inter-connectedness” (207). Inter-connectedness and its possibilities and limits shape the aesthetic imaginary of both the secret fashion shoots of 1970s Rangoon and the artists and videographers of 2021. In the videos of the #100projectors project and the fashion portraits of stylish Rangoonites, interconnection comes as a form of aesthetic blending, a conversation that transcends the border. The sitter posing in illicit western clothes in a photo studio in the heart of Rangoon, then Burma’s capital and seat of power, cannot help but point out that borders are permeable, and that national identity is temporally-based, transitory, and full of slippages. In this spot, 40-odd years earlier, Burmese nationalists used dress as a means of publicly supporting the nationalist cause (Edwards, Roces). Like the portraits, the #100projector videos blend global and local perspectives on Myanmar. Combining paintings, drawings, graphics, performance art recordings, as well as photography, the work shares the ‘instagrammable’ quality of the Easter Egg, Watermelon, and Marching Shoes strikes with their bright colours and focus on people—or the conspicuous lack of people and the example of the Silent Strike. Graphics are in Burmese as well as English. Video #6 was linked to International Women’s Day. Other graphics reference American artists such as Shepherd Fairey and his Hope poster, which was adapted to feature Aung San Suu Kyi’s face during then-President Obama’s visit in 2012. The videos also include direct messages related to political entities such as Video #3, which voiced support for the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hlutaw (CRPH), a group of 15 elected MPs who represented the ideals of Gen Z youth (Jordt et al., viii). This would not necessarily be understood by an international viewer. Also of note is the prevalence of the colour red, associated with Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD. Red is one of the three “political” colours formerly banned from paintings under SLORC. The other two were white, associated with the flowers Aung Sang Suu Kyi wore in her hair, and black, symbolic of negative feelings towards the regime (Carlson, 145). The Burmese master Aung Myint chose to paint exclusively in the banned colours as an ongoing act of defiance, and these videos reflect that history. The videos and portraits may propose that culturally, the world is interconnected. But implicit in this position is also the failure of “interconnectedness”. The question that arises with every viewing of a video or Instagram post or Facebook plea or groovy portrait is: what can these protesters, despite the risks they are prepared to take, realistically expect from the rest of the world in terms of help to remove the unwanted military government? Interconnected or not, political misfortune is the most effective form of national border. Perhaps the most powerful imaginative association with both the #100projectors video projections and fashionistas portraits is the promise of transformation, in particular the transformations possible in a city like Rangoon / Yangon. In his discussion of the cosmopolitan space of the city, Christensen notes that although “digital transformations touch vast swathes of political, economic and everyday life”, it is the city that retains supreme significance as a space not easily reducible to an entity beneath the national, regional, or global (556). The city is dynamic, “governed by the structural forces of politics and economy as well as moralities and solidarities of both conservative and liberal sorts”, where “othered voices and imaginaries find presence” in a mix that leads to “contestations” (556). Both the fashionistas and the video artists of the #100projectors use their creative work to contest the ‘national’ space from the interstices of the city. In the studio these transformations of the bodies of Burmese subjects into international “citizens of the world” contest Ne Win’s Burma and reimagine the idea of nation. They take place in the Chinatown, a relic of the old, colonial Rangoon, a plural city and one of the world’s largest migrant ports, where "mobility, foreignness and cross-cultural hybridity" were essential to its make-up (Aung Thin 778). In their instructions on how to project their ideas as a form of public art to gain audience, the #100projectors artists suggest projectors get “full on creative with other ways: projecting on people, outdoor cinema, gallery projection” (#100projectors). It is this idea projection as an overlay, a doubling of the everyday that evokes the possibility of transformation. The #100projector videos screen on Rangoon bridges, reconfiguring the city, albeit temporarily. Meanwhile, Rangoon is doubled onto other cities, towns, villages, communities, projected onto screens but also walls, fences, the sides of buildings in Finland, Scotland, Australia, and elsewhere. Conclusion In this article I have compared the recent #100projectors creative campaign of resistance against the 2021 coup d’état in Myanmar with the “fashionistas” of 1970 and their “secret” photo shoots. While the #100projectors is a contemporary digital campaign, some of the creative tactics employed, such as dissemination and identifying audiences, can be traced back to the practices of Rangoon’s fashionistas of the 1970s. ­­Creative resistance begins with an act of imagination. The creative strategies of resistance examined here share certain imaginative qualities of connection, a privileging of the ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘interconnectedness’ as well as the transformativity of actual space, with the streets of Rangoon, itself a cosmopolitan city. References @100projectors Instagram account. <https://www.instagram.com/100projectors/>. @Artphy_1 Instagram account. <https://www.instagram.com/artphy_1/>. 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Christensen, Miyase. “Postnormative Cosmopolitanism: Voice, Space and Politics.” The International Communication Gazette 79.6–7 (2017): 555–563. Edwards, Penny. “Dressed in a Little Brief Authority: Clothing the Body Politic in Burma.” In Mina Roces & Louise Edwards (eds), The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 121–138. France24. “‘Longyi Revolution’: Why Myanmar Protesters Are Using Women’s Clothes as Protection.” 10 Mar. 2021. <https://youtu.be/ebh1A0xOkDw>. Ferguson, Jane. “Who’s Counting? Ethnicity, Belonging, and the National Census in Burma/Myanmar.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 171 (2015): 1–28. Htun Khaing. “Salai Tin Maung Oo, Defiant at the End.” Frontier, 24 July 2017. 1 Aug. 2022 <https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/salai-tin-maung-oo-defiant-to-the-end>. Htun, Pwin, and Paula Bock. “Op-Ed: How Women Are Defying Myanmar’s Junta with Sarongs and Cellphones.” Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar. 2021. <https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-03-16/myanmar-military-women-longyi-protests>. Jordt, Ingrid, Tharaphi Than, and Sue Ye Lin. How Generation Z Galvanized a Revolutionary Movement against Myanmar’s 2021 Military Coup. Singapore: Trends in Southeast Asia ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, 2021. Ma Thida. “A ‘Fierce’ Fear: Literature and Loathing after the Junta.” In Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change. Eds. Lisa Brooten, Jane Madlyn McElhone, and Gayathry Venkiteswaran. Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, 2019. 315-323. Myanmar Poster Campaign (@myanmarpostercampaign). “Silent Strike on Feb 1, 2022. We do not forget Feb 1, 2021. We do not forget about the coup. And we do not forgive.” Instagram. <https://www.instagram.com/p/CZJ5gg6vxZw/>. Papastergiadias, Nikos. “Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism.” In Routledge International Handbook of Cosmopolitanism Studies. Ed. Gerard Delanty. London: Routledge, 2018. 198-210. Roces, Mina. “Dress as Symbolic Resistance in Asia.” International Quarterly for Asian Studies 53.1 (2022): 5-14. Smith, Emiline. “In Myanmar, Protests Harness Creativity and Humor.” Hyperallergic, 12 Apr. 2021. 29 July 2022 <https://hyperallergic.com/637088/myanmar-protests-harness-creativity-and-humor/>. Thin Zar (@Thinzar_313). “Easter Egg Strike.” Instagram. <https://www.instagram.com/p/CNPfvtAMSom/>. VERO. “Myanmar Communication Landscape”. 10 Feb. 2021. <https://vero-asean.com/a-briefing-about-the-current-situation-in-myanmar-for-our-clients-partners-and-friends/>. World Advertising Research Centre (WARC). “What We Know about Segmentation.” WARC Best Practice, May 2021. <https://www-warc-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/content/article/bestprac/what-we-know-about-segmentation/110142>.

A new device, sure to inspire technological bedazzlement, has been installed in Hong Kong shopping malls. Called simply The Love Machine, it functions like a photo booth, dispensing on-the-spot portraits1. But rather than one subject, it requires a couple, in fact the couple, in order to do its work of digital reproduction. For the output of this imaging machine is none other than a picture of the combined features of the two sitters, 'morphed' together by computer software to produce a technological child. Its Japanese manufacturers, while obviously cashing in on the novelty value, nevertheless list the advantage it allows for future matrimonial selection based around the production of a suitable aesthetic. Needless to say, the good citizens of Hong Kong have not allowed any rigid criteria for genetic engineering to get in the way of the progeny such a machine allows, creating such monstrous couplings as the baby 'cat-human', achieved by a sitter coupling with their pet. Rather than being the object of love here, technology acts as the conduit of emotion, or stronger still, it is the love relation itself, bringing the two together as one. What I want to touch upon is the sense in which a desire for oneness inhabits our relations to and through the technological. There is already an abundance of literature around the erotics of cyberspace, documenting and detailing encounters of virtual sex fantasies and romance. As well, there are more theoretical attempts to come to terms with what Michael Heim describes as the "erotic ontology of cyberspace" (59). Heim depicts these encounters not as a ravaging desire gone wild, sprouting up in odd places or producing monstrous offspring, but in homely and familial terms. Finally with the computer as incarnation of the machine, our love for technology can cease its restless and previously unfulfilled wanderings and find a comfortable place. What is worth pausing over here is the sense in which the sexual is subjugated to a conjugal and familial metaphor, at the same time as desire is modelled according to a metaphysics of fullness and lack. I would argue that in advancing this kind of love relation with the computer and the digital, the possibility of a relation is actually short-circuited. For a relation assumes the existence of at least two terms, and in these representations, technology does not figure as a second term. It is either marked as the other, where desire finds a soul mate to fill its lack. Or the technological becomes invisible, subsumed in a spiritual instrumentalism that sees it merely forging the union of cybernetic souls. I would suggest that an erotic relation with the technological is occluded in most accounts of the sexual in cyberspace and in many engagements with digital technologies. Instead we are left with a non-relational meeting of the same with itself. We might describe the dominant utilisation of the technological as onanistic. Relations of difference could be a productive effect of the technological, but are instead culturally caught up within an operational logic which sees the relational erotic possibilities of the machinic eliminated as sameness touches itself. I want to point towards some different models for theorising technology by briefly drawing upon the texts of Félix Guattari and Avital Ronell. These may lead to the production of a desiring relation with technology by coupling the machine with alterity. One of several climatic scenes from the 'virtual sex' movie Strange Days, directed by Katherine Bigelow, graphically illustrates the onanistic encounter. Set on the eve of the new millennium, the temporality of the film sets up a feeling of dis-ease: it is both futuristic and yet only too close. The narrative centres on the blackmarket in ultimate VR: purchasing software which allows the user, donning special headgear, to re-experience recorded memories in other peoples' lives. An evil abuser of this technology, known until the end of the film as an anonymous male junkie, is addicted to increasingly frequent hits of another's apperception. In his quest to score above his tolerance level, the cyber-junkie rapes a prostitute, but instead of wearing the headgear used to record his own perception of the rape, he forces the woman to put it on making her annex her subjectivity to his experience of desire. He records her reaction to becoming an appendage to him. The effect of watching this scene is deeply unsettling: the camera-work sets up a point-of-view shot from the position of the male subject but plays it to the audience as one might see through a video view-finder, thus sedimenting an assumed cultural association between masculinity and the male gaze. What we see is the violence produced by the annihilation of another's desire; what we hear is the soundtrack of the woman mimicking the male's enjoyment of his own desire. Put simply, what we watch is a feedback loop of a particular formation of technological desire, one in which the desire of or for the other is audio-visually impeded. Ultimately the experience can be stored and replayed as a porn movie solely for future masturbation. The scene in Strange Days quite adequately summarises the obstructed and obstructive desire to go no further than masturbation caught in the defiles of feedback. Feedback is also the term used in both video and sound production when a recording device is aimed at or switched onto a device playing back the same recording. The result, in the case of video, is to create an infinite abyss of the same image playing back into itself on the monitor; in the case of sound a high-pitched signal is created which impedes further transmission. By naming the desire to fuse with the technological a feedback loop, I am suggesting that manifestations of this desire are neither productive nor connective, in that any relation to exterior or heterogeneous elements are shut out. They stamp out the flow of other desires and replay the same looping desire based around notions of fullness and lack, completion and incompletion, and of course masculinity and femininity. Mark Dery makes this association between the desire for the technological, the elision of matter and phallic modes of masculinity: This, to the masculinist technophile, is the weirdly alchemical end point of cyberculture: the distillation of pure mind from base matter. Sex, in such a context, would be purged of feminine contact -- removed, in fact, from all notions of physicality -- and reduced to mental masturbation. (121) Dery's point is a corollary to mine; in discarding the need for an embodied sexual experience, the literature and representations of cyberspace, both theoretical and fictional, endorse only a touching of the sublimated self, no other bodies or even the bodily is brought into contact. There is no shortage of evidence for the disregard embodiment holds among the doyens of cyber-architecture. Hans Moravec and Marvin Minsky, writing about Artificial Intelligence, promote a future in which pure consciousness, freed from its entanglement with the flesh, merges with the machine (Mind Children; The Society of Mind). Here the reverence shown towards digital technology enters the sublime point of a coalition where the mind is supported by some sophisticated hardware, ultimately capable of adapting and reproducing itself. There are now enough feminist critics of this kind of cyberspeak to have noticed in this fantasy of machinic fusion a replay of the old Cartesian mind/body dualism. My point, however, is that this desire is not simply put in place by a failure to rethink the body in the realm of the digital. It is augmented by the fact that this disregard for theorising an embodied experience feeds into an inability to encounter any other within the realm of the technological. We should note that this is perpetuated not just by those seeking future solace in the digital, but also by its most ardent cultural critics. Baudrillard, as one who seemingly fits this latter category, eager to disperse the notion that writers such as Moravec and Minsky propound regarding AI, is driven to making rather overarching ontological remarks about machines in general. In attempting to forestall the notion that the machine could ever become the complement to the human, Baudrillard cancels the relation of the machine to desire by cutting off its ability to produce anything in excess of itself. The machine, on his account, can be reduced to the production of itself alone; there is nothing supplementary, exterior to or differential in the machinic circuit (53). For Baudrillard, the pleasures of the interface do not even extend to the solitary vice of masturbation. Celibate machines are paralleled by celibate digital subjects each alone with themselves, forming a non-relational system. While Baudrillard offers a fair account of the solitary lack of relation produced in and by digital technologies, he nevertheless participates in reinforcing the transformation of what he calls "the process of relating into a process of communication between One and the Same" (58). He catches himself within the circulation of the very desire he finds problematic. But whether onanistic or celibate, the erotics of our present or possible relations to technology do not become any more enticing in many actual engagements with emerging technologies. Popular modes of interfacing our desires with the digital favor a particular assemblage of body and machine where a kind of furtive one-handed masturbation may be the only option left to us. I will call this the operational assemblage, borrowing from Baudrillard and his description of Virtual Man, operating and communicating across computer cables and networks while being simultaneously immobilised in front of the glare of the computer screen. An operational assemblage, whilst being efficacious, inhibits movement and ties the body to the machine. Far from the body being discarded by information technologies, the operational assemblage sees certain parts of the body privileged and territorialised. The most obvious instance of this is VR, which, in its most technologically advanced state, still only selects the eyes and the hand as its points of bodily interface. In so-called fully immersive VR experience, it is the hand, wearing a data glove, which propels the subject into movement in the virtual world, but it is a hand propelled by the subject's field of vision, computer monitors mounted in the enveloping headset. Thus the hand operates by being subjected to the gaze2. In VR, then, the real body is not somehow left behind as the subject enters a new state of electronic consciousness; rather there is a re-organisation and reterritorialisation of the hand under the operative guidance of the eye and scopic desire. This is attested to by the experience one has of the postural body schema during immersion in VR. The 'non-operational' body remaining in physical space often feels awkward and clumsy as if it is too large or cumbersome to drag around and interact in the virtual world, as if it were made virtually non-functional. The operational assemblage of a distanced eye territorialising the hand to create a loop of identity through the machine produces a desiring body which is blocked in its relational capacities. It can only touch itself as self; it cannot find itself an other or as other. Rather than encouraging the hand to break connections with the circuit of the gaze, to develop speeds, capabilities and potentials of its own, these encounters are perpetually returned to the screen and the domain of the eye. They feed back into a loop where relations to other desires, other kinds of bodies, other machines are circumvented. Looping back and returning to the aesthetic reduction performed by the Love Machine, a more lo-tech version of the two technologically contracted to one might point to the possibility of alterity that current digital machines seem keen to circumvent. At San Fransisco's Exploratorium museum one of the public points of interface with the Human Genome Project can be found3. The Exploratorium has a display set up which introduces the public to the bioinformation technology involved as well as soliciting responses to bio-ethical issues surrounding the question of genetic engineering. In the midst of this display a simple piece of glass hangs as a divider between two sides of a table. By sitting on one side of the table with a light shining from behind, one could see both a self-reflection and through the glass to whomever was sitting on the other side. The text accompanying the display encourages couples to occupy either side of the glass. What is produced for the sitter on the light side is a combination of their own reflection 'mapped' onto the features of the sitter on the other side. The text for the display encourages a judgement of the probable aesthetic outcome of combining one's genes with those of the other. I tested this display with my partner, crossing both sides of the mirror/glass. Our reactions were similar; a sensation approaching horror arose as we each faced our distorted, mirrored features as possible future progeny, a sensation akin to encountering the uncanny4. While suggesting the familiar, it also indicates what is concealed, becoming a thing not known and thus terrifying. For what was decidedly spooky in viewing a morphing of my image onto that of the other's, in the context of the surrounding bioinformatic technologies, was the sense in which a familiarity with the homely features of the self was dislocated by a haunting, marking the claim of a double utterly different. Recalling the assertion made by Heim that in the computer we find an intellectual and emotional resting point, we could question whether the familiarity of a resting place provides a satisfactory erotic encounter with the technological. We could ask whether the dream of the homely, of finding in the computer a kinship which sanctions the love machine relation, operates at the expense of dispelling that other, unfamiliar double through a controlling device which adjusts differences until they reach a point of homeostasis. What of a reading of the technological which might instaurate rather than diffuse the question of the unfamiliar double? I will gesture towards both Guattari's text Chaosmosis and Ronell's The Telephone Book, for the importance both give to the double in producing a different relation with the technological. For Guattari, the machine's ghost is exorcised by the predominant view that sees particular machines, such as the computer, as a subset of technology, a view given credence at the level of hype in the marketing of AI, virtual reality and so forth as part of the great technological future. It also gains credibility theoretically through the Heideggerian perspective. Instead Guattari insists that technology is dependent upon the machinic (33). The machinic is prior to and a condition of any actual technology, it is a movement rather than a ground; the movement through which heterogeneous elements such as bodies, sciences, information come to form the interrelated yet specific fields of a particular assemblage we might term technological. It is also the movement through which these components retain their singularity. Borrowing from modern biology, Guattari labels this movement "autopoietic" (39). Rather than the cybernetic model which sees the outside integrated into the structure of the machinic by an adjustment towards homogeneity cutting off flow, Guattari underlines a continual machinic movement towards the outside, towards alterity, which transforms the interrelations of the technological ensemble. The machinic is doubled not by the reproduction of itself, but by the possibility of its own replacement, its own annihilation and transformation into something different: Its emergence is doubled with breakdown, catastrophe -- the menace of death. It possesses a supplement: a dimension of alterity which it develops in different forms. (37) Here, we can adjoin Guattari with Ronell's historical reading of the metaphorics of the telephone in attempts to think through technology. Always shadowed by the possibility Heidegger wishes to stake out for a beyond to or an overcoming of the technological, Ronell is both critical of the technologising of desire in the cybernetic loop and insistent upon the difference produced by technology's doubling desire. Using the telephone as a synecdoche for technology -- and this strategy is itself ambiguous: does the telephone represent part of the technological or is it a more comprehensive summary of a less comprehensive system? -- Ronell argues that it can only be thought of as irreducibly two, a pair (5). This differentiates itself from the couple which notoriously contracts into one. She argues that the two are not reducible to each other, that sender and receiver do not always connect, are not reducible to equal end points in the flow of information. For Ronell, what we find when we are not at home, on unfamiliar ground, is -- the machine. The telephone in fact maintains its relation to the machinic and to the doubling this implies, via the uncanny in Ronell's text. It relates to a not-being-at-home for the self, precisely when it becomes machine -- the answering machine. The answering machine disconnects the speaker from the listener and inserts itself not as controlling device in the loop, but as delay, the deferral of union. Loosely soldering this with Guattari's notion that the machine introduces a "dimension of alterity", Ronell reads the technological via the telephone line as that relation to the outside, to the machinic difference that makes the self always unfamiliar (84). I would suggest then that pursuing a love relation with technology or through the technological leads us to deploy an entire metaphorics of the familial, where the self is ultimately home alone and only has itself to play with. In this metaphorics, technology as double and technology's doubling desire become a conduit that returns only to itself through the circuitous mechanism of the feedback loop. Rather than opening onto heterogeneous relations to bodies or allowing bodies to develop different relational capacities, the body here is immobilised by an operational and scopic territorialisation. To be excited by an encounter with the technological something unfamiliar is preferable, some sense of an alternating current in the midst of all this homeliness, an external perturbation rubbing up against the tired hand of a short-circuiting onanism. Footnotes 1. The Love Machine is also the title of a digital still image and sound installation commenting upon the Hong Kong booth produced by myself and Michele Barker and last exhibited at the Viruses and Mutations exhibition for the Melbourne Festival, The Aikenhead Conference Centre, St. Vincent's Hospital, October, 1998. 2. For an articulation of the way in which this maps onto perspectival vision, see Simon Penny, "Virtual Reality as the Completion of the Enlightenment Project." Culture on the Brink. Eds. G. Bender and T. Druckery. Seattle: Bay Press, 1994. 3. Funded by the US Government, the project's goal is to develop maps for the 23 paired human chromosomes and to unravel the sequence of bases that make up the DNA of these chromosomes. 4. This is what Freud described in his paper "The Uncanny". Tracing the etymology of the German word for the uncanny, unheimlich, which in English translates literally as 'unhomely', Freud notes that heimlich, or 'homely', in fact contains the ambiguity of its opposite, in one instance. References Baudrillard, Jean. "Xerox and Infinity." The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena. Trans J. Benedict. London: Verso, 1993. 51-9. Dery, Mark. Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. "The Uncanny." Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17. Trans. and ed. J. Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Guattari, Félix. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. Sydney: Power Publications, 1995. Heim, Michael. "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace." Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994.59-80. Minsky, Marvin. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Moravec, Hans. Mind Children. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1988. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Anna Munster. "Love Machines." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php>. Chicago style: Anna Munster, "Love Machines," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Anna Munster. (1999) Love machines. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/love.php> ([your date of access]).

Eine Übersicht über europäische Reisende im Jemen von der dänischen Delegation bis Rathjens (1760-1950). Die Berichte ihrer Reisen sind ein wichtiger Beitrag zu unserer Kenntnis des Landes und seiner Bewohner. In Streiflichtern werden die Ergebnisse ihrer Forschung präsentiert. Die Reisende waren wissbegierig und hatten die Gabe und den Drang, Forschung in der terra incognita Arabiens zu treiben. Oft war ihre Reise mit Gefahr für Leben, Gesundheit, Hab und Gut verbunden. Sie waren glücklich, wenn es ihnen gelang, das Land wieder heil, mitsamt ihrer Notizen zu verlassen. Es war aber nicht nur die Neugier, die sie getrieben hatte, dieses Land zu besuchen. Die Geschichten und Legenden, die mit diesem Land verbunden waren, regten ihre Phantasie an. Sie waren davon entflammt und hingerissen und dachten an die Königin von Saba, den Reichtum des Landes und natürlich auch den Weihrauch. Sie wünschten sich, dorthin zu fahren, dieses Land zu erleben und zu dokumentieren, was von den alten Zeiten noch an Spuren zu finden war. Nach ihrer Rückkehr nach Europa waren sie begierig, der Welt ihrer Erlebnisse mitzuteilen und natürlich waren sie stolz darauf, als erste Europäer eine bestimmte Region besucht zu haben. Die Reisenden beschäftigten sich mit verschiedenen Forschungsgebieten, ihre Beobachtungen waren weitgefächert. Außer Land und Leuten haben sie den Himmel und die Luft, das Wasser und die See, die Berge und die Wüste, Fauna und Flora studiert, sie haben archäologische Ausgrabungen durchgeführt und Inschriften kopiert. Sie haben die Leute nach ihren Traditionen und ihrer Geschichte befragt und Informationen über ihre Sitten und Gebräuche gesammelt, sie schrieben über die Herrscher und beschrieben die politische und soziale Struktur des Landes. Sie haben Notizen über die Handwerke, Märkte, über dieArchitektur u.a.m. gemacht. Unser Wissen über das Land verdanken wir den Ergebnissen ihrer Reisen. Viele von ihnen traten die Reise ohne einen bestimmten Plan an, wie ihre Forschung ablaufen sollte. Die wenigen, die einen wissenschaftlichen Plan hatten, konnten diesen oft nicht verwirklichen. Oft haben diese Reisenden ihre täglichen Erlebnisse beschrieben, dokumentiert, was sie gesehen und gehört hatten und was passiert war. Jeder von ihnen hat seinen Beitrag zur Kenntnis des Jemen geleistet, hat geholfen, das kulturelle Erbe dieses Landes und seiner Bevölkerung zu erhalten.Stichwörter: Ein Überblick über Reisende aus Europa im Jemen vom letzten Drittel des 18. bis Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Streiflichter der Jemen-Forschung und ihrer Reise-Ergebnisse. Die erste archäologische Ausgrabung im Jemen. Synoptische Tafel. Ausgearbeitete Bibliographie. ResumenDirigimos una mirada a los viajeros europeos en Yemen, de Carsten Niebuhr a Carl Rathjens, un periodo que abarca casi 200 años (1760-1950), cuyos relatos e informes son una fuente de conocimiento de incalculable valor sobre el país y sus gentes. El artículo destaca los resultados de sus estudios. Dichos viajeros poseyeron un espíritu abierto y una mente inquisitiva que les empujaron a encabezar la exploración de la terra incognita que era entonces Arabia, a menudo arriesgando sus vidas al penetrar en este territorio desconocido, de hecho podían considerarse afortunados si lograban salir ilesos del país con sus diarios e informes intactos. Pero no era sólo la curiosidad lo que les empujaba a visitar el país, las historias y leyendas relacionadas con él alimentaban su fantasía. Se sentían inflamados y llevados por su arrebato pensaban en la reina de Saba, en su reino y, por supuesto, en el incienso. Deseaban experimentar y documentar aquello que de los tiempos antiguos se pudiera encontrar aún su huella. Y tras su regreso a Europa se sentían orgullosos de poder compartir sus experiencias con el mundo y de haber sido los primeros europeos en visitar la región. Sus observaciones fueron multidisciplinares. Además del país y sus gentes, estudiaron el cielo y el aire, el agua y el mar, las montañas y el desierto, la fauna y la flora, llevaron a cabo excavaciones arqueológicas y copiaron también inscripciones. Preguntaron a la gente por sus tradiciones y su historia, y reunieron información sobre sus usos y costumbres, describiendo igualmente los gobiernos y la estructura política y social. Tomaron notas sobre la artesanía y los mercados, sobre la arquitectura,… Nuestro conocimiento del país se lo debemos al resultado de sus viajes. La mayoría llevaron a cabo sus viajes sin una planificación determinada, según las circunstancias, y los que sí llevaban un plan a menudo no pudieron seguirlo. Habitualmente describieron sus experiencias diarias, documentaron lo que habían visto y oído y lo que hubiera ocurrido. Cada uno ha llevado a cabo su aportación al conocimiento y ha ayudado a conservar la herencia cultural de este país y su gente.Palabras clave: Una mirada a los viajeros europeos en Yemen del último tercio del siglo XVIII a mediados del siglo XX. Puntos destacados de la investigación en Yemen y de los resultados de los viajes. Primeras excavaciones arqueológicas en Yemen. Tabla sinóptica de viajeros. Bibliografía. Abstract:An overview on European travelers to Yemen, from Carsten Niebuhr to Carl Rathjens, a period that spans for nearly 200 years (1760-1950); their accounts are an invaluable source for knowledge about the country and its peoples. The article highlights the results of their studies. These travelers possessed an inquisitive mind and spirit, prompting them to conduct a survey of a land terra incognita, in our case, of Arabia, often risking their lives while entering this unknown territory. They were also considered lucky when they managed to get out safely from the country with their diaries and papers preserved intact. They were enchanted by the exotic country of Yemen and were proud to tell the world about their findings, especially being the first Europeans to have traveled in that region. Their research transcended boundaries –traveling by land and sea– to tell about the people and the rulers. They gathered information on the history of the country. They described the political and social structure, local tradition and the juridical system, the maritime-commerce and the caravan routes used throughout the ages. They copied down inscriptions and carried out paleographical and geographical surveys. They documented the culture and material wealth, the crafts and the markets, the architecture, the fauna and flora and even brought back specimens. Our knowledge of the country is an accumulative study drawn from their collective experience. Many of them did not even possess a method or plan about what studies they would conduct first, and those who had such a plan could not always carry it out as they wished. Most of them gave up their systematic study. It was a "take life as it comes" experience in which they documented what they saw and heard. Each of them added a new rung to the ladder of knowledge on the region or like an unfolding mosaic. Today, we enjoy the fruit of their labors resulting from their journeys. While climbing to ever higher levels, we remember that the accounts given in these sources are the cultural heritage and history of the country and peoples to which they came. They have presented to us, in many respects, a world that has now vanished away.Keywords: Outline on 250 years of European travelers to Yemen; the outcome of their journey and the highlights of their surveys; first archaeological excavation in Yemen; a synoptic-table of travelers; Bibliography.

Introduction There is much to be said about house and home and about our media’s role in defining, enabling, as well as undermining it. […] For we can no longer think about home, any longer than we can live at home, without our media. (Silverstone, “Why Study the Media” 88) For lesbians, inhabiting the queer slant may be a matter of everyday negotiation. This is not about the romance of being off line or the joy of radical politics (though it can be), but rather the everyday work of dealing with the perception of others, with the “straightening devices” and the violence that might follow when such perceptions congeal into social forms. (Ahmed 107) Picture this. Once or twice a week a small, black, portable TV set goes on a journey; down from the lofty heights of the top shelf of the built in storage cupboard into the far corner of the living room. A few hours later, it is being stuffed back into the closet. Not far away across town, another small TV set sits firmly in the corner of a living room. Yet, it remains inanimate for days on end. What do you see? The techno-stories conveyed in this paper are presented through – and anchored to – the idea of the cultural biography of things (Kopytoff 1986), revealing how objects (more specifically media technologies) produce and become part of an articulation of particular and conflicting moral economies of households (Silverstone, “Domesticating Domestication”; Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, “Information and Communication”; Green). In this context, the concept of the domestication of ICTs has been widely applied in Media Studies during the 1990s and, more recently, been updated to account for the changes in technology, household composition, media regulation, and in fact the dislocation of domesticity itself (Berker, Hartmann, Punie and Ward). Remarkable as these mainstream techno-stories are in their elucidation of contemporary techno-practices, what is still absent is the consideration of how gender and sexuality intersect and are being done through ICT consumption at home, work and during leisure practices in alternative or queer households and families. Do lesbians ‘make’ house and home and in what ways are media and ICTs implicated in the everyday work of queer home-making strategies? As writings on queer subjects and cyberspace have proliferated in recent years, we can now follow a move to contextualize queer virtualities across on and offline experiences, mapping ‘complex geographies of un/belonging’ (Bryson, MacIntosh, Jordan and Lin) and a return to consider online media as part of a bigger ICT package that constitutes our queer everyday life-worlds (Karl). At the same time, fresh perspectives are now being developed with regards to the reconfiguration of domestic values by gay men and lesbians, demonstrating the ongoing processes of probing and negotiation of ‘home’ and the questioning of domesticity itself (Gorman-Murray). By aligning ideas and concepts developed by media theorists in the field of media domestication and consumption as well as (sexual) geographers, this paper makes a contribution towards our understanding of a queer sense of home and domesticity through the technological and more specifically television. It is based on two case studies, part of a larger longitudinal ethnographic study of women-centred households in Brighton, UK. Gill Valentine has identified the home and workplaces as spaces, which are encoded as heterosexual. Sexual identities are being constrained by ‘regulatory regimes’, promoting the normalcy of heterosexuality (4). By recounting the techno-stories of lesbian women, we can re-examine notions of the home as a stable, safe, given entity; the home as a particular feminine sphere as well as the leaky boundaries between public and private. As media and ICTs are also part of a (hetero)sexual economy where they, in their materiality as well as textual significance become markers of sexual difference, we can to a certain extent perceive them as ‘straightening devices’, to borrow a phrase from Sara Ahmed. Here, we will find the articulation of a host of struggles to ‘fight the norms’, but not necessarily ‘step outside the system completely, full-time’ (Ben, personal interview [all the names of the interviewees have been changed to protect their anonymity]). In this sense, the struggle is not only to counter perceived heterosexual home-making and techno-practices, but also to question what kinds of practices to adopt and repeat as ‘fitting in’ mechanism. Significantly, these practices leave neither ‘homonormative’ nor ‘heteronormative’ imaginaries untouched and remind us that: In the case of sexual orientation, it is not simply that we have it. To become straight means that we not only have to turn towards the objects that are given to us by heterosexual culture, but also that we must “turn away” from objects that take us off this line. (Ahmed 21) In this sense then, we are all part of drawing and re-drawing the lines of belonging and un-belonging within the confines of a less than equal power-economy. Locating Dys-Location – Is There a Lesbian in the Home? In his effort to re-situate the perspective of media domestication in the 21st century, David Morley points us to ‘the process of the technologically mediated dislocation of domesticity itself’ (“What’s ‘home’” 22). He argues that ‘under the impact of new technologies and global cultural flows, the home nowadays is not so much a local, particular “self-enclosed” space, but rather, as Zygmunt Bauman puts it, more and more a “phantasmagoric” place, as electronic means of communication allow the radical intrusion of what he calls the “realm of the far” (traditionally, the realm of the strange and potentially troubling) into the “realm of the near” (the traditional “safe space” of ontological security) (23). The juxtaposition of home as a safe, ‘given’ place of ontological security vis a vis the more virtual and mediated realm of the far and potentially intrusive is itself called into question, if we re-consider the concepts of home and (dis)location in the light of lesbian geographies and ‘the production and regulation of heterosexual space’ (Valentine 1). The dislocation of home and domesticity experienced through consumption of (mobile) media technologies has always already been under-written by the potential feeling of dys-location and ‘trouble’ by lesbians on the grounds of sexual orientation. The lesbian experience disrupts the traditionally modern and notably western ideal of home as a safe haven and refuge by making visible the leaky boundaries between private seclusion and public surveillance, as much as it may (re)invest in the production of ideas and ideals of home-making and domesticity. This is illustrated for example by the way in which the heterosexuality of a parental home ‘can inscribe the lesbian body by restricting the performative aspects of a lesbian identity’, which may be subverted by covert acts of resistance (Johnston and Valentine 111; Elwood) as well as by the potentially greater freedoms of lesbian identity within a ‘lesbian home’, which may nevertheless come under scrutiny and ‘surveillance of others, especially close family, friends and neighbours’ (112). Nevertheless, more recently it has also been demonstrated how even overarching structures of familial heteronormativity are opportune to fissures and thereby queered, as Andrew Gorman-Murray illustrates in his study of Australian gay, lesbian and bisexual youth in supportive family homes. So what is, or rather, what can constitute a ‘lesbian home’ and how is it negotiated through everyday techno-practices? In and Out of the Closet – The Straight-Speaking ‘Telly’ As places go, the city of Brighton and Hove in the south-east of England fetches the prize for the highest ratio of LGBT people amongst its population in the UK, sitting at about 15%. In this sense, the home-making stories to which I will refer, of a white, lesbian single mother in her early 40s from a working-class background and a white lesbian/dyke couple in their 30s (from middle-/working-class backgrounds), are already engendered in the sense that Brighton (to them) represented in part a kind of ‘home-coming’ in itself. Helen and Ben, a lesbian butch-femme couple (‘when it takes our fancy’, Helen), had recently bought a terraced 1930s three-bedroom house with a sizeable garden in a soon to be up and coming residential area of Brighton. The neighbours are a mix of elderly, long-standing residents and ‘hetero’ families, or ‘breeders’, as Ben sometimes referred to them. Although they had lived together before, the new house constituted their first purchase together. This was significant especially for Helen, as it made their lives more ‘equal’ in terms of what goes where and the input on the overall interior decoration. Ben had shifted from London to Brighton a few years previously for a ‘quieter life’, but wished to remain connected to a queer community. Helen had made the move to Brighton from Germany – to study and enjoy the queer feel, and never left. Both full-time professionals, Helen worked in the publishing industry and Ben as a social worker. Already considering Brighton their ‘home’ town, the house purchase itself constituted another home-making challenge: as a lesbian/dyke couple on equal footing they were prepared to accept to live in a pre-dominantly straight neighbourhood, as it afforded them more space for money compared to the more visibly gay male living areas in the centre of town. The relative invisibility of queer women (and their neighbourhoods) compared to queer men in Brighton may, as it does elsewhere, be connected to issues of safety (Elwood) as well as the comparative lack of financial capacity (Bell and Valentine). Walking up to this house on the first night of my stay with them, I am struck by just how inconspicuous it appears – one of many in a long street, up a steep hill: ‘Most housing in contemporary western societies is “designed, built, financed and intended for nuclear families”’ (Bell in Bell and Valentine 7). I cannot help but think – more as a reflection on myself than of what I am about to experience – is this it? Is this the ‘domesticated lesbian’? What I see appears ‘familiar’, ‘tamed’, re-tracing the straight lines of heterosexual culture. Helen opens the door and orders me directly into the kitchen. She says ‘Ben is in the living room, watching television… Ben takes great pleasure in watching “You’ve been Framed”’. (Fieldnotes) In this context, it is appropriate to focus on the television and its place within their home-making strategies. Television, in its historical and symbolic significance, could be deemed the technological co-terminus to the ideal nuclear family home. Lynn Spigel has shown through her examination of the cultural history of TV’s formative years in post World War America how television became central to providing representations of family life, but also how the technology itself, as an object, informed material and symbolic transformations within the domestic sphere and beyond. Over the past fifty years as Morley points out, the TV has moved from its fixed place in the living room to become more personalised and encroach on other spaces in house and home and has now, in fact, re-entered the public realm (see airports and shopping malls) where it originated. At present, ‘the home itself can seen as having become … the “last vehicle”, where comfort, safety and stability can happily coexist with the possibility of instantaneous digitalised “flight” to elsewhere – and the instantaneous importation of desired elements of the “elsewhere” into the home’ (Morley, “Media, Modernity” 200). Importantly, as Morley confirms, today’s high-tech discourse is often still framed by a nostalgic vision of ‘family values’. There was only one TV set in Helen and Ben’s house: a black plastic cube with a 16” screen. It was decidedly ‘unglamorous’ as Helen pointed out. During the first round of ‘home-making’ efforts, it had found its way into a corner in the front room, with the sofa and armchair arranged in viewing distance. It was a very ‘traditional’ living room set-up. During my weeklong stay and for some weeks after, it was mostly Ben on her own ‘watching the telly’ in the early evenings ‘vegging out’ after work. Helen, meanwhile, was in the kitchen with the radio on or a CD playing, or in her ‘ICT free’ bedroom, reading. Then, suddenly, the TV had disappeared. During one of our ‘long conversations’ (Silverstone, Hirsch and Morley, “Listening”, 204) it transpired that it was now housed for most of the time on the top shelf of a storage cupboard and only ‘allowed out’ ever so often. As a material object, it had easily found its place as a small, but nevertheless quite central feature in the living room. Imbued with the cultural memory of their parents’ and that of many other living rooms, it was ‘tempting’ and easy for them to ‘accept’ it as part of a setting up home as a couple. Ben explained that they both fell into a habit, an everyday routine, to sit around it. However, settling into their new home with too much ‘ease’, they began to question their techno-practice around the TV. For Helen in particular, the aesthetics of the TV set did not fit in with her plans to re-decorate the house loosely in art deco style, tethered to her femme identity. They did not envisage creating a home that would potentially signal that a family with 2.4 children lives here. ‘The “normality” of [working] 9-5’ (Ben), was sufficient. Establishing a perceived visual difference in their living room, partly by removing the TV set, Helen and Ben aimed to ‘draw a line’ around their home and private sphere vis a vis the rest of the street and, metaphorically speaking, the straight world. The boundaries between the public and private are nevertheless porous, as it is exactly that the public perceptions of a mostly private, domesticated media technology prevent Helen and Ben from feeling entirely comfortable in its presence. It was not only the TV set’s symbolic function as a material object that made them restrict and consciously control the presence of the TV in their home space. One of Helen and Ben’s concerns in this context was that TV, as a broadcast medium, is utterly ‘conservative’ in its content and as such, very much ‘straight speaking’. To paraphrase Helen – you can only read so much between the lines and shout at the telly, it can get tiring. ‘I like watching nature programmes, but they somehow manage even here to make it sound like a hetero narrative’. Ben: ‘yeah – mind the lesbian swans’. The employment of the VCR and renting movies helps them to partly re-dress this perceived imbalance. At the same time, TV’s ‘water-cooler’ effect helps them to stay in tune with what is going on around them and enables them, for example, to participate and intervene in conversations at work. In this sense, watching TV can turn into home-work, which affords a kind of entry ticket to shared life-worlds outside the home and as such can be controlled, but not necessarily abandoned altogether. TV as a ‘straightening device’ may afford the (dis)comfort of a sense of participation in mainstream discourses and the (dis)comfort of serving as a reminder of difference at the same time. ‘It just sits there … apart from Sundays’ – and when the girls come round… Single-parent households are on the rise in the US (Russo Lemor) as well as in the UK. However, the attention given to single-parent families so far focuses pre-dominantly on single mothers and fathers after separation or divorce from a heterosexual marriage (Russo Lemor; Silverstone, “Beneath the Bottom Line”). As (queer) sociologists have began to map the field of ‘families of choice and other life experiments’ (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan), a more concerted effort to bring together the literatures and to shed more light on the queer techno-practices of alternative families seems necessary. Liz and her young son Tim had moved to Brighton from London. As a lesbian working single mother, she raises Tim pre-dominantly on her own: ‘we are a small family, and that’s fine’. Liz’s home-making narrative is very much driven by her awareness of what she sees as her responsibilities as a mother, a lesbian mother. The move to Brighton was assessed by being able to keep her clients in London (she worked as a self-employed communication and PR person for various London councils) – ‘this is what feeds us’, and the fact that she did not want Tim to go to a ‘badly performing’ school in London. The terraced three-bedroom house she found was in a residential area, not too far from the station and in need of updating and re-decorating. The result of the combined efforts of builders, her dad (‘for some of the DIY’) and herself produced a ‘conventional’ set-up with a living room, a kitchen-diner, a small home-office (for tele-working) and Tim’s and her bedroom. Inconspicuous in its appearance, it was clearly child-oriented with a ‘real jelly bean arch’ in the hallway. The living room is relatively bare, with a big sofa, table and chairs, ‘an ancient stereo-system’ and a ‘battered TV and Video-recorder’ in the corner. ‘We hardly use it’, Liz exclaims. ‘We much rather spend time out and about if there is a chance … quality time, rather than watching TV … or I read him stories in bed. I hate the idea of TV as a baby sitter … I have very deliberately chosen to have Tim and I want to make the most of it’. For Liz, the living room with the TV set in it appears as a kind of gesture to what family homes ‘look like’. As such, the TV and furniture set-up function as a signal and symbol of ‘normality’ in a queer household – perhaps a form of ‘passing’ for visitors and guests. The concern for the welfare of her son in this context is a sign and reflection of a constant negotiation process within a pre-dominantly heterosexual system of cultural symbols and values, which he, of course, is already able to ‘compare’ and evaluate when he is out and about at school or visiting friends in their homes. Unlike in Helen and Ben’s home, the TV is therefore allowed to stay out of the closet. Still, Liz rarely watches TV at all, for reasons not dissimilar to those of Helen and Ben. Apart from this, she shares a lack of spare time with many other single parents. Significantly, the living room and TV do receive a queer ‘make-over’ now and then, when Tim is in bed or with his father on a weekend and ‘the girls’ come over for a drink, chat and video viewing (noticeably, the living room furniture and TV get pushed around and re-arranged to accommodate the crowd). In this sense, Liz, in her home-making practices, carefully manages and performs ‘object relationships’ that allow her and her son to ‘fit in’ as much as to advocate ‘difference’ within the construction of ‘normalcy’. The pressures of this negotiation process are clearly visible. Conclusion – Re-Engendering Home and Techno-Practices As women as much as lesbians, Helen, Ben and Liz are, like so many others, part of a historical and much wider struggle regarding visibility, equality and justice. If this article had been dedicated to gay/queer men and their techno- and home-making sensibilities, it would have read somewhat differently to be sure. Of course, questions of gender and sexual identities would have remained equally paramount, as they always should, enfolding questions of class, race and ethnicity (Pink 2004). The concept and practice of home have a deeply engendered history. Queer practices ‘at home’ are always already tied up with knowledges of gendered practices and spaces. As Morley has observed, ‘space is gendered on a variety of scales … the local is often associated with femininity and seen as the natural basis of home and community, into which an implicitly masculine realm intrudes’ (“Home Territories” 59). As the public and private realms have been gendered masculine and feminine respectively, so have media and ICTs. Although traditional ideas of home and gender relations are beginning to break down and the increasing personalization and mobilization of ICTs blur perceptions of the public and private, certain (idealized, heterosexualized and gendered) images of home, domesticity and family life seem to be recurring in popular discourse as well as mainstream academic writing. As feminist theorists have illustrated the ways in which gender needs to be seen as performative, feminist and queer theorists also ought to work further on finding vocabularies and discourses that capture and highlight diversity, without re-invoking the spectre of the nuclear family (home) itself (Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan). What I found was not the ‘domesticated’ lesbian ‘at home’ in a traditional feminine sphere. Rather, I experienced a complex set of re-negotiations and re-inscriptions of the domestic, of gender and sexual values and identities as well as techno-practices, leaving a trace, a mark on the system no matter how small (Helen: ‘I do wonder what the neighbours make of us’). The pressure and indeed desire to ‘fit in’ is often enormous and therefore affords the re-tracing of certain trodden paths of domesticity and ICT consumption. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Karl, Irmi. "Domesticating the Lesbian?: Queer Strategies and Technologies of Home-Making." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/06-karl.php>. APA Style Karl, I. (Aug. 2007) "Domesticating the Lesbian?: Queer Strategies and Technologies of Home-Making," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/06-karl.php>.