arccontagion

[arccontagion]

The spikes installed outside Selfridges in Manchester are the latest front in the spread of ‘defensive architecture’. Is such open hostility towards the destitute making all our lives uglier?

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Really interesting programme from BBC about the implications of disgust. 

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Colors Magazine, a magazine about the rest of the world. Lost at the Border | Blog

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We mentioned poor doors in our brief… The idea is far from Victorian.

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It is illegal to photograph the detention centres, closed courts, luxury lounges and private jets Britain uses to deport people. So artist James Bridle found another way to recreate these ‘invisible’ spaces

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“The thing we are always concerned about is the phenomenon of suicide contagion. Youths are more susceptible to contagion, and research has found that 2 to 5 percent of teen suicides had a possible role of contagion. It is a vast minority, but it doesn’t mean the phenomenon doesn’t exist.”

After Woodson High suicides, a search for solace and answers - The Washington Post (via washingtonpost)

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Clapping reveals applause is a ‘social contagion’

The quality of a performance does not drive the amount of applause an audience gives, a study suggests.

Instead scientists have found that clapping is contagious, and the length of an ovation is influenced by how other members of the crowd behave.

They say it takes a few people to start clapping for applause to spread through a group, and then just one or two individuals to stop for it to die out.

The Swedish study is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Lead author Dr Richard Mann, from the University of Uppsala, said: “You can get quite different lengths of applause - even if you have the same quality of performance. This is purely coming form the dynamics of the people in the crowd. (via BBC News - Clapping reveals applause is a ‘social contagion’)

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Public and Military Health Posters for Contagious and Infectious Disease

In everyday speech, and even in many news reports, the terms “contagious" and "infectious" are often used interchangeably. In epidemiology (the study of how diseases spread) and most other scientific fields, however, they have distinct definitions. All contagious diseases are infectious, but not all infectious diseases are contagious.

Infectious diseases:

Are caused by “infective agents” - that is, bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, or prions - which are non-self organisms.

Cause clinically evident disease.

Not caused by immune dysfunction, non-infected injury, or psychological conditions.

Not caused by bodily reactions to chemicals or poisons not secreted by infective agents.

Transmitted in many, many ways, but generally originate outside of the infected host. An exception is in immune-compromised patients who become infected by commensal organisms.

Contagious diseases:

Are infectious diseases transmitted from person-to-person, with no special agent or vector required.

Can be spread via airborne droplets, other bodily secretions, or fomites (any object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms, such as clothing, money, doorknobs, or stethoscopes).

Are the cause of most epidemics (a notable exception is the Black Plague, which probably was caught through flea vectors).

Spread can be controlled by quarantine and isolation.

Another context in which “infectious” and “contagious” are used is to describe something as highly infectious or highly contagious. 

Highly infectious:

Symptomatic disease can be caused by a very low number of infectious agents being introduced into the body.

Some highly infectious agents (such as ebola), can be caused by a very low number of pathogens, but can only cause infection when introduced into the body in a specific manner - for example, ebola does not cause infection when inhaled, but a tiny droplet of infected bodily secretion landing on an open wound can cause disease.

Highly contagious:

Generally refers to the ability of the pathogen to survive outside of the host, and the number of ways it can be transmitted.

Can be spread through airborne droplets.

To use the ebola example, even though it can’t be caught through airborne droplets, it can be caught through fomites, dead bodies, sexual intercourse, and contact with almost any bodily fluids. Because it’s not airborne, however, it’s considered highly infectious but not highly contagious, at least by virologists.

However, for practical use, because it is so infectious, and has many other modes of transmission, it’s often called “highly contagious” in the media.

Posters from National Archive of Medical History’s Otis Archives

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Map of the week: 57% of languages do not have gendered pronouns.

By Lisa Wade, PhD

The map above is an interactive available at the World Atlas of Language Structures.  It represents an extensive, but not quite comprehensive collection of world languages. Each dot represents one. White dots are languages that do not include gendered pronouns. No “he” or “she.” Just a gender neutral word that means person.

The colored dots refer to languages with gendered pronouns, but there are more than one kind, as indicated by the Values key. The number on the right, further, indicates how many languages fit into each group. Notice that the majority of languages represented here (57%) DO NOT have gendered pronouns.

The map at the site is interactive. Go there to click on those dots and explore.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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i like the idea of contaminating the technology, of putting the blood, the guts and the madness, all those nasty womanly things into this beautiful, slick technology, into the beautiful and pure machines. i really like that juxtaposition.

Linda Dement in an interview with Sadie Plant at the 1996 Virtual Futures: Datableed conference 

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(via fleam)

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Eric Garner’s last words.

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A documentary about Deep Lab was released today.

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C O N T A G I O N : S U B M I S S I O N S

Fear is the most elegant weapon. Your hands are never messy. Force anxiety to excruciating levels or gently undermine the public confidence. Panic drives human herds over cliffs; an alternative is terror-induced immobilisation -- Jenny Holzer, Untitled, "Fear is the most elegant weapon..." 1979-82

The theme of this issue of Arc is CONTAGION. Body to body, across borders.

We are thinking about illegal subjects as contagious, the most welcome immigrant is a dead one, washed up on the shore of Lampedusa. When protesters shout Ferguson is England, crisis has gone viral: contamination is solidarity. More locally, poor doors and gated communities are divisive lines of money-coloured segregation. Who is scared of Ebola? Who can’t breathe?

We welcome ideas in a form of your choosing. It could be in any visual medium, polemical, a score or transcription of a conversation or event, a poem or a record of an action or an account of an experience (perhaps the daily routine of the mini hand sanitiser travelling everywhere you go). Upon submission your proposal must be clear, tangible and attainable.

The deadline for submitting proposals has been extended to Monday the 16th of February. The editorial team, students from Critical Writing in Art and Design, will work with you to develop the piece across February and March. Arc will be launched for distribution around the RCA and in selected bookstores in May. The format of the printed journal will be developed in conjunction with the content, and we are also looking at establishing an online platform to represent time-based content.

Previous issues of Arc can be viewed here Please contact: arc@rca.ac.uk

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'The Femicide Machine', by Sergio González Rodríguez (2012).

In Ciudad Juarez, a territorial power normalized barbarism. This anomalous ecology mutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn’t just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guarantee impunity for those crimes and even legalize them. A lawless city sponsored by a State in crisis. The facts speak for themselves. — The Femicide Machine

Find out more here

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'On Immunity - An Inoculation' by Eula Biss (2015).

'In this bold, fascinating book, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear—fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what may be in your children’s air, food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines.'

Find out more here