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[lilithnewzealand]

Outlasting the darkness: lessons of six Scottish winters

A view towards the Isle of Mull from its neighbor island, Kerrera--spring

I begin these winter musings in the final weeks of the American summer. Light is waning, and we splash one last time in the magnificent lake, pretending that the golden heat of this muggy, molten season will live on forever. In reality, the earth in its tilted run is already siphoning the minutes off the days. We can no longer reliably plan late evening BBQs around our garden’s shady oak tree, for it will already be dark by 7pm in these last weeks of August. Suddenly, we’re careening into the hectic, school-filled days of early September. One or two punctilious neighbors have already mutinously exchanged flip-flop door wreaths for pumpkins and gourds. I know that in the weeks to come, a veritable sea of hay bales and potted autumnal mums will sprout up in pleasant but unoriginal beatification of this dying season.

Chrysanthemums seem seductive envoys of death, cultivated to bloom only in hues mirroring those of a mature leaf’s swan song—pear-like yellows, burnt oranges, reds umbers, and even crackling browns. Flowers that are unwelcome and doer in the heady exuberance of spring find themselves the befitting adornment of atrophy and waning. Festive gourds, Halloween treats, and crisply weathered hayrides ease us like a conciliatory lullaby into the season that flows towards the utter darkness of the northern hemisphere’s agonizing winter solstice.

I will admit that It is not beyond me to pray, to beseech, to quietly plea for something as elementary as winter sun. Just as I pray quirky prayers that as a Western populace we’d forgo ease and profit for truly earth-honoring, nutrient rich, non-carenogenic farming, or that God would bring suffering children out from pain and fear this night, or for a friend who’s mother no longer lives, so I whisper this prayer for the mercy of winter light. I lift my voice in an entreaty that as the icy air stings our braced, pale faces, and layers panoply our bodies, that the far off winter sun with its weakened winter force would reign over our sky.

I come to these prayers with memories of winter’s capacity for mental woundedness. For six long seasons, I lived as a young adult through the insanity inducing darkness of west coast Scotland’s seemingly amaranthine, sodden winters. While before my travels I had known in theory that places such as Finland, Alaska, and Russia endured a departed sun for seasons together, I was wholly unprepared for the true, if somewhat functional insanity human beings endure when caught in the grip of a dark, far north winter. I had come to a country whose springs and summers produced some of the most stunning landscapes on earth, but whose winters’ lightlessness and wet stung the equilibrium of every cogent citizen. At ten steps beyond cozy indoor lounging, and peaceful snow-filled Saturdays, winter in the Scottish city I’d called home was, in my experience, something to survive, like an ancient, enveloping, heavy, returning foe. This is my small tale of everyday endurance.

When I left east coast America for Glasgow, Scotland in 2005 as an energetic, adventure-seeking twenty-two year old graduate student, I only vaguely considered British lore of generally omniscient rain and mist. If tea and scones accompanied that promised rain, I felt equal to its challenge. After all, I was no stranger to varieties of weather. We of the American Northeast gloried in the wonder of nature’s four faces, and cherished each one’s splendor.

Not we the soft, milk toast citizens of mild Florida, with its perpetual clemency like the slog of a meteorological purgatory, never proceeding from heaven into hell, or fleeing hell into the promise to heaven (apart from those apocalyptic moments of hurricane decimation, to be fair!). Nor were we the unfathomable folk who think it prudent to nurture community so far north as to warrant cars block heaters and homes with double heating systems. Surely a routine -30 F was nature’s indication, to western folk at least, that such landscapes as Alaska or Manitoba were not intended for human flourishing!

For all the variety of season, one reasonable constant was sunshine. From fifteen hours of committed, humid sunlight in the height of a suburban Philadelphia summer to a mere, miserable nine hours mid-December, with sunsets slipping down by 4.36pm instead of summer’s 8.32pm, the sun still at least shone weakly and cruelly in winter. How different it all was just across the pond where dramatic lochs lay and bagpipers piped.

In the beginning, my new young adult life in the art-loving, gritty, dually medieval and Victorian city of Glasgow proved mostly splendid. The beauty of nearby Hebridean islands, hill walking, and Harry Potteresque Edinburgh all soothed the longing I’d followed for vivid, three-dimensional encounter with everything I’d seen on the countless BBC murder mysteries and Jane Austen adaptions. With ceilidhs to dance, coffee shops to visit, curry to discover, and accents to unpack, the insidious impact of a profound lack of vitamin D3 upon my skin and in my body went under my radar. My mind perhaps registered the lack of sun, but only to complain or “winge” of its inconvenience, as the Scots would say. Surely, the November sky was darker than I’d ever known, but there was a jolly Burns night feast to attend, and a grotesque Haggis to address and devour.

Loch Katrine, July

Soon, alongside studies, I had found work at an inner city hotel’s vivacious restaurant. The job stretched my world from church and post-graduate university to the bustling business district of that medieval city. Working the evening shift at the flashy five-star hotel’s eatery, I saw business executives live in rooms week-to-week as their veritable second home, while lush, pleasure-seeking weekend holiday makers shifted the energy to indulgence come weekends. Often, I’d wake from a drug-like sleep the next afternoon in recovery from a previous night’s early morning finish. Weary from consecutive hours of cultivating restaurant elegance on the ground floor, while then frantically couriering steaming room service to more private, weary, or work burdened guests on upper floors, we topped long evenings with free beers and huge communal plates of greasy chips in the wee hours. Night after night, we sat like those participating in a greasy, ritualistic, pagan Scottish communion, where no one but me remembered Jesus’ body and blood.

As the sun glowed a very muted gray buzz across the daytime sky, I’d then half glimpse two hours of cloudy half-light before diving back into the murky cave of our sophisticated but windowless hotel restaurant. Here, I served Scottish rack of lamb to the lonely Welsh businessman, or waited upon the elderly far north Scot who kept the chefs in their windowless aluminum kitchen interested in life by routinely ordering the “special” of the day, chased down by an elegant but heavy triple Laphroig. We’d watch this distinguished man canter very intentionally, like a lad pulled over for his sobriety test, back across the street to the more budget hotel where he slept off this gourmet evening, ready for the following day’s to work on Scottish Educational databases.

When I’d dart out to the wide atrium bar for a diner’s wine or beer in winter, not a spot of sunlight could be seen after 3.30pm, despite the 25 foot floor-to-ceiling windows that invited every ray of lingering sun. Blackness framed the football (soccer!) fans zealously bedecked in their ribald sporting colors, marching drunkenly through the streets to and from pubs screening their games. Their glamor and serious fervor was like a shout of resolve against the depressing dimness.

As I raced along hotel corridors with my dented aluminum room service trolley and my tender, undying hopes of a small cash tip, I’d consume any glimpses of light or sky in passing windows. The mournful beauty of gulls swooping in the inky night’s electric semi-glow is my salient memory of visual grace on these long roomservice patrols along unrelieved gray corridors. Arriving at the penthouse suite on such a preternaturally shaded evening, burdened with the happy, hot, succulent roast chicken for Tony Bennett or hot chocolate and scrambled eggs for Jermaine Jackson and his shy, Caucasian girlfriend, I would sometimes pity the confusion I imagined these grand American stars must feel in our dark cityscape. Why would a civilization choose to stay and inhabit such a gritty and preternaturally dark island? On the surface of things, our commitment to this dim, soggy winter space seemed bewildering and foolishly patriotic.

Wrapped in the stalwart blanket of Scottish pride, Scots rarely discussed why they stayed at all, or how they survived. A tale of explanation that I once read was that in former generations the peoples occupying the coastal lands had found the atmospheric shoreline and islands habitable by aid of their vitamin D3 rich fish, seaweed, and cod liver oils. These they kept in a vat of fermenting sea fruits near the door of their mud-made huts. Oozing the invaluable nectar D3–liquid sunlight in food form--these earlier chiefs and clanspeople weathered the darkness abetted by foodstocks most natural to human survival in their particular climate. Did some of this impulse survive in the English and Scottish default to fish and chips on any possible occasion? In America, we grab burgers or sushi on the run. In Scotland, folk did a wee nip doon to the chippie, perhaps in an unconscious genetic compulsion back towards the fish liver oil origins enabling their earlier mental survival. 

Modern-day Scotland offered not so much a supplemental strategy, as a mission of pitiable smothering —endurance through camaraderie and pub life. In short, we drank the winter away. The prevalence of alcohol, clubbing, and more alcohol, to forget or enliven the threatening, consuming darkness was farught reality. This turn to the wine, the jack and cokes, the gin and tonics, and what became gallons of hard cider was followed, inevitably, by pursuit of deliciously repulsive fried food. A vivid memory of a winter’s evening during my university years in Glasgow was standing with friends in a grease-filled chip shop at 3 am, where a sober, level-headed, but smirking shop owner in turban and mustache served the scantily dressed, blitzed, and literally tottering western “Christian” guests a zero nutrient meal of hot chips (fries), with the chip shop’s familiar grayish green anointing curry. Indeed, a mini industry had sprung around the predictable depression of winter-bound, partying Scots—that of chippies and fish shops, open into the wee hours of the morning. By the end of six years in Glasgow, I stood well aware of the national sting of alcoholism, but certainly, and sadly, not without understanding.

I paint with broad strokes here, of course. These are memories mainly from days spent among hotel friends and university colleagues. My church friends weathered the winter rather more sedately, but not without a wee nip to get through the days, and certainly with a lion’s share of fish and chips. West Wing DVD binges, evening parties of games and “chewing the fat” (fun, leisurely chat), and mini-breaks for those who could afford to flee the gray all sustained the less alcohol prone types, as we grinned and struggled to bear the black winter away.

For myself, winterizing our let Scottish flat remained central to my mental survival. There is such a thing as cutting off your arm to spite your face. And, there is such a thing as having no good choices. When the darkness of a Scottish winter crept into Glasgow like the angel of death looking for blood on the lintels of homes, I was living with two American expatriate friends in a grand West End Glasgow flat. A magnanimous blonde stone mansion that had once outfitted an oil or railway baron of sorts in one of Glasgow’s poshest neighborhoods had now been sequestered into four elegant westend Glasgow flats. By some beneficence I still thrall to remember, we three American post-grad students had obtained “letting” rights to this splendor over a small host of other applicants. During spring, summer, and into autumn, we were the envy of all we knew. Our sprawling lounge with its twelve foot high bay window allowed in light, images of foliage, and the sound of children at play on the grounds of their expensive public (private) school across the way.

As winter crept through, however, opulent settings that had once framed our elegant spring view transmogrified to the Achilles heel of wellness and peace. My male flatmate at the time worked part-time researching medieval and modern lives of the saints, and the other seventy percent of this time drinking Jack Daniels and coke and playing an internet based video game with brothers and friends back in the US. His perch was the delicious round table within the sweep of the elegant bay window. Come November, he and I would rather awkwardly heave out the hidden, original, indoor Victorian window shudders, painted black and capable of covering literally the entire span of the floor-to-ceiling windows in a complicated inter-working of hinges and panels. Assembling this indoor screen felt like the muzzling of a bulldog or the blinding of hero, Samson-style. But we did this because there was other way to keep warm. The meager oil heaters scattered here and there like tokens to modernity held no real efficacy. They were no match for the high ceilings and now-insanely tall windows, and this shudder system in effect double glazed the space, however imperfectly. Whereas with a modern home, one stood a chance of creating somewhat stable warmth with space heaters and extra layers, these old flats stood impotent against the softly insidious sting of that millions-strong army of wet winter water cells.

In western Scotland, winter was not the season of snow, but of the far worse dual enemy of damp and darkness. This was the place of clothes that took a week to fully dry on British drying racks, and Victorian floorboards that leeched cellular moisture perpetually. Continually running dehumidifiers, we found, was positively the most effective form of heat management. Would the yesteryear drying power of real fires in the tenement fireplaces proven the key to survival against the potency of this winter water cell army? I certainly hope so for the sake of our forefathers and foremothers!

When we were done securing the blackened panels across our lounge’s windows, I turned to my own small room, likely once a servant’s quarters. There, too, hung original wooden indoor shudders for my window. Around the awkward fitting paneling, I stuffed old pajamas and the summer shorts and tank tops I’d literally never worn in Scotland. Their summer lightness now served as plugs and sealants against my greatest enemy--winter. At last, my small space lay hermetically sealed and guarded against any speck of outdoor water, and indeed, any ray of weak winter sun. I slept, lived, and worked in a cavernous darkness at least three or four months of those years in which I resided in that flat of historic luxury. Night blended almost unnoticed into day, and a cell phone flashlight directed into my eyes each morning was the best means of indicating dayspring to my searching body.

Deeper into the stretch of the city’s west end, my husband-to-be, with a professional job, traditional office hours, and a somewhat larger bank account, battled the lows of the western Scottish winter more genteelly. His best mate, a distinguished Scottish surgeon, lured him into membership at the sleek and financially exclusive David Lloyd west end gym. Here was a gorgeous, artificial, perpetual summer of sorts—the chemical paradise of an indoor pool, ensconced safely within the glass. Here, eminent surgeon sat swan alongside high stakes IT programmer, property developer alongside Oxford-trained eye surgeon. Thus it was that Alistair and Chris swam their way through the sadness of winter.

Somehow, when I think of Alistair, quietly and dramatically insisting that the David Lloyd gym and the pool were the only places keeping him from actual insanity between the pressures of complicated, risky surgeries at a large regional hospital, estrangement with his brother, tensions with a difficult mother, and the memory of a dead, beloved father, I recognized a specter of my own mental workings–a reluctance to admit or inability to see that a beloved object or passion could actually be foremost implicated in my own harm. Was the west coast Scottish darkness the true force that exacerbated all other struggles beyond the point of endurance? Yet, for this Gaelic patriot, the Scottish winter’s almost unrelenting lightlessness never came to the fore as perhaps the central instigator of mental agony. Alistair loved Scotland deeply. The main fonthead of soul-reviving relaxation outside of the gym lay in his emotional involvement with the waves and rhythms of Scotland’s contemporary celtic music. For a man so somber and focused by day, it was spellbinding to observe him unwinding with dances, fast foot-tapping and a subtly rocking body at modern celtic concerts.

As I would think of those two friends, my mind would automatically contrast them, for some reason, with the astonishing scarred man I met at the Garnethill laundromat one Scottish summer’s day. It must have been the year after my own traumatic second degree burns to my feet—boiling kettle, rushing for church, tired and stressed, slippery hands–and my subsequent skin graft surgery at Glasgow’s Royal Infirmary. The scarred man was short, almost childlike in stature, as I found many Scottish men to be, but clearly aged. Almost up the rim of his chin, where neck and head met, danced plaited, pleated scars so complete and decorative that he almost seemed reptilian.

A thick, three-dimensional scar smiled darkly across the top of neck of where throat and chin meet, reminding me of the mark made by my great uncle, who, carrying the burden of PTSD from violence seen in WWII Pacific battles, and now in the first stages of dementia, had slit his throat with a huge metal saw. This gentle, kind, and tall music-loving man had once played the saw musically, eliciting its wobbling, otherworldly siren song with a cello bow against the flat side of the tool. The musical saw’s sound is piercing and otherworldly, finding its sound family with the glassy, wobbling chords of Benjamin Franklin’s glass harmonica. Two decades later, during my undergraduate years, that tall, German-American vet who’d lied about his age to begin serving before he actually turned 18, took that very musical blade slashed it across his neck. “Look what you made me do,” he cried to my usually strong, forceful Polish-American great aunt. He survived, but forever wore that same ring around his long, elegant neck.

Now, as I bid hello to this diminutive, thoroughly scarred man, I looked quickly away, resolved to appear oblivious to what seemed a very intimate tale of attempted suicide on his body. To my surprise, however, after polite greetings in the otherwise empty laundromat, he immediately commenced the tale of his body with strong Glaswegian inflections. Perhaps it was our isolation. Perhaps it was my conspicuous burns scars blazing through summer sandals. Whatever it was, I was so glad to know him, and moved hear his story. I’ll loosely translate from that lilting Glaswegian brogue into more comprehensible but less lyrical American style.

When he was no more than 5 years old boy, he began, his mother had spilled a full kettle of boiling water over her wee son in a horrible kitchen accident. He was taken to hospital, and almost died. These scars besmirching his flesh were the best doctors could do in skin repair forty years ago, and so he’d borne these ostracizing wounds for almost his entire life. Through no fault of his own, this scarred and anxious man stood thoroughly adorned by permanent markings of unintentional violence. He displayed on one frame forever, something of every person’s lifetime of wounds, internal and external, secrets which other bodies adeptly conceal.

He continued his story by describing a most isolated life, one that I can only attribute to the visual taboo of his grotesquely slashed and matted skin. His home was a single bedsit in the Glasgow city center, where he shared a tiny kitchen with four other single men. His trade, however, was sharpening knives and blades of all kinds. I was mildly surprised to learn that he worked, for it had become routine to me to meet men and women “on benefit” for an array of real mental and physical struggles. The delight he took in his labor delighted me.

From the small, highly regulated and much rarer hunting knives that still circulated after the successful 2005 Scottish gang crackdown and knife amnesty, to larger industrial blades for manufacturing machinery, the man whose name escapes my memory, but whose face and form I’ll never forget, could sharpen them all. Here, with talk of his trade, his eyes finally shifted from their haunted anxiety to brightness. I was blessed to hear him speak with some joy of camaraderie among the gents who worked on site with him at the mechanic’s shop. While the rest of the team fixed tires and engines, he practiced his own highly tailored, solitary trade in a small corner.

Perhaps boldly, because of the safety of my engagement ring, I asked him about girlfriends and women, only to hear confirmed a lifetime of isolation and singleness. He sticks out to me among these contemplations of winter for perhaps unmatched mental resilience against outwardly imposed suffering—a human creating what order, purpose, and joy he could amidst day to day agony. It was the story of a lifetime’s Glasgow winter.

I longed for him was to experience acceptance and community across ages and genders. And so, I, not being one to routinely do so, invited him to stop in at our church in the center of the city, a place of community at the very least. I knew men like him there, faint bodily memories of times past —beatings, disabilities, and trauma—but now slowly flourishing, incrementally renewed, and even married against all odds.

At just that moment, my posh Oxbridge roommate arrived. In the wake of the awkwardness of that invitation and her aura which recalled both my connection with another social realm and his gendered isolation, he quickly scurried off down the road, bearing the burden of his laundry like Quasimodo returning to the tower. I have thought of him often since then, praying for love, for community, and great, new hope. As I write here of winter and mental survival, of Alistair needing the bright lights and chlorinated waters of the posh David Lloyd spa and fitness club, of drunken friends, and mentally suffering colleagues, I think of him. I think of the steady, determined living of the scarred, knife-sharpening man.

One late winter’s evening sitting before the artificial blue glow of my laptop in a room enclosed by the total blackout of a Glasgow winter’s evening, I purchased tickets to the romantic heart of Southern France to visit a childhood friend. I was going on mini-break! Think Van Gogh’s cafe by night painting, and you will know Arles, France, the actual location of that iconic coffee shop, and the Dutch master’s home while at the from February 1888 to May 1889. Late February, almost March, I flew from Glasgow to Barcelona, Spain, and from Barcelona to Grenoble, France, and then by train to Arles. My dear American friend’s smile and transcendent ruby curls greeted me, and together we sauntered like those who’ve reached heaven itself through her adopted hometown, a healing intellectual and aesthetic distance from the New Jersey suburb of her youth. I posed by a Baroque fountain, while an enthusiastic male youth, adorned in an expensive Chanel “merce”, man-purse, jumped in to cradle me and photobomb the shot. We paused at a cafe on a winding, cobblestone street resounding with gentle guitar music for coffee and cocoa--all my European dreams were coming true. We continued on to Arles’ ancient Roman arena, where I heard tell of jazz and opera concerts, and finally emerged before the pinnacle, iconic Arles sight–its mirthful 1900 carousel.

Each of Katherine’s overseas guests were brought here and invited to ride the most famous of all Arlesian beasts—the black bull—El Toro of the carousel. Arlesian voices, Katherine explained, cacophonied in a dynamic, regional debate over the beauty or butchery of the bullfight. When these people of Southern France craved societal momentum, their chosen form of activism was always the formation of a society–the Society for Perpetuating Bullfights, the Society for Ethical Treatment of the Bull, the Society for Ending all Bullfights, etc. Across the road from one such society in an elegant turn of the century building, I paid my euros, and we laughed as the little carousel propelled my postgraduate student body up and down like a child’s. I balled my hands into fists and extended pointer fingers into two playful horns for my own forehead. For one puerile moment, I embodied El Toro himself.

For all the charm of that exploratory, Southern France day, the moment that stands immortalized in my mind was a quiet one. Descending the bull, and resting on the cobblestone pavements between the carousel and the boulangerie where Katherine quickly ran to purchased dinner baguettes, I felt a warmth steal across my face, neck, and decolletage. What was this glowing orange heat descending from the sky? How was this mercy of a peachy, gentle heat present on a mere late February day? Soaked in the mild ecstasy of this magnanimous anomaly, I drowsily wondered again what was this golden orb was doing filling the winter sky so warmly. I am not one to anthropomorphize flesh, but in that moment, my assemblage of cells spoke almost audibly. They begged me to pause, to stop, to soak, to drink in every lingering ray of sunlight. They would not budge.

There can be tears for the relief of battle we barely knew we had. There can be weeping with the realization that we had unknowingly survived truly destabilizing insufficiencies for so long. And at that moment, tears literally sprang to my eyes as I luxuriated in the gentle fullness of a benediction so long denied—the necessary mercy of sunlight for my pale, deprived epidermis. Here was a long forgotten grace for both body and mind. Here was a reminder of an alternative world where sun reigned not as a far off, chance promise, but as an immanent, abundant love.

In 1971, John Denver, the American folk singer with a flaxen gold bowl cut sang, “Sunshine, on my shoulders, makes me happy…Sunshine almost always makes me high.” This racy line sat neatly memorized in my mind, snuck in among other more lighthearted folk fare from my parents’ 1970’s favorites. I vividly recall my parents discussing, with insufficiently hushed voices from the front seat of our gray airport limousine-style van on a trip west around America in the mid-1990’s, whether Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecilia was appropriate musical fodder for the mixed company of our family’s emerging pre-teens, teens, toddlers, and elementary students. “Makin’ love in the afternoon with Cecelia, up in my bedroom! Makin’ love!…” So little music did our parents bring, and so many long hours in the car made for a categorically memorized albums–beauty, revolution, salaciousness, and all. By the end of that month-long trek we kids had memorized much of Peter Paul and Mary’s In The Wind, John Denver’s Best Of, and Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Waters—all of which rotated like clockwork with an audiobook performance of Jane Eyre.

That day, standing in the long alien sun on that street in southern France, the line from John’s “Sunshine” filtered to the surface of long forgotten memories. To be clear, whether it makes me nerd or novice, I have never been “high” in the usual illegal, high school manner; yet, I have experienced the ebullience of a day out with friends and no obligations and money to spend, or the delight and honor of winning a grand, unexpected prize, whether first place in a the school wide coloring contest in kindergarten, or the university Presidential Award. This moment of sun’s mercy was like that—a shock of sheer biological joy, soaking in upon my skin, almost against my will or asking, and ushering with it, a deeply gladdened heart and endorphins. I no longer giggled and smirked at John Denver and his chillaxed, hippy musings. I sang alongside in fully realized understanding. How, oh how, could I return to dark Scotland?

Back in my little cavernous bedroom a week later, I distractedly ordered a large jar of encapsulated vitamin D3. Each small, smooth and marble-like tablet appeared so inane, harmless, even placebo. I tossed one in my mouth, In fact, I think I tossed 5 in my mouth for few days straight. I had no idea of their efficacy, but I reasoned that if in theory, I had been missing out on this necessity for five years, my body would require a small jolt of awakening to begin its journey into recovery. Chasing them down with water, I probably raced on with the movements of my busy life. And suddenly, a week or two later, as I turned up the circular staircase of our Victorian flat, I noticed that the unhinged sadness and chaos that had darkly plagued my inner world had calmed ever so subtly.

It was not the burst of what I imagine a drugged high must be, but the soothing calm of gently increasing stability, the slow, almost imperceptible release from the whirling bedlam of a blurred and muddied mind. The little blue pitch-forked demons of Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty had ceased their authoritative dance and disappeared into a poof of nothing.

“Wow, I’m not insane anymore,” I muttered softly to myself. Gratitude, then annoyance flowed through me. Why, oh why, hadn’t I just tried it before? I would have liked to know that I was more than the “sweet” but distracted and zany blonde—that a measure of winter peace was possible, ever so subtly.

I’ve been a sun chaser ever since. I could not go back, could not slacken my pursuit of the gift of God’s best UV rays. My body and practices have grown more savvy, tailoring their thirst to the most vanguard research—10-20 minutes a day of obsolescence before the orbital rays on as much skin as possible in the prime window of lowest UVB rays—10am to 2pm. I respect the sensitivities of the face, neck, and shoulders.

For so long, I’d scorned the Glaswegian flight to crass, boozy Majorca, Spain, with what I deemed to be its tacky modern hotels and abundance of alcoholic loitering on the sands. Why, I mused, would a nation with such ready access to Europe’s innumerable cultural splendors and fine countrysides beeline in droves to a that tasteless resort landscape? I’d drunk the molding Kool-aid of belief in fading science—wearing sunscreen even on overcast days in cloudy Scotland, and trying to cover every inch of skin with fabric, even on warm far northern days, dreaming all the while of the crowning trophy of smooth, creamy pensioner (retiree) skin, coupled with a remarkable freedom from skin cancer. But now, after seven years of winter darkness and year-round mist, my snobbish disdain broke down with understanding for those I’d once slighted –you must fill up on sun and wellness before any culture becomes important. Pale and D3 deprived as I was, it dawned on me that there was grave logic to British comedian Michael McIntyre’s routine about the Glaswegian airport bombing attempt. Contrasting successful terrorists in London and Manchester, British born Islamic jihadists failed in their malicious bomb plots here in Glasgow, where a winter-beaten Glaswegian man tackled the physician- turned-jihadist in overweening determination to let nothing keep him from…Majorca.

When I next visited Glasgow seven years following our emigration, my friend Lindsey stood contemplating my Americanized postpartum body. She who had known me well in the Glasgow days observed, “You have some curves to you now, and some colour!” It was late October then, and so particularly gratifying to appear even remotely tanned! I reveled in my new hue, a sun-kissed peach, no longer the pallid, muted white linked to breast cancer and MS.

Now as a thirty-something year old scholar, mother, and partner, I look to photos of fellow thirty year old Scottish friends. Two Octobers ago, I sat with them in an ornate Victorian sandstone building-turned-Starbucks, drinking in the miracle of their lovely children, and seeing photos of their flourishing middle class lives. They worked as a professors, teachers, bank tellers, mothers, and volunteered with refugees, addicts, and international students. They lived day by day still in this cloud of gray, and theirs is a resilience I marvel to behold. I raise my glass of almond milk and another of kombucha to them, and salute their Scottish hardiness. My heart opens in prayer for the gift of mental wellness for them, and for those of us everywhere who find the shift to winter darkness an elephant of gloom sitting upon hearts. Let us fill our homes with green plants, keep connected in fun and kinship with friends, especially the lonely, pop our vitamin D3 with its enabling K2 buddy, and long for the lights of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Yule who offer bright, needful stars of hope and celebration against a black winter sky.

As we walk in darkness, visions of summer remains my close companion hope, a specter walking by my side, the dream, like heaven reaching close to earth. And if we have eyes to see, we raise our fragile fingers to touch the veil between this present world and the next springtime. Memories and testimonies from far across the equator where antipodean New Zealand and Australian summers reign alongside our winter become the motivating promise that at the culmination of this obligatory darkness, there will be my body glistening with sun and sweat by the sonorous utterance of the lapping ocean waves.

[robertmcangusgroup]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Monday 29th January 2018

Hello, Good Morning and Welcome….  With the inevitability of the Julian calendar, Monday has rolled around once more and we prepare ourselves for another working week…For me, my life is no different than when I worked  for my company, but the sign on the door says, “Retired” which translates to past it, and effectively means, that no company will consider you for employment, so you are supposed to get up late, have a lazy day… because you earned it … I think that is the way to an early grave, I remain active, both physical and mentally, walking Bella, writing The Thistle and The Tulip and many other articles, it all keeps the body and the mind active,

APPEAL AFTER HIGH-VALUE PAINTINGS STOLEN IN MIDLOTHIAN…. Two high-value paintings have been stolen from a house in Midlothian. The works by Scottish artists were taken from a home in the Eskbank area of Dalkeith between Tuesday 17 October and Thursday 19 October last year, but details have just been released. Police said the thieves gained access to the property and took the paintings which hold sentimental value to the owner. Both paintings are original pieces and are forensically marked. The first is a picture of fish entitled "The Maverick" by artist Gordon Mitchell and the second is "The Lady with the Skate" by John Bellany. Officers are asking anyone with information to come forward. PC Emily Dalgetty from Musselburgh Police Station said: "These pieces of art have huge sentimental value to the owner and we are keen to trace those responsible for their theft. "I would ask anyone who has seen, or been offered these paintings, to contact us as soon as possible."

GLASGOW CITY CENTRE IS ONE OF UK'S POOREST AREAS…. Glasgow is among the UK's poorest constituencies, according to a new report. The End Child Poverty Coalition, made up of charities, faith groups and trade unions, said that 45% of children in the city centre were living in poverty. Glasgow Central appears 12th on a list of 20 constituencies, which is otherwise dominated by communities in London, Birmingham and Manchester. West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine had the fewest children in poverty at 9.2%. The Coalition calculated the number of children in poverty using a combination of HMRC data and a Labour Force Survey. A child was classed as poor if their family had less than £248 a week to spend after housing costs. That amount is less than 60% of median household income in the UK. Across Scottish constituencies, the organisation found that just under a third of children in North Ayrshire (29%) and Dundee (28%) were living in poverty. Other areas, such as North Lanarkshire, East Ayrshire, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire and Clackmannanshire had a quarter of children in poverty.

MOBILE CINEMA OPERATOR SECURES KEY FUNDING…. The operator of the UK's only full-time, self-contained mobile cinema has secured the funding it needs to run its programme for the next three years. Regional Screen Scotland (RSS) said Creative Scotland intends to provide it with a total grant of £620,350 for April 2018 to March 2021. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) will also give a total of £75,000 over the same period. RSS operates the mobile cinema the Screen Machine. The service was originally started in 1998. The current vehicle, which has been in use since 2005, was fully refurbished last year. The cinema tours the Highlands, Inner and Outer Hebrides and Northern Isles. RSS said: "We're delighted that the continuing success of the Screen Machine, which visited 51 different locations in the last year, has been so firmly endorsed by our two key funders."

TRAIN COULD BE MOVED AFTER LANDSLIP ON WEST HIGHLAND LINE…. NetworkRail Scotland said it could soon be possible to move a train that was caught up in a landslip on the West Highland Line on Monday. Five passengers were on board when the train came off the track early on Monday morning. No-one was injured. The line is blocked at Loch Eilt between Arisaig and Glenfinnan and the ScotRail Alliance has said Fort William-Mallaig services will be suspended until further notice. Engineers from NetworkRail Scotland are clearing tonnes of material to free the train and clear the line. A spokesman for the company said: "Works on site are progressing well. "Yesterday the team drained standing water from around the derailed vehicle and began to dig out the mud surrounding it. "Today we will complete the removal of the landslip material from around the train and then re-rail it. If possible we may move the train today, but that may not happen until tomorrow." He added: "In the days after that, we'll repair damage to the track and carry out further works to secure the slope."

UNTAXED CAR CATCHES OUT CANNABIS COURIERS…. Two men were caught with almost £30,000 worth of cannabis after using an untaxed car to transport the drug, a court heard. Kieran Teasdale and Jacob Simpson were pulled over by police after a routine computer check showed that their vehicle had not been taxed. Officers noticed a "strong smell of cannabis" coming from the car when its window was wound down. Both men were jailed for 19 months at Perth Sheriff Court. Depute fiscal Michael Sweeney told the court that the total weight of the cannabis was almost 2kg and it had a potential street value of £29,000. The court was told that the chance discovery was made because Simpson had "stupidly" decided to use an untaxed car to drive the cannabis from Bradford to Aberdeen. Simpson, 27, and Teasdale, 24, both from Bradford, had earlier admitted being concerned in the supply of cannabis on the M90 on the outskirts of Perth in April 2016.

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is by.. Morris Macleod … There's been some tricky driving conditions across Scotland this week. Even Morris Macleod encountered a road block on the Pentland Road in Lewis.

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Monday 29th January 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus

[lucyt0601]

Final Research Paper

Katie Paterson and the Concept of Memory 

The purpose of my research is to study the work and practice of the artist Katie Paterson and how her work relates to the concept of memory. Paterson replicated her memories into her art works, taking what is inside of her to create her visible mediums, which include texts, monographs, videos, sculptures, images, numbers, etc. According to Ollivier Dyens in his article The Sadness of the Machine, “Memories of pleasure, pain, sadness and joy, are the common thread that unites all human beings. Memories are our existence, and art is their system of replication” (Dyens 2001, 77).

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1981 and currently based in Fyfe, UK, Paterson is one of the leading artists of her generation. She received her BA from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2004 and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2007. She has since been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions, recipient of the John Florent Stone Fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art, and was the Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London from 2010 to 2011. She opened herself to different disciplines, but found it difficult to settle. She went between sculpture, fine art, and fashion then astronomy and geophysics. She stuck with art, cleverly incorporating science in her works. In collaboration with scientists and researchers from around the world, her projects consider the place of humans on planet Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her works utilize advanced technologies and expertise to display the engagements between people and the natural environment. The approach taken is Romantic and research-based, rigorous conceptualism and minimalism, shortens the distance between the viewer and the edges of time and the cosmos- essentially bringing said viewer closer to science through art. Paterson has broadcast the sounds of a melting glacier live, mapped dead stars, compiled a slide archive of darkness from the depths of the Universe, created a light bulb to simulate the experience of moonlight, and sent a recast meteorite back into space. She is fascinated by science and is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually-driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology and cosmology. Her conceptual art finds everyday analogies for profound cosmological themes, is consistent in exploring scientific themes through contemporary art: her works have ranged from sending a "second moon" around the earth by courier service, to playing a record at the speed of the earth's rotation. Institutions approve of  her art because it fits some deep need they have for art that is conceptual and intellectual. That combination allows museums and respectable prize givers to feel they are “down with the kids,” while also furthering their liberal mission to educate the public. Using technologies normally applied to the speed and scope of human experience, the Scottish artist zooms out or tunnels in to other, more alien dimensions, reframing natural and cosmic phenomena. Anthropocentric worldviews are dissipated in favor of a different kind of consciousness, one keyed to evolutionary systems and rooted in contact with igneous chaos. She makes use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment.“Eliciting feelings of humility, wonder and melancholy akin to the experience of the Romantic sublime, Paterson's work is at once understated in gesture and yet monumental in scope.” Paterson has exhibited internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major exhibitions including Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, MCA Sydney, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was the winner of the Visual Arts category of the 2014 South Bank Awards, and is an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University. Her poetic installations have been the result of intensive research and collaboration with specialists as diverse as astronomers, geneticists, nanotechnologists, jewelers and firework manufacturers. As Erica Burton, curator at Modern Art Oxford, wrote at a solo exhibition in 2008, “Katie Paterson’s work engages with the landscape, as a physical entity and as an idea. Drawing on our experience of the natural world, she creates an expanded sense of reality beyond the purely visible.” In terms of inspiration, I would believe that her experience living in Iceland and around the world felt like visiting different planets. Traveling to drastically different places feels like visiting different worlds, which is what sparked her fascination with outer space and the cosmos. 

Recent works: Totality (2016), a mirrorball reflecting every solar eclipse seen from earth; Hollow (2016), a commission for University of Bristol, made in collaboration with architects Zeller & Moye, permanently installed in the historic Royal Fort Gardens: a miniature forest of all the world’s forests, including over 10,000 unique tree species spanning millions of years telling the history of the planet through the immensity of tree specimens in microcosm; Fossil Necklace (2013), a necklace comprised of 170 carved, rounded fossils, spanning geological time; Second Moon (2013), a work that tracks the cyclical journey of a fragment of the moon as it circles the Earth, via airfreight courier, on a man-made year-long commercial orbit; All the Dead Stars (2009), a large map documenting the locations of 27,000 dead stars known to humanity; Light bulb to Simulate Moonlight (2009), an incandescent bulb designed to transmit wavelength properties identical to those of moonlight; and History of Darkness (ongoing), a slide archive of darkness captured at different times and places throughout the universe and spanning billions of years. “Paterson created Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) (2007). With the assistance of radio operators Peter Blair in Southampton, England, and Peter Sundberg in Lulea, Sweden, Paterson bounced Morse code Signals of the score of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata off the moon and then transcribed the echoed information back into notation, which was then played back in exhibition on a player piano… Paterson employs a novel subtractive sonification based on ever-present loss. Regular radar scans of the surface would employ much higher power and include repetitions to override error producing a refined data set that a conventional sonification strategy would then transform into music or another art of sound. Paterson’s approach is different. Just as one hears the Pacific Ocean leak into the off-timings of Nam June Paik’s version of Bach, in Earth-Moon-Earth you hear the moon in what Beethoven does not sound like.” In itself, the universe is creativity and we are connected to it as it is made of materials that are commonplace. After learning of the Earth-Moon-Earth technology, Paterson found herself imagining what messages she would wish to send while strolling under a full moon. Musicalization of dead silences consists of sound recordings of three Icelandic glaciers on records made of frozen meltwater from these glaciers are played until the records melt, mimicking the loss and silencing of their source. History of Darkness, 2010 are, “...essays a cosmically laconic take on astro physical discovery of the protocols of its recording. For the Dying Star Letters, Paterson is sent an email each time scientists note a star has been expired; she then writes a letter of condolence.”

From Sydney, Australia to New York and Scotland, Paterson’s artwork has been present in both major showings and collections. Those include the Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Guggenheim, New York and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was the winner of the Independent’s Creative 30 award ‘for Britain’s most creative young person’ and most recently the winner of the Visual Arts category of the 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Awards and has been awarded with an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Edinburgh. 

She has worked in collaboration with institutions of scientific research and space agencies to realize complex projects that consider disciplines like astrophysics from an artistic point of view. For example, Paterson and Simon Faithfull teamed up to make work that tests the very limits of the sphere of human activity and knowledge, and their conception of the environment as a vastly expanded field is made possible by new developments in technology and radical advances in scientific thinking and method. At the same time, the way in which their work is actually realised retains a keen sense of physical constraints and material conditions; they set themselves wilfully difficult tasks, and resolve them in ingenious, laborious, sometimes eccentric ways. Paterson describes her practice as interdisciplinary, exploring landscape, space and time using technology to integrate the everyday and the cosmic. Everyday technologies are linked with something more vast and untouchable- telephone calls to melting glaciers, maps of every single dead star, street lights flickering in time with lightning storms, and music reflected back from the moon. Additionally, Margaret Atwood was asked by Paterson to be a contributor to her centennial project, Future Library, 2014-2114, a work of art in the form of time travel. Atwood is convinced that the human race will still exist in a hundred years. She ponders, “How strange is it to think of my own voice--silent by then for a long time--suddenly being awakened, after a hundred years. What is the first thing that voice will say, as a not-yet-embodied hand draws it out of its container and opens it to the first page?” In this project, words are grown through the trees, each ring becoming a chapter in a book. 

A Map of every dead star in the Universe--which ties closely to this FSEM--details the location of the 27,000 dead stars that have ever been observed and recorded in human history–and her map continues to grow with each dying star. In order to create her map, Paterson consulted with physicists, librarians, and archivists to compile a record of the stars that have been recorded and that have since faded away or exploded. In her project the boundary is fuzzy between life and death, between the end of one star and the beginning of another, and it invites us to examine how we remember and record the past. Since stars die every day, one would wonder how this project could ever be finished... all the dead stars combined would be the size of the Earth. I believe that this reminds us that nothing is ever “done.” We do not recall every bit of our memories, even if we think we do. 

Bibliography 

Larsen, Lars Bang. 2014. 1000 WORDS: Katie paterson and margaret atwood. Artforum International. 11, https://ezproxy.hws.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1625101398?accountid=27680 (accessed October 16, 2019).

McKinnon, Dugal. "Dead Silence: Ecological Silencing and Environmentally Engaged Sound Art." Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013): 71-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43832509.

Dillon, Brian. "Attention! Photography and Sidelong Discovery." In Aperture, No.

     211, Curiosity (Summer 2013), pp. 25-31. Published in JSTOR.

     Accessed October 29, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24473799. 

Kahn, Douglas. Earth Sound Earth Signal : Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Accessed October 29, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central. 

"Message to the Moon: Katie Paterson's Life in Astronomy." Frieze. Last modified June 6, 2019. Accessed December 7, 2019. https://frieze.com/article/message-moon-katie-patersons-life-astronomy.

[endenogatai]

UK Uber drivers are taking its algorithm to court

A group of UK Uber drivers has launched a legal challenge against the company’s subsidiary in the Netherlands. The complaints relate to access to personal data and algorithmic accountability.

Uber drivers and Uber Eats couriers are being invited to join the challenge which targets Uber’s use of profiling and data-fuelled algorithms to manage gig workers in Europe. Platform workers involved in the case are also seeking to exercise a broader suite of data access rights baked into EU data protection law.

It looks like a fascinating test of how far existing legal protections wrap around automated decisions at a time when regional lawmakers are busy drawing up a risk-based framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence.

Many uses of AI technology look set to remain subject only to protections baked into the existing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). So determining how far existing protections extend in the context of modern data-driven platforms is important.

The European Commission is also working on rebooting liability rules for platforms, with a proposal for a Digital Services Act due by the year’s end. As part of that work it’s actively consulting on related issues such as data portability and platform worker rights — so the case looks very timely.

Via the lawsuit, which has been filed in Amsterdam’s district court today, the group of Uber drivers from London, Birmingham, Nottingham and Glasgow will argue the tech giant is failing to comply with the GDPR and will ask the court to order immediate compliance — urging it be fined €10,000 for each day it fails to comply.

They will also ask the court to order Uber to comply with a request to enable them to port personal data held in the platform to a data trust they want to establish, administered by a union.

For its part Uber UK said it works hard to comply with data access requests, further claiming it provides explanations when it’s unable to provide data.

Data rights to crack open an AI blackbox?

The GDPR gives EU citizens data access rights over personal information held on them, including a right to obtain a copy of data they have provided so that it can be reused elsewhere.

The regulation also provides some additional access rights for individuals who are subject to wholly automated decision making processes where there is a substantial legal or similar impact — which looks relevant here because Uber’s algorithms essentially determine the earning potential of a driver or courier based on how the platforms assigns (or withholds) jobs from the available pool.

As we wrote two years ago, Article 22 of the GDPR offers a potential route to put a check on the power of AI blackboxes to determine the trajectory of humankind — because it requires that data controllers provide some information about the logic of the processing to affected individuals. Although it’s unclear how much detail they have to give, hence the suit looks set to test the boundaries of Article 22, as well as making reference to more general transparency and data access rights baked into the regulation.

James Farrar, an Uber driver who is supporting the action — and who was also one of the lead claimants in a landmark UK tribunal action over Uber driver employment rights (which is, in related news, due to reach the UK Supreme Court tomorrow, as Uber has continued appealing the 2016 ruling) — confirmed the latest challenge is “full spectrum” in the GDPR rights regard.

The drivers made subject access requests to Uber last year, asking the company for detailed data about how its algorithm profiles and performance manages them. “Multiple drivers have been provided access to little or no data despite making a comprehensive request and providing clear detail on the data requested,” they write in a press release today.

Farrar confirmed that Uber provided him with some data last year, after what he called “multiple and continuous requests”, but he flagged multiple gaps in the information — such as GPS data only being provided for a month out of two years’ of work; no information on the trip rating assigned to him by passengers; and no information on his profile nor the tags assigned to it.

“I know Uber maintain a profile on me but they have never revealed it,” he told TechCrunch, adding that the same is true of performance tags.

“Under GDPR Uber must explain the logic of processing, it never really has explained management algorithms and how they work to drivers. Uber has never explained to me how they process the electronic performance tags attached to my profile for instance.

“Many drivers have been deactivated with bogus claims of ‘fraudulent use’ being detected by Uber systems. This is another area of transparency required by law but which Uber does not uphold.”

The legal challenge is being supported by the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU) which says it will argue Uber drivers are subject to performance monitoring at work.

It also says it will present evidence of how Uber has attached performance related electronic tags to driver profiles with categories including: Late arrival/missed ETAs; Cancelled on rider; Attitude; Inappropriate behaviour.

“This runs contrary to Uber’s insistence in many employment misclassification legal challenges across multiple jurisdictions worldwide that drivers are self-employed and not subject to management control,” the drivers further note in their press release.

Commenting in a statement, their attorney, Anton Ekker of Ekker Advocatuur, added: “With Uber BV based in the Netherlands as operator of the Uber platform, the Dutch courts now have an important role to play in ensuring Uber’s compliance with the GDPR. This is a landmark case in the gig economy with workers asserting their digital rights for the purposes of advancing their worker rights.”

The legal action is being further supported by the International Alliance of App-based Transport (IAATW) workers in what the ADCU dubs an “unprecedented international collaboration”.

Reached for comment on the challenge, Uber emailed us the following statement:

Our privacy team works hard to provide any requested personal data that individuals are entitled to. We will give explanations when we cannot provide certain data, such as when it doesn’t exist or disclosing it would infringe on the rights of another person under GDPR. Under the law, individuals have the right to escalate their concerns by contacting Uber’s Data Protection Officer or their national data protection authority for additional review.

The company also told us it responded to the drivers’ subject access requests last year, saying it had not received any further correspondence since.

It added that it’s waiting to see the substance of the claims in court.

The unions backing the case are pushing for Uber to hand over driver data to a trust they want to administer.

Farrar’s not-for-profit, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), wants to establish a data trust for drivers for the purposes of collective bargaining.

“Our union wants to establish a data trust but we are blocked in doing so long as Uber do not disclose in a consistent way and not obstruct the process. API would be best,” he said on that, adding: “But the big issue here is that 99.99% of drivers are fobbed off with little or no proper access to data or explanation of algorithm.”

In a note about WIE on the drivers’ attorney’s website the law firm says other Uber drivers can participate by providing their permission for the not-for-profit to put in a data request on their behalf, writing:

Worker Info Exchange aims to tilt the balance away from big platforms in favour of the people who make these companies so successful every day – the workers.

Uber drivers can participate by giving Worker Info Exchange their mandate to send a GDPR-request on their behalf.

The drivers have also launched a Crowdjustice campaign to help raise £30,000 to fund the case.

Discussing the legal challenge and its implications for Uber, Newcastle University law professor Lilian Edwards suggested the tech giant will have to show it has “suitable safeguards” in place around its algorithm, assuming the challenge focuses on Article 22.

Wow. This could be historic: the first art 22 case to really crack the veil of algorithmic black box secrecy and givevpowed back to dstified platform workers. Go @jamesfarrar who drove this ( sic) from the start!! #uber #a22 https://t.co/DEoX1bdCGY

— Lilian Edwards (@lilianedwards) July 20, 2020

“Article 22 normally gives you the right to demand that a decision made in a solely automated way — such as the Uber algorithm — should either not be made or made by a human. In this case Uber might claim however, with some success, that the algorithm was necessary for the Uber context with the driver,” she told us.

“However that doesn’t clear their path. They still have to provide ‘suitable safeguards’ — the biggest of which is the much-discussed right to an explanation of how the algorithm works. But noone knows how that might operate.

“Would a general statement of roughly how the algorithm operates suffice? What a worker would want instead is to know specifically how it made decisions based on his data — and maybe how it discriminated against him or disfavoured him. Uber may argue that’s simply impossible for them to do. They might also say it reveals too much about their internal trade secrets. But it’s still terrific to finally have a post GDPR case exploring these issues.”

In its guidance on Article 22 requirements on its website, the UK’s data watchdog, the ICO, specifies that data controllers “must provide meaningful information about the logic involved in the decision-making process, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences for the individual”.

It also notes Article 22 requires that individuals who are subject to automated decisions must be able to obtain human review of the outcome if they ask. The law also allows them to challenge algorithmic decisions. While data controllers using automation in this way must take steps to prevent bias and discrimination.

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NatWest Launches UK's First Fully Automated Protection Deposit Facility

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Ordering is quick and easy!

Just follow these 5 simple steps...

1) Find your picture 2) Choose your print format 3) Enter your details 4) Pay for your purchase 5) Sit back and relax

Unique gifts for worldwide delivery. Most items are printed to order from high quality digital originals and without the watermarking shown on our web previews. Please note that prices shown may include sales tax where applicable at your current rate.

We have gathered together fantastic imagery for you to view and own, and have made finding that perfect image simple! Just enter a word or phrase into the search box, or browse our online photo galleries. Select an image to find out more about the picture and the range of quality print formats available. Preview images may be watermarked for security reasons, such marks will not appear on your final purchase.

2) Choose your print format

Once you've found your image, select your desired print format and add it to your basket. You can own this image as a photographic print (framed or unframed), canvas print, or as a photo gift (mugs, mouse mats, t-shirts etc.). All prints are from original, high-resolution digital image files, giving you the best possible clarity and colour.

We use professional equipment and paper for prints that can withstand fade for up to 100 years! All frames and mounts are produced in-house to guarantee a premium quality product. Equal care is taken with photo gifts; we have scoured the market to find the best quality available so you are happy with your purchase. All items are quality checked before leaving our labs.

Bought from us before? Great! Simply enter your email address and password and we will fill in your billing and delivery address details.

If you haven't been here before then you will need to give us your address details and choose a password so you can track your order. All personal details are held securely and are not used for any purpose other than order management without your expressed permission.

Been here before but forgotten your password? Simply enter your email address, click 'Forgotten your Password', and we will automatically email you instructions on how to reset your password.

We recognise that security is one of the major concerns for online shopping, so we utilise state of the art security from leading international financial organisations. For your peace of mind, we do not store or have access to your credit card numbers.

The Payment Page is held on the secure servers of one of our card processors, such as Barclaycard ePDQ or PayPal. They ensure that your transaction is securely encrypted for your privacy and protection at all times. We accept all major credit and debit cards.

You can track the status of your order via the 'My Account' area on our site; just sign in using the email address and password you chose when ordering.

Pixel Perfect Guarantee

We want you to be completely happy with your purchase.

Our Pixel Perfect Guarantee ensures that the print you receive matches the preview shown on our web site, reflecting the age and quality of the artwork we have on file. 

If you are not happy with an item, or have simply changed your mind, do please let us know as soon as possible.

Contact us within 30 days of receiving your goods (returns are to be received no later than 14 days after notification).  Refunds will be processed within 7 business days. Shipping charges on the original order will be refunded but we can only refund return shipping charges if it was a result of our error.

We can exchange goods within 30 days from delivery. After this we only exchange items if they were received faulty, or if the wrong item was received. Free exchanges apply to UK orders only, replacement items sent to an overseas address may be charged the full postal cost for delivery.

In the unlikely event you receive a faulty item contact us immediately and we'll advise the next steps to take to resolve any issues.  (Note: late notificiations may require proof that the item was faulty when received.)

Any purchase bought as a Christmas present after 31st October can be returned up to January 6th. The item must be returned in the condition that you received it and in its original packaging.

Returning an Item

Please first contact us by replying to the order confirmation email or use our Feedback page. All we ask is that you return the item in the condition that you received it (including any paperwork) and wrap the package securely - the packaging they arrive in can often be used for the return.

Important: We only refund upon receipt, therefore advise returning items via a trackable method.

We will replace faulty items with the same product or refund back to a credit card if the item is no longer available. Our returns policy is valid for 30 days from receipt of goods. Returns are to be sent to the address provided in the return authorisation email.

All personalised, or made-to-order items, are excluded from the returns policy, so please check carefully before ordering. As soon as you place an order for a personalised or made-to-order item you have entered into a contract to purchase that item. Therefore once you have submitted the order you cannot cancel or return the item either before or after dispatch.

During peak periods exchanges can take up to 28 days to process. If you require an exchange for a specific date, e.g. in time for Christmas, we advise that you place a fresh order as we cannot guarantee that returns will be processed in time.

We check every single return, if an item is found not to be faulty by our independent tests we may return the item with a postage charge. A full charge will be made on goods that have been returned in a used or unsalable condition (e.g. damaged packaging, torn, scuffed or dirty goods). We reserve the right to return to you (at your cost) any item returned to us after 14 days, or not in compliance with the conditions above.

Please visit Feedback to send us comments, suggestions etc, remembering to quote your order reference in any correspondence

Please contact us for return address details for your country. 

Source

http://www.mediastorehouse.com/glasgow-corporation-passenger-transport/print/14786767.html

from http://taxi.nearme.host/glasgow-corporation-passenger-transport-gartcraig-bus-garage/

from NOVACAB - Blog http://novacabtaxi.weebly.com/blog/glasgow-corporation-passenger-transport-gartcraig-bus-garage

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Glasgow Corporation Passenger Transport, Gartcraig Bus Garage

Reviews

Delivery

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Glasgow Corporation Passenger Transport, Gartcraig Bus Garage

Plan and sections of the depot office, canteen and stores of the proposed bus garage at Gartcraig, Glasgow

Watermarking and Website Address do not appear on finished products

Creation Date: 6th March 2017

All prints are made with high-grade materials

Expert colour reproduction and quality finish

Fully covered by our Pixel Perfect Guarantee

Framed Print(US$89.99 - US$199.99) Contemporary sturdy frames with professional print

Photo Jigsaw Puzzle(US$34.99) Photo jigsaw puzzles made to order with the image of your choice

Photographic Print(US$14.99 - US$89.99) Quality photos printed on high grade photographic paper. Size refers to paper used

Canvas Print(US$79.99 - US$399.99) Delightfully modern way to show off your favourite artwork with non-warp wood for longer life

Poster(US$19.99 - US$39.99) Decorative eye-catching posters bringing a unique sense of individuality

Photo Mug(US$24.99) Enjoy your favourite drink from a custom printed gift mug

Mouse Mat(US$17.99) Archive quality photographic print in a durable wipe clean mouse mat (27x22cm) with non slip backing. Works with all computer mice.

Good copy and sent quickly .

Mouse mat arrived more quickly than expected and the quality was very good.

Excellent service nx day delivery very well packed. Would recommend Media Storehouse.

Excellent speedy service and a fantastic card.

Prompt delivery, beautiful print

Great product at a fair price.

I received my purchase on time which was important to me.

Sent order in a timely fashion.

Well packaged, on time, reasonable cost no problems

Very quick expedition and good quality product. Thank you.

Efficient service - fast delivery

Prompt service with quality product. Thank you

Very pleased with my purchase and a very quick delivery.

First classs service. Thank you

Received day after ordering, great service and product. Will use again and recommend to friends! Thankyou.

Everything was fulfilled quickly and without complaint.

Beautiful card with fast delivery - Thank you very much

Custom made order received next day. Nothing too much trouble, very obliging, very friendly, very rare nowadays!

Fast, Safe Delivery

We can ship your order (almost) anywhere in the world, securely packaged to arrive in perfect condition.

- For quick delivery we aim to ship regular Photographic Prints same or next working day

- Other items take slightly longer to prepare and we aim to ship those in 3-5 working days

If you need an item sooner do please let us know as early as possible and we will try our best for you.

Our estimated dispatch date is clearly shown at the checkout and on order confirmations. For your added convenience some items may ship separately at no extra charge.

Prints are made to order in one of our UK, USA and Australian labs - each offering its own range of professional products, We will try to automatically select your closest lab when visiting, however if you prefer to have items sent from a different lab please select the relevant store from the base of the page.

Orders can be delivered to your home, work address, or a friend. Simply enter the address you want it sent to at the checkout. Items sent by courier may require a signature on delivery. Some items may be too large to fit through a letter box, so if there was no one home you may need to collect from your local postal office or arrange an alternative delivery date. We will try to send you an email once the item has been dispatched so you know when it is arriving.

Smaller prints are sent out flat in strong envelopes with cardboard front and back for extra protection. Larger prints are wrapped in tissue paper and rolled into sturdy tubes.

Large items (including Canvas and Framed prints) use specially designed crush-proof boxes to provide extra protection on its journey to you.

These include the extensive packaging needed to get them to you safely and are calculated based on your basket and its destination. To find the postage for your order simply place it in your basket and proceed to checkout. You do not have to enter your payment details but once we have your destination country you will be shown accurate postal charges.

In the unlikely event that your purchase does not arrive, or is damaged in transit, we will be happy to replace it. Simply contact us to arrange redelivery.

Here are some reasons why tracking information may not be available:

- A delay in the updates to the tracking database. - Standard international deliveries are not trackable. - Standard (“First Class”) delivery may not be trackable

If the estimated delivery date for your parcel has passed and your tracking information hasn’t changed, please allow an additional day or two for the parcel to be delivered. Usually packages arrive on or shortly after the estimated delivery date.

Ordering is quick and easy!

Just follow these 5 simple steps…

1) Find your picture 2) Choose your print format 3) Enter your details 4) Pay for your purchase 5) Sit back and relax

Unique gifts for worldwide delivery. Most items are printed to order from high quality digital originals and without the watermarking shown on our web previews. Please note that prices shown may include sales tax where applicable at your current rate.

We have gathered together fantastic imagery for you to view and own, and have made finding that perfect image simple! Just enter a word or phrase into the search box, or browse our online photo galleries. Select an image to find out more about the picture and the range of quality print formats available. Preview images may be watermarked for security reasons, such marks will not appear on your final purchase.

2) Choose your print format

Once you’ve found your image, select your desired print format and add it to your basket. You can own this image as a photographic print (framed or unframed), canvas print, or as a photo gift (mugs, mouse mats, t-shirts etc.). All prints are from original, high-resolution digital image files, giving you the best possible clarity and colour.

We use professional equipment and paper for prints that can withstand fade for up to 100 years! All frames and mounts are produced in-house to guarantee a premium quality product. Equal care is taken with photo gifts; we have scoured the market to find the best quality available so you are happy with your purchase. All items are quality checked before leaving our labs.

Bought from us before? Great! Simply enter your email address and password and we will fill in your billing and delivery address details.

If you haven’t been here before then you will need to give us your address details and choose a password so you can track your order. All personal details are held securely and are not used for any purpose other than order management without your expressed permission.

Been here before but forgotten your password? Simply enter your email address, click ‘Forgotten your Password’, and we will automatically email you instructions on how to reset your password.

We recognise that security is one of the major concerns for online shopping, so we utilise state of the art security from leading international financial organisations. For your peace of mind, we do not store or have access to your credit card numbers.

The Payment Page is held on the secure servers of one of our card processors, such as Barclaycard ePDQ or PayPal. They ensure that your transaction is securely encrypted for your privacy and protection at all times. We accept all major credit and debit cards.

You can track the status of your order via the 'My Account’ area on our site; just sign in using the email address and password you chose when ordering.

Pixel Perfect Guarantee

We want you to be completely happy with your purchase.

Our Pixel Perfect Guarantee ensures that the print you receive matches the preview shown on our web site, reflecting the age and quality of the artwork we have on file. 

If you are not happy with an item, or have simply changed your mind, do please let us know as soon as possible.

Contact us within 30 days of receiving your goods (returns are to be received no later than 14 days after notification).  Refunds will be processed within 7 business days. Shipping charges on the original order will be refunded but we can only refund return shipping charges if it was a result of our error.

We can exchange goods within 30 days from delivery. After this we only exchange items if they were received faulty, or if the wrong item was received. Free exchanges apply to UK orders only, replacement items sent to an overseas address may be charged the full postal cost for delivery.

In the unlikely event you receive a faulty item contact us immediately and we’ll advise the next steps to take to resolve any issues.  (Note: late notificiations may require proof that the item was faulty when received.)

Any purchase bought as a Christmas present after 31st October can be returned up to January 6th. The item must be returned in the condition that you received it and in its original packaging.

Returning an Item

Please first contact us by replying to the order confirmation email or use our Feedback page. All we ask is that you return the item in the condition that you received it (including any paperwork) and wrap the package securely - the packaging they arrive in can often be used for the return.

Important: We only refund upon receipt, therefore advise returning items via a trackable method.

We will replace faulty items with the same product or refund back to a credit card if the item is no longer available. Our returns policy is valid for 30 days from receipt of goods. Returns are to be sent to the address provided in the return authorisation email.

All personalised, or made-to-order items, are excluded from the returns policy, so please check carefully before ordering. As soon as you place an order for a personalised or made-to-order item you have entered into a contract to purchase that item. Therefore once you have submitted the order you cannot cancel or return the item either before or after dispatch.

During peak periods exchanges can take up to 28 days to process. If you require an exchange for a specific date, e.g. in time for Christmas, we advise that you place a fresh order as we cannot guarantee that returns will be processed in time.

We check every single return, if an item is found not to be faulty by our independent tests we may return the item with a postage charge. A full charge will be made on goods that have been returned in a used or unsalable condition (e.g. damaged packaging, torn, scuffed or dirty goods). We reserve the right to return to you (at your cost) any item returned to us after 14 days, or not in compliance with the conditions above.

Please visit Feedback to send us comments, suggestions etc, remembering to quote your order reference in any correspondence

Please contact us for return address details for your country. 

Source

http://www.mediastorehouse.com/glasgow-corporation-passenger-transport/print/14786767.html

from TAXI NEAR ME http://taxi.nearme.host/glasgow-corporation-passenger-transport-gartcraig-bus-garage/ from NOVACAB https://novacabtaxi.tumblr.com/post/173596381226

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Would you rather have your art and artifacts moved from location A to B as quickly as possible? Then Art Couriers Glasgow will plan your transport on the desired date and you will of course still benefit from a low rate. The total amount of your art couriers is the price you receive in your non-binding offer. Do you have any questions or would you like more information about transporting your piano? Call us directly.  https://smvanservices.co.uk/service/art-transportation-storage/

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Would you rather have your arts and artifacts taken from location A to B as quickly as possible? Then Art Couriers Glasgow plans your transport on the desired date and you will of course still benefit from a competitive rate. The total amount of your art couriers is the price you receive in your non-binding offer. Do you have any questions or would you like more information about transporting your piano? Call us directly. https://smvanservices.co.uk/service/art-transportation-storage/

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[lucyt0601]

Research Paper Draft #2

Katie Paterson and the Concept of Memory 

The purpose of my research is to study the work and practice of the artist Katie Paterson and to see how her work relates to the concept of memory. That meaning how she replicated her memories into her art works and takes what is inside of her to create her visible mediums, which include texts, monographs, videos, sculptures, images, numbers, etc. She used light and dark colors together and separately, how she employed simplicity and a clean style. According to Ollivier Dyens in his article The Sadness of the Machine, “Memories of pleasure, pain, sadness and joy, are the common thread that unites all human beings. Memories are our existence, and art is their system of replication” (Dyens 2001, 77).

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1981, Paterson is one of the leading artists in her generation. She received her BA from the Edinburgh College of Art in 2004 and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2007. She has since been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions, recipient of the John Florent Stone Fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art, and was the Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London in 2010-2011. She opened herself to different disciplines, but found it difficult to settle. She went between sculpture, fine art, and fashion then astronomy and geophysics. She stuck with art, but cleverly incorporated science in her works. In collaboration with scientists and researchers from around the world, her projects consider the place of humans on planet Earth in the context of geological time and change. Her words utilize advanced technologies and expertise to display the engagements between people and the natural environment. The approach taken is Romantic and research-based, rigorous conceptualism and minimalist, shortens the distance between the viewer and the edges of time and the cosmos. She has broadcast the sounds of a melting glacier live, mapped dead stars, compiled a slide archive of darkness from the depths of the Universe, created a light bulb to simulate the experience of moonlight, and sent a recast meteorite back into space. “Eliciting feelings of humility, wonder and melancholy akin to the experience of the Romantic sublime, Paterson's work is at once understated in gesture and yet monumental in scope.” (203). Paterson has exhibited internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major exhibitions including Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, MCA Sydney, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was the winner of the Visual Arts category of the 2014 South Bank Awards, and is an Honorary Fellow of Edinburgh University. Her poetic installations have been the result of intensive research and collaboration with specialists as diverse as astronomers, geneticists, nanotechnologists, jewelers and firework manufacturers. As Erica Burton, curator at Modern Art Oxford, wrote at a solo exhibition in 2008, “Katie Paterson’s work engages with the landscape, as a physical entity and as an idea. Drawing on our experience of the natural world, she creates an expanded sense of reality beyond the purely visible.” In terms of inspiration, her experience living in Iceland felt like living on another planet. Traveling to drastically different places feels like going to different planets, which is what sparked her fascination with outer space and the cosmos. 

Among recent works are: Totality (2016), a mirrorball reflecting every solar eclipse seen from earth; Hollow (2016), a commission for University of Bristol, made in collaboration with architects Zeller & Moye, permanently installed in the historic Royal Fort Gardens: a miniature forest of all the world’s forests, including over 10,000 unique tree species spanning millions of years telling the history of the planet through the immensity of tree specimens in microcosm; Fossil Necklace (2013), a necklace comprised of 170 carved, rounded fossils, spanning geological time; Second Moon (2013), a work that tracks the cyclical journey of a fragment of the moon as it circles the Earth, via airfreight courier, on a man-made year-long commercial orbit; All the Dead Stars (2009), a large map documenting the locations of 27,000 dead stars known to humanity; Light bulb to Simulate Moonlight (2009), an incandescent bulb designed to transmit wavelength properties identical to those of moonlight; and History of Darkness (ongoing), a slide archive of darkness captured at different times and places throughout the universe and spanning billions of years. “Paterson created Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon) (2007). With the assistance of radio operators Peter Blair in Southampton, England, and Peter Sundberg in Lulea, Sweden, Paterson bounced Morse code Signals of the score of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata off the moon and then transcribed the echoed information back into notation, which was then played back in exhibition on a player piano” (204). “Paterson employs a novel subtractive sonification based on ever-present loss. Regular radar scans of the surface would employ much higher power and include repetitions to override error producing a refined data set that a conventional sonification strategy would then transform into music or another art of sound. Paterson’s approach is different. Just as one hears the Pacific Ocean leak into the off-timings of Nam June Paik’s version of Bach, in Earth-Moon-Earth you hear the moon in what Beethoven does not sound like” (208). Musicalization of dead silences consists of sound recordings of three Icelandic glaciers on records made of frozen meltwater from these glaciers are played until the records melt, mimicking the loss and silencing of their source. History of Darkness, 2010 are, “...essays a cosmically laconic take on astro physical discovery of the protocols of its recording. For the Dying Star Letters, Paterson is sent an email each time scientists note a star has been expired; she then writes a letter of condolence” (31). 

Paterson is reputable for being fascinated by science and is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually-driven work with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology and cosmology. Strong political standpoint: yes for independent Scotland. Her conceptual art finds everyday analogies for profound cosmological themes, is consistent in exploring scientific themes through contemporary art: her works have ranged from sending a "second moon" around the earth by courier service, to playing a record at the speed of the earth's rotation. Institutions approve of  her art because it fits some deep need they have for art that is conceptual and intellectual. That combination allows museums and respectable prize givers to feel they are “down with the kids,” while also furthering their liberal mission to educate the public.“The Works of Katie Paterson go sailing off the scale of civilization. Using technologies normally applied to the speed and scope of human experience, the Scottish artist zooms out or tunnels in to other, more alien dimensions, reframing natural and cosmic phenomena… anthropocentric worldviews are dissipated in favor of a different kind of consciousness, one keyed to evolutionary systems and rooted in contact with igneous chaos.” “Her poetic and conceptual projects consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time and change. She makes use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Paterson has exhibited in major shows including the Hayward Gallery, Tate Britain, Kunsthalle Wien, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Her artworks are represented in collections, including the Guggenheim, New York and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. She was the winner of the Independent’s Creative 30 award ‘for Britain’s most creative young person’ and most recently the winner of the Visual Arts category of the 2014 South Bank Sky Arts Awards. Paterson was also awarded an Honorary Fellowship at Edinburgh University in recognition of her ‘major contribution in fostering collaboration between the arts and sciences” (Tate.org). 

She has worked in collaboration with institutions of scientific research and space agencies to realize complex projects that consider disciplines like astrophysics from an artistic point of view. For example, Paterson and Simon Faithfull make work that tests the very limits of the sphere of human activity and knowledge, and their conception of the environment as a vastly expanded field is made possible by new developments in technology and radical advances in scientific thinking and method. At the same time, the way in which their work is actually realised retains a keen sense of physical constraints and material conditions; they set themselves wilfully difficult tasks, and resolve them in ingenious, laborious, sometimes eccentric ways. Paterson describes her practice as, “cross-medium and multi-disciplinary, often exploring landscape, space and time, using technology to bring together the commonplace and the cosmic. Everyday technologies – phones, record players, radio – connecting with something vaster, more intangible: telephone calls to melting glaciers, maps of all the dead stars, streetlights which flicker in time with lightning storms, music reflected from the moon” (Tate.org). Additionally, Margaret Atwood was asked by Paterson to be a contributor to her centennial project, Future Library, 2014-2114, a work of art in the form of time travel. Atwood is convinced that the human race will still exist in a hundred years. 

A Map of every dead star in the Universe--which ties closely to this FSEM--details the location of the 27,000 dead stars that have ever been observed and recorded in human history–and her map continues to grow with each dying star. In order to create her map, Paterson consulted with physicists, librarians, and archivists to compile a record of the stars that have been recorded and that have since faded away or exploded. In her project the boundary is fuzzy between life and death, between the end of one star and the beginning of another, and it invites us to examine how we remember and record the past.“But with stars dying every day, could a project like this ever be completed? If Paterson were to make a map of every dead star then it would be the size of the Earth itself. There’s also the impossibility of the task as it is ultimately infinite—why would an artist begin an artwork that is impossible to finish and with no foreseeable end?” (Tate.org). 

Notes from writing fellow meeting in CTL: 

- Smooth everything over, try not to list points too much

- Check for spelling/grammar and wording

- Make sure paragraphs flow nicely- add transitions? 

- Make sure to properly cite quotations/information

- Add my own analysis, have a clearer focus

Bibliography 

Murphy, Kate. "Katie Paterson." The New York Times Sunday Review. Last modified September 20, 2014. Accessed October 20, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/ 09/21/opinion/sunday/katie-paterson.html?searchResultPosition=1. 

Larsen, Lars Bang. 2014. 1000 WORDS: Katie paterson and margaret atwood. Artforum International. 11, https://ezproxy.hws.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1625101398?accountid=27680 (accessed October 16, 2019).

McKinnon, Dugal. "Dead Silence: Ecological Silencing and Environmentally Engaged Sound Art." Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013): 71-74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43832509.

Dillon, Brian. "Attention! Photography and Sidelong Discovery." In Aperture, No.

     211, Curiosity (Summer 2013), pp. 25-31. Published in JSTOR.

     Accessed October 29, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24473799. 

Kahn, Douglas. Earth Sound Earth Signal : Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Accessed October 29, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central. 

https://www.tate.org.uk/search?q=Katie+Paterson