#Cutting tool Exhibition 2019

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[miloscat]

[Review] Vane (PS4)

You're so Vane, you probably think this game is about you.

During The Last Guardian’s long periods of development hell, some staff left Team Ico entirely. Two individuals gathered with other developers, fellow foreigners working in Tokyo, who were tired of working in huge studios and wanted to create more personal projects. They were Friend & Foe Games… now with their website lapsed and social media feeds silent since 2019, I have to assume the studio has dissolved. But their legacy will be the unique and fascinating game Vane.

Calling Vane Ico-inspired doesn’t do it justice but there are some similarities: you spend a good chunk of the game as a child realistically navigating an enigmatic world and solving environmental puzzles. Only, the child is actually a bird. An interesting thing about Vane is that promotional materials only show about half the game, and it takes some turns as it goes on which I will spoil below, simply because the game reviewed poorly and doesn’t seem to get much attention, and maybe revealing more will entice some people to try it. Who knows.

There are four phases to Vane. The first has you flying around an open world as a crow-like bird. The game gives very little explicit story or direction to the player, aside from occasional control prompts (much less intrusive than TLG’s frequent tooltips, I might add). Figuring out what to do feels nice as you experiment with the flight movement, gather a flock of birds, and release a golden orb from a ruin. The golden matter exudes floating triangles and contact with it transforms you into a childlike humanoid, while warping the landscape around it.

The warping and time-reversing effects of this matter play into a lot of puzzles going forward and are one of the coolest ideas the games has, but for now it serves to change your state. The accompanying graphical and technical effects are incredible though, as the geometry dynamically reshapes itself. It also exhibits stop-motion-like lowered framerate which effectively conveys the otherworldly quality of this technology. In other ways the game has visible polygons and limited colour palettes that make for a compelling and abstract atmosphere.

The second phase plays with the transformation mechanic. In large underground caves amid wrecked mechanisms you will free other birds/children from imprisonment while swapping between the forms: the bird can fly and perch, while the child can push and pull things to progress. These chambers are large with multiple objectives but from here on the game becomes more linear in its structure. I wish this phase went on longer and indeed a Dualshockers interview with one of the devs outlines cut content that seems like it would have fit in this phase, but the game has more ideas it wants to try out and new settings to move the story on to, so it’s probably for the best for pacing reasons in this relatively short experience.

The third phase involves a massive timeshift, reverting the state of the world from the bleak wasteland to a metallic tower complex in the midst of a cataclysmic storm, which is also the context of a brief prologue sequence. At this point the bird form serves merely as a tool for scouting, with the bulk of this chapter seeing the child rolling around a large golden orb with the help of other kids. The orb has an effect similar to Zelda Skyward Sword’s timeshift stone boat, but more involved as it dynamically repairs parts of the damaged complex to allow you access. I got a bit lost a few times here but the game teaches you enough that with some experimentation it’s satisfying to solve, and ultimately you arrive within the tower itself…

The fourth phase continues the theme of reshaping the world with the power of sound: before, shouting at the orb would extend its range but now you have access to a gold birdlike mask that can itself create paths through a surreal twisting interior space. The bird form is now inaccessible and the game narrows its traversable space in this phase but it’s in service of the story, depicting your final transformation. Ascending the tower sees the mask bond to you and after a memorable sequence of the ground chaotically forming paths and staircases in a void (a fantastic effect even if I fell through the floor a few times) you yourself become one of the ominous tall masked figures whose presence have loomed over proceedings through the previous phases.

A final choice closes the loop as the world dissolves into its phase 1 state and you ponder what it all means, and then you can start all over again (or choose from any of the phases). I did and had a great time hunting my missing achievements, including exploring an optional Ico-like area in phase 1.

Thank you for indulging this more thorough than usual dive into the game’s events. I just thought that the different phases are so distinct that it was worth getting into how they play out. Vane is such a memorable experience, with so many great moments in its short runtime. The tone and look are incredible, and while I understand the choice of a sparse soundscape I wish it was more full of the hard techno that comes in sometimes. Maybe the crunch-heavy work environment described in the Dualshockers article was not the most healthy way to develop a game over five years, but it certainly resulted in an experience I'll be thinking about for a while.

[madamspeaker]

On a swelteringly hot Friday morning in Washington, D.C., House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat, found herself in the Library of Congress, embarking on a deeply personal and emotional journey through the institution's new “Collecting Memories” exhibit, which includes artifacts that belonged to Abraham Lincoln and were in his pockets at the time of his assassination, a look back at the COVID-19 pandemic, and letters and photos that accompanied submissions to the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Her Pride Month visit was cut short due to pending votes in the House but included a poignant reminder of her long-standing commitment to the AIDS Memorial Quilt and her advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community.

During the private tour, which included a special curation of archival materials in the Members Room, Pelosi was visibly moved. “This is so beautiful,” she remarked, reflecting on the vast array of artifacts, letters, photographs, and personal stories from the quilt collection. The tour, on which she was accompanied only by her press secretary, security detail, a reporter from The Advocate, and Library of Congress staff, was marked by somber moments as Pelosi recalled the friends she lost during the height of the AIDS crisis. “To see our friends holding them in our arms. Formerly robust people. Just so frail. So frail. Again and again, again and again,” she said.

The exhibit opened the evening before the visit when Pelosi attended Equality PAC’s annual gala. At the gala, an award named in her honor was presented to actors Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson, both longtime LGBTQ+ allies.

The "Collecting Memories" exhibit, which runs until December 2025, is housed in the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.

Although the collection contains supporting materials but no panels from it, Pelosi’s connection to the AIDS Memorial Quilt is personal. In the early days of the Names Project, she not only participated in initial meetings but also created a patch in memory of the flower girl from her wedding who succumbed to AIDS.

The Names Project Foundation, established in 1987, is the organization responsible for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It was created to provide a lasting tribute to those who died of AIDS and to increase awareness of the disease's impact.

Pelosi’s efforts were pivotal in securing the permits for the quilt’s iconic display on the National Mall. Also, in 2019, her influence was instrumental in returning the quilt to San Francisco and ensuring its archives found a home at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest ongoing community arts project in the world. Since it began in 1987, it has grown to over 60,000 individual 3-by-6-foot memorial panels commemorating more than 105,000 names. Each panel was made by friends, lovers, or family members to honor the lives lost to AIDS.

During the visit, Pelosi teared up several times as she took in the heartfelt letters from family members that accompanied their Quilt submissions.

In a candid conversation with The Advocate, she called out Republicans for using LGBTQ+ lives as political tools. “The Republicans have decided that LGBTQ has been defanged as an issue because young people, even evangelical young people, are like, ‘get out of here,’” Pelosi said.

She noted that this is especially true of Republican attacks on transgender people. “They have now decided that this is something that people may not understand. So it’s a blatantly political move on their part.”

Pelosi recounted the story of a former member of Congress who had a transgender child. She described how a Republican whose office was next to hers put up posters that read, “God made boys, God made girls,” and condemned the member’s child. “It’s cruelty. And I guess it sells in certain markets, I don’t know,” Pelosi said. “But I think it will have to go away.”

She added, “Now one thing [Republicans] use is women in sports. And that has a complication. It doesn’t for [Democrats], but it has a complication for some people.”

Pelosi expressed her disappointment in Martina Navratilova’s anti-trans point of view. The tennis star has been vocal about her opposition to transgender people’s participation in sports. “I even had a conversation with Martina Navratilova about this, and she has very definite views because I was not sharing her view. And I wanted to confirm what she was advocating,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi added that we can't let writ-large discrimination stand. "Because it all comes down to the same thing: discrimination. It's so sad," she said.

Pelosi, 84, also spoke about her transgender grand-niece, Skylar, sharing how she has seen firsthand the positive impact of acceptance and support on transgender youth. Pelosi mentioned that Skylar is much happier and has performed better in school since transitioning. Pelosi said it’s important for public figures like herself to be visible in supporting transgender people to help normalize and humanize their experiences.

The lawmaker emphasized the importance of moving beyond mere tolerance to respect and pride. “People always say to me, ‘San Franciscans are so tolerant.’ I say, don’t use the word ‘tolerant.’ It’s a condescending word. It’s not about tolerance, which might have been a good thing a hundred years ago. It’s about respect. It’s about taking pride. It’s beyond tolerance; it’s about embracing and celebrating our differences.”

Pelosi noted that during the height of the AIDS crisis, as most people didn’t understand the disease when the idea for the quilt came about, the power of the art project was the eagerness of the community to contribute to it.

“It was a mobilization, and it was really what helped break down barriers of understanding. And then people would take pride in them just as we have at the Memorial Grove, take pride in planting the tree and coming back and all those things which were renewing and comforting.” The National AIDS Memorial Grove, located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, is a dedicated space where people can gather to remember loved ones lost to AIDS.

Pelosi recounted her initial conversation with Cleve Jones, the creator of the quilt, about her skepticism that people would participate in sewing: “When they came to see me about everyone having to sew, I said nobody would sew. I was definite about that,” she said. Pelosi admitted that she was wrong in her initial reaction. She said that after she was elected to the House in June of 1987, by October she was advocating in Washington to have the quilt displayed on the National Mall. “Next thing you know, we’re here talking to the Interior Department [to display the quilt on the Mall], and they’re telling us we can have a corner with a few panels. I said, ‘Perhaps you mistook us for someone who thinks small. This is not going to happen.’”

As Pelosi reviewed the materials that had been set aside for her, staff explained that the library continues to accept submissions. Curators are dedicated to preserving and digitizing the records of the quilt to ensure they remain accessible for future generations. “We are preserving this history to ensure that it remains a living, breathing part of our national memory,” one curator noted.

This inaugural exhibition in the Rubenstein Treasures Gallery showcases the library’s rich Americana and international collections, which span over 450 languages and various forms created across time and continents. The exhibit features a diverse array of artifacts, including voice recordings, moving images, scrolls, diaries, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps, and books, encouraging visitors to explore the connections and divergences among personal memory, collective memory, and recorded history. Dynamic moving images of treasured collections surround the gallery, highlighting the continuous expansion of the library’s holdings.

As Pelosi left the Library of Congress, she expressed her gratitude for the work to preserve this vital history. “This is a wonderful way to share expressions of love and family,” she said.

[joelpottermanipulatedimage]

Week 11 | SDL

Contextual Document Final

I rewrote the contextual document, making more sense as well as adding a lot more research context as well. For this photo manipulation project, I wanted to explore something conceptually heavy. Over the mid-semester break, I took a trip to Waihi. In that two-hour drive, the landscape transformed from a grey, urban, dull, and lifeless cityscape to a beautiful, empty, and welcoming landscape. In that small trip, it felt like a complete change in life or a new realm. It got me thinking about how much beauty and life we lose with urban development. That contrast became the conceptual standpoint of this project—nature is simply losing its colour with urbanism.

I wanted to show the change in a way that felt surreal yet still had a sense of reality to it. The series combines elements from both worlds, urban and nature. The work also incorporates elements of surrealist and realistic collage, taking both pieces of nature and cityscapes and showing how the two collide. The surrealism is expressed in the transitions between these areas—the urban elements are placed with correct perspectives onto nature, yet not blended at all. It gives the effect that it is something that could be there, but shouldn’t be. This pushes the idea that the natural world is slipping away before our eyes. Sometimes shadows are present, but at other times they are absent. In each piece, I show that idea differently, though natural landscapes always form the base, with urban life placed on top. As you move through the series, the natural world is gradually overtaken by the urban. The manipulation technique involves combining multiple photographs onto a colour-corrected background image. The urban images are roughly cut out, converted into high-contrast black-and-white, and overlaid on the background. I also experimented with perspective warping and repetition inside the overlaid images, helping to complete the surrealist collage.

These photo manipulations are intended for a gallery setting. The series would be displayed in a gallery space set in the middle of the city. As viewers walk through the exhibition, it feels as though they are walking through the story, beginning with images where nature is more prominent. But as they move further into the gallery, the pieces become increasingly urbanised, until by the end, viewers are surrounded by cityscapes. This mirrors what can be seen outside the gallery—a reminder that the city is taking over. When viewers leave the gallery, they are met with colours and contexts similar to the exhibition’s final images. As cities continue to expand and grow, nature will continue to be destroyed. Natural spaces are more important than just being beautiful. Nature contributes to freedom, health, and mental well-being (Bratman et al., 2019). Mental health is reflected in this series of images through the loss of colour in urban areas, symbolising a loss of hope and love for life. It is clear that this also affects native wildlife. At an exponential rate, humanity is destroying natural spaces, leading to the removal of biodiversity. This project also aligns with ideas from post-photography. Jonas Bendiksen’s The Book of Veles creates a completely alternate reality through photo manipulation techniques. Bendiksen crafted a fictional town to comment on the post-truth era, exploring the rise of fake news and the role of photography in creating new worlds (Bendiksen, 2021). While the concept of the book is strong, I found the overall execution lacking, particularly where the manipulation felt rushed. Similarly, Joan Fontcuberta’s Pandora’s Camera critiques the way photography is evolving, arguing that digital tools have shifted photography from capturing reality to constructing worlds (Fontcuberta, 2014). My project builds on these ideas by blending urban and natural landscapes in a surrealist style. The goal is to challenge the viewer’s perception of reality, though mismatched colours, shadows, and scales disrupt the realism. In a world where post-photography is increasingly relevant, especially with the rise of AI, my work intentionally distorts reality to engage with these ideas and highlight the loss of nature. This series of photo manipulations is not just meant to “look good.” It expresses my growing concern for the future of nature in the face of urban development, how different life felt during those days spent in Waihi, and my appreciation for photography and photo manipulation.

References Bendiksen, J. (2021). The Book of Veles. GOST Books.

Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2019). Nature and mental health: An ecosystem service perspective. Science Advances, 5(7), eaax0903. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax0903

Fontcuberta, J. (2014). Pandora’s Camera: Photogr@phy after photography. MACK.

[nhianh]

WEEK 7: Digital Citizenship and Health Education: Body Modification on Visual Social Media

The use of social media has grown in importance in modern society. The cultural impact of social media cannot be overstated, what with its predicted 3.6 billion users globally (Statista, 2022). The rise of social media platforms has opened up new avenues of expression, connection, and communication that were previously unimaginable. Negative effects on people's self-esteem and mental health are another concern. The idea that social media may have a positive effect on body image became extremely plausible about ten years ago (Andsager, 2014). Health education faces unique hurdles in this digital era due to the confluence of personal expression, social media, and technology. Body alteration depictions and discussions have become ubiquitous on visual social media platforms as people increasingly use these sites to exhibit their own personalities and life experiences. Images and words that could promote negative body image thoughts are abundant on social media, where users constantly portray themselves in a positive way. The problem is that it may also lead to unhealthy comparisons and exaggerated ideas of beauty.

Researchers found that 42 percent of plastic surgeons meet patients who want to alter their look for the sake of social media platforms like Instagram (Dorfman, Vaca, Mahmood, Fine & Schierle, 2018). The fact that this has happened shows how much of an impact social media has had on people changing their bodies, especially considering how little of an impact it would have had not long ago. There are pros and cons to body alteration on social media. Pros include the chance to make money off of it, while cons include the potential for harm. Ads, magazines, and online platforms all contribute to the dissemination of unrealistic and idealized body types (Khanna, 2019). Excessive exposure to these pictures, particularly among younger generations, has the potential to promote negative body image stereotypes and self-esteem issues.

Participation in social media decreased participants' happiness with their looks, according to one longitudinal research (Stieger et al., 2022). An individual's unfavorable perception of their physique was immediately exacerbated after interacting with social media postings. By curating the photos, videos, and text that they publish on social media, individuals essentially build their own unique online persona. Most users choose to generate a biased positive self-presentation (Gonzáles and Hancock, 2011). For pictures, this usually means releasing overly edited versions that have been digitally altered using tools like Photoshop and various camera angles to make the subjects seem their best.

These results provide further evidence that concerns over social media's potential detrimental effect on self-perception of one's physique may be well-founded. Social media use is associated with lower levels of satisfaction with one's physical appearance and, in the long run, with worries about one's body image. Social media users may be encouraged to cut down on their use to lessen the impact of these negative consequences. One example is the study mentioned earlier. On a daily basis, participants spent an average of 73 minutes actively engaging with social media (e.g., posting to Facebook, tweeting, and sending WhatsApp messages) and 90 minutes passively engaging (e.g., viewing videos on YouTube, reading Facebook posts, and looking at pictures on Snapchat) - almost three hours in total. If you want to lessen the negative impact of social media on your body image, try following other profiles and posts. Pay special attention to postings that encourage a positive self-image.

References

Dorfman, R.G., Vaca, E.E., Mahmood, E., Fine, N.A. & Schierle, C.F. 2018, Plastic Surgery-Related Hashtag Utilization on Instagram: Implications for Education and Marketin, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, vol. 38, no. 3, p. 332.

Julie L. Andsager 2014, Research Directions in Social Media and Body Image, Sex Role, vol. 71, p. 407- 413, <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-014-0430-4>

Khanna, K., & Kothari, H. 2019, Assessment of Effect of Digital Branding on Brand Image of A Bank, A Study on Promotional Tools as Determinant For Purchasing Decision Amongst Rural Consumers, vol. 6, no.2, p. 56-61

Gonzales, A. L., & Hancock, J. T. 2011, Mirror, mirror on my facebook wall: Effects of exposure to facebook on self-esteem, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, vol. 14, p. 79-83.

Stieger, S., Graf, H. M., Riegler, S. P., Biebl, S., & Swami, V. 2022, Engagement with social media content results in lower appearance satisfaction: An experience sampling study using a wrist-worn wearable and a physical analogue scale, Body Image, vol. 43, p. 232-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.09.009

Stefan Stieger Ph.D. 2023, Does Social Media Have a Negative Impact on Body Image?, Psychology and Science, viewed 10 March 2024, <https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/psychology-and-science/202211/does-social-media-have-a-negative-impact-on-body-image>

[industrydesignservices]

Smart Healthcare- A New Way for Intelligent Health Environment

In the era of rapid technological advancements, healthcare stands at the forefront of transformation. Integrating intelligent technologies is ushering in a new wave of innovation, paving the way for smart health solutions. This blog post will explore the paradigm shift towards competent healthcare and how it reshapes healthcare delivery.

As per the Market Insights Report, the Internet of Things (IoT) segment of the Smart Healthcare market reached USD 55.5 billion in 2019 and is anticipated to exhibit a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8%, reaching USD 172.46 billion by 2025. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of the healthcare industry, drawing attention to the robustness and capabilities of healthcare systems globally. In an increasingly digitized world, where technology and innovation influence every aspect of our lives, it is imperative to keep something as crucial as healthcare from falling behind. Integrating the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence Solutions, Big Data, and Cloud computing can potentially construct intelligent healthcare systems on a global scale.

Introduction to Smart Healthcare:

Smart healthcare leverages cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics to enhance the quality of healthcare services. From personalized patient care to efficient hospital management, smart healthcare is changing how we approach health.

Connected Health Devices:

The proliferation of connected health devices is a hallmark of smart healthcare. Wearable devices, smart sensors, and continuous monitoring tools enable real-time data collection, providing healthcare professionals with valuable insights into patients' health conditions. This facilitates proactive and personalized healthcare interventions.

Artificial Intelligence in Diagnostics:

AI is playing a crucial role in revolutionizing diagnostics. Machine learning algorithms analyze medical data to identify patterns and trends, aiding in early disease detection and accurate diagnosis. This speeds up the diagnostic process and improves the overall efficiency of healthcare services.

Telemedicine and Remote Patient Monitoring:

Smart healthcare facilitates remote patient monitoring through telemedicine platforms and wearable devices. Patients can receive medical consultations, monitor vital signs, and manage chronic conditions from the comfort of their homes. This improves patient convenience and reduces the burden on healthcare facilities.

IoT-Enabled Healthcare Infrastructure:

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming healthcare infrastructure. IoT-enabled devices and systems streamline hospital operations, from inventory management to patient flow optimization. This interconnected ecosystem enhances overall efficiency, reduces costs, and ensures a seamless healthcare experience.

Enhanced Data Security and Privacy:

With the increased reliance on digital health data, smart healthcare prioritizes robust cybersecurity measures. Advanced encryption, secure communication channels, and compliance with data protection regulations ensure that patient information remains confidential and secure.

Personalized Healthcare Plans:

Smart healthcare enables the development of personalized healthcare plans tailored to individual patient needs. By analyzing patient data and medical history, healthcare providers can offer customized treatment plans, resulting in more effective and patient-centric care.

Future Trends and Challenges:

As smart healthcare continues to evolve, emerging trends such as blockchain in healthcare, 5G connectivity, and augmented reality (AR) applications are likely to shape the future of healthcare delivery. However, challenges such as data interoperability, ethical considerations, and the need for standardized regulations must be addressed to unlock the full potential of smart healthcare.

Conclusion:

Smart healthcare represents a paradigm shift in the way we approach healthcare services. With technological innovations driving this transformation, the future promises more efficient, accessible, and patient-centric healthcare. As innovative healthcare solutions evolve, the synergy between technology and healthcare is poised to redefine the standards of intelligent health environments.

[certainrebelarbiter]

Military Vetronics Market Size, Share

The global military vetronics market size is projected to reach USD 8.22 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 3.68% during the forecast period. Development of autonomous combat systems for military vehicles will ensure multi-dimensional growth of this market, observes Fortune Business Insights™ in its report, titled “Military Vetronics Market Size, Share and Global Trend by Product Type (Communication & Navigation Systems, Power System, Display System, C4 Systems, and Others) By Platform (Unmanned Ground Vehicles, Armored Amphibious Vehicles, Light Protected Vehicles, Special Purpose Vehicles, and Others) By Application (OEM and Aftermarket), and Regional Forecast, 2023-2027”. Battlefield environments are rapidly changing and modern warfare strategies require a heavy infusion of smart technologies to enhance alertness and augment the capabilities of the armed forces. In view of these evolving dynamics, defense agencies are conducting intense research to develop new technologies and equip combat vehicles with smart tools. For example, the Army Research Laboratory Artificial Intelligence for Maneuver and Mobility (AIMM) program under the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command aims to create AI-enabled vehicles that can serve robotic partners to ground troops, boosting their strength and combat capacities. The incorporation of next-generation technologies such as AI in defense systems will open new doors of innovation in the military vetronics domain.

Information Source - 

The report states that the market value stood at USD 6.48 billion in 2019 and offers the following:

Careful segmentation of the market and detailed analysis of each segment;

Unparalleled insights into the market drivers, trends, and challenges;

A comprehensive evaluation of the regional dynamics of the market; and

In-depth research into the key players’ profiles and their preferred strategies.

Restraining Factor

Economic Fallout of COVID-19 to Lead to Defense Cuts in Several Countries

The global economic crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to reprioritize their spending. According to the World Bank, the world economy could shrink by 8% in 2020, if financial crises in major economies continue to intensify. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that output from the Eurozone could decline by 10.2% in 2020, with recovery expected to begin towards the end of 2022. These projections have spelled serious for defense sectors in most of the major economies. In India, for example, the Indian Finance Ministry instructed ministries to cut their expenditures and experts believe that defense cuts could go as low as 40% in 2020. Moreover, the nationwide lockdown between March and May 2020 led to an estimated loss of USD 3 billion for Indian defense companies. In the UK, the government has suspended budget announcement for 2021 and has undertaken an Integrated Security and Defense Review to rethink spending priorities, which are likely to lead to defense budget cuts. The military vetronics market growth is likely to suffer in this scenario.

Regional Insights

North America Market to Gain Momentum Powered by High Defense Spending by the US

In 2019, North America led the military vetronics market share with a market size of USD 2.22 billion and is expected to continue its impressive performance during the forecast period. This is primarily attributable to the massive military expenditure of the US. The country is also making heavy investments in developing and procuring advanced military technologies, which will further drive the regional market.     

In Asia Pacific, China and India are shaping the market dynamics as both countries have steadily expanded their military budgets over the past few decades. Furthermore, the constant threat of terrorist activities and increasing cross-border animosity among countries is also supporting the adoption of advanced defense technologies in the region.

Competitive Landscape

Key Players to Focus on Engaging with Government Defense Agencies

Competition in this market is characterized by the deepening engagement between government defense agencies and private defense companies. The main reason behind these public-private collaborations is that private companies provide the necessary technologies, while government agencies provide the required financial support, creating an exciting dynamic in the defense sector.

Industry Developments:

August 2020: Melbourne-based defense integrator, Tectonica, bagged a USD 25 million contract from the Australian Defense Ministry to build situational awareness systems for the country’s new fleet of Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles. The vehicles are being built by Rheinmetall Defence in Queensland.

June 2020: India’s Ministry of Defence cleared the procurement of 156 BMP 2 Infantry Vehicles for the Indian Army to modernize the existing infantry combat vehicle fleet of the Army. The total cost of the project is estimated to be INR 1,100crore.

List of Key Companies Profiled in the Military Vetronics Market Report:

Curtis Wright Corporation (The U.S.)

Thales Group (France)

Rheinmetall AG (Germany)

Lockheed Martin Corporation (The U.S.)

L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (The U.S.)

BAE Systems (The U.K)

Oshkosh Corporation (The U.S.)

Saab AB (Sweden)

Raytheon Technologies Corporation (The U.S.)

Leonardo S.p.A (Italy)

General Dynamics Corporation (The U.S.)

[beautifulboumachinequetnightmare]

[your-bshubh-blog]

Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA) is celebrating 50 years of IMTEX as it organizes ‘IMTEX 2019 & Tooltech 2019’ at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC) in Bangalore from 24th to 30th January 2019.

[gagosiangallery]

Gagosian London to Present Social Works II, Opening October 7, 2021

September 15, 2021 Gagosian London to Present Social Works II, Opening October 7, 2021 The Sequel to the American Chapter Curated by Antwaun Sargent Exhibition Will Foreground Artists from the African Diaspora and Include Newly Commissioned Works

SOCIAL WORKS Curated by Antwaun Sargent

October 7–December 18, 2021 20 Grosvenor Hill, London __________ Gagosian is pleased to present Social Works II, the sequel to the American chapter that was on view at the gallery in New York.Curated by Antwaun Sargent, Social Works II foregrounds artists from the African diaspora and their insights into the relationship between space—personal, public, institutional, and psychic—and social and artistic practice. Bringing together intergenerational artists working in different mediums, Social Works II considers geography and its role in informing how identity is created and experienced through communities and spaces. Sumayya Vally, principal of the Johannesburg/London-based studio Counterspace and architect of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion, has produced a fragment of wall that will transform itself over time, functioning as an interactive site for research and ritual. Architect and artist David Adjaye presents a group of sculptural forms made using a rammed earth technique inherited from West African architectural vernacular. Examining ideas of landscape in the context of metropolitan London, Adjaye probes the relationship between the earth and the built environment. In Lubaina Himid’s mixed-media collage A Fashionable Marriage: The Art Critic (1986)—a study for her noted 1987 installation of painted and cut-out figures, A Fashionable Marriage—the protagonist of the British Black Arts movement of the 1980s riffs on Marriage A-la-Mode, painter William Hogarth’s eighteenth-century moralizing satire of the British upper class. Himid turns Hogarth’s critique of greed and overconsumption into a broader moral commentary on the British slave trade. Isaac Julien, a pioneer of multiscreen installation, presents the London premiere of Lessons of the Hour (2019), a contemplative journey into the life and work of Frederick Douglass, the visionary African American abolitionist. The film is presented here in a single-screen version, accompanied by a large-scale still produced especially for the exhibition.

Rick Lowe, who founded the renowned art-based community platform Project Row Houses in Houston in the 1990s, is represented by a series of cartographic paintings, first shown in Social Works, commemorating the notorious 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, where white supremacists in Oklahoma razed the city’s prosperous Black-owned Greenwood District. Kahlil Robert Irving’s sculptures positioned on low wooden platforms pay homage to the nocturnal city as a place both of witnessing and community. Hand-pressed black ceramic tiles allude to a rich material history, emulating the rugged texture of asphalt streets littered with aggregate and discarded objects and while suggesting the night sky. What black is this you say? (2020–21) is a series of poignant oil and watercolor paintings that artist and architect Amanda Williams produced as an identity-affirming response to the most recent tumultuous racial events in the United States. Alexandria Smith also confronts the present moment using allegory. In shaped wood panels featuring sinuous cut forms that delineate abstracted, disjointed figures, she investigates the contradictions, uncertainties, and objectifications impressed upon the Black femme body. Photographer Tyler Mitchell, whose soulful practice slips seamlessly between autonomous art and commercial assignments, conjures intimate dreamscapes that celebrate Black family, community, and youth. Shot on location in Georgia, where he was born, Mitchell’s new series considers notions of home and leisure commonly associated with the American pastoral idyll, charged here with the ineluctable racist history of the American South. Artist and designer Grace Wales Bonner creates conceptual shrines to Black Atlantic style and history, stressing the ritualistic importance of learning about and connecting to one’s cultural roots. Manuel Mathieu’s roiling canvases record slippages, erosions, and transformations of memories of his native Haiti; eschewing overt representation, his abstracted approach illuminates the vagaries of history with acute psychological insight. Social Works II underscores the conscious engagement of these artists with the cultural present where numerous social factors have converged to produce a heightened urgency for artists of the African diaspora to utilize space as a community-building tool and a means of creating visionary possibilities. _____ Kahlil Robert Irving, Dreams in the line and memories (/whipped), 2021 (detail), glazed and unglazed ceramic with decals and luster on wood platform, 7 × 100 × 55 inches (17.8 × 254 × 139.7 cm) © Kahlil Robert Irving

[kisan0318]

Machine Learning Market Size Outlook, Share Value, Global Growth Drivers and Industry Forecast to 2027

Market Synopsis:

According to Market Research Future (MRFR)’s analysis, the global machine learning market is expected to scale new heights in the upcoming years. The technology has gained momentum in the data-driven industries with the rising penetration of big data analytics. In addition, the market is expected to encash the opportunities unleashed by the technological advancements in the years to come.

Machine learning is an Artificial Intelligence integrated program which is excessively used for predictive analysis. It is being widely adopted by the business houses for making informed decisions to achieve their objectives & goals and ensuring efficiency. Furthermore, it facilitates a customer-centric approach for reaching to customers. this, in turn, is expected to augment the machine learning market over the next couple of years.

Request a Free Sample @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2494

Machine learning is almost inevitable for any technological innovation. From healthcare to the automotive sector, it is responsible for acceleration of revenue creation. It is projected to favor the expansion of the machine learning market across the review period.

Market Segmentation:

By components, the global machine learning market size has been segmented into software tools, cloud and web-based APIs, and others.

By service, the machine learning market has been segmented into professional services and managed services.

By application, the global machine learning market has been segmented into BFSI, healthcare, government, automotive, education, media and entertainment, defense, telecom, retail and e-commerce, and others.

By organization size, the machine learning market has been segmented into Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), and large enterprises.

Regional Analysis:

The global machine learning market, by region, has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Rest of the World (ROW). This MRFR report indicates that North America is likely to hold a substantial share of the global market owing to the vast presence of key players. Furthermore, the market is at a nascent stage and is expected to witness an influx of new entrants. In addition, significant growth is on the cards for these new startups as they exhibit more adaptability than the tech-giants.

Europe is projected to thrive at a high CAGR and account for the maximum share of the machine learning market. The growth can be ascribed to the innovation and commercialization of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. London has been presumed to hold the greatest number of startups and fuel venture capital funds, investments, etc. into the market. Meanwhile. Asia Pacific resonates strong potential for growth. It is forecasted to expand at a moderate pace through the forecast period.

Browse Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/machine-learning-market-2494

Competitive Dashboard:

Some of the major players operating in the global machine learning market are Google Inc. (U.S.), IBM Watson (U.S.), Facebook (U.S), Baidu (China), Microsoft (U.S.), Cisco (U.S.), Apple (U.S), Wipro (India), Amazon (U.S), Intel (U.S.), and Nuance Communications (U.S.).

Industry News:

In February 2019, a San Francisco startup, Affinity, has raised USD 26.5 Mn for the management of relationships with machine learning, “relationship intelligence” platform.

In February 2019, a Dartmouth research team has developed the latest machine learning method for predicting whether atypical ductal hyperplasia will turn cancerous.

In February 2019, Swedish distribution and artist services platform, Amuse, has announced that it will use machine learning for the calculation of royalty advances.

In February 2019, Firefox browser, Mozilla, has announced the deployment of a machine learning driven coding assistant, Clever-Commit, for cutting down the number of coding errors. It has been developed in collaboration with the game developer, Ubisoft.

In February 2019, Azure Stream Analytics, by Microsoft, has announced the utilization of machine learning for the introduction of detection functions in stream analytics.

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our clients to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Solutions, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.

Contact

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Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com

[contemporaryreflectiveblog]

Gender Identity within the art world

Gender identity is not a given, the sex you are assigned at birth does not determine your gender, the divide between masculine and feminine is a social constructed idea. I myself have struggled with understanding my gender and how I wish to express myself, I identity as Non-binary but I still believe there is more to my identity to which I do not understand. This is why it is important that within museum spaces artworks surrounding gender identity is very important and should be more included.

Judith Butler, a prominent theorist, views on gender are that sex does not determine gender as gender is neither essential nor biologically determined, but rather it is performative [1]. Moreover, Simone de Beauvoir suggests that “one is not born a woman but, rather becomes one”[2] though this could be suggestive for someone who was born assigned male at birth but then later transitions to become a woman, however there are many that view gender as something they are born with though they could have been assigned male they themselves has always known they are female.

Artwork on the theme of Gender identity I most connect with is photography, this raw expression of real people displays their gender identity. Photography is a very powerful tool is can either distort the world or reveal everything. For those whose gender and assigned sex is different this can be very powerful as for a lot of the community there are part of ourselves that we wish to change. This is the distortion, but expressing your gender identity can be very exposing. I often talk about topics surrounding gender and sexuality but rarely ever discuss my own but through seeing different artworks on this topic and making the discussion of gender identity more mainstream it has allowed me to explore my own and come to terms with it.

One photography who explores these ideas of gender identity is Asa Johanesson in a series called “The Queering of Photography”. These photographs are “rooted in a nonbinary thinking with a material logic focusing on questions of skin, pose, and measure”. Defining features that we associated with each sex is obscured. Many of the photos focus on people who present androgynously, by doing so gender becomes irrelevant and you focus on the beauty of portrait photography without thinking of beauty standards of men or women. One piece in this series that really resonates is the close up of the sculptured torso, the photograph cuts off where the chest is and there is drapery over the genitals so this sculpture could be either sex as it does not have a chiselled torso of the masculine man that is seen in sculpture nor does is have wider hips that women would have in sculpture to show fertility. Additionally, as the photograph is of a sculpture which often are depictions of Greek and roman myth, the God and Goddess often disregarded traditional gender and could change form.

In recent years more museums have put on exhibitions on the topic of the queer community showcasing artists and their struggles. Tate modern recently put on an exhibition showing the artwork of Zanele Muholi, A visual artist who documents and celebrates the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities. The 2019 Tate Liverpool put on an exhibition for Keith Haring’s artwork. Tate Modern gets over 5 Million visitors[3] each year whilst Tate Liverpool gets around 600,000 [4]. Having both these incredibly popular galleries display art by queer artists it helps to provide people with an insight to the community. Whilst also provide a more open queer space, somewhere the community can feel safe but not hidden. As historically queer spaces were created due to the persistent social, legal and sexual persecution of the LGBTQI+ community so they were forced to create spaces hidden from the police, this was often Gay bars[5]. But now they Same-sex relations are legal and all kinds of sexualities and gender identities are more widely acceptable more public spaces are needed. Also for those who are younger and exploring being able to see their identity represented in a public and open space is very important.

[1] Butler,J.,(1990) Gender Trouble, Routledge,London

[2] de Beauvoir,S.,(1997) The Second Sex, Vintage, London

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47711540

[4] https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/history-tate/history-tate-liverpool#:~:text=More%20than%20600%2C000%20visitors%20a,European%20exhibitions%20of%20modern%20art.

[5] Branton,S., Compton, C.,(2020) 'There’s No Such Thing as a Gay Bar: Co-Sexuality and the Neoliberal Branding of Queer Spaces' in Sage Journals, Vol.35, Iss 1, 2021

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/zanele-muholi

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/keith-haring

[l2fmpnathan]

Research VICTOR VASARELY

evasively was born in Pecks and grew up in Postmen (now Pisani, Slovakia) and Budapest, where, in 1925, he took up medical studies at Eotvos Loran University.

In 1927, he abandoned medicine to learn traditional academic painting at the private Pasolini-Volkmann Academy. In 1928/1929, he enrolled at Sandor Bortnick’s private art school called Muhly (lit. "Workshop", in existence until 1938), then widely recognized as Budapest's center of Bauhaus studies.

Cash-strapped, the muhly could not offer all that the Bauhaus offered. Instead, it concentrated on applied graphic art and typographical design.

 In 1929, he painted his Blue Study and Green Study.

In 1930, he married his fellow student Claire Spinner (1908–1990).

Together they had two sons, Andre and Jean-Pierre.

Jean-Pierre was also an artist and used the professional name 'Viral'.

In Budapest, he worked for a ball-bearings company in accounting and designing advertising posters.

Vasa rely became a graphic designer and a poster artist during the 1930s combining patterns and organic images with each other.

  Outdoor Vasarely artwork at the church of Palos in Pecks

Vasarely left Hungary and settled in Paris in 1930.

He worked as a graphic artist and as a creative consultant at the advertising agencies Havas, Draeger, and Defames (1930–1935).

His interactions with other artists during this time were limited.

He thought of opening an institution modelled after Sandor Bortnick’s muhly and developed some teaching material for it.

Having lived mostly in cheap hotels, he settled in 1942/1944 in Saint-Care in the Lot department. After the Second World War, he opened an atelier in Arcelia, a suburb about 10 kilometers from the center of Paris (in the Val-de-Marne department of the Île-de-France).

In 1961, he finally settled in Anent-sur-Marne (in the Seine-et-Marne department).

 Vasarely eventually went on to produce art and sculpture using optical illusion.

Over the next three decades, Vasarely developed his style of geometric abstract art, working in various materials but using a minimal number of forms and colors:

 1929–1944: Early graphics: Vasarely experimented with textural effects, perspective, shadow and light.

His early graphic period resulted in works such as Zebras (1937), Chess Board (1935), and Girl-power (1934).

1944–1947: Les Fusses Routes – On the wrong track: During this period, Vasarely experimented with cubistic, futuristic, expressionistic, symbolistic and surrealistic paintings without developing a unique style.

Afterwards, he said he was on the wrong track.

He exhibited his works in the gallery of Denise René (1946) and the gallery René Bertheau (1947).

Writing the introduction to the catalogue, Jacques Prévert placed Vasarely among the surrealists.

Prévert creates the term imaginaries (images + noir, black) to describe the paintings.

Self Portrait (1941) and The Blind Man (1946) are associated with this period.

1947–1951: Developing geometric abstract art (optical art): Finally, Vasarely found his own style.

The overlapping developments are named after their geographical heritage.

Defer refers to the works influenced by the white tiled walls of the Paris Defer – Rocher au metro station.

Ellipsoid pebbles and shells found during a vacation in 1947 at the Breton coast at Belle Île inspired him to the Belles-Isles works.

Since 1948, Vasarely usually spent his summer months in Gourdes in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

There, the cubic houses led him to the composition of the group of works labelled Gourdes/Cristal.

He worked on the problem of empty and filled spaces on a flat surface as well as the stereoscopic view.

 Tribute to Malevich (1954), Ciudad Universitario de Caracas

1951–1955: Kinetic images, black-white photography’s: From his Gourdes works he developed his kinematic images, superimposed acrylic glass panes create dynamic, moving impressions depending on the viewpoint.

In the black-white period he combined the frames into a single pane by transposing photography’s in two colors.

Tribute to Malevich, a ceramic wall picture of 100 m2 (1,100 sq ft) adorns the University of Caracas, Venezuela which he co-designed in 1954 with the architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva, is a major work of this period.

Kinetic art flourished and works by Vasarely, Calder, Duchamp, Man Ray, Soto, Tonguely were exhibited at the Denise René gallery under the title Le Movement (the motion).

Vasarely published his Yellow Manifest.

Building on the research of constructivist and Bauhaus pioneers, he postulated that visual kinetics (plastique cinétique) relied on the perception of the viewer who is considered the sole creator, playing with optical illusions.

 Supernovae (1959–61) in Tate Modern

1955–1965: Folklore planetaries, permutations, and serial art: On 2 March 1959, Vasarely patented his method of unites plastique’s.

Permutations of geometric forms are cut out of a colored square and rearranged.

He worked with a strictly defined palette of colors and forms (three reds, three greens, three blues, two violets, two yellows, black, white, gray; three circles, two squares, two rhomboids, two long rectangles, one triangle, two dissected circles, six ellipses) which he later enlarged and numbered.

Out of this plastic alphabet, he started serial art, an endless permutation of forms and colors worked out by his assistants.

(The creative process is produced by standardized tools and impersonal actors which questions the uniqueness of a work of art.)

In 1963, Vasarely presented his palette to the public under the name of Folklore planetaries.

1965–: Homage à hexagon, Vega: The Tribute to the hexagon series consists of endless transformations of indentations and relief adding color variations, creating a perpetual mobile of optical illusion.

In 1965 Vasarely was included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Responsive Eye, created under the direction of William C. Seitz.

His Vega series plays with spherical swelling grids creating an optical illusion of volume.

 Kedzie-Ga, 1970, Screen-print in colors, Edition of 250, 50.8 cm × 50.8 cm (20.0 in × 20.0 in)

In October 1967, designer Will Burton invited Vasarely to make a presentation to Burton’s Vision '67 conference, held at New York University.

On 5 June 1970, Vasarely opened his first dedicated museum with over 500 works in a renaissance palace in Gourdes (closed in 1996).

A second major undertaking was the Foundation Vasarely in Aix-en-Provence, a museum housed in a distinct structure specially designed by Vasarely.

It was inaugurated in 1976 by French president Georges Pompidou, two years after his death.

Sadly, the museum is now in a state of disrepair, several of the pieces on display have been damaged by water leaking from the ceiling.

Also, in 1976 his large kinematic object Georges Pompidou was installed in the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Vasarely Museum located at his birthplace in Pecks, Hungary, was established with a large donation of works by Vasarely.

In the same decade, he took a stab at industrial design with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarajevan that Vasarely decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linnie.

In 1982, 154 specially created serigraphs were taken into space by the cosmonaut Jean-Loup Chrétien on board the French-Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 and later sold for the benefit of UNESCO.

In 1987, the second Hungarian Vasarely museum was established in Zach Palace in Budapest with more than 400 works.

 He died age 90 in Paris on 15 March 1997.

A new Vasarely exhibit was mounted in Paris at Muse end Herbed in 2012.

 In 2019, a temporary exhibition of Vasarely's work entitled Le Partage des Forms was displayed in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

1970–1996: Vasarely Museum in the Saint-Firmin Palace in Gourdes, Vaucluse, France (closed in 1996)

1976: Foundation Vasarely, Aix-en-Provence, France

1976: Vasarely Museum, Pecks, Hungary

1987: Vasarely Museum, Zach Palace, Buda, Budapest, Hungary

[cllladringan]

Toy Story Animation: Refinement in Almost a Quarter of a Century

by Christine Love L. Ladringan IS202

Toy Story is a movie that has been part of most of people’s childhood. As the viewers and the film grew up, so is the complexity of the film production. Pixar has revolutionized computer animation. With its movies, the company has paved the way of technological advancements that brings invigorating techniques and methods in providing audience what is thought to be impossible.

The Creation

No one had an idea that this kind of film attainable. However, the company surpassed the odds and was regarded as the first computer-animated film. To make this possible, the process involves rendering with lighting and motion effects (Desiderio & Phillips, 2020). There were 117 computers utilized 24 hours a day and 114,240 frames to render (Desiderio & Phillips, 2020). With the high number of footage, they invented Renderman to handle this (Desiderio & Phillips, 2020).

In its 2019 film Toy Story 4, they still utilized Renderman but in its 22.5 version which includes RIS physically based path-tracing architecture (Failes, 2019). They also looked to a machine learning de-noiser which cuts rending time by a third or half (Failes, 2019). A major factor also is the utilization of USD which highly increases its efficiency (Seymour, 2019).

The animals

The picture above presents the dog in the Toy Story and the cat from Toy Story 4. At first glance, one can already recognize the growth of CGI for an unseen realism appearance. It can be discerned that it is not a real dog due to its overly smooth feature. However, the details on the animal fur and the effects of lighting enable the cat to be perceived as reality. To do this, a program called Simulation was utilized for elements to be motion-simulated (Desiderio & Phillips, 2020).

The rain

In 1995, as a result of the lack of expertise, experience and technology, the realistic rainstorm cannot be fully achieved. However, a drastic change occurs during Toy Story 4 as a detailed storm and its effect on objects were exceptionally exhibited. The advance tools on effects have enabled Pixar to present a life-like animation of rainstorm (Al-Heeti, 2019).

The characters

If you look farther away from the characters, you will realize that nothing really changed that much. As you look closely, more of its details were surprisingly detailed as they portrayed the toys through their own perspective. In the picture above, from the 1995 clothing of Andy, the animation team added fibers and weave to his clothing for a true to like appearance.

The Toy Story series exhibits the growth of computer animation technology throughout the years wherein details are more refined that the preceding. With the technology they have now, Toy Story can be rendered faster than watching the movie itself.

References

Al-Heeti, A. (2019). Toy Story 4 shows how far Pixar’s animation has come. https://www.cnet.com/news/toy-story-4-shows-how-far-pixars-animation-has-come-in-24-years/

Desiderio, K. & Phillips, I. (2020). How Pixar’s animation has evolved over 24 years, from ‘Toy Story’ to ‘Toy Story 4’. https://www.insider.com/pixars-animation-evolved-toy-story-2019-6

Failes, I. (2019). Pixar reveals the CG tools and artistry that went into the latest instalment of the Toy Story universe. https://www.creativebloq.com/features/toy-story-4

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[vavuska]

AUGUST 27, 2020

Fashion and Eurocentric standards of beauty

Armine Harutyunyan is a 23 years-old armenian artist and fashion model, who has been included in the list of the 100 sexiest women in the world. This list proves once again that beauty has no standards.

Her appearance made discuss because she doesn't have european features

In the spring of 2019, Armine received an offer to take a photo on one of the streets of Berlin, after which she was invited as a model by the Gucci fashion house and took part in the casting of the Milan White Fashion Week Spring/Summer collection on September 22 2019. Armine walked down the runway with a dress inspired by straitjacket.

In my country, Italy, the Gucci's fashion show in which models dressed in outfits ‘inspired’ by mental illness, inspired a discussion about the commodification of a serious social issue, no one in that occasion talked about Armine Harutyunyan and her appearance.

The firestorm happened after her nomination in the list of the 100 sexiest women in the world.

She became the first Armenian model to appear at a fashion show of a famous brand. In November she opened one of the exhibitions at the 2019 Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Tbilisi.

She modeled Dalood, a Georgian brand “for girls not interested in showy street style kitsch.”

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi is Georgia’s premier fashion event offering an international platform for designers from the region to seamlessly connect with media and buyers.

The Mercedes-Benz fashion is committed to building a bridge between designers, artists, photographers, fashion and art experts, journalists, fashion and art personalities from around the world.

In this occasion Armine Harutyunyan was criticised for not being conventionally attractive enough to participate in the fashion industry, much less a Gucci runway show, by Georgians.

But the criticism was not only limited to the young woman’s appearance, it was also deeply charged with anti-Armenian animus, a deeply rooted issue in Georgian society.

HERE FIND THE ARTICLE:

Born into an artistic family in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, her grandfather Khachatur Azizyan is one of Armenia’s most celebrated living artists. Instead of painting however, Armine is an illustrator and graphic designer. It’s also pretty cool to note, that while her mother is a doctor, she also participates in exhibitions too. In fact, she is so supportive, that when Armine was deciding between medicine and art herself, she told her daughter to pursue her creative side.

While she was in Berlin to see her favorite band perform, a fashion scout spotted her and asked to exchange contacts. The fashion scout followed up with her a month later, informing her that she has been casted to be part of Gucci’s show. Seeing an Armenian model walk Gucci’s runway was an exciting moment for Armenian community. It is rare for us to see models that doesn't fit Eurocentric beauty standards. Armine’s beauty is incredibly refreshing, and she certainly stood out during the show.

For so long and still to this day, women have been constantly criticized for their physical appearance based on misogynistic ideas of femininity and the racist idealization of Eurocentric features.

This affected black and asian women too: mainstream beauty standards are represented through White models, as well as the majority of Black women portrayed in the media who most often possess Eurocentric features (e.g., fair skin, long straight hair, thin lips, small nose).

In China and other parts of Asia, women use skin-whitening cream and walk around with umbrellas on sunny days to keep themselves as close to white as possible. Also, in many East Asian countries, a surgery to give women “double eyelids” has become a popular practice, taking away from their own natural, cultural beauty to make them meet the standards of white beauty. In Lebanon, 1 in 3 women will endeavor in some kind of plastic surgery. In India, light-skinned women are considered more attractive than dark-skinned women. Japan even invented a tool to thin one’s nose without the hassle of surgery.

(On the other hand we continue to see the colonial exotication, sexualization and objectification of “exotic” non-white women by white men.)

Yes, Armine Harutyunyan is not “beauty” for the Eurocentric standards you are used to, but showing that her kind of beauty, even if is seen as “exotic”, is rapresented in media and — more important — is accepted by western fashion industry is important not only for Armenian girls but for all the girls who have features similar to hers.

It is truly ignorant for people to not realize exactly how large this problem is within our society. Native American, Asian, Latin, African, Middle Eastern: All these cultures are so beautiful in their own unique way, and to just ignore them in favor of “typical” beauty is racism. Our society needs to realize that supporting Eurocentric beauty standards is just another insidious form of racism that has continued to dominate our mindset.

(Another issue is about how a lot of men online have said that “they won't fuck her” or similars, showing how women on the media are still seen as sexual objects: this is the other face of cybersexual harrasment, in which the same guys feel perfectly comfortable on telling women what they will do with their bodies.)

https://equalityarmenia.org/f/armine-harutyunyan-becomes-first-armenian-to-model-for-gucci

Some examples of Italian sexism, misogyny and they obviously don't see the whole point: making acceptable also not Eurocentric kind of beauty X