Consortium student Burhanuddin Baki will lead a five-week seminar series for London Consortium students on Mathematics for the Humanities and Cultural Studies.

These will take place 2pm - 4pm on the following dates:

• Tuesday 23rd February: Set Theory
• Tuesday 2nd March: Mathematical Proof
• Thursday 11th March: The Mathematics of Networks
• Tuesday 16th March: Number Theory
• Tuesday 23rd March: Combinations, Counting and Probability Theory

The series will focus on the emergence of what appears to be the beginning of a new ‘mathematical turn’ in critical philosophy and cultural studies. In this burgeoning trend, more advanced concepts and contemporary results from pure mathematics are introduced in order to help think through various issues and problems in the humanities today. This turn is evident in, among others, Alain Badiou’s philosophical expliques of set theory and algebraic geometry; the recent interpretations of Gilles Deleuze’s work by Manuel de Landa and Brian Massumi; and the various contemporary investigations into the more algorithmic, computational and topological aspects of internet culture and the new media. In order to partake more meaningfully in this new turn, some acquaintance with advanced mathematical concepts might be useful, and some active discussions aimed at trying to provide a critical and cultural investigation of these concepts should be conducted – which is what this seminar will attempt to offer.

When radio began at the beginning of the twentieth century it was necessarily a communication rather than a broadcast medium (the only thing to listen to were transmissions from other radio users). Now, after more than a century of mass broadcasting, radio - the transmission of live and recorded sound – is moving from being a broadcast medium to being once again a medium of communication. Under these conditions, how might the production and broadcasting of sound come to form part of academic discourse? Theorists and historians of sound have devoted much time to thinking about radio. Might it now be possible to begin thinking in it?

As part of Static, the London Consortium’s audio-visual development project, Thinking Radio is a series of workshops led by notable practitioners of radio, who will reflect on what radio has done and what it may be able to do in the future. The workshops will be practical as well as critical, and will encourage those attending it to explore practical possibilities for the production of radio work in conjunction with their academic research, and as part of the cultural programme of the London Consortium. Numbers are limited, and those who wish to attend should contact Steve Connor in advance.

Wednesday 24 February 2.00-4.00
308, 30 Russell Square, London WC1E
Tim Dee, author of The Running Sky (2009), will reflect on his experience as a BBC radio producer for 30 years.

Wednesday 10 March 2.00-4.00
308, 30 Russell Square, London WC1E
Steven Connor, ‘Thinking Out Loud’.

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

All meetings are in room 308, Department of English and Humanities Building, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Animals and Sound

Monday 15th February, 4.00-6.00
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, ‘Of the Refrain’, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London: Athlone, 1988), pp. 310-50.

Monday 8 March, 4.00-6.00
Donald R. Griffin, Listening in the Dark: The Acoustic Orientation of Bats and Men (New York: Dover; London: Constable, 1974). Extracts to be supplied.

Monday 22 March, 4.30-6.30
Oliver Messiaen, Oiseaux exotiques, (1955–56), Catalogue d’oiseaux (1956–58)
Emily Doolittle, ‘Animals in the Concert Hall: A History of Animals in Western Music’, Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review, 12 (2008)
If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

All meetings are in room 308, Department of English and Humanities Building, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Thursday 12th November, 4.00 pm
Sound in Film
James Lastra, ‘Reading, Writing, and Representing Sound’, in Sound Theory/Sound Practice, ed. Rick Altman (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.65-86
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. and trans. by Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp.89-109
Tom Levin, ‘The Acoustic Dimension: Notes on Cinema Sound’, Screen, 25 (1984): 55-68

Monday 30 November, 4.00 pm
Music and Postmodernity
Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Music and Postmodernity’, trans. David Bennett, New Formations, 66 (2009): 37-45
David Bennett, ‘Lyotard, Post-Politics and Riotous Music’, New Formations, 66 (2009): 46-57

Monday 7 December, 4.00 pm
Listening to Listening
Jonathan Gross, ‘An Ethnography of the Proms: Interim Report’
If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

GHost
Hosting I: Haunted Houses

20 October 2009, 6.30pm, Court Room, Senate House (South Block), University of London, Malet Street, WC1 7HU

GHost is organised by Sarah Sparkes and Consortium alumna Ricarda Vidal. It brings together artists, writers, curators, researchers and others to investigate the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture. It consists of two workshops, so-called ‘hostings’ and an exhibition and screening of moving image art. The hostings take place in the haunted rooms of Senate House on 20 October and 17 November and the exhibition will be hosted by St John’s on Bethnal Green on 18 December. Both ‘hostings’ will be documented by the artist Julian Wakeling with a series of ‘ghost images’, which will haunt St Johns on the night of 18 December.

GHost is organised with the support of the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London and St John’s Church on Bethnal Green

This is a free event but please rsvp ghost.hostings@gmail.com if you want to attend.

For more info please email us, join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=117301037117
or visit our blog: http://host-a-ghost.blogspot.com/

Friday 23rd October 6-8pm
Dan Graham Pavillion
Hayward Gallery

Transgressive Sight and the Viewer Interrupted

Consortium student Oliver Harris will introduce his research on the myth of Actaeon as the starting point for an exploration of shame, guilt and voyeurism. Drawing on other myths of transgressive sight – Orpheus and Pentheus in particular – as well as contemporary debates regarding pornography and the law, Harris will also address the recent exhibition and closure of Richard Prince’s installation Spiritual America (1983) at Tate Modern.

Taru Elfving will discuss the act of witnessing and the address of the viewer in contemporary visual culture. Elfving with argue that when the viewer is addressed, or called to witness, the habitual positions and conventional modes of viewing are momentarily unsettled. Yet the viewer becomes simultaneously implicated through the act of witnessing, entangled with(in) the narratives and events witnessed, allowing for a rethinking of active spectatorship and the viewer’s sense of responsibility.

For those wishing to attend the following texts are suggested as contextual material:

Ovid, The Metamorphoses
Pierre Klossowski, Diana at her Bath/ The Women of Rome (Marsilio, 1998)
Jacques Lacan, ‘The Signification of the Phallus’ in Écrits (Routledge, 1977)
Benvenuto Bice, Concerning the Rites of Psychoanalysis, or The Villa of Mysteries (Routledge, 1994)
Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.Femaleman©_Meets_OncoMouse™, (Routledge, 1997)
Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton University Press, 1992)

Admission free but booking is essential as places are limited, to book please email: louisa.adam@gmail.com
www.haywardconversations.tumblr.com

Mapping the Lost Highway: New Perspectives on David Lynch

Tate Modern

30 October – 1 November 2009

One of cinema’s most compelling and innovative directors, David Lynch remains a major influence on contemporary art, film and culture. In this landmark event, Tate Modern brings together leading artists, academics and writers from around the world to offer a series of new perspectives on Lynch’s films.

Artists and theorists will discuss Lynch’s work in a range of theoretical and artistic contexts, including psychoanalysis, philosophy, prosthetics and photography. Speakers will include the visual artists Gregory Crewdson, Daria Martin, and Jane and Louise Wilson, and there will also be contributions from the writers and academics Parveen Adams, Sarah Churchwell, Simon Critchley, Roger Luckhurst, Tom McCarthy, and Jamieson Webster. A specially commissioned video interview with Lynch himself will also be screened, and an accompanying film programme will take place at Tate Modern and the Birkbeck Cinema.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/19702.htm

Organised by Tate Modern Public Programmes and Richard Martin (London Consortium), in collaboration with the London Consortium and with additional support from LCACE and British Association for American Studies.

Steve Connor will be speaking at How Insect Are We?, the keynote symposium of Pestival, a festival celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect. The symposium takes place at Zoological Society of London, London Zoo, Regent’s Park at 7.00 on Thursday 3rd September. It is chaired by Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist, with other contributions from Stanford University biologist Deborah Gordon, the world’s leading ant specialist, engineer and designer Natalie Jeremijenko and Simon Laughlin, Professor of Neurobiology in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, an expert on the insect brain and vision. Tickets are £10, from http://pestival.org/symposium/

Consortium fellow Tom McCarthy is speaking in the symposium on Futurism and the Avant-Garde taking place at Tate Modern on 27th June 2009, to coincide with the recently-opened Futurism exhibition. His talk, entitled ‘These Panels Are Our Only Models for the Composition of Poetry, or, How Marinetti Taught Me How to Write’, asks what characteristics a genuinely Marinettian contemporary literature might have. Other contributors include Lutz Becker, Mary-Ann Caws, David Cottington, Alex Danchev and Matthew Gale.

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

This term, we will be combining field trips with more sedentary reflections. All meetings will be in room 308, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Monday 1st June, 5.30
We will be discussing Bill Fontana’s Silent Echoes, at the Haunch of Venision, 1-30 May.

Friday 12 June, 12.00
The seminar will constitute a pilot study for Jonathan Gross’s ethnography of musical listening, focussing on the experience of the Festival Hall concert of 11 June, featuring performances of Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra and Mahler’s Symphony no. 7.

Thursday 18 June, 12.00
Setting Sound. A series of listenings exploring the theoretical implications of ‘noise’ along with other non-standard forms of music, curated by Matt Clements. ‘My main point of concern is the capacity of listeners to contract ostensibly arbitrary dissonant, or contingent sound-events into relationships and patterns that invoke musical meaning, whilst extending beyond the immediate moment of consciousness. A provisional list of composers includes Bernhard Gunter, Ivan Fedele and Kevin Drumm.’

Thursday 25 June, 5.00
Steven Feld, ‘Sound Worlds’, in Sound, Patricia Kruth and Henry Stobart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.173-200.
Steven Feld, ‘Communication, Music, And Speech About Music’, in Steven Feld and Charles Kiel, Musical Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 2nd edn (Tucson, Arizona Fenestra Books, 2005 [1994].) pp. 77-95.
Copies of these texts are available in 30 Russell Square photocopy room.

Wednesday 1 July, 12.00
Glenn Gould, The Idea of North (1970).
extract

If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

Tate Modern Saturday 20 June 2009, 14.00-21.30

Saturday 20 June 2009, 14.00–21.30

14.00–17.00 symposium 18.00–21.30 dinner in the East Room

In short, this event brings together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations.

Shortness tackles topics ranging from aphorisms, txt msgs and short attention spans to nanophilology, sampling, ephemeral relationships, punch lines, short narratives and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).

The short conference is followed by a long dinner in Tate Modern’s East Room. Dinner guests will be entertained by short speeches and the whole event is supplemented by short films, performances and various interventions.

Conference speakers: DJ Spooky, Sadie Plant, Dan and Lia Perjovschi and Tom Shakespeare. Dinner speakers include Clare Wigfall and Steven Connor amongst others. The compère for the dinner will be Nicholas Parsons.

Organised by Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis (London Consortium) and Ricarda Vidal (Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies)

In collaboration with The London Consortium and with additional support from LCACE
Tate Modern Starr Auditorium
£15 (£10 concessions), booking required
£50 (£45 concessions) for dinner and conference

For more information about the event and to book tickets, please visit Tate’s website http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/18189.htm
book online or call 020 7887 8888.

www.shortness.co.uk

The Thread will be on summer hiatus during the months of July-September.  Our third series will start in either October or November, subject to scheduling.  An updated schedule of shows will be posted to the website upon availability.  We appreciate your listening and look forward to another season of engaging discussion.

The notion of transparency has achieved a continued, if varied, currency in architectural discourse throughout the twentieth-century. Along with a multitude of material attributes, transparency advocated a shifting, yet ever-present, ideological sensibility. Towards the latter part of the twentieth century, however, the general notion of transparency as an ideological mechanism became to decline. Today, while a literal sense of transparency remains, its ideology (purportedly) does not. This symposium aims to resurface questions of ideology in (contemporary) architectural discourse by creating dialogues around the following questions:
- As the notion of transparency appears to be superseded by the immateriality of the digital, how can contemporary architectural research address transparency’s role as a technological innovation, as a mechanism for design, and, above all, as an ideological device?
- Do new design technologies and media produce more transparent systems of communication?
- Despite the apparent displacement of ideology in current architectural arguments and projects, what are the subjacent ideologies that remain and how might we be able to scrutinise them?

Date:
Friday 8th May 2009

Organising Committee:
Doreen Bernath, Nerma Cridge, Eva Eylers, Kris Mun, Emanuel de Sousa, Tania Lopez Winkler, Kirk Wooller

AA PhD Dialogues is an annual international event organised by students of the PhD Programme at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London. AA PhD Dialogues is the follow-up event to the 2008 AA PhD Symposium, The Critique of the New: Questioning the Legitimization of Newness Through Technology, with Mark Wigley (Columbia GSAPP) as keynote speaker. Each year a theme is selected based upon a particular set of terms that address current questions within contemporary architectural discourse. This theme operates as an umbrella under which individual PhD research can be collectively discussed in an international forum.
www.aaphdsymposium.net
www.aaschool.net

Call for Submissions - Shortness, Tate Modern, 20 June 2009

shortness - a very short conference and a very long dinner

Deadline: Friday 20 March 2009

This event will bring together practitioners and theoreticians of the humanities, arts and sciences to extol or berate, to discuss, explore and explain shortness in all its spatial and temporal manifestations.

Topics that Shortness aims to cover include: aphorisms, txt msgs, short attention spans, nanophilology, music samples, ephemeral relationships, short narratives, punch lines, orgasms and other short-lived entities and phenomena (insects and fashion).

The conference itself will only last a few hours and will be followed by a very long dinner. Guests will be entertained by short dinner speeches and the whole event will be supplemented by short films and various interventions.

This call invites submissions for presentations or performances of up to 7 minutes to take place during the long dinner. Please note that we cannot cover any expenses incurred nor can we accommodate installations.Speakers include DJ Spooky, Sadie Plant, Tom Shakespeare, Clare Wigfall and Steven Connor amongst others. The Compère for the dinner will be Nicholas Parsons.

Please send an abstract of no more than 200 words to the organisers and include a short bio of no more than 100 words.

Contact:

short.at.tate@googlemail.com

Shortness is organised by Irini Marinaki, Konstantinos Stefanis, Ricarda Vidal and Tate Modern Public Programmes in collaboration with The London Consortium and the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study (University of London).

The London Sound Seminar offers an opportunity for research students and faculty in London to explore issues relating to the history and theory of all forms of sound-making and auditory culture.

During the Spring term 2009, we will be reading and discussing a number of key texts in sound theory. All meetings are in room 308, School of English and Humanities Building, 30 Russell Square, London WC1

Monday 26th January, 12.00
Jacques Attali, ‘Recording’, from Noise: The Political Economy of Music (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985)

Monday 9 February, 12.00
Michel Serres, ‘Boxes’, from The Five Senses, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (London: Continuum, 2008)

Monday 23 February, 12.00
Alain Corbin, Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-Century French Countryside, trans. Martin Thom (New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press), pp. 95-158, 298-308

Monday 23 March, 12.00
T.W. Adorno, ‘The Radio Symphony’, ‘The Curves of the Needle’, Music in the Background’, from Essays on Music, ed. Richard Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Aesthetic Theory, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997), pp. 225-29, 248-54, 258-61; Minima Moralia: Reflections From A Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1978), p. 247

If you would like to join the London Sound Seminar or help develop its activities, please contact Steven Connor

10:30 Welcome & Introduction

10:35 Marcus du Sautoy, ‘Mathematics: The Bridge Between the Two Cultures’.
C. P. Snow’s great friend the mathematician G. H. Hardy described mathematics as a creative art as much as a useful science. In this talk I will explore how mathematics is a language that underpins both cultures.

Marcus du Sautoy is Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He has research interests in prime numbers and symmetry and is the author of many publications, including Finding Moonshine: A Mathematician’s Journey Through Symmetry (2008). In 2008 he wrote and presented The Story of Maths for BBC TV

11:05 Anthony Grayling - Title TBC
Anthony Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has written and edited many books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are a biography of William Hazlitt and a collection of essays. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and writer for newspapers, including a writing a regular column for the New Scientist.

11:35 Coffee

12:05 Gillian Beer ‘Cultures of Extinction: Darwin and the Present’.
We currently view extinction with dismay and even horror and are encouraged to do so by specialist commentators and popular media alike. Darwin saw extinction as ordinary and as necessary to evolutionary change. What was the importance of extinction in Darwin’s theory? Why have our attitudes to it changed? Can this example help us to understand ways in which scientific, social and bodily cultures combine to shift meaning?

Gillian Beer was King Edward VII Professor at the University of Cambridge. Among her books are Darwin’s Plots and Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter. A third edition of ‘Darwin’s Plots’ with new material is appearing at the end of March 2009.

12:35 Roundtable 1

13:30 Lunch

14:30 Introduction
14:35 Jonathan Miller in conversation.
Jonathan Miller is a neurologist, writer, television presenter, photographer, curator and director of many plays and operas. In 2004, he presented Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief for BBC TV. He will talk with Colin MacCabe about the relationships between his artistic and scientific lives.

15:05 Ben Goldacre - The Humanities and the Public Misunderstanding of Science
In the time of Snow, science was only marginalised and ignored. Now we must contend with a vast army of humanities graduates in the media, who feel entitled to pass comment on matters about which they know nothing. With great authority and enormous influence, they promote the public’s misunderstanding of evidence: their self-indulgence comes at a very great cost.

Ben Goldacre is a writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who has written the weekly Bad Science column in the Guardian since 2003. He appears regularly on Radio 4 and TV, and has written for the Guardian, Time Out, New Statesman, and the British Medical Journal as well as various book chapters. His book Bad Science appeared from Fourth Estate in 2008.

15:35 Tea

16:05 Alan Sokal, ‘What Is Science And Why Should We Care?’
I shall discuss what I see as the importance for society of a “scientific worldview” — a concept that goes far beyond the specific disciplines that we usually think of as “science”. I shall argue that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence — especially inconvenient and unwanted evidence, evidence that challenges our preconceptions — are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.

Alan Sokal is a Professor of Physics at New York University and Professor of Mathematics at University College London. His main research interests are in statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. He is co-author with Jean Bricmont of “Intellectual Impostures” (Profile Books, 1998). His most recent book is “Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture” (Oxford University Press, 2008).

16:35 Roundtable 2

17:30 End

Programme

Thursday 22 January 2009; Birkbeck, Clore Management Centre, B01

10-11am – Keynote lecture: Patricia Waugh (Durham University)

11-12.30pm - Two Cultures in History
Justin Sausman (Birkbeck): ‘Before the Two Cultures: Popular Science, Magic
and Literature in the 20s and 30s’
Nicolas Tredell (Sussex University): ‘Snow and the Science Wars’
Daniel Wilson (Birkbeck): ‘Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd: Engineers in the History of the Two Cultures’

12.30-1.30pm – Lunch

1.30-3pm – Information and Communication
Gill Partington (Birkbeck): ‘Technology, Print and the “Two Cultures’”
Matt Wraith (London Consortium): ‘Noise and Aesthetics in Modernism’
Judith Simon (University of Vienna): ‘Expertocracy or the Cult of the Amateur?’

3-3.30pm - Coffee

3.30-5pm– Modelling Interpretation/Modelling Knowledge
Murray Smith (University of Kent): ‘”The Pit of Naturalism”: Reflections on Neuroscience and Naturalized Aesthetics’
Matthew Clements (London Consortium): ‘”Of thine eye I am eyebeam”: Biosemiotics and the Culture of Seeing’
Paul Crosthwaite (Cardiff University): ‘Financial Exchange and Death: The Limits of Scientism in the Study of Financial Markets’

5-5.30pm – Closing Remarks: Steven Connor

Friday 23 January 2009: Dana Centre

9.30-10am – Registration

10-11am – Keynote Lecture: George Rousseau (Oxford University)

11-12.30pm – Institutional Shapes of the Two Cultures
Sharon Babaian (Canada Science and Technology Museum): ‘Where the Two Cultures Meet but Don’t Always Talk’
Nicola Buckley (Cambridge University): ‘Two Cultures in Public Engagement?’
Shonagh Manson (Wellcome Trust): ‘Insight and Exchange: The Sciart Story’

11-12.30pm - Art/Science
Stephen Webster (Imperial): ‘Talking Collaboration: How Scientists View their Work with Artists’
Nicola Triscott (Arts Catalyst): ‘Performative Science in the Contemporary Arts’
Rachel Chapman (University of Sharjah): ‘Uncommonalities: Observations from the Field’

12.30-1.30pm – Lunch

1.30-2.30pm – Keynote Lecture: Robert Bud (Science Museum)

2.30-3.30 – Third Cultures
Deborah Cameron (Oxford University): ‘Popularizing Science or Scientizing the Popular? The Two Cultures and the New Science of Sex-Difference’
Jeff Thomas (Open University): ‘Embracing the Social’

3.30-4pm - coffee

4-5pm – Keynote Lecture: John Dupré (University of Exeter)

6.30-8.00pm Reception, Wellcome Collection
Attendees from the Birkbeck and Science Museum conference sessions are invited to a reception at the Wellcome Collection. The evening will include complimentary drinks, the chance to see the current War and Medicine exhibition and to view the permanent Medicine Now and Medicine Man galleries. The Collection will also be offering free guided tours of War and Medicine. If you would like to attend, please RSVP by 19th Jan to d.taplin@wellcome.ac.uk Please ensure your message subject line reads ‘Art & Science Now reception’, and include your full name, affiliation or organisation (if applicable) and position.

Saturday 24 January 2009, 10.30am-5.30pm, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern

A day of lectures and discussion from leading figures in the field of the arts and sciences.

Gillian Beer
Marcus du Sautoy
Ben Goldacre
Anthony Grayling
Jonathan Miller
Alan Sokal

On 7 May 1959, C. P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture in Cambridge. His influential and controversial address on the subject of ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’ condemned the widening gap of knowledge and understanding between ‘literary intellectuals’ and ‘natural scientists’.

Fifty years on, The London Consortium is bringing together the Science Museum, Tate Modern, the Wellcome Trust and Birkbeck, University of London, in a three-day conference. The conference will consider whether Snow’s critique has been addressed by the increase in multi-disciplinary work and research and the emergence of new cultural forms. Have the distinctions between and within the two cultures become further entrenched? How have the terms of the debate changed?

Programme

Thursday 22nd January, Birkbeck, University of London. Room B01, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London. 9.30am-5.30pm.

A day of academic papers from leading and emerging scholars in the field.
Keynote address: Professor Patricia Waugh (University of Durham).
Please contact Laura Salisbury to book a place: l.salisbury@bbk.ac.uk

Friday 23rd January, Dana Centre, Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, London. 9.30am-5.30pm.

A day of lectures and discussion from leading figures in the arts and sciences.

Professor George Rousseau (Oxford University)
Dr Robert Bud (Science Museum)
Professor John Dupré (Exeter University)
To book a place, go to:
http://www.danacentre.org.uk/events/2009/01/23/460

Friday 23 January, 6.30-8.00, Reception at the Wellcome Collection.

Saturday 24th January, Tate Modern, Bankside, London. 10.30am-5.30pm.

A day of public lectures and conversation from renowned figures in the field.

Gillian Beer
Marcus du Sautoy
Ben Goldacre
Anthony Grayling
Jonathan Miller
Alan Sokal

Book tickets at:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/16580.htm

The fourth annual Betting on Shorts short film competition, organised by Consortium students Ricarda Vidal, Irini Marinaki and Konstantinos Stefanis, came to a great climax on Friday 21st November 2008 at the ICA. The audience watched a programme of 17 wonderful short films on the theme of ‘Money, Money, Money’, which were simultaneously being seen in 12 other European cities - Athens, Barcelona, Bucharest, Istanbul, Maribor, Naples, Novi Sad, Paris, Poznan, Stockholm, Thessaloniki and Wiesbaden. The London jury chose as its winner Paul Cotter’s Last Hand Standing, finding it ‘perfectly conceived and executed, in such a way as to pack a full-length feature into 7 minutes’ and calling it ‘a film fable that educated its viewer out of cynicism into joy’. The overall winner across Europe was Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke’s Trotzdem Danke. Watch trailers from all the films in this year’s competition on the Betting on Shorts website.

The University of Hertfordshire’s School of Art and Design is running a conference examining the concept of luxury. The conference, entitled “In Pursuit of Luxury: commercial and academic perspectives on luxury”, intends to expand the parameters of the debate around the concepts of luxury to provide a refreshing context to construe the familiar debates surrounding the subject.

By discussing the history of luxury against contemporary issues, the event seeks to focus on a range of issues. These include: what do we understand by the term luxury and can it or should it be applied to luxury branded goods today? Does contemporary branding allow such goods to remain luxurious, even though they have been mass-produced? What do the terms such as value, consumerism, fashion, taste or connoisseurship really tell us about modern spending habits?

The conference will be held on Friday 19th June 2009 at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in Central London. Keynote speakers are confirmed as Emanuel Ungaro and Professor Chris Berry. Registration is open from Monday 26th January 2009.

A call for papers has opened with a deadline of Monday 15th December; the conference organisers invite submissions under a range of broad headings. Possible strands may include:
• Sociology and luxury
• Luxury and emerging economies
• Ethics, politics and luxury
• Luxury and craft
• Luxury and popular culture
• Luxury, globalisation and branding
• Luxury and design
• Luxury and fashion
• Luxury and jewellery
• Luxury and the history of consumption

For more information please see the following websites:
http://www.inpursuitofluxury.com/
http://www.herts.ac.uk/events/In-Pursuit-of-Luxury-Commercial-and-Academic-Perspectives-of-Luxury.cfm