Search results

This theoretical exploration describes the social and technical features that, together, play a role in the resilience of deviant ideas in contemporary society. It argues, specifically, that two distinct but inter-related spherical processes together contribute to the social persistency of deviant information. The first of these spherical phenomena relates to the fragmentation of the dominant public discussion sphere. The second spherical process of interest relates to information spheres, and specifically as it pertains to a widening of the sphere of legitimate controversy (i.e., the society-wide determination that a topic or object of conversation is worthy of debate). This article argues that these two spherical entities—the constellation of dominate and counter discussion spheres and the information sphere—have a mutualistic and interactive relationship with one another, and that understanding this relationship provides critical insight into the social resilience of deviant information.

This article unpacks the concept of rendering to explain how disposal produces value out of waste materials. Rendering draws attention to the management of meaning attached to waste materials, showing how cultures of environmental sustainability and market capitalism shape their valorisation during disposal. To illustrate this, I draw on ethnographic data from research on the operation of corpse disposal in England. This research reveals three mechanisms of rendering: (1) quantification where economic rationale is entangled with the legal-rational authority of environmental metrics; (2) containment where specific spaces of disposal and the movement between them shape the flow of meaning; and (3) the often hidden labour techniques that become a part of the value of the waste. Rendering provides a fuller account of disposal as a production process, which should be at the heart of sociological work that speaks to the often unbalanced relationship between environment and capitalism.

In visualising the heritage of the future, photo-realistic digital renderings of university developments serve a productive role in bringing their depicted content into being. Representing intended locations for the production of knowledge and the reproduction of social realities, such images possess a semiotic and affective role in relation to planning, promotion and the generation of capital and political will, and appear to accelerate past the messy but necessary processes of negotiation, construction, maintenance and even post-occupancy to represent a state of idealized completion before the fact. In borrowing the appearance of the photographic but also elements of its truth function (Tagg, 1988), photorealistic architectural media assist in the manifestation of 'truths to be' via the agency of production processes characterised by the convergence of imaging, construction, and economic functions on networked platforms (Cheshire, 2017). If for K Michael Hays, architecture is now 'just part of the smooth media mix' (Hays, 2001), this could be argued to be an outcome of developments described by Tafuri which reduce it to a 'moment in the chain of technological production' (Tafuri 1998). The effects of the participation of the university in the industrialisation of the production of spectacular space has wider epistemological repercussions: heritage, amongst other forms of knowledge, is deferred, forever yet to be produced. This paper explores the agency of images that attempt to portray locations in which the future production of knowledge take place, in order to bring them into being.

International audience ; Over the past few years, virtual reality (VR) has transitioned from the realm of expensive research prototypes and military installations into widely available consumer devices. These devices enable experiences that are highly immersive and entertaining, and have the potential to redefine the future of computer graphics. Yet, several challenges limit the practicality and accessibility of modern virtual reality Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs), including:Performance : The high pixel counts and frame rates of increase rendering costs by up to 7 times compared to 1920 × 1080 30 Hz gaming, and next-generation HMDs could easily double or triple costs again.Visual Quality / Immersion : Visual immersion using contemporary HMDs is limited due to several factors including image resolution and field-of-view. It is also subject to discomfort and even sickness because of various sparsely-explored factors such as incorrect visual cues and system latency.Physical Design and Ergonomics : Modern HMDs tend to be unwieldy and unsuitable for hours of continuous use. Further, while room-scale VR experiences successfully permit intuitive locomotion, they are limited by the size of the physical room.This course explores the role of ongoing and future research in visual perception to solve the above challenges. Human visual perception has repeatedly been shown to be an important consideration in improving the quality of computer graphics while keeping up with its performance requirements. Thus, an understanding of visual perception and its applications in real-time VR graphics is vital for HMD designers, application developers, and content creators.

The purpose of this review is to explore various approaches and perspectives that are currently being used by empirical studies reporting the impact of IFRS adoption in different jurisdictions around the globe. For this purpose to be better served, this study also presents at the outset an overview of the scope, objectives and current adoption status of IFRS. This study reviewed the literature on classifications of IFRS adoption studies with the view of deducting methodical frameworks outlining the dimensions that may warrant investigation for IFRS to be consented as a set of quality and global accounting standards. This study concludes that the success of IFRS as an international accounting standard depends on one hand in its technical quality economically yielding to both uses and reporters of financial statements and on the other hand their acceptance across different jurisdictions despite their political, cultural and economic diversities.