Material Witness Research Articles

HOTEL MODERNO, UMA MÁQUINA DE HOSPEDAR

This paper aims to produce a theoretical essay about the modern hotel from a historical and critical perspective, seeking to broaden knowledge about the mutation of this architectural typology in the context of the development of mass tourism, hypothesizing that hotels are "lodging machines". This is a conceptual discussion aimed at fostering and subsidizing the debate on hotels built between the late 1940s and the 1970s, in the context of the Modern Movement. To this end, he recalls the semantic and typological antecedents of the hotel and discusses how the social practices of mass tourism and the role of the state were reflected and reproduced in the mechanisms of modern hotels. Then, it presents aspects relating to the formal and functional typologies that support the idea that the modern hotel is a lodging machine, emphasizing some characteristics that express its architectural modernity. Finally, it highlights the historical and heritage relevance of modern hotels and the importance of documentation for intervention and conservation of this collection as material witnesses of modern architecture and mass tourism. Keywords: Hotel, Lodging Establishments, Modern Architecture, Mass Tourism, Architectural Typology.

Witnesses for the State: Children and the Making of Modern Evidence Law

Abstract This article identifies an overlooked legacy of the child protection movement in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century U.S.: transformations in evidence law and procedure that undermined common-law restrictions on children's testimony. Scholarship on the nineteenth-century modernization of evidence law argues that the rise of cross-examination allowed for the demise of common-law witness disqualification rules. The erosion of restrictions on children's testimony, however, requires an alternative or additional explanation, because cross-examination did not allay fears about children's reliability. The driving force for changes in the law governing child witnesses, I argue, was the slate of nineteenth-century child protection laws whose enforcement typically required children's testimony. The case study of Progressive-Era New York, presented here, reveals how evidence law and procedure adapted to substantive law's demand for children's evidence: reformers legislated an exception to the common-law oath requirement in children's cases, pushed trial courts to modernize their approach to examining child witnesses’ competency, and expanded the state's power to detain children as material witnesses. Those reforms fostered the ends of law enforcement, but did not resolve enduring debates about the reliability risks of children's testimony and the costs of testifying for children's wellbeing.

Correlation research on visual behavior and cognition of impression against localized church facades in China

Churches in China are material witnesses of cultural dissemination, and their architectural forms are in the process of localization. In order to determine the optimal degree of localization of church facades as well as to study the correlation between visual behavior and subjective cognition, five church facades with different degrees of localization were selected in present study, and the questionnaire survey as well as eye-tracking technology were used to collect data from two aspects: subjective cognition (the impression and acceptance levels) and objective eye movement (the first fixation duration, total fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count). The results showed the differences in public perceptions of church facades, and the impression of participants was continuously enhanced with the increasing of localization degree of church facade, while the acceptance level showed a U-shaped change. What's more, the correlation between the impression level and the first fixation duration was found to be 0.910, the Pearson coefficient between the acceptance level and the total fixation duration was found to be 0.928, indicating that eye-tracking indicators could accurately reflect the subjective cognition of the public. Performed analyses demonstrated that eye-tracking technology would provides an important technical mean for the design, conservation, and renewal of building facades.

Engendering thunder: Imperial consorts, thunder ritual and the power of Daoist material culture at the Ming court

ABSTRACT This article delves into the world of powerful women at the Ming court and their patronage of Daoist ritual and visual arts, focusing on the significance of Thunder Ritual (leifa 雷法). By examining a painted ritual scroll of the Daoist exorcistic Thunder Deity Wang Lingguan 王靈官 (Efficacious Agent Wang), Wang Lingguan and His Retinue, this study unravels the connections between Daoist Thunder Ritual, court women and the realpolitik of the Ming court. The painting was commissioned in 1542 by the Jiajing Emperor’s 嘉靖 (r. 1521–1567) Honoured Imperial Consort Lady Shen (Huangguifei shen 皇貴妃沈), and the circumstances surrounding the commissioning of the scroll reveal an intertwined relationship between Daoist material culture and the religious identities of high-ranking court women. This study contributes to an ongoing scholarly re-visioning of Daoism’s critical role in Ming history by arguing that Wang Lingguan and His Retinue stands as a material witness to the significance of Thunder Ritual at Jiajing’s court and also serves as evidence of the important role that high-ranking court women’s patronage of Daoist art plays in the significance of Daoism during the Ming dynasty.

Challenges of the modernization and industrialization of the manufacture of Ndop fabric from Cameroon

The Ndop fabric is part of the material witnesses of Cameroonian living culture like the Faso Dan Fani of Burkina Faso, like the shuka of the Massai of Kenya and Tanzania. These symbolic fabrics have a highly significant cultural and heritage dimension in their community. The promotion of these traditional African garments and the modernization of ancestral manufacturing techniques have for several decades contributed to the development of the continent's textile industry. The proliferation of ancient and modern traditional styles testifies the impact of the industrialization of the sector on the economy and on local cultures. These transformations certainly bring added value to the economy, but they have a strong impact on the value and cultural dimension of the fabric. In a global context where it is necessary to develop this sector of the local African textile industry, it is necessary to find means and possibilities which promote the emergence of African fashion by giving pride of place to the conservation and preservation of originality of these fabrics which are elements of the national cultural heritage. The decline in the symbolic and cultural value of these fabrics prompts profound reflections on the manner and means of its production and of its current use.

Making pushbacks public: Secrecy, material witnesses and devices of dis/appearance

In early 2021, the European Parliament established the Frontex Scrutiny Working Group (FSWG) to monitor all aspects of the functioning of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). The FSWG organized a series of public hearings and carried out a ‘fact-finding’ investigation to gather information and evidence about pushbacks of refugees in the Aegean Sea. By unpacking some of the controversies that emerged during the hearings of the FSWG, I explore how secrecy was practised and strategically employed to obscure the responsibility of Frontex for the reported pushbacks, and how it was contested through the presentation of related evidence. I explain how secrecy and related controversies and struggles over making pushbacks public involve a variety of actors that enrol and interact with a heterogeneous set of objects, including digital, visual and archival traces of violence at sea, as well as databases used to record information about maritime incidents. I argue that secrecy regarding pushbacks is not just about keeping information about people and objects involved in security operations hidden. Secrecy is also produced through the selective recording, (mis)categorization and circulation of information in the name of transparency.

More than an Afterimage: Music as Holocaust Spatial Representation and Legacy

Music occupies a unique and multi-faceted role in spatial representation of the Holocaust, both in terms of documenting its horrors and in cultivating legacy. This uniqueness derives from music’s dual temporal and physical essence as it is represented by written scores that serve as a blueprint, as sonic events that fill both time and space, and as musical instruments that operate as conduits for both. String instruments, in particular, have occupied a vital place in Jewish culture and, consequently, during the Holocaust. In the most tragic sense, some of these instruments even became actual containers of genocidal evidence as with violins played outside concentration camp crematoria that filled with the human ash that fell. This article will demonstrate that, when played, these instruments transform into living artifacts and musical witnesses, with voices that can speak for those who have been silenced, and that the resulting music that resonates from the printed page fills a sonic space that serves as a powerful medium for memory and representation. The phrase “bearing witness” often refers to representing the stories of people, places, and experiences through words, either written or spoken. But material culture also has a role to play in representation. While objects, art, and architecture certainly support language-based witness, they also provide their own unique lens and conduit for testimony. This seems especially true for music, which has the ability to exist as and cross between both words and objects. Nevertheless, music as material witness remains a complex and often understudied aspect of historical testimony. As a result, this paper will explore through an interdisciplinary approach the divergent nature of music as an aural form, as a creative art, and as a cultural artifact and will offer examples of how music can enhance, elucidate, and complicate Holocaust representation.

Paris as a Material Witness in a Differend: Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder

Abstract: The article examines Patrick Modiano's much commented upon semi-autobiographical historiographic metafiction Dora Bruder [The Search Warrant] (1997) through the lens of two interconnected theoretical concepts: the "differend", coined by Jean-François Lyotard to designate a situation where a plaintiff is divested of linguistic and legal means to claim her damage, and the "material witness", as Susan Schuppli has dubbed an object capable of testifying to past violence. I argue that, in the face of the evidential deficit that proceeds from the destruction of the Jewish diaspora of Paris during the Holocaust and from France's post-war memory politics in relation to the Occupation and Deportation, Modiano relies on the French capital's topography and architecture for information about Dora, her parents, and her community. Moreover, like Schuppli, he invests Parisian addresses with juridical significance so that they can become witnesses in the case he builds against wartime and post-war French authorities with a view to countering the differend to which Dora and her likes have been sentenced.

Long-term process stability in additive manufacturing

Laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF), also known as selective laser sintering or direct laser melting, is an additive manufacturing process in which part geometries are formed simultaneously with the underlying material. The microstructure, defect content, and surface quality are all synthesized conjointly with the part shape. While the geometric design freedom allowed by this process enables new complex features and parts with small (∼1 mm) features, challenges associated with process qualification can deter wider adoption. Furthermore, a lack of historical performance data for statistical process control of witness coupons, for either bulk material or for small features, makes the barrier to entry more difficult. Here, we demonstrate long-term, property-based process monitoring and variability assessment using both small-featured (1 mm) and larger, bulk-representative material witness coupons. Over a one-year period, more than 550 tensile bars and 80 Charpy impact bars were printed alongside 316 L stainless steel parts built using L-PBF and tested to detect shifts in the process over time. Miniature tensile bars with a 1 mm2 gage area were tested using a high throughput mechanical testing system. In parallel, a larger test coupon was used to monitor density, hardness, and Charpy impact toughness. This collection of measurements was used to determine detectable property shifts correlated to L-PBF process changes including powder feedstock, machine hardware, software versioning, and machine parameter settings. The benefits of using small featured, high-throughput samples are discussed based on process sensitivity and the number of repeat tests possible for each build. This study not only reveals the utility of property-based process monitoring but illustrates the sensitivity of these measurements to detect process changes and provides further evidence for property stability in modern L-PBF.

Double Agents

Double Agents

Entangled Archives

In this essay, I explore the founding violence that the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts can be said to rest on. I propose to view the building of Charlottenborg Castle which houses the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts as a “material witness” (Schuppli) to colonial history. I suggest that the building forms part of a material “cultural archive” (Wekker) of colonialism that can be seen as an entangled archive, that is simultaneously an entanglement of overlapping histories, and an instrument that disentangled and disconnected communities affected by colonialism by producing a radical cut between the colonized communities and their creative expression. By juxtaposing paintings from the colonial era with contemporary art works the essay explores the following questions: What does it mean to conduct art education on such contested grounds? What are the ramifications of colonial-modernity within the art institutions today? And how does it continue (indirectly or directly) to distribute and determine what counts as a work of art and who counts as a subject?

Norwegian Broadside Ballads and the Collecting Practices of Thorvald Boeck

In nineteenth‑century Norway there were, as there had been in Britain, a few forward‑thinking collectors who even in the earliest days of the formation of the modern Norwegian nation recognized that cheap, ephemeral documents of street literature like broadside ballads would someday be worth preserving, as significant witnesses to the printing history, local history, everyday reading, and popular culture of their time. One of the largest such collections of so‑called “skillingsviser” formed part of the library of the jurist Thorvald Boeck (1835‑1901), whose large and inclusive collection of Norwegian belles lettres and general literature remained intact after his death and is now an important part of the Gunnerus rare book library in Trondheim.The ballads represented a kind of history from below, since their annotations on these ballads preserve personages and small incidents from local history that might otherwise have been forgotten. They also represented a kind of print culture that was at once ubiquitous and, because disposable, in danger of being lost. And yet it took a certain kind of foresight to recognize the value of these printed objects, and to preserve them. Drawing on comparative study with Norwegian, Danish, and English collectors; on the memoirs of bookdealers and literary writers of the time; and on the still more material witness of provenance notes, marginalia, and bookplates on the extant ballads themselves, this article works to characterize the motives and collecting practices that led to the ballads’ inclusion in Boeck’s great private library.

Thinking of Water as a Material Witness: An Attempt to Fill the Voids in the Archive of the Moscow Canal (1932–37)

This essay revisits the Moscow Canal and explores its waters as the matter that bears witness to the violence experienced by human and nonhuman actors during the waterway’s construction between 1932 and 1937. By attending to the canal’s flow, it argues that water can operate as an alternative archive, expands the limits of what is currently considered unarchivable, and contributes several artifacts to more conventional forms of documentation. Using the operative concept of material witness developed by the artist-researcher Susan Schuppli, the essay investigates the artificial flow and analyzes patterns of its organization and operation as processes that register, disclose, and preserve the residues of violence that remain present underwater yet missing from the Moscow Canal narrative, inviting renarration of the histories produced by the reductive archival structures.

Collective empiricism and the material witness

This article develops two arguments. One follows from the idea that materials can be made into witnesses to environmental violence by drawing together the evidence generated from multiple sensors. In this way, the practice of Forensic Architecture entails a commitment to a distinctive form of collective empiricism that leads to the generation of ‘informed materials’. The second theme of the article follows from Forensic Architecture’s claim that the microphysical investigation of specific incidents can be a starting point in reconstructing larger political and environmental processes. In light of this claim, the author interrogates the relation between the evidence generated by material witnesses and the political situations to which this evidence contributes. His contention is that qualitative forms of social and historical research are required that both complement and go beyond the limits of Forensic Architecture’s commitment to collective empiricism.

Collection No Longer on Display: Restoring Medieval England’s Arabic Books to View

A dominant cultural perception of the Middle Ages – manifested in the Victoria and Albert Museum's segregation of its ‘Medieval' and ‘Islamic Gallery' rooms – falsely positions England as isolated from its global influences. In reality, the translation of Arabic books, and the contacts necessary for that translation, transformed English culture. In a medieval context, ‘translation' refers both to the movement of a text between languages and the movement of relics. The arrival of Arabic books reflects these two meanings. In medieval England, Arabic books were materially and spiritually valuable; they were treasured, collected items, and collections in their own right – anthologies which acted as libraries, emulating the Islamicate archives from which they had travelled. This essay considers two case studies drawn from the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's direct translation of the astrologer Sahl Ibn Bishr, in the Man of Law's Tale, and of the alchemist Muhammed Ibn Umail, in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale. Although Chaucer is known today as the ‘father of English', his medieval and early modern readers were aware of his indebtedness to inherited Arabic science. I argue that centring the Arabic presence in Chaucer’s works is no modern innovation, but a return to a traditional way of reading the Canterbury Tales which can be seen in practice in manuscript and early printed records. Surviving medieval English versions of Arabic texts offer material witnesses of cross-cultural dialogue, which deserve to be displayed and read.

Police State, U.S.A.

All governments are potential police states. Constitutionally constrained democracies are no exception, as demonstrated by America’s post-9/11 experience. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. government expanded its domestic police powers in the name of protecting the person, property, and liberties of U.S. persons. Many of these police state powers persist due to the poorly defined and open-ended nature of the resulting “war on terror” and pathologies of democratic politics. We explore how a constitutionally constrained democratic government can take on police state powers that sustain over time. We then catalog some persistent police state powers adopted in the United States after the 9/11 attacks. These include the surveillance state, militarized police, civil asset forfeiture, expanded border patrol, No-Fly lists, and material witness law.

Connecticut’s Material Witness Law: Sacrificing the Personal Liberty of the Innocent Witness on the High Altar of Justice

The need to protect the innocent from arrest and incarceration should be self-evident. Connecticut, like many states, permits prosecutors to request the arrest and incarceration of innocent witnesses to crimes in order to ensure their testimony at trial. It’s 115-year-old statute had rarely been examined by its Courts – and has no provisions to balance the prosecution’s need for a witness’ testimony with the witness’ liberty interests or the defendant’s due process right to testimony untainted by coercion. This article examines Connecticut’s statute, discusses cases concerning the rights of witnesses and the defendant, and considers psychological research into false confession and false accusations that might lead an innocent witness to say whatever he or she believes will most quickly lead to their release. It proposes changes to the statute, along the lines of New Jersey’s reforms to its law in the 1980s.

Material Witness: The Seaside Riots of 1962–1964

Material Witness: The Seaside Riots of 1962–1964

Material Witness: The Seaside Riots of 1962–1964

Material Witness: The Seaside Riots of 1962–1964

Beyond the Cairo Edition


 
 
 This essay reviews two recent volumes containing editions of important early quranic codices. One of these is the so-called Sanaa Palimpsest, whose lower text at present remains our only known material witness to a recension of the quranic text that is different from the canonical one; the other is the Codex Amrensis. The essay devotes particular attention to the question of the textual relationship between the Quran’s standard text and that documented by the lower layer of the Sanaa Palimpsest, and to Asma Hilali’s claim that the Sanaa Palimpsest never constituted a full quranic codex but only “a collection of disparate leaves.”