Panic Attack

When heavy air wears thin as
Tired patience. Breathless. Tight.
Once freely open friendly
Turns dense panic gasps:
Madly sucking down.
As an addict their empty bottle
One useless heaving pull at a time.
Constricted tortured capillaries
Cry out, 'give me oxygen!'
Release the inelastic of those bands
And cut free the plastic round my heart.

V&A Photographic Archive: Photography as Art

The Victorians proved problematic in my previous archive visit post so in the interest of balance, the next one is far more cheerful. The V&A story begins with an intriguing polymath, civil servant and inventor: Henry Cole (15 July 1808 – 18 April 1882). He was responsible for organising the Great Exhibition (1851) and then founding and developing a science/art collection in the South Kensington area which would both educate the masses and improve British industrial design. As the first General Superintendent of the Department of Practical Art, South Kensington Museum (1857-1873) he recognised the new phenomenon of photography had the right blend of art and science to be relevant to the museum.

Royal Anthropological Institute : Discovering disturbing distances

The RAI is the world's longest established anthropological organisation with a global membership. Its controversial history is interesting and unavoidable; The Aborigines [native peoples] Protection Society was initially formed by the Quakers in 1837 to monitor slavery issues in the aftermath of the early 19th century Quaker campaign against the African slave trade.

From this it developed into the Ethnological Society of London (ESL) founded 1848. Their focus was the history of mankind but given the interesting Victorian obsession with colonialism and perceived inferiority of anyone who wasn’t white, in 1863 Richard Francis Burton and Dr James Hunt decided to form The Anthropological Society. This new society was interested in scientific notions of race and with dubious ideology was keen to prove that native people were actually a different species in order to justify slavery.

Knowledge Management: Building blocks and knotty problems

I went on a Knowledge Management course and seeing as everything I do is managing information and spreading the knowledge, I thought I'd put my notes down here. It's not arty or anything but I found it interesting.

Introduction

Knowledge Management means different things in the context of each organisation and the definition has to be agreed at management level. But basically it’s about managing the intellectual assets of the firm/company which can take the form of documentation, expertise, communities, departments, conversations and collaborations – the effective sharing of creative knowledge.

For it to work properly people have to be engaged and given that people always know more than they say, it is challenge to get the information flowing around the organisation. We – collectively - have to create a knowledge environment that will take all the data and information and turn it into knowledge. This has little/nothing to do with technologies.