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297_10 | Carl comes home to find Jo distraught and reveals what happened with Crystal, stating that she never once knew she was abused and wondering what kind of person she was. Jo and Carl embrace as she sobs into his shoulder. Alice and Nyla return to their apartment where Alice tells her to pray for forgiveness. As Nyla prays, Alice attempts to exorcise her with ashes and hot oil, hurting Nyla. Nyla runs away to Yasmine's apartment, hoping to find some comfort. However, Yasmine is too traumatized from her rape to answer the door. |
297_11 | Kelly is waiting outside the brownstone as Crystal comes out with a pail and a brush to wash away the blood of her children. Crystal comments that she does not feel awake and thinks that this is what death must feel like. Nyla passes by and Kelly takes her into Crystal's apartment to wash her up. Hearing Tangie bring in yet another suitor to her apartment, Nyla confronts her. Tangie kicks her suitor out after he asks her to invite Nyla for a threesome. Tangie and Nyla hash out their problems, before Tangie reveals that her life is complicated and she is still learning from her mistakes ("No More Love Poems #4"). |
297_12 | Yasmine is practicing an interpretive dance ("Sechita") as Kelly discovers that Crystal has swallowed an entire bottle of pills. Crystal is taken to the hospital as Yasmine is visited by Donald, who has informed her that Bill has been murdered after attempting to rape another woman. She goes into the morgue to look at his body one last time, before slapping him and then leaving.
That night, Kelly is unable to sleep, feeling guilty for not taking Crystal's children away sooner. Juanita comes home with a birthday cake for Frank, only to find that he is not home and his clothes are gone. Juanita vents her frustration to her women's health class ("Somebody Almost Walked Off Wid Alla My Stuff") as Crystal is released from the hospital and goes into therapy. Jo gives Juanita a check for her non-profit organization, Beau Willie is sent to jail, and Nyla returns to dance class with Yasmine. |
297_13 | Tangie invites Crystal to Nyla’s going away party. Crystal initially declines. Tangie begrudgingly invites Gilda, both finally having an unspoken, mutual respect for each other. Juanita breaks things off with Frank for good ("No More Love Poems #1"). Crystal is still wondering how Beau Willie could do such a thing, but Gilda tells her that she also needs to take responsibility for not leaving Beau Willie sooner.
Jo confronts Carl on his homosexuality, which he angrily denies at first but Jo tells him that she was not oblivious to the way Carl looks at other men. After venting his frustrations over Jo's controlling nature, he then admits that he has been sleeping with other men and tells her that he is sorry. Jo, however, tells him that she is not accepting his apology, having heard him apologize many times before ("Sorry"). Jo then reveals that she is HIV-positive from Carl's exploits and tells Carl to leave when she gets back home. |
297_14 | At Nyla's going away party, all the women gather to celebrate. Jo and Juanita have a conversation on the rooftop about HIV, while the other women come out to join them, including Crystal, as the women talk about the value of their love ("My Love Is Too") and share their experiences with men's apologies ("Sorry" cont.).
Crystal tells everyone that she was missing something in her life and the women reveal the hurt and pain they've gone through in their lives, before coming together to embrace Crystal and each other ("A Laying on of Hands") and move forward with their lives. |
297_15 | Cast
Janet Jackson as Joanna "Jo" Bradmore ("Lady in Red")
Thandiwe Newton as Tangie Adrose ("Lady in Orange") (as Thandie Newton)
Whoopi Goldberg as Alice Adrose ("Lady in White")
Phylicia Rashad as Gilda ("Lady in Black")
Anika Noni Rose as Yasmine ("Lady in Yellow")
Loretta Devine as Juanita Sims ("Lady in Green")
Kimberly Elise as Crystal Wallace ("Lady in Brown")
Kerry Washington as Kelly Watkins ("Lady in Blue")
Tessa Thompson as Nyla Adrose ("Lady in Purple")
Macy Gray as Rose
Michael Ealy as Beau Willie Brown
Omari Hardwick as Carl Bradmore
Hill Harper as Donald Watkins
Khalil Kain as Bill
Richard Lawson as Frank |
297_16 | Production
On September 3, 2009, Lionsgate announced it had acquired the distribution rights to Tyler Perry's 34th Street Films adaptation of the play, with principal photography originally scheduled to take place in Atlanta, Georgia in November and December 2009, with a planned 2010 release. The film was written, directed, and produced by Perry. The cast includes Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Thandiwe Newton, and Tessa Thompson. Mariah Carey had also been cast, but pulled out in May 2010, citing medical reasons (later revealed to be her pregnancy); Thandiwe Newton was cast to replace her. Macy Gray was also cast. |
297_17 | Originally using the play's full title, the film's title was shortened to For Colored Girls in September 2010. In an October 2010 press conference with the cast, Perry credited his full body of work for being able to make the film, stating, "It took everything—Madea, House of Payne and all of that—for me to be able to do For Colored Girls. Had none of that happened I wouldn't have been able to say, 'Listen, this is what I want to do next,' so I’m very proud of it all."
When asked if she held reservations about Perry's adaptation of her work, Shange responded: "I had a lot of qualms. I worried about his characterizations of women as plastic." In reference to the film post-production, she stated, "I think he did a very fine job, although I'm not sure I would call it a finished film."
Soundtrack |
297_18 | For Colored Girls: Music From and Inspired by the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released on November 2, 2010. It features music from the cast, as well as Leona Lewis, and Nina Simone.
Release
The film was originally planned for a 2010 release, but was later delayed until January 14, 2011. However, the studio chose to move the release date forward to November 5, 2010; Tyler Perry commented it was "a serious film that really lends itself to the Fall period." Grossing $20.1 million in its opening weekend, For Colored Girls debuted at the box office at #3, behind Megamind ($47.7 million) and Due Date ($33.5 million). |
297_19 | Critical reception
On Metacritic the film received an weighted average score of 50 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews". On Rotten Tomatoes 32% of 109 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.20/10. The site's consensus is that "Tyler Perry has assembled a fine cast for this adaptation of the 1975 play, and his heart is obviously in the right place, but his fondness for melodrama cheapens a meaningful story". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a grade "A" on a scale from A+ to F. |
297_20 | Early reviews from a private screening by Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were negative. Peter DeBruge of Variety stated that "[i]n adapting Ntozake Shange's Tony-nominated play—a cycle of poetic monologues about abuse, abortion and other issues facing modern black women, rather than a traditional narrative—the do-it-all auteur demonstrates an ambition beyond any of his previous work. And yet the result falls squarely in familiar territory, better acted and better lit, perhaps, but more inauthentically melodramatic than ever." Despite an overall negative view of the film's plot and direction, DeBruge gives praise to the acting of its principal cast. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter highlighted the difficulty in translating Shange's poetic play to film. He commented: "No, it never was going to be easy, but someone needed to put creative sweat into this one, to reach for cinematic solutions to the theatrical challenge. All Perry does is force conventional plots and |
297_21 | characters—utter cliches without lives or souls—into the fabric of Shange's literary work. The hackneyed melodramas get him from one poem to the next but run roughshod over the collective sense of who these women are." Honeycutt acknowledged the talents of the film's actresses, highlighting performances by Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, and Kimberly Elise. |
297_22 | Critic Marshall Fine gave a negative review in The Huffington Post. He asserts Perry's screenplay is inadequate for its source material, stating that each character "gets the opportunity to suddenly burst into Shange's poetic arias. But the connective tissue that links the various stories ... amounts to a college course in black social pathology—or perhaps just human pathology." Acknowledging the acting talent of the ensemble cast, he states: "Don't get me wrong. The women of this film all shine, hitting strong emotional notes that ring true even when Perry's adaptation feels false ... So let's just say that For Colored Girls is a barely competent film (which is a big step up for Perry), illuminated by luminous performances." |
297_23 | Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly comments: "The female cast is great, with especially fierce performances from Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, and Anika Noni Rose. But stuck in a flailing production that might just as well invite Perry's signature drag creation Madea to the block party, the actors' earnest work isn't enuf."
Claudia Puig of USA Today called the film a "strained soap opera" which "has wrung the beauty and truth out of the original in almost every way possible." Mary Pols of Time magazine states that despite the caliber of the cast, "Elise's performance is the only restrained one in the film and her Crystal is For Colored Girls' most compelling character." She concludes that "For Colored Girls feels like the cinematic equivalent to putting a garish reproduction of the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of your McMansion and calling it art." |
297_24 | In contrast, a review by Shadow and Act was favorable, calling For Colored Girls "the best thing Perry has done to date." Perry is complimented on his cinematography, and use of "subtlety and nuance", although his screenwriting is still considered to be the weakest aspect of the film. Like previous reviews, praise is given to the acting quality of the cast, especially regarding performances given by Thandiwe Newton, Janet Jackson, and Kimberly Elise. The Huffington Post journalist Jenee Darden gave a mixed review. She comments that Perry's modern plot conflicts with the narrative of Shange's poetry which was written during the 1970s, explaining: "The film is set in the present and black people don't use the word 'colored' anymore. Watching a character type on a laptop then hearing someone describe themselves as 'colored' a few scenes later doesn't feel realistic." |
297_25 | She commends the acting of the cast, stating "Kimberly Elise stirs you as always. Loretta Devine is funny and vivid. Thandie Newton delivers as a troubled, selfish sex addict. She and Whoopi were matched perfectly as a mother and daughter with serious tensions. Singer Macy Gray's eerie portrayal of a back-alley abortionist will make you rethink ever having unsafe sex." Roger Ebert comments that "Shange's award-winning play is justly respected, but I'm not sure it’s filmmable, and I’m pretty sure it wasn't a wise choice for Perry ... That’s not to say 'For Colored Girls' doesn't have its virtues. Seeing these actresses together is a poignant reminder of their gifts, and of the absence of interesting roles for actresses in general and African-American ones in particular." |
297_26 | Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times gave a positive review, stating that "[w]ith a surgical precision, the writer-director cut [Shange's poetry] apart and reassembled it, using various pieces to create characters and storylines, keeping much of the poetry, writing the connective tissue himself so that it finds a new life, a somewhat different life on screen," and said it is his most "mature" film to-date. Commenting on the acting of the ensemble cast, she states: "Newton's Tangie swings too wildly; Goldberg's Alice, clad in white and rage, never finds traction; and Rashad, as the apartment manager Gilda, the central link between many of the characters, never quite connects, so it often feels as if she's walked onto the wrong stage" but adds that "[w]hatever stumbles there may be, they are offset by moments when 'For Colored Girls' soars," ultimately describing the film as "unforgettable." |
297_27 | Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called For Colored Girls "a serious achievement." He compliments Perry's work, stating "this new film shows a mastery of tone, a capacity to elicit strong performances and also to bring out different colors within those performances so that, when it all comes together, it's not the same note sounding over and over. This is smart, lovely work." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film "a thunderous storm of a movie." Dargis states that "working with fine performers like Ms. Elise, Anika Noni Rose, Phylicia Rashad and Kerry Washington, he sings the song the way he likes it—with force, feeling and tremendous sincerity." |
297_28 | Matt Zoller Seitz of Salon.com calls For Colored Girls Perry's "most problematic work. It's also his most ambitious." He adds that "Perry never solves the stage-to-screen translation problem. But the path he has chosen is as intriguing as it is irksome, and it works better than you might expect." In terms of acting, he praises Jackson's performance, stating: "[s]he outdoes herself here ... It's not just Jackson's short haircut and traumatized eyes that might remind viewers of Jane Wyman or Joan Crawford; Perry gets at the mix of masculine hyper-competitiveness and feminine vulnerability that has always defined Jackson, and links it to the wily, lonely coldness often captured in Wyman and Crawford performances, a directorial gambit of tremendous perceptiveness." In addition, he says Perry "is just as sharp directing Jackson's costars—especially Elise, Rashad and Devine." |
297_29 | Accolades
For Colored Girls has received accolades primarily from African American film and critic associations, in multiple categories including acting, writing, directing and overall production. Kimberly Elise has received the most acting nomination among the cast, followed by Anika Noni Rose and Phylicia Rashad.
See also
List of black films of the 2010s
References
External links
2010 films
2010 romantic drama films
American films
American romantic drama films
English-language films
Films directed by Tyler Perry
Films scored by Aaron Zigman
Films with screenplays by Tyler Perry
African-American films
African-American gender relations in popular culture
African-American LGBT-related films
American LGBT-related films
American films based on plays
Films shot in Atlanta
Films shot in New York City
Films set in Atlanta
Films about rape
Films about abortion
Films about dysfunctional families
2010s feminist films
2010 LGBT-related films
American feminist films |
298_0 | The Mastaba of Seshemnefer IV is a mastaba tomb in Cemetery GIS of the Giza Necropolis in Egypt. It dates from the early Sixth Dynasty (c. 2340 BC), and was built for the official Seshemnefer IV (LG 53). Five reliefs from the mastaba of Seshemnefer IV are on display in the Egyptian collection of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim. |
298_1 | Discovery
Already in the period between 1842 and 1845, the first excavation of the tomb was carried out by members of the Prussian Expedition under the leadership of Karl Richard Lepsius. At this time the reliefs were in a far better state of preservation. While Lepsius took pieces of the decoration of the north and east walls with him to the Egyptian Museum of Berlin (Inv.# 1128 and 1129), the blocks of the west wall remained in situ until the excavations of Hermann Junker. The tomb was completely uncovered during Junker's excavations, which took place in 1928/9. Five relief fragments were sent to the Egyptian collection of the Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim. |
298_2 | Tomb owner
Seshemnefer IV (Sšm-nfr) was Head of the Royal Harem, which means he was the manager of the area of the palace where the women and children of the royal family lived. Additionally, a list of his ranks and honorific titles survives which indicates that he was an important man at court, who was trusted by his king. The surviving reliefs from the mastaba give an insight into daily life in his time, including agriculture, cattle breeding, bird hunting, grain storage, but also clothing, offering rituals and, to some degree, colloquial language.
Reliefs at Hildesheim
Playing Goats (Inv. No. 3192)
The damaged relief fragment can no longer be assigned to a specific wall of the mastaba. In the upper register, it shows a he-goat and a jumping kid; in the lower register, a he-goat jumping over another goat. Behind it is another jumping kid. |
298_3 | Bird hunt scene (Inv. No. 3193)
This fragment cannot be clearly attributed to a specific wall of the mastaba either. It shows the netting and the division of the captured birds between two people. Two men are shown in a bird hunting scene. The left is identified as the "leader of the bird hunt". The inscription in front of the second man, which only survives in fragments, says "causing the net to be tightened." The man gives a sign that the net hanging to his right should be tighted to capture birds which have flown into it. The two birds on the right are caught in the net. In the upper portion of the image, three men empty a net. The man on the right takes the birds out and hands them to the man standing in front of him, who gives them to a third man who is standing on a cage - only his hands are now preserved. In the cage are several other birds which have already been captured.
Great harvest scene (Inv. No. 3191) |
298_4 | Scenes of various kinds of agriculture, like this broken relief with two and a half preserved registers of a harvest scene, are a regular part of the decoration of large tombs. The three preserved fragments were removed from the right part of the west wall. The left part of the wall is lost, but contained a depiction of the owner of the tomb, whose legs and kilt were still preserved when the tomb was first excavated. This allows the scene to be contextualised as a whole: Seshemnefer IV stood at left, facing right; in front of him, flax and cereals are being harvested. The harvesting of the cereals with hand sickles is preserved in the surviving fragments, including an overseer standing at right. Below, the transport of the cereal to the granary is shown. The grain is kept in large sacks which are carried by donkeys. Finally, at right, two workers stack the grain in the granary, as an caption explains. The donkey driver hold the sacks in place with his hands. In the upper register, the |
298_5 | agricultural scenes are not preserved. On the other wall of the same room, further work was depicted: the threshing of the grain with the help of the donkeys and the winnowing. All these images guaranteed the tomb owner a supply of the necessities of live after his death. They would protect him from hunger and thirst for all eternity. The relief is made of limestone and is 84.5 cm high, 100.5 cm wide and 10.5 cm deep. |
298_6 | Slaughter of a steer (Inv. No. 3194)
This relief block belonged to the highest of the three bands of imagery of the right soffit of passage between two rooms. It depicts the binding and slaughter of a steer. A man holds the steer by the horns while a second man pulls the forelegs out from under it with a rope and simultaneously kicks the back leg with his foot in order to make the animal fall. The inscription says that it is a young offering to the tomb owner.
Offering in front of the statue of Seshemnefer IV (Inv. No. 3190) |
298_7 | In the foreground of this scene of an offering of incense and meat, is the statue of the tomb owner, Seshemnefer IV, shown as a stout man standing up straight. That it is a statue is indicated by the depiction of the shoulders and arms in profile - otherwise, in Egyptian depictions of people, the shoulders were shown in a frontal view and the head in profile. It is labeled as a "statue of the Sole friend, Seshemnefer" (twt-r-ankh smr-watj sSm-nfr). The statue stands facing three servants (funerary priests) who are shown at a smaller scale. In the upper part of the relief, the steward Mer-r-ri (jmj-rA pr mrrj) acts as a funerary priest, lifting the lid of the incense vessel, so that the scent of the incense can reach the nose of the statue. Behind him stands a second servant. Because of severe damage to the relief surface, the papyrus which he holds in his hand to recite from is no longer visible. Underneath, another servant carries a cow's leg and probably formed part of another |
298_8 | slaughtering scene. All the individuals shown wear a short kilt tied in place under the navel. With the help of his statue, which was magically brought to life by offerings and rituals, Seshemnefer IV would be made to live again. The statue served as a substitute body for eternity. The relief fragment is made of limestone, is 70.3 cm high, 78.3 cm wide and 10 cm deep. |
298_9 | Bibliography
Hermann Junker. Gîza 11. Der Friedhof südlich der Cheopspyramide. Ostteil (= Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien Philosophisch-historische Klasse Denkschriften. 74, Abhandlung 2). Rohrer, Wien 1953, pp. 92–96, 100–119, 126–131, 137–241 (Digitised).
Bertha Porter, Rosalind L. B. Moss. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings. Vol. 3: Memphis. Part 1: Abû Rawâsh to Abûsîr, revised and augmented by Jaromír Málek. 2nd edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1974, S. 223–226 (Digitised).
Hans Kayser. Die Ägyptischen Altertümer im Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim. Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum, Hildesheim 1973.
Arne Eggebrecht, Bettina Schmitz, Matthias Seidel. Das Alte Reich. Ägypten im Zeitalter der Pyramiden. von Zabern, Mainz 1986, .
Katja Lembke, Martin von Falck, Bettina Schmitz. Das Alte Ägypten in Hildesheim. Vol. 1: Das Alte Reich. Ägypten von den Anfängen zur Hochkultur. von Zabern, Mainz 2009, . |
298_10 | External links
Die Mastaba des Seschemnefer IV. on the Giza-Projekt
The Mastaba of Seshemnefer IV. on the Giza Archive
Klaus Finneiser. Auf Feld und Weide. Grabrelief des Seschem-nefer IV aus dem Alten Reich (Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum Inv. Nr. 1129)
Mastabas
Giza Plateau
Buildings and structures of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt |
299_0 | Aman ul-Mulk (1 January 1821 – 30 August 1892) was the Mehtar of Chitral, Ghizer, Yasen and Ishkoman and Suzerain of Kafiristan. He ruled the State of Chitral from 1857 to 1892. His rule saw Chitral reach its territorial peak, extending from Ishkamun in Gilgit Agency to Asmar in Afghanistan. His death lead to the Siege of Chitral an instance of high drama, which goes down in the annals of British India as an epic of enormous courage and determination.
Early years |
299_1 | Accession and attributes
Muhtarram Shah Kator the III was succeeded by Aman ul-Mulk. In order to succeed Aman ul-Mulk had killed his elder brother in 1856. Thus in 1857, Aman climbed to the throne of Chitral, by steps slippery with the blood he had shed. He is referred to in local chronicles as the Great Mehtar, who ruled over the valleys with true oriental despotism between 1857 and 1892. Sir George John Younghusband denoted him as a “strong and astitute” ruler. Lord Curzon acclaimed him as "The very man for such a state and such times”. |
299_2 | Territorial expansion
Aman ul-Mulk ruled over Upper and Lower Chitral extending from the borders of Punjab on one side to the borders of Kafiristan and Dir on the other. The northern boundary of his dominion was the watershed of the Hindu Kush. In those early years, up to 1871, Chitral still paid tribute to Badakhshan in slaves, but it would be absurd to infer from this fact that Chitral ever acknowledged the suzerainty of Jehandar Shah or of the Afghan faction that dispossessed him.
1878 agreement and effects
In 1878 Aman ul-Mulk being anxious of aggression by the Amir of Afghanistan placed Chitral under the nominal suzerainty of the Maharaja of Kashmir. This brought him into direct touch with the Government of India, with whom from that time until his death he did all he could to maintain friendly relations. In 1885 a mission under Sir William Lockhart visited Chitral and was very cordially received, and so too was Colonel Durand, who went there in 1888. |
299_3 | By the agreement of 1878 Aman ul-Mulk the Mehtar or King of Chitral got an annual subsidy of Rs 12,000 from the ruler of Kashmir. The Mehtar was to present the latter annually three horses, five hawks and five Tezi dogs. Further a treaty was signed between the Amir of Afghanistan and Mortimer Durand that the former would not interfere in Bajaur, Dir, Swat and Chitral. But the disagreements increased after settlement. More than anything else, it was Aman ul-Mulk, sense of his own interests which led him to rely upon Kashmir and the British.
Aman ul-Mulk, now secure and strengthened, swiftly eliminated his old rivals south of the Hindu Kush and was able as a result to expand his dominion from Ishkamun in the Gilgit Agency to Asmar in Afghanistan. The two valleys of Chitral, along the perceived border with Afghanistan were unified under Aman ul-Mulk in 1880, with encouragement from Colonel Biddulph.
External pressures |
299_4 | For the first time after the withdrawal of the Gilgit Agency in 1881 the Amir of Afghanistan Abd-ar-Rahman, in a letter, claimed suzerainty over Chitral in 1882, he claimed Chitral in unqualified terms and asked its rule Aman ul-Mulk to acknowledge his suzerainty and declared that the British had no right of interference with the affairs of his Chiefship. The Governor General of India, Lord Ripon could not leave the letter unchallenged. After telegraphic references to London for permission to threaten Abd-ar-Rahman with ‘force of arms if needful’. Ripon warned him, tactfully, whereupon Abd-ar-Rahman promised to desist from interfering in the affairs of Chitral in the future. |
299_5 | However, on 14 June 1877, officials of the Amir came to Chitral to arrange for the betrothal of one of the Mehtars daughters to the Amirs eldest son, Sardar Habibullah Khan. And to hussel the Mehtar into concluding the matrimonial alliance. The Amir imposed political and economic pressures. Aman however did not crumble to this pressure and continued to be reluctant to enter into the said marriage alliance without the sanction of the British Government. With the few incidence of turbulence apart Chitral remained relatively undisturbed during this period noting which Churchill wrote, "Meanwhile Aman ul-Mulk ruled in Chitral showing great respect for the wishes of the British Government and in the enjoyment of his subsidy and comparative peace". |
299_6 | Further events
In October 1889, Colonel Durand arrived in Chitral, the Mehtars reception of his guest was most cordial. During the course of the visit Aman readily agreed to the following depending on receipt of increased subsidy:
His assistance in opening up the Peshawar-Chitral road.
Improving the main path in his country to tracks passable by laden muels.
Fortification of certain selected positions to be afterword's pointed out to him.
In 1886, and again in 1888, he sent two of his sons, Afzal ul-Mulk and Nizam ul-Mulk, down to India. They came back much impressed with what they had seen and did all they could to strengthen the alliance of their father with the Great Sircar.
Death
Expiry
Aman ul-Mulk died very suddenly and all the circumstances of his death indicate that he succumbed in the ordinary course of nature to a sudden attack of illness but it is so unusual in Chitral for a Mehtar to come to a peaceful end, that most of the Chitralies believe that he was poisoned. |
299_7 | Gravity
By the time of Aman ul-Mulk's death in 1892, Chitrals primary importance was that it contained the series of valleys stretching from Wakhan to British held India. Fear of this area as an invasion route went back to 1874, amid the claim that Russia could be in British territory within thirteen days with an army if held Chitral. During the Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton, it was deemed expedient, in view of Russian military activity in Central Asia, to obtain more effective control over the passes of the Hindu Kush. And it was the same menace, real or fanciful, which prompted the Marquess of Lansdowne to re-establish the Gilgit Agency in 1889. |
299_8 | Until 1892 Mehtar Aman ul-Mulk had provided a sturdy bulwark to British interests, his death had jeopardised that security. The British preferred to conciliate Nizam ul-Mulk, as he was connected with Umra Khan of Jandul and with the influential Mullah Shahu Baba of Bajaur through his maternal uncle Kokhan Beg. He also had connections in Badakshan, Hunza and Dir.
Build-up to the siege of Chitral
However, with Aman ul-Mulks death, all hell broke loose in Chitral, a three way struggle for succession broke out between two of his sons, Nizam ul-Mulk and Afzal ul-Mulk and their uncle Sher Afzal. Having the fortune of being on the spot Afzal took control and proclaimed himself Mehtar. The first thing that Afzal did was to invite as many brothers as were within reach to a banquet where he murdered them. |
299_9 | Nizam ul-Mulk was away in Yasin, of which he was the governor, when the Mehtarship was seized by his brother Afzal ul-Mulk. Anxious to consolidate his power Afzal asked the British that an officer might be sent to reside permanently in Chitral. Before, however, any arrangements could be made he was killed, after a short reign of a few months, by his uncle Sher Afzal. Nizam ul-Mulk at once hurried to Chitral and succeeded in ousting Sher Afzal. |
299_10 | Nizam, like his brother, asked that a political officer might reside in Chitral territory, and Captain Youngshusband was accordingly sent to Mastuj. Later probably not feeling himself very secure Nizam urged for the headquarters of the residence political officer who happened at that time to be Lieutenant Gurdon, to be shifted from Mastuj to Chitral but while the question was still under determination the Mehtar was murdered by his brother Amir ul-Mulk. Amir demanded recondition from Lieutenant Gurdon who was acting as assistant political agent in Chitral. When Amir ul-Mulk came to him he very properly said that he had no power to grant recognition until instructed to do so by the Government of India but that in all probability he would be recognised. |
299_11 | Aftermath
Amir ul-Mulk had shown himself quite unfit to rule. He had made himself hateful to the Chitralies and had been guilty of treachery to the English. Sir George Robertson therefore declared that subject to the approval of the Government of India, Shuja ul-Mulk his younger brother was recognised as Mehtar. The critical nature of the situation leading up to the siege of Chitral is brought out very clearly in the speech made by Lord Elgin, the Viceroy of India, on 29 March 1895, to the Supreme Legislative Council. |
299_12 | Description
Though admirably suited to govern a savage people, he was exceedingly cruel, treacherous and vindictive. Sir Lepel Griffin has called him – ''a translucent old savage''. At his accession he killed all his near relations except his brother Sher Afzul, who fled. Historian John Keay has put him down as "the cunning genius". whereas orientalist, Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner has referred to him as, "A terrible man, who to extraordinary courage joined the arts of the diplomatist".
Murder of Hayward
Aman ul-Mulk is believed to be the instigator of the murder of British explorer George W. Hayward through the agency of Mir Wali of Yasin.
References
Military history of British India
North-West Frontier Province
Mehtars of Chitral
Princely rulers of Pakistan
Nawabs of Pakistan |
300_0 | GitHub, Inc. is a provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking, feature requests, task management, continuous integration and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
It is commonly used to host open-source projects. As of November 2021, GitHub reports having over 73 million developers and more than 200 million repositories (including at least 28 million public repositories). It is the largest source code host .
History |
300_1 | GitHub.com
Development of the GitHub.com platform began on October 19, 2007. The site was launched in April 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon after it had been made available for a few months prior as a beta release. GitHub has an annual keynote called GitHub Universe.
Organizational structure
GitHub, Inc. was originally a flat organization with no middle managers; in other words, "everyone is a manager" (self-management). Employees could choose to work on projects that interested them (open allocation), but salaries were set by the chief executive.
In 2014, GitHub, Inc. introduced a layer of middle management amid harassment claims made against senior management. Tom Preston-Werner resigned as CEO amid the scandal. |
300_2 | Finance
GitHub.com was a bootstrapped start-up business, which in its first years provided enough revenue to be funded solely by its three founders and start taking on employees. In July 2012, four years after the company was founded, Andreessen Horowitz invested $100 million in venture capital. In July 2015 GitHub raised another $250 million of venture capital in a series B round. Investors were Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital and other venture capital funds. As of 2018, GitHub was estimated to be generating $200–300 million in Annual Recurring Revenue.
The GitHub service was developed by Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner and Scott Chacon using Ruby on Rails, and started in February 2008. The company, GitHub, Inc., has existed since 2007 and is located in San Francisco. |
300_3 | On February 24, 2009, GitHub announced that within the first year of being online, GitHub had accumulated over 46,000 public repositories, 17,000 of which were formed in the previous month. At that time, about 6,200 repositories had been forked at least once and 4,600 had been merged.
That same year, the site was used by over 100,000 users, according to GitHub, and had grown to host 90,000 unique public repositories, 12,000 having been forked at least once, for a total of 135,000 repositories.
In 2010, GitHub was hosting 1 million repositories. A year later, this number doubled. ReadWriteWeb reported that GitHub had surpassed SourceForge and Google Code in total number of commits for the period of January to May 2011. On January 16, 2013, GitHub passed the 3 million users mark and was then hosting more than 5 million repositories. By the end of the year, the number of repositories was twice as great, reaching 10 million repositories. |
300_4 | In 2012, GitHub raised $100 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz with $750 million valuation. On July 29, 2015, GitHub stated it had raised $250 million in funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors of that round included Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and IVP (Institutional Venture Partners). The round valued the company at approximately $2 billion.
In 2015, GitHub opened an office in Japan, its first outside of the U.S. In 2016, GitHub was ranked No. 14 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. It has not been featured on the 2018, 2019 and 2020 lists.
On February 28, 2018, GitHub fell victim to the third largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in history, with incoming traffic reaching a peak of about 1.35 terabits per second.
On June 19, 2018, GitHub expanded its GitHub Education by offering free education bundles to all schools.
Acquisition by Microsoft |
300_5 | From 2012, Microsoft became a significant user of GitHub, using it to host open-source projects and development tools such as .NET Core, Chakra Core, MSBuild, PowerShell, PowerToys, Visual Studio Code, Windows Calculator, Windows Terminal and the bulk of its product documentation (now to be found on Microsoft Docs).
On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire GitHub for US$7.5 billion. The deal closed on October 26, 2018. GitHub continued to operate independently as a community, platform and business. Under Microsoft, the service was led by Xamarin's Nat Friedman, reporting to Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft Cloud and AI. GitHub's CEO, Chris Wanstrath, was retained as a "technical fellow," also reporting to Guthrie. |
300_6 | There have been concerns from developers Kyle Simpson, JavaScript trainer and author, and Rafael Laguna, CEO at Open-Xchange over Microsoft's purchase, citing uneasiness over Microsoft's handling of previous acquisitions, such as Nokia's mobile business or Skype.
This acquisition was in line with Microsoft's business strategy under CEO Satya Nadella, which has seen a larger focus on the cloud computing services, alongside development of and contributions to open-source software. Harvard Business Review argued that Microsoft was intending to acquire GitHub to get access to its user base, so it can be used as a loss leader to encourage use of its other development products and services. |
300_7 | Concerns over the sale bolstered interest in competitors: Bitbucket (owned by Atlassian), GitLab (a commercial open source product that also runs a hosted service version) and SourceForge (owned by BIZX, LLC) reported that they had seen spikes in new users intending to migrate projects from GitHub to their respective services.
In September 2019, GitHub acquired Semmle, a code analysis tool. In February 2020, GitHub launched in India under the name GitHub India Private Limited. In March 2020, GitHub announced that they were acquiring npm, a JavaScript packaging vendor, for an undisclosed sum of money. The deal was closed on 15 April 2020.
In early July 2020, the GitHub Archive Program was established, to archive its open source code in perpetuity. |
300_8 | Mascot
GitHub's mascot is an anthropomorphized "octocat" with five octopus-like arms. The character was created by graphic designer Simon Oxley as clip art to sell on iStock, a website that enables designers to market royalty-free digital images. GitHub became interested in Oxley's work after Twitter selected a bird that he designed for their own logo. The illustration GitHub chose was a character that Oxley had named Octopuss. Since GitHub wanted Octopuss for their logo (a use that the iStock license disallows), they negotiated with Oxley to buy exclusive rights to the image.
GitHub renamed Octopuss to Octocat, and trademarked the character along with the new name. Later, GitHub hired illustrator Cameron McEfee to adapt Octocat for different purposes on the website and promotional materials; McEfee and various GitHub users have since created hundreds of variations of the character, which are available on The Octodex.
Services |
300_9 | Projects on GitHub.com can be accessed and managed using the standard Git command-line interface; all standard Git commands work with it. GitHub.com also allows users to browse public repositories on the site. Multiple desktop clients and Git plugins are also available. The site provides social networking-like functions such as feeds, followers, wikis (using wiki software called Gollum) and a social network graph to display how developers work on their versions ("forks") of a repository and what fork (and branch within that fork) is newest. |
300_10 | Anyone can browse and download public repositories but only registered users can contribute content to repositories. With a registered user account, users are able to have discussions, manage repositories, submit contributions to others' repositories, and review changes to code. GitHub.com began offering limited private repositories at no cost in January 2019 (limited to three contributors per project). Previously, only public repositories were free. On April 14, 2020, GitHub made "all of the core GitHub features" free for everyone, including "private repositories with unlimited collaborators."
The fundamental software that underpins GitHub is Git itself, written by Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux. The additional software that provides the GitHub user interface was written using Ruby on Rails and Erlang by GitHub, Inc. developers Wanstrath, Hyett, and Preston-Werner.
Scope |
300_11 | The main purpose of GitHub.com is to facilitate the version control and issue tracking aspects of software development. Labels, milestones, responsibility assignment, and a search engine are available for issue tracking. For version control, Git (and by extension GitHub.com) allows pull requests to propose changes to the source code. Users with the ability to review the proposed changes can see a diff of the requested changes and approve them. In Git terminology, this action is called "committing" and one instance of it is a "commit." A history of all commits is kept and can be viewed at a later time. |
300_12 | In addition, GitHub supports the following formats and features:
Documentation, including automatically rendered README files in a variety of Markdown-like file formats (see )
Wikis
GitHub Actions, which allows building continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines for testing, releasing and deploying software without the use of third-party websites/platforms
Graphs: pulse, contributors, commits, code frequency, punch card, network, members
Integrations Directory
Email notifications
Discussions
Option to subscribe someone to notifications by @ mentioning them.
Emojis
Nested task-lists within files
Visualization of geospatial data
3D render files that can be previewed using a new integrated STL file viewer that displays the files on a "3D canvas." The viewer is powered by WebGL and Three.js.
Photoshop's native PSD format can be previewed and compared to previous versions of the same file.
PDF document viewer |
300_13 | Security Alerts of known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures in different packages
GitHub's Terms of Service do not require public software projects hosted on GitHub to meet the Open Source Definition. The terms of service state, "By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories." |
300_14 | GitHub Enterprise
GitHub Enterprise is a self-managed version of GitHub.com with similar functionality. It can be run on an organization's own hardware or on a cloud provider, and it has been available since November 2011. In November 2020, source code for GitHub Enterprise Server was leaked online in apparent protest against DMCA takedown of youtube-dl. According to GitHub, the source code came from GitHub accidentally sharing the code with Enterprise customers themselves, not from an attack on GitHub servers.
GitHub Pages
GitHub Pages is a static web hosting service offered by GitHub since 2008 to GitHub users for hosting user blogs, project documentation, or even whole books created as a page. |
300_15 | All GitHub Pages content is stored in a Git repository, either as files served to visitors verbatim or in Markdown format. GitHub is seamlessly integrated with Jekyll static web site and blog generator and GitHub continuous integration pipelines. Each time the content source is updated, Jekyll regenerates the website and automatically serves it via GitHub Pages infrastructure.
As with the rest of GitHub, it includes both free and paid tiers of service, instead of being supported by web advertising. Web sites generated through this service are hosted either as subdomains of the github.io domain, or as custom domains bought through a third-party domain name registrar. When custom domain is set on a GitHub Pages repo a Let's Encrypt certificate for it is generated automatically. Once the certificate has been generated Enforce HTTPS can be set for the repository's website to transparently redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS. |
300_16 | Gist
GitHub also operates a pastebin-style site called Gist, which is for code snippets, as opposed to GitHub proper, which is for larger projects. Tom Preston-Werner débuted the feature at a Ruby conference in 2008.
Gist builds on the traditional simple concept of a pastebin by adding version control for code snippets, easy forking, and TLS encryption for private pastes. Because each "gist" is its own Git repository, multiple code snippets can be contained in a single page and they can be pushed and pulled using Git.
Unregistered users were able to upload Gists until February 18, 2018, when uploading gists became available only to logged-in users, reportedly to mitigate spamming. |
300_17 | Gists' URLs use hexadecimal IDs, and edits to gists are recorded in a revision history, which can show the text difference of thirty revisions per page with an option between a "split" and "unified" view. Like repositories, Gists can be forked, "starred", i.e. publicly bookmarked, and commented on. The count of revisions, stars, and forks is indicated on the gist page.
Education program
GitHub launched a new program called the GitHub Student Developer Pack to give students free access to popular development tools and services. GitHub partnered with Bitnami, Crowdflower, DigitalOcean, DNSimple, HackHands, Namecheap, Orchestrate, Screenhero, SendGrid, Stripe, Travis CI and Unreal Engine to launch the program. |
300_18 | In 2016 GitHub announced the launch of the GitHub Campus Experts program to train and encourage students to grow technology communities at their universities. The Campus Experts program is open to university students of 18 years and older across the world. GitHub Campus Experts are one of the primary ways that GitHub funds student-oriented events and communities, Campus Experts are given access to training, funding, and additional resources to run events and grow their communities. To become a Campus Expert applicants must complete an online training course consisting of multiple modules designed to grow community leadership skills. |
300_19 | GitHub Marketplace service
GitHub also provides some software as a service ("SaaS") integrations for adding extra features to projects. Those services include:
Waffle.io: Project management for software teams. Automatically see pull requests, automated builds, reviews, and deployments across all of your repositories in GitHub.
Rollbar: Integrate with GitHub to provide real time debugging tools and full-stack exception reporting. It is compatible with all popular code languages, such as JavaScript, Python, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, Android, iOS, Go, Java, and C#.
Codebeat: For automated code analysis specialized in web and mobile developers. The supported languages for this software are: Elixir, Go, Java, Swift, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Kotlin, Objective-C, and TypeScript. |
300_20 | Travis CI: To provide confidence for your apps while doing test and ship. Also gives full control over the build environment, to adapt it to the code. Supported languages: Go, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, Python, PHP, Ruby, and Swift.
GitLocalize: Developed for teams that are translating their content from one point to another. GitLocalize automatically syncs with your repository so you can keep your workflow on GitHub. It also keeps you updated on what needs to be translated. |
300_21 | GitHub Sponsors
GitHub Sponsors allows users to make monthly money donations to projects hosted on GitHub. The public beta was announced on May 23, 2019, and the project accepts wait list registrations. The Verge said that GitHub Sponsors "works exactly like Patreon" because "developers can offer various funding tiers that come with different perks, and they'll receive recurring payments from supporters who want to access them and encourage their work" except with "zero fees to use the program." Furthermore, GitHub offer incentives for early adopters during the first year: it pledges to cover payment processing costs, and match sponsorship payments up to $5,000 per developer. Furthermore, users still can use other similar services like Patreon and Open Collective and link to their own websites. |
300_22 | GitHub Archive Program
In July 2020, GitHub stored a February archive of the site in an abandoned mountain mine in Svalbard, Norway, part of the Arctic World Archive and not far from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The archive contained the code of all active public repositories, as well as that of dormant, but significant public repositories. The 21TB of data was stored on piqlFilm archival film reels as matrix (2D) barcode (Boxing barcode), and is expected to last 500–1,000 years.
The GitHub Archive Program is also working with partners on Project Silica, in an attempt to store all public repositories for 10,000 years. It aims to write archives into the molecular structure of quartz glass platters, using a high-precision laser that pulses a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) times per second.
Controversies |
300_23 | Harassment allegations
In March 2014, GitHub programmer Julie Ann Horvath alleged that founder and CEO Tom Preston-Werner and his wife, Theresa, engaged in a pattern of harassment against her that led to her leaving the company. In April 2014, GitHub released a statement denying Horvath's allegations. However, following an internal investigation, GitHub confirmed the claims. GitHub's CEO Chris Wanstrath wrote on the company blog, "The investigation found Tom Preston-Werner in his capacity as GitHub's CEO acted inappropriately, including confrontational conduct, disregard of workplace complaints, insensitivity to the impact of his spouse's presence in the workplace, and failure to enforce an agreement that his spouse should not work in the office." Preston-Werner subsequently resigned from the company. The firm then announced it would implement new initiatives and trainings "to make sure employee concerns and conflicts are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately." |
300_24 | Sanctions
On July 25, 2019, a developer based in Iran wrote on Medium that GitHub had blocked his private repositories and prohibited access to GitHub pages. Soon after, GitHub confirmed that it was now blocking developers in Iran, Crimea, Cuba, North Korea, and Syria from accessing private repositories. However, GitHub reopened access to GitHub Pages days later, for public repositories regardless of location. It was also revealed that using GitHub while visiting sanctioned countries could result in similar action occurring on a user's account. GitHub responded to complaints and the media through a spokesperson, saying: |
300_25 | GitHub is subject to US trade control laws, and is committed to full compliance with applicable law. At the same time, GitHub's vision is to be the global platform for developer collaboration, no matter where developers reside. As a result, we take seriously our responsibility to examine government mandates thoroughly to be certain that users and customers are not impacted beyond what is required by law. This includes keeping public repositories services, including those for open source projects, available and accessible to support personal communications involving developers in sanctioned regions.
Developers who feel that they should not have restrictions can appeal for the removal of said restrictions, including those who only travel to, and do not reside in, those countries. GitHub has forbidden the use of VPNs and IP proxies to access the site from sanctioned countries, as purchase history and IP addresses are how they flag users, among other sources. |
300_26 | Censorship
On December 3, 2014, Russia blacklisted GitHub.com because GitHub initially refused to take down user-posted suicide manuals. After a day, Russia withdrew its block, and GitHub began blocking specific content and pages in Russia. On December 31, 2014, India blocked GitHub.com along with 31 other websites over pro-ISIS content posted by users; the block was lifted three days later. On October 8, 2016, Turkey blocked GitHub to prevent email leakage of a hacked account belonging to the country's energy minister.
On March 26, 2015, a large-scale DDoS attack was launched against GitHub.com that lasted for just under five days. The attack, which appeared to originate from China, primarily targeted GitHub-hosted user content describing methods of circumventing Internet censorship. |
300_27 | On April 19, 2020, Chinese police detained Chen Mei and Cai Wei (volunteers for Terminus 2049, a project hosted on GitHub), and accused them of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." Cai and Chen archived news articles, interviews, and other materials published on Chinese media outlets and social media platforms that have been removed by censors in China. |
300_28 | ICE contract
GitHub has a $200,000 contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the use of their on-site product GitHub Enterprise Server. This contract was renewed in 2019, despite internal opposition from many GitHub employees. In an email sent to employees, later posted to the GitHub blog on October 9, 2019, CEO Nat Friedman stated "The revenue from the purchase is less than $200,000 and not financially material for our company." He announced that GitHub had pledged to donate $500,000 to "nonprofit groups supporting immigrant communities targeted by the current administration." In response at least 150 GitHub employees signed an open letter re-stating their opposition to the contract, and denouncing alleged human rights abuses by ICE. As of November 13, 2019, five workers had resigned over the contract. |
300_29 | The ICE contract dispute came into focus again in June 2020 due to the company's decision to abandon "master/slave" branch terminology, spurred by the George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter movement. Detractors of GitHub describe the branch renaming to be a form of performative activism and have urged GitHub to cancel their ICE contract instead. An open letter from members of the open source community was shared on GitHub in December 2019, demanding that the company drop their contract with ICE and provide more transparency into how they conduct business and partnerships. The letter has been signed by more than 700 people. |
300_30 | Capitol riot comments and employee firing
In January 2021, GitHub fired one of its employees after he expressed concern for colleagues as a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, calling some of the rioters "Nazis." After an investigation, GitHub's COO said there were "significant errors of judgment and procedure" with the company's decision to fire the employee. As a result of the investigation, GitHub reached out to the employee, and the company's head of human resources resigned.
Criticism
Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Git software, has criticized the merging ability of the GitHub interface.
Developed projects
Atom, a free and open-source text and source code editor
Electron, an open-source framework to use JavaScript-based websites as desktop applications.
See also
Collaborative innovation network
Collaborative intelligence
Commons-based peer production
Comparison of source code hosting facilities
DevOps
Gitea
Timeline of GitHub
References |
300_31 | External links
2018 mergers and acquisitions
Bug and issue tracking software
Cloud computing providers
Collaborative projects
Computing websites
Cross-platform software
Git (software)
Internet properties established in 2008
Microsoft acquisitions
Microsoft subsidiaries
Microsoft websites
Open-source software hosting facilities
Project hosting websites
Project management software
Remote companies
South of Market, San Francisco
Version control |
301_0 | Brian Reffin Smith (born 1946) is an artist, writer, teacher and musician born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in the United Kingdom, who won the first-ever Prix Ars Electronica, the Golden Nica, in Linz, Austria, 1987. He lives in Berlin, Germany. |
301_1 | Life
Brought up in Sileby, Leicestershire, Smith attended what was then an early comprehensive school, Humphrey Perkins School, at Barrow-upon-Soar. He studied metallurgy and metal physics at Brunel University (his sculptural use of metals' internal crystal structures featured in the BBC TV's science and technology programme Tomorrow's World) and later took a master's degree in the multi-disciplinary DDR (Department of Design Research) at the Royal College of Art, where he also was appointed a Research Fellow in 1979 and was later appointed College Tutor in computer-based art and design at the RCA from 1980 to 1984. He taught in the UK and France including most London art schools and French Écoles nationales, the Open University in the UK, and the Sorbonne and Arts et Métiers ParisTech in Paris. From 1986 to 2011 he was Professeur, art et informatique, at the École nationale supérieure d'art, Bourges, France. |
301_2 | Working with computers since the late 1960s, Smith was a pioneer of computer-based conceptual art, with the aim of trying to resist technological determinism and "state of the art" technology which might merely produce "state of the technology" art. He was a council member of IRAT, the London-based Institute for Research in Art and Technology. After showing interactive artworks at the Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1983 he was invited by the French Ministry of Culture to intervene in art education, and was later appointed to a teaching post in the École nationale supérieure d'art (National Art School) in Bourges. In the UK in 1979, Smith wrote 'Jackson', one of the first digital painting programs, for the Research Machines 380Z computer, software which was distributed by the Ministry of Education and used in schools and elsewhere. He was involved on-screen and as a programme adviser in BBC TV's The Computer Programme in 1982 and the BBC published his art software for the |
301_3 | BBC Micro. |
301_4 | In the Portsmouth Sinfonia orchestra, composed of players who could barely play their instruments, Smith sometimes played sixth clarinet, for example on the orchestra's World Tour, which started and ended one night in Cardiff, Wales.
Smith has been cited as among the most prolific letter-writers to the UK newspaper The Guardian, along with the celebrated Keith Flett and others.
Smith is a member of the OuPeinPo group of artists, Paris, France (OuPeinPo is to art what the OuLiPo is to literature); and Regent of the College of 'Pataphysics, Paris, France, holding the Chair of Catachemistry and Speculative (or sometimes 'Computational') Metallurgy. He regularly shows artworks and makes performances in the context of 'Pataphysics, often 'zombifying' the audience by wrapping their heads in lengths of bandage or toilet paper. |
301_5 | He is an advocate of including critique or reflection about artworks in the artworks themselves. In 1988 he showed "Artist/Critic" - two Amiga computers, not linked together, using text and a very little artificial intelligence to play the rôles of, respectively, an artist and a critic. Spectators/participants were invited to "help" one or the other text simulations by, for example, telling the artist what the critic said, or meant, and vice versa - the only way the two computers could communicate was by people typing to one what the other had said on its screen, often paraphrasing or adding their own thoughts, to which the critic, or artist, then responded. The concealed stratagem was that the simulations, that of artist and critic, were identical. |
301_6 | Areas of work, research, teaching and performance include ideas of Zombie and 'Pataphysics in art and elsewhere, and the détournement or "hijacking" of systems, mechanisms, programs, etc. from computing and other areas of science and technology, as well as cognitive psychology, to make conceptual art. Smith claims to have become a Philosophical Zombie, and hence to have a deeper insight into problems of existence, artificial intelligence and art, after a botched heart operation in a Paris hospital when, instead of the more usual latex balloon being used to inflate a blocked artery during angioplasty, the team had recourse to a pufferfish (or fugu) which swells rapidly when a harmless voltage is applied to its tail. Smith has insisted, contrary to David Chalmers who invoked the idea of a philosophical zombie as an attempted refutation of physicalism, that it's "Zombies all the way down" (at the 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Riga, |
301_7 | Latvia, 2013.) |
301_8 | Exhibitions of conceptual art, installation art, performance art etc., often computer based, include "Art for Society", Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1979, "Electra", Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1983; Fondation Cartier, Paris, Pixim, 1988, La Villette, Paris, SIGGRAPH, 1988, (USA various and Moscow), Galerie Zwinger, Berlin, and Krammig & Pepper Contemporary, Berlin, 1986–, gallery A3, Moscow 1990, Muses Maschine Art Laboratory Galerie, Berlin, 2014–2015, DAM (Digital Arts Museum) Gallery, Berlin, 2016. |
301_9 | In addition to many books on computers for children and on computer-based arts for adults, Smith has broadcast and written widely on art and technology. He is a book and peer reviewer for Leonardo Journal. Smith contributed presentations to international conferences on Art, Design, Consciousness Studies, Media Histories and Digital Arts. In his writings on computers in the early 1980s (for example "Computers", Usborne Publishing Ltd, 1981) Smith appeared to predict in some detail smart devices such as the iPad and also the idea of using software held not in a computer but remotely, in the cloud, or elsewhere on the World Wide Web.
In his chapter in White Heat Cold Logic: British Computer Art 1960–1980, Smith wrote:
This quotation inspired a symposium, "Ideas before their time", held at the British Computer Society in London in February 2010 at which Smith was the invited Keynote speaker. |
301_10 | Smith's "43 Dodgy Statements on Computer Art", described by Wired as "timeless", included ‘The sadness of most art is that it does not know its future. The sadness of computer art is that it does not know its past’ and ‘What would be pretentious or nonsensical if one said it oneself does not become more worthy when spoken by a computer-generated avatar’.
References
1946 births
Living people
People from Sudbury, Suffolk
People from Sileby
Alumni of Brunel University London
British conceptual artists
British digital artists
University of Paris faculty
Academics of the Royal College of Art
Pataphysicians |
302_0 | Dinocephalosaurus (meaning "terrible-headed reptile") is a genus of long necked, aquatic protorosaur that inhabited the Triassic seas of China. The genus contains the type and only known species, D. orientalis, which was named by Li in 2003. Unlike other long-necked protorosaurs (which form a group known as the tanystropheids), Dinocephalosaurus convergently evolved a long neck not through elongation of individual cervical vertebrae, but through the addition of cervical vertebrae that each have a moderate length. Like other tanystropheids, however, Dinocephalosaurus probably used its long neck to hunt for prey, utilizing a combination of suction, created by the expansion of the throat, and the fang-like teeth of the jaws to ensnare prey. It was probably a marine animal by necessity, as suggested by the poorly-ossified and paddle-like limbs which would have prevented it from going ashore. |
302_1 | Specimens belonging to the genus were first discovered in a locality near Xinmin in Guizhou, China in 2002. At the same locality, which dates to 244 million years ago, other marine reptiles such as Mixosaurus, Keichousaurus, and Wumengosaurus have also been found. While the type specimen consisted only of a skull and the very front of the neck, additional specimens soon revealed the complete form of the body. Further discoveries of Dinocephalosaurus specimens were made in Luoping, Yunnan, China, starting in 2008. At this locality, Dinocephalosaurus would have lived alongside Mixosaurus, Dianopachysaurus, and Sinosaurosphargis. One specimen discovered at the Luoping locality preserves a fetus within its abdomen, indicating that Dinocephalosaurus gave birth to live young like many other marine reptiles. Dinocephalosaurus is the only known member of the Archosauromorpha to give live birth, with the possible exception of the metriorhynchids, a group of marine crocodylomorphs. |
302_2 | Description
Dinocephalosaurus was a large member of the Protorosauria, attaining a maximum body length of at least , compared to a maximum of for Tanystropheus. The known specimens are probably mature, given that they have fused skull bones and lack the multi-cusped teeth seen in juvenile Tanystropheus. Like Tanystropheus, Dinocephalosaurus has an exceptionally long neck ( long) relative to its torso ( excluding the tail). |
302_3 | Skull
The skull of Dinocephalosaurus is low and narrow, with a long premaxilla and maxilla compared to those of Tanystropheus. Both the premaxilla and the maxilla meet at the anteroventral (front bottom) corner and contribute to the border of the nostril, which is located at the anterior (front) end of a long recess that extends along the snout in front of the eye socket (the antorbital depression). The bottom margins of the two snout bones are respectively lined with five and twelve long and nail-like teeth; the third premaxillary and fourth and fifth maxillary teeth are distinctly fang-like. The lower jaw has fifteen preserved teeth, with three of them being fang-like. By comparison, the teeth in adult Tanystropheus are sharp pegs, while they are tricuspid (bearing three cusps) in juveniles. |
302_4 | Unlike the oval-shaped eye socket of Tanystropheus, the eye socket of Dinocephalosaurus appears to be peach-shaped, with a narrow anterior end. On the top of the skull, the parietal is broad and flattened, bearing no trace of the midline crest found in Tanystropheus. The jugal only has two processes, missing the third backward-projecting process present in most other reptiles. Also missing are the retroarticular process of the posterior (rear) lower jaw (another point of distinction from Tanystropheus), as well as additional teeth and a cavity between the pterygoid bones on the palate.
Neck and trunk |
302_5 | Tanystropheus and Dinocephalosaurus accomplished their extremely elongated necks in different ways. The neck of Tanystropheus is composed of 13 elongated cervical vertebrae, whereas the neck of Dinocephalosaurus is composed of at least 27 cervical vertebrae that are not as elongated. Among the 27 vertebrae of Dinocephalosaurus, the longest is the nineteenth, which measures approximately long. By comparison, the longest vertebrae in a Chinese specimen of Tanystropheus are the ninth and tenth, which measure long. Additionally, the cervical vertebrae of Dinocephalosaurus are not hollow, unlike those of Tanystropheus. |
302_6 | Additional features of the cervical vertebrae which distinguish Dinocephalosaurus from other protorosaurs include the low and keel-like neural spines, and the anterior and posterior (rear) articular surfaces of the vertebrae both being concave (amphicoelous). In the first ten vertebrae, the bottom margin is also concave. The long, slender cervical ribs bear frontal projections free of the vertebral bodies, which are also unique to Dinocephalosaurus. These ribs are aligned along the neck and bridge multiple consecutive vertebral joints, from two or three consecutive joints in the anterior the neck to five or six in the posterior neck. There appear to be no distinct processes on the vertebrae for articulation with the ribs. |
302_7 | The trunk of Dinocephalosaurus has at least 26 vertebrae. In Dinocephalosaurus, there appear to be no lumbar vertebrae, or vertebrae of the trunk lacking ribs. The ribs of the sacrum and tail also do not appear to be fused to their corresponding vertebrae. Each of the gastralia in Dinocephalosaurus is composed of three elements instead of four as in Tanystropheus; they differ in that Dinocephalosaurus only has one element on the midline, while Tanystropheus has two elements that combine to form a midline bar. |
302_8 | Limbs
Dinocephalosaurus had relatively large legs terminating in flipper-like feet. The forelimbs and hindlimbs are roughly the same length, unlike Tanystropheus where the forelimbs are much smaller. Whereas most protorosaurs, such as Tanystropheus, Macrocnemus, and Langobardisaurus, had relatively ossified limbs adapted for terrestrial life, the stout limbs of Dinocephalosaurus are poorly ossified and resemble those of nothosaurs. Out of the carpal bones, only six are ossified; similarly, only three of the tarsal bones are ossified. Additionally, the astragalus and calcaneum also do not articulate with each other in the ankle, instead forming simple and rounded ossifications. |
302_9 | These traits are probably neotenic, which similarly characterizes traits found in many other aquatic tetrapods. While Tanystropheus is likely also neotenic, it does not approach Dinocephalosaurus in the extremity of this condition. Several other peculiar traits are present in the feet of Dinocephalosaurus. Unlike Tanystropheus and most other protorosaurs, the fifth metatarsal of Dinocephalosaurus is simple and straight instead of hooked. Tanystropheus merely has a fifth metatarsal which is mildly thickened at the top end, and it additionally possesses a long phalanx on the fifth digit that acts not unlike another metatarsal. On the third digit of the foot, there are four phalanges but none of them appear to be the terminal claw, which suggests that Dinocephalosaurus had a higher-than-average count of at least five phalanges in the third digit.
Discovery and naming
Panxian |
302_10 | The type specimen of Dinocephalosaurus was first discovered in 2002, during fieldwork conducted in Yangjuan Village, Xinmin District, Panxian County, Guizhou, China. It consists of a nearly-complete skull missing the left side of the jaw, as well as several associated cervical vertebrae. It was subsequently stored at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing, China under the collection number IVPP V13767, and a research paper describing the specimen was authored by IVPP paleontologist Chun Li and published by Acta Geologica Sinica in December 2003. |
302_11 | A second specimen discovered at the same locality represents a partially articulated skeleton that is only lacking the tail. Likewise stored at the IVPP, the specimen has the collection number IVPP V13898. The specimen was described in a brief correspondence authored by Li, Olivier Rieppel, and Michael LaBarbera that was published by Science in September 2004; a more detailed description was subsequently published by Rieppel, Li, Nicholas Fraser in a 2008 Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology paper. |
302_12 | The Panxian locality, from where these specimens originated, is part of Member II of the Anisian (Middle Triassic) Guanling Formation, which was initially thought to be 230 million years old, but has most recently been dated to 244 ± 1.3 million years old based on uranium–lead dating. Predominant deposits at this locality are composed of grey to dark grey marly limestone, as well as cherty limestone containing dolomite and bentonite beds. Dinocephalosaurus was specifically found in layer 90 of the Panxian deposits, a thin limestone layer which is traditionally assigned to the Upper Reptile Horizon (layers 87–90). Further below are the Middle Reptile (layers 81–85) and Lower Reptile (77–79) Horizons.
Luoping |
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