Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn (born 8 January 1964) is a British sculptor and visual artist. He is a member of the loose group known as the Young British Artists. He is better known for Alison Lapper Pregnant, a sculpture of Alison Lapper which has been installed on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square, Self, a sculpture of his head made with his own frozen blood, and Garden (2000).

Quinn has used not only conventional sculpture material, but also blood, ice and faeces; his work sometimes refers to scientific developments. Quinn's oeuvre displays a preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life—spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual.

Personal life

He was married to author Georgia Byng and has two children.

Life and career

Quinn was born in London in 1964. He studied history and the history of art at Robinson College, Cambridge. He worked as an assistant to the sculptor Barry Flanagan. Quinn began to exhibit in the early 1990s. He was the first artist represented by Jay Jopling, and his work was exhibited in Charles Saatchi's Sensation.

Self

The self is the subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. In phenomenology, it is conceived as what experiences, and there isn't any experiencing without an experiencer, the self. The self is therefore an "immediate given", an intrinsic dimension of the fact of experiencing phenomena. In some other trends of philosophy, the self is instead seen as requiring a reflexive perception of oneself, the individual person, meaning the self in such a view is an object of consciousness.

The self has been studied extensively by philosophers and psychologists and is central to many world religions. With the recent rise in technology, the self has been discussed under various new emerging fields, such as Technoself Studies.

Philosophy

The philosophy of self seeks to describe essential qualities that constitute a person's uniqueness or essential being. There have been various approaches to defining these qualities. The self can be considered that being which is the source of consciousness, the agent responsible for an individual's thoughts and actions, or the substantial nature of a person which endures and unifies consciousness over time.

Self (programming language)

Self is an object-oriented programming language based on the concept of prototypes. Self was a dialect of Smalltalk, being dynamically typed and using just-in-time compilation (JIT) as well as the prototype-based approach to objects: it was first used as an experimental test system for language design in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2006, Self was still being developed as part of the Klein project, which was a Self virtual machine written fully in Self. The latest version is 4.5.0 released in January 2014.

Several just-in-time compilation techniques were pioneered and improved in Self research as they were required to allow a very high level object oriented language to perform at up to half the speed of optimized C. Much of the development of Self took place at Sun Microsystems, and the techniques they developed were later deployed for Java's HotSpot virtual machine.

At one point a version of Smalltalk was implemented in Self. Because it was able to use the JIT this also gave extremely good performance.

Self (band)

Self (stylized as sElf or SeLF) is an American alternative pop/rock band from Murfreesboro, Tennessee and is largely the creative vision of writer, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Mahaffey.

Though it is not considered a band and not a solo project, Matt Mahaffey is the primary performer of all instrumentation and vocals on studio albums. Other members have contributed occasional parts on albums and have participated in live performances. The band currently consists of Chris James (keyboards, piano, samplers, guitar, backing vocals), Mac Burrus (bass guitar, keyboards, horns, backing vocals), and Jason Rawlings (Drums). Past members include Matt's brother, Mike Mahaffey (lead guitar, keyboards, vocals) and Timm Nobles (bass guitar). Mahaffey cites Electric Light Orchestra, Prince, and Pixies as some of his biggest musical influences.

Band history

Self began with founders Matt and Mike Mahaffey recording songs in their childhood home in the early 90s, following brief forays with other groups. The band's debut album, Subliminal Plastic Motives, was released in 1995 on the Spongebath Records, a label the Mahaffeys helped found. During this early period, the band featured Matt on vocals and guitar, Mike on lead guitar, Tim Nobles on bass, Chris James on keyboards and samplers, and Jason Rawlings on drums.