A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the group C≡N. This group, known as the cyano group, consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. In inorganic cyanides, the cyanide group is present as the anion CN−. Salts such as sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide are toxic. Hydrocyanic acid known as hydrogen cyanide, or HCN, is a volatile liquid, produced on a large scale industrially, it is obtained by acidification of cyanide salts. Organic cyanides are called nitriles. In nitriles, the CN group is linked by a covalent bond to carbon. For example, in acetonitrile, the cyanide group is bonded to methyl; because they do not release cyanide ions, nitriles are far less toxic than cyanide salts. Some nitriles, which occur as cyanohydrins, release hydrogen cyanide. In IUPAC nomenclature, organic compounds that have a –C≡N functional group are called nitriles. Thus, nitriles are organic compounds. An example of a nitrile is CH3CN, acetonitrile known as methyl cyanide. Nitriles do not release cyanide ions.

A functional group with a hydroxyl and cyanide bonded to the same carbon is called cyanohydrin. Unlike nitriles, cyanohydridins do release hydrogen cyanide. In inorganic chemistry, salts containing the C≡N− ion are referred to as cyanides. Although the cyanide ion contains a carbon atom, it is not considered organic; the word is derived from the Greek kyanos, meaning dark blue, as a result of its being first obtained by the heating of the pigment known as Prussian blue. The cyanide ion is isoelectronic with molecular nitrogen. Cyanides are produced by certain bacteria and algae and are found in a number of plants. Cyanides are found in substantial amounts in certain seeds and fruit stones, e.g. those of bitter almonds, apricots and peaches. Chemical compounds that can release cyanide are known as cyanogenic compounds. In plants, cyanides are bound to sugar molecules in the form of cyanogenic glycosides and defend the plant against herbivores. Cassava roots, an important potato-like food grown in tropical countries contain cyanogenic glycosides.

The Madagascar bamboo Cathariostachys madagascariensis produces cyanide as a deterrent to grazing. In response, the golden bamboo lemur, which eats the bamboo, has developed a high tolerance to cyanide; the cyanide radical ·CN has been identified in interstellar space. The cyanide radical is used to measure the temperature of interstellar gas clouds. Hydrogen cyanide is produced by the combustion or pyrolysis of certain materials under oxygen-deficient conditions. For example, it can be detected in the exhaust of internal combustion engines and tobacco smoke. Certain plastics those derived from acrylonitrile, release hydrogen cyanide when heated or burnt; the cyanide anion is a ligand for many transition metals. The high affinities of metals for this anion can be attributed to its negative charge and ability to engage in π-bonding. Well-known complexes include: hexacyanides 3 −. Tetracyanides 2−, which are square planar in their geometry. Among the most important cyanide coordination compounds are the octahedrally coordinated compounds potassium ferrocyanide and the pigment Prussian blue, which are both nontoxic due to the tight binding of the cyanides to a central iron atom.

Prussian blue was first accidentally made around 1706, by heating substances containing iron and carbon and nitrogen, other cyanides made subsequently. Among its many uses, Prussian blue gives the blue color to blueprints and cyanotypes; the enzymes called. The biosynthesis of cyanide in the -hydrogenases proceeds from carbamoyl phosphate, which converts to cysteinyl thiocyanate, the CN− donor; because of the cyanide anion's high nucleophilicity, cyano groups are introduced into organic molecules by displacement of a halide group. In general, organic cyanides are called nitriles. Thus, CH3CN can be called methyl cyanide but more is referred to as acetonitrile. In organic synthesis, cyanide is a C-1 synthon. RX + CN− → RCN + X− followed byRCN + 2 H2O → RCOOH + NH3, or 2 RCN + LiAlH4 + 4 H2O → 2 RCH2NH2 + LiAl4 The principal process used to manufacture cyanides is the Andrussow process in which gaseous hydrogen cyanide is produced from methane and ammonia in the presence of oxygen and a platinum catalyst.

2 CH4 + 2 NH3 + 3 O2 → 2 HCN + 6 H2OSodium cyanide is produced by treating hydrogen cyanide with sodium hydroxide HCN + NaOH → NaCN + H2O Many cyanides are toxic. The cyanide anion is an inhibitor of the enzyme cytochrome c oxidase in the fourth complex of the electron transport chain, it attaches to the iron within this protein. The binding of cyanide to this enzyme prevents transport of electrons from cytochrome c to oxygen; as a result, the electron transport chain is disrupted, meaning that the cell can no longer aerobically produce ATP for energy. Tissues that depend on aerobic respiration, such as the central nervous system and the heart, are affected; this is an example of histotoxic hypoxia. The most

Ali Kazma is a Turkish video artist, best known for his series documenting human activity, labor that explores the meaning of production and social organisation. He was born in Turkey, he graduated from Robert College in 1989. After studying photography in London, he returned to the US to study film, he received his MA from The New School in New York City. Kazma has been living in Istanbul since 2000. Kazma's videos raise fundamental questions about the meaning and significance of human activity and labor and the meaning of economy and social organisation, he has exhibited his work in the Istanbul Bienniall, Tokyo Opera City, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Centre, Istanbul Modern, 9th Havana Biennial, San Francisco Art Institute, Lyon Biennial, Sao Paulo Biennial among others. Ali Kazma was granted the 2001 UNESCO Award for the Promotion of the Arts and received the 2010 Nam June Paik Award given by North Rhine-Westphalia Art Foundation in the field of media art, with his “Obstructions” series that he had been working on since 2005.

Living and working in Istanbul as a video artist since 1998 and becoming internationally established from 2007, Ali Kazma creates sets of short films that are between ten and twelve minutes long. In his multi-video formats, Kazma creates archives of the human condition through his fascination with man and the nature of life and death. In presenting the audience with conflicting notions of human nature, as well as our spatial relationship with our body and our physical surroundings, we are shown the complexities within these topics. Kazma is represented by Galeri Nev Istanbul. In the video series he has been producing since 2005 under the heading of Obstructions, Ali Kazma has carried out research into the tense equilibrium between order and chaos, life and death, into the efforts of the human being to hold together a world inclined towards disintegration and destruction, the diversity of physical production developed to achieve this, what such production might mean in the context of human nature.

The Obstructions series was instigated by a 37-day performative work Ali Kazma realized for Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions II: Tünel-Karaköy, an exhibition co-curated for public space by Fulya Erdemci and Emre Baykal in 2005. In this work titled Today, Kazma had tracked down micro-level production and repair activities within the daily life of the neighbourhood where the exhibition took place, he first recorded and edited these activities with his camera during the day and projected them onto a shop window facing Tünel Square in the evening on the same day. After the working hours ended and the time for rest arrived, the shift of Kazma’s work started, conveying the events of the day into the night throughout the exhibition period. Employing a small shift in time as its presentation strategy, this performative work articulated the artist’s own physical and mental labour as part of the daily routine of the neighbourhood and rendered visible in fragments all kinds of production and repair activities that we pass by without paying any attention –or do not see at all, because they are carried out indoors.

Today brought, into its own field of research, the human body at work in the broadest sense of the word, the tools that function as the extensions of the body, the common gestures and acts of working bodies, the grammar of its language formed via similarities between these gestures and acts. The Obstructions series, presently comprising 16 works, was triggered by the idea of revisiting the fragments that made up Today stripped of their urban/spatial context; the majority of works in the Obstruction series have a focus on the effort human beings exert for the continuity, measurement, maintenance, repair etc. of the body. The field of execution, or the final product of such activities could either be a material object that supports or supplements the body, while at other times the body becomes the site of performance, or operation itself. Kazma's Resistance series grows out from within the Obstructions series. In other words, Resistance conveys the productive activity of the body as a creative force directly onto the body itself.

The effort to resist, implied in the title of this series, references the fundamental scientific truth that everything must disintegrate, perish. Ali Kazma’s Obstructions point towards the sum of production and repair activities as the human being’s endless effort against this absolute process of annihilation –and death– in order to at least decelerate and delay this process. In Resistance, Ali Kazma explores the discourses and management tactics developed for the body today and focuses on the interventions and strategies that both release the body from its own restrictions and restrict it in order to control it, he attempts to understand the changes the body undergoes not only via the subjects before his camera, but via the spaces that stage the reconstruction of the subject. The metaphorical perception which since Ancient Greece sees the body as the coffin, cage, or cell that confines the mind or the spirit takes “Resistance” into spaces where bodies are controlled and restricted –yet no body is seen within the architectural con

Drummuir railway station is a preserved station that serves the village of Drummuir, Scotland on the Keith and Dufftown Railway. The station served the nearby Drummuir Castle estate and Botriphnie Church and the old churchyard are in the vicinity, together with St Fomac's Well; the station was first opened in 1862 by the Dufftown Railway. The station was closed to passengers by British Railways in May 1968, but the line remained open for freight and special excursions for some time, it was reopened as a preserved station in 2003 by the Dufftown Railway Association. In 1869 the OS map shows that only a single platform was present with no passing loop, however a goods shed, loading dock and sidings were in situ, approached by trains from the north-east. By 1902 the station had two platforms, two signal boxes, a pedestrian footbridge, the goods yard to the east and a station building with ticket office and waiting room on the southbound platform. Ancillary buildings sidings; the up platform had a small wooden shelter.

In 1967 the passing loop was lifted and the signal boxes were closed. The wooden station building was a Great North of Scotland Railway design however the old wooden footbridge had been replaced by a LNER metal design fabricated from old rails and signal wire; the station had closed to regular passenger services in May 1968 and closed to goods on 15/11/71.'Northern Belle' excursion trains from Aberdeen however used the line for several years in the summer from 1984 and BR ran special trains from London until early 1991 when deteriorating infrastructure brought them to an end. The Keith - Dufftown section was however'mothballed' by BR and was purchased by the Keith & Dufftown Railway and it is now publicised as'The Whisky Line'; the station has a car park and nature trail with a bird hide has been created in the old sidings and loading dock area. It is a regular timetabled stop for trains during the operating season with three trains a day in each direction.<ref>Train times on the Keith & Dufftown Railway.

Video and narration - Drummuir railway station