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Annually on 1 January, Japan's efficient postal system circulates 2.5 billion New Year cards to arrive simultaneously in every home in the country. Based on ethnographic fieldwork around Osaka, this article investigates the continued popularity of this exchange of paper forms in an age of smartphones and fast internet connections. Extending recent anthropological scholarship about digital data, I argue that these seemingly trivial cards have transformative potential. They are active, potent participants in the cultivation, accumulation, and ongoing care of multiple networks of social, economic, and spiritual relationships. Through an analysis of the material and aesthetic qualities of the cards, I highlight how their front‐back design embodies co‐existing, but contrasting, dimensions of Japanese relations along a qualification‐quantification and personalization‐standardization axis. The cards also produce depth and scale by linking intimate, domestic concerns with larger political and economic interests, while weaving together multiple temporal dimensions. Ultimately, they exemplify how the manipulation of surfaces can have profound cosmological consequences. These cards possess a spiritual and social potency that generates an all‐encompassing, intimate closeness that yearly rejuvenates society by reconstituting individuals as part of the whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article serves as an introduction to a collection of papers that respond to Jonathan Palmer's paper on the role of creativity in psychoanalytic work. The contributors, who are known for their creative approach to psychoanalysis and art, offer their unique perspectives on the theme of creativity in psychoanalysis. They emphasize the significance of creativity, aliveness, and play in the therapeutic process, drawing on personal experiences and artistic references. The papers encourage readers to reflect on their own sources of creative expression and consider the role of creativity in their own analytic encounters. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper the characterization of the work of art as a map of intensity, as proposed by Gilles Deleuze in his essay What the children say (gathered in Critique et clinique), will be analyzed. Art’s cartographic aspect is linked to the concept of deterritorialization and the Body without Organs that the philosopher, along with Félix Guattarí, develops in Thousand Plateaus. Thus, the art-cartography represents the becoming-world of the subject that transits the Body-without-organs and the intensive differences that populate the desert of multiplicity. Each way travelled is descripted by an artistic map where the haecceities and the thresholds of flows that pierce through the disorganized bodies are portrayed. The map of intensity would be the cartographic representation of the haul travelled by a subject immersed in a hodologic space, being every line of the map a journey within an intensive space [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the relationship between art and psychoanalysis, specifically focusing on the concept of aesthetic experience and its impact on therapy. The authors discuss how aesthetic experiences can lead to transformative change for both patients and analysts, allowing for new approaches to life and the ability to confront difficult experiences. They emphasize the importance of the analyst's involvement and openness in creating an environment for these experiences to occur. The article also touches on the role of creativity in therapy and the analyst's responsibility to nurture the patient's own creative self. Overall, the article highlights the interplay between art and psychoanalysis and the potential for aesthetic experiences to deepen the therapeutic relationship. [Extracted from the article]

The demand for high-grammage paper, 150 g/m2 or more, is increasing for product protection and aesthetic value. Fold cracking, resulting from high mechanical pressure during folding, considerably decreases the economic feasibility of such products for papermaking companies. Fold cracking can be reduced through creasing, but defects possibly occur as fiber bonds are broken. In this study, the fold cracking of high-grammage paper that was not treated through creasing was explored. The mechanical and folding properties of six types of pulp fibers were evaluated based on their beating degree. The fines content of the fiber differed according to the beating condition. Using pulp with low fines content improved the folding properties. The mechanical properties of hardwood pulp were enhanced with increased beating degree. The mechanical properties of softwood pulp were considerably increased, and fold cracking occurred with increasing beating degree. Therefore, to improve the fold cracking, beating should be applied appropriately, following the type and mixing ratio of pulp fibers. Finally, softwood pulp mixing is proposed as a strategy to control fold cracking while maintaining the unique characteristics of high-grammage paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combining biologically active compounds with nanocarriers is an emerging and promising strategy for enhancing the activities of molecules while reducing their levels of toxicity. Green nanomaterials have recently gained momentum in developing protocols for treating and preserving artifacts. In this study, we designed a functional biohybrid material by incorporating tributyltin(IV) ferulate (TBT-F) into halloysite nanotubes (HNTs), generating a new formulation called HNT/TBT-F. The primary objective was to develop a formulation with robust antimicrobial properties and reinforcing features for treating paper with artistic and historical value. To characterize HNT/TBT-F, assess the HNT's loading capacity, and investigate the TBT-F release kinetics from the nanotubes, various analytical techniques, including UV-Vis and infrared spectroscopies, thermogravimetry, and microscopy analysis, were employed. Furthermore, we evaluated the antimicrobial potential of TBT-F and HNT/TBT-F against Kocuria rhizophila, a bacterial strain known for its opportunistic behavior and a cause of artifact biodeterioration. HNT/TBT-F exhibited a significantly stronger bactericidal effect than TBT-F alone against K. rhizophila cells growing planktonically or those forming a biofilm. This enhanced performance could relate to the confinement of TBT-F within the nanotubes, which likely improved its physical-chemical stability and increased the local concentration of TBT-F upon contact with the bacterial cells. Additionally, we evaluated the mechanical properties of a paper treated with HNT/TBT-F, assessing any potential alterations in its color. The findings of this study highlight the favorable attributes of the HNT/TBT-F formulation and its potential for developing protocols aimed at consolidating and preserving culturally significant paper objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary artistic practices were provided with a space for reflection and the creation of opinion in the galleries of the Fundació Espais and in the pages of its art magazine, Papers d'Art. A group of independent voices of multidisciplinary artistic production was made audible thanks to this publication that provided a critique which forged dynamic connections between artistic meaning and social and cultural contexts. This paper highlights a shift in meaning of the conception of contemporary art as a key element in intellectual culture, including politics, philosophy, science and other creative formats such as music and literature. Based on an analysis of the critical awareness of the various contributors to the magazine and on the historiographic study of certain aesthetic and symbolic questions, a review of the articles published in the Studies and Research section is detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late in his artistic and scholarly career, W.G. Sebald decided to eschew then-emergent modes of computational media in favor of analogue production techniques. Sebald himself often remarked on his encounters with media, both new and old, expressing a consistent interest in the materiality of writing. In his own artistic practice, he preferred the process of handwriting to what he called the tyranny of "PC Perfectionism." Scenes of writing, and the technologies of pen, paper, and pencil, appear regularly throughout Sebald's corpus, especially in The Rings of Saturn (1995) and Austerlitz (2001). These elegiac encounters with residual technologies informed Sebald's literary aesthetic. The novel Austerlitz, in particular, foregrounds media history and the evolution of modes of writerly work. In this novel, written in the shadow of new modes of digital writing that were becoming ubiquitous at the end of the twentieth century, Sebald's poetics of media obsolescence emerges as key preoccupation in his aesthetic project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Rushdie papers as a case study, this essay discusses questions of commodification, access, preservation and cultural nationalism related to the acquisition of the literary archives of post-colonial authors. Who should own this archive? What is the archival fate of writers with a tenuous relationship with their place of birth? Finally, how does the well-guarded, commodified, expensively acquired archive privilege aura and secrecy over the treasures in the readily available, published literary corpus? This reading suggests that we need to attend equally to the aesthetic value of the literary imagination as part of the discussion in archival studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic data from central Serbia, the article uses the concept of "esthetic formations" to consider how divergent expressions of Orthodox Christianity intersect in postsocialist space. The majority of Serbs identify as "Orthodox" and Orthodox imagery pervades the public sphere—but only a minority engage concertedly with liturgical practice. Through their regular fasting and churchgoing such self-identifying "believers" embody an Orthodox esthetic which is at once connected to—and yet distinct from—the overarching Orthodox cultural context. Whilst for churchgoers such embodiment represents sincerity and commitment, for many others it represents fanaticism and excessive piety. Overall, the article makes two claims. First, that "esthetic formations" are not internally rigid and that esthetics can divide as much as they unite. Second, that embodied esthetics allow different actors to articulate different moral claims about what constitutes sincere Orthodox practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper is considered a highly innovative novel, hailed by critics as avant-garde and experimental. However, many have also emphasized its (white) postmodernist aesthetics, often placing it in conversation with the works of writers such as David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, and George Saunders. A more robust reading of the text is necessary, one that accounts for its formal aesthetics but also privileges its place within the Latina/o canon. This essay argues that reading The People of Paper as a genrebending text allows us to converse with Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of autohistoria, which enhances the novel's greater decolonial project. Reading the novel through autohistoria theory helps us understand how the text breaks down grand narratives of Eurocentricity as well as one-dimensional narratives of an oppressed Latina/o population. Ultimately, the novel portrays the destructive nature of these marketable "sad stories" and shows how they commodify Chicana/o and Latina/o bodies. We conclude that Plascencia's aesthetics do not make the text any less a Latina/o novel. Instead, the novel draws connections to decolonial and Chicana feminist theories to demonstrate how these aesthetics do important deconstructive work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the characterization of the work of art as a map of intensity, as proposed by Gilles Deleuze in his essay What the children say (gathered in Critique et clinique), will be analyzed. Art's cartographic aspect is linked to the concept of deterritorialization and the Body without Organs that the philosopher, along with Félix Guattarí, develops in Thousand Plateaus. Thus, the art-cartography represents the becoming-world of the subject that transits the Body-without-organs and the intensive differences that populate the desert of multiplicity. Each way travelled is descripted by an artistic map where the haecceities and the thresholds of flows that pierce through the disorganized bodies are portrayed. The map of intensity would be the cartographic representation of the haul travelled by a subject immersed in a hodologic space, being every line of the map a journey within an intensive space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Site Specific, um Romance, by Fábio Morais (2013), unites the narrative literary text in several arts and in an academic monograph. In order to analyze the structural arrangement of the book, this paper presents it as words converted into images and takes the essay "Voyage on The North Sea", by Rosalind Krauss (1999), as a foundation to the understanding of this singular literature work related to audiovisual. Besides noting the aesthetic efficacy of a written book that can be an image art, as conclusions, I suggest that the work seems to point to the relationship between humanity, literature and image as ever closer,. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage visualizations are works of the cultural imaginary and this paper examines the artwork Artistic License: VR Sydney Cove circa 1800, which foregrounds the interpretive nature of heritage visualization. It is a reimagining in VR of A View of Sydney Cove, New South Wales, 1804, a contemporaneous print of Sydney Cove. Existing in the liminal space between accuracy and authenticity it is both art object and heritage visualization. The dual nature of this work supports engagement with wider audiences, fostering and broadening debate at individual, institutional, academic and societal levels about the nature and role of heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its conception in Australia, subject 'English' has been considered central to the curriculum. The English literature strand in the curriculum does not stipulate specific texts but is more explicit regarding what should be considered as an appropriate 'literary text'. Curriculum documents emphasise the need for texts to have cultural and aesthetic value whilst suggesting that English teachers include texts that are chosen by students, texts from Asia, and texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors. Despite this, the influences of British colonisation manifests in Australian English teachers' text selection as they continue to choose texts from the 'canon'. This paper is framed by Rigney's principles of Indigenism and Indigenous Standpoint Theory (1999; 2017) and will draw on my own lived experience—as an Aboriginal student, English teacher, and now researcher—to examine the presence of colonialism in English and the consequent subordination of Indigenous perspectives. This paper will suggest some of the ramifications of prioritising colonial texts while teaching and learning on Aboriginal land and investigate how the construction of subject English could feel assimilative to Indigenous people. I will explore this by using my own experience of learning William Shakespeare's 'Othello' as a student and of teaching Doris Pilkington's 'Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence' as a teacher as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Aesthetics medicine, a controversial branch of clinical medicine known for its high degree of commercialization, faces numerous conflicts, particularly in some developing countries. The global aesthetics medicine industry requires enhancements of its legal and supervision framework and risk management systems. Aims: This paper aimed to provide a comprehensive visual analysis of academic achievements related to regulatory and legal issues in the field of aesthetic medicine and to identify its development trends and research hotspots. Methods: The Web of Science Core Collection was employed to retrieve relevant studies, resulting in a total of 602 research articles after selection. Utilizing bibliometric methods and CiteSpace, this study analyzed the primary countries, institutions, authors, journals, hotspots, frontiers, and trends in this domain. Results: The findings indicated rapid increases in the number of published papers. The United States emerged as the leading contributor with 131 research papers and the highest intermediate centrality. Eleven keyword clusters were identified, with "adolescence" and "office‐based surgery" being the most recent topics. We also analyzed the trends and frontiers of legal research in medical aesthetics. Conclusion: The importance of informed consent has been increasingly emphasized, and research in the field of medical aesthetics has been gradually expanding beyond individual cosmetic procedures. The management system has become more comprehensive, moreover, guidelines and medical laws have been continually published, with research shifting toward a holistic perspective that encompasses patients, medical aesthetic providers, and regulatory authorities in the study of medical aesthetics regulation and legislation. This paper also proposes some innovative directions for future research and applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the changing picture of depression, or melancholy as it was called in the seventeenth century, as in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Freud distinguished between mourning and melancholia in the sense of healthy and pathological reactions to loss; but the concept has also evolved within psychoanalysis, as in Klein's 'On the sense of loneliness'. The process of working through depression with a goal of self-knowledge seems to come gradually closer to a Keatsian worldview of the quest for beauty and truth, in line with Meltzer's 'aesthetic conflict'. Using some of Keats' letters and poems from the winter and spring of 1818–1819, the paper traces his analysis of his own depression, as he works out how to exorcise its persecutory qualities, and learns to 'see great things in loneliness'. His understanding of the two types of melancholy, depressive and persecutory, culminates in his 'Ode on Melancholy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-known that digital learning materials influence the classroom curriculum and didactics. At the same time, few studies examine the role of the data visualizations offered by digital learning materials. Data visualizations signpost the emergence of students as data subjects who can be observed and compared on a computer screen. They thus shape teachers' socio-technical ways of seeing student learning and are likely to influence student assessments. Drawing inspiration from Science and Technology Studies (STS), this paper advances an analytical framework for eliciting the politics of data visualizations, focusing on automation, agencies, and aesthetics. The framework is exemplified through a case study of a popular Danish digital mathematics platform. In a concluding discussion, the paper considers the importance of addressing unsettled and ethical questions about the role of automated digital systems in teachers' knowledge practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a thorough overview of gel-based cleaning methods used in art conservation. It covers the evolution of traditional approaches and the development of advanced gel systems. The paper examines the structure, characterization, and classification of gels, as well as their mechanical properties, which are crucial in art conservation. Various types of gels, including hydrogels, organogels, xerogels, semi-IPNs, and microgels, are discussed in detail, highlighting their unique properties and suitability for specific conservation applications. The advantages, limitations, and applications of both natural and synthesized polymers that form the basis for these gels are also analyzed. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of gels in cleaning different materials such as paper, paintings, metals, and textiles. These case studies showcase successful removal of stains, pollutants, and unwanted layers while preserving the integrity and aesthetic value of the artworks. By contributing to the existing knowledge on gel-based cleaning approaches in art conservation, this comprehensive review establishes a foundation for future research and development in this field. The review concludes with a discussion on the challenges and potential future directions in the development and optimization of gel-based cleaning methods for art conservation. Overall, this article is a valuable resource for researchers, conservators, and students in the field of art conservation, providing essential information and insights into the use of gels as effective and safe cleaning agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the rise in extremist radicalization using digital media, antifascist education must develop its own philosophy of digital technologies. The first half of this paper turns to Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman's theory of the American agitator as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's notion of fascist projection and paranoia to provide groundwork for this project. Though written in the 1940s, Frankfurt School essays on agitation and projection can be thought of as early indications of the importance of affect in fascist politics, which has only become intensified with the advent of digital media. The paper then proceeds to apply a critical concept of "agitational aesthetics" to chan culture in the present day, highlighting the affective economy of memes in the radicalization process. In conclusion, a series of questions are posed to educators to help them think through the complexities of intervening before, during, and after the online agitation of proto-fascist tendencies in youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ethical value of artistic artifacts in challenging the unequal valuation of working bodies with a focus on the contemporary art exhibition 'Useless bodies?' by Danish artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Drawing on Judith Butler's work and posthuman theory, particularly Braidotti's contributions, the paper argues that this exhibition exemplifies how art can foster an ethics of interdependency, one that both critiques dynamics of misrecognition and imagines alternative futures. Furthermore, the paper proposes that this affirmative and critical ethics provides theoretical and methodological foundations for work and organization studies, prompting new questions about the significance of embodiment, esthetics, and artifacts for conducting (ethical) research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into cultural tastes has commonly sought to analyze and understand preferences in terms of notions of familiarity. Such approaches are inadequate, however, when it comes to examining our engagement with unfamiliar cultural content. This paper responds to this gap by examining how people respond to algorithmic recommendations of culture through a case study of unfamiliar Australian art music. It firstly identifies three different "techniques' by which audiences engage with and value music: functional, emotional, and intellectual. The analysis then examines how these techniques, together with measures of familiarity and the acoustic "materiality" of the music itself, combine to predict the affective ratings given to music recommendations. The findings show that audiences display a surprising capacity to engage with the unfamiliar. The paper argues for the need to develop more nuanced understandings of the relationship between familiarity and preferences which are capable of accommodating a taste for the unfamiliar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my responses to Kahn and Ceccoli (this issue), I express admiration for the aesthetics of their formulations of the experience of immigration and that of the dance, respectively. I describe the impact of Kahn's understanding of the effect of immigration on my experience of dancing. I also elaborate on Ceccoli's account of implicit, non-verbal dimensions of our analytic encounters, and of the reparative impact of recognition with two clinical vignettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Chemical principles are used to direct the preservation and conservation of paper cultural relics. • The mechanisms of acidic, alkaline and oxidative degradation of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in paper are summarized. • The intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting the degradation process of paper are addressed. • The advantages and disadvantages of remedial and preventive conservation methods for paper relics are discussed. Paper cultural relics, with the great historic and artistic value, experience aging and degradation during their long-term preservation. The degradation of paper involves various chemical reactions with complicated mechanisms due to the multiple components of paper itself and the complex factors that promote paper aging process. Therefore, it is of great importance to deeply understand the chemical essence and scientific principle of paper degradation, so as to propose the effective conservation methods for paper relics. This review summarized the chemical mechanisms of acidic, alkaline and oxidative degradation of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin in paper, and discussed the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that affect paper degradation systematically. Moreover, the interaction among the three types of degradation routes was analyzed for the first time, and the evolution of kinetic models for paper degradation was introduced to evaluate the durability and expected lifetime of paper. On this basis, the advantages and disadvantages of remedial and preventive conservation methods for paper relics are summarized, and the fundamental scientific principles was prospected to guide the further development of paper conservation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts Sunnie Ododo’s ‘Facekurade Theatre’ as a framework for interrogating the stage performance of Eliagu Ameh’s Displaced as Directed by Olagoke Ifatimehin. The paper highlights issues of corruption, oppression, sex slavery, deceit, destitution and suicide as dehumanizing experiences which permeates the lives of people living in Internally Displaced Persons’ camps. Drawing from the theoretical exigencies of Sunny Ododo’s facekuerade theatre aesthetics, the paper explores the semiotic use of mask (both the presence and absence of it) as a technique which aids the conveyance of double intentionality and the artistic transformation of performers/actors into multiple roles. This paper further contends ideologically that the corruption associated with the provision of aid to Internally Displaced Persons in their camps is orchestrated by inhumane and faceless individuals who profit at the expense of those in desolation and such practices should be curtailed. Women and children suffer most from displacement as they become victims of sexual predators and several oppressive conditions. This paper reveals that the deliberate aesthetic use of mask in the performance especially by the antagonist aided in enhancing and consolidating the meanings intended in the performance text. It concludes that the use of performance aesthetics such as Facekuerade theatre in framing the portrayal of social issues in theatre offer audiences the opportunity reflects on their prevailing realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an significant element for the continuation and development of modern design, conventional Chinese decorative patterns satisfy people's emotional dependence on nationality and tradition. At present, traditional patterns are designed mainly by professional designers. Due to the high dependence of the entire design process on labor, the design efficiency is untoward to improve to rapidly meet the explosive growth of business needs. However, a large amount of material data on the Internet and the development of artificial intelligence technology provides an opportunity to work out this development bottleneck. This paper mainly studies the design and implementation of the automatic generation of traditional pattern image layout based on the generation of confrontation network and aesthetic evaluation to score the quality of the generated traditional pattern image. And the scoring results are fed back to the traditional pattern layout generation network to improve the quality of the generated traditional pattern layout pictures so that the entire network structure can adapt to disparate scene requirements. The results show that the SSIM value of the structural similarity obtained by the image of the traditional pattern automatically generated by the model in this paper is larger and closer to 1 than the value of the SSIM obtained by other methods, indicating that the image of the traditional pattern automatically generated by the model has the highest aesthetic quality. Furthermore, the research provides assistance for intelligent technology to solve the development bottleneck of conventional pattern design. Finally, the future research of digital image quality evaluation approach is prospected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Grotto-Heavens and Blissful Lands" (dongtian and fudi, 洞天福地) is a unique concept of sacred space in China and even in East Asia, combining beautiful natural scenery, rich historical heritage, and diverse cultural heritage. This paper tries to explain Mount Jingfu's (jingfu shan, 靜福山) aesthetic representations. The results show that the landscape's physical environment projects the spatio-temporal system and the concept of the universe in Daoist aesthetic ideals. With the spatial evolution of divine immortals' abodes from imagination to reality, people's yearning for divine cave palaces is transformed into their connection with and their expression of the palaces in exploring space interests and aesthetic trends that are then integrated into the secular life of thousands of households through living religious rituals. Preserved by local religious believers, the ritual activities incorporated geographic, familial, and divine interactions, and characterised essential social aesthetics. By exploring a typical case of Lingnan Region (lingnan, 嶺南, an old term for South China), this paper aims to elucidate the significance of the Grotto-Heavens and Blissful Lands as living heritage in contemporary society across multiple dimensions, and to provide a theoretical basis for the protection of its system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on two research projects in the Brussels-based artistic workspace and NGO Globe Aroma, this paper shows how artists with a (recent) migration background make sense of the arts and the space in which they are produced. Born out of a need to counter the dominant presence of men in this artistic workspace and create a welcoming environment, textile-making and live radio were used as means of reclaiming space, fostering solidarity, and sharing personal narratives. Textile-making, traditionally associated with domesticity, was repurposed for public exhibition, challenging the dichotomy between private and public spheres. Furthermore, the projects challenged neo-colonial dynamics and traditional research methodologies. While asking which (micro-)political meaning these artists give to their works and practices, the paper also reflects on the cultural thresholds experienced by migrant artists wishing to access hegemonic arts institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to introduce a meaning-making process called 'sensuous abstraction' as one approach to aesthetic experience in line with Dewey's philosophy. Dewey highlights aesthetic experience as the best form of experience that integrates emotional and intellectual qualities to foster deep learning and insights. Building on contemporary research on sensation, affect, and human brain, this paper identifies two distinct modes of human understanding: the linguistic/conceptual system and the sensuous-imaginative system. The former, often associated with abstraction and intellectual thinking, is heavily emphasized in traditional schooling, but the latter, integral to human cognition, is sadly neglected and overlooked. While situational meaning offers a way to bridge the two systems, it often falls short of leading to aesthetic experience. In response, sensuous abstraction can promote a process of meaning making that becomes more general than sensation but never as general as linguistic categories while maintaining its sensory wholeness as aesthetic experience demands. Using a classical artwork as an example, this paper concludes sensuous abstraction can be adopted as one approach for educators to create learning experiences by integrating sensory experience and generalizations and abstractions that lead to aesthetic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composer, author, and teacher, John Cage, was exercised by our 'inability' to truly listen when approaching sound. In exploring the influences on Cage's avant-garde style, specifically the spiritual discipline found in both Zen Buddhism and Chance operations, this paper attempts to distinguish his philosophy (and use) of silence and chance as an aesthetic pedagogy. In accordance with Dewey's aesthetic theory and Shusterman's Somaesthetics, resolving the inability to listen is aesthetically conceived as somatic 'attuning' to the occurrence of chance sounds in the ambience of the world. By maintaining Cage's spiritually informed approach as a compositional framework, this paper highlights how his philosophy of silence is pedagogically illustrative of the active engagement we can have with the world. This approach is most apparent in Cage's 4'33", where the 'musicalizing' of everyday sounds erodes the boundaries between art and life, creating a continuity with the world. Somewhat problematically, Cage attempted to make this possible by channelling experience into a state of immersion, unifying art and life by 'letting go' of subjectivity. But as is shown by the Fluxus artists who were inspired by Cage's teachings, the possibility for negotiating Cage's terms brings with it an opportunity to theoretically reflect on the educational processes that underpin Cage's approach to sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intersection of art history and AI technology. Special attention is paid to Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), a machine learning technology widely used in AI art. This technology is particularly interesting to art history and the philosophy of art because it raises enduring questions about the creative process of artmaking, especially what constitutes a new and original work of art. While this is a relatively new area, it is possible to discern emerging directions where art and AI intersect. One pressing issue concerns the use (or misuse) of algorithmically enabled technologies and datasets to perpetuate longstanding art-historical biases. The critical position adopted in this paper shares this concern. I examine a notable example of GAN technology that claims to create original art styles. While such experiments in computational creativity are technically interesting, their artistic aims can be questionable. I argue a mechanical model of artistic development based solely on the autonomy of style is problematic for at least two reasons: 1) it uncritically reinstates a formalist view of art history; 2) it recreates a narrow style-centric ‘historical modernism.’ However, despite voicing these reservations, I also discuss the potential of this technology to engage with topics of critical relevance to art history and the philosophy of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UEFA Europa League group stage clash on 24 October and 7 November 2019 between Celtic FC of Glasgow and SS Lazio of Rome offers fascinating insight into ultra social movements as forms of leadership. This exploratory research paper conceptualizes this tie as an Event that provides both a pivotal point of cross-cultural reflection on ultra fan groups as emergent social movements, and a means for the examination of forms of social leadership in contemporary society. In such terms, the paper initiates a critical consideration of The Green Brigade, a self-styled ultra fan group of Celtic FC as an emerging social movement, characterizes the group in terms of the differentiated ultra/ultraS binary, begins to qualitatively address the question as to levels of support for the group among the wider constituency of Celtic supporters, and as such, tentatively explores the groups' leadership and organizational characteristics. The research concludes that a creative and action-oriented leadership style can be discerned. While organizational characteristics require further examination, intimations of a logic of development emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jonathan Palmer's account of his artmaking practice illuminates the distinct role of intuition and the centrality of aesthetic experience in the creative process. The paper throws light on the work of creating a setting and framework that lends itself to an intuitive engagement, both in art-making and in analysis, an engagement that allows the painter and analyst to remain open to new formations of not-yet represented elements of experience. This paper shows what is entailed in keeping the possibly of fresh experience alive, by careful attention to the framing of things, the properties of the chosen medium, and the experimental posture of the practitioner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pictorialism emerged in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a global aesthetic movement that argued for photography's artistic status on par with other plastic arts more powerfully than ever. Archives from South Asia demonstrate the movement's thriving life in the subcontinent with Calcutta emerging as a centre and its bilingual amateur photographer-writers as major participants simultaneously engaging in globally circulating specialist discourses on pictorialism and popular discussions of their practice aimed at public pedagogy. By looking into Bangla periodical press this paper investigates how Bengali pictorialists used popular Bangla magazines in the early twentieth century to establish their distinct voice regarding what counted as artistic photography as they engaged with a non-specialist mass readership. Mass-circulated Bangla articles were not vernacular translations of knowledge and practices produced in metropolitan locations and disseminated in transregional languages like English. Vernacular was an extension of Bengali amateur photographers' participation in global photography, as they remained grounded in their historical specificity. These amateur photographers were bilingual intellectuals who wrote in English for a global public and in Bangla for a Bangla-reading publics and refraining from translating culture as they moved across languages. Indeed, articulations in vernacular didn't mean a venularization of practice; they indicate plurality of belonging and affiliation that crafted the pictorialist aesthetic of the Bengali amateurs. By unpacking this intellectual history, this paper decenters the Euro-US-centric history of pictorialism towards writing an interconnected history of the artistic movement, while also complicating the category of modern Indian art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of Chinese embroidery, Gu's Embroidery in the late Ming Dynasty and Ding Pei's Principles of Embroidery can be considered the pinnacle of embroidered painting's practice and texts. Nowadays, there are many studies of the unique position and artistic value of "embroidered painting." It is in this context that this paper offers a particular consideration of the technical aspects of embroidered painting in the Ming and Qing dynasties. With a series of specific questions, this paper is designed to examine embroidered painting from the perspective of stitching technique and gender, as well as its dual status as both an independent art form and a stitching technique. However, due to its nature as a women-exclusive art, embroidery suffered discriminatory treatment and was unable to acquire its privileged status in a male-dominated imperial society. As a result, embroidered painting had to win discourse power by not emphasizing its sophisticated technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author calls for articles or papers to be published in the journal on topics about the Americas like culture, aesthetics, history, and ethics.

One task of the Greek literary critic was to help his reader understand how style moves audiences. This paper explores the implications of such a task and thereby reveals how Greco-Roman dance traditions were reflected by and embedded in conceptualizations of verbal art in antiquity. Kinaesthetics—a system of physiological and psychological responses to movement—is offered as the key to unlocking style's kinetic essence and the far-reaching influences of performance over theories of verbal art. As the criticism of Longinus and Dionysius of Halicarnassus demonstrates, dance offered aesthetic lessons that could be translated into a variety of contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the so-called ‘irony debate,’ one of the most infamous polemics of modern intellectual history, G.W.F. Hegel accuses his German romantic contemporaries of being ‘nicht im Ernst’—not in earnest—with respect to irony. Given how this complaint is lodged alongside other, highly charged accusations (e.g. ‘hypocrisy,’ ‘absolute sophistry’ and ‘evil’), the unsurprising consensus among scholars today is that Hegel’s critique does injustice to the philosophically rich account of romantic irony. Acknowledging this vindication of romantic irony, however, I want to revisit and revise this criticism in a way that makes sense of the seemingly paradoxical claim that earnestness, rather than being the opposite of irony, is the very condition of it. Having clarified both the robust normativity of romantic irony as well as the specific shortcomings of Hegel’s critique in the first part of this paper, I then articulate what I call the ‘earnestness condition,’ or EC, according to which irony is in earnest when (a) it has substance, and (b) is grounded in its substance. Developing this account both advances a largely stalled scholarly discussion of the irony debate and develops a conceptual language useful for distinguishing between thick and thin kinds of irony in use today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aesthetics, generally understood as an intensified emphasis on the sensorial look and feel of urban environments, has become an important perspective through which urban scholarship is examining the economic, social, political and cultural processes of urban regeneration projects across the globe. Much of this aestheticising work is now mediated by many kinds of digital technologies. The entanglement of digital technologies with the sensorial feel of urban redevelopments manifests in many different ways in different urban locations; it is deeply reshaping the embodied experiencing of urban life; and it enacts specific power relations. It is the focus of this paper. Drawing on the work of Lefebvre and Jansson, this article develops the notion of 'textured' space in order to offer an analytic vocabulary that can describe distinctive configurations of urban experience at the intersection of specific urban environments, bodily sensations, and digital devices. Analysing embodied sensory politics is important because various aspects of bodily sensoria are central to human experiences of, and relations between, both self and other. Hence bodies are enrolled differentially into different expressions of these new urban aesthetics: while some are seduced, others are made invisible or repelled, or are ambivalently entangled in digitally mediated aesthetic atmospheres. The article offers some examples of the power relations inherent in the textured aesthetics of three of the most significant, and interrelated, processes of contemporary, digitally mediated urban change: efforts to be seen as a 'world-class city' and to facilitate gentrification and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I try to 'rethink' consistency as an educational quality for the 3rd millennium, following Italo Calvino's choice to take it up in his lecture series Memos for the Next Millennium, and despite the fact that the (final) lecture devoted to this quality remained unwritten. After reflecting on how consistency already plays a certain role in Calvino's other lectures, I expand on the specific educational implications of this role's unresolved ambivalence, in order to argue that this ambivalence, properly understood, might be fully constitutive of the educational significance of consistency. To achieve such an understanding I turn to Gilles Deleuze and his concept of style as a 'practice' of consistency. Not only does a stylistic understanding of consistency offer interesting possibilities for a more constructive approach to the said ambivalence—between consistency as static stability and dynamic keeping-together- but as such it also speaks to a number of issues that are directly and fundamentally educational in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methodological paper connects posthuman conceptualizations of voice with artistic research and examines whether it opens toward different registers and levels of embodied and aesthetic forms of knowing that cut across normative accounts of what it means to know. We start from what Patti Lather calls 'a praxis of stuck places' and ask how to give voice to experiences such as chronic illness and pain, while at the same time disrupting representational forms of illness and pain. To investigate this, we first critically engage with the popular genre of the health diary and its representational form. Secondly, we explore how Lisa A. Mazzei concept of 'voice without subject' can support us in disrupting the normative and representational production of voice, while working with a failing voice. Finally, we analyze the sound installation, A Borrowed Diary —made by M. Broeckmeyer, and explore how it opens up alternative approaches to voice and chronic pain. We will argue that making 'voice without subject' work, touch, and resonate can impact the lives of people who often remain unheard, in that it acknowledges experiences and expressions that are mostly not validated. Creating with 'voice without subject' makes tangible how personal experiences, however, temporarily, contribute to the bigger picture of how we look at and listen to people with illnesses and/or disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in empirical data, this qualitative study analyses how female anti-feminist influencers engage in metapolitics and how anti-feminist practices of metapolitics unfold within visual social media content. Employing multimodal content analysis and netnography this study adds to the research on metapolitics and political influencers. Applying network media logic as an analytical lens this paper is focusing on three female anti-feminist influencers and their metapolitical practices on TikTok. Results show that female anti-feminist influencers use different practices to metapolitize their (supposed) private life while introducing their audience to anti-feminist ideas and other anti-feminist actors, e.g., actors of the so-called manosphere. Further, they use TikTok to commodify their anti-feminist worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two main aims. The first is to examine our normative relations to artworks and cultural artefacts threatened by damage or destruction. The second aim is to develop an argument for the notion of aesthetic obligation, offering an alternative model of explanation of our normative relations to artworks and cultural artefacts which relies neither exclusively on the object of appreciation ('object-oriented approach') nor on the appreciating subject ('subject-oriented approach'). Instead, an aesthetic obligation is held to be directed primarily towards the community which appreciates the object on the grounds of its aesthetic value. That which unites an aesthetic community is the practice of valuing an object for its aesthetic character. The notion of aesthetic obligation thus relies both on the community of subjects which holds an object in high aesthetic regard and that same object's aesthetic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Francis Sparshott introduced the term 'remote art' in his 1982 presidential address to the American Society for Aesthetics. The concept has not drawn much notice since—although individual remote arts, such as palaeolithic art and the artistic practices of subaltern cultures, have enjoyed their fair share of attention from aestheticians. This paper explores what unites some artistic practices under the banner of remote art, arguing that remoteness is primarily a matter of some audience's epistemic distance from a work's context of creation. I introduce palaeoart—the depiction of extinct prehistoric fauna and flora, especially from the Mesozoic—as a paradigmatic case of remote art, showing that its remoteness is secured both by the deceptively rich cognitive load required for its creation and appreciation, and by its existence at the margins of the institutional artworld, which ensures that this cognitive loading is largely obscured. Too often, remote art is not just inscrutable, it is invisible to us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tuned mass damper (TMD) is a classical device interesting for reducing deformations between DOFs without physically connecting them. However, it has a practical limit due to the increase in mass required for improving its performance. A building mass damper (BMD) uses mode coupling to make the upper substructure of a chain-like structure behave as a TMD for the lower substructure, which avoids adding mass to the structure. Unfortunately, near-uniform chain-like structures require isolation of the upper substructure for tuning the BMD, making it impractical for retrofitting existing structures since it is an in-series intervention. This paper proposes and evaluates using an inerter, instead of isolating the upper substructure, to control vibrations through mode coupling in a chain-like structure. From an analytical and numerical study, it was found a significant reduction of lower substructure deformations by implementing solely an inerter and a damper in the upper substructure. The inerter-based approach showed similar performance to the classical BMD with the advantage of being an in-parallel intervention. Therefore, this approach constitutes a practical retrofit to improve the dynamic behavior of existing structures with excessive deformations in a lower substructure whose functionality or esthetics would be compromised if control devices were installed in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into often-unspoken realms of human suffering -- tragedy and psychosis -- to uncover the role that art can play in understanding and overcoming experiences that defy conventional language. Dovetailing from Heidegger's aesthetics, I explore the unique qualities that make the artistic process such a powerful medium for existential restoration, connecting otherwise disparate individuals to the wider tapestry of humanity. Ultimately, I argue for a new understanding of 'artistic literacy,' emphasising the benefits that unconventional modes of expression hold for the expresser, listener and humanity at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Form aesthetic principles represent an aesthetic consciousness developed through long-term human labor practices, which are crucial for the design and evaluation of product form. The equilibrium aesthetic principle is a vital component of the form aesthetic principles, significantly influencing other form aesthetic principles. This study introduces a method for product form design and evaluation using an improved equilibrium measurement formula that incorporates the number of form elements and is structured in three phases: design (phase 1), evaluation (phase 2), and analysis (phase 3). In phase 1, the primary functional units (form elements) of the target product are identified, and its potential spatial arrangements are analyzed. Clay models, 2D wireframes, and 3D models are constructed based on spatial layout schemes, yielding several alternatives. In phase 2, the original equilibrium measurement formula (E_I), the improved equilibrium measurement formula (E_II), and expert perceptual questionnaires (E_III) are applied to evaluate the alternatives, obtaining their respective rankings. In phase 3, a Pearson correlation analysis is conducted on the three evaluation results, followed by a discussion of the research findings. The results show a significant correlation between E_II and E_III, with a correlation coefficient of 0.986, enabling the selection of the optimal design solution based on their rankings. The findings indicate that incorporating the number of form elements as a new parameter in the measurement formula enhances the accuracy and effectiveness of form aesthetic measurement. This paper uses the bladeless fan as an example to demonstrate the proposed method, offering product designers a novel approach to enhance form aesthetic measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines and considers the emergence of (fine art) Experimental Studies at Brighton Polytechnic in 1971, as part of the art school modernisations after the Coldstream Report of 1960. Research, to date, suggests this was the first and maybe the longest-running experimental fine art media course in the UK. The photographic works of artists John Hilliard and Roger Cutforth are discussed as they taught the early years of the course, and Roger Cutforth's work The Non-Art Project (1970–1971), an offsite project and small black and white photobook gives this article its title. The term non-art, as a category in art history is explored along with Information (Kynaston McShine, MOMA 1970), and both are suggested as an important underpinning for the emergence of Experimental Studies, which became Fine Art Critical Practice (FACP) and was run out to form a general fine art course 2020–2022. The end of the paper looks at a particular FACP student degree show from 2015 which resembles some noteworthy curatorial work of Roger Cutforth from 1971. This visual coincidence is taken as a marker – not of deliberate reference, but of a tradition that can still be used with agency and aesthetic purpose by later generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, Online Social Media platforms have witnessed a dramatic expansion due to the substantial reliance of individuals on these communication channels. These platforms are widely utilized to convey emotions, share opinions, and express preferences through various means such as artworks, multimedia contents, and blogs. Researchers are exploring these individual-specific traits for biometric identification. Aesthetic biometric systems utilize users' unique preferences across various subjective forms such as images, music, and textual contents. This study introduces a novel multi-modal aesthetic system, with a primary contribution to the development of an attention-based fusion method for person identification. The proposed identification system leverages a deep pre-trained model for high-level feature extraction from visual and auditory modalities. The paper introduces a novel fusion architecture named attention-based residual fusion network (ARF-Net) to incorporate two heterogeneous aesthetic feature vectors. The proposed model yielded a 99.38% identification accuracy on the Aesthetic Image Audio 32 (AIA32) dataset and 98.02% identification accuracy on Aesthetic Image Audio 52 (AIA52) dataset, outperforming other aesthetic biometric systems. The proposed architecture stands out for its efficiency, showcasing a lightweight architecture with minimal parameters, ensuring optimal performance in different modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]