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Biopics on artists influence the popular perception of artists' lives and work. Projected Art History highlights the narrative structure and images created in the film genre of biopics, in which an artist's life is being dramatized and embodied by an actor. Concentrating on the two case studies, Basquiat (1996) and Pollock (2000), the book also discusses larger issues at play, such as how postwar American art history is being mediated for mass consumption. This book bridges a gap between art history, film studies and popular culture by investigating how the film genre of biopics adapts written biographies. It identifies the functionality of the biopic genre and explores its implication for a popular art history that is projected on the big screen for a mass audience.
Der Begriff der Agency – nur unbefriedigend als 'Handlungsmacht', 'Handlungspotenzial' oder 'Handlungsinitiative' ins Deutsche übersetzbar – ist in verschiedensten wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen unverzichtbar, um Prozesse gegenseitiger Einflussnahme, die Reichweite oder den Ausschluss von Handlungsspielräumen oder Verantwortung für konkrete Vorgänge zu bestimmen. In der Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaft hat er lange Zeit keine systematische Rolle gespielt. Erst in Reaktion auf Perspektiven der seit den 1990er-Jahren boomenden Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) und daran anschließenden Entwürfen der Medienwissenschaft wurden vergleichbare Konzepte von medial verteilter Handlungsmach...
Humankind has a special relationship with rain. The sensory experience of water falling from the heavens evokes feelings ranging from fear to gratitude and has inspired many works of art. Using unique and expertly developed art-historical case studies – from prehistoric cave paintings up to photography and cinema – this book casts new light on a theme that is both ecological and iconological, both natural and cultural-historical. Barbara Baert’s distinctive prose makes Looking Into the Rain. Magic, Moisture, Medium a profound reading experience, particularly at a moment when disruptions of the harmony among humans, animals, and nature affect all of us and the entire planet. Barbara Baert is Professor of Art History at KU Leuven. She teaches in the field of Iconology, Art Theory & Analysis, and Medieval Art. Her work links knowledge and questions from the history of ideas, cultural anthropology and philosophy, and shows great sensitivity to cultural archetypes and their symptoms in the visual arts.
Are ‘persons’ physical things, members of the species homo sapiens which exist solely in materialist form, continuous in structure with other living things? Or is the issue a more complex one: are there more dimensions to being a person than mere physical, biological existence? These are matters of interest and discussion in many fields of study in this age of individuality. In this wide-ranging essay, the author addresses various aspects of the issue, including the history of self and identity. The ancient tradition of dualism is rejected in favour of a straightforward holistic and naturalistic account of selfhood; it is argued that the mind arises in an emergent sense from the body and personal identity is best expressed in terms of a self-reflective and meaningful narrative. The approach is principally from an analytic philosophy point of view but also takes on–board psychological and sociological aspects of self and identity.
Mechatronic design processes have become shorter and more parallelized, induced by growing time-to-market pressure. Methods that enable quantitative analysis in early design stages are required, should dependability analyses aim to influence the design. Due to the limited amount of data in this phase, the level of uncertainty is high and explicit modeling of these uncertainties becomes necessary. This work introduces new uncertainty-preserving dependability methods for early design stages. These include the propagation of uncertainty through dependability models, the activation of data from similar components for analyses and the integration of uncertain dependability predictions into an optimization framework. It is shown that Dempster-Shafer theory can be an alternative to probability theory in early design stage dependability predictions. Expert estimates can be represented, input uncertainty is propagated through the system and prediction uncertainty can be measured and interpreted. The resulting coherent methodology can be applied to represent the uncertainty in dependability models.
This book looks closely at the endings of narrative digital games, examining their ways of concluding the processes of both storytelling and play in order to gain insight into what endings are and how we identify them in different media. While narrative digital games share many representational strategies for signalling their upcoming end with more traditional narrative media – such as novels or movies – they also show many forms of endings that often radically differ from our conventional understanding of conclusion and closure. From vast game worlds that remain open for play after a story’s finale, to multiple endings that are often hailed as a means for players to create their own s...
The first in-depth study of the Utrecht artist to address questions beyond connoisseurship and attribution, this book makes a significant contribution to Ter Brugghen and Northern Caravaggist studies. Focusing on the Dutch master's simultaneous use of Northern archaisms with Caravaggio's motifs and style, Natasha Seaman nuances our understanding of Ter Brugghen's appropriations from the Italian painter. Her analysis centers on four paintings, all depicting New Testament subjects. They include Ter Brugghen's largest and first known signed work (Crowning with Thorns), his most archaizing (the Crucifixion), and the two paintings most directly related to the works of Caravaggio (the Doubting Tho...
This volume presents the work of the “Collegium for the Advanced Study of the Picture Act and Embodiment” at the London Warburg Institute. It gathers studies on various topics: on the history and anthropology of the “picture act” (Bildakt); on theoretical and methodological aspects of picture act theory; on the role of image perception in the philosophy of the extended mind; on phenomena related to haptic experience of the image in the Middle Ages and early modern period; on somatic communication processes; on semiotic aspects of iconological thinking; and on the living dynamics of internal and external movement in imagery and language.
Human beings have the inherent ability to live their lives in a self-determined and species-appropriate way, meaning oriented towards the conservation of the environment and the resources. This ability has however been deliberately suppressed for thousands of years by the elites that are in power, previously an alliance between throne and altar and currently by corporations and politicians. In order to increase and ensure their own power they have always understood how to make people dependent and to inculcate them "to serve with joy and obedience". Thus authoritarian social structures emerged and consequently people are treated like pets: slavery, serfdom and wage-dependency today. This dev...
This volume unravels the debates on the »Participation Age«: Instead of perpetuating visions of social »all-inclusion« or the »digital divide«, the collection reclaims collectivity as an effect of technological and historical conditions. Thinking of participation both as promise and duty, the contributions analyse the attractions and impositions connected to the socio-technical formation of collectivities. The constraints of participation are addressed by focusing on the mutual shaping of user practices and technological environments. It is hence a relational thinking that allows specifying the manifold interconnections of technology, practices and discourses.