Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their (...) individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues. (shrink)

The potential use, relevance, and application of AI and other technologies in the democratic process may be obvious to some. However, technological innovation and, even, its consideration may face an intuitive push-back in the form of algorithm aversion (Dietvorst et al. J Exp Psychol 144(1):114–126, 2015). In this paper, I confront this intuition and suggest that a more ‘extreme’ form of technological change in the democratic process does not necessarily result in a worse outcome in terms of the fundamental concepts (...) of democracy and the Rule of Law. To provoke further consideration and illustrate that initial intuitions regarding democratic innovation may not always be accurate, I pose and explore four ways that AI and other forms of technology could be used to augment the representative democratic process. The augmentations range from voting online to the wholesale replacement of the legislature’s human representatives with algorithms. After first noting the intuition that less invasive forms of augmented democracy may be less objectionable than more extreme forms, I go on to critically assess whether the augmentation of existing systems satisfies or enhances ideas associated with democracy and the Rule of Law (provided by Dahl and Fuller). By imagining a (not too far-fetched) future in a (not too far-removed) democratic society, my conclusion is that, when it comes to democracy and the Rule of Law, intuitions regarding technology may lead us astray. (shrink)

Can we speak about a specific real-virtual spatiality in the contexts offered by the post-desktop technological philosophy and practice? Does Augmented Reality have the potential to produce a different type of space in which private and public converge up to the point of their cross identification? More exactly, to create, what media theoretician Jenny Edbauer Rice names a “zone of public intimacy”? The goal of this essay is to explore the possible answers to these questions. At the core of (...) my analysis is the idea that the hybrid character of Augmented Reality is effected by two conditions. On the one hand, by the process of converging real and virtual spaces into a single – although discontinuous – “multimedia” space-image and, on the other, by the tensions existent between private perception and public engagement. My conclusion is that by creating a hybrid convergent space of inclusions and exchanges, AR raises not only the prospect of a new sensorium, but, what is more, it confirms the possibility of a distinct aesthetic paradigm as well as of a different way to articulate social relations. (shrink)

While recent studies suggest that augmented learning employing smart glasses increases overall learning performance, in this paper we are more interested in the question which repercussions ALSG will have on the type of knowledge that is acquired. Drawing from the theoretical discussion within epistemology about the differences between Knowledge-How and Knowledge-That, we will argue that ALSG furthers understanding as a series of epistemic and non-epistemic Knowing-Hows. Focusing on academic knowledge acquisition, especially with respect to early curriculum experiments in various (...) STEM disciplines as investigated by the BmBF “Be-Greifen” project, we take the Be-Greifen holo.lab setup as an example for showing that ALSG shifts the learning focus from propositional knowledge to epistemic competencies, which can be differentiated as “grasping”, “wielding”, and “transferring”. (shrink)

Augmented Reality (AR) is commonly defined as a digital layer of information viewed on top of the physical world through a smartphone, tablet or eyewear. Increasingly, this understanding of AR is shifting to a dynamic framework of ‘smart things’, including wearable technology, sensors and artificial intelligence (AI), with the ability to intercede in key moments and to deliver contextual and meaningful experiences. The things that come into context are the logical next steps in an evolutionary development towards computers that (...) are better able to show empathy in relation to people: even more human-oriented, anticipative and ubiquitous. Thus, this outsourcing of meaning to empathic technologies points to one of the fundamental questions concerning the relation of human and technology – the nature of the trust that users place in technology. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of the prospects and ethics of using AI to achieve human enhancement, and more broadly what we call intellectual augmentation (IA). After explaining the central notions of human enhancement, IA, and AI, we discuss the state of the art in terms of the main technologies for IA, with or without brain-computer interfaces. Given this picture, we discuss potential ethical problems, namely inadequate performance, safety, coercion and manipulation, privacy, cognitive liberty, authenticity, and fairness in more detail. (...) We conclude that while there are very significant technical hurdles to real human enhancement through AI, and significant ethical problems, there are also significant benefits that may realistically be achieved in ways that are consonant with a rights-based ethics as well. We also highlight the specific concerns that apply particularly to applications of AI for "sheer" IA (more realistic in the near term), and to enhancement applications, respectively. (shrink)

The article investigates how the use of extended reality technologies and interactive digital interfaces have affected the design of exhibition spaces. Its main objective is to shed light on how these technologies have influenced the ways in which immersive art installations are conceived and experienced. Particular emphasis is placed on the impact of interactive technologies on how visitors experience exhibition spaces. The article examines an ensemble of immersive art cases, paying special attention to the distinction between immersion and interactivity. Two (...) concepts that are pivotal for understanding the transformations concerning the subjectivity of the exhibition visitor those of the “imagineer” and the “ultra-technologist”, which are analysed in the article. The intention is to render explicit how extended reality technologies have contributed to the design of immersive experiences, significantly influencing the interrelations between the technical, aesthetic and institutional aspects concerning exhibition design and the methods of dissemination of art. (shrink)

Intelligence augmentation was one of the original goals of computing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) inherits this project and is at the leading edge of computing today. Computing can be considered an extension of brain and body, with mathematical prowess and logic fundamental to the infrastructure of computing. Multimedia computing—sensing, analyzing, and translating data to and from visual images, animation, sound and music, touch and haptics, as well as smell—is based on our human senses and is now commonplace. We use data visualization (...) and sonification, as well as data mining and analysis, to sort through the complexity and vast volume of data coming from the world inside and around us. It helps us ‘see’ in new ways. We can think of this capacity as a new kind of “digital glasses”. The Internet of Living Things (IOLT) is potentially an even more profound extension of ourselves to the world: a network of electronic devices embedded into objects, but now with subcutaneous, ingestible devices, and embedded sensors that include people and other living things. Like the Internet of Things (IOT), living things are connected; we call those connections “ecology”. As the IOT becomes increasingly synonymous with the IOLT, the question of ethics that is at the centre of aesthetics and the arts will move to the forefront of our experience of and regard for the world in and around us. (shrink)

Man has built tools to extend his visual experience in order to explore reality beyond his sensory capacity, for example microscopes, telescopes, high shutter speed and infrared cameras. However he has yet to build a tool to fully explore visual realms beyond his ordinary cognitive faculties. With the development of computing, comes the possibility of building a tool to explore the virtual forms/spaces of images that are ordinarily inaccessible to the mind. This article identifies how cognition is ordinarily limited and (...) posits a way of going beyond those limits, by defining a computational model of how those virtual forms/spaces might be created. This definition is based on brief but repeated empirical experiences of ‘higher order’ manifestations. (shrink)

In “How Art Teaches: A Lesson from Goodman”, Markus Lammenranta inquires if and how artworks can convey propositional knowledge about the world. Lammenranta argues that the cognitive role of art can be explained by revising Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbols. According to Lammenranta, the problem of Goodman’s theory is that, despite providing an account of art’s symbolic function, it denies art the possibility of mediating propositional knowledge. Lammenranta claims that Goodman’s theory can be augmented by enlarging it with an (...) account of direct reference developed by Bertrand Russell and contemporary philosophy of language. On this basis, an expanded version of Goodman’s theory can explain how artworks can express propositions even without being linguistic, representational, or non-fictive. Lammenranta explicates his theory by explaining how abstract paintings and literary fictions can mediate propositional claims about the actual, everyday world. (shrink)

Instead of treating art as a unique creation that requires reason and refined taste to appreciate, Elizabeth Grosz argues that art-especially architecture, music, and painting-is born from the disruptive forces of sexual selection. She approaches art as a form of erotic expression connecting sensory richness with primal desire, and in doing so, finds that the meaning of art comes from the intensities and sensations it inspires, not just its intention and aesthetic. By regarding our most cultured human accomplishments as the (...) result of the excessive, nonfunctional forces of sexual attraction and seduction, Grosz encourages us to see art as a kind of bodily enhancement or mode of sensation enabling living bodies to experience and transform the universe. Art can be understood as a way for bodies to augment themselves and their capacity for perception and affection-a way to grow and evolve through sensation. Through this framework, which knits together the theories of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jakob von Uexküll, we are able to grasp art's deep animal lineage. Grosz argues that art is not tied to the predictable and known but to new futures not contained in the present. Its animal affiliations ensure that art is intensely political and charged with the creation of new worlds and new forms of living. According to Grosz, art is the way in which life experiments with materiality, or nature, in order to bring about change. (shrink)

The arts and nursing are profoundly connected. While the relationship between nursing and art has persisted over time, the majority of nursing scholarship on the arts has historically centered upon the art of nursing practice and the cultivation and application of aesthetic knowing. However, there is a burgeoning use of arts‐based strategies is nursing education, research, and practice. Correspondingly, there is a need to understand how such approaches can uniquely contribute knowledge to the nursing discipline in order to support arts‐integration (...) for nursing scholars. We structure our inquiry into arts’ contributions according to two dominant methods of engaging with arts‐based strategies: knowing about (e.g., phenomena) vis‐à‐vis art‐viewing, and knowing through (e.g., embodied knowing) vis‐à‐vis art‐making. In doing so, we explore critical contributions of art to nursing research and educational practices, including arts’ capacity to augment traditional research and communication approaches, democratize the research space, challenge issues of representation, and facilitate education, dissemination, and reflexivity. (shrink)

The title of the film by Steve Kloves (1989) refers to the dual-piano, languishing lounge act performed by two brothers. The resurgence and demise of the musical team is brought about by the addition of a sultry, female vocalist--Susie Diamond. Embedded within the story is an exploration of integrity and its augmentation by the virtues of courage and honesty. Integrity marks an individual whose self is a coherent, consistent whole. Important elements of the individual’s personality are mutually supportive rather than (...) being disparate or in conflict. The integrity scrutinized by the film is Jack’s; it involves the younger brother’s inconsistent fidelity to his considerable musical talent. Late in the story we learn that he despises performing the popular musical fare with his brother and that he really wants to be creative, playing jazz. Although Jack is shown playing piano with modulated passion at a jazz club, we infer that he does so infrequently. Jack’s older brother is not in conflict with himself because his talent is suited to playing the bland tunes that are the staple of the act. Jack’s integrity is compromised because his commitment to his art is half-hearted; he cannot make the leap of faith--in himself. He knows that he hates playing the lounge music, is moved by jazz, and has considerable ability. Jack therefore realizes, however vaguely, that he ought to give himself to the music he loves, despite the risks this would entail. The trajectory of the film-story can be viewed as Jack finally summoning the courage to honestly confront his struggle with integrity and deciding to do something about it. (shrink)

Marcuse suggested the alienation of art from society intrinsic to the aesthetic form represents and recollects an unreal world capable of indicting existing social arrangements while simultaneously providing a sensuous experience of another possible, liberated reality denied by established institutions. Drawing on and recasting part of Marcuse’s theory of art and the aesthetic dimension, the author puts forward several theses regarding art, alienation and abolition of the prison-industrial complex. First, art implies alienation; yet, because of that condition, art offers an (...) antidote to estrangement conducive to PIC abolition. Second, Marx explained why key components of capitalism engender alienation, but expounding upon his analysis reveals how incarceration and the concomitant punitive paradigm also reinforce and reproduce estrangement; art, understood as recollection, can aid in abolition of those institutions. Third, authentic justice implies unimpeded use of creative capacities denied and distorted by the PIC, but art can act as recuperation of those capacities in ways that transform our understanding and practice of justice. Fourth, art can offer a foretaste of liberation while anticipating, expressing and heightening our understanding of the possibilities for fuller freedom and PIC abolition, going against and beyond reformist reforms that have historically functioned to strengthen and expand the PIC. Finally, art augments the spirit of abolition and intimates a mode of being antithetical to imprisonment, the PIC and the alienated way of life associated with criminalization and State coercion. (shrink)

The primary intention of this book is to elucidate the relations between sensory perception and art as a form of knowledge. This enables us to understand how different kinds of art are given their meaning not only from observation, resemblance and reason but also from an artist’s sensitivity to the inner form of sensory experience as it is realized in perception, reflection, memory and imagination. By assuming a number of different points of view, Part 1 shows how the physical object (...) and the act of sensory perception are logically interdependent, and I give my elaboration of this argument two kinds of emphasis. In the first place, it opposes all arguments that support a merging of the mental and physical, as in idealism, materialism, neutral monism and panpsychism. A conceptual distinction is observed because sensory perception gives the physical object its identity. This idea also implies that the physical object is only realized by sentient life - self-aware inner life and a world become possible simultaneously. The second emphasis concerns the mind-body problem, and towards the end of Part 1 I offer an argument which places this problem in a certain light by representing the brain not as a physical counterpart to inner experience but as essentially instrumental to perception and self-awareness, and related experience. The argument in Part 2 is distinguished by a sense of continuity between the nature of sensory perception and the formal resources of artists in both physical and literary media. Hence, in a discussion of Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, I indicate ways in which the painter conveys the inner experience and character of the figures in the painting by means of compositional design, light and colour, and thereby uses these and other sensuous resources to portray human life and experience. This is followed by a discussion of two sonnets by Shakespeare, in which the same general aim is pursued by using the literary resources of figurative language. Finally, a discussion of Hamlet shows how, in this work, the augmentation of figurative language by dramatic form strengthens the view that art can provide a form of knowledge that is based as completely upon intuition about our sensory experience as it is upon reason and observation. Just as my (true) perception of a cup as a vessel for drinking tea or coffee arises immediately from past experience, so the dramatist can see immediately from his or her past experience how a character might perceive things and behave. -/- . (shrink)

This article investigates the hypothesis of creating non-linear audio-visual narratives, through an unanticipated use of traditional print-based games, enriched with videos, via augmented reality (AR) possibilities. A ludic system has been created and presented. Based on a traditional card game, a non-linear cinematic narrative occurs. We attempt to examine the following questions: in which way can we bring together different forms of visual communication, such as graphic design and video? Can the above forms create a complex narrative whole and (...) what kind of rules will be needed for this? How can we enrich traditional forms of gaming with the potentials of AR? Gaming itself demands a set of rules. Can these rules play the role of algorithms in the combined universe that we have designed and created? In which way can the designer on the one hand and the user on the other influence the overall output of the system? What will the user experience be like? The printed card system chosen for this is Tarot and more precisely the Great Arcana, which makes use of the 22 fundamental Tarot figures. (shrink)

Counterfactual thinking has become an established method to evaluate decisions in a range of disciplines, including history, psychology and literature. Elke Reinhuber argues it also has valuable applications in the Fine Arts and popular media. A fascination with the path not taken is a logical consequence of a world saturated with choices. Art which provokes and explores these tendencies can help to recognise and contextualise the impulse to avoid or endlessly revisit individual or collective decisions. Reinhuber describes the term in (...) broad strokes through the disciplines, to show how counterfactualism finds shape in contemporary art forms, especially in photography, film, immersive and interactive media art. (such as 360° content, virtual reality and augmented reality).She analyses the different stages of counterfactuals with examples where artists experience counterfactual thoughts in the process of art production, explore these thoughts in their artwork, or where the artwork itself evokes counterfactual thoughts in the audience. A fascinating exploration for scholars and students of Art, Media and the Humanities, and anybody else with an interest in choices, the art of decision making and - counterfactualism. (shrink)

Special purpose service robots have already entered the market and their users’ homes. Also the idea of the general purpose service robot or personal robot companion is increasingly discussed and investigated. To probe human–robot interaction with a mobile robot in arbitrary domestic settings, we conducted a study in eight different homes. Based on previous results from laboratory studies we identified particular interaction situations which should be studied thoroughly in real home settings. Based upon the collected sensory data from the robot (...) we found that the different environments influenced the spatial management observable during our subjects’ interaction with the robot. We also validated empirically that the concept of spatial prompting can aid spatial management and communication, and assume this concept to be helpful for Human–Robot Interaction design. In this article we report on our exploratory field study and our findings regarding, in particular, the spatial management observed during show episodes and movement through narrow passages. Keywords: COGNIRON, Domestic Service Robotics, Robot Field Trial, Human Augmented Mapping, Human–Robot Interaction, Spatial Management, Spatial Prompting. (shrink)

In this response to Pieter Lemmens’ post-autonomist evaluation of the liberatory potential of digital network technologies, Kate Milberry finds the concept of pharmakon as a diagnostic to uncover what ails the worker in technocapitalism wanting. Through an exploration of Marxian concepts and critical theory of technology, she explores ways to augment political responses to capitalist exploitation in the digital age. Milberry concludes that it is not possible to change the sociotechnical foundation of contemporary life until we fundamentally alter the capitalist (...) social relations concretized in technology. This can only be done through adopting an ethic of care, that is to say: only through love. (shrink)

Firstly, this contribution proposes to address synthographies – images generated through Text-to-image technologies – by deepening the epistemological shift related to the possibility of transposing the image-creation process from the analogue arts to the notational ones (or, by drawing on Nelson Goodman's terminology, from the “autographic” to the “allographic” forms of art). Secondly, the paper highlights how synthographies can be considered partly autographic and partly allographic, since the linguistic prompts constitute only the notational aspect of the generated images. Furthermore, this (...) contribution argues that the recent critiques around such images, which referenced aspects related to the absence of authorial presence and mechanicality, characterised the history of photography since its beginning. Finally, the contribution explores how the possibility to create synthographies that are almost indistinguishable from photographies easily might further separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter, erasing what remains of the visual reliability and documental value of images. (shrink)

Art therapy encourages the use of art materials to express feelings and thoughts in a supportive environment. Art materials differ in fluidity and are postulated to thus differentially enhance emotional response (the more fluid the material the more emotion). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, this assumption has not been empirically tested. The current study aimed to examine the emotional and physiological responses to art making with different art materials. We were particularly interested in vagal activity, indexed by heart (...) rate variability (HRV), because of its association with numerous health related outcomes. In this study, fifty adults (mean age 33 ± 10.27 years, 52% males) participated in a repeated measures experiment, in which they were requested to draw with three art materials (order randomized) differing in their level of fluidity (pencil, oil-pastels and gouache paint) intermittent with periods of music. We measured the emotional response to art making with each material using a self-report measure and matrices of HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. We calculated two indices of HRV, one indicative of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity, and one indicative of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. Art making with gouache paint and oil pastels resulted in improved positive mood, while pencil did not. Art making explained approximately 35% of the variability in parasympathetic reactivity, which may indicate changes in emotional regulation processes during the art-making task. Yet, fluidity was not sufficient to explain the reaction to art-making. Surprisingly, the largest suppression of PNS and augmentation of the SNS occurred during art-making with oil-pastels and not with Gouache. Moreover, PNS and SNS reactivity to oil-pastels were related to emotional valance, which may point to emotional engagement. We can conclude that art-making with oil-pastels, first created in Japan in 1924 to increase self-expression of students, results in a unique emotional and physiological responses. These findings might be explained by the enhanced tactile experience of art-making with oil-pastels along with their relative fluidity, triggering an arousal pattern. Further studies that take the format and presentation of the materials as well as the content of the artwork, into account, are needed. (shrink)

David Berry and Michael Dieter: Introduction -- Florian Cramer: What is post-digital? -- Malcolm Levy and Christine Paul: Genealogies of the new aesthetic -- David Berry: The post-digital constellation -- Lukacs Mirocha: Communication models, aesthetics and ontology of the computational age revealed -- Katja Kwastek: How to be theorized: a f*** academic essay on the new aesthetic -- Daniel Pinkas: A hyperbolic new aesthetic -- Stamatia Portanova: The genius and the algorithm: reflections on the new aesthetic as a computer's vision (...) -- Lev Manovich and Alise Tifentale: Selfiecity: exploring photography and self-fashioning in social media -- David Golumbia: Judging like a machine -- Caroline bassett: Not now? : feminism, technology, postdigital -- Geoff Cox: Postscript on the problem of temporality in the post-digital -- Michael Dieterdark: Patterns: interface design, augmentation and crisis -- Sean Cubitt: Data visualisation and the subject of political aesthetics -- Mercedes Bunz: School will never end: on infantilization in digital environments: amplifying empowerment or propagating stupidity? -- Jussi Parikkathe : City and the city: London 2012 visual (un)commons -- Shintaro Miyazaki: Going beyond the visible: new aesthetic as an aesthetic of blindness? -- Thomas Apperley: Glitch sorting: minecraft, curation and the postdigital -- Marc Tuters: Through glass darkly: Google's gnostic governance -- Vito Campanelli: New aesthetic in the perspective of social photography -- Søren Bro Pold and Christian Ulrik Andersen: Aesthetics of the banal: "new aesthetics" in an era of diverted digital revolutions -- Wendy Chunnet: Works now: belated too early. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Main Street as Art Museum:Metaphor and Teaching StrategiesElizabeth (Beau) Vallance (bio)In truth, walking down Main Street in many American small towns today is rather like walking through an art museum whose walls have mysterious gaps where paintings have been removed for cleaning. Maybe more accurately, walking down Main Street can be rather like walking through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston after a Vermeer, two Rembrandts, and eleven (...) other artworks were stolen in 1990: since the Gardner's charter does not allow it to rearrange its holdings, the resulting gaps remained with only explanatory notes in their too-large spaces on my last visit there. A town I know well has a disturbing number of empty storefronts, identified with only the faint outlines of their former names, their windows holding explanatory notes in the form of signs proclaiming that they are for sale or rent. Thanks to Wal-Mart and other big-box stores thriving in a distinctly nonpedestrian strip north of town, the commerce that once thrived on Main Street has died or been removed to new locations, and the once-lively street-level shop windows that testified to downtown liveliness for foot traffic are now empty, awaiting new life as, very likely, antique shops or restaurants.But in principle, a walk down Main Street can be very much like a stroll through a museum gallery—visually rich, inviting unexpected choices, aesthetically rewarding. This article explores the concept of shop windows as visually ordered compositions much like paintings and other art objects and suggests some approaches to applying this concept in teaching a range of subjects and styles of art in both classrooms and actual museums. For the purposes of argument, we will assume that our mythical Main Street is alive [End Page 25] with businesses of many kinds, with the old-fashioned windows open to the street that allow us to "window shop" for many blocks. Some of my examples are drawn from the very enjoyable experience they still offer, of wandering from image to image, commenting as we go.Museum Visitors as Window-ShoppersConsider the behavior of the average museum visitor, a composite characterization drawn from my years as a museum educator and augmented by a few statistics on how people comport themselves in museums and other public places. The behavior of visitors in art museums is an especially clear case of how people observe deliberate compositions, for in art museums objects are typically arranged fairly sparely, with minimal crowding of the objects themselves, small labels that may or may not explain much about the painting or sculpture or silver tureen, good lighting, and a fairly hushed atmosphere, unless a crowd has gathered for a family festival or a major exhibition.Generally, people come to museums in pairs or small groups and not necessarily with a clear plan beyond perhaps seeing a particular favorite work of art or generally catching the highlights of the collection. Their purpose may be social as much as specifically educational, and those who come with companions tend to chat a bit as they walk through the collection. Generally, other things being equal, they turn to the right on entering the building.1 After that, however, visitors become unpredictable, and they meander among the objects in ways the museum cannot control unless visitors are following a live tour guide or a printed self-guiding tour that recommends stopping at selected objects in a predetermined order. Visitors may move to a large object located in the center of the gallery (such as a medieval suit of armor, an Egyptian mummy case, or an enormous painting on a freestanding wall partition), or to a case filled with many small precious-looking objects (such as pre-Columbian gold jewelry from Peru, or the tiny bass sculptures that are gold weights from the Ashanti culture in Ghana). They may be drawn to something in a familiar style, such as a large Impressionist painting or a Rembrandt-looking portrait. They may gravitate to a favorite object in the collection, or they may be attracted by a new acquisition or a work recently installed after many years in storage. At all these stops, they... (shrink)

Richard Shusterman suggested that Maurice Merleau-Ponty neglected “‘lived somaesthetic reflection,’ that is, concrete but representational and reflective body consciousness.” While unsure about this assessment of Merleau-Ponty, lived somaesthetic reflection, or what the late Sam Mallin called “body phenomenology”—understood as a meditation on the body reflecting on both itself and the world—is my starting point. Another is John Dewey’s bodily theory of perception, augmented somewhat by Merleau-Ponty. -/- With these starting points, I spent roughly 20 hours with St. Benedict Restores (...) Life to a Young Monk (c. 1360), a work of tempera and gold leaf on panel, by Giovanni Del Biondo, active in Italy from 1356 to 1398, on display in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s permanent collection. Following Dewey’s suggestion that “[t]he eye ... is only the channel through which a total response takes place,” meaning that motor, emotional, intellectual and non-visual perceptual capacities become active when we encounter paintings, I describe how the work engaged a range of bodily modalities; and how reflecting on these, in turn, supplied phenomenal articulations of life negating, preserving and enhancing forces important in the culture that produced it, and famously discussed by Friedrich Nietzsche. By virtue of the approach adopted, I also demonstrate Dewey’s belief that intimate engagement with art entails a total coordination of one’s capacities around the artwork, while simultaneously reinforcing Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception and how we can find phenomenal articulations of concepts such as the Nietzschean ones just mentioned. While focusing on Del Biondo’s painting, my main purpose is to engage in body phenomenology practices, and to show, in the words of Shusterman, how “[w]e might sharpen our appreciation of art through more attention to our somaesthetic feelings involved in perceiving art” and indeed the world. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, William Kentridge has consolidated a worldwide reputation as an artist of great verve and scope. He is arguably most widely known for his series of 10 animated films drawn over a period of 22 years, and set in his home city of Johannesburg. Originally conceived as a distraction, something to fill the gaps between exhibitions, the films have magnificently exceeded their brief, establishing instead one of the great characters in contemporary fiction: Soho EcksteinHighveld mining magnate, (...) and Kentridge s alter ego. The timeline of the films covers South Africa s transition from apartheid to democracy. The specific events and crises comprising the country s political transformation form the backdrop to the story unfolding across the screen, but the films are not "about" political events. Instead the saga traces a different and parallel arcSoho s gradual awakening from capitalist blockhead and cuckold to sober penitent, coming to terms with his own frailties and the first signs of mortalityand it is this human quality that gives the films their power and enduring appeal. Matthew Kentridge has witnessed, from first beginnings, the evolution of William Kentridge s technique, themes and ideas. From his unique and privileged vantage point, he has watched the transformation of Soho from individualistic South African megalomaniac into a kind of late-twentieth-century Everyman. This book is his response. This volume also incorporates an element of augmented reality, which readers can explore using their smartphones or tablets, making the book an even more enriching experience.". (shrink)

Significance appears as an alignment of stimuli, from a sea of randomly and methodically inputted or stored content into what we might call patterns in the mind. What Klaus Conrad refers to as apophenia, Micheal Shermer as patternicity and Jung as synchronicity, significance serves as synaptic moments recognizing formal elements of a thought, in many cases as individualized personal and possibly ethnocentric experience packets in the mind that have some significance to us. Finding significance in something, or associative significance between (...) things, can lead to some interesting and poetic creative forms of expression, for authors such as August Strindberg or Peter Watts. New ideas form in the mind from some origin. Apophenia, patternicity and synchronicity pose some interesting models for how the mind might process information not originating through the senses alone. Integrating the terms apophenia and ‘noetics’, this article will seek to define apophenoetics as the process and study of the way that patterns form and are processed and decoded in the mind from the sea of random content, virtual imagery and history (past/present/future), without the immediate influence of external stimuli, and could serve as a model for creativity, spiritual transcendence and connecting emotionally with others. (shrink)

This study proposed a children’s digital art ability training system with artificial intelligence-assisted learning, which was designed to achieve the goal of improving children’s drawing ability. AI technology was introduced for outline recognition, hue color matching, and color ratio calculation to machine train students’ cognition of chromatics, and smart glasses were used to view actual augmented reality paintings to enhance the effectiveness of improving elementary school students’ imagination and painting performance through the diversified stimulation of colors. This study adopted (...) the quasi-experimental research method and designs the pre-test and post-test for different groups. The research subjects are the Grade 4 students of an elementary school in Taitung City, Taiwan. The test tools included an imagination test and an evaluation of painting performance ability. The test results of a total of 30 students before and after the experiment included the experimental group that received the children’s digital art ability training system with AI-assisted learning and 30 students in the control group that had not received the teaching were analyzed by covariance. These results were supplemented by the description and interpretation of student feedback, teachers’ reflection notes, and other qualitative data to understand the performance of the students in the experimental group in terms of imagination and painting performance. (shrink)

Leo Tolstoy's theory of human nature is sketched with Descartes's and Hume's theories of human nature in the background for context. Tolstoy's view is limited to "What Is Art"?, although it could be substantially augmented by references to his other well-known works. "By words a man transmits his thoughts," to which Tolstoy adds, "by means of art he transmits his feelings." Language and art work together to give us an aesthetic education that is built around the forms of communication (...) found in the arts: story-telling, singing, acting, dancing, making, and so on. These activities reflect the fundamentals of human nature; hence, the connection Tolstoy found between human nature and art that previous thinkers had not made. (shrink)

Ces dernières années, des musées d’art contemporain sont apparus partout dans le monde occidental et au-delà. Le nombre de ce genre de musées augmente en permanence. Le touriste d’aujourd’hui, qui se rend dans une grande ville, s’attend à y trouver un musée d’art contemporain, de la même manière qu’il s’attend à y trouver un restaurant italien ou un cinéma. Dans la plupart des cas, ces attentes sont confirmées. Dans le pire des cas, le touriste va apprendre que le musée d’art (...) contemporain est encore en construction et qu’il sera ouvert l’année suivante. Quoi qu’il en soit, cette acceptation si facile de la notion de « musée d’art contemporain » par la culture d’aujourd’hui n’est pas sans importance. Traditionnellement, le musée d’art constituait un endroit dans lequel l’art du passé était collecté, conservé et montré au beau milieu de la vie contemporaine. Mais que signifie construire un musée d’art contemporain ? Que signifie « muséographier » la contemporanéité elle-même?Museums of contemporary art have appeared everywhere in the Western world and beyond in recent years, and they are constantly increasing in number. Any tourist visiting a major city today expects to find a museum of contemporary art, just as they expect to find an Italian restaurant or a cinema. In most cases, this is indeed what they find. At the very least, tourists will find that the city’s museum of contemporary art is still under construction and will open the following year. Whatever the case, the ready acceptance of the “museum of contemporary art” in today’s culture is significant. Traditionally, an art museum was a place where the art of the past could be collected, curated and displayed right in the heart of the contemporary world. But what does creating a museum of contemporary art really mean? In other words, what does it mean “to make a museum exhibit” of contemporaneity itself? (shrink)

If Beckett’s study of Proust has belatedly received the criticisms its author no doubt anticipated, another influential study published a little over thirty years later has, like its predecessor, elicited, among others, the critical response that the author of the Recherche finds himself recruited to the self-serving project of the critic. Gilles Deleuze’s Proust is cast not as the pessimistic Schopenhauerian which Beckett makes of him, but rather, as a force of affirmation in the quasi-Nietzschean register of the ‘powers of (...) the false’. Deleuze would studiously augment his 1964 study with two additions in an effort to improve it. The consequence of this is to render its textual genesis a testament to one of the themes, and for Deleuze the theme of the Recherche, namely, apprenticeship. Moreover, the ‘pedagogy’ to which Proust’s novel subjects the philosopher becomes itself an example of the ‘untimely’ operations of art upon what Deleuze calls the upright or dogmatic image of thought. (shrink)

If Beckett’s study of Proust has belatedly received the criticisms its author no doubt anticipated, another influential study published a little over thirty years later has, like its predecessor, elicited, among others, the critical response that the author of the Recherche finds himself recruited to the self-serving project of the critic. Gilles Deleuze’s Proust is cast not as the pessimistic Schopenhauerian which Beckett makes of him, but rather, as a force of affirmation in the quasi-Nietzschean register of the ‘powers of (...) the false’. Deleuze would studiously augment his 1964 study with two additions in an effort to improve it. The consequence of this is to render its textual genesis a testament to one of the themes, and for Deleuze the theme of the Recherche, namely, apprenticeship. Moreover, the ‘pedagogy’ to which Proust’s novel subjects the philosopher becomes itself an example of the ‘untimely’ operations of art upon what Deleuze calls the upright or dogmatic image of thought. (shrink)

The use of cross-media and transmedia-based art installation has generated new ways for the audience to appreciate, understand and experience art. Transmedia, the integration of multiple media forms to augment a single narrative, has not only been largely used in commercial films, but has also been used by artists to communicate their message more effectively. In this article, we explore some remarkable multi-channel video installations and transmedia artworks to highlight how this technology has shaped new uses of technology as a (...) new medium to express artistic concepts. We discuss one artwork, an experimental collaboration between artists and scientists, entitled Reefs on the Edge, which communicates valuable information about climate change to a general audience. (shrink)

The most popular English arithmetic of the 16th century was Robert Recorde’s Ground of Artes. Of the many surviving editions (15 before 1600), only two were published during Recorde’s lifetime, and a third was published shortly after his death. The first two differ materially from the latter, which was the basis of the long series of „augmented“ or „revised“ editions which appeared from 1561 to 1699. Because of their greater accessibility, discussions of 16th-century arithmetics usually cite these later editions, (...) sometimes tacitly ascribing material to the early editions which does not appear before 1558. (shrink)

This paper considers the way social theorists draw on affective imagery to convey ideas about complex social processes such as the formation of subjectivity within a given habitus. The argument focuses on discussions of art in the work of Elias and Foucault to question whether imagery, and particularly imagery drawn from art, serves to simplify more complex processes of reasoning, or whether the image can be understood as a type of conceptual consolidation of an argument rather than a means to (...) simply illustrate or augment it. The paper also raises the question of whether art is a more complex form of social agency than it was sometimes understood to be in its original social context. (shrink)

3D digitization of social legacy has been utilized to safeguard data about colonial legacy items like design, craftsmanship, and trinkets. The 3-d unfolding of gadgets via improvements including elevated reality, augmented reality, and 3-d printing have affected the fields of expertise records and social legacy and features grow to be extra normal. However, concentrates on that go past the specialized parts of 3D innovation and treat such points as their importance for reclamation, protection, commitment, schooling, exploration, and morals scarcely (...) exist. The point of this paper is twofold: from one perspective, it expects to get a superior comprehension of the materialness of every innovation for various purposes gallery show, and, then again, it centers on the discernment of these innovations. This exploration was completed by joining a writing survey with quantitative and subjective investigations of the information procured through a study of SIX inquiries a. Given the analysis of this quantitative and personal information, we give a few measures to utilizing 3D digitized and printed multiplications to upgrade social encounters. The outcomes show the significance of cautiously planning 3D collaborations in the individual and social settings of end-clients and colonial establishments in a request to make genuine social encounters_._. (shrink)

Deep learning techniques, which use a massive technology known as convolutional neural networks, have shown excellent results in a variety of areas, including image processing and interpretation. However, as the depth of these networks grows, so does the demand for a large amount of labeled data required to train these networks. In particular, the medical field suffers from a lack of images because the procedure for obtaining labeled medical images in the healthcare field is difficult, expensive, and requires specialized expertise (...) to add labels to images. Moreover, the process may be prone to errors and time-consuming. Current research has revealed transfer learning as a viable solution to this problem. Transfer learning allows us to transfer knowledge gained from a previous process to improve and tackle a new problem. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive survey of recent studies that dealt with solving this problem and the most important metrics used to evaluate these methods. In addition, this study identifies problems in transfer learning techniques and highlights the problems of the medical dataset and potential problems that can be addressed in future research. According to our review, many researchers use pre-trained models on the Imagenet dataset in many applications such as skin cancer, breast cancer, and diabetic retinopathy classification tasks. These techniques require further investigation of these models, due to training them on natural, non-medical images. In addition, many researchers use data augmentation techniques to expand their dataset and avoid overfitting. However, not enough studies have shown the effect of performance with or without data augmentation. Accuracy, recall, precision, F1 score, receiver operator characteristic curve, and area under the curve were the most widely used measures in these studies. Furthermore, we identified problems in the datasets for melanoma and breast cancer and suggested corresponding solutions. (shrink)

What role does race play in the moral judgment of character? None, ideally, philosophers insist, contending that the proper assessment of an action requires that we disregard any social values associated with the body performing it. What rightly comes under evaluation, they assert, is the neutral, abstract deed irrespective of the race of the agent. Only under these conditions, presumably, can we gauge true moral worth. Reading together Immanuel Kant and Frantz Fanon on ethics and race, I propose instead that (...) embodied values such as those accorded by race do not distort the portrait of the ethical subject but rather bring that subjectivity into being. Key Words: blackness • embodiment • ethics • Frantz Fanon • Immanuel • Kant • morality • race • value. (shrink)

We explore themes in Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan’s work and apply his Ethics and Economic Progress to problems facing individuals and firms. We focus on Buchanan’s analysis of the individual work ethic, his exhortations to “pay the preacher” of the “institutions of moral-ethical communication,” and his notion of law as “public capital.” We highlight several ways people with other-regarding preferences can contribute to social flourishing and some of the ways those who have “affected to trade for the public (...) good” might want to redirect their efforts. We show how Buchanan’s work has considerable implications for business ethics. Just as his economic analysis of politics changed how we understand government, we think his economic analysis of ethics can (and should) change how we understand business. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)