The article considers the nature of series as a narrative, focusing especially on its chronotope, i.e. its spatiotemporal coordinates. The concept of chronotope can be applied at at least two different levels of the interpretation of a narrative: the real world of reception and the expressive form of narration. The impact of series entails both aspects. It is for this reason that series, once on television then on the internet, represented a revolutionary turn in the modern experience of storytelling. Series (...) are therefore bound to the progressive spread of a new form of sociality known as a digital “total mobilisation”. Since the era of TV series up to the emergence of web series, seriality has been able to regulate the increase of interaction in the use of visual devices. Series play the role of a dietetical regulator, which designs the spectators’ attention. An artistic, i.e. experimental, exploitation of this new form of storytelling is possible when one considers the emergence of a new narrative genre, which we propose to call the “short form”. (shrink)

The article aims at showing how far the technologies of audiovisual registration affect not only the ontology of images but also our sense of realism in politics and history. As argue Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, historical events have become “tele-events” after the birth of these technologies. Our handling with images has changed accordingly. As argues Pietro Montani, we no longer consider them as “copies” of real objects but rather as “occasions” for initiating processes of “validation” of history. Hannah Arendt’s (...) opposition between the ancient concept of history being based on praxis and the modern concept of history as “fabrication” (poiesis) of the humankind must be therefore reconsidered. History is rather the negotiation between these two attitudes (praxis and poiesis): cinema might be one of the exemplary sources of this negotiation, as epitomized by the documentary work in the audiovisual archives conducted by Esfir Shub (1927) and Harun Farocki (1992). Representation (Louis Martin) becomes thus a dynamical power of imagination dealing with historical and political reality; consequently, the “ideal spectator”, just as the “ideal reader” for novels (Umberto Eco), is charged with a new task of actualizing the sense of images with regard to their historical and political references. (shrink)

This article compares two philosophers who have a different theoretical origin: respectively, Arthur C. Danto and Jean-François Lyotard. Both of them are interested in the revolutionary character of Andy Warhol’s art. Danto as well as Lyotard argues that Warhol conceives the work of art as a machine: according to the former, it is a philosophical machine; according to the latter, it is a consumerist machine. Nonetheless, the two hypotheses converge on judging Warhol’s art as a turn in the history of (...) art and its relationship to the world. According to Danto, who follows Hegel here, Warhol at the same time interprets and transcends the 1960s and their Zeitgeist. But paradoxically, Warhol’s historical gesture, epitomized by his work Brillo Box, initiates the age of the “end of art”. According to Lyotard, on the contrary, Warhol represents the end of the critical power of modern art, to which the sublime alone can remediate. The two perspectives converge in the idea that the investigation of repetition is the very center of Warhol’s art. Art has now become the pivot of the Western capitalism and consumerist society. Warhol actually explores the different forms and modes of repetition (commodities, icons, symbols) and, in this way, anticipates the confrontation of contemporary art with the “finite infinite” represented by the media world. (shrink)

La Critique de la faculté de juger ne relève pas seulement d’une théorie esthétique, pour originelle qu’elle puisse être. Elle met surtout en œuvre un nouveau discours philosophique. La critique de la métaphysique y est reconsidérée d’une manière positive, comme une réflexion sur la donation de sens à la croisée entre principes généraux et expériences contingentes. Le philosophe italien Emilio Garroni a développé ce nouveau point de vue sur le troisième Critique, en soutenant que, dans cette Critique, Kant a formulé (...) une nouvelle forme de « libre schématisme », et en même temps la primauté de ce schématisme par rapport au « schématisme objectif » de la Critique de la raison pure. De manière générale, il partage l’idée que le schématisme représente le lieu théorique où Kant développe implicitement sa théorie sémantique. Lisant, comme Garroni, Kant après Wittgenstein, nous posons alors la question : qu’est-ce qu’une forme de vie après le langage? (shrink)

Fino a una quindicina di anni fa, l’idea di una connessione forte tra l’estetica da una parte e l’intermedialità e l’interattività dall’altra non sarebbe stata probabilmente pensata nei termini in cui essa emerge nei contributi qui presentati. Di interattività si sarebbe presumibilmente parlato a partire dagli esperimenti di arte interattiva e di incontro tra arte e video: una forma di interazione tutta compresa all’interno di un discorso sulle pratiche artistiche, poco o nulla aperto al conf...

The essay reconsiders Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenology of reading, taken as a possible non reductionist answer to the neuroscientific theories of literature. By emphasizing the aesthetic nature of reading, thanks also to Hans Robert Jauss’ contribution, the idea of a ‘reader’s imagination’ emerges here, as a specific and unique power which allows not only the access to the world of the literary text, but opens also new spheres for the understanding and exploration of the real world. In shorts, it is concerned (...) with the constitution of a special cognitive-emotional pattern, which depends on the building of what Iser considers as the reader’s «artificial habitats», through the interaction with the text. (shrink)

The article focuses on the possibility of reconsidering the relationship existing between monstrosity and sublime in the light of Jean-François Lyotard’s interpretation of the Kantian sublime. Sublime and monstrosity unveil a system of analogies and differences, which can depict the aesthetic experience mediated by mass media, rather than by art. The lack of form and the sometimes obscene drift, which are typical of media experience, configure indeed a sensibility that oscillates between the ascension to sublime heights and the emergence of (...) monsters. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with arguing the existence of a relationship between the enactive theory of perception and aesthetics. One of the leading figures in the theory of enactment, Alva Noe, pointed out that the works of art constitute one of the keys to understand how perception and cognition realize their enactment onto reality. Art objects are, in fact, a very peculiar case of artefacts since they are considered as being able to quicken the living beings’ organization in their interaction (...) to the world. Do they create a different atmosphere? Do they “furnish” the surrounding habitat with new meanings? The paper argues that these are, of course, fundamental elements in the art’s action onto reality. As far as the subjective enactment of perception is concerned, together with power in designing life organization, art has arguably another original functions, that of building new “environs” where experience can meet reality under a different light and thus prepare the field for other creative contributions, both cultural and technological. (shrink)

Through a direct reference to Louis Marin’s theory of the visual representation, in the article some filmic and non-filmic images (Biblical episodes, paintings, tapestry, movies and digital images) are analysed as they all display the character of a screen. The convergence between visual representations and screens is then generalized in order to show that, at least during Western Modernity, image vision often functioned as an absorption into a screen space, where the spectator was not only able to reorganize his optical (...) experience, but was also empowered, through the relationship established with the figures in the representation, to act and display his/her agency, desires and claims. Considered as screens, images show thus the coincidence between an aesthetic and a political experience, where the spectator is not a passive consumer, but an actor on the stage. (shrink)

John Dewey puts aesthetic experience at the center of his reflection on art and beauty, reconsidering it dynamically. Nowadays, this view opened the path to somaesthetics, a term coined by Richard Shusterman, and aesthetic anthropology. Here, it is argued that the contribution of pragmatist aesthetics could be further developed by exploring its analogies with techno-aesthetics, a paradigm proposed by French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in the early 1980s. Art occupies accordingly a special place within the different forms of aesthetic experience, being (...) considered as a way of experimenting the impact of new technologies in the human experience. It is a process by which technologies create ‘devices’ for experimenting perception and reflection: namely, ways of reconstructing the nature of the human mind in-between body and technology, and by means of their interaction. Cinema reconsidered after Dewey’s fellow George H. Mead, offers an exemplary case as both artistic and technological devices. (shrink)

Il fil rouge che lega le quattro sezioni del volume, che raccoglie le relazioni presentate al convegno internazionale Interactive Imagination (Roma, 6-8 giugno 2016), con l’aggiunta di contributi dei curatori e di studiosi che pure vi hanno partecipato, è la nozione di immaginazione, investigata da diverse prospettive teorico-filosofiche, correlata a quella di ambiente, anch’essa approfondita sotto diversi aspetti. Il tema mediale compare, talvolta esplicito talvolta in filigrana, con sfacce...

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

A hard difficulty in Astrobiology is the precise definition of what life is. All living beings have a cellular structure, so it is not possible to have a broader concept of life hence the search for extraterrestrial life is restricted to extraterrestrial cells. Earth is an astronomical rarity because it is difficult for a planet to present liquid water on the surface. Two antagonistic bioethical principles arise: planetary protection and terraforming. Planetary protection is based on the fear of interplanetary cross-infection (...) and possible ecological damages caused by alien living beings. Terraforming is the intention of modifying the environmental conditions of the neighbouring planets in such a way that human colonisation would be possible. The synthesis of this antagonism is ecopoiesis, a concept related to the creation of new ecosystems in other planets. Since all the multicellular biodiversity requires oxygen to survive, only extremophile microorganisms could survive in other planets. So, it could be carried out a simulation of a meteorite by taking to other planets portions of the terrestrial permafrost, or ocean or soil, so that if a single species could grow, a new ecosystem would start, as well as a new Natural History. As a conclusion, ecopoiesis should be the bioethical principle to guide practices and research in Astrobiology. (shrink)

Il volume offre una riflessione sulle forme di esperienza musicale della contemporaneità e di un passato che spazia dalla prima età moderna alla fine del ventesimo secolo. Queste possono essere riportate a un concetto ampliato di mediazione musicale che non si applica soltanto all’esperienza “mediatizzata” della musica, proposta da dischi, film, trasmissioni radio e televisive, piattaforme di archiviazione web e social media, ma anche a un concerto dal vivo, a un’installazione, a una partitura a stampa e a un manoscritto musicale (...) miniato. Saggi di Cecchi, Borio, Albert, Bratus, Borghetti, Garda, Sala, Senici, Calabretto, Varon, Corbella, Soldani, Giuggioli, Meandri e Aldeni. (shrink)

The notion of individualised evidence holds the key to solve the puzzle of statistical evidence, but there’s still no consensus on how exactly to define it. To make progress on the problem, epistemologists have proposed various accounts of individualised evidence in terms of causal or modal anti-luck conditions on knowledge like appropriate causation, sensitivity and safety. In this paper, I show that each of these fails as satisfactory anti-luck condition, and that such failure lends abductive support to the following conclusion: (...) once the familiar anti-luck intuition on knowledge is extended to individualised evidence, no single causal or modal anti-luck condition on knowledge can succeed as the right anti-luck condition on individualised evidence. This conclusion casts serious doubts on the fruitfulness of the move from anti-luck conditions on knowledge to anti-luck conditions on individualised evidence. I expand on these doubts and point out further aspects where epistemology and the law come apart: epistemic anti- luck conditions on knowledge do not adequately characterise the legal notion of individualised evidence. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former, S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter, S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and (...) Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist. (shrink)