The production of good sound generation in the violin is a complex task that requires coordination and spatiotemporal control of bowing gestures. The use of motion-capture technologies to improve performance or reduce injury risks in the area of kinesiology is becoming widespread. The combination of motion accuracy and sound quality feedback has the potential of becoming an important aid in violin learning. In this study, we evaluate motion-capture and sound-quality analysis technologies developed inside the context of the TELMI, a technology-enhanced (...) music learning project. We analyzed the sound and bow motion of 50 participants with no prior violin experience while learning to produce a stable sound in the violin. Participants were divided into two groups: the experimental group received real-time visual feedback both on kinematics and sound quality, while participants in the control group practiced without any type of external help. An additional third group of violin experts performed the same task for comparative purposes. After the practice session, all groups were evaluated in a transfer phase without feedback. At the practice phase, the experimental group improved their bowing kinematics in comparison to the control group, but this was at the expense of impairing the sound quality of their performance. At the retention phase, the experimental group showed better results in sound quality, especially concerning control of sound dynamics. Besides, we found that the expert group improved the stability of their sound while using the technology. All in all, these results emphasize the importance of feedback technologies in learning complex tasks, such as musical instrument learning. (shrink)

Auditory-guided vocal learning is a mechanism that operates both in humans and other animal species making us capable to imitate arbitrary sounds. Both auditory memories and auditory feedback interact to guide vocal learning. This may explain why it is easier for humans to imitate the pitch of a human voice than the pitch of a synthesized sound. In this study, we compared the effects of two different feedback modalities in learning pitch-matching abilities using a synthesized pure tone in 47 participants (...) with no prior music experience. Participants were divided into three groups: a feedback group receiving real-time visual feedback of their pitch as well as knowledge of results; an equal-timbre group receiving additional auditory feedback of the target note with a similar timbre to the instrument being used ; and a control group practicing without any feedback or knowledge of results. An additional fourth group of violin experts performed the same task for comparative purposes. All groups were posteriorly evaluated in a transfer phase. Both experimental groups improved their intonation abilities with the synthesized sound after receiving feedback. Participants from the equal-timber group seemed as capable as the feedback group of producing the required pitch with the voice after listening to the human voice, but not with the violin. In addition, only participants receiving real-time visual feedback learned and retained in the transfer phase the mapping between the synthesized pitch and its correspondence with the produced vocal or violin pitch. It is suggested that both the effect of an objective external reward, together with the experience of exploring the pitch space with their instrument in an explicit manner, helped participants to understand how to control their pitch production, strengthening their schemas, and favoring retention. (shrink)

Audiovisual communication is greatly contributing to the emerging research field of affective computing. The use of audiovisual stimuli within immersive virtual reality environments is providing very intense emotional reactions, which provoke spontaneous physical and physiological changes that can be assimilated into real responses. In order to ensure high-quality recognition, the artificial intelligence system must be trained with adequate data sets, including not only those gathered by smart sensors but also the tags related to the elicited emotion. Currently, there are very (...) few techniques available for the labeling of emotions. Among them, the Self-Assessment Manikin devised by Lang is one of the most popular. This study shows experimentally that the graphic proposal for the original SAM labelling system, as devised by Lang, is not neutral to gender and contains gender biases in its design and representation. Therefore, a new graphic design has been proposed and tested according to the guidelines of expert judges. The results of the experiment show an overall improvement in the labeling of emotions in the pleasure–arousal–dominance affective space, particularly, for women. This research proves the relevance of applying the gender perspective in the validation of tools used throughout the years. (shrink)

Nieto Blanco, Carlos El mundo desde dentro: El pensamiento de José Ferrater MoraSevilla: Renacimiento. Iluminaciones, 520 p.ISBN 9788418387418.

This critical appraisal of Juan Comesaña’s Being Rational and Being Right is divided into three sections: Section I describes the fundamental features of “Experientialism,” the theory of basic rationality developed and defended in the book; Section II briefly indicates how the chapters of the book unfold; and Section III describes and examines one problematic issue concerning how Experientialism interacts with the liberalism/conservatism debate in the theory of justification.

The concept of “magic realism” raises many problems, both theoretical and historical. I first encountered it in the context of American painting in the mid-1950s; at about the same time, Angle Flores published an influential article in which the term was applied to the work of Borges;1 but Alejo Carpentier’s conception of the real maravilloso at once seemed to offer a related or alternative conception, while his own work and that of Miguel Angel Asturias seemed to demand an enlargement of (...) its application.2 Finally, with the novels of Gabriel García Márquez in the 1960s, a whole new realm of magic realism opened up whose exact relations to preceding theory and novelistic practice remained undetermined. These conceptual problems emerge most clearly when one juxtaposes the notion of magic realism with competing or overlapping terms. In the beginning, for instance, it was not clear how it was to be distinguished from that vaster category generally simply called fantastic literature; at this point, what is presumably at issue is a certain type of narrative or representation to be distinguished from realism. Carpentier, however, explicitly staged his version as a more authentic Latin American realization of what in the more reified European context took the form of surrealism: his emphasis would seem to have been on a certain poetic transfiguration of the object world itself—not so much a fantastic narrative, then, as a metamorphosis in perception and in things perceived . In García Márquez, finally, these two tendencies seemed to achieve a new kind of synthesis—a transfigured object world in which fantastic events are also narrated. But at this point, the focus of the conception of magic realism would appear to have shifted to what must be called an anthropological perspective: magic realism now comes to be understood as a kind of narrative raw material derived essentially from peasant society, drawing in sophisticated ways on the world of village or even tribal myth. Recent debates, meanwhile, have complicated all this with yet a different kind of issue: namely, the problem of the political or mystificatory value, respectively, of such texts, many of which we owe to overtly left-wing revolutionary writers .3 In spite of these terminological complexities—which might be grounds for abandoning the concept altogether—it retains a strange seductiveness which I will try to explore further, adding to the confusion with reference points drawn from the work of Jacques Lacan and from Freud’s notion of the “uncanny,” and compounding it by an argument that magic realism is to be grasped as a possible alternative to the narrative logic of contemporary postmodernism.4 1. See Angel Flores, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” Hispania 38 : 187-92.2. See Alejo Carpentier, “Prólogo” to his novel El Reino de este mundo ; the most useful survey of the debate remains Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria, “Carpentier y el realism magico,” in Otros Mundos, otros fuegos, ed. Donald Yates, Congreso International de Literature Iberoamericana 16 , pp. 221-31.3. See Angel Rama, La Novel en America Latina , and especially Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, De Mitólogos y novelistas , in particular the discussions of Gabriel García Márques and Alejo Carpentier.4. My own general frame of reference for “postmodernism” is outlined in my “Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 : 53-92. Frederic Jameson, William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University, is the author of The Prison-House of Language and The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. He is also a member of the editorial collective of Social Text. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analysis” and “Ideology and Symbolic Action”. (shrink)

El manuscrito Resc/55 del CSIC contiene un apartado en el que se relata el sueño que un ṣāliḥ de Túnez tuvo con el profeta Mahoma. En el sueño, el Profeta le cuenta al soñador los sucesos del día del juicio, le hace una serie de recomendaciones y le promete que, por pequeña que sea la fe que tenga un musulmán, entrará en el Paraíso siempre que siga siendo musulmán. Estas palabras de seguro resonarían de manera especial entre los mudéjares o (...) moriscos que seleccionaron el texto y que lo copiaron muchas veces. Desde un acercamiento que toma en cuenta tanto la tradición árabe literaria de relatos edificantes de sueños (manamāt), como el entorno socio-histórico de los moriscos, el autor de este artículo analiza el contenido de la historia. De particular importancia es entender cómo el texto legitima su contenido y presenta las palabras del profeta como auténticas echando mano de una larga tradición de sueños protagonizados por Mahoma. Se incluye al final del artículo una transliteración del texto aljamiado. (shrink)

El presente ensayo tiene por objeto analizar la dimensión antropológica de la teoría del dominio siguiendo el tratamiento y la solución aportada por Domingo de Soto en la relección De dominio y en el De iustitia et iure. Atenderemos al dominio en cuanto especie del derecho natural fundada en la condición creatural del ser humano enfrentándola con la institución legal de la servidumbre. De manera introductoria, ubicamos la solución aportada por Soto en el contexto de la polémica americana sobre la (...) condición del indígena ejemplificada en la polémica sostenida entre Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda y Bartolomé de las Casas. (shrink)

La virtud y el conocimiento son momentos indisociables para el modo de vida del su!smo islámico en general Los elementos constituyentes de dicha praxis aparecen integrados por un primer estadio ascético seguido de otro de místico. Trataremos de mostrar que el su!smo construye una imagen del hombre determinada por el grado de moralidad inherente al obrar y a la intención y en función después, del modo y de la cualidad del conocimiento adquirido por el individuo. Presentamos, el marco general en (...) el que se encuadra la ética sufíe. Analizaremos, después las posibilidades naturales y trascendentales con las que cuenta el individuo para desarrollar su existencia dentro del marco profético. Un último descenso desde el cuerpo del individuo hacía el espacio de la conciencia, nos mostrará el terreno en el que acontecerá el ejercicio purgativo de la ascesis. For the Islamic Su! way of life, virtue and knowledge are moments which cannot be separated. "e constituting elements of that praxis consist on a!rst ascetic state followed by a second mystic state which we shall try to make clear via two examples. We intend to demonstrate that Su!sm constructs an image of man determined by the level of morality inherent to his actions, in the intention and in the resulting function; of the method and the quality of the knowledge acquired by the individual. We will present the general frame upon which Su! ethics are founded. We will then analyse the natural and transcendental possibilities that the individual has in order to develop his existence within the prophetic frame. One last descent from the body of the individual towards the space of conscience will show us the terrain where the purging exercise of the ascesis occurs. (shrink)

Uno de los logros indiscutibles de la obra de John Rawls ha sido la revitalización del concepto de igualdad en la ética y la filosofía política de los últimos años, desmonopolizándolo de las ideologías que han recorrido con mejor o peor fortuna todo el siglo xx y devolviéndolo al rigor analítico y conceptual de la filosofía. Además, con la virtud añadida de armonizar el valor de la igualdad con los valores de la libertad y la eficiencia: un esfuerzo no siempre (...) valorado con suficiente comprensión. No hay duda, pues, de la influencia de la teoría de la justicia de Rawls en el pensamiento igualitarista actual que, de algún modo, se ha construido -y aún continúa haciéndolo- siguiendo -o bien desmarcándose de- la estela trazada por el filósofo de Harvard. En este artículo, analizo los principales debates abiertos en tomo al igualitarismo rawlsiano y apunto alguna posible orientación futura. En primer lugar, expongo los dos grandes argumentos igualitaristas en la obra de Rawls, derivados, respectivamente, de la concepción moral de la persona y de la arbitrariedad moral de las contingencias sociales y naturales de los individuos. Posteriormente, exploro los problemas de ambos argumentos insistiendo, por un lado, en la inadecuación de la personalidad moral kantiana como fundamento de una teoría igualitarista y, por otro, en la incoherencia del igualitarismo de la suerte como extensión igualitarista de la teoría rawlsiana. En tercer lugar, muestro que el principal problema igualitarista en la obra de Rawls proviene de una concepción de la igualdad o equidad vacía de solidaridad. Concluyo, finalmente, que a la justicia como equidad habría que contraponerle una justicia como fraternidad. (shrink)

In this article, the relevance of Leonardo Polo's thought in Natural Theology is discussed. Likewise, the contributions of articles included in this tome are briefly described.

Nuestro propósito se cifra en esta ocasión, en mostrar los motivos filosóficos que condujeron al Martin Heidegger a introducir la metafísica suareciana en la configuración de su ontología existenciaria. Tomaremos como hilo conductor la historia del ser y más en concreto, la de su olvido en favor del ente y que Heidegger desarrolló en diferentes escritos como un momento negativo, fundamental y previo a la exposición de su concepción de la Metafísica. En este relato dejaremos anotado, la función capital que (...) para el proyecto heideggeriano de reinterpetación de la Metafísica desempeñó, la idea de la metafísica griega y en particular de la aristotélica alcanzada por el pensador alemán. Abordaremos este problema con cierta extensión pues sostenemos que el concepto de la metafísica suareciana manejado por Heidegger está determinado por su comprensión de la Metafísica de Aristóteles. Y que se resume en su conocida interpretación onto-teológica. En último término, el peso de la reflexión heideggeriana sobre la metafísica de Suárez, recae sobre el concepto de existencia y su modo de aprehensión que es comprendido como un antecedente moderno e imperfecto del Dasein como vía de acceso al Ser. (shrink)

Este trabajo se propone subrayar que la libertad no es sólo predicamental, sino que se inserta en el ser de la persona. En función de esa propuesta, se estudia la doctrina de dos grandes autores, Tomás de Aquino y Nietzsche, parangonando sus formulaciones sobre la existencia y el sentido de la libertad de la persona.

We develop a general framework for forcing with coherent adequate sets on [Formula: see text] as side conditions, where [Formula: see text] is a cardinal of uncountable cofinality. We describe a class of forcing posets which we call coherent adequate type forcings. The main theorem of the paper is that any coherent adequate type forcing preserves CH. We show that there exists a forcing poset for adding a club subset of [Formula: see text] with finite conditions while preserving CH, solving (...) a problem of Friedman [Forcing with finite conditions, in Set Theory: Centre de Recerca Matemática, Barcelona, 2003–2004, Trends in Mathematics, pp. 285–295.]. (shrink)

The purpose of this research is the analysis of a specific cultural and political tension, through two decisive concepts: imagocracy and imagomaquia. Our aim is to define the political battlefield in the arena of audiovisual communication. In the case of Latin America, we have identified two significant moments, in which the popular audiovisual strategies had crucial importance. Our material of research has been both the New Latin American Cinema and the sociology of the decolonial image. We have studied them in (...) depth in order to define the effectiveness of popular audiovisual strategies as nuclei of creation and aesthetic-political resistance, which opposes the hegemonic audiovisual order. (shrink)

Robots should be able to represent emotional states to interact with people as social agents. There are cases where robots cannot have bio-inspired bodies, for instance because the task to be performed requires a special shape, as in the case of home cleaners, package carriers, and many others. In these cases, emotional states have to be represented by exploiting movements of the body. In this paper, we present a set of case studies aimed at identifying specific values to convey emotion (...) trough changes in linear and angular velocities, which might be applied on different non-anthropomorphic bodies. This work originates from some of the most considered emotion expression theories and from emotion coding for people. We show that people can recognize some emotional expressions better than others, and we propose some directions to express emotions exploiting only bio-neutral movement. (shrink)

El duelo anticipado es un tema al que la filosofía ha prestado muy poca atención, a diferencia de lo que ocurre con el duelo que sigue a la muerte. Una peculiaridad obvia del primero es que sucede mientras todavía existe una relación interpersonal entre el doliente y aquel por quien se duele. En este artículo examino el impacto que el duelo anticipado puede tener en dicha relación, particularmente con respecto a las actitudes reactivas de sanción, propias del conflicto interpersonal.

The Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla, a 5th-century hagiographical work, feature many elements recalling the ancient novel. Even if the first part of the text, the Life, must be considered a novel itself due to its dependence on the model of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, some novelistic motifs - especially the use of descriptions, digressions and first-person narrations − appear throughout the whole text. In addition, we also examine the textual evidence of the influence of the ancient (...) novel on this hagiographical text through the analysis of some lexical details which suggest the reading of the ancient novels. The hagiographer uses these elements to rewrite in same cases the original scene of the Acts of Paul and Thecla or to evoke in other scenes the universe of the ancient novel in order to delight his readers. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 1 Seiten: 73-96.