Alphonso and Dalinda, or, The magic of art and nature : a romance /

Mode of access: Internet.

Art and human nature

This article presents a visual artist’s point of view about art. This view confronts the Eurocentric traditional cannon with some ignored, but valuable traditions, thus proposing a contra-canon. These ideas are examined on the light of a variety of sources, including prehistoric, pre-Columbian, and 20th century art expressions, in a variety of media, from sculpture to literature. Recent art expressions are characterized by their incorporation of minority values and perspectives that challenge “universal” views. Using samples of works from Latino and African American artists, the author shows that, even today, art is a means to know the world and its people, to exhibit personal life, to create personal symbolism, and to show one’s identity or the search for it. Like the human nature it represents, art has multiple faces.

Post-normal science and the art of nature conservation

Nature conservation may be considered a post-normal science in that the loss of biodiversity and increasing environmental degradation require urgent action but are characterised by uncertainty at every level. An ‘extended peer community’ with varying skills, perceptions and values are involved in decision-making and implementation of conservation, and the uncertainty involved limits the effectiveness of practice. In this paper we briefly review the key ecological, philosophical and methodological uncertainties associated with conservation, and then highlight the uncertainties and gaps present within the structure and interactions of the conservation community, and which exist mainly between researchers and practitioners, in the context of nature conservation in the UK. We end by concluding that an openly post-normal science framework for conservation, which acknowledges this uncertainty but strives to minimise it, would be a useful progression for nature conservation, and recommend ways in which knowledge transfer between researchers and practitioners can be improved to support robust decision making and conservation enactment.

Nature, Art, and Science

Professor Emeritus David Lee of FIU speaks on the interaction of art and the sciences. Lecture held at the Green Library, Modesto Maidique Campus on January 15, 2014.

The use of cues for attention in ancient Greek art: aspects that influence concentration in the work of art and its elements

The goal of this study is to identify cues for the cognitive process of attention in ancient Greek art, aiming to find confirmation of its possible use by ancient Greek audiences and artists. Evidence of cues that trigger attention’s psychological dispositions was searched through content analysis of image reproductions of ancient Greek sculpture and fine vase painting from the archaic to the Hellenistic period - ca. 7th -1st cent. BC. Through this analysis, it was possible to observe the presence of cues that trigger orientation to the work of art (i.e. amplification, contrast, emotional salience, simplification, symmetry), of a cue that triggers a disseminate attention to the parts of the work (i.e. distribution of elements) and of cues that activate selective attention to specific elements in the work of art (i.e. contrast of elements, salient color, central positioning of elements, composition regarding the flow of elements and significant objects). Results support the universality of those dispositions, probably connected with basic competencies that are hard-wired in the nervous system and in the cognitive processes.

Some birds of the countryside; the art of nature,

Printed in Great Britain.

The two paths : being lectures on art, and its application to decoration and manufacture, delivered in 1858-9 /

I. The deteriorative power of conventional art over nations -- II. The unity of art -- III. Modern manufacture and design -- IV. Influence of imagination in architecture -- V. The work of iron in nature, art and policy.

Rodin; the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook,

The career of Rodin -- Rodin and the Beaux-Arts -- Sojourn in Belgium : "The man who awakens nature" : realism and plaster casts. -- Flemish painting : journeys in Italy and France -- Rodin's notebook. Ancient workshops and modern schools -- Scattered thought on flowers -- Portraits of women -- An artist's day -- The line and the structure of the gothic -- Art and nature -- The gothic genius -- The work of Rodin : the study of the cathedrals -- Influence of the gothic on the art of Rodin -- "Saint John the Baptist" (1880) -- "The gate of hell" ; "The burghers of Calais" (1889) -- Rodin and Victor Hugo -- The statute of Balzac (1898).

Art and the Body Image: about Self and Stereotypes

Today's man is socially absorbed by problematic body issues and everything that this means and involves. Literature, publicity, science, technology and medicine compound these issues in a form of this theme that has never been seen before. In the artistic framework, body image is constantly suffering modifications. Body image in sculpture unfolds itself, assuming different messages and different forms. The body is a synonym of subject, an infinite metaphorical history of our looks, desires, that leads one to interrogate his/her image and social and sexual relations. These are understood as a manifestation of individual desires freed from a moral and social imposition. It attempts a return to profound human nature before we are turned into a cloning industry. In thisstudy it isimportant for usto understand in which form doessculpture reflect body image as a sociocultural and psychological phenomenon within the coordinates of our time. To understand how they represent and what artists represent in sculpture as a multiple and complex structure of human sexuality. Today, the sculptural body, expanding its representation, no longer as a reproduction of the corporal characteristics, presents the body in what it possesses of most intimate, unique, human and real, that moves, reacts, feels, suffers and pulsates, a mirror of us all.

Temporal verification for scientific cloud workflows: State-of-the-art and research challenges

Cloud computing is establishing itself as the latest computing paradigm in recent years. As doing science in the cloud is becoming a reality, scientists are now able to access public cloud centers and employ high-performance computing resources to run scientific applications. However, due to the dynamic nature of the cloud environment, the usability of scientific cloud workflow systems can be significantly deteriorated if without effective service quality assurance strategies. Specifically, workflow temporal verification as the major approach for workflow temporal QoS (Quality of Service) assurance plays a critical role in the on-time completion of large-scale scientific workflows. Great efforts have been dedicated to the area of workflow temporal verification in recent years and it is high time that we should define the key research issues for scientific cloud workflows in order to keep our research on the right track. In this paper, we systematically investigate this problem and present four key research issues based on the introduction of a generic temporal verification framework. Meanwhile, state-of-the-art solutions for each research issue and open challenges are also presented. Finally, SwinDeW-V, an ongoing research project on temporal verification as part of our SwinDeW-C cloud workflow system, is also demonstrated.

The effective and the evocative : reflecting on practice-led research approaches in art and design

Early in the practice-led research debate, Steven Scrivener (2000, 2002) identified some general differences in the approach of artists and designers undertaking postgraduate research. His distinctions centered on the role of the artefact in problem-based research (associated with design) and creative-production research (associated with artistic practice). Nonetheless, in broader discussions on practice-led research, 'art and design' often continues to be conflated within a single term. In particular, marked differences between art and design methodologies, theoretical framing, research goals and research claims have been underestimated. This paper revisits Scrivener's work and establishes further distinctions between art and design research. It is informed by our own experiences of postgraduate supervision and research methods training, and an empirical study of over sixty postgraduate, practice-led projects completed at the Creative Industries Faculty of QUT between 2002 and 2008. Our reflections have led us to propose that artists and designers work with differing research goals (the evocative and the effective, respectively), which are played out in the questions asked, the creative process, the role of the artefact and the way new knowledge is evidenced. Of course, research projects will have their own idiosyncrasies but, we argue, marking out the poles at each end of the spectrum of art and design provides useful insights for postgraduate candidates, supervisors and methodologists alike.

Art and the sublime : the paradox of indeterminacy unknowing and (dis)orientation in the presentation of the unpresentable

the (dis)orientation of thought in its encounter with art can be understood as the direct result of an encounter with indeterminacy as a lack in meaning. As an artist I am aware of how this indeterminacy impacts on the perceived value and authority of the artistic voice and in particular its value as a research voice. This paper explores this indeterminacy of meaning, as a profound and disturbing unknowing characteristic of the sublime and argues its value to advanced thought and for any methodological understanding of practice-led research. Lyotard described the sublime as an ‘understanding’ through which art and its associated practices may be able to resist an all too easy assimilation by the public as just a consumer commodity. His thought represents an attempt to both politically and philosophically understand art’s, and particularly abstract painting’s, affect as a state of profound and positive unknowing. To talk of the sublime in art is to speak of the suspension of any comfortable certainty in being and instead to engage with the real as a limit to meaning and knowing. It is to talk of the presentation of the unpresentable as a momentary but significant dissolution of representation. This understanding of the sublime is then further explored through the cultural phenomena of the monochrome painting and applied to the work of the two contemporary artists, Franz Erhard Walter and Günter Umberg. Initially the monochrome was understood as an attempt to go beyond traditional representation and present the unpresentable. In the one hundred years or so since that initial move this understanding has broadened. The monochrome now presents itself as a genre or even project within visual art but it still has much to teach us. In the concretely abstract and performative artworks of Franz Erhard Walter and Günter Umberg, traces of this ambition remain and their work can be seen to pose questions probing our understandings and experiences of artistic meaning, its value and the real.

Artful determination : "state of the art" and PCME Ltd v. Goyen COntrols Co. UK Ltd

In a recent decision by Mr Justice Laddie, a patent was held anticipated by, inter alia, prior use of a device which fell within the claims of the patent in suit, even though its circuitry was enclosed in resin. The anticipating invention had been "made available to the public" within the terms of section 2 (2) of the Patents Act 1977 because its essential integers would have been revealed by an interesting character, the "skilled forensic engineer".