Ideals, Aesthetics, and Practices of Professionalization in the Tokyo Jazz Scene

In the early twenty-first century, jazz has a history in Japan of approximately 100 years. In contemporary Tokyo, Japanese musicians demonstrate their right to access jazz performance through a variety of musical and extra-musical techniques. Those accepted as fully professional and authentic artists, or puro, gain a special status among their peers, setting them apart from their amateur and part-time counterparts. Drawing on three months of participant-observation in the Tokyo jazz scene, I examine this status of puro, its variable definition, the techniques used by musicians to establish themselves as credible jazz performers, and some obstacles to achieving this status. I claim two things: first, aspiring puro musicians establish themselves within a jazz tradition through musical references to African American identity and a rhetoric of jazz as universal music. Second, I claim that universalism as a core aesthetic creates additional obstacles to puro status for certain musicians in the Tokyo scene.

Heritagescaping and the aesthetics of refuge: challenges to urban sustainability

The year 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of UNESCO&rsquo;s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, or World Heritage <br />Convention. Regarded by many as a hugely successful project, World Heritage has <br />provided a framework for safeguarding a wide array of historic built environments. <br />The choice of &ldquo;sustainable development and the role of communities&rdquo; as the theme of <br />the fortieth anniversary was, however, recognition of the significant problems and <br />challenges this arena of cultural and spatial governance has created for those living in <br />and around listed sites. Cities have proved particularly challenging, and resistant to <br />prescriptive modeling at the level of international policy. Evictions, punitive <br />legislation, rising living costs, and loss of community are the now familiar by���products of worldheritage that continue to go undocumented and ignored.<br />Against this backdrop, this chapter traces recent developments and trends surrounding urban heritage conservation, highlighting recent turns towards community���driven approaches and discourses of sustainability. It then raises the issue of gentrification, with a particular focus on where such problems take on critical importance: small���scale urban environments. Focusing on Galle in Sri Lanka, the final part of the chapter explores the emergence of a form of &ldquo;heritagescaping&rdquo; oriented by an aesthetics of solitude, tran-quility, and quiet comfort. In offering a contribution towards debates around urban sustainability and the role of heritage therein, it is argued that such processes present significant obstacles to the development of more community���based, culturally sustainable forms of heritage conservation.

Injustice Everywhere: Hemingway's Struggle with Race, Gender, and Aesthetics

The purpose of this study was to critically evaluate the aesthetic decisions and theoretical complexity of three of Ernest Hemingway���s most experimental texts: IN OUR TIME, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and THE GARDEN OF EDEN, and to show that the usually maligned Hemingway was an author invested in the avant-garde and in analyzing and dissecting rigid societal rules, not championing them. Through critical analysis this study examined how Hemingway makes specific aesthetic decisions in order to more clearly examine the disparity between whites and both women and racial minorities in America. The problems that Hemingway makes clear through his art are meant to have a profound effect upon the reader and encourage re-evaluation of societal rules, their purpose, and their fairness to those who are not white, male, and typically in a position of power. The findings demonstrate that Hemingway���s entire oeuvre is open to re-interpretation on the basis of a progressive view of the author.

Neuroscience and Hindu Aesthetics: A Critical Analysis of V.S. Ramachandran���s ���Science of Art���

Neuroaesthetics is the study of the brain���s response to artistic stimuli. The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran contends that art is primarily ���caricature��� or ���exaggeration.��� Exaggerated forms hyperactivate neurons in viewers��� brains, which in turn produce specific, ���universal��� responses. Ramachandran identifies a precursor for his theory in the concept of rasa (literally ���juice���) from classical Hindu aesthetics, which he associates with ���exaggeration.��� The canonical Sanskrit texts of Bharata Muni���s Natya Shastra and Abhinavagupta���s Abhinavabharati, however, do not support Ramachandran���s conclusions. They present audiences as dynamic co-creators, not passive recipients. I believe we could more accurately model the neurology of Hindu aesthetic experiences if we took indigenous rasa theory more seriously as qualitative data that could inform future research.

Postdigital interfaces and the aesthetics of recruitment

This paper analyses reconfigurations of play in emergent digital materialities of game design. It extends recent work examining dimensions of hybridity in playful products by turning attention to interfaces, practices and spaces, rather than devices. We argue that the concept of hybrid play relies on predefining clear and distinct digital or material entities that then enter into hybrid situations. Drawing on concepts of the ���interface��� and ���postdigital���, we argue the distribution of computing devices creates difficulties for such presuppositions. Instead, we propose thinking these situations through an ���aesthetic of recruitment��� that is able to accommodate the intensive entanglements and inherent openness of both the social and technical in postdigital play.

"The whole reflected world shuddering": active aesthetics and contemporary Australian poetry

This article maps the landscape of contemporary Australian poetry, arguing that that we are witnessing a paradigmatic shift that now accommodates ancient storytelling and cultures alongside emergent poetic forms and communities. It considers how contemporary poems reflect key cultural movements while themselves enacting a movement towards new forms of knowing.

Best after rain : waterfall discharges and the tourist experience

Waterfalls attract tourists because they are aesthetically appealing landscape features that are not part of everyday experience. It is generally understood that falls are usually seen at their best when there is a copious flow of water, especially after heavy rain. Guidebooks often contain this observation when referring to waterfalls, sometimes warning readers that the flow may be severely reduced during dry periods. Indeed, many visitors are disappointed when they see falls at such times. Some are saddened when the discharge of a waterfall has been depleted by the abstraction of water upstream for power generation or other purposes. While, for those in search of the Sublime or merely the superlative, size is often important, small waterfalls can give great pleasure to lovers of landscape beauty. According to guidebooks, however, even these falls are usually best seen after rain. Drawing on tourist and travel literature and personal journals from the eighteenth century to the present, and with reference to examples from different parts of the world, this paper discusses the importance of discharge in the tourist experience of waterfalls.

Applying integrated resource and environmental management to transmission right-of-way maintenance

The concept of a substantive integrator is introduced as a method for integrated resource and environmental management as a means to assimilate different resource values at the operational or field level. A substantive integrator is a strategic management tool for integrating multiple uses into coprorate management regimes that traditionally manage for single values. Wildlife habitat management is presented as a substantive integrator for managing vegetation on electric utility power line corridors. A case study from northern British Columbia provides an example of wildlife habitat management as a means to integrate other resource values such as aesthetics, access and subsistence along British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority's transmission rights-of-way.

A natural model for architecture : the nature of the evolutionary model 1995

John Frazer's architectural work is inspired by living and generative processes. Both evolutionary and revolutionary, it explores informatin ecologies and the dynamics of the spaces between objects. Fuelled by an interest in the cybernetic work of Gordon Pask and Norbert Wiener, and the possibilities of the computer and the "new science" it has facilitated, Frazer and his team of collaborators have conducted a series of experiments that utilize genetic algorithms, cellular automata, emergent behaviour, complexity and feedback loops to create a truly dynamic architecture. Frazer studied at the Architectural Association (AA) in London from 1963 to 1969, and later became unit master of Diploma Unit 11 there. He was subsequently Director of Computer-Aided Design at the University of Ulter - a post he held while writing An Evolutionary Architecture in 1995 - and a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. In 1983 he co-founded Autographics Software Ltd, which pioneered microprocessor graphics. Frazer was awarded a person chair at the University of Ulster in 1984. In Frazer's hands, architecture becomes machine-readable, formally open-ended and responsive. His work as computer consultant to Cedric Price's Generator Project of 1976 (see P84)led to the development of a series of tools and processes; these have resulted in projects such as the Calbuild Kit (1985) and the Universal Constructor (1990). These subsequent computer-orientated architectural machines are makers of architectural form beyond the full control of the architect-programmer. Frazer makes much reference to the multi-celled relationships found in nature, and their ongoing morphosis in response to continually changing contextual criteria. He defines the elements that describe his evolutionary architectural model thus: "A genetic code script, rules for the development of the code, mapping of the code to a virtual model, the nature of the environment for the development of the model and, most importantly, the criteria for selection. In setting out these parameters for designing evolutionary architectures, Frazer goes beyond the usual notions of architectural beauty and aesthetics. Nevertheless his work is not without an aesthetic: some pieces are a frenzy of mad wire, while others have a modularity that is reminiscent of biological form. Algorithms form the basis of Frazer's designs. These algorithms determine a variety of formal results dependent on the nature of the information they are given. His work, therefore, is always dynamic, always evolving and always different. Designing with algorithms is also critical to other architects featured in this book, such as Marcos Novak (see p150). Frazer has made an unparalleled contribution to defining architectural possibilities for the twenty-first century, and remains an inspiration to architects seeking to create responsive environments. Architects were initially slow to pick up on the opportunities that the computer provides. These opportunities are both representational and spatial: computers can help architects draw buildings and, more importantly, they can help architects create varied spaces, both virtual and actual. Frazer's work was groundbreaking in this respect, and well before its time.

The experience of waterfalls

Landscape beauty has long been a concern of geographers and other scholars, but relatively little work has been done on the aesthetic analysis of specific landscape features such as mountain peaks and waterfalls. In Australia, as in many other parts of the world, waterfalls are popular scenic attractions, and this paper attempts to explain the widespread appeal of these landforms by examining them in the light of theories of landscape aesthetics, from the Picturesque and Sublime to arousal and prospect-refuge. While no single theory offers a complete explanation of our experience of waterfalls, this paper suggests that by using several theoretical approaches to the subject we are more likely to gain a full understanding of the way we respond to these landscape features.

On medium specificity and discipline crossovers in modern art : An interview with Jacques Ranci��re on Medium-Specificity and Discipline Crossovers in Modern Art

Jacques Ranciere's work on aesthetics has received a great deal of attention recently. Given his work has enormous range ��� taking in art and literature, political theory, historiography, pedagogy and worker's history ��� Andrew McNamara and Toni Ross (UNSW) seek to explore his wider project in this interview, while showing how it leads to his alternative insights into aesthetics. Ranci��re sets aside the core suppositions linking the medium to aesthetic judgment, which has informed many definitions of modernism. Ranci��re is emphatic in freeing aesthetic judgment from issues of medium-specificity. He argues that the idea of autonomy associated with medium-specificity ��� or 'truth to the medium' ��� was 'a very late one' in modernism, and that post-medium trends were already evident in early modernism. While not stressing a simple continuity between early modernism and contemporary art, Ranciere nonetheless emphasizes the ethical and political ramifications of maintaining an a-disciplinary stance.

"Theatre of the dancing language" : new possibilities in contemporary Australian playwrighting

This study focuses on trends in contemporary Australian playwrighting, discussing recent investigations into the playwrighting process. The study analyses the current state of this country���s playwrighting industry, with a particular focus on programming trends since 1998. It seeks to explore the implications of this current theatrical climate, in particular the types of work most commonly being favoured for production. It argues that Australian plays are under-represented (compared to non-Australian plays) on ���mainstream��� stages and that audiences might benefit from more challenging modes of writing than the popular three-act realist play models. The thesis argues that ���New Lyricism��� might fill this position of offering an innovative Australian playwrighting mode. New Lyricism is characterised by a set of common aesthetics, including a non-linear narrative structure, a poetic use of language and magic realism. Several Australian playwrights who have adopted this mode of writing are identified and their works examined. The author���s play Floodlands is presented as a case study and the author���s creative process is examined in light of the published critical discussions about experimental playwriting work.