Acquiring synaesthesia: insights from training studies

Synaesthesia denotes a condition of remarkable individual differences in experience characterized by specific additional experiences in response to normal sensory input. Synaesthesia seems to (i) run in families which suggests a genetic component, (ii) is associated with marked structural and functional neural differences, and (iii) is usually reported to exist from early childhood. Hence, synaesthesia is generally regarded as a congenital phenomenon. However, most synaesthetic experiences are triggered by cultural artifacts (e.g., letters, musical sounds). Evidence exists to suggest that synaesthetic experiences are triggered by the conceptual representation of their inducer stimuli. Cases were identified for which the specific synaesthetic associations are related to prior experiences and large scale studies show that grapheme-color associations in synaesthesia are not completely random. Hence, a learning component is inherently involved in the development of specific synaesthetic associations. Researchers have hypothesized that associative learning is the critical mechanism. Recently, it has become of scientific and public interest if synaesthetic experiences may be acquired by means of associative training procedures and whether the gains of these trainings are associated with similar cognitive benefits as genuine synaesthetic experiences. In order to shed light on these issues and inform synaesthesia researchers and the general interested public alike, we provide a comprehensive literature review on developmental aspects of synaesthesia and specific training procedures in non-synaesthetes. Under the light of a clear working definition of synaesthesia, we come to the conclusion that synaesthesia can potentially be learned by the appropriate training.

Nuevas armas de una misma guerra : O de cómo las historietas enseñan Historia

En los últimos años, los investigadores dedicados al estudio de la enseñanza de la Historia llamaron la atención sobre la influencia de nuevos "artefactos culturales" en el forjamiento de la cultura histórica de los jóvenes. Videojuegos, series de televisión, documentales, películas y sitios web deben empezar a ser tenidos en cuenta, a la hora de evaluar los principales emisores de contenidos históricos. En este caso, nos dedicamos a estudiar a uno de estos "artefactos": los cómics o historietas históricas. Buscaremos, entonces, conocer su derrotero histórico y, a partir de él, analizar el lugar que actualmente tienen en el currículum, teniendo en cuenta sus límites y posibilidades. A partir de un recorrido por las principales historietas históricas que tuvo la Argentina en el siglo XX y principios del XXI, analizaremos su contenido y la propuesta político-pedagógica que se desprende, tanto de sus autores, como de aquellas organizaciones destinadas a difundirlas en la escuela. La conclusión del trabajo es que, a pesar de la novedad que implica la enseñanza de la Historia por medio de herramientas alternativas a los tradicionales manuales, tanto su contenido como los valores difundidos no difieren de aquellos que difundían los viejos textos escolares. En este sentido, las historietas funcionarían como herramientas al servicio de una enseñanza de la Historia escolar cuya función principal es fomentar una conciencia cívica nacionalista

Nuevas armas de una misma guerra : O de cómo las historietas enseñan Historia

En los últimos años, los investigadores dedicados al estudio de la enseñanza de la Historia llamaron la atención sobre la influencia de nuevos "artefactos culturales" en el forjamiento de la cultura histórica de los jóvenes. Videojuegos, series de televisión, documentales, películas y sitios web deben empezar a ser tenidos en cuenta, a la hora de evaluar los principales emisores de contenidos históricos. En este caso, nos dedicamos a estudiar a uno de estos "artefactos": los cómics o historietas históricas. Buscaremos, entonces, conocer su derrotero histórico y, a partir de él, analizar el lugar que actualmente tienen en el currículum, teniendo en cuenta sus límites y posibilidades. A partir de un recorrido por las principales historietas históricas que tuvo la Argentina en el siglo XX y principios del XXI, analizaremos su contenido y la propuesta político-pedagógica que se desprende, tanto de sus autores, como de aquellas organizaciones destinadas a difundirlas en la escuela. La conclusión del trabajo es que, a pesar de la novedad que implica la enseñanza de la Historia por medio de herramientas alternativas a los tradicionales manuales, tanto su contenido como los valores difundidos no difieren de aquellos que difundían los viejos textos escolares. En este sentido, las historietas funcionarían como herramientas al servicio de una enseñanza de la Historia escolar cuya función principal es fomentar una conciencia cívica nacionalista

Nuevas armas de una misma guerra : O de cómo las historietas enseñan Historia

En los últimos años, los investigadores dedicados al estudio de la enseñanza de la Historia llamaron la atención sobre la influencia de nuevos "artefactos culturales" en el forjamiento de la cultura histórica de los jóvenes. Videojuegos, series de televisión, documentales, películas y sitios web deben empezar a ser tenidos en cuenta, a la hora de evaluar los principales emisores de contenidos históricos. En este caso, nos dedicamos a estudiar a uno de estos "artefactos": los cómics o historietas históricas. Buscaremos, entonces, conocer su derrotero histórico y, a partir de él, analizar el lugar que actualmente tienen en el currículum, teniendo en cuenta sus límites y posibilidades. A partir de un recorrido por las principales historietas históricas que tuvo la Argentina en el siglo XX y principios del XXI, analizaremos su contenido y la propuesta político-pedagógica que se desprende, tanto de sus autores, como de aquellas organizaciones destinadas a difundirlas en la escuela. La conclusión del trabajo es que, a pesar de la novedad que implica la enseñanza de la Historia por medio de herramientas alternativas a los tradicionales manuales, tanto su contenido como los valores difundidos no difieren de aquellos que difundían los viejos textos escolares. En este sentido, las historietas funcionarían como herramientas al servicio de una enseñanza de la Historia escolar cuya función principal es fomentar una conciencia cívica nacionalista

Technologies for Seduction: The “Espacio Doméstico” VideoArt Center in Blanca [EDOM]

Sustainability, understood in its beginnings as a common horizon for multiple practices and fields of study, has gradually given way to the development of increasingly sophisticated tools, with distinct dominant meanings established for each discipline. Within the field of material technologies for architectural production, sustainability seems to have found its most fertile ground in topics such as recycling, the use of "bio" materials, or energetic efficiency. However, to improve the understanding of the impact of technology on our ways of living, it appears increasingly necessary to move from the deterministic logic of sustainability into the relational domain of ecology, where the use and deployment of technologies can be observed through the multiplicity of its effects and the diversity of actors involved. In this paper we will address the case of the rehabilitation of several traditional houses located in the Murcian town of Blanca to host the “Espacio Doméstico” VideoArt Center (EDOM). In this action the selection and implementation of technologies have been aimed at impacting on diverse aspects including local communities, digital manufacturing, recycling, and policies regarding the rehabilitation of heritage buildings. While the initial approach was to address housing recovery as a heterogeneous accumulation of stories, technologies or material deployments of the domestic, our intervention strategies ascribed to the different technologies the role of mediating with existing elements through the incorporation of the very different visions of sustainability. Thus, we displayed artifacts produced by digitally manufactured methacrylate assembled on IKEA structures, fluorescent power lines supported by insulators on the wall, fluorescent tattoos on walls and ceilings that guide and extend the configuration of existing flooring, esparto furniture and fabrics produced by the esparto women workers’ and village women’s associations, re-appropriations of old furniture through the implementation of new media technologies, etc. If we can see seduction as the process of converting affinities and disagreements into affirmative communication, then the EDOM proposal can be seen as an active seduction process between technologies and users who approach this kind of cultural artifacts. Through these permanently active processes, art technologies will refer the viewer to complex sensory experiences, where a combination of parody, memory and sound pushes the user to the limit of mere comprehension of works of art. This more relational approach to the issue of heritage rehabilitation, technology or art institutions is offered as an area of controversy and debate on the scope of political ecology and its potential impact on the architect’s professional practice.

Literatura en el espacio público : Rivas y su obra: un punto de inflexión en la recuperación de la memoria histórica

Tras una revisión diacrónica del tratamiento del tema de la guerra civil en la narrativa gallega, el artículo analiza la función performativa que en ese contexto han desempeñado una serie de obras narrativas de Manuel Rivas y su eficacia como factores de legitimación y dinamización del proceso de recuperación de la memoria histórica. Como conclusión se propone considerar a Rivas como un emprendedor de la memoria (Jelin) y sus obras como 'lieux de memoire' (Nora) por su condición de artefactos culturales de integración social.

Information Technologies for Presentation of Bulgarian-Indian Cooperation in a Virtual Museum

We investigate digitalization and security of the Bulgarian and Indian cultural artifacts in multimedia archive. In the paper we describe project implementation and methods for intellectual property protection that are result of bilateral cultural and scientific cooperation between research-workers in India and Bulgaria.

``New Yorker'' Profiles, 1925--1992: A bibliography

The Profiles that ran in the New Yorker magazine from its inception in 1925 are valuable examples of literary journalism and are of lasting value to scholars both as texts and as cultural artifacts. This thesis assembles a bibliography of all Profiles that appeared under the magazine's first three editors, with some explanation of their importance to biographical and literary studies. ^

La ciudad, el poeta y su familia melancolica (Poesia Chilena de los ultimos 50 anos)

This dissertation explored the relationship among poets, cities, and the construction of nation-ness. It was an interpretive reading of Chilean poetry and Chilean-ness as a way of inventing the nation from its very origins, starting with the colonial epic poem La Araucana and the founding of Santiago, its capital city. In this dissertation, poetry not only dealt with cities or "city poets" but also with the very conception, drafting, and systematic invention of cities as a "dream of order". The construct of a "community" of Chileans has maintained family ties with "Melancholy" in the collective imagination. This structure of melancholy reinforced the idea of "an order and a community" passed along by poets through generations. This dissertation also explored the moment when this melancholic family was fractured, divided, and Santiago was darkened by the events of September 11, 1973 and the rise of dictatorship, brutality, and censorship. ^ The methodology employed to examine different aspects of the construction of the city-nation included theoretical approaches such as Benedict Anderson's idea of nations as "imagined communities," Ángel Rama's analysis of Latin American urban rationality in his book The Lettered City , and the idea of the poet as an urban seer or visionary, the "flâneur" studied by Walter Benjamin in Charles Baudelaire's poetry. A central finding was that this "imagined community" have been severely transformed since 1950. In Chilean poetry, two works served as major referents: Pablo Neruda's Canto General, a totalizing idea of collective identity carved from the stones of the ruins of Machu Picchu, and Nicanor Parra's Poemas y Antipoemas (1954), which begun to illustrate the slow "decomposition" of the "The Lettered City." Among such conflicting images of (post-)modernity, poet Enrique Lihn became the central counter-figure who put an end to a long tradition of producing canonical nation-building cultural artifacts. His book El paseo Ahumada (1983) impacted the new generations of Chilean poets. The conclusion brought together the five-century history and diverse poetic experiences of the traditional Lettered City with the latest currents of marginalized urban poetry (1987-2003), the so-called "barbarians," flâneurs who were (re)inventing Chilean-ness in the globalized, and anti-Utopian city of "Sanhattan." ^

Coral Gables Virtual History

Florida International University has partnered with the City of Coral Gables to create a geospatially-enabled Virtual Historic City. With this tool, users may navigate to any point in the city at a selected time period (e.g. the Biltmore Hotel from the 1920s to 1940s) and experience the city as it was, through a wide variety of cultural artifacts and textual materials. A virtual walking tour of Coral Gables was also created, which includes an audio narration and 3D simulations providing the façades of historic buildings and landscape. Students, educators, historians, public policy administrators, architects, sociologists, environmental analysts, urban planners, and the general public can explore over 8,000 historical documents, photographs, oral histories, and maps that have been spatially registered to their relevant locations and time.

A Formação de professores nas tramas do virtual

This study aims to reflect on the cultural and aesthetics formation of teacher, and how they act as a co-author in the virtual environment. The reflection permeates on topics such as: The Information Age and the challenges of the teacher in the twenty-first century; teacher professional development and the multiple personal identities; the importance of cultural repertoire for teaching practice and the role of the teacher as co-author in the informational network. In addition to the theoretical reflections were conducted two focus groups with the participation of teachers with different graduations and working in various levels of education to discuss the presented topics. It was proposed to create a website for the teacher to sail and collaborate with posts on many cultural artifacts. For the construction of the content for the site, it developed a “daily creation”, which is the search information storage from multiple sources, such as academic papers, songs, websites, magazines, comics, blogs, books, photographs, advertisements, finally everything that can increase imagination and serve for the production of content. Data analysis of the focus group showed that teachers recognize the varied cultural repertoire makes for a good professional aplomb, but cannot actively participate in the local culture. It was also found that the teacher has difficulty manipulating information technology and communication and therefore, distance themselves from an active production network. The focus group contributed to building a website and posts on cultural artifacts. Production can be accessed at www.digitaldoprofessor.com.

Literatura en el espacio público : Rivas y su obra: un punto de inflexión en la recuperación de la memoria histórica

Tras una revisión diacrónica del tratamiento del tema de la guerra civil en la narrativa gallega, el artículo analiza la función performativa que en ese contexto han desempeñado una serie de obras narrativas de Manuel Rivas y su eficacia como factores de legitimación y dinamización del proceso de recuperación de la memoria histórica. Como conclusión se propone considerar a Rivas como un emprendedor de la memoria (Jelin) y sus obras como 'lieux de memoire' (Nora) por su condición de artefactos culturales de integración social.

Sexting na adolescência: análise da rede de enunciações produzida pela mídia

Esta tese foi produzida no Programa de Pós -Graduação em Educação em Ciências : Química da Vida e Saúde , na linha de pesquisa "Educação científica : implicações das práticas científicas na constituição dos sujeitos ". O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar a rede de enunciações sobre o sexting em alguns materiais (reportagens, programas televisivos, postagens em blogs e comentários realizados por leitores dos sites) presentes na internet e investigar as condições de emergência da prática do sexting. O sexting é um termo criado nos Estados Unidos da América, que deriva das expressões sex (sexo) e texting (envio de mensagens). Esse conceito descreve uma prática social e cultural que está sendo difundida mundialmente: esta consiste em produzir e enviar fotos e vídeos sexuais, sensuais e eróticos entre conhecidos/as, amigos/as, namorados/as, “ficantes” etc.. Nesta pesquisa, utilizamos como aporte teórico os estudos de Pierre Lévy, André Lemos, Paula Sibilia, Guy Debord, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault e Zygmunt Bauman. Tais autores ajudam-nos a pensar que o sexting emerge devido a alguns acontecimentos sociais, culturais, históricos etc., que vêm provocando alguns deslocamentos em nossa sociedade. Para proceder com tal pesquisa, utilizamos a internet como campo empírico. Em nossa busca, encontramos 48 artefatos culturais que discutem, de alguma forma, sobre sexting. Dentre estes, 37 comentam sobre vídeos caseiros que mostram relações sexuais, 8 discutem sobre o fenômeno sexting e 3 debatem sobre a produção de fotos sensuais. Para análise dos dados, utilizamos algumas ferramentas foucaultianas, especialmente os conceitos de discurso, dispositivo e enunciado. Ao olharmos os materiais, percebemos que os/os adolescentes vêm se utilizando das tecnologias digitais para visibilizarem a sua sexualidade, o que nos dá indícios de que estas vêm possibilitando a constituição de jornalistas cidadãos/ãs. Além disso, evidenciamos que as fotos e vídeos dos/as adolescentes foram produzidos em comum acordo entre eles/as. Muitos dessas fotos e vídeos, foram disseminados pelos próprios sujeitos que aderiram a essa prática. Assim, a exposição da sexualidade, por meio do sexting, tem sido realizada com o propósito de adquirir visibilidade e de tornar-se a personalidade do momento. Entendemos que essa vontade de escancarar a sexualidade, por meio das tecnologias digitais, está vinculada à sociedade do espetáculo, que manifesta a necessidade de tornar-se visível. Além disso, notamos que essa prática está relacionada à escola, pois muitos dos casos relatados ocorreram no interior dessa instituição ou tiveram uma repercussão nesse ambiente. Em muitos casos, a escola era culpabilizada pelos casos de sexting que envolviam seus/sua alunos/as. No entanto, são os pais o foco de maiores críticas pela mídia massiva, pois, para essa instância, são estes os maiores responsáveis pela disciplinarização desses corpos. Evidenciou-se também que os/as praticantes do sexting sofreram micropenalidades, as quais tinham como objetivo corrigir suas condutas. Nesse sentido, entendemos o sexting como uma atualização do dispositivo da sexualidade, pois este coloca a sexualidade – a qual, durante a modernidade sólida, constituía-se como algo exclusivamente do âmbito privado – em evidência nos espaços públicos. Ao mesmo tempo, verificamos que algumas práticas disciplinares ainda buscam governar e normalizar a sexualidade dos sujeitos. A análise do material empírico possibilitou-nos verificar dois enunciados que fazem parte do discurso do sexting. O primeiro destes é que, na contemporaneidade, aparecer é uma condição de existência; o outro é que a sexualidade é entendida como algo que deve ser regulado, governado e normalizado. Consideramos importante centrarmos os estudos no sexting, pois entendemos que essa prática vem contribuindo para o surgimento de outros modos de viver e entender a sexualidade, pois o sexting enquadra a sexualidade como algo a ser exibido e mostrado para todos/as.

Recovering Valuable Artifacts of the Cultural Heritage through Modern Technology and Equipment

This paper presents the digital reconstruction of the carving of the iconostasis of the Assumption church in the town of Bansko in its original form, a research project of the Department of Mathematical Linguistics of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Cultural flows in an Aboriginal school : deterritorializing textual production through a socially mediated Indigenous heritage

Flows of cultural heritage in textual practices are vital to sustaining Indigenous communities. Indigenous heritage, whether passed on by oral tradition or ubiquitous social media, can be seen as a “conversation between the past and the future” (Fairclough, 2012, xv). Indigenous heritage involves appropriating memories within a cultural flow to pass on a spiritual legacy. This presentation reports ethnographic research of social media practices in a small independent Aboriginal school in Southeast Queensland, Australia that is resided over by the Yugambeh elders and an Aboriginal principal. The purpose was to rupture existing notions of white literacies in schools, and to deterritorialize the uses of digital media by dominant cultures in the public sphere. Examples of learning experiences included the following: i. Integrating Indigenous language and knowledge into media text production; ii. Using conversations with Indigenous elders and material artifacts as an entry point for storytelling; iii. Dadirri – spiritual listening in the yarning circle to develop storytelling (Ungunmerr-Baumann, 2002); and iv. Writing and publicly sharing oral histories through digital scrapbooking shared via social media. The program aligned with the Australian National Curriculum English (ACARA, 2012), which mandates the teaching of multimodal text creation. Data sources included a class set of digital scrapbooks collaboratively created in a multi-age primary classroom. The digital scrapbooks combined digitally encoded words, images of material artifacts, and digital music files. A key feature of the writing and digital design task was to retell and digitally display and archive a cultural narrative of significance to the Indigenous Australian community and its memories and material traces of the past for the future. Data analysis of the students’ digital stories involved the application of key themes of negotiated, material, and digitally mediated forms of heritage practice. It drew on Australian Indigenous research by Keddie et al. (2013) to guard against the homogenizing of culture that can arise from a focus on a static view of culture. The interpretation of findings located Indigenous appropriation of social media within broader racialized politics that enables Indigenous literacy to be understood as a dynamic, negotiated, and transgenerational flows of practice. The findings demonstrate that Indigenous children’s use of media production reflects “shifting and negotiated identities” in response to changing media environments that can function to sustain Indigenous cultural heritages (Appadurai, 1696, xv). It demonstrated how the children’s experiences of culture are layered over time, as successive generations inherit, interweave, and hear others’ cultural stories or maps. It also demonstrated how the children’s production of narratives through multimedia can provide a platform for the flow and reconstruction of performative collective memories and “lived traces of a common past” (Giaccardi, 2012). It disrupts notions of cultural reductionism and racial incommensurability that fix and homogenize Indigenous practices within and against a dominant White norm. Recommendations are provided for an approach to appropriating social media in schools that explicitly attends to the dynamic nature of Indigenous practices, negotiated through intercultural constructions and flows, and opening space for a critical anti-racist approach to multimodal text production.