Experiência e comunicação em Walter Benjamin

É tendo em conta a dimensão de experimentação, de exposição ao mundo e ao outro, que a experiência se torna uma conceito que se insere num paradigma comunicacional. Se a experiência for tida como um encontro com o mundo, então ela é necessariamente perspectivada em conjugação com a comunicação uma vez que é a ela que devemos a possibilidade de partilhar, adoptar (e ultrapassar) as fronteiras ou os quadros de sentido que fundam a experiência.Nas sociedades contemporâneas, uma parte substancial do movimento comunicativo é realizado de forma mediatizada. Como entender, então, o efeito da mediatização da comunicação ao nível da experiência? Tendo como ponto de partida as meditações de Walter Benjaminem torno da Erfahrung e da Erlebnis, expostas fragmentariamente ao longo da sua obra, e da dicotomização entre uma experiência autêntica e uma experiência inautêntica, propomo-nos refletir sobre a comunicação e a sua mediatização. E procuramos pistas que nos elucidem em que medida a ubiquidade dos media afeta a riqueza da experiência comunicativa.

Storytelling for ordinary, practical purposes (Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Storyteller’)

This essay explores the role that storytelling can play in teachers’ learning. Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Storyteller’ provides a theoretical framework that enables us to highlight the complexity of the professional learning of teachers when they share stories about their everyday lives. We develop our argument by presenting two instances of teachers representing their professional experiences through storytelling, using these examples (which are drawn from two distinct research projects) to reflect on the learning they accomplish by telling their stories. In the first example, Portuguese teachers involved in a professional learning programme use storytelling to develop their understanding of their practice as literacy educators. In the second example, Australian teachers who participated in a research project tell stories that challenge the way standardised literacy testing devalues their experience as educators. The lesson we draw from these examples affirms the socially grounded character of storytelling for the professional learning and renewal of teachers vis-à-vis a policy environment that privileges other forms of knowledge.

Experiência e comunicação em Walter Benjamin

É tendo em conta a dimensão de experimentação, de exposição ao mundo e ao outro, que a experiência se torna uma conceito que se insere num paradigma comunicacional. Se a experiência for tida como um encontro com o mundo, então ela é necessariamente perspectivada em conjugação com a comunicação uma vez que é a ela que devemos a possibilidade de partilhar, adoptar (e ultrapassar) as fronteiras ou os quadros de sentido que fundam a experiência.Nas sociedades contemporâneas, uma parte substancial do movimento comunicativo é realizado de forma mediatizada. Como entender, então, o efeito da mediatização da comunicação ao nível da experiência? Tendo como ponto de partida as meditações de Walter Benjaminem torno da Erfahrung e da Erlebnis, expostas fragmentariamente ao longo da sua obra, e da dicotomização entre uma experiência autêntica e uma experiência inautêntica, propomo-nos refletir sobre a comunicação e a sua mediatização. E procuramos pistas que nos elucidem em que medida a ubiquidade dos media afeta a riqueza da experiência comunicativa.

The Expanded Human Kallikrein (KLK) gene family : genomic organisation, tissue specific expression and potential functions

The tissue kallikreins are serine proteases encoded by highly conserved multigene families. The rodent kallikrein (KLK) families are particularly large, consisting of 13 26 genes clustered in one chromosomal locus. It has been recently recognised that the human KLK gene family is of a similar size (15 genes) with the identification of another 12 related genes (KLK4-KLK15) within and adjacent to the original human KLK locus (KLK1-3) on chromosome 19q13.4. The structural organisation and size of these new genes is similar to that of other KLK genes except for additional exons encoding 5 or 3 untranslated regions. Moreover, many of these genes have multiple mRNA transcripts, a trait not observed with rodent genes. Unlike all other kallikreins, the KLK4-KLK15 encoded proteases are less related (25–44%) and do not contain a conventional kallikrein loop. Clusters of genes exhibit high prostatic (KLK2-4, KLK15) or pancreatic (KLK6-13) expression, suggesting evolutionary conservation of elements conferring tissue specificity. These genes are also expressed, to varying degrees, in a wider range of tissues suggesting a functional involvement of these newer human kallikrein proteases in a diverse range of physiological processes.

John Frazer

John Frazer, Professor, trained at the Architectural Association, taught first at Cambridge University and then the AA in the 1970s and again in the '90s. He was Head of School of Design Research History and Criticism at the University of Ulster in the 1980s, he also ran a systems and design consultancy with his wife Julia (including projects for Cedric Price and Walter Segal) and was founder and chairman of Autographics software. He is currently Swire Chair Professor and Head of School of Design in Hong Kong.----- This is a very personal perspective on a concept of universal and future significance. It is personal, both is the sense that it is an unashamedly biased view of both the significance of the project, and the nature of that significance and because the author was personally involved as one of the consultants on GENERATOR and subsequently involved Cedric Price in its educational application at the Architectural Association. GENERATOR is still very much alive and was still developing whilst this chapter was being written.

‘Beijing bling’: creative details and consumer choices in contemporary China : an interview with Hung Huang

This edited interview with Hung Huang, CEO of China Interactive Media Group (CIMG), was conducted by Lucy Montgomery in Beijing on 12 August 2005. It was done as part of the ARC Discovery research project, Internationalising Creative Industries: China, the WTO and the Knowledge Economy, led by John Hartley. That project is investigating the development of creative industries in China by focusing on a number of creative services including fashion magazines. Huang’s group publishes five fashion magazines in China, including i-Look, Youth International (Qingnian Yizu), which is the Chinese edition of Seventeen (originally founded by TV-Guide mogul Walter Annenberg), and the Beijing and Shanghai versions of London’s Time Out. It also produces TV programs under the same media brands. The company is based in the stylish Bauhaus-designed former factory 798-Space in the district of Dashanzi, Beijing (see www.798space.com). Huang went to school in Greenwich Village and graduated from Vassar College in New York. She is the daughter of Zhang Hanzhi, who was Mao Zedong’s personal English teacher, and stepdaughter of Qiao Guanhua, Foreign Minister of China during the 1970s at the time of the Nixon visit. Her book My Abnormal Life sold 200,000 copies in China.

Third-sector discourses and the future of (un)employment : skilled labor, new technologies, and the meaning of work

In this paper we analyse a 600,000 word corpus comprised of policy statements produced within supranational, national, state and local legislatures about the nature and causes of(un)employment. We identify significant rhetorical and discursive features deployed by third sector (un)employment policy authors that function to extend their legislative grasp to encompass the most intimate aspects of human association.

Seeing music performance : visual influences on perception and experience

Drawing from ethnographic, empirical, and historical / cultural perspectives, we examine the extent to which visual aspects of music contribute to the communication that takes place between performers and their listeners. First, we introduce a framework for understanding how media and genres shape aural and visual experiences of music. Second, we present case studies of two performances, and describe the relation between visual and aural aspects of performance. Third, we report empirical evidence that visual aspects of performance reliably influence perceptions of musical structure (pitch related features) and affective interpretations of music. Finally, we trace new and old media trajectories of aural and visual dimensions of music, and highlight how our conceptions, perceptions and appreciation of music are intertwined with technological innovation and media deployment strategies.

Predication and propagation : a method for analyzing evaluative meanings in technology policy

In this article I outline and demonstrate a synthesis of the methods developed by Lemke (1998) and Martin (2000) for analyzing evaluations in English. I demonstrate the synthesis using examples from a 1.3-million-word technology policy corpus drawn from institutions at the local, state, national, and supranational levels. Lemke's (1998) critical model is organized around the broad 'evaluative dimensions' that are deployed to evaluate propositions and proposals in English. Martin's (2000) model is organized with a more overtly systemic-functional orientation around the concept of 'encoded feeling'. In applying both these models at different times, whilst recognizing their individual usefulness and complementarity, I found specific limitations that led me to work towards a synthesis of the two approaches. I also argue for the need to consider genre, media, and institutional aspects more explicitly when claiming intertextual and heteroglossic relations as the basis for inferred evaluations. A basic assertion made in this article is that the perceived Desirability of a process, person, circumstance, or thing is identical to its 'value'. But the Desirability of anything is a socially and thus historically conditioned attribution that requires significant amounts of institutional inculcation of other 'types' of value-appropriateness, importance, beauty, power, and so on. I therefore propose a method informed by critical discourse analysis (CDA) that sees evaluation as happening on at least four interdependent levels of abstraction.