Looking and aesthetics: beyond literary representations of voyeurism

This thesis examines looking in literary and filmic representations to discover its aims and capacities beyond the conventional interpretations of the act as voyeurism.

Alien aesthetics

Melbourne was visited by Bruce Sterling, one of the founders of the science fiction genre of cyberpunk, for the very first time. Bruce's work as a future thinker and visionary who has been shaping the forefront of design and technology can be followed at his Wired column, Beyond the Beyond. His public lecture at Deakin Edge on August 18th tackled the bleeding edge of contemporary culture: Alien Aesthetics. The idea of Alien Aesthetics is better known through the work of Ian Bogost. According to Bogost, Alien Aesthetics is not concerned with trying to "satisfy our human drive for art and design, but to fashion design fictions". These kinds of alien design fictions can be seen in the images produced by Google's Inceptionism, which capture the deep dreams of artificial neural networks. Alien Aesthetics is also present in pop culture, as in the work of artist Holly Herndon, whose new album Platform has been heralded as a fusion between critical thinking about technology and creative exploration of what she calls "alien sounds". This kind of cross-pollination between contemporary theory and creative practice also took place at a free parallel event at LOOP Bar on August 17th: Conversations about Alien Aesthetics. This event was organised by a partnership between the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University and The New Centre of Research & Practice, a global research platform dedicated to transdisciplinary exchanges between art and science, and featured local and virtual speakers from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Brazil.

William Gaddis's aesthetics of recognitions

William Gaddis���s The Recognitions (1955) is a selfreflexive novel that portrays Wyatt Gwyon���s trajectory from childhood to maturity, as he rejects and searches for originality. The present work bestows an analysis of William Gaddis���s The Recognitions focusing on the problematization of originality and authorship proposed by the novel by means of the central issues of forgery and plagiarism, which bring with them two larger and more important sister-notions: authorship and originality. The novel questions the prevailing demand for originality and discusses the possibility of being original. It formulates an aesthetics of recognitions defended in the novel and used by the author in the making of this text. In order to do that, this work provides a view on the different concepts associated with the terms originality and original, as well as some of the main infringements related to them in contemporary society. It also offers an account of the development of the concepts of originality and authorship in Western society, showing the growing importance of the figure of the author and the parallel development of the concepts of plagiarism and copyright. The next three chapters are dedicated to attempt to provide an account of William Gaddis���s The Recognitions focusing on the main artist characters and an analysis of the novel in the light of the theoretical and historical background provided. The first of these chapters focuses on Wyatt���s trajectory and his visions of art. The second identifies and analyses Wyatt���s mirrors in the narrative, which reinforce the self-reflective structure of the novel. And the third chapter exemplifies and analyses Wyatt���s aesthetics of recognitions, which turns out to be Gaddis���s own aesthetics in the making of his fiction.

Factors to Achieve Aesthetics in All-Ceramic Restorations

The demand for aesthetic restorations has increased during the last years. Dental ceramics are a successful alternative for some cases because of aesthetics and biocompatibility. Therefore, the aim of this literature review was to present the factors necessary to fabricate all-ceramic restorations with aesthetics similar to natural dentition. A search of English-language peer-review literature was completed using MEDLINE database from 1975 to 2009 including the keywords "aesthetic," "metal-free crown," "all-ceramic," and "color." It was observed that several factors influence aesthetics of all-ceramic restorations. Color scale, light source during color evaluation, characteristic of core material, color of supporting tooth, presence of root post, and type of cement are clinical factors that may influence color of the restorations. Laboratorial factors as technique for ceramic condensation, thickness, temperature, and number of firing cycles also influence the result of these crowns. Although several clinical and laboratorial factors influence aesthetics of all-ceramic restorations, the aesthetic success and longevity of these restorations depend on the integration with surrounding periodontal tissue.

Some deviations of form: a little essay on psychoanalysis, art and aesthetics

This work intends to investigate the use of psychoanalytical theory within the aesthetic and critical contemporary art field. To this purpose, it focuses on two philosophers who have become significant in our time: the art critic Hal Foster and the art historian Georges Didi-Huberman. This study aims to show how far the concepts generated in psychoanalytic praxis allowed interpretations that disrupt the traditional aesthetics field. This type of analysis is possible once we abandon the paradigm of ���applied psychoanalysis���, which is still current in non-clinical setting. Finally, the proposal wants to argue that the category of the amorphous may clarify certain aesthetic experiences that range from the modernity of art through postmodernity.

Optimizing maxillary aesthetics of a severe compromised tooth through orthodontic movement and dental implants

Treatment of severe compromised tooth in the maxillary anterior area still poses great challenge to the clinicians. Several treatment modalities have been proposed to restore the function and aesthetics in teeth with advanced periodontal disease. The present study aims to report a case of traumatic injury of a left-maxillary central incisor with ridge preservation, orthodontic movement, and implant therapy. A 45-year-old woman underwent the proposed treatment for her left central incisor: basic periodontal therapy, xenogenous bone graft, and guided bone regeneration (GBR). Six months after the graft procedure, orthodontic movement by means of alignment and leveling was made and a coronal displacement of the gingival margin and vertical bone apposition could be observed after 13 months of active movement. Afterwards, a dental implant was placed followed by a connective tissue graft and immediate provisionalization of the crown. In conclusion, orthodontic movement was effective to improve the gingival tissue and alveolar bone prior to implant placement favoring the aesthetic results. Six years postoperatively, the results revealed height and width alveolar bone gain indicating that the treatment proposed was able to restore all the functional and aesthetic parameters.

EVOLUTIONARY AESTHETICS AND SEXUAL SELECTION IN THE EVOLUTION OF ROCK ART AESTHETICS

This theoretical proposal applies evolutionary aesthetic, animal signalling and sexual selection to understand our artistic cognition, especially rock art aesthetics. Iconographic motifs, universally found in rock art, indicate which set of pre-artistic aesthetic psychological bias has been co-opted to catch the viewer`s attention. The co-evolutionary process of sexual selection could have shaped the design features of both rock art images and their aesthetic cognition by conferring mutual benefits on both producers, via manipulation, and receivers, via information extraction. We show some strategic techniques identified in rock art and art that indicate the occurrence of this co-evolution between producers and receivers.

The Art of Aidagara: Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Quest for an Ontology of Social Existence in Watsuji Tetsur�����s Rinrigaku

This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara (���betweenness���) in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsur�� (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as ���Critical Buddhism.��� The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from ���topical��� or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) ���critical��� thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of ���reason��� versus ���intuition��� in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison of Watsuji���s ���ontological quest��� with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji���s primary Western source and foil, is followed by an evaluation of a corresponding search for an ���ontology of social existence��� undertaken by Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962). Ultimately, the philosophico-religious writings of Watsuji Tetsur�� allow for the ���return��� of aesthesis as a modality of social being that is truly dimensionalized, and thus falls prey neither to the verticality of topicalism nor the limiting objectivity of criticalism.