Michael Podro; V—A Sense of Complexity in the Visual Arts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 79–98, https://doi.or.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to present the development and evaluation of an art psychotherapy brief treatment method for complex depression for patients referred to mental health services.Background: Art Psychotherapy literature describes a range of processes of relational change through the use of arts focused and relationship focused interventions. Complex depression has a prevalence of 3% of the population in the West and it is recorded that in 2016 only 28% of that population were receiving psychological treatment. This (...) study was developed to test the hypothesis of whether an accessible and acceptable approach to the treatment of complex depression could be developed in relation to existing evidence-based practice within mental health services.Method: The United Kingdom Medical Research Council phased guidance for complex intervention development was used to develop the intervention. The process included producing a literature overview, systematic description of clinical practice, including a logic model and a clinical protocol. The art psychotherapy protocol described an arts-based dynamic interpersonal therapy approach, offered 1:1 over 24 sessions. Further to this the intervention was tested for referrer acceptability. The intervention is in the early stages of evaluation, using changes to the patient's depression and anxiety measured pre- and post-treatment with a follow-up measure at 3 months following completion of treatment.Results: Phase I of the study provided a good basis for developing a logic model and protocol. The authors found that there was good clinical consensus about the use of a structured clinical art psychotherapy method and the literature overview was used to support specific examples of good practice. The verification of clinical coherence was represented by a logic model and clinical protocol for delivering the intervention. The acceptability study demonstrated very high levels of acceptability for referrers reporting that ADIT was acceptable for patients with complex/major depression, that they were likely to refer to ADIT in the future that the use of arts was likely to improve accessibility the use of arts was likely to improve outcomes and that offering ADIT was an effective use of mental health resources.Discussion: Phase I of this intervention development study demonstrated theoretical and practice coherence resulting in a clinical protocol and logic model. Whilst Phase II of this study showed promising results, Phase II would need to be sufficiently scaled up to a full trial to further test the intervention and protocol. (shrink)

Michael Podro; V—A Sense of Complexity in the Visual Arts, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 79–98, https://doi.or.

JPVA Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts No 6 Complexity Architecture / Art / Philosophy 'Beginning with complexity will involve working with the recognition that there has always been more than one. Here however this insistent "more than one" will be positioned beyond the scope of semantics; rather than complexity occurring within the range of meaning and taking the form of a generalised polysemy, it will be linked to the nature of the object and to its (...) production. Complexity, therefore, will be inextricably connected to the ontology of the object. What this means is that complexity, in resisting the hold of a semantic idealism on the one hand, and the attempt to give to it the position of being the basis of a new foundationalism on the other, becomes a way of thinking both the presence and the production of objects.' Andrew Benjamin The Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts has set new standards in its exploration of themes central to philosophy's relation to the visual arts, illuminating areas of art criticism, architecture, feminism as well as philosophy itself. Rather than simply reflecting current trends it provides a forum in which the real developments in the analysis of the visual arts and its larger cultural and political context can be presented. Articles by well known philosophers and theorists, as well as some lesser known, together with writings by artists and architects allow a strong interdisciplinary approach reflecting the Journal's roots in post-structural theory. Previous issues include: Philosophy & the Visual Arts (No 1) Philosophy & Architecture (No 2) Architecture, Space, Painting (No 3) The Body (No 4) Abstraction (No 5). (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture (1973) and Elizabeth Manchester’s All My Dresses With All My Shoes (2002) in terms of the differently structured temporalities of making and viewing through which the concept of femininity materializes in each work. Diachronic understandings of post-feminism, as a concept emptied of a former moment of political consciousness, are contested through my readings of artworks that call forth a complexity of tenses. The article argues that the connections (...) and tensions between the two works, which are generationally distinct in terms of the political and cultural climate of their production, require a critical apparatus that suggests the simultaneity of differently valued temporal experiences. The notion of temporal play is further explored in relation to Vanessa Beecroft’s performance and film works VB29 (1997) and VB35 (1998). Here the traces of earlier feminist strategy, in which femininity is cast in relation to loss, are reconfigured in the failure to achieve the stasis of the photographic moment. (shrink)

Is there progress in art? The question is one which most people would answer vehemently in the negative without giving it much thought. And yet, how is one to account for changes in artistic style? And what is one to think about modern art, which still seems baffling to many in comparison with traditional figurative art? Suzi Gablik's challenging argument is that art, like science, has a history, order and structure which can be called progressive. Progress, however, is not a (...) question of moral or esthetic improvement but involves a cognitive 'growth' of artistic styles and is related to transformations in modes of thinking. The model used for the argument is based on principles of developmental psychology advanced by the famous and revolutionary Swiss experimental psychologist Jean Piaget. By demonstrating the way in which art is linked with the acquisition of stages of development: increasingly complex perceptual and logical structures lead to mental organizations which are increasingly dominated by scientific, rationalistic and conceptual modes of thinking in contrast to earlier more mystical ones. In this light, an attempt is made to explain the shift in art from figurative or iconic representation, where the image resembles the object to which it refers, towards non-representational art which is abstract and conceptual in organization. Three sections of illustrations demonstrate, through revealing juxtapositions, the course of artistic development from ancient and medieval times, through the Renaissance, to contemporary art. -- from dust jacket. (shrink)

Is there progress in art? The question is one which most people would answer vehemently in the negative without giving it much thought. And yet, how is one to account for changes in artistic style? And what is one to think about modern art, which still seems baffling to many in comparison with traditional figurative art? Suzi Gablik's challenging argument is that art, like science, has a history, order and structure which can be called progressive. Progress, however, is not a (...) question of moral or esthetic improvement but involves a cognitive 'growth' of artistic styles and is related to transformations in modes of thinking. The model used for the argument is based on principles of developmental psychology advanced by the famous and revolutionary Swiss experimental psychologist Jean Piaget. By demonstrating the way in which art is linked with the acquisition of stages of development: increasingly complex perceptual and logical structures lead to mental organizations which are increasingly dominated by scientific, rationalistic and conceptual modes of thinking in contrast to earlier more mystical ones. In this light, an attempt is made to explain the shift in art from figurative or iconic representation, where the image resembles the object to which it refers, towards non-representational art which is abstract and conceptual in organization. Three sections of illustrations demonstrate, through revealing juxtapositions, the course of artistic development from ancient and medieval times, through the Renaissance, to contemporary art. -- from dust jacket. (shrink)

The arts are one of the most complex of human endeavours, and so it is fitting that a special issue on Complex Systems in Aesthetics and Arts is being published. As the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank the reviewers of the submitted papers for their hard work in making this issue possible, as well as the authors who submitted their work and were very responsive to the comments of the reviewers and editors.

The Anatoly Bakushinsky’s Seminarium (1917–1926) at the Tsvetkov gallery in Moscow became one of the first experimental and most influential venues to develop approaches to the perception of art in Soviet Russia. In it, Bakushinsky, an art critic and the head of the Physical-Psychological Department of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN), incorporated the practice of formal art history into a methodology based on materialism, psychology, and experimental aesthetics widely practiced at the GAKhN. Today, this combination of approaches is (...) perceived as an isolated historical example of an outmoded eclecticism. I argue, however, that Bakushinsky’s methodology should be studied in the context of the complex institutional structure of the Academy that was designed to ensure multidisciplinary work in art studies and its almost immediate implementation into art practice. This institutional and material nexus of the GAKhN’s history opens up a new direction in studying the intellectual legacy of Soviet humanities of the 1920s, which is otherwise often reduced to biographical narratives. (shrink)

This article is about the power of critical thinking through embryos and embryology in bioart. In this instance, critical thinking does not promise revolution or a takedown of bioengineering, but basic empowerment through scientific knowledge. I argue that the use of embryos in Jill Scott’s Somabook (2011) and Adam Zaretsky’s DIY Embryology (2015) constitutes an instance of what Philip Galanter identifies as complexism. In turn, the complexism of embryology reveals two modes of critical thinking. First, embryology distils the awe and (...) wonder that come with basic scientific literacy. In turn, scientific literacy provides agency for individuals through a trifecta of feeling, belief and pragmatism: based on the frisson of curiosity and wonder that comes with recognizing biological complexity, it frees individuals from the bounds of superstition and metaphysics while building a path to fact-based problem solving. Second, as works of art bearing embryos they are part of the politics and history of embryology that emerged in contrast to genetics almost a century ago. Distinct from the coding of genetics as nucleus-centric, separate, homogeneous, a matter of being, and male, embryology was coded as cytoplasmic, interactive, heterogeneous, a matter of becoming, and feminist. (shrink)

Bodily expression of affection through movement is both simple and complex: simple insofar as it puts us into immediate communion with the affective lives of others; complex insofar as it relies on rapid and subtle movements that generally escape explicit notice. The difficulty in understanding the bodily basis of intersubjectivity comes in understanding how in and through complex movement the simplicity of expression is possible. It is here that reflection on the arts proves valuable. Hans-Georg Gadamer points to the role (...) of art in contemplating the truth of appearance, and he observes that nature appears as self-renewing play. Drawing on these insights, this paper considers the treatment of bodily expression in the work of three artists: the portraiture of El Greco, a novel by Charlotte Brontë, and several poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. All three artists employ the imagery of fire to represent bodily expression. Fire recommends itself because of its subtle movement and its radiance. In light of these artists’ approach to the phenomenon, the paper argues that “radiant interplay” characterizes the how of bodily expressiveness. Our bodies radiate our felt affectivity through the play of our features, and this play is always reciprocally related to the play of others radiating their felt affectivity. Reflection on art enriches the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This book reports recent landmark developments and the state of the art in NDS science in psychological theory and research.

ACMES is a multidisciplinary conference series that focuses on epistemological and mathematical issues relating to computation in modern science. This volume includes a selection of papers presented at the 2015 and 2016 conferences held at Western University that provide an interdisciplinary outlook on modern applied mathematics that draws from theory and practice, and situates it in proper context. These papers come from leading mathematicians, computational scientists, and philosophers of science, and cover a broad collection of mathematical and philosophical topics, including (...) numerical analysis and its underlying philosophy, computer algebra, reliability and uncertainty quantification, computation and complexity theory, combinatorics, error analysis, perturbation theory, experimental mathematics, scientific epistemology, and foundations of mathematics. By bringing together contributions from researchers who approach the mathematical sciences from different perspectives, the volume will further readers' understanding of the multifaceted role of mathematics in modern science, informed by the state of the art in mathematics, scientific computing, and current modeling techniques. (shrink)

An ongoing collaborative project between art and science, Taming the Forest (2022) was implemented by a team of students, artists and researchers charting an interdisciplinary project among bioeconomics, environmental history, policy and artistic practice. In this article, the project acts as a case study for researching the conflicting narratives of history and economics about biodiversity in general, and specifically about forests. It shows how different blends of methodologies in artistic-cum-scientific research can become relevant for both realms, opening new creative pathways (...) and pedagogical registers while repeatedly returning to a specific forest’s microhistory. Moreover, the article stresses the need for a new sensibility and complex knowledge, moving beyond an objective study and becoming attentive to different dimensions of research and its outputs that emerge through the introduction of artistic thinking and methodologies. This kind of transdisciplinary approach becomes necessary in order to tackle the manifold large-scale problems such as the climate and biodiversity crises, which call for both acting decisively and transforming radically, above all with regard to how humans perceive, relate to and manage nature. (shrink)

A deep theme of Austrian economics has been that of spontaneous order or selforganization of the economy. The origin of this theme dates to the putative founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, with his theory of the spontaneous emergence of money for transactions purposes in primitive economies being archetypal example (Menger, 1892). Menger drew this approach from the Scottish Enlightenment figures David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith, with the latter’s Wealth of Nations (1776) particularly important. The most important (...) developer of this idea within the tradition after Menger was F.A. Hayek (1948), who would identify this self-organization phenomenon with emergence, later expanding upon this into the broader concept of complexity (Hayek, 1952, 1967). Caldwell (2004) argues that this became an increasingly important focus of Hayek’s thought in the later years of his life. Among those examining this development in more detail besides Caldwell have been Koppl (2006, 2009), Rosser (2010a),1 and Lewis (2010). This essay will consider more thoroughly the relationship between the concepts of emergence and complexity and the roles that they have played in Austrian economics as well as more broadly in philosophy and science. An important point is that both of these concepts do not possess precise meanings; they are “terms of art” within philosophy. However, while closely linked through the general idea of a whole being “greater than.. (shrink)

Contemporary artworks are primary sources for a better understanding of the most important issues in our current reality. The complexities of cultural interactions are often thematized in pieces of art using the artistic means of code-switching, and where the investigation of these questions is pursued in and with regards to the issues of the broader context, including the built and the urban setting. In this paper I examine some aspects of these questions, with the help of some inspiring examples, through (...) artworks by creators coming from five different parts of the world: hence in the works by Manit Sriwanichpoom, Nandipha Mntambo, Michael Rakowitz, Yinka Shonibare, and Marja Helander. In this way I aim to emphasize the global relevance of these issues, as well as what we can thus learn from and about our own origins, current standpoints, and further possibilities. (shrink)

The economic crisis happening across the world over the last few years describes a range of interdependencies and interactions,and has highlighted the fundamentalf laws of neoclassical economic theory: its unedifying focus on prediction and, above all, its inability to explain how the economy really works. As such, it is increasingly recognised that economic phenomena cannot be exclusively investigated as being derived from deterministic, predictable and mechanistic dynamics. Instead, a new approach is required by which history-dependence, organic and ever-evolving processes are (...) also accounted for. As this view implies new challenges and opportunities for policy, we will focus our attention on innovative components of Complexity Theory for the study of economics and the evaluation of public policies. (shrink)

Academics from diverse disciplines are recognizing not only the procedural ethical issues involved in research, but also the complexity of everyday “micro” ethical issues that arise. While ethical guidelines are being developed for research in aboriginal populations and low-and-middle-income countries, multi-partnered research initiatives examining arts-based interventions to promote social change pose a unique set of ethical dilemmas not yet fully explored. Our research team, comprising health, education, and social scientists, critical theorists, artists and community-activists launched a five-year research partnership (...) on arts-for-social change. Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada and based in six universities, including over 40 community-based collaborators, and informed by five main field projects, we set out to synthesize existing knowledge and lessons we learned. We summarized these learnings into 12 key points for reflection, grouped into three categories: community-university partnership concerns, dilemmas related to the arts, and team issues. In addition to addressing previous concerns outlined in the literature, we identified power dynamics hindering meaningful participation of community partners and university-based teams that need to be addressed within a reflective critical framework of ethical practice. We present how our team has been addressing these issues, as examples of how such concerns could be approached in community-university partnerships in arts for social change. (shrink)

Summary Colour and space are pervasive topics in both perception and art. This article investigates the role of colour and pattern in relation to space and time in the art works by two artists: Frank Stella, a well-known Post-War American abstract painter, and Pieter Vermeersch, an emerging Belgian abstract painter, representing a contemporary trend to break the barriers between artistic disciplines. While Stella adheres to the Modernist logic of non-illusionistic, non-spatial, non-referential art as object, perceived instantaneously, Vermeersch explores ways to (...) enhance the viewers’ spatial and temporal experiences through complex art installations with multiple objects and architectural elements interacting with each other and with the spaces in which they are embedded. We discuss these major themes in some representative art works, and in the way they are perceived and appreciated by contemporary viewers, investigated in four empirical studies: two laboratory experiments using well-controlled stimuli derived from at works, and two museum studies employing a variety of methods, including mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to articulate and analyse the complexity of the concept of work in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. Work is usually interpreted as antithetical to political action. This claim merits specification: only the instrumental, utilitarian strand of homo faber poses real danger to authentic politics. By contrast, the artistic or cultural mode of homo faber is not only compatible with Arendt’s understanding of politics, but in fact indispensable for any form of political longevity. Enduring political existence (...) is impossible without the constant support of artists, poets, historiographers and monument-builders who reify and memorialize the key meanings of political communities. This claim is substantiated by applying the phenomenological concept of sedimentation and drawing the political implications of this application. However, similarly to Edmund Husserl, Arendt identified a dual, problematic nature of sedimentation that underscores the importance of natality and thinking in artistic practice. (shrink)

Many on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead. Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects (...) three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's _Hiroshima Projection_, made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's _After Hiroshima mon amour_ ; and Leslie Thornton's _Let Me Count the Ways_, which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied. (shrink)

This book is a practical study of the forest industrial complex composed in analogical narratives of prosaic discourse and poetic themes presented in a gallery tour through the corporate moral forest. Its focus is on the changing of management by objectives policies to management by ethics philosophies and managing moralities.

Saturn and Melancholy remains an iconic text in art history, intellectual history, and the study of culture, despite being long out of print in English. Rooted in the tradition established by Aby Warburg and the Warburg Library, this book has deeply influenced understandings of the interrelations between the humanities disciplines since its first publication in English in 1964. This new edition makes the original English text available for the first time in decades. Saturn and Melancholy offers an unparalleled inquiry into (...) the origin and development of the philosophical and medical theories on which the ancient conception of the temperaments was based and discusses their connections to astrological and religious ideas. It also traces representations of melancholy in literature and the arts up to the sixteenth century, culminating in a landmark analysis of Dürer's most famous engraving, Melencolia I. This edition features Raymond Klibansky's additional introduction and bibliographical amendments for the German edition, as well as translations of source material and 155 original illustrations. An essay on the complex publication history of this pathbreaking project - which almost did not see the light of day - covers more than eighty years, including its more recent heritage. Making new a classic book that has been out of print for over four decades, this expanded edition presents fresh insights about Saturn and Melancholy and its legacy as a precursor to modern interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.1 (2005) 31-47 [Access article in PDF] Holistic Integrated Design Education: Art Education in a Complex and Uncertain World Christopher Nokes Egosystem All art is the solution to an initiating design problem that must be articulated, even if the problem is this: to create something without meaning. As such, all art is a literary process, whereby the idea is articulated before that idea is (...) re-presented as an art form. And this is precisely what I attempt to do in the classroom when I assign highly challenging, universal, socio-cultural based and interpretive design problems. Both intent and solutions are implicit in the design assignments given to students. In each case the design process is emphasised, and students define the problem, research (often collaboratively), brainstorm (diving deeply into the problem for potential solutions), develop alternative solutions, use free-hand sketches and storyboarding to track the design and decision-making process, and (finally) select the best design for development and evaluation. Definition of key terms, research and storyboarding are the initial steps in the process to solving each of the design problems. Some examples of problem solving performance tasks are provided below (Table 1).Regarding the last example, in my first year of teaching I accepted a position on agreement that I teach Grade 10 (sophomore) mathematics. Even though my teaching background favored art and history, this was not a hardship because my original degree was in architecture (University of Toronto, 1978). I realized quickly that my personal romance with D.N. Perkins's Knowledge as Design demanded that I attempt to teach mathematics as a design process (much to the dismay of the department head).1 Nevertheless, imaginative mathematical works of mind were explored, based on original "design problems." As well, collaborative math tests were developed (and structured as design problems), where students divided into groups or design teams, each team having a "competent mathematician" on [End Page 31] Click for larger viewTable 1 Works of Mind; Visual Arts as a Problem-Solving Design Process [End Page 32]board. Each team worked together to solve one challenging mathematical problem, or a series of challenging mathematical design problems, under a time limit. This ensured that each student had a role to play. A key group dynamic here is that students speak to each other as peers, in a way teachers cannot: "No! You don't do it that way, silly. It's like this!" says A. "Ok! Ok! Don't yell at me," says B tenderly. "It's like this?" "Yes!" says A. "See! You really are good at math!" It was a beautiful thing to watch. The so-called "stupid-at-math" students saw how the "brainy" math students interpreted and approached mathematics, while the "brainy" students pulled those students who always believed they were "stupid at math" up to their level. In the end (to say the least), it greatly increased the weaker students' comfort level entering the classroom, and (at best) it gave weaker math students confidence by dispelling some of the mystical mystery which mathematics seems to possess — mathematics is not a mystery, it is a problem waiting to be solved as any other design problem once you know the process. Click for larger viewTable 2 Components of the Egosystem This is holistic integrated design education (or HIDE). Transforming students from the traditional, isolated receiver of information to the holistic child requires a fundamental transformation of the associative-cognitive paradigm of learning behavior and psychology, based on the child's ego development in a kind of object-filled, symbolical, self-contained world.2 In actuality, the world is complex, multi-faceted, hyper-sensitive, with many people of different socio-cultural and intellectual frames of mind interacting; and it is (thus) hardly self-contained. The world has indeed evolved that far. Somehow, like all paradigms, the ego must undergo a similar evolution, a similar transformation.3 A new version of ego must be invented, one that takes into account all the stuff of objective reality — the... (shrink)

This essay investigates the linguistic, artistic, and typographical dimensions of Anne Carson’s H of H Playbook and Trojan Women by Euripides: A Comedy. I argue that graphic design and design-thinking principles provide a useful and unexplored theoretical framework for deciphering these books, given the often-complex relationship in them between image and words, and sometimes even words presented in different typeface and handwriting. Carson worked in graphic design for a time, and as a poet, words – and metaphor, specifically – are (...) her primary design tool. Language works in tandem with image and form to create broader artistic meaning. (shrink)

To analyze the relations between art and science, philosophers and historians have developed different lines of inquiry. A first type of inquiry considers how artistic and scientific practices have interacted over human history. Another project aims to determine the contributions that scientific research can make to our understanding of art, including the contributions that cognitive science can make to philosophical questions about the nature of art. We rely on contributions made to these projects in order to demonstrate that art and (...) science are codependent phenomena. Specifically, we explore the codependence of art and science in the context of a historical analysis of their interactions and in the context of contemporary debates on the cognitive science of art. (shrink)

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a remarkable convergence of art and design in De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus. But in the second half of the twentieth century fine art relinquished its liaison with design due to the influence of Dada and Surrealism's postromantic antagonism to practical-functionalism. Dada and Surrealism and postmodern fine art are characterized by a critique of the dominant social discourse of functionalism and the demand for a sublime poetics to be brought (...) into everyday life. This article argues that the apparent antipathy between postmodern fine art and design can be ameliorated if we critically analyse interpretations of evolutionary theory by postromantic philosophers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, and Deleuze and Guattari. When Bergson notes that practical-functional reasoning was created by evolution he reveals a flaw in the pursuit of an aesthetics that is totally opposed to commonsense and practical-functionalism. And when we turn to Deleuze and Guattari we find another valuable concept in the form of their notion of the machinic, which assists further in reconciling the postromantic emphasis on the sublime with the practicality of mechanism. Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the machinic is informed by chaos theory, which allows further elaboration in terms of complexity theory. Complexity theory can be understood as a process philosophy that has no need to figure the sublime in terms of a mysterious force of nature because the mystery is located within complex interactions among a manifold of components, what one might refer to as a cosmic, machinic, combinatoire that arises out of what Christopher Langton has called the edge of chaos. This makes it possible to replace the emphasis on desire as the fundamental force of nature evident in Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari with a complexity-theoretical concept of a cosmicmachinic combinatoire. It is then possible to formulate a machinic, evolutionary aesthetics that can reconcile the postromantic demand for sublimity with the demand for practical-functionalism that lies at the heart of the discipline of design. In place of the modernist machine aesthetic that informed De Stijl, Constructivism and the Bauhaus we would have a postmodernist machinic aesthetic. (shrink)

In the Euthydemus, Socrates is presented as an eager student of seemingly trivial arts, earning derision both for desiring to master the peculiar art of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus and for studying the harp in his old age. I explain Socrates’ interest in these apparently trivial arts by way of a novel reading of the first protreptic argument, suggesting that the wisdom Socrates praises is complex in nature, securing the happiness of its possessor only insofar as it is composed of both (...) ordinary productive knowledge and ethically productive knowledge. This reading of the first protreptic makes sense of the otherwise perplexing second protreptic, explaining why Socrates is so keen to identify an art which makes what it uses. Wisdom acts as a reliable source of benefit only insofar as it is a complex composed of multiple different arts and types of knowledge. These arts, however, can only be acquired one at a time – if no single art is capable of combining the powers of both ordinary productive knowledge and ethically productive knowledge in the way that wisdom as a whole does, then the pursuit of wisdom will fail to offer reliable benefit despite the reliably beneficial nature of its possession. Thus, it is appropriate for the Euthydemus to conclude with Socrates telling Crito to take courage and pursue philosophy despite the seemingly harmful effects that its pursuit has had on others. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus represent the danger facing the aspiring philosopher, the possibility of being ruined by independent possession of the particular kind of ordinary productive knowledge on which philosophical activity depends – verbal mastery, the grasp of subtle conceptual distinctions needed both to argumentatively reveal reality and to argumentatively obscure it, to reliably equivocate and to reliably avoid equivocation. (shrink)

Popularized by Richard Hofstadter, the notion of "paranoid style" is the most influential attempt at applying the category of paranoia to the study of politics. Yet, the success of this elegant formula conceals a complex history and a set of unarticulated assumptions about the connections between symbolic phenomena, psychopathological states, and politics. The article proceeds to recover these assumptions and suggests that the notion of "paranoid style" is ultimately indeterminate, making its application arbitrary and ideological.

Many on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead. Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects (...) three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's _Hiroshima Projection_ (1999), made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's _After Hiroshima mon amour_ (2005-2008); and Leslie Thornton's _Let Me Count the Ways_ (2004-2008), which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction. I consider two different arguments for literary value, one based on Martin Heidegger's philosophy of art and the other on the tradition of form-content inseparability in literary aesthetics and literary criticism. The former is reliant on the genre's combination of formal complexity with substantive superficiality and the latter on the combination of formal complexity with substantive complexity. I employ Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) and Nelson DeMille's (...) Plum Island (1997) as examples, focusing on the question of whether they have thematic content. I demonstrate that the novels instantiate substantive themes—about corruption, alienation, and moral amnesia—in consequence of which the argument for form-content inseparability is more compelling. I conclude by suggesting that form-content inseparability underpins both the literary value of hardboiled detective fiction and the genre's capacity for aesthetic education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 53-66 [Access article in PDF] Art Selection, or the Preservation of Artworks in the Struggle for Art Christopher Perricone The argument of George C. Williams's book Adaptation and Natural Selection is against what biologists call the group selectionist view — that individuals will act on behalf of their species, or at least on behalf of the group to which they belong.1 Williams (...) showed, and now most biologists agree, "no creature could ever evolve the ability to help its species at the expense of itself. Only when the two interests coincided would it act selflessly."2 According to Matt Ridley, Williams is one of the towering figures in contemporary biology. Williams helps us to understand better what natural selection is and consequently helps us to understand better our place in the world. Williams claims that when we are dealing with life, "we are forced to invoke natural selection to achieve a complete explanation of an observed system."3 Physics and chemistry alone are not sufficient to explain life. Williams gives the example of a falling apple. If one has to explain the trajectory of the apple, the principles of mechanics are sufficient for providing an adequate explanation of the phenomenon. If, however, we were asked how the apple acquired its various properties, and why it has these properties instead of others, we would need the theory of natural selection, at least by implication. Only thus could we explain why the apple has a waterproof wax on the outside...why it contains dormant embryos....We would find that an impressive list of structural details and processes of the apple can be understood as elements of a design for an efficient role in the propagation of the tree from which it came."4Of course, a little over a hundred years before Williams published his book, Charles Darwin published Origin of Species, in which natural selection is the linchpin of his theory of evolution. Natural selection for Darwin not only helped to explain the competitive climate of the living world but its luscious fecundity as well. Natural selection works like this: Let's say you [End Page 53] have a population of large beaked and small beaked birds. The environment in which the birds live provides them with an abundant and nutritious supply of both large and small seeds. Typically the small beaked birds eat the small seeds. The large beaked birds are capable of eating both small and large seeds. However, a blight occurs killing off all the small seed producing trees causing the food supply of the small beaked birds to diminish to virtually nil. Given that the small beaked birds are unable to feed on the continued supply of large seeds, they are selected out or eliminated from that environment: either they must seek out another environment, or they die. The large beaked birds, however, are in this case more adaptable to the environment because they can eat large seeds, survive, and pass on their largebeaked traits to the next generation. Darwin characterizes this process as "the struggle for life." He says: Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from what ever cause proceeding, if they be in any way profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relation to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.5Darwin sums up his discussion of natural selection by saying that the idea explains... (shrink)

This volume is both a state-of-the-art display of current thinking on second language development as a complex system. It is also a tribute to Diane Larsen-Freeman for her decades of intellectual leadership in the academic disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition. The chapters therein range from theoretical expositions to methodological analyses, pedagogical proposals, and conceptual frameworks for future research. In a balanced and in-depth manner, the authors provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of second language development, with a (...) wealth of insights that promise to break the status-quo of current research and take it to exciting new territory. The book will appeal to both seasoned and novice researchers in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, bilingualism, cognitive psychology, and education, as well as to practitioners in second or foreign language teaching of any language. (shrink)

In Art and intention Paisley Livingston develops a broad and balanced perspective on perennial disputes between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists in philosophical aesthetics and critical theory. He surveys and assesses a wide range of rival assumptions about the nature of intentions and the status of intentionalist psychology. With detailed reference to examples from diverse media, art forms, and traditions, he demonstrates that insights into the multiple functions of intentions have important implications for our understanding of artistic creation and authorship, the ontology (...) of art, conceptions of texts, works, and versions, basic issues pertaining to the nature of fiction and fictional truth, and the theory of art interpretation and appreciation. Livingston argues that neither the inspirationist nor rationalistic conceptions can capture the blending of deliberate and intentional, spontaneous and unintentional processes in the creation of art. Texts, works, and artistic structures and performances cannot be adequately individuated in the absence of a recognition of the relevant makers4intentions. The distinction between complete and incomplete works receives an action-theoretic analysis that makes possible an elucidation of several different senses of "fragment" in critical discourse. Livingston develops an account of authorship, contending that the recognition of intentions is in fact crucial to our understanding of diverse forms of collective art-making. An artist's short-term intentions and long-term plans and policies interact in complex ways in the emergence of an artistic oeuvre, and our uptake of such attitudes makes an important difference to our appreciation of the relations between items belonging to a single life-work. The intentionalism Livingston advocates is, however, a partial one, and accommodates a number of important anti-intentionalist contentions. Intentions are fallible, and works of art, like other artefacts, can be put to a bewildering diversity of uses. Yet some important aspects of art's meaning and value are linked to the artist's aims and activities. (shrink)

We argue that an epistemology of martial arts is at least as complex as advanced epistemological positions available to the philosophy of science. Part of the complexity is a product of the epistemic relation between the knower and known, or the scientist and the object of inquiry. In science, we measure things without changing them and, sometimes, complex systems can change as we measure them; but, in the epistemology of sport that we are interested in, each measurer is also (...) an object of inquiry. As such, each martial arts practitioner has to use various epistemic tools to measure a responsive system. We proceed in three steps. First, we discuss three epistemological frameworks in the philosophy of science—perspectivism, productivism, and distributed cognition. Second, we develop an epistemology of martial arts that features components from each of those epistemic frameworks. Third, we close the paper with a brief discussion about the unique complexity available to the martial artist, focusing on the responsive measurements that occur between two systems. (shrink)

In an attempt to discover the facial action units for affective states that occur during complex learning, this study adopted an emote-aloud procedure in which participants were recorded as they verbalised their affective states while interacting with an intelligent tutoring system (AutoTutor). Participants’ facial expressions were coded by two expert raters using Ekman's Facial Action Coding System and analysed using association rule mining techniques. The two expert raters received an overall kappa that ranged between.76 and.84. The association rule mining analysis (...) uncovered facial actions associated with confusion, frustration, and boredom. We discuss these rules and the prospects of enhancing AutoTutor with non-intrusive affect-sensitive capabilities. (shrink)

The purpose of this preliminary qualitative research study is to explore the role and function of multiple dynamic interactive aesthetic and intersubjective phenomena in the creative arts therapies process relative to transformation in perception, behavior, relationship, and well-being. A group of doctoral students and faculty studied these phenomena in an analogous creative arts therapies laboratory context using a method called Intrinsic Arts-Based Research. Intrinsic Arts-Based Research is a systematic study of psychological, emotional, relational, and arts-based phenomena, parallel to those emergent (...) in the creative arts therapies, using individual and collective intrinsic immersive and reflective experience in combination with qualitative and arts-based research methods. Our primary goal was to simulate the creative arts therapies experience in order to identify, document, and describe the complex transformative phenomena that occur at the nexus of arts-based expression, reflection, and relationships in the arts therapies. For the purposes of this paper transformation is defined as “.... a significant reconfiguration of perception and thought resulting in the lessening of psychic restraint and pain, allowing for the emergence of new psychological perspectives that contribute to living a more creative life” (Gerber et al. 2012, 45). Through a deductive thematic analysis of written accounts of these simulated creative arts therapies experiences by participant/researchers in the laboratory we identified three primary dynamic and interactive broad constructs that together, with more specific modifying themes, might account for and describe change within the creative arts therapies. These broad dynamic interactive themes are: ruptures, resolutions, and transformation; relationship and intersubjectivity; and, arts-based expressive processes. The more specific modifying themes include dialectical rupture and resolution, relational attunements and ruptures, imaginational flow, transcendence and ruptures, sensory/kinesthetic/embodied ways of knowing, and intersubjective transcendence. We propose that change in the creative arts therapies is driven more by a dynamic system of interactive phenomena the varying combinations of which create conditions for relational attunement, imagination, dialectical tensions and creative resolutions, and the ultimately creative transformation. (shrink)

Feminist analyses of the roles gender has played in art lead to an alternative theory that emphasizes art's complex interactions with culture(s) rather than the autonomy within culture claimed for it by formalism. Focusing on the visual arts, I extrapolate the new theory from feminist research and compare it with formalist precepts. Sharing Arthur Danto's concern that art has been disenfranchised in the twentieth century by its preoccupation with theory, I claim that feminist thought re-enfranchises art by revisioning its relationship (...) to its contexts. (shrink)

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) present us with unprecedented opportunities in bringing together students and educators from widely disparate geographical locations, as well as diverse cultures and backgrounds to participate in a learning experience that should take into cognizance the affordances of these novel arenas in the design of both content and the environment(s) in which this content is to be implemented/enacted. While VLEs do seem to address the requirements of well-structured learning endeavours, the boundaries of which are clearly defined, they (...) are challenged where complex learning material in which boundaries are less easily defined, as is the case in art/creativity education, are concerned. Given that the learning content of the creative fields is open ended by its very nature and as such does not seem to readily lend itself to an implementation within the structure of present-day, two-dimensional virtual learning environments, can such an environment/methodology be developed in the open-ended three-dimensional structure of a metaverse, based upon the critical examination of a real-life, historic precedent? (shrink)

In this challenging essay, Maarten Doorman argues that in art, belief in progress is still relevant, if not essential. The radical freedoms of postmodernism, he claims, have had a crippling effect on art, leaving it in danger of becoming meaningless. Art can only acquire meaning through context the concept of progress, then, is ideal as the primary criterion for establishing that context. The history of art, in fact, can be seen as a process of constant accumulation, works of art commenting (...) on one another and enriching one another's meanings. It is these complex interrelationships and the progress they create in both art and its observers that Doorman, in a display of great philosophical erudition, defends. (shrink)

Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of the cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary education, and even modern electoral politics. Along the way, the book turns to a set of art works from mobile steampunk sculptures to bicentennial adaptations of Frankenstein to a musical about the US Presidential election that ask how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, (...) responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling. The Creativity Complex traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and for the social world more broadly. (shrink)

This article contends that the evolution toward interdisciplinary collaboration that we are witnessing in the sciences must also occur in the humanities to ensure their very survival. That is, humanists must be open to working with scientists and social scientists interested in similar research questions and vice versa. Digital humanities is a positive first step. Complexity science should be the next step. Even though much of the ground-breaking work in complexity science has been done in the natural sciences (...) and mathematics, it can, if critically adapted, provide the needed metaphor for a broad integration of disciplines, humanistic and otherwise. Given its almost a-disciplinary nature, a complexity approach to the research problems in the humanities necessarily breaks down silos. Moreover, it can restore and reframe the seamless intellectual fabric sought by researchers before the atomization of the various disciplines in the nineteenthcentury academy. (shrink)

In this essay, we explore the philosophical and theoretical resonances of the artwork Qatipana from the perspective of some key insights of Gilbert Simondon’s information processing system approach. Qatipana (Quechua word that means flow, sequence, transmission) is a hybrid ecosystem of information flow which, even though not the kind of dispositive systems theory was designed to read, offers some valuable empirical insights to test some key aspects of Simondon’s information processing systems. In particular, we are interested in observing how Simondon’s (...) becoming and individuation play out in an algorithmic cycle performed by the cognitive system of an Artificial Intelligence agent: how does mono-technology and computerization of cultural techniques influence the nature of knowing the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? We contrast Simondon’s contributions with the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer on information in cybernetics and the cosmotechnics and Technodiversity of Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui. Furthermore, we offer a provisional assessment of the reach, limits, and possibilities this kind of symbiotic crossing of technologies and arts: it is a field filled with challenges and unresolved complexities that should encourage us to recognize the urgency that is implied in the disruptive (and creative) we can see unfolding in social and political life. The already pervasive (and growing) presence of computational systems has become both a tremendous risk and a vertiginous deployment of liberating opportunities. Latin America and elsewhere are desperately calling for an insightful and imaginative engagement. (shrink)

The enduring influence of the architect Gottfried Semper derives primarily from his monumental theoretical foray Der Stil in der technischen und tektonischen Künsten, here translated into English for the first time. A richly illustrated survey of the technical arts, Semper's analysis of the preconditions of style forever changed the interpretative context for aesthetics, architecture, and art history. Style, Semper believed, should be governed by historical function, cultural affinities, creative free will, and the innate properties of each medium. Thus, in an (...) ambitious attempt to turn nineteenth-century artistic discussion away from historicism, aestheticism, and materialism, Semper developed in Der Stil a complex picture of stylistic change based on scrutiny of specific objects and a remarkable grasp of cultural variety. Harry Francis Mallgrave's introductory essay offers an account of Semper's life and work, a survey of Der Stil, and a fresh consideration of Semper's landmark study and its lasting significance. (shrink)

This volume explores the roles and uses of abstraction in scientific and artistic practice. Conceived as an interdisciplinary dialogue between experts across histories and philosophies of art and science, this collection of essays draws on the shared premise that abstraction is a rich and generative process, not reducible to the mere omission of details in a representation. When scientists attempt to make sense of complex natural phenomena, they often produce highly abstract models of them. In the history and philosophy of (...) art, there is a long tradition of debate on the function of abstraction, and - more recently - its relation with theories of depiction. Adopting a process-oriented perspective, the chapters in this volume explore the epistemic potential of a diversity of practices of abstracting. The systematic analysis of a wide range of historical cases, from early twentieth-century abstractionist painting to contemporary abstract photography, and from nineteenth-century physics to recent research in biology and neurosciences, invites the reader to reflect on the material lives of abstraction through concrete artefacts, experimental practices and theoretical and aesthetic achievements. Abstraction in Science and Art: Philosophical Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of science, and epistemology, as well as to historians of science and art, and to practicing artists and scientists interested in exploring foundational questions at the heart of the creative practice of abstracting. (shrink)

Crisis events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, can have a devastating effect on communities and the care professionals within them. Over recent years, arts-based interventions have helped in a wide range of crisis situations, being recommended to support the workforce during and after complex crisis but there has been no systematic review of the role of arts-based crisis interventions and whether there are cogent themes regarding practice elements and outcomes. We, therefore, conducted a systematic review to (i) define the arts-based (...) change process used during and after crisis events, and (ii) explore the perceptions of intermediate and long-term mental health benefits of arts-based interventions for professionals in caring roles. Our search yielded six studies (all qualitative). All data were thematically aggregated and meta-synthesized, revealing seven practice elements (a safe place, focusing on strengths and protective factors, developing psychosocial competencies to support peers, emotional expression and processing, identifying and naming the impact of the crisis, using an integrative creative approach, and cultural and organizational sensitivity) applied across all six studies, as well as a range of intermediate and long-term benefits shared common features (adapting, growing, and recovering; using the community as a healing resource; reducing or preventing symptoms of stress or trauma reactions, psychophysiological homeostasis). The ways in which these studies were designed independently from one another and yet used the same practice elements in their crisis interventions indicates that there is comparability about how and why the arts-based practice elements are being used and to what effect. Our findings provide a sound basis and meaningful parameters for future research incorporating quantitative and qualitative approaches to firmly establish the effectiveness of art-based interventions, and how arts can support cultural sensitivity, acceptability and indicated outcomes, particularly those relating to stress and trauma during or following a crisis. (shrink)