Praying by Numbers: An Essay on Medieval Aesthetics

2008 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Niklaus Largier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formal Basis ◽  
The Aesthetic

In this essay I argue that the imitation of examples of sainthood in the practice of prayer is the formal basis of a medieval aesthetics that focuses on the animation and the phenomenology of sensation and emotion. Quoting from this tradition and drawing on the mechanical character of such techniques of animation, nineteenth and twentieth-century authors and filmmakers——Flaubert, Huysmans, and Buññuel——explore the aesthetic possibilities of these religious practices. Thus, they recover and illustrate a history of the evocation of sensation and emotion through images and texts, which in the medieval context can be best described as a highly formal art of "praying by numbers."

scholarly journals SOM E FÉ: DA PRÁTICA COMUNITÁRIA RELIGIOSA PARA A COMPLEXIDADE DO PENSAMENTO MUSICAL ERUDITO DO ÚLTIMO QUARTEL DO SÉC. XX

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
José Luís Postiga
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The West ◽  
Communicative Practice ◽  
Musical Concepts ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Western Classical Music

When faced with the artistic-musical concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century, it is common to observe them from the perspective of the scientific advances they have promoted or resulted from, the abstract organizations in which they are based, the aesthetic principles they create or and almost always fall within the individuality of the interpretation present in the creative act and its representativeness, regardless of the support in which it presents itself. Paradoxically, some of the main classical musical works written in the last quarter of the twentieth century resulted from the musicological study and/or musical representation of concepts, rites, religious practices representative of different cultures of the West and especially the East. In this sense, throughout the present article will be addressed works by composers of Western classical music, such as the case of Jonathan Harvey and Tristan Murail, characteristics of the musical currents that fit, from serialism to spectralism, as well as acoustic and electronic casts, which result. reinterpretations of religious practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as sound behaviors of the communicative practice of peoples, such as the songs and instruments of Tibet and Mongolia.

scholarly journals POLISH AESTHETIC DISCOURSE OF THE 20TH CENTURY: INTERPRETATION OF INTERPRETATIONS

2018 ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
E. I. Onishchenko
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
National University ◽  
Aesthetic Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Polish aesthetic discourse of the twentieth century and the prospects for its interpretation in the Ukrainian aesthetics, particularly in the works by Kateryna Shevchuk, defended at the department of ethics, aesthetics and culture studies of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. These research greatly extend the idea of the aesthetic canon of the Polish thought, classically represented by the aesthetics R. Ingarden and W. Tatarkiewicz and reveal the names of virtually unknown in Ukraine Polish scientists, including special interest is the legacy of L. Blaustein, M. Wallis, H. Elzenberg and G. Ossowski. In particular, this perspective covers traditional for the twentieth century aesthetics problems, including psychology of art, collective aesthetic experience, ratio, fantasy, and imagination. Also, new interpretive perspectives of sublime and ugly, aesthetical experience are opened. The theoretical orientations of the Polish scholars, in one way or another, were connected with the cornerstones of the aesthetic science - its subject, the conceptual-categorical apparatus, the structure of aesthetic consciousness, the phenomenon of artistic creativity, the specific nature of art, and others. In the process of conceptual concretization, in the field of Polish aesthetics a number of problems have been rather clearly distinguished, among which the special attention of practically all of its leading representatives has attracted the phenomenon of aesthetical experience. K. Shevchuk’s investigation opens up an opportunity, at least in the format of a secondary interpretation, to join the research of the Polish scholars, whose work proved to be a giant "white spot" for the Ukrainian aestheticians. Introducing actually unexplored concepts Polish scientists to the modern Ukrainian aesthetic theory not only facilitates the opening of "unknown pages" in the history of the twentieth century aesthetics, but also makes actual mark of new approaches to the analysis of classical problems, the relevance of which will never be a subject of doubt.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Experience as a Spiritual Support of Homo Post-Secularis

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Bychkov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Spiritual Support ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Age ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Universe

The essay begins with an analysis of the cultural situation of humanity after its transition to secular mentality and a gradual disenchantment with secularism, which leads to the formation of post-secular mentality. It further suggests that aesthetic experience traditionally served as a bridge between the secular and the religious/spiritual and can serve in this capacity again in the post-secular age. It outlines the main traits of the post-secular person (homo post-saecularis). Two aspects of aesthetic experience are emphasized: its in-depth penetration into nature in an attempt to achieve unity with it, and the aesthetic observation of artworks. In pursuing both of these aspects, the post-secular person attempts, just as Romantics and Symbolists previously, to grasp something invisible beyond visible forms and escape from banal reality into higher spiritual realms of being, ultimately experiencing him- or herself as having a place in the universe. Aesthetic experience, if it is correctly understood and practiced, can give all this to the present-day post-secular person. The rest of the essay is devoted to a brief history of twentieth-century views of art, mainly in French and Russian thought, that foreshadow its post-secular role, and to the author’s authentic theoretical framework for understanding art and aesthetic experience, as well as his, equally authentic, program of how to achieve the post-secular function of art in practice for a present-day person.

Living Stereo

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Vast Amount ◽  
Screen Media ◽  
History Of ◽  
Advance Research ◽  
The Aesthetic

Stereo is everywhere. The whole culture and industry of music and sound became organized around the principle of stereophony during the twentieth century. But nothing about this-not the invention or acceptance or ubiquity of stereo-was inevitable. Nor did the aesthetic conventions, technological objects, and listening practices required to make sense of stereo emerge fully formed, out of the blue. This groundbreaking book uncovers the vast amount of work that has been required to make stereo seem natural, and which has been necessary to maintain stereo's place as a dominant mode of sound reproduction for over half a century. The essays contained within this book are thematically grouped under (Audio) Positions, Listening Cultures, and Multichannel Sound and Screen Media; the cumulative effect is to advance research in music, sound, and media studies and to build new bridges between the fields. With contributions from leading scholars across several disciplines, Living Stereo re-tells the history of twentieth-century aural and musical culture through the lens of stereophonic sound.

scholarly journals The Twentieth-Century Secularization of the Sinograph in Vietnam, and its Demotion from the Cosmological to the Aesthetic

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-293
Author(s):  
John Duong Phan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Language Ethics

This article examines David Damrosch’s notion of “scriptworlds”—spheres of cultural and intellectual transfusion, defined by a shared script—as it pertains to early modern Vietnam’s abandonment of sinographic writing in favor of a latinized alphabet. The Vietnamese case demonstrates a surprisingly rapid readjustment of deeply held attitudes concerning the nature of writing, in the wake of the alphabet’s meteoric successes. The fluidity of “language ethics” in early modern Vietnam (a society that had long since developed vernacular writing out of an earlier experience of diglossic literacy) suggests that the durability of a “scriptworld” depends on the nature and history of literacy in the societies under question.

Algorithm Machine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Broeckmann
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
Machine Art ◽  
Technical Systems ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Determining Factor

This chapter discusses the ways in which twentieth-century artists have engaged with the aesthetic dimensions of algorithms and machine autonomy. It extends the narrative on the history of machine art from the previous chapter, beyond the program of Hultén’s 1968 “Machine” exhibition. It explains how the dialogue between art and cybernetics has evolved from the 1950s cybernetic artworks of Nicolas Schöffer, through the 1968 exhibition “Cybernetic Serendipity” and Jack Burnham’s concept of Systems Aesthetics, to the more contemporary software and robotic artworks of Max Dean, Seiko Mikami, and others. A focus is placed on the work of Canadian artist David Rokeby who has explored the aesthetics of the human encounter and interaction with technical systems since the 1980s. The analysis aims at adding two further aspects of the aesthetics of machines to the list of five such aspects developed in the previous chapter: one is the aspect of “interactivity”, which adds the dimension of a charged dialogue and exchange between human and machine; and the other is the aspect of “machine autonomy”, which becomes a determining factor in the human experience of increasingly independent and self-referential technical systems.

scholarly journals ‘Modernism’ and the Ethiopian Orthodox Sunday School Movement: Indigenous Movements and their International Connections

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
RALPH LEE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sunday School ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Intellectual Heritage ◽  
Ethiopian Orthodox ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
School Movement

This article traces the history of twentieth-century Ethiopian Orthodox student movements formed in response to modernity, especially the influential Maḫbärä Qəddusan, ‘Association of Saints’, established in 1991 when Ethiopia's Communist regime fell. It explores parallels in Egyptian and Indian miaphysite Churches; balances the prevailing narrative of explosive Pentecostal growth which has obscured the influence of such movements; provides insight into networks that have stimulated renewal and responses to contemporary challenges through strong engagement with traditional literary and intellectual heritage; and explores training and publications promoting contemporary reflection on this heritage, the revival of important religious practices and the targeting of influential ecclesiastical and public positions.

Maeve Kelly: Women, Ireland, and the Aesthetics of Radical Writing

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-321
Author(s):  
Simon Workman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Irish Literature ◽  
Irish Context ◽  
Significant Case ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Female Experience

This article considers the work of Irish writer and feminist Maeve Kelly arguing that she has been not only a radical and, to some extent, seminal voice within modern Irish writing, but an author whose work self-consciously reflects upon the production and mediation of Irish women's writing within British and Irish culture. While Kelly is not unique in adopting a feminist approach in her writing, aspects of her fiction are somewhat discrete within modern Irish literature in terms of how they express, delineate, and resolve the challenges – material, psycho-cultural, aesthetic – attendant upon the representation of feminist political thought and occluded Irish female experience. Particularly within an Irish context, Kelly's writing provides a significant case study of the aesthetic problematics of politically radical fiction. Her oeuvre represents a vital contribution to Irish writing of the twentieth century as well as to the history of women in post-war Ireland.

Migration and Modernities

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Geographic Boundaries ◽  
The Us ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Migration and Modernities recovers a comparative literary history of migration by bringing together scholars from the US and Europe to explore the connections between migrant experiences and the uneven emergence of modernity. The collection initiates transnational, transcultural and interdisciplinary conversations about migration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, demonstrating how mobility unsettles the geographic boundaries, temporal periodization, and racial categories we often use to organize literary and historical study. Migrants are by definition liminal, and many have existed historically in the spaces between nations, regions or ethnicities. In exploring these spaces, Migration and Modernities also investigates the origins of current debates about belonging, rights, and citizenship. Its chapters traverse the globe, revealing the experiences — real or imagined — of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century migrants, from dispossessed Native Americans to soldiers in South America, Turkish refugees to Scottish settlers. They explore the aesthetic and rhetorical frameworks used to represent migrant experiences during a time when imperial expansion and technological developments made the fortunes of some migrants and made exiles out of others. These frameworks continue to influence the narratives we tell ourselves about migration today and were crucial in producing a distinctively modern subjectivity in which mobility and rootlessness have become normative.

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