Art and Science

This article, which is a fragment of my PhD Dissertation written under the supervision of Professor Corina Popa, examines the way in which illusionism is discussed in the early modern period, thus trying to offer, in its original context, a background for understanding the attitude of Roman art theorists from the seventeenth century towards illusionistic painting.
Illusion is the most feared danger in a century obsessively concerned with the certainty of knowledge; asserting the epistemic capacity of painting – which, in my opinion, was a chief concern for Seicento Roman theorists – meant by necessity in the seventeenth century confronting
this problem. The issue was extremely pressing since topoi about painting as an art of illusion were at the core of Renaissance art theory. More so, illusion, had become, on the one hand, associated with the wondrous, thus un-scientific, attitude towards nature characteristic of the now obsolete culture of curiosity; but, on the other hand, it was on occasions considered a tool for understanding the flaws of the visual process of deriving knowledge from nature, and many natural philosophers were interested in the science of optical illusions.
One of the most salient features of the whole debate is the way perspectival effects are assessed. For Renaissance art theorists and practitioners the employment of perspective offered the guarantee
for a “rational,” implicitly “scientific,” representation. Numerous treatises from the seventeenth century, though, discuss it and the anamorphic representations based on it, as means of tricking the senses and it is no surprise that art theorists of the second half of the seventeenth century do not approve of the illusionism based on mathematical rules (anamorphoses, trompe-l’ oeil). Based on the individual, subjective point of view, such artworks cannot find their approval, since they do not partake to the unbiased decorum of objectivity of the scientific endeavour.
I further highlight the difficulty of endorsing trompe-l’ oeil – a type of image that introduces ambiguity and disrupts the transitive function by putting forward the artifice involved – by an art-theoretical system rooted in the belief in the function of the image to represent (in the
cartesian sense) and to communicate. I also put forward a complementary explanation for the disbelief towards illusionism: the conjunction of illusionistic mimesis and the representation of the
particulars challenges the Classicist notion of the Idea, which must, through judicious selection, transcede the particulars in nature and embrace its very essence, and thus guide every artistic act. Finally, I argue that the suspicion of art theorists towards illusionism owes to its futility for scientific representation, in the view of early modern natural historians, which, in its turn, is based on this very issue of the association between illusionism and particulars.
Focusing on the position of illusion in seventeenth-century thinking, I have showed the main reasons for the changes in the discourse of art theorists (Mancini, Bellori, Passeri, etc.) about painting’ s capacity to create illusion.

This Ph.D. by Published Work examines five projects that took place over ten years, between 2007 and 2016, that were curated as part of the artistic programme of Arts Catalyst, an independent interdisciplinary arts commissioning organisation of which the author is the founding director. This programme of work sought to understand what form of curatorial model and interpretative framework could generate new artworks and co-produce interdisciplinary knowledge across areas of specialist research and geopolitical urgency.

The projects take the form of exhibitions, texts and edited books, which are presented as the portfolio of work. The selected projects are: Malamp UK, Brandon Ballengée (2007-2010); Arctic Perspective Initiative (2009-2011); ITACCUS – IAF Technical Activities Committee on the Cultural Utilisation of Space – and associated activities (2007-2014); Holoturian, Ariel Guzik (2013-2015); and Wrecked on the Intertidal Zone, YoHa, Critical Art Ensemble, et al. (2013-2016).

Through analysis of and reflection on the projects, this commentary proposes a curatorial model of interdisciplinary co-inquiry, which can foster an ecology of practices, enabling curators, artists, scientists, specialist experts and people with situated expertise to coproduce knowledge around matters of concern, particularly relating to human-environment interaction and common and extraterritorial spaces. It examines the roles of the curator in this model and how these might differ from those commonly understood as established curatorial practice.

The commentary further presents an interpretative and tactical framework of the planetary commons for curating art-led projects in the realm of ecopolitical concerns, that can engage audiences and publics with the art and ideas emerging from this co-inquiry approach. The combination of curatorial model and interpretative and tactical framework contribute to discourses on both inter/trans-disciplinarity and the role of art in relation to the politics of ecology.

The Ph.D. contributes to the field on several levels. Within curatorial studies, the interdisciplinary co-inquiry model reconfigures curatorial practice as a collective, inquiry-driven, knowledge-producing practice, and provides a useful methodology for inter-/trans-disciplinary artistic practice in relation to the politics of ecology, while the framework of the planetary commons proposes direction and allows for investment in reciprocity through commoning practices. Beyond contemporary art, a curatorial co-inquiry model deepens and alters existing approaches for listening to, valuing, and synthesising different types of knowledge and expertise around current environmental and related social concerns. While the commentary argues for the planetary commons framework within the contemporary art space, there are wider implications for it as a complement and alternative to the dominant interpretative framework of the Anthropocene.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

This review essay of two edited volumes sketches how STS scholars have analyzed scientific representation and visualization in recent work. Several key foci have emerged, among them attending closely to materiality, engaging the digital through embodied action, turning to ontology, as well as benefitting from artistic practice and critique. In diverse ways these choices are informed by a discontentment with the Cartesian split of mind and body as well as the picture theory of language. Yet, naturalism endures as a template, an expectation, and sometimes a specter with and against which much representational work in science is done. What STS scholars have learnt about representation in laboratory and expert settings still awaits being employed more comprehensively for making sense of practices beyond the lab, especially in contested political, social and ecological environments. In setting out to do so, they ought to reflect on the kinds of logic that their practices of representing representation enact.

From a societal point of view, art has a key relevance: Art is a means to pursue the cultural questions posed about interrelations, perceptions of realities and meanings (critique and value formation) in an aesthetic mode of working. It is a multivalent communication (communication system) which, through a varying contextualization, evades a specific translation (interpretation) and, in this way, forms a resource for reflection—on the personal level, through the beholder, and on the societal level, as a system.
In terms of the progressing differentiation of art systems (horizontal differentiation), this is accompanied by a shift of emphasis so that its focus is not (any longer) on the production of objects and in particular their display in art contexts (labelled as such). Instead, what is now its focus is the designing of processes influencing developments as well as the integration of a range of disciplines. Rather than artists being the experts on questions of design, they are now being inquired as experts on issues related to perception and its relationing. As a result, perceptual (aesthetic) skills and their artistic application in social contexts (relationing) represent a crucial ability, and the medium and the canon of media becomes secondary.


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The need to be distant from the frenetic rhythms of the contemporary life, to rediscover an equal relationship with the natural environment, and to expand ecological and eco-critical awareness, is certainly not a recent idea. Already on the cusp of the 1960s and 1970s, in America the Back to the Land social movement gathered around itself a great many supporters who promoted a rural style of life, one antithetical to that offered by the unhealthy and corrupt traditional society. Little more than a century earlier, in 1845, Henry Thoreau, at twenty-eight years of age, decided to leave his hometown and go to live beside Walden Lake, in a cabin he himself had built. In the silence of the woods, Thoreau wanted to march to the sound of a “different drum” by rediscovering the freedom to immerse himself in the rhythms of nature. He was to remain there for more than two years.
In his 1919 book Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte, Hermann Hesse undertook a poetical journey inside a sacred place called “sanctuary”. The books published about the philosophies of the environment and nature from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries were innumerable: from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 Nature to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, 1859, and to George Perkis March’s Man and Nature published in 1964. These were followed by the collection of essays titled A Sound County Almanac, written in 1949 by Aldo Leopold and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson published in 1962. But the list is far longer1. An important historical bibliography, then, represents the fertile terrain on which there has grown up, over the last two centuries, an increasingly heated and varied eco-critical debate. It is no longer the academic, scientific, political and economic world that is debating world-wide environmental problems: contemporary art too, with its provocative and multi-sensorial language, has in fact for some time played a leading role within this scenario.
It is a heterogeneous story consisting of many points of view, of summits about the climate, of group actions in favour of the environment and against the decay of nature caused by uncontrolled economic progress, but also of green slogans and the most recent green economy. All these voices united together in a polyphonic chorus have for some time attempted to outline a new path to follow, one that, through the rediscovery of ethical values and moral codes, might lead to a more knowing debate and cohabitation with the world.

Over 30 colorful photographs of snowflakes, taken through a microscope, are included in this show -- work that has been used in a variety of schools for about 15 years. This PowerPoint show also explains how the black and white microphotographs of snow crystals by W.A. "Snowflake" Bentley in 1885 were converted to colored images. Using a technique similar to staining, Rick Doble colored the original Bentley images (in the public domain) to bring out the structure of the crystals. Doble explains his process in this presentation along with a lavish display of his colored snowflakes. These colored photographs have been widely used in elementary schools and also at the college level. They have also been featured in libraries and in the national media. Documentation about these mentions are included at the end of this presentation. Permission is given to educators and non-profit organizations to use these images, as long as the artist is credited.

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity denote a diversity of practices and present specific challenges to collaboration in research and education. One of those challenges is the integration of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS). The roles these disciplines perform in inter- and transdisciplinary research and education are often mostly limited to instrumental and subordinate ones. Unequal participation of these disciplines causes their exclusion from scientific communities, also affecting career paths of early and senior researchers. I present some results from the project entitled «Shaping interdisciplinary practices in Europe» (SHAPE-ID) that addresses the problem of how to better integrate AHSS disciplines in interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. I conducted a systematic literature review and identified spaces in which integration is performed and roles that AHSS researchers fruitfully develop in an inter- or transdisciplinary setting. I discuss how to facilitate the participation of AHSS researchers by reconfiguring inter- and transdisciplinary spaces and roles. I conclude that AHSS disciplines’ participation in collaborative settings is limited and affects the type of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge production processes that are driven. This has a direct effect on how senior researchers perceive their academic careers and set the research agenda. But also, on how early career researchers build their academic future.

Naukową refleksję nad zagadnieniem przypadku zwykło się utożsamiać z matematyką czy filozofią. W niniejszej pracy spojrzymy na ten problem z perspektywy sztuk wizualnych. Historia filozofii i nauki pokazuje, iż pojęcie przypadku rozumiane było na wiele różnych sposobów. Także dzisiaj można wyodrębnić przynajmniej trzy jego odmienne ujęcia: 1) przypadek obiektywny – kiedy uznajemy, że zdarzenia losowe faktycznie występują w przyrodzie, 2) przypadek subiektywny – kiedy to, co uznajemy za losowe wynika z braku dostatecznej wiedzy na temat możliwych zdarzeń, oraz 3) przypadek dynamiczny – kiedy losowość pojawia się w wyniku złożonych interakcji w zdeterminowanych układach. Wydaje się, iż wszystkie te oblicza przypadku mają swoje odzwierciedlenie również w sztuce. Odnajdujemy je w twórczość wielkich mistrzów (Leonarda da Vinci, Maxa Ernsta, André Massona, Marcela Duchampa, Jacksona Pollocka, Ryszarda Winiarskiego) a także w dziełach sztuki współczesnej.

This article unveils imagery that seems intended to be recognized in phases from such sites as Font-de-Gaume (pg. 24), Laugerie-Basse (pg. 35-37), Isturitz (pg. 37-38), Saint-Cirq-du-Bugue (pg. 38-39), and Guy-Martin (pg. 26-35), after describing the first Paleolithic sculpture of an animal reported in the Ile-de-France. These include: 1) The extended panel of Ségognole 3. The grotto is known for a vulva between 2 faint horses, but its largest graphic element is a groove that has been explained away as a “border”. The groove is actually the caudal line of a 1.9 meter-long bas-relief of a bison that has been overlooked because of the failure to apply the same conventions of the vulva – figurative realism, monumentality, and the use of natural forms – to the engraved line, although it is identical in manufacture. The wisent composed by natural relief accentuated by incising, flaking, and polishing confirms that the ensemble is Paleolithic. 2) A survey of Paleolithic parietal images wh...

“You [must] risk getting lost in the thickets, … that is the only way to make art.” --Robert Smithson.

Julian Charrière’s (*1987) work bridges the realms of environmental science and cultural history. Marshalling performance, sculpture and photography, his projects often stem from fieldwork in remote locations with acute geophysical identities. His latest work Second Suns investigates the post-nuclear landscapes and architecture of the Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) and Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). Visual content comprises four major photo series, sculptural and video works, and expedition documentation, featuring compelling images of ruined concrete bunkers, sunken battleships, apocalyptic sunsets and decaying infrastructure while contributions by leading thinkers provide historic, geographic and intellectual context. Second Suns offers readers access to notorious geographical zones shrouded in fantasy and tragedy and provides the most comprehensive visual engagement with each site published to date.

Currently Art and Science, the two main fields of the human knowledge, are interacting more intensely developing new connections between them. Throughout the last three decades we are witnessing a great acceleration of scientific and technological progress, which has permeated our society so deeply, that some people say that we have entered a new era: The digital era. "Dance, like any other social activity, cannot be disconnected from technological advances. Thus, the new technologies are incorporated into the range of resources that the choreographer uses in different aspects and moments of the creative process" (Preciado-Azanza, 2018). The creators, regardless of their scope, not only use them but explore them and invent new ways of using them. Also, the scientific and technological progress influences the experiences, knowledge, objects and images of our unconscious (personal and collective) used to create a piece of dance. To achieve the connection with the viewers, it is crucial they understand the meaning of the choreographic work, at which point the imaginary or personal aesthetics are united to the collective. Throughout the XXI Century, the new technologies also have changed this connection. We cannot talk about viewer, the current society claims greater participation of the spectator/ user and the globalization of the creation. This research presents the impact of new technologies on the creative process of the dance pieces developed in this century focusing on: How mental imaginery and aesthetics had changed and which technological tools have been incorporated in the scenic space design. The utility of new technologies during the choreographic process (Creating or exploring new movements, improving technical aspects or the coordination between dancers) incorporated these aspects in professional work.

SUMMARY
The ubiquitous use of digital technology in all aspects of daily life has opened up unprecedented possibilities such as immediate access to information, (tele)presence at any place on the planet, multiplication and modification of identity, as well as rearticulation and reconstruction of embodiment. In cyberpunk literature, new media art practices, cyber theories, SF films and comic books, and scientific research, there is often a tendency to leave the mortal physical body, behind in order to upload the immortal mind into the vast realm of the digital where one can be whatever or whomever s/he wants. In relation to modern technology,
the biological body is often regarded as obsolete for not being “equipped” to cope with the exponential speed of technological development. Hence, it is not surprising that many studies ignore the problem of embodiment by focusing more on the issues of identity, consciousness and disembodiment in digital worlds. Therefore, this book will attempt to highlight those theories that focus on embodiment in technologically mediated environments, thus reintegrating the physical body into discussions of new media phenomena and the ways they affect social reality today. In this book I will start from the hypothesis that without the physical body there is no virtual or real. The aim is to underline the significance of physical body in biotechnological interfaces, and to discuss and analyze the
ways in which the role of body and embodiment changes in ubiquitous virtual environments, as well as to map the ways in which technology alters bodily functions thus affecting ontological survival of humans as biological species.
The issues of constructing identities and identification processes will be observed through an anti-essentialist theoretical framework and mapped through two different but mutually intertwined phases in the evolution of global networks – Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 platforms. While Web 1.0 platforms were based on textual representations and identity play allowing us to become everything we are not
and can never be in the physical reality, Web 2.0 platforms that are specific to social networking delegate identities of physical reality in the virtual domain. However, presumed “real” identities manifest themselves as constructs in a virtual environment since they are based on a selective representation of an idealized self. Through feedback loops, this phenomenon further highlights the question of not only the quality of interpersonal relationships and communication, but also the way that we perceive and define ourselves in the physical environment. Dispersion
of boundaries between real and virtual, private and public, entails a fundamental question that this book will attempt to answer: What does it mean to be human in today’s world of digitalization when the explosion of digital imagery and interactions into the physical environment has so profoundly affected social, cultural and political activities, interventions and subversions, turning both the distinction between “real” and “virtual” spaces and dualistic ways of defining the self into rather obsolete concepts. Is anything at all “virtual” in cyberspace, i.e. can cyberspace be defined as virtual at all when, for example, because of an activity such as posting on Facebook, one can lose a job or has to let corporations dictate and define what is and what is not appropriate in the one’s digitally constructed identity? Nevertheless, we are still comforted by the illusion that our screen as an interface separates the real and the virtual, functioning as the boundary or line marking the end of real and the beginning of virtual. Everything situated on the other side of the screen, like a distorted mirror, allows us to rationalize and simplify the existence of the boundary between what defines us in physical reality and what we are as constructs in online interactions. However, what happens when the screen, that black mirror, breaks into pieces, thus enabling the body as interface to become responsible for the other Self or the digital alter ego? In this regard, special attention will be given to the concept of abandoning the screen and turning to the emerging new interfaces that rearticulate the relation between corporeality and virtuality. Gestural interfaces as a new “mouse” or a new touch screen without a screen will, coupled up with holographic projections that have already found their way into the physical public spaces, open up a multitude of far-reaching questions of psychosomatic nature: If, for example, we are present/telepresent to one another via holograms animated via corporeal gestures, would it mean the differentiation of degree of corporeality in terms of valuation and hierarchy of embodiment? How will we be able to determine what is more valuable, more present and real – projection or materiality of the body? And finally, will there be any difference at all between gesturally manipulated projection and the real body that is already deeply caught in the process of cyborgization? In William Gibson’s words, the future is already here - it is just not very evenly distributed.

The connection between art and science in observation drawing has mostly been referenced concerning scientific illustration. The botanical drawings of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868- 1928) and Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933) have also been referenced as examples linking art and science. These drawings are catalogued and the majority of the botanical specimens are identified. Previous studies have mainly focused on a more individualized descriptive approach of the drawings themselves or a biographical perspective towards Mackintosh’s interest in botany. Nevertheless, a more profound formal study of these drawings as a whole, has not yet been done as to clearly identify their artistic and their scientific features and assess their potential contributions to both art and science. With this in mind, we have analysed 70 botanical drawings owned by the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery and the National Library of Ireland. We compared their features toy botanical illustrations, photographic records from the present time, real live plants and with both artists’ stylized plant forms. This study should contribute to the dialogue between art and science and, ultimately the appreciation of the natural world and biodiversity.

Title: Arts and Sciences in Dialogue – Proceedings of the International Conference
Editors: Isabel Ponce de Leão, Maria do Carmo Mendes & Sérgio Lira
Publisher: Green Lines Instituto para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável
eBook ISBN: 978-989-8734-04-4

In ihrem 2005 veröffentlichten Buch „Kunst aus dem Labor“ thematisiert die Medientheoretikerin Ingeborg Reichle die engen Verbindungen zwischen Kunst und Naturwissenschaften. Standen lange vor allem technische Medien im Zentrum medientheoretischer Erkundungen, so gehören heute biologische dazu: In der BioArt und der Transgenic Art wenden Künstler*innen Methoden der Molekularbiologie an, um genetische Codes zu manipulieren; in der Robotic / Artificial Life Art wird mit computerbasierten Simulationsmodellen gearbeitet. Künstler*innen kooperieren eng mit Naturwissenschaftler*innen, überführen Laborsituationen in den Ausstellungskontext, experimentieren mit gentechnisch manipulierten Organismen und thematisieren in Techno- science die Auswirkungen der Forschungen auf unser Leben.

Bloomsbury Acquisitions Editor Margaret Michniewicz (formerly with Ashgate) is welcoming book and series proposals for Bloomsbury's new research monograph program in art history and the visual arts, emphasizing cutting-edge scholarship and high standards in production values.

<< The French Baroque Organ Art: Musique, Organ building, Performance >> /
<< L’Art d’orgue Baroque français : Musique, Facture, Interprétation >>

[ Аннотация: ] Настоящая монография представляет собой первое в российском музыковедении исследование, в центре которого — французское органное искусство Барокко как комплексное явление, объединяющее музыку, органостроение и исполнительство.
Опираясь на свой разносторонний опыт, автор выступает одновременно в роли учёного, исполнителя и органного эксперта. В книге впервые предлагаются в переводе на русский язык и анализируются основополагающие документы французского органного Барокко, принадлежащие перу композиторов, органных мастеров, музыкальных мыслителей и учёных.
В результате анализа трёх составляющих французского органного искусства Барокко, рассматриваемого в контексте той эпохи — эстетическом, стилистическом и музыкально-теоретическом (гармония и музыкальная форма), — в книге выявляются сущностные критерии французского органного искусства Барокко и определяются его хронологические рамки.
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[ Abstract: ] The present monograph is the first research in the Russian musical science which focuses on the French Baroque Organ Art as a complex phenomenon involving Music, Organ building and Performance.
Drawing on her rich professional experiences, the author acts in triple role: as a musicologist, concert organist and organ expert. In this book, she presents and analyses the fundamental French Baroque organ documents, which belong to composers, organ builders, philosophers and scientists.
As a result of her analysis of three components of French Baroque Organ Art, placed in the context of that time — aesthetic, stylistic, theoretical and musical (harmony and musical form) —, Marina Tchebourkina reveals an essential and unique character of the French Baroque Organ Art, demonstrates its evolution and determines its chronological limits.
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[ Résumé : ] La présente monographie est le premier ouvrage dans la science musicale russe qui concentre son attention sur l’art d’orgue Baroque français en tant que phénomène complexe réunissant musique, facture et interprétation.
Fort de ses expériences professionnelles, l’auteur agit à la fois en tant que musicologue, organiste et expert d’orgue. Dans le livre sont présentés et analysés les documents fondamentaux dans le domaine de l’orgue Baroque français qui appartiennent aux compositeurs, facteurs d’orgue, philosophes et scientifiques.
À l’issue de l’analyse des trois composantes de l’art d’orgue Baroque français, placées dans le contexte de l’époque — esthétique, stylistique, théorique et musical (harmonie et forme) —, Marina Tchebourkina révèle le caractère essentiel et unique de l’art d’orgue Baroque français, démontre son évolution et détermine ses limites chronologiques.

The paper deals with the concepts of fragmentation and reconstruction in the field of portraiture. Taking a portrait as a large fragment of information, we look into ways in which it can be optimised and reduced such that it remains valid but becomes more efficient. The paper commences by exploring the concept of the fragment from various facets, including historically, especially from the modernist point of view, and goes forth to investigate various techniques from practices both adjunct and outside of the field of art in order to inform the portraiture process itself on how information can be collected, optimised and presented to the viewer.

It is obvious to any seasoned moviegoer that contemporary popular films are different than those of earlier times. We measured 160 English-language films released from 1935 to 2010
and addressed  four changes concerning shots, motion, and  luminance. Perhaps  the most obvious change is that shot lengths have gotten shorter, and others have also documented this trend. Perhaps also apparent is that contemporary films have more motion and movement than those of the Hollywood studio era. Less apparent, however, is the relation between shot lengths and motion. In contemporary films shorter shots also have proportionately more motion than longer shots in the same film, whereas  in older  films  the shots of different  length are not dis tinguished by their relative  amount  of  their  motion.  And  finally  films  have  gotten  darker.  That  is,  the  mean luminance value of frames across  the  lengths  of  a  film  has  decreased  over  time.  We  discuss psychological effects associated with these four changes, including harnessing viewer attention through narrative pacing and the enhancement of the viewing experience.

Kondor was an apostle of flying: a group of about hundred works in the oeuvre deals with a certain topic from the long history of flight and flying machines. From ornithopters, which imitated the flight of birds, and the figure of Louis Blériot, who was the first to cross the English Channel, to the landing on the Moon, he created a wide range of works that reflected on the beautiful and frightening idea of conquering gravity. The study argues that there were three substantially different approaches, and they can be mapped onto three roughly consequent periods of Kondor’s career: (1) Images of tradition: in the early period, flight was associated with mythological stories, the history of flight, and the history of art (for example, works related to Icarus, Leonardo, or Blériot). (2) Images of destruction: from around the mid-1960s, Kondor  began to depict horrifying accidents and frightening machines. In the second, middle phase of his art, destruction prevailed in flight-related themes. Not independently from his childhood experiences, these works are dominated by war catastrophes, flight accidents, and military aircraft. (3) Images of construction: in parallel with the rapid development of astronautics and airliner’s technology, the last phase of Kondor’s art became more constructive. He produced small airplane models, created photo series using these models, and illustrated science fiction. These artworks were influenced by the new, flight-related visual language found in contemporary popular media.

Kurt Vanhoutte discusses the history of human orreries, in which individuals take the place of the celestial bodies, re-enacting the motions of
the orbiting planets. Going back at least to the eighteenth century,
Vanhoutte traces the history of the orrery as an inherently theatrical
device, and demonstrates that the main purpose of a human orrery is to
enact the dynamics of the universe by playing the role of the planets,
“walking the orrery” as it were, in a scale model laid out across the landscape. Enacting the orrery in  lockstep, Vanhoutte argues, makes users
immediately experience the planets moving at different speeds. This
dynamic interactive map of the solar system gives users the opportunity,
through performance and play, to cognitively map one’s sense of presence
and direction in space.

The Fabergé Eggs carry international fame as a symbol of tragedy, wealth and power. The first Fabergé Egg created for the House of Romanov or the Russian royal family was in 1885 when Emperor Alexander III commissioned an Easter Egg as a present for his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna. That gave the beginning to a series of 50 Imperial Easter Eggs, which ended with the forced abdication of Nicholas II in 1917.

Each Egg was uniquely crafted for each Easter season, following the artistic trends of the day or a notable event. In most cases, the Tsar would leave the decision to be made by the workmasters, with the sole requirement of each egg to have a surprise inside. The eggs are probably the best known and preserved artefact from the Romanov era, and are still a figure in contemporary mainstream stage.

In this paper, the Imperial Coronation Egg will be taken as an example of the master craftsmanship of the Fabergé House. To begin with, I will explore the symbolism laying behind the egg as an object over different cultures. Furthermore, I will examine the materials and techniques used to create the egg, and connect them to the symbolism within Imperial Russia and Eastern Orthodoxy Church. Lastly, I will connect the previous examinations with the current owner of the Imperial Coronation Egg and 8 others, Viktor Vekselberg, and how the ownership and hunt for the most precious Easter eggs is a paradigm of power and wealth

W zachodniej humanistyce ostatnich lat mamy do czynienia z rozpowszechnieniem się
rozmaitych „fabulacji spekulatywnych” (Haraway) na temat czasów w których żyjemy,
zwłaszcza w kontekście trwającej katastrofy ekologicznej. Chodzi tu o powoływane przez
badaczy nowe epoki w dziejach Ziemi, takie jak kapitalocen (Moore) termocen (Bonneuil i
Fressoz) czy plantacjocen (Tsing), które pozwalają zrozumieć, to co dzieje się z naszą
planetą. Proliferacja różnego typu „–cenów” zbiegła się w czasie z obchodami stulecia
powstania Bauhausu, prowokując do pytań o to, na ile tradycja tej szkoły pozwala zrozumieć
współczesne hybrydy natury, kultury i technologii powstające w obszarze sztuk
performatywnych. W niniejszym wystąpieniu pokażę w jaki sposób tradycja Bauhausu
pozwala zrozumieć zjawiska zachodzące w zamglonym antropocenie. Chodzi tu o powołaną
przeze mnie do istnienia epokę, w której mamy do czynienia tyleż z kryzysem ekologicznym,
co poważnym kryzysem epistemologicznym. Zamglony antropocen jest więc spekulacją na
temat tego, jak mógłby wyglądać świat, w którym osłabieniu uległa dominacja wzroku jako
narzędzia orientacji, czyli tego zmysłu, który – jak chcieli Nowocześni – gwarantuje
uzyskanie najpewniejszej wiedzy o świecie. Zestawiając prace Anni Albers ze współczesnymi
instalacjami pokażę, co o interesującej mnie epoce może powiedzieć tradycja Bauhausu.