M.C. Escher

L’attrazione esercitata dalla musica continua ad affascinare gli studiosi e, sebbene definiamo
generalmente la musica come ‘linguaggio’, non possiamo paragonarla affatto al linguaggio
verbale, perché essa non esprime nessun concetto univoco. Inoltre, ci siamo chiesti se anche la
musica nasconda modelli ricorsivi – tanto presenti in natura e nella sintassi verbale – e come
questi possano essere rilevati durante l’ascolto, seppur in maniera inconscia.

At its most fundamental level, sustainability is the ability of an organism or system to endure or continue. “Sustaining a narrative “ can mean the capacity of a narrative to sustain the interest of a “reader” and it can mean the capacity of a narrative to sustain itself, or continue, indefinitely.
 
In Pan’s Labyrinth and Inception, the labyrinth is both metaphor and material; the device that sustains the narrative and the structure that supports the film. Del Toro and Nolan code an un-resolvable question into their narratives, experimenting with infinity within a bounded space, with closed, recursive loops, and employing a visual, optical language distinct to the medium of film to accomplish this. The directors don’t adapt a pre-existing book or story to the screen, but adapt the creation and the telling of STORY itself to the screen. They adapt narrative itself to the medium. The directors create stories that transpire within the boundaries of a finite running time and yet contain multiple, even endless possible interpretations. Viewers return again and again to re-experience and re-interpret each film, as the narrative paths divide and multiply, various meanders leading to alternate outcomes, and yet each ending returning to the origin point.

My presentation in Kanazawa aims to bring a renewed interest and a new nexus of activities around William Huff's work, especially as an exercise in transformational thinking in the field of architectural education. After his retirement, professor Huff donated a beautiful collection of his students' work to the HfG-Archiv in Ulm, Germany, which inspired us at the Institute of Art and Design in Vienna to conduct a semester assignment for 450 students around the topic of Parquet Deformations (P.D.). The open search for strategies to transfer the spatiotemporal idea of a planar P.D. into 3D led to fascinating results. Hereby we discovered a field of formal research that opened the students' eyes for two and three-dimensional relationships and made them enthusiastic and sensitive for spatial transformations. This is a brief report on how we conducted the exercise, as a fruitful exercise for the basic design education of young architects and designers. William Huff, experimenting with his students on parquets consisting of one geometrical shape only, discovered a way to transform, slowly and subtly, one geometrical shape into another and set up strict rules for the assignment: the parquet had to be made up with one geometrical shape only (no overlaps, no gaps). The allowed lattices were square, rhombic (the rhombic has to be a 60°-120° rhombus) or regularly hexagonal. Parquet Deformations (P.D.s), designs, produced for over three decades in a curriculum of basic design studies, are rooted in two analytical disciplines: monohedral tiling from geometry; continuous deformation from biological morphology (after D'Arcy Thompson). The HfG-archive also hosts intricate 3D-models made under Huff's guidance. Especially the "trisections of the cube" and William Huff's comment

Es un libro acerca de cómo los logros creativos del lógico Kurt Gödel, el artista M. C. Escher y el compositor Johann Sebastian Bach interactúan. Como el autor indica: "me di cuenta de que Gödel, Escher y Bach eran solamente sombras dirigidas en diversas direcciones de cierta esencia sólida central. Intenté reconstruir el objeto central, y llegué con este libro." El tema central del libro es más abstracto. Hofstadter se pregunta: "¿Siguen las palabras y las ideas reglas formales, o no?" En el prefacio de la edición del vigésimo aniversario, Hofstadter lamenta que su libro haya sido malinterpretado como una mezcolanza de cosas ingeniosas sin un tema central. Indicó: "GEB es una tentativa muy personal de decir cómo es que los seres animados pueden salir de la materia inanimada. ¿Qué es un "uno mismo", y cómo puede un "uno mismo" salir de cosas tan faltas de ser como una piedra o un charco?"

Las premisas que animan las investigaciones del autor en este rumbo sustentan la convicción de que en otras culturas  y en otros períodos de la (pre)historia se han practicado geometrías heterodoxas, complejas y no euclideanas de un rigor desconocido en Occidente hasta la actualidad. Algunas de esas geometrías están impulsando avances filosóficos, científicos y tecnológicos que se encuentran experimentando su estado de arte en un amplio conjunto de disciplinas.

Correlativamente, muchos de esos avances han permitido comprender y modelar recién ahora las prácticas de las geometrías otras y reconfigurar nuestra comprensión de las teorías occidentales que les corresponden, antropología del arte y sistemas axiomáticos incluidos. Hallazgo fundamental de este trabajo es la comprobación de que las geometrías prácticas (al igual que sucede, pensándolo bien, en la tecnología informática) no requieren para su realización formulaciones previas de tono formal, normativas de carácter discursivo ni cobertura lingüística de orden meta-teórico.

Lo que intentaré materializar en este hipertexto siempre mutante es im­po­ner una mi­rada in­versa, desobediente a la que la antropología en general y la etnociencia en particular han lle­gado a promover. Lo que pretendo es, en efecto, modelar las prácticas que se llevan a cabo desde tiempos sin memoria en enclaves culturales poco da­dos a la pro­pa­ganda de sus propios logros: prácticas a las que nunca supimos vin­cular con ningún cuerpo de conocimiento y a las que hemos llamado “artes”, “artesanías”, “ergo­logías” o “sis­temas sim­bó­licos” a falta de toda comprensión verdaderamente metódica de su natu­ra­le­za cognitiva, de sus rigores técnicos y de la instancia de cognición situada que ellas encarnan; prác­ti­cas que de­sen­vuelven pro­ce­dimientos palpablemente sis­te­má­ti­cos pe­ro no necesa­ria­men­­te lexi­cali­za­dos, al­can­­zan­do resultados muchas veces des­­con­cer­tan­tes por su com­­ple­jidad, por su índole de cosa inexpli­cable o por la intra­ta­bi­lidad o inverosi­militud de las expli­caciones que se intentaron para domesticarlas o (como diría geométrica­mente Hans-Georg Gadamer al definir la comprensión) para agregarlas al campo de nuestro hori­zonte hermenéutico.

En este trabajo se postulan ocho ejes temáticos que espero ayuden a or­de­nar un campo hasta ahora tan apasionante como amorfo y a motivar la puesta en marcha de las investigaciones que resta hacer y de las demarcaciones que es menester poner en acción a fin de purgar el terreno de no poca escoria oscurantista. Los ocho ejes en base a los que se ordenará el estudio des­criben los que parecen ser los hitos más relevantes en el desarrollo de los estu­dios téc­nicos y en la práctica de la etno­geo­metría. Ellos tienen que ver con:

(1) el descu­brimiento del carácter fractal de muchas de las geometrías de una amplia región de Áfri­ca como punto de partida para la com­pren­sión de fenómenos análogos un poco más o un poco menos intensamente fractales, recursivos, contraintuitivos, no lineales y no euclideanos en otras partes del mundo;

(2) las iso­metrías de las franjas, los es­pa­cios del plano y los giros en círculo para organizar el campo de la simetría y articular sus tipo­logías y sus procedimientos constructivos, de­fi­niendo la actuación de reglas cuyos e­nun­ciados (más recientes de lo que se imagina) bien puede que hayan sido unila­teralmente etic pero que ningún nativo, ningún estilo arqueológico y ninguna tradición histórica parecen haber necesitado violar jamás para llevar a cabo sus prácticas;

(3) el análisis de las con­fi­gu­ra­ciones geométricas del knot­­work celta-eslavo-escita, de los flu­jos en grafos y de las lla­madas simetrías en es­trella de las tese­la­ciones del arte islámico, puestas en para­lelo con los cuasi-cristales de las alea­ciones com­­plejas recién descu­biertos en Occi­den­te, los cua­les exhi­ben morfo­lo­gías coin­ci­dentes con las de los em­bal­do­sados ape­riódicos co­no­cidos desde la Edad Me­dia en Irán, Siria y Anatolia que preceden por siglos a las modalidades del Islām tardío a las que, por su virtuosismo, a veces cree­mos que son las más representativas de todas;

(4) las inves­tiga­ciones y los logros con­ceptuales y me­to­doló­gi­cos alcanzados por el geó­me­tra holando-mozambi­que­ño Paulus Gerdes en las huellas de Ubiratan D’Am­bro­sio, de la pedagogía del oprimido de Paulo Freire y de los proyectos eman­ci­patorios del Frente para la Libe­ración de Mo­zam­bique, a efectos de conocer en todas sus impli­can­cias los polio­mi­nós y las geo­me­trías com­ple­jas en el plano esférico, entre otras rea­liza­ciones;

(5) la compren­sión de las relaciones entre los grafos eulerianos y euclideanos y los di­seños de flujos, ci­­clos y cir­cuitos de Angola, Vanuatu y otras regiones, así como la in­fluen­cia de ambos campos en las más recientes técnicas com­pu­tacionales de graph ba­sed navigation;

(6) una nueva comprensión de la forma en que las artes populares recursivas de la India aldeana y campesina han materializado en imágenes principios algorítmicos que sólo se han podido comprender acabadamente en el último tercio del siglo XX y que tienen que ver con la programación de computadoras de propósito general, con la lingüística computacional y con las formas más avanzadas de modelado y diseño, fractalidad in­clui­da;

(7) la docu­menta­ción de los últimos y más radi­cales avan­ces en for­mas geo­mé­tri­­cas de repre­sen­­tación encar­nadas en los fulle­renos, en las es­tructuras de tense­gridad de tiendas, pe­lo­tas, cestas y tejidos a través del mundo y en los sis­te­mas de símbo­los A­din­kra que comparten los Ashanti de Ghana con los cien­­tí­ficos dedi­ca­dos a los ar­canos del álgebra super­si­métrica y de la teoría de cuer­das, ho­mó­logos prácticos, a su vez, de los có­­digos de co­rrec­­ción de errores del ADN y de la autocorrec­ción en la me­cánica cuán­tica y en la infor­mática inte­li­gente de avanzada;

(8) la descripción sistemá­tica de las geo­metrías pro­yec­ti­vas subyacentes a los sistemas tra­di­cionales de navega­ción y de los sis­te­mas de re­fe­ren­cia y métodos formales (también geo­métricos) que han precedido al menos por un milenio a las técnicas contemporáneas de geo­po­si­cionamiento.

Bu çalışmanın amacı Bilge Karasu'nun (1930-1995) Gece adlı romanının göstergebilimsel bir tahlilini sunmaktır. Bu doğrultuda, Fransız edebiyat kuramcısı Gérard Genette'in (1930-2018) söylem çözümleme yöntemi metne uygulanmıştır. Bu yöntem doğrultusunda, Gece düzen, hız, sıklık, ses ve kip unsurları bağlamında şekil itibarı ile tetkik edilmiş, metnin grameri çıkarılmaya gayret edilmiş, anlaşılırlığın temini adına grafiklerden ve şekillerden yararlanılmaya bilhassa özen gösterilmiştir. Böylelikle, yöntemin Türkçede analitik bir tarif ve tatbikini sunmak amaçlanmıştır. Metnin tahlilinde, çalışmanın ana gövdesini teşkil eden Genette'in yöntemi haricinde, (i) Umberto Eco'nun (1932-2016) açık yapıt kavramı, Maurits Cornelis Escher'in (1898-1972) tabloları ve (iii) Carl Jung'un (1875-1961) arketiplerinden istifade edilmiştir. Bu suretle, metnin farklı okumaları, metnin var ettiği dünyanın izafiliği ve imkânsızlığı ve metindeki karakterin veya karakterlerin bireyleşme süreci izah edilmeye çalışılmıştır.

This study intends to present a discourse analysis of Bilge Karasu's (1930-1995) novel named Night within the framework of the semiotic analysis method of the French literary theorist Gérard Genette (1930-2018). In line with this method, Night is stylistically analyzed in terms of speed, frequency, sound and mood elements, its grammar is revealed, and special care is taken to make use of graphics in order to ensure clarity. The main purpose here is to present an analytical description and application of the method in a Turkish text. Apart from Genette's method, which forms the basis of this work, the study also benefits from (i) the concept of the open work by Umberto Eco (1932-2016), the paintings by Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) and (iii) the archetypes of Carl Jung's (1875-1961). The study thus attempts to illustrate different readings of the text, the relativity and implausibility of the world the text conjures up, and the process by which the character(s) in the text experience individuation.

The developed/underdeveloped dichotomy is the starting point of mainstream theories of development. Based on a theoretical framework inherited from modernisation theories, they represent development as the process through which productive structures in the Global South are transformed following the footsteps of the Global North. Dependency theories productively challenged this linear conception of development, but failed to provide a consistent alternative because of their incapacity to move beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. In this article, I claim that Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development finally indicates a way to think of development beyond the developed/underdeveloped dichotomy. Through analogies with the work of the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, I contrast the concept of uneven and combined development with competing views of development to show both that it makes better sense of particular development trajectories and that it offers a better theoretical base for political action. By stressing the necessarily perspectived character of development, the concept of uneven and combined development makes it possible to ask a crucial question often overlooked: development for whom?

Due to the 20th century mathematical and scientific developments of Georg Cantor, Max Karl Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg, concepts once relegated to obscurity, such as irrationality, infinity, insolvability, and chaos, were brought to mainstream attention, ultimately changing the course of technological and scientific development into the 21st century. Before these seminal thinkers, concepts like numerical irrationality and infinity were considered by many to be worthless if not amoral; such attitudes can be found persisting back to the ancient Greeks under the Pythagoreans. Interestingly, the aesthetic of irrationality follows a similar historical trajectory, mostly finding relegation in peripheral movements and specific artists before the 20th century. However, the 20th century has seen the greatest and longest persisting resurgence in mathematically irrational thought within the arts. This paper compares the visual and musical experiments in irrationality, incommensurability, and infinity in the works of MC Escher and Conlon Nancarrow during the early and mid-twentieth century, showing a correlation between contemporary mathematical and physical innovations and specific aesthetic pursuits in art and music.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Países Bajos, 1898-1972) conocido popularmente como M.C. Escher es ampliamente conocido por lo que bautizó como “imágenes mentales” relacionadas con las matemáticas y la física. Aunque no se consideraba a sí mismo artista, y nunca tuvo formación en ciencias en general, o matemáticas en lo particular, desarrolló una obra gráfica que consistentemente navegó de lo concreto a lo abstracto a lo largo de medio siglo de carrera.
Sus observaciones realistas e invenciones de su propia imaginación atrajeron una audiencia que no ha dejado de aumentar pero que marcó indeleblemente la era de la psicodelia de los sesenta y setentas. Desafiando toda clasificación artística, se convirtió en el líder de un movimiento gráfico del que solo el era parte.
El crítico de arte, Juan Carlos Flores Zúñiga, explora en su nueva crítica para Ars Kriterion E-Zine la relación entre ciencia, fantasía y arte en la obra gráfica de Escher con base en la más extensa muestra retrospectiva realizada hasta la fecha. Más de 400 de sus obras están siendo expuestas hasta setiembre en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Houston, Texas, Estados Unidos.

In looking at works of Escher is natural to ask whether there is a geometrical principle underlying its elaboration, which tend to confuse us and deceiving us through the clever use of illusory tricks. It seems that several worlds coexist in the same pictorial space, the orientation of which varies according to the relative position between the eye and flat. And is it possible to trace stable elements, officers of the points in its system of representation?
This work which attempts to provide an answer to this question was developed on the two prints, “Relativity” and “Tower of Babel,” apparently made a second oblique perspective. It was investigated whether the apparently irreconcilable worlds of living space had been obtained through projective strict rules or by the artist’s creative sensibility. We have tried some sort of confirmation of the artist’s words when remarked that “Even though I had no education or knowledge of the exact sciences, I often feel closer to the mathematicians to my fellow artists.”
The research has its roots in the field of return perspective, which reconstructs the reference (where ever it exists) of the representation and to obtain orthogonal projections of the objects by a rollover. This operation has also enabled us to discover what
are the devices put in place to make possible the coexistence of these worlds.

A close reading of two paintings:

1. One poem draws on Escher’s Self Portrait lithograph by showing that the only way the  drawing avoids succumbing to infinite regress is by remaining incomplete.

2. The other poem responds to Magritte’s Key of Dreams: a surreal collection of object with mismatching nouns by teasing out relationships in a maneuver akin to dream interpretation.

International Gallerie Vol.13 No.2 2010 pg.52-55

This article adopts a semiotic (and edusemiotic) perspective that abolishes all binary divisions in favour of the process of semiosis that ensures a continuous translation of signs into other signs via the dynamic relations formed by the human mind, cultural artefacts, and events in real life. The mind, in edusemiotics, partakes of unconscious ideas in the form of mental images. As for culture, the field of communication phenomena calls for, according to Yuri Lotman, the identification of specific semiotic systems representing their ‘languages’, including non-verbal signs such as images, pictures, and other art forms that function as cultural texts. The methodology of bricolage (conceptualized in educational research by Joe Kincheloe) combines hermeneutics with narratology, and ‘reading’ images becomes imperative for advancing critical pedagogy. The article examines and interprets selected images, including those belonging to the low end of popular culture, and connects them with the exemplarily significant event at the level of socio-cultural reality.The paradoxical self-referential ‘logic’ is the prerogative of semiotic reason that constantly reflects on – thus bringing to cognition and transforming – our often unconscious assumptions, beliefs and habits thus contributing to the construction of subjectivity that uses critical reason informed by signs, which include the bricolage of images.

Tanto en su pintura como en sus ideas esteticas, Vasili Vasilievich Kandinsky mostró una personalidad absolutamente vanguardista motivante de acaloradas polémicas. Punto y linea sobre el plano es uno de los
trabajos fundamentales de Kandinsky ya que, a la par de una esclarecedora contribucion al anilisis de los elementos
esenciales del quehacer pictorico, constituye un aporte a la busqueda de un metodo generico para las investigaciones
de la ciencia del arte. Pero Punto y linea sobre el plano tambien revela a Kandinsky como un artista apasionado,
siempre deseoso de explicar y expY ic arse Pas razonas primeras y profundas de esa extraña y singular aventura
que es la creacion artistica.

Aesthetic pleasure enjoyed while looking at M.C. Escher’s art is undeniable, but what is its character? There is a realistic precision that reflects the artist’s talent. In true Escher-esque style however, the realistic depiction is just enough to lure perception into confounding and disorienting landscapes. How can stairs both ascend and descend, at the same time, for a stair climber going in one direction? This paper will acquaint the reader with phenomenological terminology that Husserl develops in his aesthetic theory, such as the components in image-consciousness, its use of phantasims, interest, immersion and investment, all characterizing what is required to have an aesthetic feeling from fine art. These explications would seem to render art such as Escher’s as incapable of sustaining aesthetic pleasure, however in our final conclusion Escher’s art will prove unlike disqualified art that either remains un-interesting to its perceiver, or relies on a fraudulent semblance of reality. Furthermore, Husserl’s phenomenology of the aesthetic experience only describes the components of image-consciousness but does not account for why an aesthetical feeling can begot from an arrangement of representations, leaving the possibility of various types of aesthetic modes open, such as Escher’s beautiful work that pleasantly disorients aesthetic contemplation.

Considerando que um dos traços mais evidentes da história da poesia moderna ocidental é a aliança entre criação e reflexão, através da qual o poeta, ao exercer também a atividade crítica, entrecruza o fazer poético com o pensar sobre esse fazer, a autora analisa os poemas e os ensaios do poeta, crítico, ensaísta e tradutor mexicano Octavio Paz, com o propósito de mostrar como essa conjunção se faz presente em sua obra. Para tanto, começa por traçar uma biografia intelectual do poeta, percorrendo a sua trajetória literária e política, desde a década de 30 até nossos dias.
A autora busca desvendar a lógica que atravessa o pensamento crítico paziano,  avaliando os seus conceitos de poesia, modernidade, tradição, revolução, vanguarda e pós-modernidade. Para isso, utiliza-se das gravuras do artista gráfico holandês M.C. Escher, também voltado para a exploração do jogo paradoxal dos contrários e que soube, como Paz, aliar lucidez e vertigem.

This prize-winning book attempts to address the major issues that have challenged western philosophy, such as consciousness, thinking and  conceptual systems, like mathematics as a model of reality. The mystery is why this book became an international best-seller because it can only be understood by experts. The author, Douglas Hofstadter, is a polymath, who started as a physicist but could not resist the lure of logic and theories about arithmetic, as he immersed himself in the early days of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). This review will attempt to create a shortcut of a shortcut to minimize frustration.

Despite the obvious differences between the work of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher and that of Romanian draftsman S. Steinberg, with a closer look is possible to trace strong affinities between some of their works and many of the themes they handled, such as the drawing of metamorphoses, the figure-background relationship, and the intercourse between reality and representation space. In spite of a general mood difference between their respective graphic narrations, the work of the two authors appears to be based on the same kind of anxieties that have crossed the twentieth century, involving different fields of knowledge.

Witch balls are globes of glass, with a hole in the top, often suspended in doorways or windows. They were made in most glass factories across Europe as glassblowers’ ‘whimsies’ or showpieces and then later sold as decorative items. They appeared in a variety of geographical contexts and had numerous uses, but the name itself refers to the belief that these balls were protective devices that could ward off evil spirits, especially the evil eye and the malevolent influence of the witch.

This paper explores the history of the witch ball and its use in various domestic, apotropaic, religious and commercial contexts.

Written for and published by the Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300–1900 project (University of East Anglia / Ashmolean, Oxford).

At present, not only works of art and curatorial activity, but also the exhibition space seems crucial in the process of exhibiting art. The message formulated by exhibitions is influenced by their architecture through the architectural forms applied and the organisation of the space, along with its transformations, in order to create the individual character of a given exhibition. The paper analyses permanent and temporary exhibitions devoted to recognized artists (Felix Nussbaum Haus; Wyspiański and Wyspiański.Unknown exhibitions; Escher x nendo. Between Two Worlds exhibition). The aim of the work is an attempt to describe contemporary trends in exhibition design, pointing to the history of the phenomenon.

Virtual Reality is turning into a major and more accessible medium to spatial, interactive and linear narrators, aka architects, game designers and filmmakers. This research-creation is conducted with two main objectives: First, to investigate the unique narrative possibilities that VR affords as a result of its medium-specific perceptual cues of scale. Second, to utilize the notion of scale in designing a remediated experience of a traditional screen-based form of storytelling in the Iranian culture known as Pardeh-Khani (literally translated as: reading off curtain/screen). In response to the first objective, possible ways that scale could leverage three distinct forms of immersion in VR were scrutinized under three isolated experiments. Also a broad range of VR and non-VR cases, from cinematic to fully interactive games which revolve around the idea of scale were studied. The key takeaway was that exploiting a dynamic scale of virtual embodiment could lead to spatial experiences, gameplay mechanics and cinematic communications particular to VR. Following the second objective, M.C Escher’s Relativity (1953) became a key inspirational source for designing an impossible architecture which incorporates a malleable scale of embodiment but also hosts the spatiotemporal ritual of Pardeh-Khani. The challenges of and possible solutions for designing the navigational structure of a surreal spatial experience in a room-scale VR are discussed in detail. This research-creation explores the medium-specificities of VR with a multidisciplinary approach from one side, and from the other side, it raises the awareness about a marginalized tradition of storytelling through the lens of cutting-edge technology of VR.

Keywords: Virtual Reality, Immersion, Scale, Virtual Embodiment, Remediation, Pardeh-Khani, Traditional Storytelling, Spatial Narrative, M.C. Escher

This text deals with the relationships between the phenomenalizations of hand and engraving art, especially against the background of Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical commentaries on the works of Albert Flocon. Special space is devoted to the interpretation of Flocon’s engraving of two hands in connection with Escher’s similar lithography. Another thematic field is the role of the tool and the hand equipped with the tool. However, the central axis of this thinking is the interconnection or intertwining of body and matter, the interactive relationship between human being and matter, between visual observation and dynamic haptics, which require a certain force and thus also experience the back pressure of matter. The conclusion of the text draws attention to a specific engraving, such as writing, especially the writing of a philosophical text, as we read about it in Bachelard’s book The Flame of a Candle, the last word of which is—surprisingly—engraving.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

(I am sorry if Part Three seems rather fragmentary - a handful of questions left over from previous sections.  It really needs some kind of conclusion to draw the threads together, but for the moment inspiration eludes me.)

El presente artículo es un análisis sobre la aplicación de conceptos matemáticos en la literatura hispanoamericana. Se incluyen algunos textos de los siguientes autores: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (México, 1651-1695), Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina, 1899-1986), Roberto Juarroz (Argentina, 1925-1995), José Ángel Valente (España, 1929-2000) y Vicente Luis Mora (España, 1970), así mismo se incorporan dentro de la discusión al poeta visual mexicano Alfredo Espinosa y al pintor holandés M. C. Escher. Más allá de señalar la presencia de elementos matemáticos dentro de la literatura, el objetivo del presente estudio consiste en señalar la manera particular en que cada uno de estos autores acude al uso de las matemáticas con diferentes fines estéticos y de representación.
A través de un análisis semiótico se proponen dos tipos de aplicación de conceptos matemáticos en la literatura: aplicación por representación y aplicación por significado. El presente estudio revela los beneficios que la aplicación por significado ofrece a la literatura, especialmente como una alternativa para desdibujar los límites de representación y de lenguaje.

due out in June 2019

Abstract:

In the following analysis, I will focus on three astronauts who become posthumanistic entities within their diegeses, while arriving at points of cognition beyond their everyday work and environments, which in two cases are based on non-Euclidian structures: David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey (US/UK 1968, D: Stanley Kubrick), Sam Bell in Moon (UK 2009, D: Duncan Jones), and Cooper in Interstellar (US/UK/CA 2014, D: Christopher Nolan) all live and work at humanity’s final frontier in order to exercise the effects of capitalism (Bell), or to gain new knowledge (Bowman, Cooper). In the beginning, all three are the perfect embodiment of what McLuhan calls the “gadget lover”.11 In reference to the Greek myth of Narcissus, McLuhan states that humankind is immersed in its prostheses (e. g. devices, tools, and convenience artefacts) so much that they delude themselves about the (metaphorical speaking) amputations that are inscribed in very same the technologies […]. Surrounded and deluded by an electro-mechanical and AI-controlled work life,
the three depend on artificial anthropospheres, embodied by space ships and
ground bases. Soon they come to ignore or counteract the directives of their companies
and supervisors, represented by HAL 9000 or GERTY. They transcend
their human borders in the climaxes of the films by freeing themselves from the
said anthropospheres. Bowman, Bell, and Cooper become the hyperreal cause
and effect of their fate and humankind’s future. The plot twists – the process of
cognition – of all three films can thus metaphorically be described as climbing
the “Penrose stairs”. This will also be contextualized with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s "reciprocal exclusion" as well as images by M.C. Escher.

Das neue Lexikon des Horrorfilms wirft Dario Argento ‒ dem Regisseur und Drehbuchautor des Filmes ‒ in Bezug auf Suspiria vor, dass er "seine dünnen Plots mit Hilfe ausgezeichneter Kameraleute sowie ansprechender Dekorwahl und Musikuntermalung" tarnen würde, und fällt folgendes Urteil: "Es genügt nicht nur, Stimmungen zu erzeugen. Ein Film sollte auch eine Geschichte erzählen". Dass Suspiria zu wesentlich mehr imstande ist, als bloß Stimmungen zu erzeugen, beweist die Existenz mehrerer unterschiedlicher Interpretationen zu Dario Argentos sechstem Spielfilm. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, eine Auswahl besagter Lesarten des Filmes zusammenzufassen, thematisch zu gliedern, Gemeinsamkeiten hervorzuheben, auf Abweichungen voneinander hinzuweisen und somit dem/der LeserIn einen groben Überblick über mögliche Interpretationen von Suspiria zu verschaffen.

The Amalfi Coast has always represented a milestone in the European travel routes, fascinating tourists from all over the world. This paper intends to focus on the Amalfi Coast's drawings made by Escher, who stayed here and drew many views of the most famous urban aggregates. These are images in which the artist seems to want to record the data of a typical compositional language, transforming those figurations from simple snapshots travel to real graphic experiments. Those visual suggestions, so faithfully noted down in the drawings, thus become the basis for creating some of the most interesting images of his graphical repertoire.

Editor: Pendragon, Bologna  EAN: 9788833643861 176 pp.

If it is true, as Galileo Galilei said, "that the universe is written in a mathematical language, and the characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is like wandering vainly  through an obscure labyrinth", this book helps us to find harmony, regularity and beauty. In fact, thanks to constant and assiduous research, the author has created over three hundred inequalities that give rise to as many patterns for reordering the world. And he suggestS a fascinating hypothesis: that patterns of stone or ceramic inlays that cover the walls and floors of some ancient monuments, merely considered the work of craftsmen using only with ruler and compass, there may be mathematical inequalities calculated in advance. From the Greek and Roman worlds, to our own Middle Ages and the splendid Islamic tessellations, Sciuto's formulas (using only the mathematical and trigonometric knowledge of the time, unchanged since the second century B.C. for over 1600 years) go further, touching on the art and artists of the early twentieth century, with geometric effects that are sometimes rigorous and sometimes psychedelic, Yet always surprising. Suggesting that a mathematical formula, more or less simple, may indeed underlie everything we know. Are you ready for an immersive journey into the tessellated world of patterns?

Shortlisted story in the Literary Gentleman annual competition.

"The story is a never ending conversation between a bus conductor and a passenger and like the story itself, the conversation carries on in circles until the reader himself does not know whether he is coming or going. A clever tale told with malice and cunning."

- Gentleman, pg.7