Vision and Visuality

Since its inception, the skyscraper has served as an icon of American innovation, modernity, and freedom. Upholding this image has erased the racial thinking and racist practices foundational to this born-and-bred American architectural form. This essay restores the import of race to the skyscraper by reading formalist theories by the father of modern architecture, Louis Sullivan, alongside a work of African American modernist fiction, Nella Larsen's Passing (1929). Reading Sullivan alongside Larsen explains how skyscrapers and blackness together have defined what gets seen as modern. The unexpected pairing reveals the visual racial logics built into skyscraper aesthetics and adds an architectural thread to the well-established scholarship on Larsen's novel.

Many Jews and Christians today do not believe that God has a body. God is instead invisible and incorporeal, and even though Christians believe that God can be seen in Jesus, God otherwise remains veiled from human sight. In this ground-breaking work, Brittany E. Wilson challenges this prevalent view by arguing that early Jews and Christians often envisioned God as having a visible form.

Within the New Testament, Luke-Acts in particular emerges as an important example of a text that portrays God in visually tangible ways. According to Luke, God is a perceptible, concrete being who can take on a variety of different forms, as well as a being who is intimately intertwined with human fleshliness in the form of Jesus. In this way, the God of Israel does not adhere to the incorporeal deity of Platonic philosophy, especially as read through post-Enlightenment eyes. Given the corporeal connections between God and Jesus, Luke’s depiction of Jesus’s body also points ahead to future controversies concerning his divinity and humanity in the early church. Indeed, questions concerning God’s body are inextricably linked with Christology and shed light on how we are to understand Jesus’s own visible embodiment in relation to God.

In The Embodied God, Wilson reframes approaches to early Christology within New Testament scholarship and calls for a new way of thinking about divine—and human—bodies and embodied experience.

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

In By an Eye-Witness (2013), conceptual artist Azadeh Akhlaghi restaged the deaths of iconic 20th-century Iranian reformists and revolutionaries before a camera. With its microhistorical approach, the work masterfully offers insight into how we might bridge narrative gaps in lieu of erasing them. The series posits history as a memory always constructed as such, and shows how changing the archive amounts to changing the future.

Devotional images in Renaissance Italy often compare divine visions to an enlivened statue or work of art, thereby heightening the effect of divine immediacy. Yet the early modern period also saw the emergence of another kind of picture that is much less studied. This alternative model favoured the apparent stoniness or emptiness of artistic simulacra – as seen in Cerano’s painted representation of the Virgin in the guise of a marble statue rendered in grisaille. It is a striking departure from Catholic reformers’ insistence on the mimetic naturalism of true images. As this paper shows, Cerano’s work went against the predominant paradigm of imitation, whereby artistic replicas acted as potent transmitters of divine presence inherent in the original cult image. The work presents an alternative to the true ‘living’ image by defending the artistic copy as an efficacious, but also inanimate, substitute for the divine prototype.

Τα επιθαλάμια της Σαπφούς αποτελούν, παρά την αποσπασματικότητά τους, ίσως το πιο ολοκληρωμένο παράδειγμα σωζόμενων γαμήλιων ασμάτων από τον αρχαίο κόσμο. Στο κέντρο της εν δυνάμει «εξιστόρησης» των γαμήλιων στιγμιοτύπων από την ποιήτρια-«χορηγό» δεσπόζει το δίπολο «νύμφα» και «γάμβρος», δοσμένο μέσα από το πρίσμα μιας ειρηνικής και συγκαταβατικής ετερότητας. Μιας ετερότητας με αλληλοσυμπληρούμενα και όχι αντιμαχόμενα επιμέρους στοιχεία. Με λίγα λόγια, τα επιθαλάμια μπορούν να θεωρηθούν ως μια τρόπον τινά «ωδή στην ετερότητα», έννοια που τόσο αρμονικά, συνοπτικά μεν αλλά και καθαρά εσωκλείουν στη θεματική τους, ένας «αίνος» στο ζευγάρι για τα φυσικά του χαρίσματα, τις αρετές και τα ανδραγαθήματά του.
Η παρούσα εισήγηση στοχεύει αρχικά στην ιχνηλάτηση της ιδιόμορφης επιθαλάμιας τυπολογίας σε παπυρικά αποσπάσματα που περιλαμβάνουν σκιαγραφήσεις του ζευγαριού και το κατατάσσουν νοερά στη δεσπόζουσα θέση του γαμήλιου «αξιακού συστήματος». Δευτερευόντως στοχεύει στη μακροσκοπική εξέταση και ανάλυση των ανιχνευθέντων στοιχείων με ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στις εικόνες και τις παρομοιώσεις. Με τον τρόπο αυτό μπορεί να διαπιστωθεί κατά πόσο η γλώσσα εικονοποιεί και αποτυπώνει ιδανικά από τη μια τη γυναικεία θηλυκότητα και από την άλλη την αρρενωπότητα του γαμπρού, και συνακόλουθα να εξακριβωθεί ο τρόπος με τον οποίο επιτυγχάνεται η προβολή της διαφορετικότητας των δύο φύλων μέσα από τις παρομοιώσεις. Επιπλέον, η εισήγηση στοχεύει στην εξέταση των νοερών ή φαντασιακών απεικονίσεων στα ποιήματα, προκειμένου να διαπιστωθεί κατά πόσο η εξίσωση του ζευγαριού με προκαθορισμένα τυπολογικά μοτίβα (η νύφη
παρομοιάζεται συχνά με μήλο ή λουλούδι, ο γαμπρός με δέντρο κ.α.) επηρεάζει την εικόνα του αναγνώστη για το θηλυκό και το αρσενικό. Τέλος, θα εξεταστεί κατά πόσο οι εικόνες που προκύπτουν αλληλοσυμπληρώνονται ή αντικρούονται σε σχέση με τα επικρατούντα πρότυπα της εποχής που γράφθηκαν τα ποιήματα. Για το σκοπό αυτό σκόπιμη θεωρείται η παράθεση σχετικών αποσπασμάτων, π. χ. Sapph. fr. 44 V. κ.α..


Forms and Visualization of the “Other” in Sappho’s Wedding Songs: The “Heteron” (ἕτερον) as Seen Through the Binary “Nympha” (νύμφα) and “Gambros” (γάμβρος).

Abstract:
Sappho’s wedding songs, in spite of being fragmentary, constitute the most typical example of surviving epithalamia from the ancient world. A dominant element in the nuptial “narration” of the poetess/chorus leader is the binary “nympha” and “gambros”, two different forms of the “other” delivered to the hearer/reader from a “conciliatory” and “acquiescent” point of view. In other words, in Sappho’s epithalamia the elements of otherness are not in conflict but co-exist harmoniously rendering her wedding songs an “ode” to the above-mentioned notion. The wedding songs talk about the “other” concisely, yet frankly and clearly, working in addition as a praise (“ainos”) of the couple for their qualities, virtues and skills.
The main goals of the present paper can be briefly summarized as following: Firstly, there will be an attempt to trace the peculiar formulas of epithalamia in the surviving fragments containing descriptions of the wedding couple which place them at the top rank of the conjugal system of values. Another aim of the paper is to macroscopically examine and analyze the existing formulas focusing specifically on the images and comparisons concerning the couple. I will ascertain whether the language can adequately illustrate and render the bride’s femininity on the one hand and the groom’s masculinity on the other, and will consequently verify the way in which the diversities between “masculine” and “feminine” are displayed through the existing comparisons. Furthermore, one of the main goals of the paper is to examine the visualization in the existing fragments in order to be verified whether the equation of the wedding couple with predefined typological patterns affects the hearer’s/reader’s point of view for the “male“ and the “female”(the bride is often equated to an apple or a flower and the groom to a
tree). In conclusion, it will be inquired whether such images complement or contradict the prevalent archetypes of the time in which the examined epithalamia were composed. For this reason, it will be appropriate to include in the analysis some other relevant passages from Sappho’s poetry, e.g. Sapph. fr. 44 V. etc.

The essay discusses the work of the British photographer Anna Sherbany through the work of the French philosophers Deleuze and Felix Guattari using their text ‘Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature’ (1986), to discuss the concepts of 'deterrotialisation'. Sherbany is located at the margins of many discourses, as an Iraqi Jew living in a Britain within a European Jewish diaspora, a minority within contemporary Britain. These varying displacements and multiple diasporic experiences have formed part of the raw materials of her practice and have been transformed into visual acts of deterritorialisation of dominant languages. Her work references and challenges these multiple perspectives and like Deleuze and Guattari's notion of a minor literature, this deterroritalisation of dominant modes of visuality is not a mode of practice concerned with personal quest for cultural or political identity. Rather Sherbany articulates the interconnections between the social, aesthetic and the discursive.
Key Words: Anna Sherbany; Philosophy, Vision and Visuality Research; Iraqi-Jewish Diaspora; Art Theory; Photography; British Photographers, Diaspora

How did modern Chinese painters see landscape? Did they depict nature in the same way as premodern Chinese painters? What does the artistic perception of modern Chinese painters reveal about the relationship between artists and the nation-state? Could an understanding of modern Chinese landscape painting tell us something previously unknown about art, political change, and the epistemological and sensory regime of twentieth-century China?

Yi Gu tackles these questions by focusing on the rise of open-air painting in modern China. Chinese artists almost never painted outdoors until the late 1910s, when the New Culture Movement prompted them to embrace direct observation, linear perspective, and a conception of vision based on Cartesian optics. The new landscape practice brought with it unprecedented emphasis on perception and redefined artistic expertise. Central to the pursuit of open-air painting from the late 1910s right through to the early 1960s was a reinvigorated and ever-growing urgency to see suitably as a Chinese and to see the Chinese homeland correctly. Examining this long-overlooked ocular turn, Gu not only provides an innovative perspective from which to reflect on complicated interactions of the global and local in China, but also calls for rethinking the nature of visual modernity there.

"Interested in the ways in which medieval and early modern communities have acted as participants, observers, and interpreters of events and how they ascribed meaning to them, the essays in this collection probe the individual or collective beholders of violence during the period and question how they made sense of the world around them. Addressing a range of medieval and early modern art forms, including visual images, objects, texts, and performances, the contributors examine the complexities of viewing and the production of knowledge across temporal moments.

In considering new methods to examine the beholder's perspective, this volume addresses such questions as: Can we speak of such a thing as the "period eye" or an acculturated gaze of the viewer? If so, does this particularize the gaze or does it risk universalizing perception and thus empty out the very certainty that it seeks to confirm? How do violence and pleasure intersect within the visual and literary arts? How can an understanding of violence in cultural representation serve as means of knowing the past and as means of understanding and potentially altering the present?"

This research instrumentalizes the deliberation on drawing in architectural representation, in order to criticize the way of seeing that is dominated by recent media technologies and power relations. This paper intends to search how the drawing, in particular line-making, is affected in this environment, and how to respond to it via alternative, manipulative, and creative tactics of vision considering drawing as a critical act. The dependency of line on visuality is criticized by alternative drawing practices of contemporary line-makers. Consequently, imaginative, creative and layered qualities of design thinking, representation and production can be uncovered. Originality in architecture lies in its virtual, hidden , unseen and unnoticed properties. Methodology selected is nourished by an argumentative method that is based on a system theory approach. A dialectical discussion is conducted utilizing some concepts such as visual-nonvisual, physical virtual , material-immaterial, and ...

Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) harnesses the media specificity of verbal text and visual image for the evocation of the ambivalence that constitutes hybrid identities. Rhys’s uses of covert intermediality do much to perform the lived experience of the Creole protagonist’s degeneration as they allow for the imitation of the deterioration of both her sensory perception and visibility. The intermedial representation of her interiority depends on a series of ekphrasis that resists closure and appeals to readers to favour dissent over consent.

http://www.aisthesis.de/Programm/Periodica/Medienkomparatistik

Runaway slave newspaper advertisements constitute some of the earliest visual formulations of supposedly legible racial meaning in the Americas. Numbering in the thousands, these missing persons reports contain rare pre-photographic portrayals of self-emancipated individuals “seen” by a public. By reading the advertisements with and against the grain, this essay explores the logic of seeing in these early forms of racial profiling and speculates about how descriptive language makes race feel as if it is and ought to be visible and transparent to the beholder. Racial visibility was and is produced by the layers of abstraction undertaken to represent what could already be recognized as “racial” in public culture and affirms a perceptual experience I call racial sense. A theory of racial sense is developed in this essay by reading Immanuel Kant’s aesthetic philosophy alongside Sylvia Wynter’s critique of the human. This theory of racial sense challenges the distinction between aesthetics and science as staged by the modern project of the human.

In this study, by comparing "The Mystery of Marie Roget" with other detective stories by Poe, I discuss Dupin's attempt at understanding the illegible modern city and his "exceptional" failure in "The Mystery of Marie Roget." I believe that "The Mystery of Maire Roget" paradoxically reflects the essence of detective fiction, which originally depended on the manner of viewing. In addition, I show that "The Man of the Crowd," as "an X-ray picture of a detective story" is not so much embryo of detective fiction as an example of avan-garde detective fiction.

Yannick Haenel est un écrivain français cinéphile qui intègre ainsi de nombreuses références à des films dans ses textes. Le cinéma est un art important pour l’auteur de Cercle (2007) qui, au même titre que la peinture ou la musique, imprègne de manière non négligeable ses écrits où il est appréhendé comme un réservoir de puissantes expériences sensibles et réflexives. Cette dynamique est tout particulièrement à l’œuvre dans Tiens ferme ta couronne (2017), dont une des trois parties est précisément intitulée « Des films » et où la figure du cinéaste américain Michael Cimino, frère de cœur et d’esprit du personnage principal aussi narrateur, se révèle prépondérante. C’est en effet ce roman qui célèbre le plus intensément les noces entre le cinéma et la littérature, pour reprendre une formule employée par l’auteur lorsqu’il s’est vu remettre le prix Médicis pour ce livre. On s’arrête dès lors, dans le cadre de cet article, sur ce texte spécifique afin de voir quel imaginaire filmique il déploie et fait vibrer, comment littérature et cinéma s’y entrelacent, en activant notamment la tension visible-invisible depuis laquelle s’opère une singulière traversée de l’écran.

In the philosophy and psychology of perception there exists a long-standing debate about the detachability of the visual from the conceptual contents of perception. The article analyses the implications of this dilemma for the attribution of aesthetic properties independent of the classification of aesthetic objects and the possibility of (moderate) aesthetic formalism.

Rapid Assessment of Refractive Error, Presbyopia, and Visual Impairment and Associated Quality of Life in Nampula, Mozambique

James Loughman, Technological University DublinFollow
Lindelwa Nxele, Brian Holden Vision Institute, Durban, South AfricaFollow
Cesar Faria, Lúrio University, Nampula, MozambiqueFollow
Stephen Thompson, Technological University DublinFollow
Prasidh Ramson, Brian Holden Vision Institute, Durban, SouthFollow
Farai Chinanyi, Brian Holden Vision Instiute, Durban, South AfricaFollow
Kovin S. Naidoo, Brian Holden Vision Institute, Durban, South AftricFollow
Document Type
Article

Rights
This item is available under a Creative Commons License for non-commercial use only

Disciplines
1.7 OTHER NATURAL SCIENCES

Abstract
Introduction: Uncorrected refractive error is the leading cause of visual impairment worldwide and leads to an impaired quality of life. This study was designed to determine the prevalence of uncorrected refractive error and presbyopia, to assess spectacle coverage, and to evaluate visual health-related quality of life among persons aged 15–50 years old in Nampula, Mozambique.

Methods: Participants were assessed using a validated rapid assessment of refractive error protocol, comprised of a demographic questionnaire, a standardized ophthalmic assessment to determine refractive status and spectacle coverage, and a modified vision-related quality of life questionnaire to assess the impact of uncorrected refractive error on participants’ visual health status.

Results: Among the 3,453 respondents, visual impairment prevalence was 3.5% (95%, CI 2.7%–4.2%), with 65.8% of those visually impaired being 35 years of age and older. Uncorrected refractive error prevalence was 2.6% (95%, CI 2.1–3.2%), and was the primary cause of visual impairment among 64.5% of cases. The spectacle coverage for uncorrected refractive error was 0%. Presbyopia prevalence was higher, at 25.8% (95%, CI 12.0–30.5%), with only 2.2% spectacle coverage. Respondents with visual impairment demonstrated statistically significantly lower quality of life scores compared to those without visual problems (p < 0.01).

Implications for practitioners: The uncorrected refractive error problem and a distinct lack of spectacle coverage for refractive error and presbyopia indicate an urgent need for the development and delivery of a comprehensive refractive error service in the Nampula region of Mozambique.

This research instrumentalizes the deliberation on drawing in architectural representation, in order to criticize the way of seeing that is dominated by recent media technologies and power relations. This paper intends to search how the drawing, in particular line-making, is affected in this environment, and how to respond to it via alternative, manipulative, and creative tactics of vision considering drawing as a critical act. The dependency of line on visuality is criticized by alternative drawing practices of contemporary line-makers. Consequently, imaginative, creative and layered qualities of design thinking, representation and production can be uncovered. Originality in architecture lies in its virtual, hidden , unseen and unnoticed properties. Methodology selected is nourished by an argumentative method that is based on a system theory approach. A dialectical discussion is conducted utilizing some concepts such as visual-nonvisual, physical virtual , material-immaterial, and temporal-permanent. Following a qualitative approach, unbinding the concept of line changing on a similar axis with digital mediums and tools, the conceptualization process of drawing from a historical point of view, questioning the new concepts that it relates to, and discussing the interaction of changes in line tools and representations constitute the path of this research. As a consequence, it may be proposed that prioritizing the unseen, minor or secondary characteristics of design issues and their dynamic relationships may reveal an alternative line-making practice.

This paper explores the relationships between landscape and power, colonialism and its aftermaths, and state territoriality and its contestation, in the work of two popular Northwest Coast landscape painters: Emily Carr and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. The work of both artists is explored in terms of their representation of relations between indigenous peoples, physical landscapes, state power, and modernity, and in the context of ongoing political struggles over land, resources and the environment between First Nations and the Canadian government. The paper also calls attention to the multiple and fractured nature of postcolonial visualities, to the discursive, social, technological and institutional relations that shape how landscapes are experienced and represented, and, ultimately, to the trace of colonial pasts in the environmental and political imaginaries of a postcolonial present.

Фомин И. В. Метафорическая визуальность в концептуализациях когнитивного: знание как видение // МЕТОД: Московский ежегодник трудов из обществоведческих дисциплин. — М., 2016. — Вып. 6. — С. 33-45.

Статья посвящена анализу связанных с визуальностью метафор, лежащих в основе некоторых научных и философских понятий. Обсуждаются наивная и античная модели зрения и связанные с ними особенности понятийного аппарата. Анализируются модели познания, заложенные в метафорике категорий образа, теории и идеи. Исследуется дихотомия ясных и смутных представлений.


Metaphorical visuality in the concepts of cognition: Knowing as seeing
 
The article analyzes metaphorical visually that underlies some of scientific and philosophical concepts. Naive and antique models of vision are explored in their connection with some basic concepts of cognition. Metaphorical visuality that is inherent in the concepts of image, idea, and theory is studied. The notion of clear and obscure concepts is explored.

ОБРАЗ, ИДЕЯ, ЭЙДОС, ТЕОРИЯ, КОНЦЕПТ-АНАЛИЗ, КОГНИТИВНАЯ МЕТАФОРА, ЯСНОСТЬ, ОТЧЕТЛИВОСТЬ, СМУТНЫЕ ПРЕДСТАВЛЕНИЯ, МОДЕЛЬ ЗРЕНИЯ, IMAGE, IDEA, EIDOS, THEORY, CONCEPT ANALYSIS, COGNITIVE METAPHOR, CLARITY, DISTINCTNESS, OBSCURE IDEAS, MODEL OF SEEING

La monographie collective "Raison, déraison et faculté persuasive des images" focalise sur le potentiel persuasif des images au sein de notre culture pleine d’images. L’enjeu de la réflexion est d’analyser les stratégies de manipulation diverses, dont l’objet est non seulement l’image, mais aussi nous, ses récipients. Le traitement spécialisé de ce sujet, conçu de manière complexe, apporte une réflexion de l’image des points de vue de la philosophie, de la sémiotique, de l‘esthétique et de l’histoire de l’art. Au fil des quatre chapitres, la recherche présente la problématique donnée sous l’angle de quatre aspects différents. Le premier chapitre cherche à trouver une réponse à la question de savoir comment traîter aujourd‘hui le problème du partage des images. Afin de saisir cette pratique de manière philosophique, le problème en question est analysé en fonction d’un questionnement de l’archéologie foucaldienne et situé au sein de la discussion actuelle concernant la représentation.

RESUMO: Este texto pretende abordar conceitualmente a perspectiva metodológica conhecida como Arts-Based Research (ABR) de uma forma mais ampla e a a/r/tografia de uma forma mais específica. No Brasil a ABR é conhecida como Pesquisa (ou Investigação) Baseada nas Artes (PBA), ou Pesquisa Educacional Baseada nas Artes (PEBA), ou ainda Investigação Educacional Baseada nas Artes (IEBA). Nos países de língua espanhola é explorada como Investigación Basada en las Artes (IBA) e nos países de língua inglesa, Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER) ou simplesmente Arts-Based Research (ABR). A a/r/tografia é uma das formas de &quot;investigação baseada nas artes&quot;. Inicialmente, detalharemos o campo epistemológico do construcionismo social e a noção de &quot;voz&quot; para posteriormente tratar da &quot;investigação baseada nas artes&quot;, seu vínculo com a a/r/tografia e o contributo de ambas para as pesquisas em educação.

En este artículo se ofrece un panorama sobre la importancia de la revisión de las técnicas, el desarrollo de las tecnologías y los estudios de la visión adelantados a comienzos del siglo xix. Esto con el objetivo de entender cómo se produjo la transformación histórica del observador y los cambios en las relaciones sociales que sucedieron a estos acontecimientos. Asimismo, se retoman algunos postulados de la antropología de la imagen para formular preguntas sobre la incidencia de las prácticas de la visión en la construcción del sujeto social. A la vez, da cuenta de cómo este estudio puede demarcar estrategias para interpretar la relación contemporánea entre imagen, medio y cuerpo.

Education expanded considerably over the course of the 19th century in England and the United States, becoming increasingly institutionalized and standardized. At the same time, new industrial and mechanical methods of reproduction were introduced, making illustration more efficient and affordable. Together, these two developments produced a proliferation of educational publications that provide evidence of the ways that observation was imagined, described and taught during this time. A frequent theme of these publications is the “object lesson,” through which students were taught not only about an object, but also about how to learn through observation. Yet approaches to object lessons varied. Some educators insisted that students must learn from actual objects (e.g. Mayo, 1830; and Hailman, 1867), while others celebrated the possibilities afforded by printed pictures (e.g. Frost, 1835; Calkins, 1861; Crafts, 1873; and Salmon, 1891). In addition, among the latter group, a variety of approaches to illustration circulated. In this paper, I compare these various approaches and contextualize them within contemporary research emerging from the nascent field of psychology, with the aim of articulating some of the ways that observation was imagined and disciplined in the 19th century.