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`The Very Beautiful Principles Of Natural Philosophy': Michael Faraday, Paper Marbling And The Physics Of Natural Forms, Robert Pepperell

LASER Journal

In 1854, Michael Faraday wrote to thank the author who had sent him a book on the art of paper marbling. In the letter, Faraday referred to `the very beautiful principles of natural philosophy' involved in the process of dropping ink on thickened water. What are the `beautiful principles' that Faraday referred to, and how are they involved in the art of paper marbling? Here I consider some of the physical processes that occur in paper marbling and how the patterns that emerge represent `dissipative structures' that are governed by fundamental principles of nature, in particular the tendency for physical …

Aesthetic Approaches To Symmetric Functions, John M. Campbell

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Symmetry is often regarded as an integral aspect about aesthetics. This motivates the pursuit of interdisciplinary studies based on the use of subjects in mathematics concerned with symmetry in conjunction with aesthetics. What is referred to as a symmetric function in the field of algebraic combinatorics is an abstraction based on polynomials that exhibit a symmetric property, and this leads us to pursue an algebraic combinatorics-inspired exploration based on aesthetics. In particular, we use different bases and transitions between them to create aesthetically pleasing visualizations of symmetric functions. We see that these visualizations in turn raise new and interesting questions.

The House I'D Like To Have: Women's Spatial Cultures, Design, And Aesthetic In 20th Century Italy, Francesca Romana Forlini

Interiority

"Has any woman ever designed architectures in the past centuries? You may ask her to design a hut, not even a temple! She can't. She is foreign to architecture." These infamous words of Benito Mussolini (1927) reflected the widespread sexism of the Fascist regime and prompted a silent wave of dissent pioneered by women intellectuals, architects, writers, and journalists in the early 20th century. They advocated for a valuable feminine contribution to Italian architecture and their story is still partially unknown by architectural historians today. This essay tackles Italian women's spatial design and aesthetics during the regime, a period in …

A Daycare Artist Residency In Minusio: Aesthetic Eunuciations In Borderspaces, R. Michael Michael Fisher

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

This is a compilation of happenings from an artist residency at an urban core daycare and kindergarten site from July-December, 2021. The artist provides some notes on how to approach a residency, create site-specific art and work with the children, their teachers, care staff and the community surrounding the site. A newly coined concept of minusio, emerged over time and served as an invisible basis for art-care, in a sense the mirror(ing) of the gift of nurturing but also the lack of care—and offering a route to what human’s really desire, when they are not so busy and distracted …

To All That Will Ever Be, Has Been, And Is., William Silverstein

Senior Projects Fall 2023

Artist Statement:

Broadly, this exhibition celebrates steel and the transfer of force, both figuratively and literally, from one object to another. Metal is a medium that resists your inputs yet uniquely captures the labor required to shape it. In my work, I have blended historical and modern metalworking techniques to create my interpretations of natural and manmade objects.

Degradation, deformation, and pushing material to its limits have all been key elements of my process. How much weight can a weld hold before it fails? How thin can a surface be sanded before collapsing?

In recent years, I have been very …

Harmony Of Difference: Theorizing Rashid Johnson's New Universalism In The Grids Of Antoine's Organ, Mark Fredricks

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My reading of Antoine’s Organ, a sculptural installation created by the artist Rashid Johnson in 2016, explores the artwork as a richly textured response to the limited universalism of modernism. I argue that Antoine’s Organ is a multimodal expression which crafts a harmony of difference using the aesthetic language and forms of both visual art and music. The term “harmony of difference” is taken from and inspired by a composition of the same name by jazz musician Kamasi Washington, and is used within to describe Rashid Johnson’s counterpoint strategy to work differences with and against each other, mobilizing the grid’s …

The Subject And Object Of Art: Lacan, Rose, And Levinas., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This article introduces the different approaches between the western metaphysical thought and the scholars Jacques Lacan, Jacqueline Rose, and Emmanuel Levinas – particularly the contributions to the notion of the ‘becoming’. Lacan expands on Freud’s discovery of the primacy of the unconscious (the id) and concentrates on how the unconscious is structured as a language. He argues that human subjectivity is formed by three realms: The mirror stage which initiates the child into the imaginary, the language which initiates the child into the symbolic and the realm of the real which is always veiled and out of reach.

The Beautiful Is Unveiled, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

The beautiful is unveiled and resides in the goodness that is within human beings. Beings emanate the goodness within; thus, whoever possesses goodness is able to unveil beauty.

Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics And The Absence Of Emergency By Santiago Zabala., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Throughout history, we find ourselves searching for ways to nurture empathy and justice to cope with the political world crisis and improve our lives. The book, Why Only Art Can Save Us, written by a contemporary philosopher and author, Santiago Zabala, questions how the creation of art can shift the reasoning and existential being of humanity; and how art could be the only salvation to the political world crisis. Thus, Why Only Art Can Saves Us, is a philosophical, political, and existential reflection on the appeal and aesthetic qualities of art in the 21st century.

A Dialogue On Marta Minujin's Happening: Leyendo Las Noticias (Reading The News), Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias is a happening that combines feminine subjectivity with the socio-political, creating a dialogue around notions of trace, the feminine, text, meaning, and impermanence. Specifically, how these notions affect the women living in an unstable and pluralistic world. It depicts a woman as a ‘participatory woman’ talking about women, in a conflicted patriarchal society. I would argue that the popular Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias, represents a ‘slippage,’ for women (Cixoux 1976) amid a repressive culture, and a historical context of a Dirty War, violence, and fear. Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Jane Bennett, and …

Whose Place Is It? Enacted Territories In The Museum, Jennie Andersson Schaeffer, Ksenija Komazec, Elsa Vaara, Andreea Strineholm, Helena Tobiasson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

There is a growing trend to embrace the idea of public participation in the work of museums, from exhibition design to collections. To further develop participatory cultures in museums, these negotiations and emerging practices should be examined more closely. This paper explores a museum’s whole-hearted attempt to engage with the societal issue of climate change and work with a high degree of participation from civic society when staging a temporary exhibition. We investigate experiences in the process of building, measuring, separating and transgressing during the collaboration. Based on these explorations the paper presents three emerging and interconnected territories in the …

Mechanisms Of Nourishment, Raymond Lloyd Brown Iii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This written thesis is a description and analysis of the ceramic work of Ray Brown. Included in this thesis is an explanation and defense of my work in my exhibition Mechanisms of Nourishment. It also unpacks the conceptual, technical, and formal aspects of the work.

The research explored in this written thesis discusses the relationship between the aesthetic and utilitarian components of pottery. From an analytical, iterative approach to form, I strive to isolate proportions that evoke a sense of volume and repetition. My references to Mid Century Modern and Streamlining Era design guide my efforts into dynamic mechanisms of …

Towards A Decolonial Feminist Aesthetics: Gender, Race, And Empire In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’S Dictee, Juwon Jun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Defining revolutionary struggle as a struggle between fictions, Trinh T. Minh-ha asserts that art in revolution is a spiritual presence which widens the conception of freedom. Political struggle is constituted by clashes in differently written and conceived realities—hinged on the creation and realization of multiple liberatory fictions. Liberation then requires us to attend to creating new myths and conceptions of freedom which can free us from the current structures of domination that produce current subjects and realities. If culture is indeed an “essential element in the history of a people,” mapping decoloniality in cultural and aesthetic fields may be essential …

Estetika Permainan Musik Barat Pada Big Band Salamander, Oki Dirgualam, Dadang Suganda, Buky Wibawa, Kunto Sufianto

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

This article describes the aesthetics of the big band jazz music by Salamander Big Band. Aesthetics is a study of the processes that occur in three basic elements: aesthetic objects, aesthetic subjects, and aesthetic values related to aesthetic experiences, aesthetic properties, and attractive and unattractive parameters. This paper presents the basic elements of western music aesthetics, especially big band jazz music, and how Salamander Big band can implement the aesthetic values of western jazz big band music in the music played. This research uses a qualitative approach with a descriptive analysis method. Through a process of appreciation, habituation, additional insight …

Sugimoto’S Middle Brow And The Collective Horizon, Aaron Francis Ward

Japanese Society and Culture

Is art for everyone? Although attendance at art galleries has risen rapidly at the start of the 21st century, so too has the price of art, and the perception that art is an object of conspicuous consumption. The current paper presents a discussion of the possibilities that the photography of Hiroshi Sugimoto offers an artistic oeuvre that countenances the current state of the art market and is open to the aesthetic appreciation of a broader audience. As middlebrow mode of cultural production (Bourdieu 1996), photography is an artistic form that most people are familiar with, rendering it a medium that …

Manuscript For Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

This document is the manuscript version before graphic design and copyediting. Follow this link to see the final version.

The situation that inspired and drove these aesthetic guidelines for campus master planning were unique to the history Bethel University and Seminary. By the early 1960s, Bethel was outgrowing its site on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. The opportunity to purchase 160 acres in Arden Hills arose and the leap of faith was taken to buy this land and relocate. But it was not that simple. More was involved than mere practical problems of too-little space solved by an abundance …

Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

Table of Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

The Need for Aesthetic Guidelines for Campus Master Planning The Purpose and Use of this Document

Aesthetic Guidelines: “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus,” by Eugene Johnson (1963) (original version without annotations) . . . . . . . 5

Eugene Johnson’s, “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus” (with annotations, a history of interpretation and use) Annotations …

Myelination: A Plastic Religion, Cody A. Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plastic products are convenient, abundant and our use of them has become routine. This acceptance of

plastics’ presence has become a dogma that most humans adhere to. The continual consumption of

these single-use plastics in our daily lives has unknowingly shaped our environmental consciousness,

behaviors, and justification for them. This belief in plastics function has been strategically developed by

companies that rely on our behaviors to distribute their products. Humans have become the faithful

consumers of these goods and this belief. The brain and its ability to remain plastic and develop

decision-making skills are known as Myelination. New experiences enhance …

It's The Funerals I Missed Which Haunt Me The Most, Arno Goetz

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

What makes a photograph great? This is the central question which guides my research, and I answer this question in two parts. The first element is the structure of the photograph, which Robert Adams addresses in his collection of essays, Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. With the guiding principle that structure can provide harmony in an image, I develop a collection of guidelines for composing images and name them the “Rules of Clarity.” The purpose of these rules is to help photographers create harmonious compositions, free from distractions. When a photograph has few distractions, it …

Installation: Untitled#0420, Thesis: Is The Artist’S Position Valid And Necessary To Her Completed Artworks ? —— An Investigation Of The Artist’S Position Through Martin Heidegger’S Poetry, Language, Thought And The Fisherman Analogy, Coco Ma

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Artist statement:

In my practice of mixed-media sculptures and installations, I use different kinds of materials in unexpected ways to provoke uncertainties, inquiries, and reflections. My works entice people to stop and pay close attention. In this process, they may be confused and amused. By being labor- intensive and repetitive with ordinary materials, my works inspire people to see familiar forms and materials in new and fresh ways. Underneath the familiarity of the materials is the “white noise,” a hum of dissonance between the familiar and the strange.

The installation Untitled#0420 uses fishing lines as its major component, which is …

Viseral Projects, Matthew Conrardy

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A brand’s image, its identity, is established through what the brand is, what it does, where it is going, and how it is unique. The representation of a brand’s identity materializes through the messaging, images, graphics, colors, and typography associated with it. Brand manuals are designed to establish and maintain both the consistency and flexibility of the brand identity.

This manual outlines the visual and verbal applications that currently embody the Viseral Projects brand across the multimedia environment. It includes information outlining the Viseral brand story, identity system,

platforms, and examples of executions. It has been constructed with the anticipation …

Spooky Stuff, Petra A. Szilagyi

Theses and Dissertations

A real imaginal exploration of the aesthetics of the supernatural.

Queerness, Witchcraft, And Embodied Presence: Aesthetic Knowings Of What A Body Can Do, Megan Bigelow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking as a point of entry the critique of representation and affirming the limitations of the cuts that language makes, this capstone project explores the imbrications and assemblages between Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges, witchcraft and other body-based ways of knowing and being, and the consciousness of non-human forms such as plants and through the framework of non-representational theory, process philosophies, aesthetics, queerness, and the concept of difference itself.

Since such theories themselves are living, breathing entities, this capstone project explores the ideological split that has occurred between sacred and secular beliefs, moving through different figures such as nuns and …

Aesthetics And Imagining The Octopus’S Mind, André Krebber, Maike Riedinger, Yvette Watt

Animal Sentience

Several commentators on Mather’s target article discuss the challenges of finding adequate cognitive methods and concepts for accessing the mind and experience of octopuses. Building on Godfrey-Smith’s commentary, we propose aesthetics as a way. The arts provide means to perform what Godfrey-Smith calls an “imaginative leap” to access the experience of octopuses, especially mimesis. We are trying to do this in our current project Okto-Lab. Laboratory for Octopus Aesthetics.

Humor And Allegory, Christopher Goodale

Masters Theses

This series of works proposes the merging of aesthetic interests that undermine the self-seriousness of the artist and the idea of labor in painting. Painting’s slowing of time can hopefully extinguish the peripheral noise of the outside world and provide space for thought. These paintings propose different ways to help the viewer understand visual depth, narrative, and formal decision-making. The optical depth of red, the spatial depth of glazed paint, and the spiritual depth of the figure can provide multiple meanings and possibilities. Another metaphor for the development of this series of paintings would be one comedian telling a joke …

१ - ३६ [1 - 36 Translated From Hindi], Aayushi Khowala, Fleet Library, Special Collections

4th Student Artists' Book Contest 2018

No abstract provided.

(The Work Of) Play In The Age Of Electronic Reproduction, Alexis Newton

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Electronic technologies have allowed for the mass (re)production of new media artifacts on a previously unachievable scale. While media across the board have been effected by the scope of such technology, videogames specifically provide an interesting and generative point of contact in the digital world. Videogames bridge gaps between the academic, political, and popular often unintentionally and unconsciously in ways that other new media artifacts and technologies cannot. But, while this is so, there seems to be a gap in discourse that brings together virtual and embodied experiences in order to create a more cohesive and holistic understanding of the …

Art's Disclosive Dimensions: Reflections On The Work Of Peter London, Aaron Darrisaw

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

When I initially came to this project, I vaguely remembered hearing of Peter London once before – in passing perhaps. Yet I knew nothing really of his art or his work as an educator. Each day I came into work, however, I was met with a series of very interesting correspondences, articles, conference presentations, lecture notes, and more that offered a thoroughgoing vision of art as a personally, socially, and spiritually transformative and enriching enterprise. The collection contained document after document of valuable contributions to the instrumental role that art can and does play in opening up individuals to their …

Primate Aesthetics, Chelsea L. Sams

Masters Theses

A cultural, historical, and scientific survey of the phenomena of primate pictorial behavior, presented in a series of interconnected vignettes. What do primates find visually appealing? What is their motivation when creating images? What are the implications for art and for science? By drawing explicit and implicit connections between science, art, case studies, research, and personal narrative, I attempt to weave together what we know, and what we may never be able to know about this complex field.

Art As Display, Frank M. Boardman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art is essentially a type of display. As an activity, art is what we do when we display objects with certain intentions. As a set of objects, art is all of those things that are displayed for those purposes. The artworld is the social atmosphere that surrounds this particular activity of display. And a history of art is an evolving narrative of change in the practice of this sort of display.

Specifically, to focus for convenience on art as a set of objects, this is what we can call the “displayed-object thesis”:

x is a work of art iff: (a) …