How do hip-hop songs produced from 2017 to 2023 depict and rationalize online fraud? This study examines the depiction of online fraudsters in thirty-three Nigerian hip-hop songs on nine popular streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and YouTube. Using a directed approach to qualitative content analysis, we coded lyrics based on the moral disengagement mechanism and core themes derived from existing literature. Our findings shed light on how songs (a) justify the fraudulent actions of (...) online fraudsters, (b) blame and dehumanize victims of online romance fraud, (c) glamorize online fraud, and (d) provide insights into prevailing attitudes, indigenous linguistics, and worldviews regarding cybercrime victimization. Specifically, our analysis shows the presence of moral disengagement mechanisms, including "dehumanization," “minimizing own agency,” and "displacement of responsibility." Moreover, we identify core contextual themes pertinent to online fraud in the Nigerian context: (a) "cyber spiritualism" and (b) "the North-South divide." This research underscores the global influence of musicians whose songs are easily accessible on diverse music platforms in trivializing the plight of online fraud victims. We argue that these artists' persuasive messages not only downplay but also satirize the victims' predicaments, thus contributing to the cultural worldviews and dimensions of online fraud. We conclude by underscoring these songs' capacity to actualize, reshape, and actively engage with the narratives of glamorization, justification, spiritualism, colonial legacies, gender dynamics, and societal implications. We recommend that future research endeavors explore non-conventional data sources adept at capturing the intricate fabric of cultural attitudes and dynamics. (shrink)

Musical life became disrupted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many musicians and venues turned to online alternatives, such as livestreaming. In this study, three livestreamed concerts were organized to examine separate, yet interconnected concepts—agency, presence, and social context—to ascertain which components of livestreamed concerts facilitate social connectedness. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling was conducted on 83 complete responses to examine the effects of the manipulations on feelings of social connectedness with the artist and the audience. Results showed that (...) in concert 1, where half of the participants were allowed to vote for the final song to be played, this option did not result in the experience of more agency. Instead, if their preferred song was played (regardless of voting ability) participants experienced greater connectedness to the artist. In concert 2, participants who attended the concert with virtual reality headsets experienced greater feelings of physical presence, as well as greater feelings of connectedness with the artist, than those that viewed a normal YouTube livestream. In concert 3, attendance through Zoom led to greater experience of social presence, but predicted less connectedness with the artist, compared to a normal YouTube livestream. Crucially, a greater negative impact of COVID-19 (e.g., loneliness) predicted feelings of connectedness with the artist, possibly because participants fulfilled their social needs with this parasocial interaction. Examining data from all concerts suggested that physical presence was a predictor of connectedness with both the artist and the audience, while social presence only predicted connectedness with the audience. Correlational analyses revealed that reductions in loneliness and isolation were associated with feelings of shared agency, physical and social presence, and connectedness to the audience. Overall, the findings suggest that in order to reduce feelings of loneliness and increase connectedness, concert organizers and musicians could tune elements of their livestreams to facilitate feelings of physical and social presence. (shrink)

The microbiome has become one of the most recognizable research subjects and presences in the headlines of news and scientific articles published in almost every biological science area in the last few years. The steady decline in the price of DNA sequencing has enabled metagenomics, community analysis and genome sequencing to enter routine research in microbiology and biotechnology laboratories all around the world. The already open access to national and international databases that include nucleotide (including full genomes) and protein sequences (...) such as GenBank or EMBL-Bank and a multitude of free bioinformatic software resources accessible online, along with the international efforts towards open science publication and open data, allow the possibility of the microbiome and microbiota to be envisaged as a potential data and material resource for new media art projects especially for artists interested in biological processes. Recent results on the creation of synthetic life that are already testing the boundaries of life could be another approach for the creative exploration of microbiology and microbial processes from the artistic point of view. This article will attempt to uncover and reflect on the potential for further exploration of this resource. (shrink)

The rise of Internet-mediated communication poses possibilities and challenges for organisation studies, also in the area of corporate social responsibility and business and society interactions. Although social media are attracting more and more attention in this domain, websites also remain an important channel for CSR debate. In this paper, we present an explorative study of activist groups’ online presence via their websites and propose a combination of methods to study both the structural positioning of websites and the meanings (...) in these websites. We focus on the websites of SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, and of one of its campaigns, makeITfair, concerned with labour conditions in the IT industry worldwide. This allows us to show how this combination of methods can further our understanding of the way activist networks’ online presence can provide insights into the tactics these networks apply to achieve institutional change on CSR issues. Meanwhile, we identify some notable differences between styles and word use in the two organisations’ websites. We conclude with a set of suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Since time immemorial, pastoral ministry has been physically present in church buildings, homes and public places, providing face-to-face care and reassurance of God’s love and accompaniment. The tragic outbreak and speedy spread of COVID-19 from China triggered unprecedented challenges, dramatically led to restrictive national lockdowns, closure of physical meetings, fundamentally unsettled routine ways of doing ministry and demanded total digitalisation of the gospel, which eventually rendered the ministry of physical presence absent. While doing ministry online seemed to have (...) been working well in other countries, it has been a uniquely different trajectory in Zimbabwe predominantly because of financial, material, human incapacitation as well as cultural and other contextual factors. Scholarly research on online pastoral praxis in Zimbabwe is scanty. Applying Osmer’s methodology, this study reviewed lived experiences and challenges of pastors in ministering virtually since the beginning of lockdowns early 2020 hitherto late 2021. It interrogated the ministry of presence and understanding of digitalisation. Amidst a plethora of social, political and economic drawbacks, this article unearthed erratic capability, affordability, availability, connectivity and feasibility of digitalised shepherding. Taking physical presence as incarnation of the triune God, demonstration of love, care and accompaniment as indispensable in pastoral ministry, this article stressed the significance of physical presence. However, considering the prevailing COVID-19 and contextual constrictions, it recommended that pastors should appreciate and submit their congregants to the ubiquitous and indispensable spiritual presence of God while redoubling efforts in ministering through contextually feasible ways until lockdowns end.Contribution: This article provides a critical biblical and scholarly review and analysis of the ministry of presence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe. This will provoke pastors, churches and church bodies to rethink and reconsider progressive strategies towards contextually effective pastoral theology, ministry and ecclesiology in times of pandemics in the context of economic volatility. (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure the rise of online Adoration of the Reserved Sacrament during the widespread suspension of worship in response to COVID‐19. Taking the phenomenon seriously as an instance of the sensus fidelium exposes limitations in the Tridentine formulation of the mode of sacramental presence. Alternative approaches may be developed with reference to the thinking of two post‐Heideggerian philosophers, Marion and Nancy, who in different ways explore the subject's encounter with the divine in (...) the phenomenal world as a double kenosis, without reference to an abstract concept of Being. These accounts together suggest an account of adoration as a kenotic response to divine kenosis and so suggest understandings of Eucharistic Adoration that are not bounded by the constraints of physical materiality. The paper concludes by considering the wider applicability of this approach in a world that is, increasingly, a hybrid of physical and ‘virtual’ phenomena and at a time when US Catholics are believed to be losing their faith in the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. (shrink)

In the context of a global pandemic that started in 2020, the Chilean higher education institution Universidad Andrés Bello faced the challenge of giving continuity to its already established blended program for English courses while also starting the implementation of a high-stakes certification assessment for its students using the Test of English for International Communication Bridge. This study sought to evaluate how much of a mediating factor online teaching presence could be in the context of test preparation within (...) a language course in aspects related to autonomous learning and perceived learning outcomes. A mixed-methods approach was used. It included a survey applied to 1,642 eligible students of the English program. These quantitative data were complemented with students’ comments and teacher interviews. After triangulating quantitative and qualitative data, teaching presence was clearly perceived to be a relevant aspect of the online experience in the studied courses. However, both students’ and teachers’ voices evidenced pervasive challenges and tensions that hinder the potentially transformative benefits that online learning is expected to bring about. (shrink)

In response to the interruption of all levels of education following COVID-19, we start by underlining the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning. Next, we inquire into the question of presence in physical and virtual classrooms, and offer a discussion of presence as “being-here-now,” a “movement toward becoming,” and as gelassenheit or “releasement toward things.” We highlight the materiality of communication, and the performative production and transformation of the classroom space. Finally, we illustrate how performative (...) writing enhances the sense of being-here-now, and facilitates the co-inhabiting of online learning spaces that lack co-presence of bodies in the same physical environment. (shrink)

While the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty remained engaged with artistic creation throughout his entire work, which continues to inspire artists today in manifold ways, no systematic and artistically inclusive study of this dimension of his thought has existed so far. Du sensible à l’œuvre fills this gap by offering not only an in-depth study of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthesiology and aesthetics by international Merleau-Ponty scholars spanning three generations, but also a rich selection of essays by art critics and theorists who assess (...) the impact of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy on their own artistic fields, including cinema, music, literature, film, dance, and installation art. (shrink)

Researchers seeking to engage in projects related to Tribal communities and their citizens, lands, and non-human relatives are responsible for understanding and abiding by each Tribal nation’s research laws and review processes. Few studies, however, have described the many diverse forms of Tribal research review systems across the United States (US). This study provides one of the most comprehensive examinations of research review processes administered by Tribal Research Review Boards (TRRBs) in the US. Through a systematic analysis, we consider TRRBs’ (...) online presence, online documentation, and themes across documents, for five entity types: Tribal nations and Tribal consortiums, Tribal colleges and universities, Tribal health organizations, Indian Health Services, and other Tribal organizations. Results include an assessment of online presence for 98 potential TRRBs, identification of 118 publicly available online documents, and analysis of 41 themes across four document types: Tribal research codes and TRRBs’ guidelines, applications, and post-approval documents. Altogether, this research provides a macro-level analysis of the most common types of TRRBs in the US in an effort to increase researchers’ understanding of these important processes as they prepare to ethically engage Tribal communities in research. These results aim to empower Tribal decision makers as they align their TRRBs’ online visibility and documentation with community priorities and strengthen their protections for the rights and wellbeing of their citizens and community. Ultimately, by expanding our knowledge of TRRBs across the US, this contribution seeks to uphold Tribal sovereignty in research and promote ethical approaches to research with Indigenous communities. (shrink)

Perceived trust is a key factor affecting the behavior to donate online. In order to further explore the factors and influencing mechanisms that affect the success of medical crowdfunding projects, this paper, combined with the Stimulus-Organism-Response theory, introduces the mediating variable of social presence and perceived differences in trust, and constructs a model of online users’ donation behavior to medical crowdfunding projects. We collected 437 valid samples through a questionnaire survey, and processed the data with SPSS and (...) Amos software to test and analyze the theoretical model. The research results showed that project description and user participation have a significant positive effect on social presence; project transparency and patient identity have a significant negative effect on perceived differences in trust; social presence has a positive effect on donation behavior, while the perceived difference in trust has a negative effect; social presence and perceived differences in trust play a mediating role respectively; there is no significant effect of patient status on social presence. This study further expands the application of social presence and perceived differences in trust in medical crowdfunding, and provides a theoretical basis for the success of medical crowdfunding projects. (shrink)

Since time immemorial, pastoral ministry has been physically present in church buildings, homes and public places, providing face-to-face care and reassurance of God's love and accompaniment. The tragic outbreak and speedy spread of COVID-19 from China triggered unprecedented challenges, dramatically led to restrictive national lockdowns, closure of physical meetings, fundamentally unsettled routine ways of doing ministry and demanded total digitalisation of the gospel, which eventually rendered the ministry of physical presence absent. While doing ministry online seemed to have (...) been working well in other countries, it has been a uniquely different trajectory in Zimbabwe predominantly because of financial, material, human incapacitation as well as cultural and other contextual factors. Scholarly research on online pastoral praxis in Zimbabwe is scanty. Applying Osmer's methodology, this study reviewed lived experiences and challenges of pastors in ministering virtually since the beginning of lockdowns early 2020 hitherto late 2021. It interrogated the ministry of presence and understanding of digitalisation. Amidst a plethora of social, political and economic drawbacks, this article unearthed erratic capability, affordability, availability, connectivity and feasibility of digitalised shepherding. Taking physical presence as incarnation of the triune God, demonstration of love, care and accompaniment as indispensable in pastoral ministry, this article stressed the significance of physical presence. However, considering the prevailing COVID-19 and contextual constrictions, it recommended that pastors should appreciate and submit their congregants to the ubiquitous and indispensable spiritual presence of God while redoubling efforts in ministering through contextually feasible ways until lockdowns end. CONTRIBUTION: This article provides a critical biblical and scholarly review and analysis of the ministry of presence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Zimbabwe. This will provoke pastors, churches and church bodies to rethink and reconsider progressive strategies towards contextually effective pastoral theology, ministry and ecclesiology in times of pandemics in the context of economic volatility. (shrink)

Computer and communication technologies created new modes of creating and sharing arts. In this paper, we apply ‘diffusion of innovation’ theory to investigate how artistic content travels in an online social network site called deviantArt, a site designed for sharing user-generated artworks. We first define what innovation corresponds to in such a context, and then discuss how it can be measured with the help of network, image and text analysis methods. We propose to use user-shared resources as relatively (...) easy targets of tracking innovation. (shrink)

Whereas in the past ‘free’ and ‘illegal’ were nearly synonymous in the music industry, consumers nowadays face a myriad of music platforms with widely different characteristics in terms of business model (advertising supported, fee based, etc.), delivery mode (streaming, downloading, etc.), and others. The current research examines music consumption preferences in this new context. In order to break with the outmoded free-illegal versus paid-legal dichotomy, the present research studies consumer preferences for a broader range of music platform attributes, including free (...) versus paying business models, (il)legality of use, artist revenues, downloading versus streaming, and audio quality. Based on a literature review and a qualitative study with in-depth interviews (N = 92), an online conjoint survey (N = 764) quantifies online music preferences. Results show that consumers of all ages clearly and consistently prefer legal and ethical options if available, but favor different ways of making this economically viable. Youngsters and young adults are more open to advertising, while middle-aged adults are more often willing to pay for advertising-free platforms. Thus, in real-life choices, youngsters may appear to be less ethical and law abiding, but the driving force behind this is mainly economical. Finally, a market segmentation provides deeper insights into online music consumer preferences and leads to recommendations on how to define viable legal and ethical music offerings. (shrink)

Human presencing explores how people’s past encounters with others shape their present actions. In this paper, I present an alternative perspective on human embodiment in which the re-evoking of the absent can be traced to the intricate interplay of bodily dynamics. By situating the phenomenon within distributed, embodied, and dialogic approaches to language and cognition, I am overcoming the theoretical and methodological challenges involved in perceiving and acting upon what is not perceptually present. In a case study, I present strong (...) and weak dimensions of human presencing. In the former, a person uses their body in distinct ways and shapes their immediate ecology to make others present to them. In contrast, in the latter, a person’s past encounter with others powerfully shapes the projections they make onto written digital inscriptions. These findings have implications for how people act in online learning environments and how human activity shapes the machines we use every day. In this way, the paper highlights the complexity of a person as a social being and allows for different approaches to human embodiment in technology. (shrink)

Computer and communication technologies created new modes of creating and sharing arts. In this paper, we apply ‘diffusion of innovation’ theory to investigate how artistic content travels in an online social network site called deviantArt, a site designed for sharing user-generated artworks. We first define what innovation corresponds to in such a context, and then discuss how it can be measured with the help of network, image and text analysis methods. We propose to use user-shared resources as relatively (...) easy targets of tracking innovation. (shrink)

Continuance intention to online learning platforms has received increased attention in recent years, and media richness has been found to be an important antecedent influencing user retention. However, there is insufficient research on the mediating and moderating mechanism underlying this relation. The purpose of this article is to investigate the positive association between three dimensions of media richness and user continuance intention, the mediating role of social presence in the relationship between three dimensions of media richness and continuance (...) intention, and the moderating role of need for cognition in the relationship between three dimensions of media richness and social presence. We conduct a survey questionnaire with a sample of 368 users from online learning platforms and use structural equation modeling. The results indicate that the model proposed has a high explanatory power of continuance intention to online learning platforms and give support to the moderating role of the need for cognition. The study highlights the crucial role these technological-environment-related variables have in relation to virtual user experience and their continuance intention. Furthermore, this study shows the significance of differentiated online course design to foster users’ social presence according to user types. (shrink)

"[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."--Karsten Harries, The New York Times Book Review With The Presence of Myth , Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of (...) culture which extends to all realms of human intercourse--intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional. . . . [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."-- Anglican Theological Review. (shrink)

"[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."—Karsten Harries, _The New York Times Book Review_ With _The Presence of Myth_, Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of culture (...) which extends to all realms of human intercourse—intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional.... [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."—_Anglican Theological Review_. (shrink)

A plethora of studies stress students’ self-regulated learning skills to be conditional for successful learning in school and beyond. In general, self-regulated learners are actively engaged in constructing their own understanding also including the regulation of contextual features in the environment. Within the contextual features, the regulation of peer interaction is necessary, because college courses increasingly require peer learning. This goes along with the increasing interest for online learning settings, due in no small part to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. (...) In the present study we explore how social presence, social space and sociability are essential elements in the regulation of online peer interaction. To shed light in this matter, higher education students were qualitatively followed for 1 year in an online academic writing course by using retrospective interviews and reflective questions. Additionally, for social presence, students’ perceptions were quantitatively measured with a validated questionnaire. The results show that the planning phase is the most important phase for supporting students’ social presence because that is where the regulation of peer interaction becomes important. The sociability has an important role here as well becoming less prominent further on in the self-regulation process. In the SRL follow-up phases, students look for other ways to increase their social presence and social space in order to shape the regulation of peer interaction from a position of trust. In the evaluation phase, students are aware of the importance of social presence but less of social space for the regulation of peer interaction. We conclude with some design principles to facilitate students’ regulation of peer interaction in online settings. (shrink)

This article analyzes recent cases of company-sponsored online experiments with unsuspecting users and discusses the ethical aspects of such experimentation. These cases illustrate a new type of online research where companies modify their algorithms to intentionally misinform or mislead users. Unlike typical forms of A/B testing, where two versions of the same website are presented to different users to evaluate interface changes, algorithm modification is a deeper form of testing where changes in program code induce user deception. Thus, (...) we propose to call this new approach C/D experimentation to distinguish it from the surface-level website evaluation associated with A/B testing. Three aspects raise ethical concerns regarding C/D experimentation: the absence of user consent to participate in research, the presence of intentional deception, and the complete lack of protection for human subjects who partake in privately funded behavioral research. Three recommendations are proposed to address these issues: (i) to develop an ethical code of conduct for subject protection shared by online companies, (ii) to include special provisions for C/D experiments in social networking platforms, and (iii) to create an independent user advocacy board to protect the rights of users who partake in online research conducted in the private sector. (shrink)

From the Romantic era onward, many of the discourses surrounding artistic creativity have merged the artist and his working space: the place of work is viewed as the mirror of the man and his oeuvre, a sanctuary, a social or an exhibition space. A popular topos in this context was the view of the empty studio. This paper explores the 19th-century empty studio image as a self-portrait of the artist. It examines how the depictions of the space and its (...) objects work to inscribe the artist’s presence, and to express his or her artistic self-conception and identity within the changing artistic-social structures of the period. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 208-212. … intervals of destructuring paradoxically carry the momentum for the ongoing process by which thought and perception are brought into relation toward transformative action. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation 1 Facing a blank canvas or blank page is a moment of pure potential, one that can be enervating or paralyzing. It causes a pause, a hesitation, in anticipation of the moment of inception—even of one that never comes. The implication is that the (...) blank is yours in that moment, and it calls on you to act on it, to think into it, to create on it. Each blank canvas gives you time, of an undefined length, to transform that canvas’ inherent potential into a work. This two-dimensional plane of potential can be projected into a space, which the body can then occupy. When you “destructure” a space in the same way, prepare it to be a blank, much as you build a canvas, you allow your entire body to enter the space of potential, and you rest in anticipation of work, like the hand poised above the page. Artists have found that the deliberate creation of that space of potential through sealing the space and painting it white, thereby erasing details and distractions, can be such a transformative experience as to help define their whole practice. The cessation of distraction, the absence of indicator that a “blanked” workspace provides allows for a new presence of mind, it gives them the room, literally, to move into their work, and from there to move their work into the world. The workspace for the artist, the studio, is often perceived as a lab-like condensation of the gallery or museum, the traditional and idealized white cube. Similarly, with the blank page, a concrete relation between space and time comes forward as the intentional simplification of the architecture changes behavior and perception within the space. The work of “blanking” the studio space is a meditative reduction, an erasure, and in a way, an attempt at drawing away from the world beyond the studio - the sealed space is meant to recede from reality, to become abstracted by its willed lack of details and distractions. Within that space the time for a new beginning is made more present, more attainable, and the focus it fosters becomes another tool to aid creation. At the formative moment of his artistic practice, Tom Friedman used the blank of his studio, saturated in white, sealed off from the world, to fight velocity. He describes how he projected his vision of the end goal, the museum - a place he believes to be defined by slow contemplation - onto his own studio experience. He then sat and reflected on common objects, one by one, framed by the blank box he had created. The domestic objects he brought into the space to study foreshadow his mature works, where often the quotidian object has a single additional element – his intense labor. Friedman makes discrete objects through absurdly intense and focused labor, epitomized, perhaps by his 1,000 hours of Staring , made from 1992-97: Tom Friedman. 1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997) His labor, to use his own words, is his way to “bring all of who you are to the experience.” Friedman shares his labor, allows the slow, deliberate pace of his work born in the studio to penetrate the museum. Nothing seems effortless, or a gesture, the labor is apparent, displayed, and tangible. He gives us the labor, the personal investment in the physical that saved art for him, that divorced the work from the language he cites as a factor of alienation. When we see his work we do not see words, we see acts, we see objects. He has forced the studio as workspace into the exhibition space, as he stuffs hundreds of more hours of labor into his shows with each new piece, filling the space with material and labor, material and labor – his involvement, his investment, is his gift to us as the viewers, as he introduces the laborious and contemplative pace he feels belongs to the museum. He saves us also from the alienation of language, which first drove him into the sealed studio and away from the discourse of his school. He presents us with his real, the object which stands in stark contrast to the white slate of the studio, the sealed white box he started from, where his individual, self-contained objects begin and end, completed through the intensity of isolation, first of the individual artist, and then of the material he chooses to slowly, slowly, slowly work: Tom Friedman. Untitled (1992) In his in-depth analysis of galleries as a blank white cube, Brian O’Doherty emphasizes the religious connotations implied in the strict laws of the exhibition space and the valuation, aesthetics and elements of control he feels it imposes upon the work. Like Friedman, he recognizes the power of the restricted space – indicating the “perceptual fields of force” – that act on any object introduced into it. Going beyond Friedman’s assessment of the space as highly utilitarian for focusing his perception, O’Doherty emphasizes the rejection of the physical body of the artist or observer, saying that the cube allows for only observation - eyes and mind. He later parallels the picture frame as a psychological container for the artist with the room as the same for the observer. In both cases, this is an emphasis on the alienating nature of the relationship – just as the artist is kept out of the frame by the picture, in the gallery the art forces the body of the spectator out, calling for a self-referential purity. Patrick Ireland. White Cube (1998) O’Doherty makes a point of saying that the installation shot of the gallery without figures is “one of the icons of our visual culture.” In recent years, however, installation shots have begun to include figures, in some cases they are essential to understanding the scale and even the nature of the work, specifically with work that captures the experience of the space and the way that it varies from a white cube. The work of Olafur Eliasson is a case in point, as the Danish artist uses elements of scientific and natural phenomena to alter perception within the controlled gallery environment, tweaking and redirecting O’Doherty’s “perceptual fields of force” to make points about the act of seeing, or seeing yourself seeing, to quote the artist. This indicates a shift in the role of the artwork, not to exclude the body and stand discretely and self-sufficiently, but to include it, to manipulate it and to make the observer aware of the nature of that manipulation and the work’s ability to manipulate. Olafur Eliasson. 360º room for all colours (2002) So though in O’Doherty’s analysis, the intense blankness of the gallery pushed the observer out in favor of the artwork’s isolation, artists can replicate this inhumane sterility in their own workspace to focus their work on the influence of the gallery right from inception. This can be interpreted as an almost opposite understanding of the purpose of sealing and whitewashing the workspace as stated by Friedman. He sought a refuge from the critical language of the art school, and a space that, like the museum, gave him a protracted sense of time, and, he felt, welcomed him in, “to bring all of who you are,” as opposed to O’Doherty’s feeling that the museum was asking you, at least in body, to leave, and allow the work to take on its own life. Friedman does not seem to imply the tension with the cube and critical stance that O’Doherty prioritizes. Where Friedman finds a refuge, O’Doherty defines an opponent. In a third position, Robert Irwin describes his sealed studio space as “the world.” Though he made the same effort as Friedman to seal out all influences and distractions, he implies that he is in dialogue with the world through his own concentration and perception. This is reminiscent of the nature of the monad, as interpreted by Deleuze, a unity that envelops a multiplicity, a sealed container that contains the universe. He went through the same ritual described by Friedman, sealing up the space, painting it white, and then forcing himself to remain inside, staring at his own work, training his concentration relentlessly. But he found that the room became the distraction: …he became aware that a thin crack along the wall a few yards away from the canvas likewise exerted its presence; that when he plastered that crack over and repainted the wall, the canvas itself presented an entirely new aspect.2 The context was in a relentless dialogue with the work, and trying to neutralize that dialogue, to mute the conversation between space and object, became part of his ritual as he “fixed” his space each day in the hope of total concentration on the work. Ultimately, Irwin shaped the trajectory of his art by relinquishing the studio, establishing a post-studio practice, where the work is conceived and created out in the world, in dialogue with the world and reflective of the conditions it finds surrounding it. The white cube failed to ever achieve neutrality, his heightened concentration prevented him from ever neutralizing the space, so, instead of continuing to try to maintain the charade of a perfect blank, he acknowledged the unstoppable voice of place and turned all his efforts onto the object and the world, as a constant dialogue. Some artists push their studio space far from purity, domesticating it like a lair or a living room, and others destroy it, fill it with chaos or detritus, blacken or clutter it so as never to be starting from a blank, and thereby try to avoid the anxiety of facing that void. Similarly artists may never prepare a white canvas, a clean page, a marble block, or other form that is intentionally lacking, in order to try to escape the dialogue with emptiness. But Irwin, like O’Doherty, found an opponent in the white cube, and he learned not to fight it, rather he ended the conflict by making it an ally, an interlocutor, a collaborator. We can vainly strive to start from nothing, to find the lull, the clearing, and to always consider what we do in balance with the empty set. Somehow that intangible cloud of hazy nothingness, that softness of a lapse continually offers a place to bounce off of, to react to, to wrestle with, to rest with, in tension, or a place to begin. Robert Irwin. Excursus: Homage to the Square3 (1998) NOTES 1 Massumi. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. p271. 2 MOMA, NY. Eliasson, 360 ? Room for All Colours . Installation. 2002. (shrink)

In the realm of pixels and virtual spaces, the art of placemaking transcends physical confines, weaving a digital mosaic of voices and visions. Feminist digital placemaking emerges as a vibrant brushstroke on this canvas, painting online environments with the hues of inclusion, safety, and empowerment. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement in Iran, mirrored in the "Year of Hope" digital exhibition, showcases the transformative power of feminist digital placemaking in amplifying voices, knitting solidarity, and challenging oppressive narratives. The "Woman, Life, (...) Freedom" movement, sparked by the tragic demise of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, unfolds like a poignant narrative, with women scripting the chapters of resistance. This movement, a collage of courage and defiance, has found a digital stage in the "Year of Hope" exhibition, where each artwork tells a story, each pixel a testament to the unyielding spirit of Iranian women. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Artists StarveKevin MelchionneAlthough cultural types may fear being branded as philistines for saying so, a remarkable amount of contemporary art is so awful that the very fact and regularity of this awfulness is in want of an explanation. Outside the art world, this observation is jejune. Inside, it makes for immediate disqualification. Is there something about the most common artistic motivations and attitudes that make this awfulness (...) bound to happen yet hard for insiders to sniff out?There are probably many factors in need of elaboration. One reason is widespread self-deception about the motivations for pursuing art. We often hear artists explain their commitment to art by a desire to express themselves or develop their gifts. We hear of a love of beauty or the challenges of craft or the chance for insight into self and world. Frequently, artists describe being called to art, a feeling of being chosen by art rather than choosing it. These are familiar accounts of what makes a life or career in art worth pursuing. But the piety of these high sounding explanations is strikingly incongruent with so much—though by no means all—contemporary art and suggests that, among artists, self-deception about motivations looms large.Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" is a parable of artistic motivation and a case study in the self-deception of the artist. In the brief story, Kafka unwinds an account of artistic motivation that begins with the familiar explanations but gives way eventually to less flattering admissions about artistic ambition. Professional fasting ultimately becomes a path to truth for the hunger artist. But the truth that it yields reduces [End Page 142] art from a source of intrinsic value to a somewhat desperate form of attention seeking. In the figure of the hunger artist, Kafka captures one self-delusion common among artists.IIn "A Hunger Artist," Kafka charts the decline of an accomplished artist.1 Kafka tells us that the artist, a practitioner of what the author describes as a now forgotten genre of performance art known as professional fasting, garners a degree of notoriety for his ability to sustain fasts of death-defying lengths. Half-art, half-sport, Kafka's professional fasting amounts to sitting in a contained but public space such as a cage, where the fast is observable round-the-clock by watchers whose job is to verify its authenticity. The fast is also subject to the attention of paying spectators. Presumably, it is this commercial element as well as the secular hubbub surrounding the fast that most distinguishes it from religious fasting (out of which artistic fasting must have emerged sometime in previous centuries, had Kafka also bothered to concoct a history of the practice). A professional fast typically lasts for periods of up to the biblically resonant forty days, after which the artist is carried from his cage with great fanfare to a modest, performance ending breakfast. Through the practice of fasting, the hunger artist lifts self-denial and by implication, self-control, to the level of virtuosity. The grace of the fast and even a sense of moderate contentment in it are part of what is on display for the audience.Notwithstanding a light routine of bonhomie, Kafka's hunger artist remains distant from his audience. He is neither buoyed by their adoration nor deflated by their vulgarity. Instead, the hunger artist seems entirely sustained by his practice. In his self-possession, we glimpse a familiar ideal of the authentic artist devoted to his practice for the sake of its intrinsic rewards. Indeed, doubts about the authenticity of his performance only fuel the hunger artist's determination. Far from insulted by the zeal of official observers, the hunger artist welcomes their vigilance. In their distrust of the hunger artist, the most severe of watchers convey a respect for the practice of professional fasting. Their desire to scrupulously ratify the authenticity of his effort is also an endorsement of its value. The earnestness of the referees pleases the hunger artist, though we are assured that their presence hardly matters. As in any authentic art, the bystanding critics are hardly necessary to ensure the integrity of the performance... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Particularity, Presence, Art Teaching, and LearningJulia Kellman (bio)The Awful, the Particular, and the TranscendentYears ago in a life drawing class during graduate school, for who knows what reason, I chose to focus my drawing on the model's head and not on her entire form. She was wearing an enormous and elaborate black velvet hat with yards of veiling and several large red silk roses. The combination of textures, (...) shadows, colors, forms, and the suggestion of a story, of meaning beyond the exercise itself, drew me in I think. Using an entire large sheet of tan-colored drawing paper, soft vine charcoal, and a kneaded rubber eraser I began to draw, moving from the impossible hat to the model's high cheekbones, deep-set shadowed eyes, soft cheeks, and curved neck. Somewhere between the top of the paper (the crown of her hat) and the woman's face, however, my hand, my self, the drawing, the young woman, and the hat merged by some means outside my control. I was the act of drawing. I was the charcoal, the curved cheek, the dark eyes, the wonderful hat. There were no boundaries among us. No distances. The drawing, it seemed, drew me at the same time that it revealed an image of the model and her black velvet hat on the paper and tied me to the woman seated before me. I was exalted, transported, amazed.Now, as I think back to that drawing, I understand it as my first clear art experience of doing, not thinking, being, not observing that all artists encounter on their best days. It was, in another way of considering, my initial encounter with the fact that "the imaginative faculty, especially as engaged in the art process is one of the strongest and clearest ways in which we can learn within the qualitative, immediate present, within kairotic as opposed to chronic time, or within the eternal present,"1 as the art educator Kenneth [End Page 51] Beittel explains. Or, put another way, it was my experience with the fact that, as the writer Lawrence Weschler suggests in his biography of the artist Robert Irwin, "Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees."2 Or, as the sculptor Anne Truitt explains, drawing can be "a direct channel between one's [my] experience and one's [my] hand."3This transformation from a distinct see-er and seen to a single entity sharing both time and space, from a distant relationship to intimacy, from a world of the generalized to the place of the particular brings us to the intertwined themes of this article: the importance of the awesome transcendent particularity of the singular—person, creature, place, object, plant, or moment in art and, similarly, religious contemplation and the likeness and/or overlap of artistic engagement with spiritual experience.In order for us to examine the artist in the midst of creating, and to explore our theme of art's relationship to the awful (think of the older usage meaning "full of awe" here) particularity of thisness as John Dun Sotus4 describes the perfection of the particular and specific, as well as to explore the relationship of art making, art learning, art teaching, and spiritual experience, exemplars are necessary. Our first exemplar is Gordie, a member of the art class I teach at a local hospital. He, as much as anyone, exemplifies artistic engagement with the current moment, its thisness in fact, and he illustrates the art maker's/learner's engagement with pure doing in the act of creating an image. Our second exemplar, the filmmaker, writer, and painter Derek Jarman,5 exemplifies by his lifetime of creative accomplishment an artist in the most literal manner. And even in the last years of his life—as sculptor, gardener, landscape designer, writer, and creator of a place of great beauty—he illuminates in both his words and in his garden his engagement with the present moment, with particularity, and with the spiritual quality that permeates his world.Gordie's Tale: Art and FlowersGordie accompanied his friend Roger to the first art class to be held at the hospital for people with... (shrink)

Although the presence or absence of a pitch accent clearly can play an important role in signaling the discourse and information structure of an utterance, whether the form of an accent determines the type of information it conveys is more controversial. We used an eye‐tracking paradigm to investigate whether H*, which has been argued to signal new information, evokes different eye fixations than L+H*, which has been argued to signal the presence of contrast. Our results demonstrate that although (...) listeners interpret these accents differently, their interpretive domains overlap. L+H* creates a strong bias toward contrast referents whereas H* is compatible with both new and contrast referents. (shrink)

This article analyses the topic of presence in modern and contemporary religious art by means of the work of two artists. Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory (1951-1962) will be compared to the Buddhism-inspired works of Antony Gormley. Sutherlands Christ in Glory is intended to show Christ’s presence to the involved observer: the invisible Christ can become present through interaction with Christ in Glory in the same way that Christ becomes present through prayer. Viewed in connection with other works (...) by Gormley, Land, Sea, and Air II (1982) is intended to show presence to the viewer, the body as presence. This concerns an attitude of quiet concentration and awareness in connection with the ‘elemental’ world. Theologically speaking, the difference between Christ in Glory and Gormley’s works is as follows: the Christian tradition views the human being as a creation of God. He or she lives in his or her presence only in dependence on God. For Gormley, it has to do with a presence without God the creator. The human being is present as body and awareness in a world in which everything is uncertain. There is an unmistakable difference in their views of presence, but that does not mean, as we will see, that Gormley’s work cannot be fruitful for the Christian religion. Gormley’s Sound II in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral points the involved observer to the importance of the renewal of life after baptism through meditation as an important part of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing organizations to innovate and change their strategies for a new reality. This study collects online learning related tweets in Arabic language to perform a comprehensive emotion mining and sentiment analysis (SA) during the pandemic. The present study exploits Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to extract subjective information, determine polarity and detect the feeling. We begin with pulling out the tweets using Twitter APIs and then preparing for intensive preprocessing. Second, the (...) National Research Council Canada (NRC) Word-Emotion Lexicon was examined to calculate the presence of the eight emotions at their emotional weight. Third, Information Gain (IG) is used as a filtering technique. Fourth, the latent reasons behind the negative sentiments were recognized and analyzed. Finally, different classification algorithms including Naïve Bayes (NB), Multinomial Naïve Bayes (MNB), K Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) were examined. The experiments reveal that the proposed model performs well in analyzing the perception of people about coronavirus with a maximum accuracy of about 89.6% using SVM classifier. From a practical perspective, the method could be generalized to other topical domains, such as public health monitoring and crisis management. It would help public health officials identify the progression and peaks of concerns for a disease in space and time, which enables the implementation of appropriate preventive actions to mitigate these diseases. (shrink)

Oral communication often takes place in noisy environments, which challenge spoken-word recognition. Previous research has suggested that the presence of background noise extends the number of candidate words competing with the target word for recognition and that this extension affects the time course and accuracy of spoken-word recognition. In this study, we further investigated the temporal dynamics of competition processes in the presence of background noise, and how these vary in listeners with different language proficiency (i.e., native and (...) non-native) using computational modeling. We developed ListenIN (Listen-In-Noise), a neural-network model based on an autoencoder architecture, which learns to map phonological forms onto meanings in two languages and simulates native and non-native spoken-word comprehension. We also examined the model's activation states during online spoken-word recognition. These analyses demonstrated that the presence of background noise increases the number of competitor words, which are engaged in phonological competition and that this happens in similar ways intra and interlinguistically and in native and non-native listening. Taken together, our results support accounts positing a “many-additional-competitors scenario” for the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition. (shrink)

An artistic interpretation of historical facts is quite relevant in the literature and non-fiction of a post-totalitarian society. Prose works on historical themes are valuable and interesting in that they create an illusion for readers to be present in a certain period of historical time, and it is the artistic modeling of events that makes priceless facts of history completely disappear. The historical past is an inexhaustible material that word artists have been referring to for centuries, creating the (...) best examples of fiction. Prose texts of historical subjects are perceived by each next generation in a new way, historical events and phenomena are interpreted from different angles, the activities of famous figures of the past are widely covered. Non-fiction literature is a kind of literature that is on the verge of artistry and documentary. The main non-fiction genres are a diary, autobiography, biography, memoirs, confession, letters, etc. On the one hand, non-fiction literature claims to recognize the author’s subjective truth about him in her texts; on the other hand, only the reader can either, demonstrating full confidence in the author, call this text documentary, or admit the presence of poetry and aesthetics in the work and tilt the scales in the direction of artistry. The material for observation and research of the phenomenon of artistic modeling are works that allow us to trace the most common, in our opinion, models of correlation of historical and artistic consciousness in postmodern literature and non-fiction of a post-totalitarian society. (shrink)

In a recent Chapter, Alexander Pruss attempts to defend the traditional Christian doctrine of Eucharistic Transubstantiation. It is objected that his case is unconvincing, since it involves accidents and dispositions existing without subjects, and an inadequate account of the Eucharistic presence of Christ. It is argued that the doctrine can yet be maintained, along Aristotelian-Thomistic lines.

The move online of almost all meetings in 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic threw into sharp relief the taken-for-granted centrality of conferences within scientific culture. While its impact on science has yet to be fully grasped, for the authors of this special issue, this situation held heuristic power for understanding the meanings and functions, now and historically, of international scientific conferencing. Ongoing discussions in the academic world about the pros and cons of virtual meetings bring out (...) the central place of presence in these events and its mediation across space and time by modern infrastructures and technologies. From their rise in the mid-nineteenth century to the experiences of the present day, as well as in imagined futures, international conferences have been about communication. Following James Carey, they can be considered both as places for sharing knowledge and as rituals aimed at fostering and performing communities. (shrink)

We recommend that the future of religion and science involve more partnerships between scholars, amateurs, and artists. This reimagines an underdeveloped aspect of the history of religion and science. Case studies of an undergraduate course examining religious ritual and technology, seminarians reflecting on memory and identity in light of Alzheimer's disease, environmentalists responding to their guilt and shame about climate change, and Chicagoans recognizing the presence of nature in the city show how these partnerships respect insights and experiences of (...) our varied partners, identify and resolve community problems, and advance scholarship. Sourdough starter, a new metaphor, describes these collaborative, nourishing partnerships. (shrink)

: Standing before one of Ada Medina's works in a museum recently, I knew myself to be in the company of a distinct presence. The exquisite form was so novel, yet its layers of organicity were deeply familiar. The piece effectively conveyed complex relationality, and pointed toward innovative forms of being, without resorting to didacticism, melodrama, or cliché. I had a strong urge to hug it. I needed to step back and figure it out.

In this paper, we explore best practices for asynchronous discussions in graduate online bioethics education. We explain that online approaches have advantages and challenges in contrast to in-person discussions. Online challenges are lack of visual or auditory cues and technical access. Advantages include extended opportunities for specific focus, thoughtful reflection, and critical review. We found no significant review of related best practices in bioethics. Our more general literature review of graduate education and online approaches, plus experience (...) in our own bioethics graduate program, suggest provisional best practices that we detail. We reason that online graduate discussion provisionally should aim for a “community of inquiry” framework that incorporates cognitive, social, and teaching “presences,” as well as a learning presence. However, we also note unresolved concerns about whether the framework sufficiently addresses learning, is complete, and captures communicative functions. Drawing further on the literature, we also suggest best practices for instructor feedback to students about their discussion performance, including that remarks should be timely and specific. Summaries from two courses in our graduate bioethics program illustrate how we implement discussion strategies. Finally, we review assessment strategies and suggest that embedded formative assessments in discussion support and demonstrate deeper learning. Limitations in generalizability include that our review targets asynchronous and text-based online discussion, our program assessments do not necessarily detail best practices, student expectations and approaches could be rather particular to our program, and specific bioethics content in principle could alter best practices. (shrink)

Social presence, or the subjective experience of being present with another existing person, varies with the interaction medium. In general, social presence research has mainly focused on uni-directional aspects of each exchanged message, not on bidirectional interactions. Our primary purpose is to introduce such bidirectional evaluation by quantifying the degree of social presence with a few statistical measures. To this end, we developed a software called “TypeTrace” that records all keystrokes of online chat interactants and reenacts (...) their typing actions and analyzed the results from different chat conditions, mainly focusing on the characterization of bi-directional interactions. We also compared the chat interaction patterns with the patterns from phone call datasets to investigate the difference of live communication in different media. The hypothesis of the experiment was that either richness or concurrency of communication is important for organizing social presence. Richness is defined by the variety of information at a time in communication and the concurrency is the number of temporal thread being processed at the same time. Our results show that when we merely increase the richness of information by presenting the typing process, the cognition of others' presence does not significantly increase. However, when the information concurrency is augmented by introducing the transmission of realtime text, we found that the transfer entropy between the interactants becomes considerably higher, and the social presence and emotional arousal, intimacy increased. High transfer entropy was also observed in the phone call dataset. This result shows that the mere augmentation of information richness does not necessarily lead to increased social presence, and concurrent communication is another critical factor for fostering vivid conversation in digital environments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:502 Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Jaime Madden Teaching Online: Issues of Equity and Access in Writing-centric Formats The COVID-19 pandemic has turned us all into online teachers. In the context of this crisis, we have quickly learned new technologies and the affordances of asynchronous and synchronous delivery. We have grappled with the challenges of building community and supporting active engagement, (...) and we have turned to adapting our assessment methods for the remote environment. We have done this work at traditional colleges and universities, where online teaching was formerly the purview of graduate students and adjunct instructors. Online learning can no longer be associated with those who struggle to access traditional classrooms, such as disabled students and those who attend for-profit colleges. Instead, access to online learning can now be associated with access to wealth and to health—specifically as relates to avoiding contact with the virus. In K-12 education, we have seen districts that largely enroll white students make the decision to continue online or go hybrid for the fall 2020 semester, whereas those that largely enroll students of color are returning to the classroom.1 Inequalities pervade the teaching landscape as well. Teaching is not a job usually marked as high risk, but within this environment, some 1. The work of activist and artist @bmore_radical shows how these decisions are being made in Baltimore, Maryland. See https://www.instagram.com /bmore_radical/?hl=en. Jaime Madden 503 bodies suffer at higher rates. In a recent article published in this journal, coauthors writing as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective describe their experience and knowledge “of the ways that academia produces sickness.”2 The authors are white and cisgender women at Anglo-American and European universities, and even though they acknowledge that they did not experience high levels of racism, classism, linguistic marginalization, and/or illness, they still found themselves—at different stages of their careers—“worn thin” in a system where “bodies are disposable.”3 Commenting on this problem in another context, disability studies scholar Alison Kafer notes that disability is “more fundamental, more inevitable, for some than others.”4 The pandemic has made this much clear: able-bodied people are “temporarily able-bodied,” and those who experience racism and classism are among the most frequently and intensely sickened. In attending to how teachers and students transition online en masse, we need to consider how we are differently positioned within institutions governed by the logics of racialized capitalism. It is important to recognize not only which students can access these online spaces but also which skills such spaces tend to reward. It is also important to ask which teachers are disproportionately impacted by the transition online. In this piece, I describe the challenges of assessment and then wrestle with broader questions of access as a scholar invested in feminist studies and disability studies. The tension in online education between its promise of access and its methods of assessment is, I argue, worthy of urgent attention. The Challenges of Assessment I have taught online courses at four institutions: two private colleges and two public universities. Good teaching and learning can undoubtedly happen across a range of spaces. In online environments, I have found that my best teaching happens in the feedback I give students. 2. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker, “Doing Academia Differently: ‘I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society,” Feminist Studies 46, no. 1 (2020): 132. 3. Bisaillon, et al., “Doing Academia Differently,” 136, 140. 4. Alison Kafer, Feminist, Queer, Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 26. 504 Jaime Madden This is understandable since assessment practices are important teaching opportunities in all contexts. In online environments, and particularly in asynchronous teaching, I have found that it is while carrying out assessments of student work that my most intense teaching occurs. It is through grading and offering comments on papers and assignments that I am most directly in communication with students as their teacher. When I mark student work, I ask questions of students, I prompt them to consider how our course materials may be placed... (shrink)

The relation between “presence” and “representation” is an age-old topic in the arts, but it is further complicated in our time of advanced media conditions. Pierre Huyghe is one artist who has consistently addressed questions of presence and representation throughout his artistic oeuvre, including the role of the witness within it. Considering the sophistication of Huyghe’s work with regard to the riddle of presence in the realm of contemporary means of representation, the artist’s work is taken (...) as a case study for a broad range of artists exploring related topics within the arts and the media. This paper argues that art that interrogates the question of presence within the context of contemporary media culture—from Marina Abramović to Stelarc, Jeffrey Shaw to Julia Scher—asks for being interpreted through presence theories developed within the field of media studies in addition to methods of art theory and criticism. Accordingly, Huyghe’s work is productively related to one such theory, namely the YUTPA model by Caroline Nevejan, which theorizes the interrelated concepts of natural, mediated, and witnessed presence. (shrink)

The lexicon of religion has been widely used in the context of the social and cultural transformations associated with the ‘digital revolution’, whether in metaphoric or in realistic terms. The study of digital magic/magic in digital times, the other side of the coin of the Sacred 2.0, is still in its infancy. Yet, references to magic are made frequently in reflections about the rapid development of the digitalisation of society and culture, and they deserve more in-depth study. This paper tackles (...) the issue of magic in and of new technologies, including artificial intelligence devices. After a broad outline of the presence of magic in the digital ecosystem, this paper will focus on the lexical surface and semantic references to ‘magical thinking’, explore the underlying reasons for such references and unveil the regimes of existence for magic. Finally, the paper questions the role of language in the construction of a ‘digital magic’ and the transformations of the semantic category of magic as seen through the prism of a cultural revolution, that of the digitalisation of societies. (shrink)

If Milton is the grand expositor of human culture as a middle realm, Williams can be seen as in many respects his secular heir, an heir careful to work out how the poetic imagination serves to make man's expulsion from Edenic origins bearable and even invigorating. Williams' poetics begins, as Riddel makes clear, in the awareness that there is no inherent or even recoverable correspondence between words and facts in the world, but Williams then devotes most of his energies to (...) denying the metaphysical alternative to that position—the claim that all language can do is reflect on and play with the emptiness or fictiveness of its signifiers. If words do not copy but produce meanings, then they can be used significantly to focus our attention on the activities of the artist and his constructed characters as they engage in that process of production. The act of producing meanings can be the process by which to achieve another kind of reference, for the act of expression can itself become the focus generating a poem's significance by calling attention to the various ways authors and characters station themselves in relation to specific situations. Fiction then is not so much a term describing the ontological status of certain kinds of language but a term characterizing a particular way of using language to reflect upon forms of behavior in which we are not fully conscious of the quality of our activities. Williams' position on the artist's language is clearest in his frequent metaphor of the artist as farmer. The initial activity of both men is a kind of violence, an assertion of the difference between human desires and indifferent "blank fields." But what begins as antagonism does not result in the creation of self-referential fictive structures or the gay wisdom of maintaining and disseminating differences. Rather antagonism is the precondition for what Williams richly labels "composition": the farmer-poet organizes the blank field into a fertile, life-sustaining set of relationships which are not simply linguistic.1 · 1. Williams, Imaginations, ed. Webster Schott , pp. 98-99. Williams' image of arts as antagonistic composing has important parallels with the Russian Formalist concept of "defamiliarization," but for Williams it is not simply a scene but a total human act that is revealed by this process. Charles Altieri teaches modern literature and literary theory in the English department at the University of Washington. The author of Enlarging the Temple: New Directions in American Poetry of the 1960s, he has just completed a study of literary meaning. "Culture and Skepticism: A Response to Michael Fischer" was contributed to Critical Inquiry in the Winter 1979 issue. (shrink)

Lavinia Marin draws from phenomenology to lay bare another aspect of the ubiquitous presence of social media. By taking the phenomenology of attention as a starting-point, she show that attention is – rather than only a scare resource as analysts departing from the perspective of the attention economy would have it – foundational for our moral relations to other beings. She argues that there is a distinctive form of other-oriented attention that enables us to perceive other beings as living (...) beings that are worthy of care. This mode of attention presupposes a form of affectivity and involves the recognition of the other as a moral being capable of forming judgments, as well as someone having certain vulnerabilities. Her analysis shows that by prioritizing homogenous interactions and standardization, social media platforms hinder us from engaging in this mode of attention, thereby undermining our capacity of recognizing to others as surprising, changing, and fallible beings. (shrink)

Cet article analyse quelques dispositifs proposés par différents artistes contemporains qui placent la présence physique de l’artiste, ainsi que sa coprésence avec les spectateurs, au cœur de leur expérimentation et de leur pouvoir de suggestion. Cela pose des questions troublantes mais suggestives sur ce qu’est la présence dans un monde de médialisation ubiquitaire, et sur ce que l’être-là-ensemble apporte à la circulation des images, des sons et des octets d’information.

This paper analyzes from a pragmatic postphenomenological point of view the performative practice of CREW, a multi-disciplinary team of artists and researchers. It is our argument that this company, in its use of new immersive technologies in the context of a live stage, gives rise to a dialectics between an embodied and a disembodied perspective towards the perceived world. We will focus on W (Double U), a collaborative interactive performance, where immersive technology is used for live exchange of vision. By (...) means of a head mounted omni-directional camera and display the fields of vision of two participants are swapped, which enables the participants to perceive the world through another person’s point of view. This intermedial experience brings a classic dichotomic perception of space to falter: material reality as a ‘live’ condition can no longer be opposed to a virtual mediated reality. In the shifting moment between the embodied and the perceived world, on the fracture between what one sees and what one feels, the distinction between live and mediated is blurred, moreover, can no longer be made. The perception of the body is pushed to the extreme, causing a most confusing corporal awareness, a condition that intensifies the experience and causes an altered sense of presence. In a dynamic cognitive negotiation, one tends, however, to unify the divergent ontologies of the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ to a meaningful experience. In this respect, we refer to recent neurological experiments such as the ‘rubber hand illusion’ in order to clarify the spectator’s tendency to fuse both ontologies and to embody a coherent image-world. (shrink)

The relation between “presence” and “representation” is an age-old topic in the arts, but it is further complicated in our time of advanced media conditions. Pierre Huyghe is one artist who has consistently addressed questions of presence and representation throughout his artistic oeuvre, including the role of the witness within it. Considering the sophistication of Huyghe’s work with regard to the riddle of presence in the realm of contemporary means of representation, the artist’s work is taken (...) as a case study for a broad range of artists exploring related topics within the arts and the media. This paper argues that art that interrogates the question of presence within the context of contemporary media culture—from Marina Abramović to Stelarc, Jeffrey Shaw to Julia Scher—asks for being interpreted through presence theories developed within the field of media studies in addition to methods of art theory and criticism. Accordingly, Huyghe’s work is productively related to one such theory, namely the YUTPA model by Caroline Nevejan, which theorizes the interrelated concepts of natural, mediated, and witnessed presence. (shrink)

This article examines the experience of online worship among 13 participants ‘attending’ virtual services in Cambridge. We focus upon an online formal Eucharistic service and a more informal Sunday evening non-Eucharistic service. After providing an overview of the literature on online religion, more specifically the possibility of a virtual religious community and the performance of online Eucharist, we present data from semi-structured interviews which were analysed through thematic analysis. The interviews reveal that virtual services, while better (...) than nothing, have significant limitations in terms of participation, belonging, and the kind of religious experience engendered. While only two participants expressed the view that the virtual service was better than the live service, the majority found that the virtual service lacked a sense of connectedness. However, everyone agreed that it was different from a television broadcast in several important ways. The overall view was that celebrating the Eucharist was not possible online, because congregants could not actually partake of the bread and wine blessed by the priest which, for them, was an essential aspect of the ritual. For most people there was neither spiritual communion, nor a belief in consecration at a distance, leaving them feeling they were not really participating in the Eucharist. The participants in the study who engaged with both the Eucharist in the morning and the non-Eucharistic service in the evening generally seem to have preferred the latter. The data from this study are congruent with studies of diverse faiths which reveal the perceived importance of physical presence, contact and connection as being important for ritual effectiveness. (shrink)

The present article aims at analyzing the social and ontological effects of listening music online, with particular attention to the artistic practice of improvisation. In the first paragraph, I will briefly explain the essential concepts which ontology of music has traditionally counted on, and I will suggest an alternative theoretical approach, that I define as ontology of musical act. Then I will investigate the relation between recording practices and improvisation. In the final paragraph I will compare some features (...) of musical recordings with those of technological devices that allow us to listen music online. (shrink)