Men who are victimized in their intimate different-sex (DS) and same-sex (SS) relationships often report not having information to help them escape their abusive situations. To overcome this lack of information, public awareness campaigns have been created. But thus far, there is no clear understanding of how these campaigns reflect theoretical principles central to improve message effectiveness and avoid undesired negative effects. This study aims to review the content of intimate partner violence (IPV) pictorial campaigns focusing on victimized men (...) in DS and SS relationships. Specifically, it aims to understand the campaigns’ global characteristics and if their content represents constructs from different theoretical models. Online search engines were used to extract pictorial campaigns in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, released up until 2019. They must have had to be promoted by a formal organization, and were coded according to a theoretically grounded taxonomy, using thematic analysis. Our results indicate that out of the 57 campaigns collected, most were aimed at men without specifying the relationship they were in (i.e., DS or SS) ( n = 22, 39%) and intended to change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about IPV (in line with the Theory of Planned Behavior) ( n = 47, 82%). Additionally, four campaigns adequately integrated fear appeal constructs of the Extended Parallel Processing Model ( n = 4, 7%), while 41 campaigns highlighted dissonant states in line with the Elaboration Likelihood Model ( n = 41, 72%). Following the Transtheoretical Model, most campaigns targeted victims in the Maintenance stage ( n = 52, 92%). The campaigns under analysis may prove useful for some victimized men, mostly presenting messages designed to elicit a beneficial attitude and behavior change. Our analysis highlights different limitations as well, such as the lack of information on susceptibility to IPV ( n = 13, 23%) and the effectiveness of the recommended responses that the campaigns provide ( n = 20, 38%), which may interfere with adequate fear appeal processing. Additionally, presenting more diverse victims may be beneficial, along with social norms change information regarding gender roles, violence, and help-seeking. This may guide the development of improved and tailored campaigns to better facilitate help-seeking in victimized men that mostly avoid undesired negative effects on the viewer. (shrink)

After invention of writing, this new innovation jointed images, and writing together with painting became able to transfer human’s information and ideas. During the Islamic period, simultaneously with the widespread use of paper in painting and calligraphy, a kind of painting developed that is called as miniature.The illustrated inscription of Iran in Islamic period have different type of political,cultural historical and etc information .The informations are important to historians ,archaeologists and other scientists. The Purpose of writing this essay is to (...) introduce the pictorial inscription “Shahname of Baysongor Merza” as a historical, archaeological source of taymourid period. In addition, importance of this pictorial inscription in Archaeology and History interpretions will be expressed. (shrink)

Drawing on recent attempts to critically reconstruct the ideas of Heinrich Wölfflin, this paper argues that there is a specific ‘logic of depiction’ that is distinctive to visual as opposed to verbal forms of representation. The aim is to provide a set of objective parameters that can allow a comparative analysis of the formal organization of pictures despite differences in period, subject matter, format, etc. The paper seeks to show that such an analysis is possible and that it (...) possesses explanatory force. Its frame is a critical engagement with Richard Wollheim's theory of style. Wollheim holds that general style terms are merely tools of classification and that they are relative to the changing point of view of those who seek to understand the art of the past. However, the critical reconstruction of Wölfflin's fundamental concepts aims to identify necessary conditions for visual representation as such. The fundamental concepts function not as taxonomic categories but as ‘limit concepts’ that demarcate a scale of possibilities and thus enable meaningful comparison of artworks. (shrink)

Pictures are created objects that have the function of generating a perceptual experience. In this sense, they are “experiential artifacts” (Terrone forthcoming). The experience elicited by pictures – usually visual (but for non-visual pictorial experience see e.g. Lopes 1997) – is a composite perceptual experience, in which the “perception” of the depicted scene (which is not in front of us) is generated by and experienced along the perception of the marked surface (the object that is actually in front of (...) us). This experience is usually called a “pictorial experience”. A philosophical analysis of such an experience amounts to answering the following questions: How should we describe the phenomenology of pictorial experience? What is it like to experience pictures? How should the “perception” of the depicted scene be characterized? Is it really a form of perception? How does it relate to the perception of the marked surface? (shrink)

This paper proposes that pictorial experience, the experience that pictures give rise to when we understand them, involves the non-veridical experience of seeing the picture's subject matter. Using phenomenological analysis and material from philosophy of mind and perceptual psychology, it argues that both pictorial experience lacking awareness of the picture surface, such as illusion, and pictorial experience that includes this awareness, i.e. seeing-in, should be understood in this way.

This work is an investigation into the analytical debate on pictorial representation and the theory of pictorial art. My main concern are a critical exposition of the questions raised by the idea that it is resemblance to depicted objects that explains pictorial representation and the investigation of the phenomenon of abstract painting from an analytical point of view in relation to the debate on depiction. The first part is dedicated to a survey of the analytical debate on (...) depiction, with special attention to the fortunes and misfortunes of the resemblance theory of depiction. In the first chapter I give an outline of the main contemporary theories on offer, contextualised within an historical background that stretches from Plato to Descartes. I have decided to focus on the theory of resemblance more than on other approaches on depiction, because much of my research is dedicated to an analysis and implementation of one of the theories that have recently sought to re-discover the resemblance paradigm, although with certain important modifications. Namely, the second chapter is dedicated to the exposition of John Hyman’s basic resemblance theory of depiction, to the elucidation of its presuppositions and to the discussion of some criticisms and objections that the theory has raised. The third and the fourth chapter are dedicated to the implementation of Hyman’s theory in relation to the phenomenon of abstract painting. There are two peculiarities about Hyman’s theory: first, it is in counter-tendency in comparison with all the other accounts of depiction on offer, in that it does not need to conceive of pictorial representation as of representation of particulars or kinds of objects that we can easily identify. Second, it is a theory that gives art a prominent role: Hyman illustrates his claims with many examples taken from the history of figurative art. The second part of my work is inspired by the idea that the basic resemblance theory can be applied to abstract paintings as well. Developing an analysis of abstract painting from an analytical point of view is a task that very few authors have tried to accomplish so far – as far as I am aware. However, it is evident that the task abstract painters have set themselves is interestingly akin to the task philosophers try to accomplish when arguing about depiction. It is widely agreed that one of the main topics of contemporary art is art itself and that one of the main topics of abstract painting is the art of painting itself, the art of producing pictures, the exploration of its limits and its conventions. With these considerations in mind, I have sought to sketch my proposal for a basic resemblance theory of abstract painting, critically engaging with philosophers such as Richard Wollheim, Kendall Walton, Lambert Wiesing and with art-critics and historians such as Clement Greenberg and Ernst Gombrich. (shrink)

The iconic revolution changing the routine of everyday communication is gradually leading to the creation of a linguistic structure that combines visual and verbal tools in both formal and semantic aspects. Computer and mobile applications today enable high-tech imaging that ensures the spread of iconic communication in mundane interactions and the possibility of a creative combination of verbal and iconic codes for language users who navigate in a world of images in an increasingly confident manner. The iconic revolution that accompanies (...) this expansion of new communication technologies thus leads to serious changes in language use, thereby enhancing the transmission of verbal and iconic language to become a key element of mundane communication. This article argues that this turn in communication technology guided the attention of Kristóf Nyíri, an eminent figure in contemporary Hungarian philosophy, to the problem of the relationship between icon, language, and tradition. The aim of the present essay is twofold: to shed light on the relevance of Nyíri’s analysis and thoughts on the relationship between tradition and language in the history of communication, and to identify, using Nyíri’s model of pictorial meaning as a starting point, the relevant aspects of the conception of technological determinism in answering questions from the philosophy of language and mind. (shrink)

Pictorial free perception reports are sequences in comics or film of one unit that depicts an agent who is looking, and a following unit that depicts what they see. This paper proposes an analysis in possible worlds semantics and event semantics of such sequences. Free perception sequences are implicitly anaphoric, since the interpretation of the second unit refers to the agent depicted in the first. They are argued to be possibly non-extensional, because they can depict hallucination or mis-perception. (...) The semantics proposed here employs an account of anaphora using discourse referents, a formalized possible worlds semantics for pictorial narratives, and, to model the epistemic consequences of perceptual events, the event alternative construction from dynamic epistemic logic. In intensional examples, the second unit depicting what is seen is analyzed as embedded. It is argued that a semantics for embedding where the attitudinal state of the depicted agent is required to entail the semantic content of the picture attributes too much information to the agent. This is addressed with a model of normal looking, and a semantics for the embedding construction that uses existential quantification over alternatives, rather than universal quantification. (shrink)

How does a picture teach a viewer to look at it, understand it, and make meaning?. “Cross-mediality and narrative textual form: A semiotic snalysis of the lexical and visual signs and codes of the picture bnook.” Semiotica, 118 : 1–70 and Peter Pericles Trifonas.. “Texts and images.” In International handbook of semiotics, Vols. 1&2, edited by Peter Pericles Trifonas. The Netherlands: Springer. Pp. 1139–1154.) The suggestion for a pictorial grammar has been derived from the fact that pictures have no (...) unique visual metalanguage and therefore require recourse to language as an instrument for pictorial analysis. The lexical-visual relationship in a text is more complex than is suggested in the question. Proponents for the semiotic autonomy of pictures have objected that the commentaries of crossmedial contexts have not asserted the semiotic priority of the lexical over the visual message. ‘Is an autonomous semiotics of visual perception possible, or does the semiotic analysis of pictorial text always require recourse to the model of language?’. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on E. H. Gombrich's claim that pictorial perception is a case of illusion. My aim is to point out that, on the one hand, the interpretation of this claim that is widely accepted in pictorial theory is not supported by Gombrich's analysis of pictorial perception; and, on the other hand, that the interpretation of the claim that I see as more compatible with Gombrich's analysis is not consistent with relevant (...) facts about our relation to pictures. However, I will argue, Gombrich's elaboration of the claim of illusion is significant to the extent that it highlights important aspects of the system of pictorial representation. (shrink)

Twenty classes in ten schools with 627 sixth?grade students in five cities in Taiwan participated in this study. The research provides information on the performance differences among written computation, pictorial representation, symbolic representation and number sense. The results of One?way ANOVA analysis indicate that significant difference was found among WCT, PRT, SRT and NST tests, with F=536.327, p=0.000. The a posteriori comparisons show for each pair (WCT vs PRT, WCT vs SRT, WCT vs NST, PRT vs SRT and (...) SRT vs NST) significant difference at the 0.001 level (p=0.000), except for the pair comparison between PRT and NST. This implies that these Taiwanese students were highly skilled in written computation but their written skills were not equally transferred to use of non?computational paths that depended on symbolic representation, pictorial representation and number sense to solve similar problems. (shrink)

Recent advances in the Super Linguistics of pictures have laid the Super Semantic foundation for modelling the phenomena of narrative sequencing and co-reference in pictorial and mixed linguistic-pictorial discourses. We take up the question of how one arrives at the pragmatic interpretations of such discourses. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (i) the discourse composition problem: how to represent the joint meaning of a multi-picture discourse, (ii) observed differences in narrative sequencing in prima facie equivalent linguistic (...) vs pictorial discourses, and (iii) the phenomenon of co-referencing across pictures. We extend Segmented Discourse Representation Theory to spell out a formal Super Pragmatics that applies to linguistic, pictorial and mixed discourses, while respecting the particular ‘genius’ of either medium and computing their distinctive pragmatic interpretations. (shrink)

Contemporary phenomenological discussions on relationship between painting and nothingness have mainly employed Sartrean and Heideggerian notions of nothingness. In this paper, I propose another perspective by discussing the possibility of pictorially depicting Levinas’s notion of the nothingness of being, which he develops in his early works in terms of the il y a. For Levinas, the il y a intimates itself in moments like insomnia, where the world as a horizon of possibilities slips away and all there is left is (...) an experience of present absence, an enchainment to the night, which renders the insomniac utterly impotent and exposed. The possibility of eliciting an experience of the il y a through artistic means has been extensively discussed in literary theory, but so far there has been hardly any discussion regarding the pictorial depiction of the il y a. In this paper, I suggest that the atmospheric interior paintings of the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi exemplify par excellence a painterly rendering of the experience of Levinasian nothingness. Through an analysis of Hammershøi’s compositional techniques, I show how figurative means can bring about an anonymous, non-figurative presence which eludes reification. (shrink)

The work is aimed at interpreting text and paintings in D. Rubina and B. Karafelov’s book ‘Okna‘. The authors of the article conduct an analysis of episodes with pictorial ecphrasis in the stories from the book and an iconographic analysis of paintings inside the stories. The chosen topic is actual, because it provides an alternative way to solve a problem of word and image relations in the text. The article is aimed at the search for new methods (...) to reflect a protagonist’s character. In this context, the authors of the article compare images in D. Rubina’s texts with B. Karafelov’s paintings, analyze the symbiotical connection of pictorial ecphrasis and reproductions of paintings. The most of the stories are autobiographical what makes them representative in terms of transferring the narrator’s position through the pictorial ecphrasis. In that book, paintings are not just illustrations and not visualization of ecphrasis. Pictures were introduced into the text of novels for presenting main motives and enriching stories by new images and meanings, which could not be represented by text. Colors of paintings are accentuated by color-designation words and are converged to tonality of text. Thereby a reader can interact with a writer and a painter simultaneously. After analyzing of text and pictures, the authors of the article made a conclusion about efficiency of word and picture synthesis for disclosure of the same themes in multiple artistic planes. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that images, whether in the world or in the head, do not have a privileged analysis into constituent parts. They are thought to lack the sort of syntactic structure necessary for representing complex contents and entering into sophisticated patterns of inference. I reject this assumption. “Image grammars” are models in computer vision that articulate systematic principles governing the form and content of images. These models are empirically credible and can be construed as literal grammars for (...) images. Images can have rich syntactic structure, though of a markedly different form than sentences in language. (shrink)

The concept of athleticism seems, at first glance, to be a minor component of Deleuze's analysis in Francis Bacon, appearing by name in the text only six times. In this article, I draw out the close link between athleticism and Deleuze's fundamental concept of intensity, arguing that this ostensibly minor term is in fact central to his account of the ‘clear and durable sensation’ produced by Bacon's painting. In tracing links between athleticism, Deleuze's aesthetic concept of ‘the fall’, and (...) his reliance on and critique of Kant's theory of intensive magnitudes, I show that athleticism in Francis Bacon names the form of intensity proper to painting. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that pictorial styles are individuated in terms of different degrees of determinacy. For example, Morandi’s still-life etchings and Monet’s cathedral paintings embody different styles in that in the former, shape properties are differentiated in a fine-grained manner, and in the latter, coarse grained. I develop this view by critically examining John Kulvicki’s analysis of how we interpret pictures. According to Kulvicki, we rarely interpret pictures as differing in terms of features that belong to (...) the vehicle of representation—that is, the design-content relation. Rather, he thinks that we individuate pictorial styles in terms of the content that each picture represents. Contra Kulvicki, I argue that we interpret the vehicular features of pictures in light of our knowledge of picture production, and that the diversity of pictorial styles involves both content and vehicle. (shrink)

This article presents an exploratory analysis of the metaphoric structure of five artistic paintings within “Think aloud” protocols, in which a group of 14 English speakers with a low self-rated level of expertise in art and history of art expertise were asked to verbalize all their thoughts, ideas and impressions of the artworks. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) multiple interpretations for the same artwork are possible, (2) the interpretations of the metaphorical structures (...) described by the participants often diverge from those advanced by the researchers. These findings challenge the methods by which metaphor identification and analysis in pictorials is currently approached. As a matter of fact, most of the research in pictorial metaphors tends to reduce stimuli such as artistic paintings to unique metaphoric interpretations generally produced by a single researcher by means of introspection. By addressing this methodological problem in metaphor research, this article contributes to the development of a theoretical and operational participant-based framework that takes into account the role of metaphoric conceptualization within the domain of art and art cognition. (shrink)

In the process of interpreting works of pictorial art, it is easier to understand not the "style", but the "theme", that is, not how to write, but what to write. In the history of modern art, which attaches more importance to "style", the problem of "theme" is not fundamental and is among the primitive issues worthy of the attention of amateurs who do not understand art. However, sometimes it is in simplicity that the essence lies. The simplest questions that (...) interest almost everyone are the link between works of art and society. When analyzing the "topic", the subject under study is not confined to one work of art, since an integrated approach to the consideration of the problem should be used. The author's main contribution to the study of the history of the development of Chinese painting is a new perspective – the analysis of works based on the "theme". The results of the study revealed the main themes of Chinese pictorial art, identified the main reasons for referring to them, and also established their symbolic meaning, connection with philosophical and literary traditions. The important role of literary scientists in determining the directions of thematic development of Chinese landscape painting is revealed, the significance of the images of the fisherman and the traveler as carriers of the spiritual content of the landscape is determined. The conclusion is made about the prominence of certain themes in the pictorial art, depending on the processes of social development of China. (shrink)

This study investigated the effects of music therapy and pictorial illustration on the attention span of children with mild intellectual difficulties. A pre-test, post-test and control group quasi-experimental research design was used with a sample of children diagnosed with mild intellectual disability from three special schools in Ibadan, Nigeria. Fifty children were randomly selected and assigned to one of three groups: music therapy, pictorial illustration, or control. Twenty-four sessions of music therapy and pictorial illustration classes were held (...) with the experimental group only. The Moss Attention Rating Scale was used before and after the intervention to collect data on participants’ attention span. Analysis of Covariance indicated that there was a significant statistical difference between pre-test and post-test results of the two groups. The estimated marginal means of post-attention span by treatment indicated that pictorial illustration had the highest post-attention span score, followed by music therapy, while post-attention span score for the control group was the least. Based on the findings, it is recommended that teachers, caregivers, and parents of children with mild intellectual disability adopt pictorial illustration and music therapy as teaching strategies to enhance their attention span. (shrink)

I argue that the picture theory provides both a common referential hase and a common logical syntax for languages embodying alternative conceptual schemes. I offer an analysis of depiction, explicating the Tractarian concepts of pictorial structure, pictorial relationship, and representational form. Significant failure of reference and the existence of languages with incompatible ontological commitments show that on the molar level depiction is not required for sense. Using three premises, taken to be axiomatic for Wittgenstein, I show that (...) analysis leads to a base of elementary propositions which must depict in order to be significant. There, the relations between pictorial structure, pictorial relationship and representational form are such that reference is secured and conceptual relativity precluded. (shrink)

Friendships have important influences on children's well-being and future adjustment, and interpersonal forgiveness has been suggested as a crucial means for children to maintain friendships. However, existing measures of preadolescent children's forgiveness are restricted by developmental limitations to reporting emotional responses via questionnaire and inconsistent interpretations of the term “forgive.” This paper describes development and testing of concurrent and discriminant validity of a pictorial measure of children's emotional forgiveness, the Children's Forgiveness Card Set. In Study 1, 148 Australian children (...) aged 8–13 years responded to a hypothetical transgression in which apology was manipulated and completed the CFCS and extant measures of forgiveness and socially desirable responding. Following an exploratory factor analysis to clarify the structure of the CFCS, the CFCS correlated moderately with other forgiveness measures and did not correlate with socially desirable responding. Apology predicted CFCS responding among older children. In Study 2 an exploratory factor analysis broadly replicated the structure of the CFCS among a sample of N = 198 North American children aged 5–14 years. We also fitted an exploratory bi-factor model to the Study 2 data which clarified which cards best measured general forgiveness, or positive or hostile aspects of responding to transgressions. Apology once again predicted the CFCS, this time regardless of age. The CFCS appears a potentially valid measure of children's emotional forgiveness. Potential applications and differences between explicit and latent forgiveness in children are discussed. (shrink)

The libidinal economy could be exploited by both political movements and advertising campaigns in a pictorial space that is related to the social space at any historical moment. The arrangement of desires in a propaganda poster of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is, in light of political semiotics, the same as in a campaign poster in a consumer society today. The same libidinal economy is rooted in our political unconsciousness and remains to be the deep structure of our political performance. (...) A critical image analysis or a political semiotic critique of this libidinal economy that rules us in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and in consumer society today is necessary and urgent. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the cultural code "Rimon", covering phytomorphic symbolic images in the Jewish pictorial semiosis. The object of the study is the traditional symbolism in the pictorial practice of the Jews of the Crimea. The article uses the methods of semantic and semiotic analysis in deciphering the meanings of plant symbols of the pictorial semiosis of the Jews of the Crimea, the method of analysis of previous studies, the method of synthesis (...) in structuring groups of signs. The authors consider the following aspects of the topic: the codes of the pictorial semiosis of the Jews of the Crimea are designated, their morphology, semantics, key meanings and the main code are substantiated. The phytomorphic Rimon code and its features are considered in detail. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. As a result of studying the traditional culture of the Jews of the Crimea, five main codes of the Jewish pictorial semiosis were identified, covering the following groups of symbols: skewomorphic (subject), phytomorphic (plant), zoomorphic (animal), numeric. The source of all codes and the generalizing code is the Sefer code (Book). The interrelationships between the codes, four key meanings – Creation, Paradise, Torah persons and Messianic aspirations are revealed. The semantic center of the code system is defined – the Torah and Aron Hakodesh, as a repository of the Torah. 2. The considered phytomorphic code Rimon is a symbolism of traditional images of plants, the mention of which is found in the Torah, as well as in the Talmud and Midrash. The images of plants in the Jewish reading convey the meanings of human virtues and negative qualities, and also indicate the Messianic hopes laid down in the Torah and especially in the Midrash of the Talmud.The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that for the first time a semantic-semantic analysis was carried out and the interrelationships of cultural codes in the pictorial semiosis of the Jews of the Crimea were determined, with an emphasis on the Rimon code. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the possibilities that works of art might possess for looking in original and unforeseen ways into something that, at first sight, has little to do with arts and artistic practice. To be more precise, we present here three artistic representations, taken from various times and style periods, that depict a well-known figure in art history: angels. A detailed description and analysis of these images give us the opportunity to figure out something about another figure, (...) which is fascinating to us as philosophers of education: the teacher. Our basic intuition is that the way in which three important artists—Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, and Paul Klee—have tried to capture and trace out... (shrink)

The 2011 Thai general election was seen by many Thai political analysts as a watershed moment that would hopefully be the tipping point of socio-political reconciliation in the drawn out political struggle that has characterized Thai politics since 2005. The highly contested nature of Thai politics becomes salient when viewing campaign posters pictorial and linguistic content. The most controversial of which was the ``Vote No'' campaign taken on by the For Heaven and Earth Party, which is a political party (...) nominally associated with Thailand's conservative People's Alliance for Democracy. This study seeks to unwrap and decode the semiotics of this party's political campaign posters in Thailand's 2011 general election by providing cultural context to the application of multimodal discourse analysis and critical semiotics framework. I will argue that the ``Vote No'' campaign and its campaign posters depicting politicians as animals is a continuing political discourse of conservative Buddhist philosophers/scholars that reaches back to the 1980s. Furthermore, the ``Vote No'' campaign seeks to create dissonance and reinstate conservative rule via monarchial and/or military intervention by creating political deadlock thereby undermining democratic rights and rule by the exercising of democratic rights of voting, thus disenfranchising citizens by their own hand. (shrink)

The article discusses teaching the analysis of documentary films from the standpoint of a discursive approach. The importance of teaching the analysis of documentary films is due to the specifics of audiovisual production. A documentary film is a polyosemiotic construct combined with verbal, pictorial and sound signs, which are important for the translator to take into account in the translation process. The discursive approach allows to teach future translators to analyze not only the work as a whole, (...) but also to analyze the historical and socio-cultural context in which it was created. (shrink)

It is common for visitors to have rich and varied experiences in the limited space of a classical Chinese garden. This leads to the sense that the garden’s scale is much larger than it really is. A main reason for this perceptual bias is the gardener’s manipulation of visual information. Most studies have discussed this phenomenon in terms of qualitative description with fragmented perspectives taken from static points, without considering ambient visual information or continuously changing observation points. A general question (...) arises, then, on why depth perception can vary from one observation point to another along a garden path. To better understand the spatial experience in classical Chinese gardens, this study focused on variations in perceived depth among different observation points and aimed to identify influential visual information through psychophysical experimentation. As stimuli for the experiment, panoramic photos of Liu garden were taken from three positions at Lvyin Pavilion. Considering the effects of pictorial visual cues on depth perception, the photos were processed to create 18 kinds of stimuli. Two tasks were presented to the participants. In Task 1, 71 participants were asked to rate the depth value of the garden using the magnitude estimation method in a cave automatic virtual environment. Statistical analysis of Task 1 revealed that depth values differed significantly among different viewpoints. In Task 2, participants were asked to compare 18 stimuli and 3D images presented on three connected monitors and to judge the depth of the garden using the adjustment method. The results of Task 2 again showed that depth values differed significantly among different viewpoints. In both tasks, ambient information significantly influenced depth perception. (shrink)

To those who know little about the Middle Ages, the copying of manuscripts of “the ancients” (whether classical, such as the Roman poet Horace, or Christian, such as Saints Jerome or Augustine) often seems either a laudable act of preserving the past or an unfortunate fixation on repeating the words of others rather than penning new and original compositions. Even scholars of the Middle Ages appear sometimes more interested in new types of works such as fabliaux or courtly romances written (...) in the vernacular; when they study the practice of copying, they often concentrate on identifying prototypes or legacies. Finding old wine in old bottles has been a fairly constant theme in medieval studies; sometimes, we must admit, medievalists have just thrown out the old bottles and moved on to something completely new. In this context, it may seem strange to find a work about medieval Latin manuscript commentaries titled “The Birth of the Author,” responding to Roland Barthes's well-known essay “The Death of the Author,” published in 1984 and cited repeatedly since. What can it mean to see new, self-conscious awareness of the act of personal creation in works that are copies by scribes of other works that themselves comment on yet earlier works, often of a certain age or canonicity? Yet in this intelligent, engaging, and beautifully produced book, art historian Jeffrey Hamburger not only shows how those who wrote commentaries came to suggest that anyone who composes a work (even the scribe who copies it) could be considered a creator of meaning but also that the images in commentaries themselves sometimes make statements—indeed, statements more radical than those in the text—about the author of the work being illustrated. Long known as one of the relatively rare historians of medieval art equipped with a wide knowledge of theology and hence of how images respond to and reflect text, Hamburger here shows himself possessed of a shrewd eye for the image itself. He studies illuminated prefaces to, among other texts, the prose and poetic works of Horace as used in the medieval classroom, copies of the major biblical commentary of the High Middle Ages, the Glossa ordinaria, and Rupert of Deutz's erotically charged commentary on the Song of Songs. Changing the lens through which scholars have usually viewed such texts, Hamburger argues that images of authors of commentaries sometimes go beyond anything in the text to assert the authority not only of the author of the text commented on and of the commentator but occasionally even of the scribe.The Birth of the Author is a work of complicated analysis, and its full power demands close attention. Understanding how images construct claims that go beyond the text involves a good deal of careful looking. Hamburger is a patient and clear guide, but the reader must be prepared to flip back and forth between the magnificent colored images the publisher provides and to follow what are often painstaking arguments from comparison of small visual differences or puzzling identifications of seemingly strange details. The result of doing so is, however, to gain not only the reward of Hamburger's ingenious conclusions but also a lesson in how to look. For example, in a discussion of Gilbert Universalis's commentary on the Lamentations of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, Hamburger shows how Gilbert not only identifies Jeremiah as a “divine rhetorician” but also assimilates his own act of authorship to Jeremiah's prophetic speech. In the only extant copy of Gilbert's text that has a program of illustrations, the artist constructs both Jeremiah's speech and Gilbert's interpretation as similar acts of creation by framing both authors in parallel architectural images that evoke the Old Testament temple and a Christian church. Or to give a final example of Hamburger's interpretive reach: the book concludes not with yet another medieval preface but with an example of the far less usual manuscript epilogue. Here not only commentator, scribe, and illustrator but even the medieval reader construct themselves. Reception becomes interpretation, illustration becomes construction. In a commentary by the Carolingian figure Sedulius Scotus (fl. 840–60) on the Roman grammarian Donatus (mid-fourth century), the illustrator depicts Donatus as author and scribe (thus assimilating author into copier and vice versa). On the same folio, a later medieval reader constructs himself as reader/author in a charming marginal doodle that seems to entrap Donatus in a sort of hangman's noose. Thus, a bit wryly perhaps, Hamburger—himself teacher, commentator, and consummate scholar—seems to suggest that even frustrated students can construct themselves as interpreters and, yes, authors. Behind the seeming repetition and backward glance of the images in medieval commentaries lies radical and forward-looking self-awareness of the acts of authoring, interpreting, reading, and imagining. In Hamburger's analysis, the most seemingly conventional of medieval genres—the preface to commentaries on the texts of others—is a locus of the birth in illustration of the self-conscious and self-expressive author and reader. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein’s engagement with Russell’s The Analysis of Mind was crucial for the development of his new method. First, I show that Wittgenstein’s criticism of the causal theory of meaning (namely: that it generates an infinite regress and that it does not determine the depiction of a fact) is motivated by its incompatibility with the pictorial conception of language. Second, I show that in reacting against that theory he comes to invent the calculus conception of language. (...) Third, I argue that the calculus conception is vulnerable to critiques that parallel those presented against Russell’s theory (a rule-following regression and the indeterminacy of depicted facts). Fourth, the striking similarity between the problems present in Russell’s theory and in Wittgenstein’s own views makes him realize that both were working under misleading trains of thought and false analogies. It is this realization that brings Wittgenstein to the view that his task is to investigate the genesis of philosophical puzzlement in order to stop philosophical theorizing right from the beginning. Thus, in explaining the invention of Wittgenstein’s new method I show its relation to Russell’s philosophy and indicate the origins of the rule-following problem. (shrink)

The use of words to label concepts is a weak point in CMT but one which is little discussed. This article considers the relative merits of image and writing as semiotic modes for identifying conceptual metaphor domains and whether image can offer an alternative to target is source formulae. It reports on an experiment in which MA translation students draw composite drawings to represent orientational metaphoric aspects of a UK government press release. Conventional metaphoric language deriving from the orientational metaphors, (...) especially good is up/bad is down, plays a significant role across this text, forming a “metaphor chain” pattern. The drawings and post-task interviews with the participants reveal details of the internal structure of the source domain up and how it is conceptualized. Particularly of note is the strong horizontal forward aspect of orientation which emerges when the written text is represented pictorially. The article demonstrates how drawing can be used as a tool in metaphor-led discourse analysis. (shrink)

It is a contested question in contemporary theories of religion whether the concept of religion can be defined in a sound way or not. Many theorists maintain that a universal but delimiting definition is impossible. In this study, by contrast, it is argued that a conceptual analysis of religion that holds universally is perfectly possible because the following thesis can be seen as a necessary and sufficient conceptual condition of what religion is: X is a religion if and only (...) if X is a collection of artifacts which has the proper function of representing a supraphysical world. On this thesis, it is argued that artifacts such as pictorial and verbal representations, rituals, symbols, and various tools constitute religion as a cultural object, which, as a collection of artifacts, has the proper function of representing a conceived world that is not entirely physical, and which, allegedly, is a prerequisite for existential welfare in relation to observance. It is here important to understand what is constitutive for these kinds of conceived worlds. Supraphysical world is defined as follows. Given that the actual world is a physical world, a conception S is a construction of a supraphysical world if and only if both of the following conditions apply to S: Metaphysical component: S is a duplicate of the actual world with the addition of an anti-physical substance. Existential-normative component: S is an alleged prerequisite for existential welfare in relation to observance. The core argument of the study is that holds a priori for the concept of religion and as an a posteriori necessity for every instance of a religion. Apart from discussing the methodological problems of defining religion, the study introduces a new theory of religion in terms of. It addresses issues in the theory of artifacts; in the theory of representations; and in the theory of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate explanations of picture superiority effects previously found for several tasks. In a process dissociation procedure with word stem completion, picture fragment completion, and category production tasks, conscious and automatic memory processes were compared for studied pictures and words with an independent retrieval model and a generate-source model. The predictions of a transfer appropriate processing account of picture superiority were tested and validated in “process pure” latent measures of conscious and unconscious, or automatic and source, (...) memory processes. Results from both model fits verified that pictures had a conceptual processing advantage over words for all tasks. The effects of perceptual compatibility depended on task type, with pictorial tasks favoring pictures and linguistic tasks favoring words. Results show support for an explanation of the picture superiority effect that involves an interaction of encoding and retrieval processes. (shrink)

This volume of collected papers, with the accompanying essays by the editors, is the definitive source book for the work of this important experimental psychologist. Originally published in 1991, it offered previously inaccessible essays by Albert Michotte on phenomenal causality, phenomenal permanence, phenomenal reality, and perception and cognition. Within these four sections are the most significant and representative of the Belgian psychologist's research in the area of experimental phenomenology. Extremely insightful introductions by the editors are included that place the essays (...) in context. Michotte's ideas have played an important role in much research on the development of perception, and his work on social perception continues to be influential in social psychology. The book also includes some lesser-known aspects of his work that are equally important; for example, a remarkable set of articles on pictorial analysis. (shrink)

Thin, Costall, Butterworth...should be applauded for offering a collection of previously inaccessible essays by Albert Michotte on phenomenal causality, phenomenal permanence, phenomenal reality, and perception and cognition. Within these sections they have made wise selections and done a wonderful job of translating hitherto untranslated works. Most importantly, they have written extremely insightful section introductions that place the essays in historical and contemporary context. a Contemporary Psychology Albert Michotte's ideas have played an important role in recent research on the development of (...) perception, and his work on social perception continues to be influential in social psychology. This book presents the most significant and representative of the Belgian psychologist's research in the area of experimental phenomenology -- only a small portion of which has been published in English translation. It also includes some lesser-known aspects of his work that are equally important; for example, a remarkable set of articles on pictorial analysis (including film) virtually unknown to most contemporary researchers. The editors/translators of this text offer an enlightening introduction to Michotte's career that establishes historical context and highlights some of the links between his efforts and current research. For the most part, however, Thin s, Costall, and Butterworth allow Michotte to speak for himself. What he has to say is of considerable import in terms of contemporary psychological inquiry and debate. (shrink)

An analysis of three pictorial works by Ugo Nespolo is put forward: "Barbe posticce" (1977); "Guardar Manzoni" (1974); "Il museo: Fontana" (1975). It is claimed that such works embody meditations on the concept and the varieties of representation, that they prompt critical reflections on the role of museums in art-making, and that they suggest an alternative route to that of the 'dematerialization' of the art object for the understanding of contemporary art.

In this paper I tackle the question of what basic form an analytical method for articulating and ultimately assessing visual representations should take. I start from the assumption that scientific images, being less prone to interpretive complication than artworks, are ideal objects from which to engage this question. I then assess a recent application of Nelson Goodman's aesthetics to the project of parsing scientific images, Laura Perini's ‘The truth in pictures’. I argue that, although her project is an important one, (...) her Goodmanian conventionalism produces a method of analysis that is incapable of adequately parsing a certain class of pictures and her focus on truth is unnecessary. This speaks against the promise of Goodman's analytical strategy for elucidating visual content and reasoning in the sciences and elsewhere. As an alternative, I develop John Willats’ analytical method and compare it to Perini's through engaging three of her examples—a chemical diagram, a graph and an electron micrograph. Ultimately, a space remains open for a mixed system where Willats’ account provides pictorial analysis and the Goodman–Perini approach parses visual languages. (shrink)

This paper motivates, explains, and defends a new account of the content of thought experiments. I begin by briefly surveying and critiquing three influential accounts of thought experiments: James Robert Brown’s Platonist account, John Norton’s deflationist account that treats them as picturesque arguments, and a cluster of views that I group together as mental model accounts. I use this analysis to motivate a set of six desiderata for a new approach. I propose that we treat thought experiments primarily as (...) aesthetic objects, specifically fictions, and then use this analysis to characterize their content and ultimately assess their epistemic success. Taking my starting point from Kendall Walton’s account of representation (Mimesis as make-believe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1990), I argue that the best way to understand the content of thought experiments is to treat them as props for imagining fictional worlds. Ultimately, I maintain that, in terms of their form and content, thought experiments share more with literary fictions and pictorial representations than with either argumentation or observations of the Platonic realm. Moreover, while they inspire imaginings, thought experiments themselves are not mental kinds. My approach redirects attention towards what fixes the content of any given thought experiment and scrutinizes the assumptions, cognitive capacities and conventions that generate them. This view helps to explain what seems plausible about Brown’s, Norton’s, and the mental modelers’ views. (shrink)

Textbooks play a strong part in constructing gender roles and status in society. Thus, the images, lessons, and stories of gender portrayed in textbooks affect the perception of prevalent masculine behavior. To develop an insight into the phenomena, this article analyzes the institutionalized patriarchy and patriarchal values embedded in the Urdu and English National Book Foundation textbooks for grades 5, 6, and 7. The study used content analysis techniques to decode the tone, juggling of meanings, pictorial representation, topic (...) selection, word selection, number of pages devoted to each topic, and gender placement of Urdu and Social Studies textbooks. The study explored whether women are portrayed as followers of men and men as having a leadership role. The mother is predominantly presented as a housewife who stays at home, cleaning and cooking all day. While the father goes to work every day and comes home and relaxes after a hard day’s work. Such placement of gendered roles has an effect on the thinking of young students and they internalize the idea that such roles are a natural part of their personality. Moreover, the books reflect a reality which is more male-oriented, while female representations are lacking in the dominant reality. (shrink)

Can static pictures depict motion and temporal properties? This is an open question that is becoming increasingly discussed in both aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. Theorists working on this issue have mainly focused on static pictures of dynamic scenes and streaky images – such as futurists’ paintings or long-exposure photographs. And yet, we could ask: if there is some success in creating an illusory impression of movement in a static image - as is the case in optical illusions of (...) movement, such as Bridget Riley’s Fall (1963: Tate, London), or Kitaoka’s Rotating Snakes Illusion - is this to say that such static images depict movement? As far as I know, no one working on the depiction of motion has specifically and systematically tackled motion-based illusions nor tried to answer this question. This paper considers two cases of optical illusions of movement and concludes that one of them is involved in the depiction of movement. While the declared goal of my analysis is to answer a quite circumscribed question, it is also the occasion to tackle motion-based illusions tout court - to account for the complex visual experiences they elicit and related phenomenology. Moreover, this account has interesting consequences for theorizing depiction and pictorial experience in general. In particular, it constitutes a counterexample to resemblance theories of depiction. (shrink)

The analysis of multimodal argumentation in advertising is a crucial and problematic area of research. While its importance is growing in a time characterized by images and pictorial messages, the methods used for interpreting and reconstructing the structure of arguments expressed through verbal and visual means capture only isolated dimensions of this complex phenomenon. This paper intends to propose and illustrate a methodology for the reconstruction and analysis of “double-mode” arguments in advertisements, combining the instruments developed in (...) social semiotics, pragmatics, and argumentation theory. An advertisement is processed through a five-step path. The analysis of its context, text genre, and images leads to a first representation of the messages that it encodes both pictorially and verbally (step 1). These first semantic representations are further enriched by including their polyphonic articulations and presuppositions (step 2), their explicatures (step 3), and their dialogical functions and illocutionary forces (step 4). These pragmatic steps retrieve the commitment structure of the ad, which allows a further argument analysis conducted through argumentation schemes (step 5). (shrink)

An analysis of the sources of Wittgenstein’s picture theory — which include not only his moment of insight on reading a magazine story about the use of models in a traffic court, but also the work of Russell, Hertz, and Boltzmann — provides the basis for an exploration of Wittgenstein’s articulation of a pictorial conception of representation in his wartime notebooks and its crystallization in the Tractatus. A discussion of Wittgenstein’s later criticism of the picture theory and his (...) notion of a “philosophical picture” illustrates the fundamental reversal in his transition to his later conception of philosophy: instead of taking literal pictures as a guide to the nature of meaning, he came to regard philosophical theories as akin to expressing an aesthetic preference for a certain style of representation. Wittgenstein’s treatment of factual language in the picture theory is related to his Tractarian approach to logical form, and the role of the show/say distinction in his early conception of logic and language. Particular attention is given to the difficulties generated by the idea that the conditions for the possibility of a given domain of discourse cannot be described in language, but must be shown by the form of words in question. (shrink)

This essay re-examines the once promising idea that style analysis can provide an independent source of insight into an artifact's non-stylistic context. The essay makes explicit the consequences of treating collective style as such a source in archaeology and anthropology of art, and further develops a new framing for the idea that avoids the criticisms largely responsible for the decline in theoretical interest in the epistemic import of visual style analysis since World War II. This re-framing proposes that (...) inference from style to context is permissible on those occasions when a collective style signals by its morphology its suitability to serve a certain function. And it does so because it prescribes publicly certain modes of behavior or spectatorship. Furthermore, the public nature of the signaling may be such that it allows even uninitiated spectators to get a sense of it and thus to gain access to some of the motivations and norms informing the collective's form of life. (shrink)

Complex systems are pervasive in the world around us. Making sense of a complex system should require that a person construct a network of concepts and principles about some domain that represents key (often dynamic) phenomena and their interrelationships. This raises the question of how expert understanding of complex systems differs from novice understanding. In this study we examined individuals' representations of an aquatic system from the perspective of structural (elements of a system), behavioral (mechanisms), and functional aspects of a (...) system. Structure–Behavior–Function (SBF) theory was used as a framework for analysis. The study included participants from middle school children to preservice teachers to aquarium experts. Individual interviews were conducted to elicit participants' mental models of aquaria. Their verbal responses and pictorial representations were analyzed using an SBF‐based coding scheme. The results indicated that representations ranged from focusing on structures with minimal understanding of behaviors and functions to representations that included behaviors and functions. Novices' representations focused on perceptually available, static components of the system, whereas experts integrated structural, functional, and behavioral elements. This study suggests that the SBF framework can be one useful formalism for understanding complex systems. (shrink)

Trademarks are not just property; they are aesthetic creations that pervade everyday experience. As pervasive aesthetic creations having literary, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and musical content, trademarks deserve aesthetic analysis. So this paper discusses the origins, strength, appeal, and effectiveness of trademarks within the context of aesthetic considerations such as meaning, intention, authorship, and mode of creation. Also reviewed are morphemic and phonemic analysis of trademarks, semantic positioning, the dichotomy between creation and discovery of trademarks, and the differences (...) between trademarks and titles. The discussion is confined to "word marks" consisting of alphanumeric characters because discussing other kinds of marks (such as designs, configurations, sounds, colors, and scents) would raise issues well beyond the scope of a single article. (shrink)