scholarly journals Mediating presence: curtains in Middle and Late Byzantine imperial ceremonial and portraiture

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria G. Parani
Keyword(s):  
Material Objects ◽  
Standard Component ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Imperial Portraiture ◽  
The Way

Curtains constituted a standard component of the scenography of imperial ceremonies during the Middle and Late Byzantine period. This paper explores how curtains were used to control and ritualise sensory and perceptual access to the sacred person of the emperor and to manipulate emotive response to ritual performances. It also enquires into the way in which curtains, both as material objects and as symbols, were employed by those staging imperial ceremonies in order to articulate and communicate messages regarding the nature of the emperor's authority and his special status vis-à-vis his subjects. Paradoxically, the performative and symbolic potential that ensured the curtains’ use in imperial ceremonies led to their exclusion from the representation of the emperor in imperial portraiture, since post-Iconoclastic art did not admit veiled secrets.

Seeing Depicted Space (Or Not)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
Empty Space ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Pictorial Perception ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Pictorial Experience ◽  
The Way

What is it to see something in a picture? Most accounts of pictorial experience—or, to use Richard Wollheim's term, ‘seeing-in’—seek, in various ways, to explain it in terms of how pictures somehow display the looks of things. However, some ‘things’ that we apparently see in pictures do not display any ‘look’. In particular, most pictures depict empty space, but empty space does not seem to display any ‘look’—at least not in the way material objects do. How do we see it in pictures, if we do? This chapter offers an account of pictorial perception of empty space by elaborating on Wollheim's claim that ‘seeing-in’ is permeable to thought. It ends by pointing to the aesthetic relevance of seeing—or not seeing—empty space in pictures.

The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wiśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Essential Element ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Hidden Knowledge ◽  
Physical Diseases ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Way

Christians always admired and venerated martyrs who died for their faith, but for a long time thought that the bodies of martyrs should remain undisturbed in their graves. Initially, the Christian attitude toward the bones of the dead, whether a saint’s or not, was that of respectful distance. This book tells how, in the mid-fourth century, this attitude started to change, swiftly and dramatically. The first chapters show the rise of new beliefs. They study how, when, and why Christians began to believe in the power of relics, first, over demons, then over physical diseases and enemies; how they sought to reveal hidden knowledge at the tombs of saints and why they buried the dead close to them. An essential element of this new belief was a strong conviction that the power of relics was transferred in a physical way and so subsequent chapters study relics as material objects. The book seeks to show what the contact with relics looked like and how close it was. Did people touch, kiss, or look at the very bones, or just at reliquaries which contained them? When did the custom of dividing relics appear? Finally, the book deals with discussions and polemics concerning relics and tries to find out how strong was the opposition which this new phenomenon had to face, both within and outside Christianity on the way to relics becoming an essential element of medieval religiosity.

The Value in Things: Folklore and the Anthropological Museum Exhibit

1985 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-20
Author(s):  
M. Young
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Museum Exhibit ◽  
Accurate Picture ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In anthropological museums material objects serve to depict relationships between people, objects, and the physical world. Thus there is an obvious link between the museological side of anthropology and that branch of folklore or folklife studies which focuses on material culture. Both study objects as indices of the minds of their makers. Recently, however, the proponents of both of these subdisciplines have been taken to task for an over-emphasis on the object in and of itself which leads them to ignore or obscure the "environment" within which that object originally existed. Folklorists who wish to discern both the form and meaning of material items and those who recognize the importance of studying all aspects of a multi-faceted event have benefited from the performance-centered approach which extends its focus from the folkloric item to the total context within which that item was generated. It is this approach which enables folklorists to view verbal or visual forms in relationship to various cultural processes and to address topics in ethnoaesthetics, ethics, and education which folklore shares with anthropology and museology. The following is a brief discussion of the way in which concepts from folklore theory can be used in the anthropological museum exhibit to present a more dynamic and accurate picture of the relationship between people and things.

scholarly journals “A Very Remarkable Piece of Iron”: Towards a Theory of Material Imagination in Virginia Woolf’s “Solid Objects”

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Martin Štefl
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Complete Loss ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Intellectual Autonomy ◽  
Solid Objects ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Modern Condition ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article examines the supposed lack of “humanity” in Woolf’s short stories and novels by identifying its source in the sphere of “solid objects” and in the way these “objects” destabilize the coherence of what the western philosophical tradition typically refers to as “subject” (in the Cartesian sense). Referring to Moore’s direct realism as well as James’s and Mach’s radical empiricism, the discussion focuses on specific states of heightened perceptive intensity in which the perceiving subject stumbles on the verge of collapse and “mixes” itself with what it perceives. By considering these limit cases, this paper tries to demonstrate the way in which Woolf’s fiction might in fact be understood as illustrative of the process of de-humanizing de-centralization and dispersion of the already fluid consciousness and its blending with the impersonal material objects, resulting in a complete loss of one idea of “the human” (an idea based on the intellectual autonomy and sovereignty of a unified subject) and pointing towards a post-human and post-modern condition in which human becomes defined by the ever-widening circle of its own outside

scholarly journals Grave Monuments from Jiyeh (Porphyreon) and the Sepulchral Art of Sidon's Chora

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariusz Gwiazda
Keyword(s):  
Early Phase ◽  
Decorative Motifs ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Stone Material ◽  
Early Byzantine ◽  
The Way

Hellenistic steles and Roman cippi and sarcophagi discovered in the course of salvage excavations in Jiyeh (ancient Porphyreon) opened the way to the discussion of the artictic culture of Sidon and the northern part of its hinterland. The form and decoration of these grave monuments find no parallels outside the Sidonian cemeteries, pointing to very strong artistic ties between the metropolis and the villages in its chora. Compared to the output of other Syro-Palestinian sculptural centers, the products from Sidonian territory demonstrate exceptional originality, foremost in the choice of decorative motifs, but also concerning the stone material: local sandstone conglomerate and limestone. The steles, cippi and sarcophagi from Jiyeh enable us to date more precisely the locality's northern necropolis that functioned, in the light of the presented evidence, from the Hellenistic to the early Byzantine period. Moreover; the dating of the monuments leads to the assumption that the early phase of the cemetery coincided with the operation of nearby pottery workshops.

scholarly journals Material Objects and Their Parts

Metaphysica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Brewer
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Location ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Precise Location ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Spatial Partition ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

AbstractCommonsense appears committed to enduring macroscopic material objects that exclude each other from their precise location at all times. I elaborate a specific version of the commonsense commitment and consider its merits in connection with an important line of objection concerning the relation between material objects and their parts. The central thesis is that amongst persisting macroscopic material objects there are Natural Continuants, NCs, whose unity at a time and over time is entirely independent of our concepts, which occupy their precise spatial location Exclusively at all times, and which ground Artificial Continuants, ACs, by partition, collection, and approximation. I call the position the Natural Continuants View (NCV). Section “The Natural Continuants View” offers a provisional characterization. Section “Spatial Partition” considers a familiar puzzle concerning the idea that material objects may survive the loss of a part in order to provide intuitive motivation for (NCV) and to elaborate its commitments concerning (spatial) parts. The result is an account of the way in which NCs ground ACs by spatial partition. Section “Collection and Approximation” turns to a consideration of collections and assemblages of NCs. Section “Conclusion” concludes.

Processes as Continuants and Process as Stuff

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Crowther
Keyword(s):  
Final Part ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Space Filling ◽  
Concrete Material ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

Some writers have argued that processes are ‘continuants’; that they persist over time in the way that concrete material objects do on an endurantist ontology. The first part of the chapter attempts to show that these arguments should be resisted. The second part of the chapter develops the idea that there is a philosophically significant analogy between process and space-filling stuffs. According to this analogy, process can be understood as a kind of ‘temporal stuff’. The chapter responds to arguments against this analogy and goes on to argue that an understanding of the analogy with space-filling stuff is central to a grasp of why processes are not continuants. The final part of the chapter, again drawing on this analogy, goes on to develop the idea that processes occupy time by ‘occurrent renewal’ over periods of time.

scholarly journals Ting og typologier – en utforskning av landbruksutstillingen på Dalane Folkemuseum

1970 ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Eva Reme ◽  
Olaug Norun Økland
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Southwest Coast ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

The Folk Museum at Dalane is a regional museum for the four southernmost municipalities in Rogaland on the southwest coast of Norway. Established in 1910, it is a museum typical of the period in which the Norwegian folk museums were set up. The point of departure for this article is the museum’s typological agricultural exhibition, which still is untouched, exactly as it was mounted in 1952. By emphasizing a micro-perspective the authors illuminate how ideas and practices both followed and departed from well-established museum paradigms. The applied actor-perspective emphasizes the importance of the individuals who were actually responsible for the organization and development of the museum. The article accentuates the museum actors’ attitudes and approaches towards the material objects, as well as their way of mounting and organizing the exhibition. Furthermore, by taking into consideration the way they built and participated in various social networks, the intention is also to shed light on how the museum actors negotiated between their own ambitions and established norms for collecting and forming exhibitions. In this way it is possible to follow how local museums can simultaneously confirm and challenge existing museum paradigms. 

Sounds and Auditory Perception

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvira Di Bona
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Philosophy Of Music ◽  
Musical Sound ◽  
Double Nature ◽  
Approach Group ◽  
The Way

What makes sounds intriguing items to investigate from a philosophical perspective is their double nature: on the one hand, they are produced by activities involving material objects, which are their sources and are able to carry information about them; on the other hand, they seem to be “disembodied,” detached from their sources, as having an existence of their own and specific audible properties, which are usually considered to be pitch, loudness, and timbre, regardless of the material objects whose activities produced them or to which they are connected. This ambiguous nature of sounds is mirrored by the way in which we define them and explains also why there are such diverse views on their metaphysics. These views are organized in two groups and are discussed in Metaphysics of Sound and its subsections, the Source-Based Approach group and the Wave-Based Approach group. Furthermore, the puzzling double nature of sound is also exemplified by the way we speak when describing what we hear. That is, we often say we listen to a loud or low sound and thus refer to sound and its audible properties, but we also say we hear a dog barking or a baby crying, in which case we mention sound sources. The relationship between sound and sound sources, and the question of whether we hear either the former or the latter have been some of the central issues on which scholars of the philosophy of sound have focused, especially when facing the challenge of understanding what it is that we hear when having an auditory experience. The different answers to this matter provided within the recent debate in analytic philosophy are reviewed in Auditory Perception in Philosophy and its subsequent subsections: Hearing Sounds, Hearing Sources, and Hearing beyond Sounds and Sources. The answers that research in psychoacoustics and neuroscience has given to the same question occupy, instead, Auditory Perception in Psychoacoustics and Neuroscience. When talking about sounds and how we perceive them, researchers often refer to their spatial location. Spatial Hearing is, then, about the spatiality of audition. Musical Sound is discussed as well because of its connections to the issues of auditory perception and the metaphysics of sound. Aesthetic reflections on musical sound are marginal here (for substantial bibliographical suggestions on musical aesthetics, see also the Oxford Bibliographies articles in Music “Philosophy of Music” and Philosophy “Analytic Philosophy of Music”). In the last section, Speech Sound is examined in relationship to the possibility of hearing either meanings, phonological features, or audible features such as pitch, loudness, and timbre. This bibliography begins with an introduction on the General Overviews on sounds and auditory perception.

Strange Objects, Counterfeits, and Reproductions

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-108
Author(s):  
Filip Mattens
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Material World ◽  
Perceptual Presence ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Material Things ◽  
The Way

Our different senses put us in contact with the same world. In this paper, I use unusual objects and situations to bring out structural dissimilarities in the way our senses relate to the same world of material objects. In the first part, I briefly discuss the perceptual presence of spatial and material things. Using uncommon objects allows me to treat this issue without any need to invoke what it is like to have visual experiences. What comes to the fore in these analyses, however, seems less obvious in experiences of the other senses. Therefore, in the second part, I propose a strategy, invoking unusual situations, to weed out the multisensory associations that enrich our normal relation to objects, in order to get a better grip on the perceptual correlate of the different senses. Although the actual correlates of the senses may not be material objects in each case, I explain why they are nonetheless occurrences in a spatial and material world.

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