Mystics, Shamans, and Visionary Arts

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Multiple Time ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Wassily Kandinsky ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Art For Art's Sake

Diverse theories and cases are associated with artistic expression attributed to mystical experience. To showcase variety as well as underlying commonalties, the intersecting experiences of mystics, shamans, and visionary arts builds on understanding shamanic altered consciousness in multiple time periods, attunement to nature manifest through art and sacred sites, and modernist impulses beginning in the 20th century. Cases range from prehistoric cave paintings of Chauvet and Lascaux to contemporary shamanic rituals of Siberia, from oracles, amphitheaters, and firewalking in Ancient Greece to the calendrical mysteries of Egypt, Stonehenge, Crete, and Mesoamerica. The cosmology-saturated paintings of Wassily Kandinsky and the mystical mountains of Nicholas Roerich can be productively juxtaposed, since these artists created resonating movements of global followers. For deeper analysis, insights of artists, including poets and epic singers, into their creative processes can be combined with analytical literature on spirituality and visionary arts. Focus on roots of shamanic consciousness and on cases selected from cultural anthropology and art history shifts analysis away from famous examples of religious art within organized religions. Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian mystical traditions should be celebrated, but not at the expense of fluid and open-minded definitions of spirituality in the arts. This shifted gaze enables some conventional distinctions to be dissolved, for example, that between “art for art’s sake” and art that may result in individual and communal healing. In some interactive contexts of mystical artistic expression, distinctions between artists and their perceivers may also dissolve. In sum, mysticism and art are “eye of the beholder” phenomena. Experiences of mystics, shamans, and artists can be viewed as having significant interconnections without overgeneralizing about mysticism, shamanism, or the arts.

scholarly journals Transcending utility? The gendered conflicts of a contemporary creative identification

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Taylor ◽  
Marie Paludan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art For Art's Sake ◽  
Therapeutic Utility ◽  
Psychology Of Creativity

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have been described as an age of creativity in affluent Western societies because of the increased popularity of the visual arts and the expansion of the global sector of the creative and cultural industries (CCI). The psychology of creativity has contributed new conceptualisations of creativity and creative processes, challenging associations that derive from the elite arts. This article investigates the implications of these changes for the gendering of creativity and creative practice. It asks if contemporary reconceptualisations of creativity open new possibilities for women to identify as creative practitioners. The article presents a critical discursive study of interviews with UK women maker-artists. The analysis shows how the women emphasise the practical applications or utility of their creative practice. A claim of utility can function to justify the practice. In addition, a claim of therapeutic utility, for others and for the artist herself, potentially addresses the neoliberal priority that people take responsibility for their personal well-being. However, the justification of utility contrasts with the creative vocation associated with the masculine elite artist who pursues “art for art’s sake”. The justification can therefore be seen to undermine the women’s creative identifications, reinstating the conventionally masculine status of creativity and the arts.

Multisensory Modalities and Modernist Translation

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
The Arts

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.

The Poetry and Music of Science

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom McLeish
Keyword(s):  
School Leaver ◽  
Creative People ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Poetry And Music

‘I could not see any place in science for my creativity or imagination’, was the explanation, of a bright school leaver to the author, of why she had abandoned all study of science. Yet as any scientist knows, the imagination is essential to the immense task of re-creating a shared model of nature from the scale of the cosmos, through biological complexity, to the smallest subatomic structures. Encounters like that one inspired this book, which takes a journey through the creative process in the arts as well as sciences. Visiting great creative people of the past, it also draws on personal accounts of scientists, artists, mathematicians, writers, and musicians today to explore the commonalities and differences in creation. Tom McLeish finds that the ‘Two Cultures’ division between the arts and the sciences is not after all, the best classification of creative processes, for all creation calls on the power of the imagination within the constraints of form. Instead, the three modes of visual, textual, and abstract imagination have woven the stories of the arts and sciences together, but using different tools. As well as panoramic assessments of creativity, calling on ideas from the ancient world, medieval thought, and twentieth-century philosophy and theology, The Poetry and Music of Science illustrates its emerging story by specific close-up explorations of musical (Schumann), literary (James, Woolf, Goethe) mathematical (Wiles), and scientific (Humboldt, Einstein) creation. The book concludes by asking how creativity contributes to what it means to be human.

scholarly journals Facebook for Facebook's Sake

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-38
Author(s):  
Kevin Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Digital City ◽  
Aesthetic Movement ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Take Back ◽  
Facebook Usage ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Art For Art's Sake ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Central Claim

The affective labour debate has become mainstream in communications studies. In this paper, I The affective labour debate has become mainstream in communications studies. In this paper, I suggest the Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century as inspiration for how users can use Facebook with the knowledge that their data is being used for profit. I present Facebook usage as art, creating an analog with aesthete Oscar Wilde’s essay, “the critic as artist” (1891/2010), where he presents critics as artists. Other theorists, especially Walter Benjamin provide grounding for making the argument that Facebook usage is an artistic expression. I then turn to my inversion of Walter Pater’s “art for art’s sake”, the seminal idea of Aestheticism and propose Facebook for Facebook’s sake as a method for Facebook use. While more advanced remuneration concepts have yet to arrive with such force that they could provide the proper payment to users, Facebook for its own sake is a way to appreciate Facebook’s beauty in the meantime. Baudelaire and Debord’s psychogeographic theories provide methods for navigating cities that I apply to examine Facebook as a digital city. The central claim of this paper is the following: By using Facebook for Facebook’s sake, users take back some of the dignity taken away from them in the exploitation of free labour. Finally, I turn to critiques of Aestheticism and how contemporary software might provide insight into using Facebook in an ethical manner. Users will have to consider each action differently; how would liking something affect users’ artistic expression of themselves? In this way, while the affective labour debate continues, users can use Facebook for its own sake.

scholarly journals El silencio como límite: en torno a la afirmación estética de la memoria traumática = Silence as a Limit: Regarding the Aesthetic Affirmation of Traumatic Memory

2018 ◽  
pp. 413
Author(s):  
Rocío Garriga Inarejos
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Artistic Representation ◽  
The Aesthetic

Después de la tragedia del Holocausto surgieron enormes interrogantes respecto a la pertinencia de su representación artística. En los estudios que se han realizado al respecto pueden distinguirse dos tendencias: una se dio en los años 60-80, y la otra, que comenzó en la década de los 90, continúa extendiéndose hoy. Abordar este tipo de temas conlleva afrontar la cuestión del silencio y valorar toda una serie de aspectos éticos relacionados con la expresión artística. Cabe preguntarse cuál es el alcance que tiene esta noción para las artes.After the tragedy of the Holocaust, emerged huge questions about the appropriateness of its artistic representation. Can be distinguished two tendencies in the studies that have been done about it: one was in the years 60-80, and the other, which began in the 90s, continues today. Addressing such issues involves to deal with the question of silence and assess a some ethical aspects related to artistic expression. One should ask what is the scope that has this notion in the arts.

scholarly journals Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 479-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foluke Ogunleye
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Tertiary Institution ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The People ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject

From time immemorial human beings have sought to document their activities in realistic forms in order to pass across information about their lives to posterity. Even before the advent of cinematography, human beings had attempted to show life, not as static, but as dynamic. Cave paintings done by early men have shown an attempt to demonstrate movement through drawings of animals with many legs, designed to simulate motion. Also, attempts at showing moving images have included the shadow plays of North Africa and India, puppetry in many parts of the world, the pot art of India, etc. These activities presented the culture of the people and showed how icons are developed, what they stand for in the people's lives, and how people made meaning out of their lives and activities. With the development of the arts of cinematography and television, these also became vehicles to document happenings and events in the lives of the people.In this study, I discuss the television docudrama as an alternative means of documenting history. There are many reasons necessitating an alternative source of documenting history, but two examples from Nigeria will suffice to justify this position. The powers-that-be in Nigeria have decreed that it is no longer necessary to study history in primary and secondary schools, and the subject has been removed from the curriculum. Consequently, if a Nigerian citizen does not go to a tertiary institution to study history, the past of her/his people will forever remain a mystery to her/him. Currently, there is a very lively debate in Nigeria about the origins of the Yoruba people. Traditional rulers, who are supposed to be the custodians of history, are at loggerheads with each other and with eggheads in history departments. The traditional rulers are bringing out diverse facts and evidence that differ from previously written histories.

“Seeing Law in Terms of Music” A Short Essay on Affinities between Music and Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
Erika Arban
Keyword(s):  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Intellectual Structure ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Short Essay

It is often believed that law and the arts have very little in common, since law is perceived as a rather formalistic and inaccessible subject incapable of eliciting emotions in the same way as the arts. This article, however, aspires to offer a different picture : by exploring music in its interconnectedness with law, it condenses the main arguments discussed by literature to ultimately show that law and music may reveal, after all, surprising affinities, so that some thought-provoking parallels between them can be made. Similarly, the paper strives to find points of connection between law and music in order to show the profound resiliency of law as an academic discipline. Finally, the paper advances the idea that the unbridgeable distance between the two disciplines exists (partially) in appearance only and that, in spite of its allegedly technical nature, law is a very flexible field of knowledge whose intellectual structure can influence and inform other creative processes.

Similarities and Contrasts in the Creative Processes of the Sciences and the Arts

Leonardo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Guillemin
Keyword(s):  
Art And Science ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
The Arts

The author describes his experiences as first a scientist and later an early digital artist, which led him to recognize both similarities and contrasts in the thinking and practice of art and science.

scholarly journals Poéticas em arte sonora: entrevista com Paulo Nenflidio

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Roseane Yampolschi ◽  
Clayton Mamedes ◽  
Paulo Nenflidio
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Technical School ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
The University ◽  
Artistic Research

Paulo Nenflidio, in his biographic note, presents himself as an artist who works at the intersection between art, science and technology. A multiple and inventive artist, his works comprise sculptures, installations, objects, instruments and drawings in which sound, electronics, movement, construction, invention, randomness, physics, control, automatons, and workaround come together as elements of artistic expression. Paulo Nenflidio holds a degree in Fine Arts from the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo and is an electronics technician graduated from the Lauro Gomes Technical School in São Bernardo do Campo. Born in São Bernardo do Campo, the artist maintains his studio in this city. In this interview, we seek to deepen our study about the poetics of Paulo Nenflidio's works. How his creative trajectory developed, conceptual inspirations that guided the development of his creative processes and his artistic research, as well as the role of sound and silence as forms of poetic expression are issues addressed in this conversation. This interview was conducted by email, between the 20th and 24th of July 2021.

scholarly journals SASTRA LISAN DALAM PERKEMBANGAN TEKNOLOGI MEDIA: STUDI TERHADAP TRADISI SALAWAT DULANG DI MINANGKABAU

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Eka Meigalia ◽  
Yerri Satria Putra
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Media Technology ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The People ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
Data Source

This paper explains the conditions of oral literature when dealing with the development of media technology. In addition, it explains the use of technologies and media developments in this digital era by oral literary actors in their creative processes for the continuity of tradition. For this reason, the tradition of salawat dulang which developed in Minangkabau was used as the primary data source for the study. The method in this research will be a qualitative. Meanwhile the technique of data collection is done by observation, interviews, and literature review. Based on the research conducted, salawat dulang is one of the oral literature that is able to survive because of its ability to adapt to technological developments. The text that is spoken is always updated according to the tastes of the people that are obtained by speakers through media such as television, radio or social media. Social media was used by speakers as a means of promotion and publication of their activities in the arts.

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