«WITHOUT MEASURE AND WITHOUT ANALOGY»: THE TRADITION OF THE DIVINE BODY IN 2 (SLAVONIC) ENOCH

Scrinium ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-257
Author(s):  
Andrei A. Orlov
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Divine Body

The artice investigates the origins of the Shiccur Qomah tradition. This tradition depicts visionaries, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiba, receiving from the supreme angel Metatron revelations of the «measurement of the body» (in Hebrew, Shiccur Qomah), an anthropomorphic description of the Deity together with the mystical names of its gigantic limbs. Although the majority of the evidence of the the Shiccur Qomah tradition survived in late Jewish writings, Gershom Scholem argued that the beginning of Shiccur Qomah speculations can be found in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch where one can find the description of the appearance of the Lord as a terrifying extent analogous to the human form. The article develops Scholem's hypothesis arguing that the traditions about the divine body in 2 Enoch were shaped by the early Adamic traditions. The portrayal of the prelapsarian Adam found in the longer recension of 2 Enoch reveals fascinating similarities to the later Shiccur Qomah descriptions.

Making Up 3D Bodies

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Kiona Hagen Niehaus ◽  
Rebecca Fiebrink
Keyword(s):  
Software Tool ◽  
The Body ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Modeling Systems ◽  
Exploratory Approach ◽  
Disability Status ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Impact

This paper describes the process of developing a software tool for digital artistic exploration of 3D human figures. Previously available software for modeling mesh-based 3D human figures restricts user output based on normative assumptions about the form that a body might take, particularly in terms of gender, race, and disability status, which are reinforced by ubiquitous use of range-limited sliders mapped to singular high-level design parameters. CreatorCustom, the software prototype created during this research, is designed to foreground an exploratory approach to modeling 3D human bodies, treating the digital body as a sculptural landscape rather than a presupposed form for rote technical representation. Building on prior research into serendipity in Human-Computer Interaction and 3D modeling systems for users at various levels of proficiency, among other areas, this research comprises two qualitative studies and investigation of the impact on the first author's artistic practice. Study 1 uses interviews and practice sessions to explore the practices of six queer artists working with the body and the language, materials, and actions they use in their practice; these then informed the design of the software tool. Study 2 investigates the usability, creativity support, and bodily implications of the software when used by thirteen artists in a workshop. These studies reveal the importance of exploration and unexpectedness in artistic practice, and a desire for experimental digital approaches to the human form.

The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance

1994 ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Caroline Evans ◽  
Kathleen Adler ◽  
Marcia Pointon ◽  
Lynda Nead
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Form

The Body Breached: Post-Soviet Masculinity on Screen

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Goscilo
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Soviet Cinema ◽  
Material Values

Whereas the utopian male body of the Soviet Imaginary hyperbolized and recast in steel or bronze the anatomical ideals of classical antiquity (Mikhail Bakhtin’s ‘closed body’), post-Soviet cinema typically has featured a male corporeality resembling the open body of apertures and protruberances posited by Bakhtin, but as degraded, marred, and vulnerable (Kenneth Clark) rather than celebratory or regenerative. Thus the indomitable heroes of hypertrophied bulk, brawn, and beauty in Stalinist films such as Grigorii Aleksandrov’s Circus (1936), Mikhail Kalatozov’s Valerii Chkalov (1941), and Mikheil Chiaureli’s Fall of Berlin (1949) have been superseded by the dramatically violated and traumatized physiques of protagonists in recent films confronting war—Aleksandr Nevzorov’s Purgatory (1998 ), Valerii Todorovskii’s My Stepbrother Frankenstein (2004), Aleksandr Veledinskii’s Alive (2006)—and those reassessing the Stalinist era: Aleksei German’s Khrustalev, the Car (1998) and Pavel Livnev’s Hammer and Sickle (1994). Indeed, the latter explicitly deconstructs the forcible transformation of Soviet citizenry into fantastic icons of Stakhanovite virility and its tragic consequences. Similarly, post-Soviet onscreen crime devastates the male body, and nowhere more vividly than in Filipp Iankovskii’s Lermontov-indebted Sword Bearer (2006), which violently imprints all contemporary experience, most of it lethal, on the human form in a world ruled by material values and devoid of communal ideals.

Fractured and Effaced Façades

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-185
Author(s):  
Ron J. Popenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Deprivation ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Antonin Artaud ◽  
Body Form ◽  
Dynamic Expression ◽  
Marc Chagall ◽  
Dynamic Form ◽  
The Face ◽  
Involuntary Displacement

The rise of Fascism in Europe and its aftermath rest ever in the background of Chapter Six and its collection of ‘Disfigured Bodies’. The face and gaze of Antonin Artaud best characterises the tone of this series of violent destructions, lost ones and the isolated (like Picasso in occupied Paris). Amid ‘Veiled and Displaced Faces’ and ‘Empty Gazes’, involuntary displacement and sensory deprivation haunt representations of the human form. The head and human figures presented here are almost unrecognisable when re-conceived by a metteur en scène like Étienne Decroux or a sculptor like Alberto Giacometti. Marc Chagall, in exile, invents fantasy forms that masquerade the figures of opera and ballet performers with colourful, cushioned exteriors in magical scenographic spaces. Experimentation with actor as object manipulator or manipulacteur, like the scenographic, dynamic form in some of Jacques Lecoq’s work, displace dynamic expression to ‘things’ outside of the body form itself. In Chapter Six, some non-verbal performers search for statements beyond language: texts in the materiality of space itself. The abstracted silhouette speaks as depersonalised, masquerading image.

The Werewolf, Inside and Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-108
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Inner Core ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Human Element ◽  
The Core ◽  
Opposite Process ◽  
Human Flesh

Ancient werewolf thinking was strongly articulated in accordance with an axis between an inside and an outside, in three ways. First, the werewolf was often understood as a combination of an outer carapace and an inner core: more often the human element formed the carapace, and the lupine element the core, but the opposite arrangement could also obtain. Usually the humanoid carapace was identified, awkwardly, with the werewolf’s human clothing, and the wolf was revealed once this was shed; but sometimes, perhaps, the wolf could be more deeply buried within, as in the cases of those, like Aristomenes, that boasted a hairy heart. The inner and outer form could be pinned together, as it were, by an identifying wound; it is also possible that the belief that a wound could force a werewolf back into human form existed already in the ancient world. Secondly, a werewolf transformation, in either direction, could be effected by the taking of a foodstuff within the body: a man could be transformed into a werewolf by eating an (enchanted?) piece of bread, or the food most appropriate to a wolf, human flesh; he could be transformed back into a man either by abstinence from human flesh or by the equal-and-opposite process of eating a wolf’s heart. And, thirdly, it was the impulse of the werewolf, when transformed from man to wolf, to make a bolt from the inner places of humanity and civilisation for the outer places of the wilderness and the forest.

The costume of MoCap: A spatial collision of velcro, avatar and Oskar Schlemmer

Scene ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-232
Author(s):  
Matt Delbridge
Keyword(s):  
Motion Capture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Mathematical Properties ◽  
Victor Turner ◽  
Spatial Discourse ◽  
Screen Space ◽  
Contemporary Practice ◽  
A Performance

The rationale that governs motion of the organic in the cubical leans towards a transformation of the body in space, emphasizes its mathematical properties and highlights the potential to measure and plot movement – this is the work of a Motion Capture (MoCap) system. The translation in the MoCap studio from physical to virtual is facilitated by the MoCap suit, a device that determines the abstract cubical representation that drives first the neutral, and then the characterized avatar in screen space. The enabling nature of the suit, as apparatus, is a spatial phenomenon informed by Schlemmer’s abstract ‘native’ costume and his vision of the Tanzermensch as the most appropriate form to occupy cubical space. The MoCap suit is similarly native. It bridges the physical and virtual, provides a Victor Turner like threshold and connection between environments, enacting a spatial discourse facilitated by costume. This collision of Velcro, Avatar and Oskar Schlemmer allows a performance of space, binding historical modernity to contemporary practice. This performance of activated space is captured by a costume that endures, in Dorita Hannah’s words, despite the human form.

scholarly journals Body composition inPan paniscuscompared withHomo sapienshas implications for changes during human evolution

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (24) ◽  
pp. 7466-7471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne L. Zihlman ◽  
Debra R. Bolter
Keyword(s):  
Body Composition ◽  
Muscle Mass ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Soft Tissues ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The Body ◽  
Lower Limbs ◽  
Relative Mass ◽  
Human Form

The human body has been shaped by natural selection during the past 4–5 million years. Fossils preserve bones and teeth but lack muscle, skin, fat, and organs. To understand the evolution of the human form, information about both soft and hard tissues of our ancestors is needed. Our closest living relatives of the genusPanprovide the best comparative model to those ancestors. Here, we present data on the body composition of 13 bonobos (Pan paniscus) measured during anatomical dissections and compare the data withHomo sapiens. These comparative data suggest that both females and males (i) increased body fat, (ii) decreased relative muscle mass, (iii) redistributed muscle mass to lower limbs, and (iv) decreased relative mass of skin during human evolution. Comparison of soft tissues betweenPanandHomoprovides new insights into the function and evolution of body composition.

scholarly journals Developing Real Avatars for the Apparel Industry and Analysing Fabric Draping in the Virtual Domain

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Balach ◽  
Agnieszka Cichocka ◽  
Iwona Frydrych ◽  
Marc Kinsella
Keyword(s):  
Computer Games ◽  
Body Shape ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Apparel Industry ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Form ◽  
The Real ◽  
Virtual Domain ◽  
Industry Needs

Abstract The youth of today are much more technologically adept than previous generations. This has led to many technological innovations, and the development of these innovations has in turn altered our perception of the world. The film, gaming, and clothing industries have been forced to embrace new technology to satisfy the demand of people for a more realistic virtual experience. These industries all rely on the use of 3D avatars to create virtual depictions of the human body. In the gaming and film industry, the accuracy of the avatar is not so critical. The avatars used in computer games and CGI sections of films have soft contours, which look visually appealing, but are not necessarily accurate to the human form. By contrast, the apparel industry needs to focus on creating very accurate avatars, which represent each person's body shape for virtual fitting to achieve realistic, well-fitted garments. This article describes the methods used to build an avatar and compares the draping between the following scenarios: the real avatar with a real garment, the real avatar with a virtual garment, and finally the virtual avatar with a virtual garment. This research will help to understand how the body shape can affect the virtual fit.

Elemental Difference and the Climate of the Body

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Anne Parker
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Complex Shape ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
Political Hierarchy ◽  
Ecological Hierarchy ◽  
The One

The polis, the philosophical concept according to which there is one complete human form, is to blame for political and ecological crises. The polis as a philosophical tradition shares the current complex shape of climate change. A certain perfect body figures the denial of matter of the polis. The book presents a philosophy of elemental difference, an affirmation of the singularities of location, movement, living, aging, dying, valuing, in which humans partake. Elemental difference in the polis can be appreciated in the fact that empirical bodily nonidentity can be called upon to elevate one group of bodies among the rest. Empirical bodily nonidentity is a feature of the original articulation of the polis as a philosophical concept in the work of Aristotle. Sylvia Wynter has argued that the very idea of empirical bodily nonidentity begins with the modern science of racial anatomy. She calls this biocentrism. This book argues that biocentrism is a feature of the polis, according to which the one complete body was defined by its capacity for disembodied thought. The sciences of racial anatomy are a more explicit commitment to biocentrism, but the ranking of matter with respect to one complete human, a body that is the site of supra-natural thinking, is a practice that has always characterized the polis. In this way, the polis is responsible for both political and ecological hierarchy. It is as responsible for what is euphemistically called climate change as it is for the political hierarchy that constitutes it.

REPRESENTING, OBJECTIFYING, AND FRAMING THE BODY AT LATE BRONZE AGE KNOSSOS

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELLEN ADAMS
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Human Form ◽  
The World

Abstract This paper explores how the human form is depicted, objectified and contextualized, in order to clarify the complex relationship between ‘representation’ and ‘reality’, and to investigate the various ways the body is bounded. Part one argues that objectification is not always a passive process, but that the body is deliberately presented to the world to be observed and evaluated. Part two focuses on the configuration of bodily boundaries, and how the body is framed, for example, by clothing, architecture and the mortuary context. The wealth and range of evidence (wall paintings, seals and sealings, figurines, stone vases and burials) render Knossos an excellent case study for this approach. This paper asks not who the Knossians were, in terms of identity and ethnicity, but rather how they wanted to be presented to the world and each other.

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