scholarly journals Corporeal Musical Structure: A Gestural-Kinesthetic Approach to Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Ho
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Trace Forms ◽  
Starting Point

The music of Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketch II (1994) entails a procession of discrete gestures that are delineated by moments of repose. The performer’s grasp of the piece lies in its physicality of movement: each gesture and in-between stillness are both heard and felt as an aggregate of velocities, directions, and intentions of the body. Drawing upon Carrie Noland’s concept of “vitality affects,” I take the performative gesture, encompassing both visually accessible movement and inwardly felt kinesthesia, as a starting point for the analysis of Rain Tree Sketch II. Concepts of effort and shape taken from Rudolf Laban’s dance theory provide a framework for creating a new methodology of enhanced trace-forms to analyze gesture and kinesthesia. The analysis of gestures reveals the coexistence of opposite effort qualities and shapes in an expanded corporeal space, resonating with Takemitsu’s ideal of reconciling contradictory sounds, as noted in his collection of essays Confronting Silence (1995). Husserl’s notions of retention and protention, viewed through the lens of embodiment, and Laban’s concepts of effort states and effort recovery are brought to bear on the still moments, showing the piece to have a throbbing, embodied rhythmic structural arc. This new methodology centering on gestural-kinesthetic details provides the tools to articulate structural sensations that are often overlooked but lie at the center of musical experience.

Revaluations through Dance: Friedrich Nietzsche's Thought in Isadora Duncan's Speech The Dance of the Future

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-219
Author(s):  
Meindert E. Peters
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Eternal Recurrence ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Mind

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence on Isadora Duncan's work, in particular his idea of the Dionysian, has been widely discussed, especially in regard to her later work. What has been left underdeveloped in critical examinations of her work, however, is his influence on her earlier choreographic work, which she defended in a famous speech held in 1903 called The Dance of the Future. While commentators often describe this speech as ‘Nietzschean’, Duncan's autobiography suggests that she only studied Nietzsche's work after this speech. I take this incongruity as a starting point to explore the connections between her speech and Nietzsche's work, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I argue that in subject and language Duncan's speech resembles Nietzsche's in important ways. This article will draw attention to the ways in which Duncan takes her cues from Nietzsche in bringing together seemingly conflicting ideas of religion and an overturning of morality; Nietzsche's notion of eternal recurrence and the teleology present in his idea of the Übermensch; and a renegotiation of the body's relation to the mind. In doing so, this article contributes not only to scholarship on Duncan's early work but also to discussions of Nietzsche's reception in the early twentieth century. Moreover, the importance Duncan ascribes to the body in dance and expression also asks for a new understanding of Nietzsche's own way of expressing his philosophy.

Towards a structural understanding of drug and peptide transport within the proton-dependent oligopeptide transporter (POT) family

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 1353-1358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Newstead
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Anticancer Agents ◽  
Targeted Delivery ◽  
Drug Transport ◽  
Structural Information ◽  
Sequence Similarity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Peptide Transport ◽  
Peptide Transporter ◽  
Starting Point

One of the principal aims of modern drug design is the targeted delivery of drugs within the body, such as to the central nervous system, combined with their exclusion from the liver and kidneys, which break down foreign molecules and subsequently eliminate them. Many of the commonly prescribed drugs are transported into cells and across the plasma membrane via endogenous membrane transporters, whose principal roles are the uptake of essential nutrients for metabolism. In many cases, such drug transport is serendipitous as they are simply mistaken as ‘natural’ compounds. Many of these transporters could, however, be targeted more efficiently, improving drug absorption, distribution and retention. The molecular details of these drug–transporter interactions, however, are at best poorly understood, in large part through the absence of any high-resolution structural information. To address this issue, we recently determined the structure of a prokaryotic peptide transporter, PepTSo from Shewanella oneidensis, which shares a high degree of sequence similarity and functional characteristics with the human PepT1 and PepT2 proteins. PepT1 and PepT2 contribute significantly to the oral bioavailability and pharmacokinetic properties of a number of important drug families, including antibiotics, antivirals and anticancer agents. The crystal structure of PepTSo provides the first high-resolution model of a drug importer and provides the starting point for understanding drug and peptide transport within the human body.

scholarly journals MRI Study on Tibial Nerve of the Ankle Canal and Its Branches: A method of multiplanar reconstruction with 3D-FIESTA-C sequences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Zhang ◽  
Xucheng He ◽  
Juan Li ◽  
Ju Ye ◽  
Wenjuan Han ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibial Nerve ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
The Body ◽  
Multiplanar Reconstruction ◽  
Medial Malleolus ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Medial Plantar Nerve ◽  
Lateral Plantar Nerve ◽  
Good Imaging ◽  
Starting Point

Abstract Background The display of tibial nerve and its branches in the ankle canal is helpful for the diagnosis of local lesions and compression, and also for clinical observation and surgical planning.The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of three-dimensional dual-excitation balanced steady-state free precession sequence (3D-FIESTA-C) multiplanar reconstruction (MPR) display of tibial nerve and its branches of the ankle canal. Methods The subjects were 20 healthy volunteers (40 ankles), aged 22–50, with no history of ankle joint desease. 3D-FIESTA-C sequence was used in the 3.0t magnetic resonance equipment for imaging. During the scanning, each foot was at a 90-degree angle to the tibia.The tibial nerve of the ankle canal and its branches were displayed and measured at the same level through multiplanar reconstruction. Results Most of the tibial nerve bifurcation points were located in the ankle canal (57.5%), few (42.5%) were located at the proximal end of the ankle canal, and none was found away from the distal end. The bifurcation between the medial plantar nerve and the lateral plantar nerve is on the line between the tip of the medial malleolus and the calcaneus, and it’s angle is between 6° and 35°.The average cross-sectional diameter of the medial plantar nerve is about mm, and the lateral plantar nerve about mm. In MPR images, the display rates of both the medial calcaneal nerve and the subcalcaneal nerve were 100%, and the starting point of the subcalcaneal nerve was always at the distal end of the starting point of the medial calcaneal nerve. In 55% of cases, there were more than 2 medial calcaneal nerve innervations. Conclusion The 3D-FIESTA-C MPR can display the morphological features and positions of tibial nerve and its branches and the bifurcation point’s projection position on the body surface can be marked. This method not only benefited the imaging diagnosis of tibial nerve and branch-related lesions of the ankle canal, but also provided a good imaging basis to plan the clinical operation of the ankle canal and avoid surgical injury.

scholarly journals Human Machines Petrified: Play's Mineral Mechanics and Les statues meurent aussi

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Olga Beloborodova ◽  
Pim Verhulst
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
The Body ◽  
French Translation ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Mechanical Devices ◽  
Sentient Beings

Play is usually regarded as the starting point of Beckett's late theatre, introducing a radically new approach to the body and language that set a benchmark for subsequent plays such as Not I, That Time and Footfalls. Building on Krapp's Last Tape and Happy Days, Play dehumanizes its characters by means of the audiovisual technologies that Beckett was experimenting with at the time. In this process, his human subjects are increasingly reduced to mechanical devices or mouthpieces for the conveyance of speech, instead of represented as recognizable and sentient beings of flesh and blood. The nonhuman aspect of Play is enhanced by its foregrounding of Beckett's long-standing fascination with the mineral, with the characters' faces being ‘so lost to age and aspect as to seem almost part of the urns’. Whereas, separately, the influence of radio, television and cinema on Play has received some critical attention, and James Knowlson, Claire Lozier, Mark Nixon, Jean-Michel Rabaté and Conor Carville, among others, have noted Beckett's fascination with the sculptural arts and the inorganic, this paper aims to merge those two strands by discussing the docufilm Les statues meurent aussi (1953) as a potential but overlooked source of inspiration. By combining the technological and the sculptural in Play, Beckett stages a ‘mineral mechanics’ verging closely on the nonhuman without being fully dehumanized, as characters continue to laugh and hiccup, barely retaining a trace of their humanity. This oscillation from the human to the nonhuman and vice versa is clearly traceable in the genesis of the text, as well as its French translation (Comédie). The result, Play's iconic stage image, is marked by the familiar Beckettian trope of in-betweenness: between life and death, between the organic and the mineral, between the natural and the technological.

scholarly journals Brain as agent and conscious mind as action guide: from Libet-style experiments to necessary conditions for free will

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
Jonas Gonçalves Coelho
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
General View ◽  
Conscious Mind ◽  
Sociocultural Environment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Conscious Intention ◽  
The Brain

Many neuroscientific experiments, based on monitoring brain activity, suggest that it is possible to predict the conscious intention/choice/decision of an agent before he himself knows that. Some neuroscientists and philosophers interpret the results of these experiments as showing that free will is an illusion, since it is the brain and not the conscious mind that intends/chooses/decides. Assuming that the methods and results of these experiments are reliable the question is if they really show that free will is an illusion. To address this problem, I argue that first it is needed to answer three questions related to the relationship between conscious mind and brain: 1. Do brain events cause conscious events? 2. Do conscious events cause brain events? 3. Who is the agent, that is, who consciously intends/chooses/ decides, the conscious mind, the brain, or both? I answer these questions by arguing that the conscious mind is a property of the brain due to which the brain has the causal capacity to interact adaptively with its body, and trough the body, with the physical and sociocultural environment. In other words, the brain is the agent and the conscious mind, in its various forms - cognitive, volitional and emotional - and contents, is its guide of action. Based on this general view I argue that the experiments aforementioned do not show that free will is an illusion, and as a starting point for examining this problem I point out, from some exemplary situations, what I believe to be some of the necessary conditions for free will.Key-words: Agent brain, conscious mind, free will, Libet-style experiments.

scholarly journals Global and Comparative Leadership

Management ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Von Glinow ◽  
William D. Schneper
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Organizational Performance ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Global Leadership ◽  
The Body ◽  
Leadership Theories ◽  
Business Context ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Definition Of

The body of research related to global leadership is both vast and confounding. Some observers trace the field’s domain back thousands of years to the first rulers and military commanders with worldwide aspirations or to religious and spiritual figures such as Abraham, Laozi, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad. Within the business context, the literature is considerably younger but still includes some of the earliest international management classics, such as Perlmutter 1969 (cited under Global Mindset) and Levitt 1983 (cited under Globalization). Despite the accomplishments of past research, critics contend that our understanding of global leadership has progressed too slowly. Joyce Osland, in Osland 2008 (cited under Developing Global Leaders and Ensuring Effectiveness), compares the state of the field to the earliest phases of domestic leadership scholarship. Indeed, the bulk of the literature remains conceptual, normative, and prescriptive. There is a scarcity of rigorous ethnographic work, and quantitative studies often focus more on measuring and comparing rather than developing and testing complex theory. Even the definition of global leadership is uncertain. This is partially due to the breadth and diversity of leadership research in general. As Ralph Stogdill noted as far back as 1974, “there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept” (Handbook of Leadership, New York: Free Press, p. 259). Hollenbeck 2009 (cited under Traditional Leadership Theories) finds global leadership to be “even more mysterious, with something about the term that beckons interested writers and researchers to offer their own definitions. There is a temptation to dance on the head of a definitional pin” (p. 5). In other words, the definition of global leadership depends on one’s personal inclinations and theoretical starting point. Global leadership means something different to managers and policymakers, as it does for scholars in organizational behavior, strategy, or psychology. To encompass such diverse perspectives, we define global leadership broadly as the capacity to bring about change and enhance organizational performance across national borders. This capacity in turn requires the skills and acumen to influence and energize employees, business partners, and other organizational stakeholders. Closely related and overlapping with the study of global leadership, the cross-country or comparative leadership field explores the similarities and differences in leadership traits and practices across countries, which helps explain the aspects of leadership that are generally universal across countries, or largely dependent upon the unique institutional and country context.

The Role of Bodily Movement in Learning and Performing Music: Applications for Education

2012 ◽  
pp. 768-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane W. Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Body Movement ◽  
The Body ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Performance Skills ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Bodily Movement ◽  
Musical Knowledge ◽  
And Performance

This article explores the fundamental role of bodily movement in the development of musical knowledge and performance skills; in particular, how the body can be used to understand expressive musical material and to communicate that meaning to coperformers and audience. The relevance to the educator is explored (whether working with a child or adult beginner, or a more advanced learner). The article is divided into six main sections, tracing the role of body movement skill in music production, expressive musical performance, developing learners to play their musical instruments with technical and expressive appropriateness, coperformer coordination, and projection for audience perception. The work builds on a growing interest in the embodied nature of musical experience. The article concludes with case study observations of practical insights and applications for the teacher.

The Peri-Renal Tissue of Protopterus A Contribution to the History of the Adrenal

1956 ◽  
Vol s3-97 (37) ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
W. HOLMES ◽  
D. E. MOORHOUSE
Keyword(s):  
Small Diameter ◽  
Renal Tissue ◽  
Body Cavity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Round Cell ◽  
East African ◽  
Cell Tissue ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Eosinophil Granulocytes

The animal studied was the lungfish Protopterus aethiopicus; the investigation was histological and cytochemical, the material being freshly taken from East African lakes. The peri-renal tissue is a substantial organ which, because it surrounds the kidney, extends through the greater part of the body cavity. Those who have investigated its structure in recent years have considered it to be a haematopoietic organ. A wide variety of histological, histochemical, and haematological techniques was used. The organ is shown to contain five characteristic kinds of tissue; these are named: lipid, endothelial, pigmented, round-cell, and steroid tissue respectively. The lipid tissue is characterized by cytoplasmic liposomes--droplets containing phospholipid. In one type of cell, the ‘small lipid cell’, which may be related to the eosinophil granulocytes of the blood, the droplets have a relatively small diameter. In a second type, the ‘large lipid cell’, the droplets grow to a much larger diameter, and show evidence of cycles of activity involving increase and disappearance of the phospholipid. Histochemical interpretations are made difficult by the finding that this phospholipid does not colour with Sudan black. The endothelial tissue is composed of phagocytic (macrophage) cells some of which are elongated and line vascular sinusoids while others are spherical and contain larger inclusions. These inclusions have some lipid characteristics and may be a manifestation of the translocation of lipid within the organ. The pigmented tissue is composed of melanophores and of a second, round, type of cell which shows evidence of relationship with the macrophage system. Both kinds of cell contain ‘melanin’; the second also has inclusions with different histochemical properties. The round-cell tissue, found in nodules, has a general resemblance to lymphoid tissue. It is doubtful whether its cells are lymphocytes, but it has not been found possible to characterize them in any other way. The steroid tissue is composed of cells which react positively to the histochemical tests comprised in the ‘steroid repertoire’, as used in the study of the mammalian adrenal. Attention is drawn to technical difficulties which may have confused the study of the peri-renal tissue as a haematopoietic organ. The connexion between the lipid tissue and circulating granulocytes has features which distinguish it from the processes of granulocyte formation in the spleen. There are strong indications of an evolutionary connexion between peri-renal tissue and the cortex of the adrenal gland of higher animals. The lungfish may offer the best starting-point for the study of the comparative histology of the adrenal of tetrapods. The association between lipid, steroid, haematopoietic, macrophage, and pigment tissue has parallels in function in the complex interrelations of the mammalian adrenal.

Reading Signs and Symbols with Abdelkébir Khatibi

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-260
Author(s):  
Rim Feriani ◽  
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani ◽  
Debra Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

This chapter considers the ways in which Khatibi’s practices of reading contribute to theories of meaning through his thinking on the deciphering of signs and symbols and of making sense of the world, and of the worlds of the text, in their multifaceted forms. It takes as its starting point what Khatibi terms, in his introductory essay ‘Le Cristal du Texte’ in La Bessure du Nom propre, ‘l’intersémiotique’, migrant signs which move between one sign system and another. Khatibi takes as his own project examples from semiotic systems found within Arabic and Islamic cultures, from both popular culture, such as the tattoo, to calligraphy and the language of the Koran, from the body to the text and beyond – including storytelling, mosaics, urban space, textiles. His readings reveal the intersemiotic and polysemic meanings created in the movements of these migrant signs between their sign systems. For Khatibi, this ‘infinity’ of the ‘text’ is linked also to a mobile and migrant identity refracted in the multifaceted surfaces of the crystal (hence the title of the essay – ‘Le Cristal du Texte’) rather than in one reflection as in a mirror. Moving from these concerns of Khatibi with which he develops his radical theory of the sign, of the word and of writing, the chapter goes on to propose new readings of a selection of other writers with a shared, but varied, relationship to their Islamic heritage. These are writers working with and through that heritage – and importantly, as for Khatibi, including the Sufi heritage – and whose writing is also resonant with Khatibi’s intersemiotic theoretical and cultural project concerned with the individual and the collective, the historical and the contemporary, the political, the social and the linguistic.

Mountstuart Elphinstone, Colonial Knowledge and ‘Frontier Governmentality’ in Northwest India, 1849–1878

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Martin J. Bayly
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Northwest India ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Colonial Governmentality

With the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849 following the disasters of the First Anglo-Afghan War, Mountstuart Elphinstone's "An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul", and those of his intellectual successors, became "useful knowledge", and found a fertile administrative environment in the management of India's northwest frontier. According to this logic of government, frontier spaces could be tamed through adequate knowledge and understanding of their indigenous populations, part of a wider assemblage of power that has been referred to in Foucauldian terms as "frontier governmentality". Taking this concept as its starting point, this chapter turns its attention to the procurement, evolution, and use of colonial knowledge as part of this wider project of frontier governance. If "frontier governmentality" differed from "colonial governmentality", then what made it distinct? By studying the trajectories of the body of colonial knowledge initiated by Mountstuart Elphinstone and his intellectual successors, new understandings of colonial power in frontier spaces start to emerge through the lens of "governmentality", offering key insights into the modalities of colonial government in so-called "peripheral" areas, and the role played by "colonial knowledge" as part of this assemblage of power.

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