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 Life Signs Detector Using a Drone in Disaster Zones

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 2441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Al-Naji ◽  
Asanka G. Perera ◽  
Saleem Latteef Mohammed ◽  
Javaan Chahl
Keyword(s):  
Vision System ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Image Sequences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Computer Vision System ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Life Detection ◽  
Difficult Terrain

In the aftermath of a disaster, such as earthquake, flood, or avalanche, ground search for survivors is usually hampered by unstable surfaces and difficult terrain. Drones now play an important role in these situations, allowing rescuers to locate survivors and allocate resources to saving those who can be helped. The aim of this study was to explore the utility of a drone equipped for human life detection with a novel computer vision system. The proposed system uses image sequences captured by a drone camera to remotely detect the cardiopulmonary motion caused by periodic chest movement of survivors. The results of eight human subjects and one mannequin in different poses shows that motion detection on the body surface of the survivors is likely to be useful to detect life signs without any physical contact. The results presented in this study may lead to a new approach to life detection and remote life sensing assessment of survivors.

scholarly journals As Fast as Possible Rather Than Well Protected: Experiences of Football Clothes

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viveka Berggren Torell
Keyword(s):  
Human Subjects ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Football Clubs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Textile Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Phenomenological View

With Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological view that human beings ’take in’ the world and experience themselves as subjects through their bodies as a starting point, players in both men’s and women’s teams, kit men, purchasing managers, sporting directors, and a coach from Swedish football clubs have been interviewed about their perceptions and experiences of football clothing. Since the body is both a feeling and knowing entity, clothes are seen as components of body techniques, facilitating or restricting body movements in a material way, but also as creators of senses, like lightness and security; in both ways, influencing the knowledge in action that playing football is. In this article, the content of the interviews is discussed in relation to health. When clothes are primarily related to a biomedical view that health means no injuries and illnesses, warm pants and shin guards are mentioned by players, who are rather ambivalent to both, since these garments counteract a feeling of lightness that is connected to the perception of speed. Players want to be fast rather than well protected. If clothes, instead, are interpreted as related to a broad conception of health, including mental, social, and physical components, the relation body–space-in-between–clothes seems to be an important aspect of clothing. Dressed in a sports uniform, unable to choose individual details, the feeling of subjectivity is related to wearing ’the right-size’ clothes. Also new textile technology, like injury-preventing and speed-increasing tight compression underwear, is perceived by players based on feelings that they are human subjects striving for both bodily and psychological well-being.

He Will Wash His Garments in Wine (Gen 49:11)

2021 ◽  
pp. 47-83
Author(s):  
Laura Quick
Keyword(s):  
Special Function ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Body ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Biblical Literature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Ritual Context

This chapter takes its starting point from the notion that, for the biblical authors, clothing and jewellery symbolically encoded the personhood of its wearer. These items could thus manifest and modify the body in ritual contexts. As such, the manipulation and destruction of clothing items in the ritual context took on a heavy symbolic value. After the ritual use of textiles in the wider ancient Near East is explored, this insight is shown to explicate a number of the more difficult references to clothing in biblical literature. Moreover, since the production of textiles was gendered in the ancient world, this special function of clothing provided women with agency in ritual and religious settings. In these texts, textiles afford women with the means to become experts in rituals associated with life and death. These references therefore attest to the use of clothing and textiles in an important but largely unacknowledged aspect of female ritual expertise.

scholarly journals Doubling, Decay and Discontinuity: Pathology and the (post)human body in Marie Darrieussecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francoise Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Cloning Technology ◽  
The Human Condition

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Research Recommendations for Applying Vitamin A-Labelled Isotope Dilution Techniques to Improve Human Vitamin A Nutrition

2014 ◽  
Vol 84 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 52-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry A. Tanumihardjo ◽  
Anura V. Kurpad ◽  
Janet R. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Vitamin A ◽  
Vitamin A Deficiency ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
The Body ◽  
Pool Size ◽  
Serum Retinol ◽  
Vitamin A Status ◽  
Status Assessment ◽  
Total Body

The current use of serum retinol concentrations as a measurement of subclinical vitamin A deficiency is unsatisfactory for many reasons. The best technique available for vitamin A status assessment in humans is the measurement of total body pool size. Pool size is measured by the administration of retinol labelled with stable isotopes of carbon or hydrogen that are safe for human subjects, with subsequent measurement of the dilution of the labelled retinol within the body pool. However, the isotope techniques are time-consuming, technically challenging, and relatively expensive. There is also a need to assess different types of tracers and doses, and to establish clear guidelines for the use and interpretation of this method in different populations. Field-friendly improvements are desirable to encourage the application of this technique in developing countries where the need is greatest for monitoring the risk of vitamin A deficiency, the effectiveness of public health interventions, and the potential of hypervitaminosis due to combined supplement and fortification programs. These techniques should be applied to validate other less technical methods of assessing vitamin A deficiency. Another area of public health relevance for this technique is to understand the bioconversion of β-carotene to vitamin A, and its relation to existing vitamin A status, for future dietary diversification programs.

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.

The Meaning of Children's Poetry: A Cognitive Approach

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Coats
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Holding Environment ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Children's Poetry

Critical attention to children's poetry has been hampered by the lack of a clear sense of what a children's poem is and how children's poetry should be valued. Often, it is seen as a lesser genre in comparison to poetry written for adults. This essay explores the premises and contradictions that inform existing critical discourse on children's poetry and asserts that a more effective way of viewing children's poetry can be achieved through cognitive poetics rather than through comparisons with adult poetry. Arguing that children's poetry preserves the rhythms and pleasures of the body in language and facilitates emotional and physical attunement with others, the essay examines the crucial role children's poetry plays in creating a holding environment in language to help children manage their sensory environments, map and regulate their neurological functions, contain their existential anxieties, and participate in communal life.

scholarly journals Reconciling Loss Aversion and Gain Seeking in Judged Emotions

2021 ◽  
pp. 096372142199204
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Mellers ◽  
Siyuan Yin ◽  
Jonathan Z. Berman
Keyword(s):  
Loss Aversion ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Negative Change ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Status ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
Negative Feelings

Is the pain of a loss greater in magnitude than the pleasure of a comparable gain? Studies that compare positive feelings about a gain with negative feelings about a comparable loss have found mixed answers to this question. The pain of a loss can be greater than, less than, or equal to the pleasure of a comparable gain. We offer a new approach to test hedonic loss aversion. This method uses emotional reactions to the reference point, a positive change, and a negative change. When we manipulated the reference point (i.e., pleasurable and painful), two distinct patterns emerged. Pain surpassed pleasure (loss aversion) when the reference point was positive, and pleasure exceeded pain (gain seeking) when the reference point was negative. A reference-dependent version of prospect theory accounts for the results. If the carriers of utility are changes from a reference point—not necessarily the status quo—both loss aversion and gain seeking are predicted. Loss aversion and gain seeking can be reconciled if you take the starting point into account.

Locomotory Diseases Influence on Body Equilibrium and Balance

2014 ◽  
Vol 555 ◽  
pp. 652-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbu Cristian Braun ◽  
Ileana Constanta Rosca
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Force Plate ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Method ◽  
First Person ◽  
Mass Center ◽  
Stability Problems ◽  
Research Stage

The paper describes a new method of body equilibrium evaluation applied for different human subjects, the principal aim being to demonstrate to what extent any locomotory diseases could influence the body stability and equilibrium. The research refers to identify some persons with different locomotory diseases and to find both the influence on equilibrium and stability and if possible to improve them. Our research stage, synthesized in this paper, explains the body equilibrium evaluation in orthostatic posture done for different subjects, aged between 20 and 40 years. A number of 10 relevant persons were considered to be evaluated, 2 of them having some locomotory diseases. The first person presents any neuro-motor stability problems in case of long standing case. The other person has both Achilles tendons torn and operated. All subjects were tested in orthostatic posture, in 3 distinct positions, using a Kistler force plate. The experiments referred to the body mass center (COM) displacement in sagittal and lateral planes, representing an interesting characteristic for its equilibrium. It was shown that the person with diseases affecting stability presented a loss of equilibrium when standing for 10-20 seconds, i.e. higher COM displacements in both planes reported to the other tested subjects.

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