scholarly journals The Peacock Fallacy: Art as a Veblenian Signal

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larissa Mendoza Straffon
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Good Genes ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Indirect Benefits ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
And Function ◽  
Original Concept ◽  
Genetic Fitness

The fact that world-over people seem inexplicably motivated to allocate time and effort to apparently useless cultural practices, like the arts, has led several evolutionary scholars to suggest that these might be costly Zahavian signals correlated with genetic fitness, such as the infamous peacock’s tail. In this paper, I review the fundamental arguments of the hypothesis that art evolved and serves as a costly Zahavian signal. First, I look into the hypothesis that humans exert mate choice for indirect benefits and argue that the data supports mate choice for direct benefits instead. Second, I argue that art practice may well be a costly signal, however not necessarily related to good genes. Third, I suggest that Thorstein Veblen’s original concept of conspicuous signals as social tools to obtain and convey prestige provides a better account than the Zahavian model for the evolution and function of art in society. As a Veblenian signal, art could still have many of the effects suggested for visual art as a Zahavian signal, except not for the indirect benefits of optimal offspring, but for the direct benefits of acquiring and conveying social status.

Female and Male Mate Choice

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-52
Author(s):  
Ingo Schlupp
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Mate Choice ◽  
Female Choice ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Male Mate Choice ◽  
Indirect Benefits ◽  
Short Overview ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
Male Mate

Females choose mating partners for three main reasons: direct benefits, indirect benefits, and compatibility, either genetic or social. In this chapter I am not trying to look at all angles of mate choice, but to give a short overview of female choice to provide a basis for a comparison with male choice. This will highlight what studies are needed to reach a more complete picture of sexual selection. I would summarize the chapter like this: it’s the ecology, stupid.

scholarly journals Aesthetic evolution by mate choice: Darwin's really dangerous idea

2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1600) ◽  
pp. 2253-2265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard O. Prum
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Mate Choice ◽  
Null Model ◽  
Mate Preferences ◽  
Good Genes ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Communication Signal ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
Selection Research ◽  
Aesthetic Evolution

Darwin proposed an explicitly aesthetic theory of sexual selection in which he described mate preferences as a ‘taste for the beautiful’, an ‘aesthetic capacity’, etc. These statements were not merely colourful Victorian mannerisms, but explicit expressions of Darwin's hypothesis that mate preferences can evolve for arbitrarily attractive traits that do not provide any additional benefits to mate choice. In his critique of Darwin, A. R. Wallace proposed an entirely modern mechanism of mate preference evolution through the correlation of display traits with male vigour or viability, but he called this mechanism natural selection. Wallace's honest advertisement proposal was stridently anti-Darwinian and anti-aesthetic. Most modern sexual selection research relies on essentially the same Neo-Wallacean theory renamed as sexual selection. I define the process of aesthetic evolution as the evolution of a communication signal through sensory/cognitive evaluation, which is most elaborated through coevolution of the signal and its evaluation. Sensory evaluation includes the possibility that display traits do not encode information that is being assessed, but are merely preferred. A genuinely Darwinian, aesthetic theory of sexual selection requires the incorporation of the Lande–Kirkpatrick null model into sexual selection research, but also encompasses the possibility of sensory bias, good genes and direct benefits mechanisms.

Dynamic Evolution of Preferences, Strategies, and Traits

Mate Choice ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gil G. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Indirect Selection ◽  
Good Genes ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Multiple Traits ◽  
Genetic Covariance ◽  
Indirect Benefits ◽  
Mode Of Transmission ◽  
Evolution Of Preferences

This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature concerning the co-evolution of chooser preferences and courter traits. It begins by summarizing the simplest scenario for coevolution between traits and preferences. It then reviews the evidence for genetic covariance between traits and preference. The remainder of the chapter discusses adaptive coevolution, mode of transmission and preference-trait coevolution, the limits of indirect selection, compatibility and epistasis, mate choice as an agent of trait evolution, population-level consequences of mate choice, and coevolution of multiple traits and preferences. It suggests that the contribution of good genes, and additive indirect benefits more generally, may be quite small relative to other forms of selection on preference.

scholarly journals Michael O’Brien’s Theological Aesthetics

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 451
Author(s):  
Rebekah Lamb
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Contemporary Artists

This essay introduces and examines aspects of the theological aesthetics of contemporary Canadian artist, Michael D. O’Brien (1948–). It also considers how his philosophy of the arts informs understandings of the Catholic imagination. In so doing, it focuses on his view that prayer is the primary source of imaginative expression, allowing the artist to operate from a position of humble receptivity to the transcendent. O’Brien studies is a nascent field, owing much of its development in recent years to the pioneering work of Clemens Cavallin. Apart from Cavallin, few scholars have focused on O’Brien’s extensive collection of paintings (principally because the first catalogue of his art was only published in 2019). Instead, they have worked on his prodigious output of novels and essays. In prioritising O’Brien’s paintings, this study will assess the relationship between his theological reflections on the Catholic imagination and art practice. By focusing on the interface between theory and practice in O’Brien’s art, this article shows that conversations about the philosophy of the Catholic imagination benefit from attending to the inner standing points of contemporary artists who see in the arts a place where faith and praxis meet. In certain instances, I will include images of O’Brien’s devotional art to further illustrate his contemplative, Christ-centred approach to aesthetics. Overall, this study offers new directions in O’Brien studies and scholarship on the philosophy of the Catholic imagination.

scholarly journals Being-with: Access to Relation, Participation, and Togetherness in Contemporary Art

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Valberg
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Relational Practices ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specific Setting

Being-with is an artistically based research project aimed at applying and studying participatory and relational practices within the arts as well as addressing the esthetical and ethical questions that such practices generate. The participants in Being-with – researchers and artists as well as children, parents, grandparents, siblings and other residents in the small town of Høvåg in Norway – gathered weekly for half a year to experience how aesthetic production may interact with social space and vice versa. The article reflects on what consequences such interaction may have for the conception of art, and its arenas and agendas … when we consider art not only as a reflection of our lives, but also as an agent shaping our lives and changing the social surroundings we are part of. The article relates discourses of aesthetics penned by continental philosophers over the last 50 years to a specific setting in a Nordic contemporary art practice.

scholarly journals This Kinetic World: Rethinking the Grid (Neo-Baroque Calls)

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Lara D. Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Linear Perspective ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Control Society ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Performance Research

In performance research today, as in the 1960s, the pressing question is: how to do things with systems. I return to the grid to attend both sites and modes of cultural practices and techniques� (technologies) that so powerfully harness and transform the control society.� My approach to the grid as dispositif seeks to open familiar dialogues, about variants of subjectivity and presence, to the materialities and devices of systems, structures, and bureaucratic operations. As seeing machine, the grid�s story includes linear perspective, geometricization, and fugitivity. Defined by consistency and contradition, by optics, haptics, and cybernetics, I identify grid logics with the neo-baroque. Exploring the grid through tiling, weaving, seafaring, and curating techniques that link the administrative and the algorithmic state, I discuss the arts of two architectural sites in the port cities of Cartagena, Colombia and Singapore.

When Theatre was for All: the Cork Report, after Ten Years

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (48) ◽  
pp. 367-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Brown ◽  
Rob Brannen
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Senior Lecturer ◽  
Healthy Development ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
And Function ◽  
Theatre Management

By the mid 'eighties, the Thatcher government's public funding restrictions had taken a firm hold, leading to a now familiar position of crisis theatre management. In 1985, under pressure from the profession, the Arts Council of Great Britain commissioned an independent enquiry, the first for sixteen years, to evaluate the needs of the publicly funded theatre and to determine funding priorities. Although the resulting Cork Enquiry was seen by many at the time as a cost-cutting exercise, eight months intensive research and evidence-taking led to a carefully constructed case for a funding increase against an estimated shortfall of up to £13.4 million – and also produced a broad vision of the nature of theatre in England. It is now ten years since the Cork Enquiry delivered its report, with the aim of ensuring the healthy development of an art form placed under severe financial constraint. Here lan Brown and Rob Brannen, Secretary and Assistant Secretary to the Enquiry, provide insight into the Enquiry's setting-up, its process, and formulation of recommendations. In the light of recent consultation exercises, they examine the nature and function of such reports alongside the long-term impact of the Cork Enquiry. lan Brown was Drama Director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1986 to 1994, and is now Professor and Head of the Drama Department at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh. Rob Brannen is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University, Bedford.

scholarly journals It’s All in the Reading

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Déirdre Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

It seems inherent in the nature of contemporary artist’s book production to continue to question the context for the genre in contemporary art practice, notwithstanding the medium’s potential for dissemination via mass production and an unquestionable advantage of portability for distribution. Artists, curators and editors operating in this sector look to create contexts for books in a variety of imaginative ways, through exhibition, commission, installations, performance and, of course as documentation. Broadening the discussion of the idea of the book within contemporary art practice, this paper examines the presence and role of book works within the context of the art biennale, in particular the Venice Art Biennale of which the 58th iteration (2019) is entitled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’ and curated by Ralph Rugoff, with an overview of the independent International cultural offerings and the function of the ‘Book Pavilion’. Venetian museums and institutions continue to present vibrant diverse works within the arena of large-scale exhibitions, recognising the position that the book occupies in the history of the city. This year, the appearance for the first time, of ‘Book Biennale’, opens up a new and interesting dialogue, taking the measure of how the book is being promoted and its particular function for visual communication within the arts in Venice and beyond.

What if we think of the classroom as a work of art? Performance, collaboration, and social engagement considered as pedagogic practices

2020 ◽  
pp. 147402222096694
Author(s):  
Theron Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Performance Studies ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Performance Practices ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Socially Engaged Art ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Pedagogic Practices

This article brings into relation critical perspectives and practical tactics from a range of different fields—performance studies, visual art practice, pedagogy and educational theory, and activism and community organising—in order to create some space for re-imagining what might be possible within the dynamics of the Higher Education classroom. It proceeds through a series of speculative modes: ‘what if we think of the classroom as a market?’, which for many is the currently dominant metaphor under neoliberalist economies; ‘what if we think of the work of art as a classroom?’, which traces the recent ‘pedagogical’ or ‘educational’ turn in visual art practice; and finally, ‘what if we think of the classroom as a work of art?’, in which the creative impulses and tactics drawn from performance practices, activism and community organising, and socially engaged art are speculatively applied to the arts and humanities classroom.

Using Art to Engage the Public in Hygiene and Sanitation Research

Utafiti ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-110
Author(s):  
Kiagho Kilonzo
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Health Care Research ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
Health Records ◽  
The Public ◽  
Research Outcomes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The twentieth century saw a huge increase worldwide in the presence of the arts in organisations and institutions involved in healthcare activities, including public health care research conducting in various countries. This article shows the impact of using art to engage literate and non-literate people in the pro-active translation of research outcomes into their own cultural practices and their personal decisions affecting their health status. The study demonstrates that art can be of use changing social behaviour and therefore to improve public health records in statistically significant ways. This work also demonstrates that the term ‘art’ refers to more than a means of entertainment and passive appreciation of aesthetics; the effectiveness of art is tangible and its impact is measurable as a mode of education, and as providing a deeply needed instructive incentive for hygienic and sanitation transformation.

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