Adoption of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena to Introduce Wayang Character

Wayang is considered a cultural heritage that has been passed down from generation to generation in Indonesia. However, the younger generation known as digital natives shows a lack of motivation and interest in Wayang. Therefore, it became an important matter to introduce traditional Wayang to younger audiences in engaging formats. This paper proposes an adaptation of the multiplayer online battle arena or known as MOBA. This type of multiplayer game for the mobile market is gaining high popularity among the young generation because it embraces quick-paced, strategic, and intense battle scenes. We called our game "Wayang Tarung" or "Wayang Battle" in English. Furthermore, the game has several features supporting the narrative of wayang characters, such as simple digital motion comics and character briefing between loading screens. A mechanic-dynamic-aesthetic framework (MDA) is used as a guideline to assure the game has engaging gameplay. Since the game runs asymmetrically, the starting condition for both players must be considered. Therefore, we also apply a game balancing strategy to ensure that each Wayang character has weak and strong points. In addition, we were adapting artificial intelligence from the Clash Royale game to dictate autonomous character behavior. The implementation of the Wayang Tarung game has been evaluated using a heuristic testing method adapted from the norman Nielsen heuristic usability. We also conducted a direct observation in a controlled-lab condition and gathered the data using a pre-post test that evaluated player knowledge of Wayang's character. Based on the excellent mark pre-post test result, we believe that adopting the multiplayer game platform in introducing wayang characters to the young generation has enriched prominent to explore further.

Anatolian-Persian grave stelae from Bozüyük in Phrygia: a contribution to understanding Persian presence and organisation in the region

This paper provides an assessment of four grave stelae that were found recently in the area surrounding Bozüyük, on the Anatolian plateau in the south of the Bilecik province. The plateau was part of the core of the kingdom of Phrygia during the Early and Middle Iron Ages, and part of the satrapy of Phrygia during the Achaemenid period of the Late Iron Age in Anatolia. The main focus is to examine the place of such stelae among Anatolian-Persian examples and to explore elements of Persian presence and organisation in the region. The precise archaeological contexts of these stelae are unknown, but are likely to have been tumuli. They are examples of an Anatolian-Persian style from the Achaemenid period, but can also be considered to be part of a somewhat rustic 'rural' sub-style, compared with more elaborate stelae that have been found around Dascylium, the satrapal capital of Hellespontine Phrygia. The Bozüyük stelae feature banquet, hunting and ritual scenes, and also battle scenes that distinguish them from other Anatolian-Persian stelae. Despite similarities, particularly with the Vezirhan stele, there are also discrepancies that make precise analogies with reliefs on other stelae difficult, though not impossible. It is likely that they were created by a connected group of sculptors, and might therefore be evidence of a workshop that sculpted local materials in a unique rural style.

Synchronization and Coordination of Art Performances in Highly Competitive Contexts: Battle Scenes of Expert Breakdancers

In the performing arts, such as music and dance performances, people actively interact with each other and show their exciting performances. Some studies have proposed that this interaction is a social origin of the performing arts. Some have further investigated this phenomenon based on the synchronization and coordination theory. Though the majority of these studies have focused on the collaborative context, several genres of the performing arts, such as jazz sessions and breakdance battles, have a competitive context. Several studies have suggested that, in this competitive context, performers actively interact with each other and construct some correspondence. Moreover, a few recent studies focusing on competitive conversations, such as debates, have shown that, compared to people's interactions in collaborative conversations, people in competitive contexts frequently coordinate their behaviors in complicated ways. However, the interaction and coordination among performers in these competitive contexts have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, we investigated the coordination of expert breakdancers in battle scenes and measured their rhythmic movements using a motion capture system. We calculated the relative phase of the rhythmic movements between two dancers to investigate their coordination. The results showed that the dancers' rhythmic movements tended to synchronize in an anti-phase fashion, which means that there were similarities as well as differences between the two dancers' rhythmic movements. Furthermore, this pattern of coordination changed dynamically as time elapsed, from an in-phase synchronization or leader-follower relationships to an anti-phase synchronization and then leader-follower relationships.

Letter of King Hugh IV of Cyprus and its Interpretation in the 17th-Century Russian Literature

This article contains two sources concerning the history of Russia and Cyprus: an unknown and previously unpublished letter of King Hugh IV of Lusignan of Cyprus to Giovanna, Queen of Naples, and a work of an unknown Russian author of the seventeenth century about the victory of the Cypriot Christian army over the Turks. A textual and comparative analysis of both sources carried out in the article proves a borrowing of information by the Russian author from the letter of the Cypriot king. The work of the anonymous author is an almost liberal literary translation of Hugh’s letter. At the same time, the Russian translator did not borrow the plot of the letter directly, but most likely through later Cypriot literature, in which the story told by the Cypriot king was probably extremely popular. The events of the history of Cyprus of different times intertwine in the Russian text in order to show the heroic past of Cyprus. The Russian author dates his story to 552 and connects it with Emperor Justinian I, the most revered and heroic Byzantine ruler. He cannot separate the history of Cyprus from the history of Byzantium, just as the Cypriot and Greek-Byzantine authors of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries could not do it. However, both texts speak of Latin Crusaders, who are fighting against the Turks under the leadership of the King of Cyprus. The Russian author remains faithful to the Orthodox tradition of rejection of the idea of crusades and replaces the idea of martyrdom of a crusader in the name of the Lord with heroic battle scenes traditional for Russian literature. He acknowledges that warriors are fighting for the Christian faith and for the church but denies the idea of guaranteed salvation and eternal life for military feats. At the end of the article, the full text of the letter of Hugh IV of Lusignan based on a manuscript of the fifteenth century kept in the manuscript department of the Bavarian State Library is published.

Peter the Great’s Naval Campaigns Series (1860–1877) of Alexey Bogolyubov: The Evolution of Artistic Language

This article focuses on the history of a series of paintings by Alexey Bogolyubov which was devoted to Peter the Great’s naval campaigns and created between 1860 and 1877 at the commission of Alexander II. Bogolyubov’s series of naval battle scenes has not been studied individually before. Dispersed across various public and private collections, the paintings have lost their role as a pictorial ensemble. Besides, the fate of three of the eight paintings remains unknown, and they can only be judged by indirect sources: archival and literary sources, copies, studies, and preparatory graphic works. Collected and systematised in this article, these materials make it possible to present the development of the series and Bogolyubov’s pictorial language over a decade and a half at the peak of his artistic career. An analysis of the pictorial features of this cycle of paintings and some other works reveals a change in the artistic techniques during the creation of the series. Also, the author identifies works of Bogolyubov’s predecessors on similar subjects and reveals features of their stylistic similarities and differences from those of Bogolyubov’s. The author traces the connection between Bogolyubov’s choice of subjects in the paintings and the state of naval history, more particularly, their connection with the works of Feodosy Veselago. In addition, the author reveals a case of change in the original idea of the composition of The Battle of Gangut and its division into three paintings consistently reflecting the course of the battle. Additionally, the article compares the routes of hydrographic expeditions and travels as part of the entourages of Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich and Tsesarevich Alexander Alexandrovich and places related to events of Peter the Great’s reign. Thus, the research demonstrates Bogolyubov’s search for a maximum accumulation of historical material and documentary depiction of events.

The Russo-Turkish Wars in Russian Literature: Axiological Priorities in Historical Dynamics

The paper represents the experience of analytical description of the fictional discourse, which captures the chronicle of the long-lasting military confrontation between the Russian Empire and the Sublime Porta. The author pursues the goal to trace the logic of evaluative dynamic specific to the Russian literary tradition in the perception and reflection of the events of the Russo-Turkish wars. The material of the paper is a sufficiently voluminous corpus of literary and journalistic texts, most fully and clearly representing the wide range and variability of axiological attitudes of participants of the XVI–XIX centuries national literary process who responded to these events. Among them are such iconic names for Russian intellectual and artistic culture as M.V. Lomonosov, G.R. Derzhavin, A.F. Veltman, A.A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, M.P. Pogodin, N.A. Nekrasov, A.N. Pleshcheev, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, V.M. Garshin and many others. As a result, the author concludes that the nearly four-century history of the Russo-Turkish wars provided rich material for creative initiatives of Russian writers and significantly influenced the development of the Russian literary process. Reacting swiftly to the events of numerous military conflicts, fiction produced and clearly demonstrated ideological and axiological priorities of public consciousness from the perspective of their historical dynamics. The general logic of the Russian-Turkish confrontation theme development was directly expressed at the level of poetics in artistic creations. Comparing the early literary experiences of understanding and depicting military conflicts, one can observe a general movement from the general to the particular, from the collective to the individual, from direct evaluation to complex ethical collisions. As artistic consciousness develops, depictions of large-scale battle scenes give way to literary sketches of inner experiences, psychological and existential perspectives replace the external perspective of describing events. The perception of the war is gradually, but more distinctly reveals through the prism of the personal consciousness of an author and his character and is perceived as a personally lived meaningful experience.

TRADITIONS OF THE CEREMONIAL MILITARY PORTRAIT IN SOVIET PAINTING OF THE 1940-1950

Based on Soviet painting of the 1940-1950 s the article explores the features of the genre, that became especially popular in the last years of the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war years. It represents military leaders and statesmen standing against the battle scenes or directly on the battlefield. Traditions, semantics, compositional techniques of this genre developed in Modern era. Analysis of the socialist realism paintings allows seeing the process of «appropriation» of the imperial tradition.

„Na Ukrainie za owych dobrych czasów” – „Przed laty. Powieść ukraińska” Paulina Święcickiego

The forgotten work and life of Paulin Święcicki (1841–1876), a writer from Kiev region and active in Galicia, represents a rare, authentic example of Polish‑Ukrainian cultural border. His debut work entitled 'Przed laty. Powieść ukraińska' (1865), despite being an artistic failure, is an interesting link between the heritage of the Romantic 'Ukrainian School' and the historical vision of Polish Borderlands in With fire and sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The creation of the 17th‑century reality of Ukrainian grasslands (noble, rural and Cossack existence), battle scenes (fights against the Tatars), romantic‑melodramatic plot – these are all adapted to a unique Ukrainian (not Polish‑centred) perspective. Święcicki’s ‘ukrainism’ is a portrait of Cossack heroism, a picture of enslaving the Ukrainian nation, and a picturesque description of local stories. The eclectic character of the work, which is nostalgically contemplative and in romantic style, as well as journalistically engaged, has an impact on its incoherence, but also makes it original against the background of the Sarmatian‑borderland fiction of those days.

Combination of image and spirituality in Odil Yakubov's novel "Old World"

This article examines in detail the imagery methods used in Odil Yakubov's novel “Old World”, such as portraits, landscapes, and battle scenes, and analyzes the author's effective use of these imagery techniques in illuminating artistic psychology.