Metaphor, magic, and mental disorder: Poetics and ontology in Mexican (Purépecha) curanderismo

This article offers an epistemological, poetic, and ontological reading of the ways of knowing regarding mental disorders that are characteristic of the traditional healers ( curanderas and curanderos) of an Indigenous group in Mexico. The study is based on ethnographic interviews with traditional Purépecha (Tarascan) healers in rural Michoacan. Interviews focused on local conceptions of emotional and mental illness, especially Nervios, Susto, and Locura (nerves, fright, and madness). We discuss the conceptual structure of these Indigenous illness notions, the nature of the associated imagery and notions of the soul, as well as the general sense of meaningfulness and reality implicit in Purépecha curanderismo. The highly metaphorical modes of understanding characteristic of these healers defy analysis in purely structuralist terms. They do, however, have strong affinities with the Renaissance “episteme” or implicit framework of understanding described in The Order of Things, Michel Foucault's classic study of modes of knowing and experiences of reality in Western thought—a work profoundly influenced by Heidegger's interest in the historical and cultural constitution of what Heidegger termed “Being.” After examining the individual illness concepts, we explore both the poetic and the ontological dimension (the foundational sense of reality or of Being) that they involve, with special emphasis on supernatural concerns.

Application of VR in the Experimental Teaching of Animation Art

As computer technology advanced, VR has emerged. It is a virtual environment based on high-tech computer technology that can bring people a sense of reality and sensory experience. Through specific devices or equipment, it uses unique means to interact and communicate with the target object in the virtual environment, so that the professor can get a sense of reality and immersive experience. In order to increase students’ interest in teaching content, and at the same time to develop the education industry to achieve technology, this article combines virtual reality technology with experimental teaching. The paper discusses the use of VR in animation art experimental teaching and plans to provide thoughts and instructions about the fresh way in animation experimental teaching. This paper proposes the application research methods of VR in animation experiment teaching, including literature research method, expert interview method, questionnaire survey method, VR animation art teaching based on image method, and VR animation teaching evaluation clustering algorithm, which is used for conducting research experiments on the utilization of VR in animation art experimental learning. The experimental results in this article show that 96.25% of students like animation art VR experimental teaching system, which is helpful to the development of the teaching work.

Collateral beauty in the wind of truth: reclaiming a new sense of reality

It is beautiful to be able to have the opportunity to allow oneself a doubt on the unquestionability of one's mental habits; it is beautiful to be able to renew one's energy to relate to the world in a way not bent by the banality of convenience and calculation. It is beautiful to realise that one feels the need for beauty as an inspirational motive for one's thinking, feeling and acting, and as a resource towards a new education. The serious pandemic crisis has probably accelerated a necessary but demanding process that takes time to accomplish: that of becoming aware of a reality based on the principle of interconnection and interdependence – of the person with all his/her dimensions, with each other, with the Cosmos. I believe that this new perception of reality – as the result of an experience – can mark a new step for the discourse and pedagogical practice so as to devote itself to a new form of beauty in the search for a ἀλήθεια (aletheia) truth to be configured as a desire for unveiling and deep understanding of the sense of reality, to be nourished in a revitalised interdisciplinarity, with a sense of wonder and amazement for every aspect of life. Care, responsibility and commitment, if animated by joy and love, can only aspire to excellence, giving the person the opportunity to fully realise his or her dignity and humanity.

Influence of Digital Media Technology on Forest Scene Animation Design

The animation construction of forest scene is a virtual stand scene visualization framework which uses the related technologies of virtual forest modeling and stand scene visualization, and uses the scene graph technology to manage. This paper studies the influence of digital media technology on the animation design of forest scene. In this paper, the model of virtual stand scene is mainly completed by Creator modeling software of MultiGen company. In order to reduce the number of scene patches and ensure realism, the tree model is designed with OpenFlight tree hierarchy. At the same time, the key technologies of Creator modeling and model optimization are analyzed. The virtual stand scene visualization framework uses the open source graphics rendering engine OpenSceneGraph (OSG) as the scene driver to realize the stand scene visualization. This paper provides a variety of roaming control methods. The experimental results show that the virtual forest scene visualization framework can better simulate the forest scene and has a strong sense of reality.

Using immersive video technology for construction management content delivery: a pilot study

Construction management is considered a hands-on field of study which requires good spatial and visual cognitive ability. Virtual reality and other innovative immersive technologies have been used to facilitate experiential learning and to improve students’ spatial cognitive abilities. Virtual environments have been criticized due to the gamified look of the environment. Static panorama pictures have been previously used to bring a better sense of reality and immersion at the same time in construction education. However, they cannot provide a continuous experience, and the sense of presence (immersion) is not ideal either. Immersive videos such as 360-degree videos can address this shortfall by providing a continuous experience and a better sense of presence. The use of this technology in construction education field is very limited. As a result, this study investigated a pilot experiment where a combination of 360, 180 3D, and flat videos was incorporated as an educational instrument in delivering construction management content. The content was recorded using different configurations from different body postures to further investigate the optimal way of utilizing this technology for content delivery. The content of the videos was focused on construction means and methods. Students reviewed the content using head-mounted display devices and laptop screens and answered a survey designed to capture their perception and experience of using this technology as an educational tool in the construction management field. The results show a positive perception toward using immersive videos in construction education. Furthermore, the students preferred the head-mounted display as their favorite delivery method. As a result, the prospect of incorporating immersive videos to enhance construction management education is promising.

Making sense of reality

There is a pressing need to provide a worthwhile academic underpinning to public service or community interpreting and its professional context. This paper considers the strategies that could benefit both pure and applied research in this area by discussing a number of majorfactors. First, the approaches used by interpreting as well as related scientific re- search in the public service field to engage with the relevant range of professional practitioners in identifying the topic, gathering adequate and reliable information, seeking ways forward, developing interdisciplinary understanding and implementing improvedpractice, are considered.Second, it is argued that there is a crucial needfor interpreting and language specialists to demonstrate and apply standards of valid research methodologies equivalent to those used in other disciplines in this context (such as medicine), in order to affirm their academic responsibility and interdisciplinary credibility. Finally, the dissemination of the results of research, not only to fellow academics in the language world but also to academics in other related disciplines as well as to the practitioners - interpreters, translators, doctors, lawyers, police officers, social workers etc., is considered. Research results must be accessible in order to improve practice and to enable the research results to be brought into the mainstream informed debate.

The Experimental Gothic

This essay proposes that the crucial movements of the historical avant-garde looked to the first wave of Gothic literature (1760s–1820s) in developing their respective variants of experimental prose. To date, the linguistic and textual characteristics (non-mimesis, ineffability) of the literary mode here called Experimental Gothic have not been comprehensively investigated, neither in Avant-Garde nor Gothic Studies. The proposed poetics of the Experimental Gothic indicates that the early avant-gardes did not straightforwardly recycle Gothic material but rather wove the praxis of contemporary theories of representation into their prosaic exploits, which were immersed in the imaginary, supernatural and irrational. The linguistic features of recognised works of avant-garde prose by luminaries such as Carl Einstein, Hugo Ball and Julien Gracq reveal the Experimental Gothic to be a language project spawned from anarchist backgrounds, which leads readers to reject their naïve belief in conventional representation in order to gain a renewed sense of reality.

THE IMPORTANCE OF AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE ART OF CINEMA AN ASSESSMENT ON

Besides being an art, cinema also reveals the existence of a linguistic ability. In this way, with a flexible and dynamic narrative structure that turns changed so as to maintain its coherence, which can create endless imaginative narratives and present these narratives that provide a structure which allows the viewer. Cinema is quite close to the appearance in life, and the illusion of reality is an inalienable attribute of it. Reality is sometimes used as a whole, sometimes a part of it is reflected on the screens. At the core of the language of cinema lies the visual perception of the world in which people live. The concept of aesthetics is essential to understanding the ways in which contemporary and popular culture interacts with cinema. Light, sound, color and movement elements are involved in providing visual communication. Color, one of the most important elements of visual design in the cinema industry, is at the heart of the narrative world created by cinema. Basically there is no color, there is light. The element of color can be said to be an aesthetic transformation of reality or a directed, interpreted sense of reality. Every image in the cinema is accepted as a sign as the carrier of the filmic image. In addition to this, cinema is a visual art, as well as an auditory art. Cinema, which was considered as an art before sound, has undergone a structural change with the introduction of sound. Cinema aesthetics is a special aesthetic area established with cinematography and dealing with beauty. For this reason, the aim of the study is to reveal the importance of aesthetic elements for the art of cinema. In addition, the basic aesthetic elements in the art of cinema are discussed in detail and it is tried to explain why aesthetic elements are important for the art of cinema. Keywords: Cinema Art, Aesthetics, Lighting, Color, Image, Sound.

Rethinking the Rhetorical Epistemics of Gaslighting

Gaslighting is defined as a dysfunctional communication dynamic in which one interlocutor attempts to destabilize another’s sense of reality. In this article, we advance a model of gaslighting based in an epistemic rhetoric perspective. Our model directs attention to the rhetorics used to justify competing knowledge claims, as opposed to philosophical models that tend to rely on objective truth-value. We probe the discursive manifestations of gaslighting in logocentric, ethotic, or pathemic terms. We then apply our model to explain sexist and racist gaslighting that derives power from normatively instantiated discourses of rape culture and White supremacy. Specifically, our analysis identifies the appeal structures used to legitimate such gaslighting in response to disclosures of sexual violence and testimony about racial injustice.