Search

This essay explores the various modes of visualities and visual production in Kashmir. It begins with mapping the existing state visualities that use hypervisibilization, victimization, criminalization, and depoliticization as modalities to represent Kashmir. In recent years, long-standing counternarratives to these representations have met with increasing repression, engendering a visual stagnancy. Earlier, countervisuals by photojournalists confronted state visualities by directing the gaze toward Kashmiri bodies. This essay argues that the repeated production and circulation of these realistic images have also reached a point of visual fatigue. At this juncture of a seeming visual impossibility, the essay proposes creative configurations and visual imaginaries through artistic visioning as a means to continue the work of visual production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 24, No. 1 (2024) Full Issue

This paper examines the interplay between memory, history, nationalism, and visual cultures by focussing on a framed photograph of a revolver gifted to Kamala Dasgupta's family by the Calcutta (Now Kolkata) police after Indian independence. Once used in an attempted assassination during the anti-colonial struggle, the revolver has become an anomaly in the nation's collective memory – a 'floating signifier' with an unfixed meaning. Analysing the photograph as a media spectacle and a symbol within national myths, I argue that it disrupts linear narratives of progress that dominate nationalist historiography. The article shows how Kamala's act of procuring the revolver has been overshadowed by her comrade Bina Das's violent act. Drawing on theories of the spectacle, national temporality, and subaltern studies, I illustrate the selective commemoration of revolutionary violence in India. The research in this paper demonstrates how precarious and subaltern histories such as Kamala's can destabilise established national narratives and pluralise temporal orders of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has witnessed an increased interest in outer space among non-expert citizens of London; many astronomical societies have expanded, and telescopes and astronomical magazines have experienced pronounced growth in sales. Anthropology, as a discipline focused on the study of human culture, has recently provided new insights into the cultural dimensions involved in contemporary experiences of the universe. After spending two months among amateur astronomers at two London astronomical societies, I argue that pictures – understood from a material culture perspective – play a key role in shaping people's relationship with the universe. This relationship is currently influenced by new technologies that offer more accessible ways to capture and share pictures of the skies. Simultaneously, new social media apps have opened new digital platforms for sharing outer space pictures, introducing innovative visual ways to engage with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the construction and circulation of representations of Portuguese mainland railways by photography in the illustrated press in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before World War I. The analysis uses a methodology combining semiotics with discourse analysis in journalism, which is applied to a sample of 406 photographs published in Portuguese magazines between 1872 and 1914. This study shows how these photographs created a new railway landscape, different from that fabricated previously by photographic albums (republished in the press as woodcuts), where human agents were more present, the utilisation of railways is underscored and dire aspects of the circulation of trains (namely train accidents) are more visible. This article contributes to the field of transport history with a perspective from visual culture and to the debate about the use of photography in historical research, as a reliable primary source, much more than a mere illustrative support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Globality Without Mobility: Ephemera, 1830s–1860s" from the Journal of World History explores the history of globalization in the nineteenth century through the lens of ephemera, focusing on single-page prints that circulated in Tokugawa Japan. These prints, known as imitation rankings, captured disasters, calamities, and societal changes in a concise and visually appealing manner. The article highlights how these ephemera, despite being locally produced and consumed, reflect global trends in the circulation of information and the transformation of print culture. The study sheds light on the interconnectedness of global publishers facing similar challenges and devising innovative tactics to navigate a rapidly changing world. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines how Italian visual artists are now structurally encouraged to be proficient in performing activities unrelated to field-specific criteria, or – to use the words of one respondent – why they are supposed to "be good at being incredibly good at doing stuff they don't know how to do." Drawing on qualitative data (N = 135), four dimensions of unartistic yet binding concerns are explored: networking relationality, bureaucratic "callification," systemic politics, and outward visibility. To analyze this dynamic, the concept of "Matryoshka roles" is introduced. Although uncharacteristic of artists' work and nested inside its surface depiction (Matryoshka), each dimension entails a set of injunctions and sanctioned behavior (roles) that reconfigure the reality of contemporary visual artists and vitiate the separation between internal vs. external principles of hierarchization. Reflecting on the autonomy of the field of visual art as a transitory historical phase, mechanisms of fields' heteronomization are addressed. By considering a series of factors (e.g., differences among early- and late-career artists, presence on social media, perception of heteronomous practices, most distinctive accomplishments, career junctions), the increasing pressure of meta-fields of economics, power, and state is detailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst geography has a long tradition of examining geopolitical discourses and imaginaries in media and popular culture, audiences remain understudied. A preoccupation with the site of representation is coupled with a disciplinary bias towards analysing visual media and culture, which obscures alternative ways of knowing, representing and engaging in the world. This paper redresses these imbalances by exploring radio and its capacity to shape audiences' geographical imaginations. An innovative 'playlist‐diary' method is used to reveal how listeners hear, interpret and imagine BBC Radio 4 broadcasts on Europe's migration 'crisis' between 2014 and 2019; a novel approach which answers calls for geographers to engage with sounds and methodologies of listening, and better understand audience responses to journalistic storytelling on migration. The paper makes a significant conceptual contribution to the field by illustrating how listeners hear broadcasts in discursive, affective and imaginative registers, and by identifying the pivotal role of refugee voices and stories in forging a politics of recognition; that is to say, how and under what conditions radio journalism collapses discourses of 'us' and 'them', expands imaginative communities of belonging, and leads to instances of identification and connection between listeners and refugees. It therefore pushes beyond research that focuses on discursive and affective invitations in media by uncovering how radio shapes audiences' geographical imaginations around migration and regulates fields of perceptibility, recognition and relatability with people on the move. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades now, audio-visual artworks have routinely been described as "research" or "research based". However, the relationship between image, research and theory is often unclear, particularly when the artwork in question is produced outside formal academic frameworks like practice-based PhD or MFA programs. This essay asks how we can understand and interpret artworks that use materials and methods that approximate those used by academic researchers but do so through audio-visual means. Four artworks are discussed: Kajsa Dahlberg's Reach, Grasp, Move, Position, Apply Force (2015); Kalle Brolin's I am Scania (2016) and I am the Sun (2018); and Hanni Kamaly's HeadHandEye (2017/2018). All four highlight how image practices establish, reinforce, and subvert specific attitudes, ideas, and practices relating to work or the human body. The author's key argument is that the selected artworks can be understood as examples of the media-theoretical method of analysis known as cultural techniques. Cultural techniques have been defined within media theory as the chains of operations that link humans, things, and media. The scholar who uses this perspective searches for the rules, procedures, and documented practices that preceded and directed the development and formats of specific media technologies. This essay proposes that the four selected artworks show how fragmentation operates as cultural technique in different contexts. Fragmentation is shown to be at work beneath efficiency studies of industrial workers in the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first (Dahlberg); in the relationship between the sugar industry and coal mines in the south of Sweden in the early twentieth century (Brolin); and in the de-subjectification practices among colonial rulers in the nineteenth century (Kamaly). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, left unfinished in 1929, has attracted significant interest in recent decades. This essay offers a new interpretation of Warburg's "picture atlas," not in relation to modernist collage and photomontage, but as an heir to scientific pedagogical exhibitions of the late Wilhelmine period. It deals in particular with two "public enlightenment" shows curated by the Leipzig medical historian Karl Sudhoff, whose work Warburg admired and employed: the first on with the history of hygiene in Dresden in 1911, the second in Leipzig, three years later, on the development of scientific images. Like Warburg, Sudhoff appreciated artworks and artifacts as sources for the history of science and medicine. His exhibitions consisted of assemblages of photographic reproductions—some of which were provided by Warburg himself—and uncannily anticipate Mnemosyne in both form and content. By examining the exchange of materials and display methods between the two scholars, the article explores how their respective visual projects reflected deeper disagreements over the public role of science, the epistemic power of images, and the persistence of the irrational in the human psyche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of the present essay have been working together since 2014 to publish the mosaics from the late Roman synagogue in the village of Huqoq in eastern Lower Galilee. The final season of active excavation in summer 2023 has prompted us to reflect on how the task of interpreting the Huqoq mosaics has been informed by and has responded to ongoing excavation at the site. We focus here on the mosaic that depicts the exploits of the biblical figure Samson, emphasizing the serendipitous nature of the sequence and pace of discovery and how these factors shaped our analysis and interpretation of the mosaic fragments. The story of this discovery offers a cautionary tale, demonstrating the dangers of cordoning off the study of synagogue art from its wider contexts. We argue that an air of exceptionalism surrounds the study of ancient synagogues in Israel. Methodologies that constrain the scope of research to conform to fixed ideas about social, cultural, and religious boundaries end up offering sterile interpretations of material that is better viewed in dynamic and open-ended terms. The Huqoq mosaics have demonstrated, again and again, the interconnectedness of Mediterranean visual culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of Persianate self‐hood, this article explores the intersection between translation, Indian dress, and portraiture in India and Britain, 1760–1800. It examines the translator's lived experience and cultural output as a published scholar and Persian secretary in the East India Company. First, it considers the self‐constructed through clothing; second, it examines how the role of the EIC translator is discretely performed. The third is the role of art and the artist in visualizing a record of professional life and its relationship with material culture, and finally, how it evoked a multifarious kinship on a network of ideas unrelated to ethnicity or place. Engaging with the concept of transculturalism, it considers the global 'family' as a flexible and dynamic unit that empowers the movement of visual and material culture within generations. The investigation of dress and grooming reframes the imperial 'self', seeing dress as the primary navigator of cultural space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As visual cultures scholars have argued, visual expression and aesthetic artifacts largely comprise the modern world. This includes the production of the school as an institution. A critical approach to education therefore must reinscribe students with the ability to see what educational processes attempt to hide and to construct an understanding of the real for themselves. To illustrate this argument, we explore the production of visuality within data science education as one example of how the visual manifests within schools. In response, we propose a visual literacy informed approach to engaging students with data, one that expands beyond contemporary forms of critical data literacy by involving an ontological critique of educational aestheticization. To ground this work, we examine the role of visuality and aesthetics within the implementation of co-designed arts-infused data science projects in four US middle schools. In analyzing interviews with teachers and students, we uncover a series of tensions that reveal the ongoing influence of school visualities alongside the potential for student generated images to amplify their right to look. We therefore argue that critical pedagogies must not only involve reading and critiquing aesthetic artifacts but also engage students in a critique of visuality itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Take Me to the River: Place and Material in Visual Culture" by Michelle Henning explores the significance of location in visual culture in Britain, considering the impact of globalization and historical contexts. The author delves into the relationship between place, materiality, and visual culture, emphasizing the interconnectedness of images and material culture. Through examples from history and art, the article highlights the complex and nuanced nature of visual culture, challenging traditional dichotomies and inviting a more holistic understanding of images and their material contexts. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the challenges of representing the HIV/AIDS crisis through visual art, focusing on the exhibition "Bodies of Experience" at Camerawork in London in 1988. The exhibition featured photographic projects by various artists living with HIV, prompting debates on visibility, representation, and community engagement. The text explores the complexities of visibility politics in the context of the HIV/AIDS era and reflects on the significance of non-visual strategies in art, offering alternative ways to engage with intimacy, spirituality, and bodily connection. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Locust Swarms of Print" discusses the impact of visual culture in Britain, focusing on the evolution of print culture within urban modernity. It references Walter Benjamin's musings on the shift from codex format to newspapers and film, highlighting the overwhelming influence of advertisements and economic chaos on the consumption of printed material. The text also explores contemporary manifestations of visual culture, such as large-scale banners at public demonstrations and digital reproductions of political messages. Additionally, it delves into the intersection of digital and print media, emphasizing the importance of questioning the technological and labor structures that shape visual culture discourse. [Extracted from the article]

The article "The Art School Project" by John Beck and Matthew Cornford explores the history and significance of art schools in Britain, focusing on the transformation and disappearance of many art school buildings. Through a series of exhibitions and photographs, the authors aim to document and investigate the impact of art schools on local communities and broader social and political contexts. The project delves into the complex interactions between visual and verbal elements, highlighting the role of art education in shaping British visual culture since the 1960s. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Confronting the White Classical Body" by Hardeep Singh Dhindsa explores the perception of color in ancient Greco-Roman sculptures and the development of Whiteness Studies. It discusses how the concept of whiteness has been historically constructed and maintained to uphold racial hierarchies. The author challenges the traditional view of white marble sculptures by adding vibrant colors to them, questioning the neutrality and beauty associated with whiteness. The article delves into the historical context of race science and the role of Classics in justifying imperialism and slavery. [Extracted from the article]

SUMMARY: Visiting, or observing a site in its surrounding environment, is a key point of archaeological and heritage assessment and research. This paper examines historic and contemporary site visits to Robert Owen’s 1830s agricultural community at Harmony Hall. The site was described in letters, in articles, and in visual culture throughout the nineteenth century, after which the site became overgrown. The site itself is telling of some of the reasons behind the community’s early problems, and the reasons behind its ultimate transformation from a community to a school. Today, both the agricultural community and the school are gone. This paper explores the site in the past and today, situating Harmony Hall within its historic and contemporary landscape. Drawing on place-based approaches to heritage sites, experience, and interpretation, this paper outlines the interpretive value in critical ‘visiting’ as a method for assessing sites with a complicated histories like Harmony Hall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Art, Ecology, and AI: Envisioning More-Than-Human Landscapes" by Richard A. Carter discusses the challenges facing Britain's environments and visual cultures in the context of climate change, technology, and artistic expression. Carter emphasizes the importance of investigating material processes in contemporary visual culture, particularly in relation to AI technologies and their impact on how we represent and understand our environments. The article highlights the need for creative-critical investigations that engage with ecological representation and challenge prevailing narratives, ultimately calling for reflexive and careful approaches to digital visual cultures. [Extracted from the article]

AbstractThis article consists of a translation and contextualizing essay which brings the research of Japanese fashion illustrator and scholar of fashion illustration Nagasawa Sachiko to an English-language audience for the first time. The preceding contextualizing essay gives background information on Nagasawa and the period of fashion history when this article emerged, and argues for the importance of Nagasawa’s fashion research to scholars of visual studies and fashion studies. Nagasawa’s article “The Transition of Fashion Illustration in Japan” posits a genealogy of fashion illustration, locating the origins of this genealogy in Edo period (1601–1868) ukiyo-e woodblock prints. She proposes that there are many analogous terms within the broad sense of “fashion illustration,” but that they can be categorized into three streams which have been discussed separately until this study: “lyrical pictures,” “fashion illustration (narrow sense),” and “style pictures or fashion design pictures.” Nagasawa summarizes existing scholarship, identifying important gaps, and investigates the relationships between these streams. In order to familiarize English-language readers with a style of scholarly writing that is underrepresented in anglophone contexts, the contextualizing essay also provides background on the expository prose and rhetoric of Japanese academic articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the Uyghur doppa from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to understand Uyghur cultural life and identity. It links the doppa to Uyghur history and the evolving sense of ‘Uyghurness’, reflecting its cultural significance today, both in Xinjiang and through the diaspora. The limited scholarly work on the doppa, spanning 150 years, suggests a gender bias in documenting female-associated crafts. Ironically, at a time when the doppa holds increasing importance, especially with the creation of Doppa Day (5 May), this lack of resources opens up space for creative discourse on Uyghur identity. The study also reveals a tendency to adapt through cultural experiences while maintaining a deep connection to the homeland. Ultimately, this research demonstrates how a small cultural object can provide profound insights into community sensibilities and material culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual generative media represent a novel technology with the potential to mediate public perceptions of political events, conflicts, and wars. Seeking to understand a visual culture in which algorithms become integrated into human processes of memory mediatization, this study addresses representation in AI-generated war imagery. It frames AI image generation as a socio-technical practice at the nexus of humans, machines, and visual culture, challenging Silicon Valley's prevailing narrative of visual AI as "an engine for the imagination." Through a case study of AI images generated in response to verbal prompts about Russia's war against Ukraine, I examine the representational capabilities and limitations of the text-to-image generator Midjourney. The findings suggest homogeneity of visual themes that foreground destruction and fighters, while overlooking broader contextual and cultural aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war, thus generalizing the depiction of this war to that of any war. This study advances the research agenda on critical machine vision as a transdisciplinary challenge situated at the interface of media and cultural studies, computer science, and discourse-analytic approaches to visual communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a study of the visual characteristics of the medieval manuscript diagrams found in Theodosios' Spherics. It provides a new taxonomy of eight types of diagrams found in the manuscript sources, and examines the way in which geometric information is encoded in the manuscript diagrams using a number of visual encodings. It then argues that these diagrams can be used to address ongoing research debates about whether the striking visual characteristics of medieval diagrams in mathematical texts are the result of deliberate choices by the premodern authors, the result of accidents of transmission, or both. Along the way, the paper identifies a further type of transmission error that is prevalent in the medieval transmission of mathematical diagrams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender diversity is gaining traction in children's animated content, with Disney playing a significant role in its representation. The protagonists in Disney productions are becoming integral to visual culture and serve as important reference points. This study categorises LGBTQ+ characters associated with the longstanding company. It analyses their characteristics and the prominent roles they play, aiming to explore how young audiences relate to non-heteronormative characters. The research highlights that visibility remains limited and underscores the ongoing need for greater inclusivity to ensure all identities are represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is concerned with the possibility of reframing the visibility of migrants onscreen in Želimir Žilnik's documentary films. It is claimed that Žilnik's selected works such as the Kennedi trilogy open up a space for reversing the lens of the dominant hegemonies of viewing by enacting a productive instability in performing their actual lives on the one side but also provoking the spectators to reconstruct stories in the same way the protagonists do. In including the voice of the migrant, as well as (de)constructing his own presence, we can understand Žilnik's films as formulating a political background in the very logic of the frame that disrupts self-colonising or balkanising perspective as it gives voice to those that were usually silent, silenced or implicated. The study proposes a possible space, both physical and epistemological for the articulation of the right to be seen in films that thematise those usually found on the outskirts of social visibility by proposing that complex narratives and images irreducible to the general idea of 'the Balkans' can be a transformative social and cultural gesture as it rearticulate power-positions of those marginalised of the level of counter-narrative, counter-archive, and the counter-image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the symbolic construction of queer identities in Sarah Waters' Neo-Victorian Trilogy using content analysis and film semiotics. It explores postmodern narrative techniques and the symbolism of femininity, focusing on themes of desire, identity, and redemption. The highlight of this article is how Waters' works enrich the narrative and challenge traditional representations, offering new perspectives on gender and sexuality in visual culture, and provide a framework for symbolic of queer film, contributed three themes: sex, salvation and desire. Furthermore, the finding also indicates that the shift of queer films to OTT platforms has diversified queer imagery, encouraging more creators to engage in queer film production and fostering a pluralistic understanding and support for the LGBTQ+ community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine the level of acceptability of the developed learning modules in Introduction to Dressmaking and Sewing Machine Operations at Rizal Technological University during the school year 2023-2024. The researcher used the descriptive type of research with diagnostic test as the tool used in the identification of the least mastered topics in Introduction to Dressmaking and Sewing Machine Operations and a survey questionnaire as the main data gathering instrument. The questionnaire focused on the level of acceptability of the developed learning modules in Introduction to Dressmaking and Sewing Machine Operations in terms of objectives, content, visual design, and assessment. The least mastered topics that were used as basis for the development of the learning modules in Introduction to Dressmaking and Sewing Machine Operations was identified based on the results of the diagnostic test conducted by the researcher to the second year GFD Students of Rizal Technological University. The instructor and student respondents evaluated the developed learning modules in Introduction to Dressmaking and Sewing Machine Operations as to objectives, content, visual design, and assessment with grand weighted mean rating of 3.61, verbally interpreted as Very High Level (VHL) leading to no significant difference between the assessment of the two groups of respondents on the developed learning modules. The comments and suggestions offered by the respondents were for the improvement of the product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of Sasanian hegemony in Georgia (Kartli/Iberia) on the monuments of early Christian Georgia's material culture. It explores how Sasanian political power and influence were conveyed through visual imagery, depicting Kartli as an adaptive yet creatively distinct realm that incorporated many elements of Sasanian art and culture into early Christian iconography. The article focuses on some iconographic motifs representing the Sasanian concept of royalty and their adaptation to Georgian culture, analyzed through both Iranian and Georgian visual sources, as well as Georgian textual data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hospital gown is a particularly charged article of clothing. For the chronically ill and disabled the ritual of donning the gown signals a change of identity from "person" to "patient." This essay chronicles the metamorphosis of a standard hospital gown into a work of wearable art that showcases the glittering pregnant body. Rather than thinly shrouding nakedness this gown reveals the nude gravid and disabled figure as not only worthy of artistic concentration but full of wonder and enchantment. This work emerges from the author's decade-long collaborative practice with her sister Devan Stahl as her experiences living under the medical gaze are compounded in the pursuit of motherhood. The Imaging Gown takes up past and present visual cultures of medicine and re-presents them with sublime sensibilities that affirm the patient perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we propose a methodological reflection based on the work with photographs of youth published in print media in Chile during the 20th century. We use our proposal for qualitative analysis, which includes intentional work with visual culture, the creation of our own archives, and the development of tools for individual and group analysis of photographs. We propose two specific strategies for the analysis of photographs: the first is "layered analysis", and the second is "group or panel analysis", which allows for linking images, culture, and youth. We trust that this methodological reflection will contribute to the study of youth and stimulate debate in the field of study itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses Isaac Julien's film Looking for Langston alongside 1980s Black British political culture, in which visual culture played a significant part. Focusing on the role of the image in that time and place, the article reads the embodied performances of waiting, use of the montage, and constructed scenes of Black queer lifeworlds, past and present, as challenging the linear modes of temporality that have confined Black politics to a perpetual state of deferment and the modern notion of vision under which the Black gay male image remains under siege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship bringing together photography, visual culture and political theory is unsettling established approaches to understanding photography beyond art-historical frameworks. This article examines the implications and potentials for education practices of this emerging new paradigm by exploring how the civil potential of photography and creative practice might be activated in learning environments. The article reflects on the collective learning arising from a series of educational experiments developed by the Doing Visual Politics network which have sought to connect cultures of socially motivated creative practice in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia; Kathmandu, Nepal and Dhaka, Bangladesh by interrogating and expanding disciplinary understandings at the intersection of photography, visual activism, social practice and public pedagogy. These learning spaces – where the expression of concern for shared world/s is prioritized – have provided useful insights into approaches capable of exceeding the limits of the conventional politics of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay assesses six early Soviet avant‐garde texts that recently were republished by the European University Press in St. Petersburg. These volumes include incredibly exact, high‐resolution reprints of seminal avant‐garde texts with historical commentary and analytic essays, which offer new insight into the illustrated books' contributions to the socialist project. This essay describes those contributions and their implications for our current understanding of the visual function of early Soviet poetry. It aims to open space for a discussion of the particular material visuality of avant‐garde books and other static visual objects within contemporary debates about the meaning of text and image in Soviet visual culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine vision is one of the main applications of artificial intelligence. In China, the machine vision industry makes up more than a third of the national AI market, and technologies like face recognition, object tracking and automated driving play a central role in surveillance systems and social governance projects relying on the large-scale collection and processing of sensor data. Like other novel articulations of technology and society, machine vision is defined, developed and explained by different actors through the work of imagination. In this article, we draw on the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to understand how Chinese companies represent machine vision. Through a qualitative multimodal analysis of the corporate websites of leading industry players, we identify a cohesive sociotechnical imaginary of machine vision, and explain how four distinct visual registers contribute to its articulation. These four registers, which we call computational abstraction, human–machine coordination, smooth everyday, and dashboard realism, allow Chinese tech companies to articulate their global ambitions and competitiveness through narrow and opaque representations of machine vision technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interview is dedicated to the pioneering work of Gaia Giuliani in critical race, whiteness and postcolonial Italian studies in Italy and internationally, over ten and five years, respectively, from the publication of Bianco e nero: Storia dell'identità razziale degli italiani (with Cristina Lombardi-Diop, Mondadori Education, 2013) and Race, Nation and Gender in Modern Italy: Intersectional Representations in Visual Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Shelleen Greene is an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Her Equivocal Subjects: Between Italy and Africa – Constructions of Race and Nation in the Italian Cinema (Bloomsbury, 2012) set a milestone in scholarship on Italian visual culture and race. Lorgia Garcia Peña, scholar and activist, is a professor of Latinx Studies at the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her Translating Blackness (Duke, 2022) conceived Latinx Caribbean diaspora (also in Italy) as part of both Black migrants' oscillating border-crossings and their forms of resistance to colonialism and racism. Both scholars have long been in dialogue with Giuliani's scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This descriptive and cross-sectional study examines the visual perception of real and AI-generated photographs on Facebook, focusing on the highland context of Puno, Peru. Data were collected from 215 participants through a survey administered via Google Forms, and images were evaluated by 24 experts using a technical sheet from January to February 2024. The findings indicate positive public reactions, a preference for authentic images, and an ability to identify distortions in those generated by AI. Experts identified favourable technical aspects of the synthesised images. These findings indicate a complex interplay between photographic authenticity and AI technology in visual perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from decolonial theories, I explore the history of art education in the Dominican Republic in the first half of the 20th century. I examine how racial hierarchies were activated in art classes in school through the romanticization of the countryside and the mystification of children's material culture. A distorted use of rural imagery served to advance the elite's narrative of White Dominican identity and to normalize a racial imaginary that negated the country's African heritage. I analyze how national and global discourses that coupled modernity with Whiteness encouraged aesthetic preferences that permeated children's visual culture and national art. I contend that, because children's art and play conjure images of innocence, the exhibition of children's material culture was utilized to naturalize the absence of a Black heritage. This article builds on recent scholarship that underscores the need to diversify art education histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the historical formation of environmental sacrifice zones, using Louisiana's Cancer Alley as a case study by focusing on the relationship between cotton and the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. Corporate communications before World War II often portrayed cotton as integrated into the growing chemicals industry, positioning petrochemicals as a successor to the plantation economy. By analyzing visual culture within corporate communication, the article investigates how corporate visual representations normalize industrial development despite its creation of toxic landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities in northern Afghanistan, predominantly Persian-speaking and identifying as ethnically Tajik, remember past wars in everyday practice, material culture, and memorialization processes. Their conception of history connects them to a collective memory that intersects with wars and conflicts in present-day Afghanistan. It also informs how they have contested past governments and the present political climate at the local, national, and international levels. Their collective memory acts as a counterweight to dominant understandings of the past and a critique of a long history of exclusionary politics. Since the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2021, they have brought their collective memory with them in exile. This article attempts to understand the current crisis in Afghanistan by centering visual culture as a guide to the social and political history and memory that inform the sentiments of these communities and one of the anti-Taliban opposition groups, the National Resistance Front. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Media & Cultural Studies is the property of Journal of Media & Cultural Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of BRAC: Barcelona, Research, Art, Creation is the property of BRAC: Barcelona, Research, Art, Creation and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Glass-based materials are renowned for their application prospects in neutron and gamma-ray shielding, focusing on their dual functionality of offering radiation protection while permitting visual monitoring. These materials stand out for their excellent chemical durability, resilience against radiation-induced deterioration, high refractive indices, and superior light transmission characteristics. In this paper, the initial sections are delved into the shielding mechanisms for neutron and gamma-ray radiation, employing Monte Carlo simulations to elucidate the design principles and development strategies of these shielding materials. It is complemented by a comprehensive review of the current state of research in glass-based shielding materials. Given the environmental and health concerns associated with lead-based glasses, lead glass is being abandoned. The paper highlights the predominance of silicate, borate, and borosilicate glasses in the industry. It is demonstrated that the addition of heavy metal oxides (such as Bi2O3 and BaO) and rare earth elements (like La and Gd) to the glass matrix can significantly increase the mass attenuation coefficient (MAC), reduce the half-value layer (HLV), and thereby enhance shielding effectiveness. Notably, the integration of these dopants may negatively impact the mechanical properties of materials. This paper also includes a comparison of glass-based shielding materials with alternative shielding solutions. Enhancing the multifaceted performance of glass-based shielding materials, alongside the advancement of ecofriendly and smart shielding solutions, will constitute a pivotal area of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel, concerns about class, decorum, and civility intersected with contemporary dialogue about the distinction between humans and animals, specifically, how human children needed to be educated to be distinguished from the wild, uncivilized state of animals and peasants. Both animals held significance surrounding behaviors that separated the moral from the immoral; cats and eels were pets and food, and they were used in baiting pastimes: cat clubbing and eel pulling. Paired with the children, Leyster's choice of animals raised multiple moral questions and allowed for multiple interpretations, making the work widely appealing and setting Leyster apart in a tight market for genre paintings. These layers of possible meanings continue to make the work compelling today and shed light on how visual culture reflected and reinforced human–animal and social class distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In W.J.T. Mitchell’s essay “Metapictures,” Mitchell claims that Diego Velásquez’s painting Las Meninas is “a veritable whirlpool of interpretive ‘aspects,’ switching and alternating the places of painter, beholder, and model, the viewer and the viewed… The figure of the ‘whirlpool’ suggests a way of specifying (or picturing) the multistability effect in a graphic form” (75). Mitchell’s “whirlpool of interactive ‘aspects’” provides an excellent means of grafting the concept of the metapicture onto different artistic discourses—here, ballet and its counterpart, meta-ballet (75). I contend that meta-ballet has two components: it comprises both the deliberate act of referencing the balletic canon and also the process of exploring the constituent parts of the balletic tradition (gesture and bodily movement, staging, performativity, and so on) in a way that mutates normative understandings of ballet. This paper’s aims are twofold: firstly, I develop the concept of meta-ballet and apply it to the show Princess Tutu. Secondly, I explore the uniquely meta-balletic nature of ballet pantomime and bodily motion as deployed by the show. Princess Tutu is quite self-consciously a meta-ballet, making constant references to real-world ballets, ballet techniques, and balletic pantomime. Its playful re-articulations and references to the canonical Western ballets of the nineteenth century illustrate the rich possibilities within ballet’s vast and variegated archive of bodies, texts, performances, and gestures.

The dhadhak merak is an iconic mask in Reyog Ponorogo. Over a very long period of time, the dhadhak merak has visually evolved into the form that is often seen today. The visual phenomenon then forms an image of Ponoragan visual culture that is interesting to explore in greater depth. This is what attracts the author's attention to focus on reviewing: 1) The phenomenon of visual development of dhadhak merak over time and 2) Reading Ponoragan visual culture in dhadhak merak. This research is a descriptive qualitative research, with data collection techniques using literature studies and archival documentation. In the process of reading the visual culture of dhadhak merak, the author conducted a review from several aspects, namely: visual structure, function, value, and meaning. The results of this study are 1) The dhadhak merak has undergone seven phases of development starting from its simple dhadhak to the form that is commonly found today. 2) The visual structure, function, historical value, and meaning of the dhadhak merak are constructed on the culture of the people of Ponorogo itself starting from the era of animism-dynamism, Hindu-Buddhism, Islam, to the present era. From that, the Ponoragan culture as a very strong identity marker can be reflected in the dhadhak merak visual culture artifact.

Catholic Art’ is art produced for catholic patrons, which includes iconographic works in visual arts, sculptures, architecture, and decorative and applied arts. Jesus Christ, his disciples, followers, saints, and biblical narratives have been the subject matter of Catholic art. There is an ecumenical relationship between Christian theology and Catholic Art. However, not all Christians are Catholics, but all Catholics are Christians. The Mangaluru case study centers on the prominent Italian Artist Priest, Fra. Antonio Moscheni SJ (1854-1905). He was entrusted to embellish the newly built cathedral with frescos on Biblical themes. The resemblance of these frescos to the works of the Sistine Chapel of Rome and its unique blend with the native southern mural traditions is a unique and fascinating amalgamation of East and Western art techniques. Due to his work’s popularity, Moscheni was commissioned to complete several projects across the churches of western coastal India between 1889 and 1905. He began working in Mangaluru and later Bantwal, the region known as Canara. He did a few projects in Konkan, a northern coastal city of Goa, and Mumbai. In the end, the southern coastal town, Kochi, also referred to as the Malabar, where breathed his last due to illness. The case study focuses on detailed accounts of his disciples who assisted him during his commissions and were later established as individual practitioners catering to the community’s needs. The study locates Catholic art practice in India and its legacies in historical and sociocultural contexts and analyzes and reflects on their milieu.

This article draws a generative parallel between two multimedia exhibitions, 55 Days at Peking (2017) and Diplomatic Residence Compound (2016) presented at DRC No. 12—a nonprofit art space located within the Diplomatic Residence Compound in Beijing, which is often abbreviated to DRC. Although it is not quite an area of extraterritoriality, DRC has created an alternative diplomatic domain of cross-border engagement partly outside the straitjackets of state control and regimentation. This article investigates how the works presented at DRC No. 12 construct a "migratory" site of aesthetic encounters—where things, bodies, and images are set in motion physically or conceptually, unsettling any notions of spatial stability and temporal continuity—and how DRC No. 12 as an exhibition space allows artists and viewers to reconsider and reconfigure the connections and boundaries between private and public, past and present, and domestic and foreign through immediate site-specific practice of making or perceiving art, bringing to the fore the contingency, heterogeneity, and mutability of one's sense of identity, place, history, and culture. It also delves into the ways in which DRC No. 12 explores and demonstrates a glocal model of art and exhibition making, concurrently aligning with and disrupting a range of institutional apparatuses of supports, constraints, and controls at the local, national, and transnational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]