The Aesthetics of Paradoxism (Second Edition)

In the history of thought and creation, the decisive events, the great and significant moments, the strongly affirmative stages - then the imposition of the optimizing novelties - have depended on the name and prestige of a personality. Referring to those, we personalize further on. The examples are extremely numerous, even in our nearest past. When we mention a creation - in the largest sense of the term - with the name of the personality who illustrates it most extensively at a given time, we state precisely the specific importance of it; we give it, with other words, the identity to which we can refer continuously with full knowledge and without causing any confusion among the receivers. The facts are called with the name of the man who produced them, and in this way we can compose a parallel onomastic dictionary, in which the work is included in the person’s space, keeping its content. The consecrated proper names evolve through quickly imposed habits, a large range of increments that announce the essential outline of their peak production. No space for ambiguity remains when we address to readers or listeners who are somewhat acquainted with the subject and we use such terms as Aristotelianism, Platonism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Proustianism, Eminescianism, Barbianism, etc. We have even the advantage of a centered communication when we suggest with a sole notion the work as well as its dominant features, linked with the renown of the concerned author. There is no doubt that this way of denomination, when practiced a long time, has become a reflex and now is part of the habits of a correct expression. And neither the semantic objectification of works by a person nor the inherent axiological sanction disturb anybody. Personification being inevitable in creation, the history of art can be superposed to the history of the authors or, at, least gets tangled very strongly with them. It is precisely the case with the recent literary movement of Paradoxism, conceived in Romania and affirmed in the United States, which is closely bound to the temperament, inclination, taste and creative disposition of its initiator and organizer, the poet-mathematician Florentin Smarandache (paradoxism = smarandachism, in an “internal” and already notorious interpretation)

On the Economics of Innovation Projects Product Experimentation in the Music Industry

The paper is conceptual, combining project and economic organization literatures in order to explain the organization and management of market-based projects. It dedicates particular focus to projects set up in order to facilitate product innovation through experimentation. It investigates the internal vs. market economies of scale and scope related to projects, as well as the issues of governance, planning and coordination related to reaping such economies. Incorporating transaction cost perspectives as well as considerations of labour markets, the paper explains the management of market-organized innovation projects by virtue of localized project ecologies and local labour markets of leaders and boundary spanners. It illustrates its arguments with a case study of the Recorded Music industry.Project management, product innovation

Essays on Organization, Creativity, and Globalization

This dissertation examines an underexplored type of innovation - the discovery of new resources. Schumpeter distinguishes among five types of innovation: new products, new processes, new organizations, new markets, and new resources. Most prior work has focused on the first three types of innovation. This study focuses on the last type of innovation, the discovery of new resources, in creative industries where talent is the most important resource of creativity and profit. This dissertation is comprised of three chapters. Each of the chapters examines a strategy or an environmental change such as unbundling, digitalization, and cross-border acquisition which may facilitate or weaken the discovery of new talent and experiment with new artists. In the first chapter, I explore the impact of unbundling on the discovery of new talent. The results highlight the trade-off between breadth-oriented experimentation (experimenting with more new alternatives by producing unbundled products) and depth-oriented experimentation (collecting more accurate information on fewer alternatives by producing bundled products) and suggest that unbundling may facilitate firms’ breadth-oriented experimentation and the discovery of new talent. In the second chapter, I investigate whether digitalization (digital market) facilitated the discovery of new talent by entrepreneurial firms. Digitalization offers diverse niche opportunities from a long-tail market and decreases the cost of experimenting with new artists. However, the findings from this chapter suggest that entrepreneurial firms did not benefit from such opportunities; iTunes and YouTube did not facilitate entrepreneurial firms’ discovery of new talent and experimentation with new artists (compared to incumbent firms). In the third chapter, I turn to look at the impact of foreign ownership or capital on the discovery of new domestic talent. The “liability of foreignness” argument suggests that foreign ownership may weaken the discovery of new talent from the host country because foreign owners may lack a good understanding of the host country culture. This study analyzes the case of Sony’s acquisition of CBS Records (a US major label) in 1988, which is the first merger by a Japanese firm with a firm of a distant culture. The results suggest that Sony did not undermine CBS Records’ discovery of domestic new talent but instead increased the popularity of new domestic artists in CBS Records and its subsidiaries

The Art Of Reconstruction

The objective of this thesis paper is to highlight my artistic process, current projects, and research strategies emerging from my studio practice. First, this thesis describes and elaborates my practice of “reconstruction,” the reasons I find it effective, and the personal history behind it. I also discuss the goals of my work and how I intend to carry it forward into the future. Throughout my work I seek to tell a story that resonates with my personal history, communicating to audiences both the vulnerabilities and transitions of life experience. My work invites the viewer into a collective space where the larger narratives about our human experience are shared. I excavate story through parallel tracks of written and visual responses exposing the vulnerabilities of truth-telling. From the rending and fragmentation of surface contexts, I construct wholeness. The intersection of fracture and collision creates relevant moments of access for each viewer. The results provide a kaleidoscopic lens through which my own anecdotal and contemplative moments become a means for reconnecting the audience to their own stories and images

Small Business E-Commerce Adoption througha Qualitative Lens: Theory and Observations

Using approaches consistent with the qualitative research tradition, the authors attempt to understand the motivation behind small business adoption and exploitation of e-commerce. A theoretically grounded model of e-commerce deployment by small businesses owners is presented, which can best be explained by two theoretical lines: an economic evolutionary perspective and a sociological institutional perspective. Further, our findings suggest a tie between owner characteristics, dispositions, traits, and the level of e-commerce integration achieved. We contend that understanding the drivers of e-commerce adoption, policy makers and other help agencies can tailor programs to assist firms with integrating and exploiting e-commerce in a cost effective manner

An Anxiety of Authenticity? Fusion Musics and Tunisian Identity

The analytical trope of hybridity has a troubled past in the social sciences. The careless adoption of scientific terminology without adaptation to cultural contexts can result in dangerous consequences for ethnomusicology. This paper challenges, and ultimately accepts, the efficacy of hybridity as a model for musical contact. Mindful of essentialization, post-colonial situations, and the perils of over-generalization, ethnomusicology holds sophisticated tools for examining local understandings of hybridity and the role that fusions play in shaping identities. Approaching musics from internal perspectives returns agency to musicians and listeners, liberating the local experience from the cloaking paradigm of hybridity as a strict and predictable function of globalization. This paper examines Tunisian conceptions of musical hybridity through two case studies: the French Jazz-inspired Tunisian ‘oud musician, Anouar Brahem, and the Arab-Appalachian band, Kantara. Internal and external discourses of Hybridity suit the Tunisian soundscape. I demonstrate how intentionally hybrid musical projects (fusion and ma\u27luf in particular) inform and are informed by Tunisian cultural histories and identities. Describing Tunisianness is complex in a sovereign state only fifty-four years old and conquered by successive kingdoms, from the Phoenicians to the French. In Tunisia national identity thrives on inclusion and cultural layering. Pride and authenticity are often located in explicitly hybrid expressions, including music. Although anxieties of purism, preservation, and standardization have curbed some musical innovation, Tunisians connect deeply with fusion, hybrid musics that, for many, exemplify what it means to be Tunisian

An Anxiety of Authenticity? Fusion Musics and Tunisian Identity

The analytical trope of hybridity has a troubled past in the social sciences. The careless adoption of scientific terminology without adaptation to cultural contexts can result in dangerous consequences for ethnomusicology. This paper challenges, and ultimately accepts, the efficacy of hybridity as a model for musical contact. Mindful of essentialization, post-colonial situations, and the perils of over-generalization, ethnomusicology holds sophisticated tools for examining local understandings of hybridity and the role that fusions play in shaping identities. Approaching musics from internal perspectives returns agency to musicians and listeners, liberating the local experience from the cloaking paradigm of hybridity as a strict and predictable function of globalization. This paper examines Tunisian conceptions of musical hybridity through two case studies: the French Jazz-inspired Tunisian ‘oud musician, Anouar Brahem, and the Arab-Appalachian band, Kantara. Internal and external discourses of Hybridity suit the Tunisian soundscape. I demonstrate how intentionally hybrid musical projects (fusion and ma\u27luf in particular) inform and are informed by Tunisian cultural histories and identities. Describing Tunisianness is complex in a sovereign state only fifty-four years old and conquered by successive kingdoms, from the Phoenicians to the French. In Tunisia national identity thrives on inclusion and cultural layering. Pride and authenticity are often located in explicitly hybrid expressions, including music. Although anxieties of purism, preservation, and standardization have curbed some musical innovation, Tunisians connect deeply with fusion, hybrid musics that, for many, exemplify what it means to be Tunisian

Isles of Boshen : Edward Lear's literary nonsense in context

This thesis investigates three major areas in the background of Edward Lear's literary nonsense: the parodic relationship with text and genre of early children's literature, the trends behind Lear's innovative illustration style, and the "nonsense" child construct manifest within the genre, which I claim is, in many ways, an expression of the Romantic conception of the child. The first chapter explores the parodic basis of nonsense. Most literary nonsense is referential; it often begins by inhabiting a genre or individual work, but what it does to the original is debatable. Some critics see nonsense as parody, while others claim that nonsense precludes parody in its intentional purposelessness. In this chapter I explore the critical debate surrounding parody in nonsense, and parody in general. I then examine the works of Lear, and some Carroll, looking first at their genuine, clear parodies. Next, I look at the many borderline cases of parody which use nonsense as a device but are not overshadowed by it. Finally, I discuss the more "pure" literary nonsense which, I argue, goes beyond parody to establish a new genre. The next chapter looks at the background of Lear's nonsense illustration. His style of illustration was a widely original combination of devices which are best seen in the context of the children's book illustrations of his day. With Bewick's innovations in woodcuts, the quality of children's illustrations had drastically improved. Diverging from this trend, Lear's illustrations hearken back to the rough chapbooks which he probably read as a child. His child-like style, coupled with an expert draughtsman's eye, began a rival tradition of children's book illustration. His illustrations are in way caricatures of chapbooks. His text and illustrations, like those of Blake and Hood, are integral, and their self-reflexiveness with the verses places them in an altogether different class of illustration

Synthesizing Transcendental Painting: Race, Religion, and Aesthetics in the Art of Emil Bisttram, Raymond Jonson, and Agnes Pelton

Three core artists of the Transcendental Painting Group, Emil Bisttram (1895-1976), Raymond Jonson (1891-1982), and Agnes Pelton (1881-1961), employed modernist painting styles in an attempt to create spiritually significant art. Although previous scholarship has focused on the artists' formal innovations, their work was imbricated in contemporary cultural politics, actively participating in discourses surrounding conceptions of race, religion, aesthetics, and the interrelation of each of these realms. Each drew from sources in metaphysical religious literature, especially Theosophy and related traditions. Their theories of ideal aesthetics for religious art, based on the supposition that artists could convey direct emotional experience through abstraction, reflected the Theosophical drive to overcome materialist philosophy by transcending the limits of physicality. Bisttram, Pelton, and Jonson also internalized Theosophy's promotion of syncretism as a guiding principle, and followed metaphysical religionists in advocating a combinative appropriation from diverse religious and artistic traditions. In particular, they relied on Theosophical conceptions of the importance of gleaning allegedly ancient wisdom as they addressed American Indian cultures of the Southwest. Their art created a hybrid iconography, combining symbolic elements from metaphysical religious sources with imagery derived from Southwest Indian cultures, asserting an integral relationship between the two, and advancing the perceived agreement between Native American and Theosophical religious systems as evidence of the truth of the latter. In addition to expressing metaphysical interpretations of Native American religions in their work, they promoted a transcultural aesthetic that posited American Indian art as an archaic and therefore "authentic" means of expressing of spiritual wisdom; they modeled their own abstract aesthetics in response to their encounters with Indian art. As they appropriated from Native American sources, they created images that celebrated the indigenous peoples of the Southwest as possessing unique and important religious knowledge. Their intent, however, was to advance Western culture forward by drawing from ancient sources to create a new, synthetic religion. The result was an art that referenced American Indian cultural practices and art traditions, but gave no voice to the original Native American artists, claiming to transcend the sphere of cultural significance and approach the level of "universal" meaning