Para-images: Cultural ideas and technical apparatuses beyond the pictorial surfaces

Our world is hinged on images. The mass obsession with selfies and spectacles, the surveillance technology and Deepfake videos enabled by computer vision, the Event Horizon Telescope that produced the first image of a black hole, the simulations which climate change research relies on. Reality is being ever more entangled with image, yet images are increasingly detached from the physical world and escape human comprehension. It is obvious that the traditional understanding of images as a representation of the world, while valid, will no longer suffice to account for the intertwined relationship images has with our world. Contemplating the ever-complex relationship between images and reality, the thesis proposes a new approach to understanding images in contemporary visual culture: para-images. The thesis employs Vilém Flusser’s notion of counter vision to examine cultural ideas and technical apparatuses operating beyond the pictorial surfaces of seven images of water splashes. In the process, the thesis identifies agential realism and twenty-first-century media as two useful frameworks in formulating the triangular relationship among humans, images and the world. Attempting to answer the question ‘What is left of an image if the pictorial surface is scratched away?’, the thesis uncovers the often neglected ideological and technical infrastructures that make images possible in the first place. Situating images and machines at the same level of humans as entities with their own agencies, the image theory this thesis establishes concerns the entanglement of humans, machines, apparatuses, images and the world. In short, an image is the world, the world is an image

COSMOLOGICAL NARRATIVE IN THE SYNAGOGUES OF LATE ROMAN-BYZANTINE PALESTINE

The night sky provided ancient peoples with a visible framework through which they could view and experience the divine. Ancient astronomers looked to the night sky for practical reasons, such as the construction of calendars by which time could evenly be divided, and for prognosis, such as the foretelling of future events based on the movements of the planets and stars. While scholars have written much about the Greco-Roman understanding of the night sky, few studies exist that examine Jewish cosmological thought in relation to the appearance of the Late Roman-Byzantine synagogue Helios-zodiac cycle. This dissertation surveys the ways that ancient Jews experienced the night sky, including literature of the Second Temple (sixth century BCE – 70 CE), rabbinic and mystical writings, and Helios-zodiac cycles in synagogues of ancient Palestine. I argue that Judaism joined an evolving Greco-Roman cosmology with ancient Jewish traditions as a means of producing knowledge of the earthly and heavenly realms.Doctor of Philosoph

CULTURAL ROOTS OF TECHNOLOGY: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF AUTOMATED SYSTEMS FROM THE ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE

The aim of this research work is to outline the history of proto-cybernetic systems throughout antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance. After identifying what are considered the main characteristics of an automaton, we examine all technical, literary, historical available sources, in order to get the descriptions not only of the actually built or designed automata, but also of the ones that were imagined in literary texts. From the work of historical reconstruction it has also been possible to make a classification of ancient automata, thanks to a UML representation of their operation. This classification of the types of automata and of the actions they could perform (or attributed to them) made it possible to build a matrix of distances of more than 200 automata (and of their features) with the Minkowski algorithm and consequently to get a philomemetic tree (with the software MEGA 4.0), which describes automata evolution over the period

Towards a Sustainable Life: Smart and Green Design in Buildings and Community

This Special Issue includes contributions about occupants’ sustainable living in buildings and communities, highlighting issues surrounding the sustainable development of our environments and lives by emphasizing smart and green design perspectives. This Special Issue specifically focuses on research and case studies that develop promising methods for the sustainable development of our environment and identify factors critical to the application of a sustainable paradigm for quality of life from a user-oriented perspective. After a rigorous review of the submissions by experts, fourteen articles concerning sustainable living and development are published in this Special Issue, written by authors sharing their expertise and approaches to the concept and application of sustainability in their fields. The fourteen contributions to this special issue can be categorized into four groups, depending on the issues that they address. All the proposed methods, models, and applications in these studies contribute to the current understanding of the adoption of the sustainability paradigm and are likely to inspire further research addressing the challenges of constructing sustainable buildings and communities resulting in a sustainable life for all of society

Lighthouses in Antiquity: Case Studies of the Lighthouses at Dover, England; Patara, Turkey; and Leptis Magna, North Africa

There may have been upwards of 100 lighthouses in the Mediterranean, along the northern Atlantic coast, and in England during the Roman Imperial period. Lighthouses were simultaneously a common structure and triumphs of Roman engineering. They were statements of power, prestige, and identity. After the construction of the Pharos of Alexandria in 280 BCE, lighthouses came to be a typical monument in Roman harbors, and a beneficial invention that continue to be built today. Architecture has adapted and evolved over time, but lighthouses have maintained the same basic shape, structure, and function. Lighthouses are represented in the three artistic media of ancient evidence: archaeological remains, iconography, and primary (contemporary) sources. The data is uneven, however, because no ancient lighthouse known today has all three. A study of ancient lighthouses requires a holistic approach that utilizes archaeological remains, iconography, contemporary sources, historical sources, and modern scholarship. The following thesis reviews the artistic media, the history of and possible precursors to ancient lighthouses such as Bronze Age temples and Classical signal towers; the function of ancient lighthouses, and their illumination. Three case studies of the ancient lighthouses at Dover, England; Patara, Turkey; and Leptis Magna, North Africa are examined in detail. These three lighthouses differ in their historical context, dates, shape, placement, and construction materials. This thesis examines these criteria through the use of case studies and the analysis of archaeological remains, iconography, contemporary sources, and historical sources to construct a more complete view of ancient lighthouses. An in-depth study of the three lighthouses and the available evidence revealed that, although there are inconsistencies, archaeology, iconography, and contemporary sources can often each fill in the gaps where the other evidences are lacking and provide information about ancient lighthouses that we otherwise would not have. For example, archaeological remains provide information about lighthouse construction and materials, iconography offers clues regarding illumination and external construction, and contemporary sources indicate lighthouse placement and historical context. While a holistic study of ancient lighthouses cannot account for all missing information, the evidences often support one another and work together to provide a more comprehensive view on the subject

Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction: Hyper-Modernism, Hyperreality, and Posthumanism

How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization