377 research outputs found

    Museum Representations of Contested Spaces: The Kuril Islands

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    Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a boom of museums focused on the Ainu cultural subject has emerged in both Russia and Japan. By conceptualizing museums as nonneutral and culturally embedded productions which attempt to convey knowledge of foreign spaces to home spaces, this thesis will analyze the ways in which various museum institutions in Russia and Japan, as well as those produced by Ainu activist groups, choose to tell certain stories about the disputed Kuril Island territories and the Ainu people, and to map those stories within the broader colonial framework of the Kuril Islands dispute and indigenous rights in Russia and Japan. The institutions discussed in this text are the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park, Japanese National Museum of Territory and Sovereignty, Russian Ethnographic Museum, Omsk Oblast Museum of Fine Art, Nibutani Ainu Cultural Museum, and Ureshipa Shirarika

    Sagrada familia in ice

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    Building an Image: Japanese Influence on the Perception of Western Countries, A Study of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair

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    In this thesis, I argue that the Japanese government has utilized art and artistic expression to influence the perception that Western countries had of its nation and culture. This phenomenon is examined through a case study of Japanese participation at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and the exhibits that they presented. These exhibits are examined utilizing both reception and post-colonial theory, and then applying these theories to primary source material from the 1904 World’s Fair. These materials include guidebooks and photographs from both the United States and Japanese authors, to showcase differences between how the East and West interpreted these exhibits. Two specific examples that illustrate this point are the Japanese relationship with the indigenous population the Ainu and the presentation of Geisha as an embodiment of Japanese culture. Through this analysis, I draw a relationship between the Japanese government’s self-represented identity and this identity’s reception by Western authors. This research concludes that the Japanese government influenced the perception of Western countries through their participation at the 1904 World’s Fair, and carefully cultivated an image of their culture that was beneficial to their international goals. This thesis helps to shed light on Japan’s interactions with the Western world after their return to the world’s stage, and the importance of using art to influence international perceptions of their national identity

    The Diamond, April 7, 2000

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    Front Page: Students Attend Calvin Writer\u27s Conference; Board Interviews New VPSS Candidate News: Dordt Represents Syria, Kuwait, and Palestine in Model Arab League; Dordt Hosts British Literature Conference; Zylstra Gives Reasons for the SLC; Do Students Have a Voice and Do They Care?; How To Get Involved; News Briefs; Diamond Lookback; Tuition Increases; Social Workers Informed About Victim Advocacy Opinion: Learning Continues After College; Cat Houses, Priorities and the Proposed Student Life Center; Everyone Has a Journey, What\u27s Yours? Features: Seniors Exhibit Art; Wielenga and De Haan Present Faculty Recital; Sid the Serpent Teaches Local Children about Opera A & E: Concert Tour Culminates in Home Concert; Nobody Move and Nobody Gets Hurt Sports: Elgersma Resigns as Soccer Coach; Tennis Teams Look Competitive; Defenders End Basketball Seasonhttps://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/dordt_diamond/1167/thumbnail.jp

    Natural Computing and Beyond

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    This book contains the joint proceedings of the Winter School of Hakodate (WSH) 2011 held in Hakodate, Japan, March 15–16, 2011, and the 6th International Workshop on Natural Computing (6th IWNC) held in Tokyo, Japan, March 28–30, 2012, organized by the Special Interest Group of Natural Computing (SIG-NAC), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). This volume compiles refereed contributions to various aspects of natural computing, ranging from computing with slime mold, artificial chemistry, eco-physics, and synthetic biology, to computational aesthetics

    Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks

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    Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.Knowledge Unlatche

    Towards a deep ecology of art, technology and being - an ontological investigation with particular reference to the rock-cut edifices of Ellora, India, and Tadao Ando’s water temple

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    This practice-based thesis is an interrogation of ‘being’, one not centred on the human being. It concerns a being that manifests through dynamic inter-relation between human and other entities and phenomena in the universe. It considers several interrelated questions, interrogating notions of 'relational being','non-anthropocentric being', 'the being of a space', ‘the space of being’. Ultimately, one is considering the implications of relational being for ‘deep ecology’. With regard ‘relational being’, key inter-related Buddhist ideas drive the thinking and practice: ‘relational origination’ (pratityasamutpada), and ‘emptiness’(shunyata). Furthermore at the heart of this particular history of technology is a discussion of the significance of zero. The Sanskrit term shunya, means both ‘zero’ and ‘empty’, and relates to shunyata. There are several principal objectives. Firstly an analysis of perceived relational dynamics in Ellora’s rock-cut architecture, technology, and ontology. Secondly, scrutiny of apparent correspondence between Ellora’s Edifice Twenty-Nine and a contemporary Tantric shrine: the Water Temple, constructed in 1991. Thirdly, an examination of ideas in contemporary science and technology that engender reconsiderations of notions of ‘relational being’. The primary practical outcomes are two films: relationship-place naka-ma and zero = every day? Both approach the question through phenomenological process, paralleling Ando’s conception of ‘architecture’ as an integrated and inter-acting entity of built edifice, wider landscape, and the spectatorship of persons who frequent it. This research engenders ‘new knowledge’ in terms of: offering pluralistic, trans-national and trans-disciplinary insight on current thinking relating to art, architecture, technology, spectatorship, and ontological practice; evolving knowledge with regard interactions between body, humanly constructed entities, wider environments/ecologies; engendering new perspectives on considerations of cyberspace, Ellora, Ando, and the Water Temple; contributing to a counter thesis vis-à-vis the colonial project of objectification and ossification of the other
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