Historical activities in the mathematics classroom: Tartaglia's Nova Scientia (1537)

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Lesson 08: The Renaissance

This lesson covers artworks created during the Renaissance in Europe. It begins with a preface on artworks created prior to the Renaissance that focused on Christian ideology and iconography. Artists discussed include Botticelli, Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Leonardo da Vinci

Fashioning the Flapper: Clothing as a Catalyst for Social Change in 1920s America

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society\u27s rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women\u27s Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The impact of the rise and fall of corsetry, the infamous flapper, and Black culture has shaped fashion throughout this highly influential decade and in turn, these fashions helped shape society

The Politics of Abstract Art. Forma 1 and the Italian Communist Party

Este artículo examina el papel del grupo de artistas abstractos Forma 1 en relación con la política cultural del Partido Comunista Italiano durante la posguerra, como ejemplo de los intentos de superar la dicotomía establecida en Italia entre arte abstracto y realismo socialista y producir una alternativa a la confrontación entre ambos discursos estéticos. Mientras los artistas realistas socialistas subrayaban la necesidad de expresar contenidos políticos explícitos con un estilo que asegurase su máxima legibilidad para una audiencia de masas, los artistas de Forma 1 argumentaban que la abstracción significaba una crítica de la representación pictórica que podía contribuir a la crítica de la ideología burguesa, armonizando de este modo el marxismo con los desarrollos artísticos más avanzados. El PCI, por su parte, basaba su política artística en amplias alianzas de artistas e intelectuales antifascistas, que cada vez eran más difíciles de mantener en el clima de creciente confrontación política y cultural que siguió a la II Guerra Mundial

The Politics of Abstract Art. Forma 1 and the Italian Communist Party

Este artículo examina el papel del grupo de artistas abstractos Forma 1 en relación con la política cultural del Partido Comunista Italiano durante la posguerra, como ejemplo de los intentos de superar la dicotomía establecida en Italia entre arte abstracto y realismo socialista y producir una alternativa a la confrontación entre ambos discursos estéticos. Mientras los artistas realistas socialistas subrayaban la necesidad de expresar contenidos políticos explícitos con un estilo que asegurase su máxima legibilidad para una audiencia de masas, los artistas de Forma 1 argumentaban que la abstracción significaba una crítica de la representación pictórica que podía contribuir a la crítica de la ideología burguesa, armonizando de este modo el marxismo con los desarrollos artísticos más avanzados. El PCI, por su parte, basaba su política artística en amplias alianzas de artistas e intelectuales antifascistas, que cada vez eran más difíciles de mantener en el clima de creciente confrontación política y cultural que siguió a la II Guerra Mundial

Imagining a New Italy to Create Italians. Le Vie d’Italia from 1917 to 1935

This article is situated in the framework of the editorial products through which Touring reinvented tourism and travel in the early part of the 1900s. It concentrates on the magazine Le Vie d’Italia, proposing a rereading starting from the covers, which, up through 1935, exhibited a product, or rather, an Italian product brand each month in place of the traditional beauty of the landscape. These covers/manifestos suggest a new visual of the landscape and build the new view for Italians, relying on the rhetorical mechanism—amply tested historically—of figures of the landscape operating as a topic

Drawing as language in design project: a course of analysis via Vesely and Perez-Gomez

We propose drawing as design project process, regarded both as project’s instrumental utility (technology) and condition for disciplinary reflection (art), considering drawing as language whose operability enables innovation in design. At the production level (drawing), two cornerstone conditions are implied: 1. the instrumental ability (technology) and 2. its critical (semantical) evaluation. As subject for analysis we present project drawings from widely recognized contemporary Portuguese designers. We interpret design object as the project’s overall communication exchange, questioning how drawing, as mediator for projectual practice in design, limits the object’s creation and hence its existence as design language? Our answer considers drawing: 1. mediator for representation (through technical expression), 2. classifying function (through program) and 3. interpretative mark of imagination (through authorship).Propomos o processo da projectação em design através do desenho, interpretado simultaneamente como utilidade instrumental (tecnologia) e condição de reflexão disciplinar (arte) considerando o desenho como uma linguagem cuja operatividade possibilita a inovação em design. No plano do fazer (desenhar) estão, fundamentalmente, implicadas duas condições: 1. a capacidade instrumental (tecnologia) e 2. a sua valorização crítica (semântica). Tomamos como material de análise desenhos de projecto de designers portugueses contemporâneos de reconhecido mérito nacional e internacional. Procuraremos atingir a compreensão do objecto de design, como intercâmbio da comunicação global do projecto, através da seguinte pergunta: em que medida o desenho, como mediador da prática projectual do design, condiciona a criação do objecto e consequentemente a sua existência enquanto linguagem do design? Responderemos considerando o desenho: 1. mediador da representação (através da expressão técnica), 2. como função classificadora (através do programa) e 3. como marca interpretativa da imaginação (através da autoria)

Parametric Thinking: Recognizing the "Architectural Formulas" in Cultural Built Heritage by Parametric Digital Modelling

Parametric digital modeling is today one of the most interesting tools on the international architectural design scene. At the same time it is one of the areas on which architectural criticism debates for some time. The use of parametric methods throughout the whole design process is favored by the rapid evolution of hardware and software devices and the everincreasing programming capabilities. However, the so-called Parametric Architecture has revealed its existence even before the digital revolution. Parametric Architecture is a definition coined by Luigi Moretti in the '40s. Furthermore, several scholars have found examples of parametric thinking from the origin of the history of Western architecture. The idea of verifying the existence of a "parametric thinking" in the Cultural Built Heritage, recognizing the parameters that could have guided the architectural composition and re-creating their relationships using tools of parametric digital modelling is the focus of the present proposal. It follows, deepens and develops a research carried out on the atria's vaults of several Baroque palaces in Turin

Knowledge for the Enhancement between Memory and Contemporaneity: Pilgrim’s Old and New Routes in Historical Maps (15th-19th Centuries)

The text analyses the cartography produced between the late Middle Ages and the Unification of Italy (and the Carta d’Italia of the Military Survey Office): among the most important categories of documented sources for the history of viability and the area. The original maps (almost all hand-drawn) prevail, drawn for the ancient states or upper classes for the purpose of military or civil management, control and enhancement of the territory.  Beyond the metrics and topographic contents, the utilisation of historical maps requires research in public and private land registries of Italy and other countries, which is not always easy. It furthermore requires a rational critical evaluation of the products and with this the necessary contextualisation of administrative and political-economic-social strategic practice to which they belong. The text addresses historical cartography (general maps of various scales and road types) used for the study of viability, including the numerous pilgrim routes that cross Tuscany from north to south, passing through the Appennino, through the crossings of Lunigiana and Valtiberina. The official Tuscan products, as well as those of its sub-regions and communities (whose road network is highlighted) stand out among others, and also singular street routes, particularly those drawn during the second half of the 18th century and the first decades of the 20th century when the geometric cadastre was completed. Almost all of them were needed to be able to rule the territory and often to plan and carry out important public work as well as modernisation of communication infrastructure

An Historical Survey on Light Technologies

Following the celebration of the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies in 2015, this paper presents a survey of the exploitation of light throughout our history. Human beings started using light far into the Stone Age, in order to meet immediate needs, and widened its used when ancient civilizations developed. Other practical uses were conceived during the Middle Ages, some of which had a deep impact on social life. Nevertheless, it was after the Scientific Revolution and, to a wider extent, with the Industrial Revolution, that more devices were developed. The advancement of chemistry and electricity provided the ground and the tools for inventing a number of light-related devices, from photography to chemical and electrical lighting technologies. The deeper and broader scientific advancements of the twentieth century, throughout wave and quanta paradigms and the research on the interactions with matter at the sub-atomic level, have provided the knowledge for a much broader exploitation of light in several different fields, leading to the present technological domains of optoelectronics and photoelectronics, including cinema, image processing, lasers, photovoltaic cells, and optical discs. The recent success of fiber optics, white LEDs, and holography, evidence how vastly and deeply the interaction between light and man is still growing