The virtual observing agent in music: a theory of agential perspective as implied by indexical gesture

The human body is inseparable from our understanding of music. Through embodied cognition, listeners conceptualize music as performed action. We find evidence of this in our most fundamental musical language. “High” pitches resonate high in a singer’s head, while “fast” rhythms resemble fast bodily movement. Scholars have followed the entailments of these metaphors in recent decades, developing theories of bodily gesture (Hatten 2004, Lidov 2005) and physical mimesis (Cox 2011). These hold that the bodily movement that we hear in music can imitate the physical gestures that we use in everyday communication (e.g., waving, nodding, bowing, or sighing). This has its own entailments; most fundamentally, it implies the presence of a virtual, human-like agent within music that is similar to the “virtual persona” theorized by Edward T. Cone (1974). In other words, in perceiving musical sounds as imitative of physical movement and gesture, we infer the presence of a virtual agent who enacts them. This dissertation extends these theories, demonstrating that musical gestures can be mimetic of indexical somatic movements—that is, bodily movements of pointing, looking, striving, and reaching. These indexical gestures suggest the presence of a virtual observing agent. The virtual observing agent acts a lens through which we, the listener, can experience the interior world (diegesis) of a work. This leads us to embody a single and more individualized perspective on the musical representation. I explore the implications of indexical gesture and perspective with an examination of music from the common practice period. Moreover, I bring the theory of virtual observing agency together with theories of musical narrative and emotion.Musi

Brain structural predispositions for music and language processing

[eng] It has been shown that music and language training can elicit plastic changes on brain structure and function bringing along behavioural benefits. For instance, musicians have been reported to have better auditory discrimination including pitch and speech-in-noise perception, motor-synchronization, verbal memory and general IQ than individuals without formal musical background. Also, bilinguals have shown higher executive function and attention-related abilities than monolinguals. Furthermore, altered functional and structural connectivity can be tracked to brain areas related to the activities most frequently performed by both musicians (instrumentalists and singers) and linguistic experts (such as bilinguals or professional phoneticians). While research in the last decade has devoted important effort to the study of brain plasticity, only a few investigations have addressed the connection between the initial functional or structural properties of brain networks related to auditory-motor function and subsequent language or musical training. Indeed, brain structural markers such as grey matter volume/density or white-matter diffusivity measurements from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data, as well as functional measurements from task- related activity or resting-state data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or electroenceplhalography (EEG) have been demonstrated to correlate with consecutive performance and learning in the auditory-motor domain. The main goal of the present dissertation was twofold: we aimed to further the existing knowledge regarding brain plasticity elicited during putative sensitive periods and after long-term music practice, and to explore the white-matter pathways that predict linguistic or musical skills at baseline . Our secondary goals were to confirm previous findings regarding the brain structures involved in music and language processing, as well as to provide evidence of the benefits of usingstructural measurements and correlational analyses between imaging and behavioural data to study inter-individual differences. Study I focused on the comparison between professional pianists and non- musicians observing a complex pattern of increases and decreases in grey matter volume. In comparison to non-musician individuals, pianists showed greater grey matter volume in areas related to motor skill and the automatization of learned movements, as well as reinforcement learning and emotional processing. On the other hand, regions associated to sensorimotor control, score reading and auditory and musical perception presented a reduction in grey matter volume. Study II explored the relationship between white-matter structural properties of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and the performance of native German speakers in a foreign- language (Hindi) sentence and word imitation task. We found that a greater left lateralization of the AF volume predicted performance on the imitation task. This result was confirmed by using not only a manual deterministic approach but also an automatic atlas-based fibre-reconstruction method, which in addition pointed out to a specific region in the anterior half of the left AF as the most related to imitation ability. Study III aimed to investigate whether the white-matter structural connectivity of the pathways previously described as targets for plasticity mechanisms in professional musicians predicted musical abilities in non-musicians. We observed that the white- matter microstructural organization of the right hemisphere pathways involved in motor-control (corticospinal tract) and auditory-motor transformations (AF) correlated with the performance of non-musician individuals during the initial stages of rhythmic and melodic learning. The present work confirmed the involvement of several brain structures previously described to display plastic effects associated to music and language training in the first stages of audio-motor learning. Furthermore, they challenge previous views regarding music-induced plasticity by showing that expertise is not always or uniquely correlated with increases in brain tissue. This raises the question of the role of efficiency mechanisms derived from professional-like practice. Most importantly, the results from these three studies converge in showing that a prediction-feedback-feedforward loop for auditory-motor processing may be crucially involved in both musical and language learning and skills. We thus suggest that brain auditory-motor systems previously described as participating in native language processing (cortical areas of the dorsal route for language processing and the AF that connects them) may also be recruited during exposure to new linguistic or musical material, being refined after sustained music practice.[spa] Estudios previos muestran que la formación musical y lingüística provoca cambios plásticos en las estructuras y funciones cerebrales, acompañándose también de beneficios conductuales. Por ejemplo, se ha descrito que los músicos poseen mejores habilidades de discriminación auditiva (incluyendo la percepción tonal y la discriminación del habla en un ambiente ruidoso), una mayor capacidad de sincronización motora, así como mejor memoria verbal y coeficiente intelectual general en comparación con personas sin formación musical. Paralelamente, los bilingües muestran mejores funciones ejecutivas y habilidades relacionadas con la atención en comparación con individuos monolingües. Además, las alteraciones en la conectividad cerebral funcional y estructural pueden ser rastreadas estudiando las áreas cerebrales relacionadas con las actividades más utilizadas por músicos (instrumentistas y cantantes) y expertos lingüísticos (como bilingües o fonetistas profesionales). Pese a que en la última década se han dedicado esfuerzos importantes en el campo de la investigación sobre la plasticidad cerebral, sólo unos pocos estudios han tratado de investigar la conexión entre las propiedades iniciales del cerebro, en cuanto a las funciones y estructuras que se relacionan con las funciones auditivo-motoras, y el posterior aprendizaje musical o del lenguaje. Sin embargo, los marcadores estructurales cerebrales, tales como volumen/densidad de materia gris o medidas de difusividad en la sustancia blanca a partir de datos de imagen del tensor de difusión, así como medidas funcionales de la actividad relacionada con una tarea o datos de resting-state (estado de reposo) obtenidos por resonancia magnética o electroencefalografía, han demostrado que pueden correlacionar con el rendimiento y el aprendizaje en el dominio auditivo- motor. En la presente tesis pretendíamos ampliar nuestro conocimiento en cuanto a la plasticidad cerebral obtenida durante los supuestos “períodos sensibles” y después de la práctica musical mantenida en el tiempo, por un lado, y explorar las vías de sustancia blanca que pueden predecir habilidades lingüísticas o musicales al inicio del aprendizaje, por otro lado. Como objetivos secundarios, queríamos confirmar resultados previos con respecto a las estructuras cerebrales involucradas en el procesamiento de la música y el lenguaje, así como apoyar el uso de mediciones estructurales y enfoques correlacionales (entre datos de neuroimagen y conductuales) para estudiar las diferencias inter- individuales. El Estudio I se centró en la comparación entre pianistas profesionales y no músicos, observando un complejo patrón de aumentos y disminuciones en el volumen de materia gris. En comparación con los individuos no músicos, los pianistas mostraron mayor volumen de sustancia gris en áreas relacionadas con la habilidad motora y la automatización de movimientos aprendidos, así como el aprendizaje a través del refuerzo y el procesamiento emocional, mientras que las regiones asociadas al control sensoriomotor, lectura de partituras y percepción auditiva y musical presentaron una reducción del volumen de materia gris. El Estudio II exploró la relación entre las propiedades estructurales de la materia blanca del fascículo arqueado (AF por sus siglas en inglés) y el rendimiento de hablantes nativos de alemán en una tarea de imitación de frases y palabras en una lengua extranjera (hindi). Encontramos que una mayor lateralización del volumen de AF hacia la izquierda predecía el desempeño en la tarea de imitación. Este resultado se confirmó utilizando no sólo un enfoque determinístico-manual sino también una reconstrucción automática (basada en atlas anatómicos) de las fibras de sustancia blanca que, además, señalaba una región específica en la mitad anterior del AF izquierdo como la más relacionada con las capacidades de imitación. El Estudio III tenía como objetivo investigar si la conectividad estructural de vías de sustancia blanca anteriormente descritas como dianas para los mecanismos de plasticidad en músicos profesionales, podría predecir las habilidades musicales en los no músicos. Se observó que la organización micro-estructural de la materia blanca en el hemisferio derecho en vías involucradas en el control motor (tracto corticoespinal) y en transformaciones auditivo-motoras (AF) correlacionaba con el desempeño de individuos no músicos en las etapas iniciales del aprendizaje rítmico y melódico. El presente trabajo ha confirmado la implicación en las primeras etapas del aprendizaje audio-motor de varias estructuras cerebrales que previamente habían mostrado efectos plásticos asociados al aprendizaje musical y del lenguaje. Además, estos resultados desafían las opiniones anteriores sobre la plasticidad inducida por la experiencia musical al demostrar que la experiencia no se correlaciona siempre ni únicamente con un aumento del tejido cerebral, y planteando así preguntas sobre los mecanismos de eficiencia derivados de la práctica musical a nivel profesional. Más importante aún es que los resultados de estos tres estudios convergen mostrando que un bucle de predicción–retroalimentación (feedback)–alimentación directa (feedforward) para el procesamiento auditivo-motor puede estar implicado de manera crucial tanto en el aprendizaje musical como en el aprendizaje de idiomas. Por tanto, sugerimos que los sistemas auditivo-motrices del cerebro, que previamente se habían descrito como participantes en el procesamiento del lenguaje nativo (áreas corticales involucradas en la vía dorsal para el procesamiento del lenguaje, y el AF, que las conecta) también pueden ser reclutados durante la exposición a material lingüístico o musical nuevo, siendo refinado tras años de práctica musical activ

The neurobiology of cortical music representations

Music is undeniable one of humanity’s defining traits, as it has been documented since the earliest days of mankind, is present in all knowcultures and perceivable by all humans nearly alike. Intrigued by its omnipresence, researchers of all disciplines started the investigation of music’s mystical relationship and tremendous significance to humankind already several hundred years ago. Since comparably recently, the immense advancement of neuroscientific methods also enabled the examination of cognitive processes related to the processing of music. Within this neuroscience ofmusic, the vast majority of research work focused on how music, as an auditory stimulus, reaches the brain and howit is initially processed, aswell as on the tremendous effects it has on and can evoke through the human brain. However, intermediate steps, that is how the human brain achieves a transformation of incoming signals to a seemingly specialized and abstract representation of music have received less attention. Aiming to address this gap, the here presented thesis targeted these transformations, their possibly underlying processes and how both could potentially be explained through computational models. To this end, four projects were conducted. The first two comprised the creation and implementation of two open source toolboxes to first, tackle problems inherent to auditory neuroscience, thus also affecting neuroscientific music research and second, provide the basis for further advancements through standardization and automation. More precisely, this entailed deteriorated hearing thresholds and abilities in MRI settings and the aggravated localization and parcellation of the human auditory cortex as the core structure involved in auditory processing. The third project focused on the human’s brain apparent tuning to music by investigating functional and organizational principles of the auditory cortex and network with regard to the processing of different auditory categories of comparable social importance, more precisely if the perception of music evokes a is distinct and specialized pattern. In order to provide an in depth characterization of the respective patterns, both the segregation and integration of auditory cortex regions was examined. In the fourth and final project, a highly multimodal approach that included fMRI, EEG, behavior and models of varying complexity was utilized to evaluate how the aforementioned music representations are generated along the cortical hierarchy of auditory processing and how they are influenced by bottom-up and top-down processes. The results of project 1 and 2 demonstrated the necessity for the further advancement of MRI settings and definition of working models of the auditory cortex, as hearing thresholds and abilities seem to vary as a function of the used data acquisition protocol and the localization and parcellation of the human auditory cortex diverges drastically based on the approach it is based one. Project 3 revealed that the human brain apparently is indeed tuned for music by means of a specialized representation, as it evoked a bilateral network with a right hemispheric weight that was not observed for the other included categories. The result of this specialized and hierarchical recruitment of anterior and posterior auditory cortex regions was an abstract music component ix x SUMMARY that is situated in anterior regions of the superior temporal gyrus and preferably encodes music, regardless of sung or instrumental. The outcomes of project 4 indicated that even though the entire auditory cortex, again with a right hemispheric weight, is involved in the complex processing of music in particular, anterior regions yielded an abstract representation that varied excessively over time and could not sufficiently explained by any of the tested models. The specialized and abstract properties of this representation was furthermore underlined by the predictive ability of the tested models, as models that were either based on high level features such as behavioral representations and concepts or complex acoustic features always outperformed models based on single or simpler acoustic features. Additionally, factors know to influence auditory and thus music processing, like musical training apparently did not alter the observed representations. Together, the results of the projects suggest that the specialized and stable cortical representation of music is the outcome of sophisticated transformations of incoming sound signals along the cortical hierarchy of auditory processing that generate a music component in anterior regions of the superior temporal gyrus by means of top-down processes that interact with acoustic features, guiding their processing.Musik ist unbestreitbarer Weise eine der definierenden Eigenschaften des Menschen. Dokumentiert seit den frühesten Tagen der Menschheit und in allen bekannten Kulturen vorhanden, ist sie von allenMenschen nahezu gleichwahrnehmbar. Fasziniert von ihrerOmnipräsenz haben Wissenschaftler aller Disziplinen vor einigen hundert Jahren begonnen die mystische Beziehung zwischen Musik und Mensch, sowie ihre enorme Bedeutung für selbigen zu untersuchen. Seit einem vergleichsweise kurzem Zeitraum ist es durch den immensen Fortschritt neurowissenschafticher Methoden auch möglich die kognitiven Prozesse, welche an der Verarbeitung von Musik beteiligt, sind zu untersuchen. Innerhalb dieser Neurowissenschaft der Musik hat sich ein Großteil der Forschungsarbeit darauf konzentriert wie Musik, als auditorischer Stimulus, das menschliche Gehirn erreicht und wie sie initial verarbeitet wird, als auch welche kolossallen Effekte sie auf selbiges hat und auch dadurch bewirken kann. Jedoch haben die Zwischenschritte, also wie das menschliche Gehirn eintreffende Signale in eine scheinbar spezialisierte und abstrakte Repräsentation vonMusik umwandelt, vergleichsweise wenig Aufmerksamkeit erhalten. Um die dadurch entstandene Lücke zu adressieren, hat die hier vorliegende Dissertation diese Prozesse und wie selbige durch Modelle erklärt werden können in vier Projekten untersucht. Die ersten beiden Projekte beinhalteten die Herstellung und Implementierung von zwei Toolboxen um erstens, inhärente Probleme der auditorischen Neurowissenschaft, daher auch neurowissenschaftlicher Untersuchungen von Musik, zu verbessern und zweitens, eine Basis für weitere Fortschritte durch Standardisierung und Automatisierung zu schaffen. Im genaueren umfasste dies die stark beeinträchtigten Hörschwellen und –fähigkeiten in MRT-Untersuchungen und die erschwerte Lokalisation und Parzellierung des menschlichen auditorischen Kortex als Kernstruktur auditiver Verarbeitung. Das dritte Projekt befasste sich mit der augenscheinlichen Spezialisierung von Musik im menschlichen Gehirn durch die Untersuchung funktionaler und organisatorischer Prinzipien des auditorischen Kortex und Netzwerks bezüglich der Verarbeitung verschiedener auditorischer Kategorien vergleichbarer sozialer Bedeutung, im genaueren ob die Wahrnehmung von Musik ein distinktes und spezialisiertes neuronalenMuster hervorruft. Umeine ausführliche Charakterisierung der entsprechenden neuronalen Muster zu ermöglichen wurde die Segregation und Integration der Regionen des auditorischen Kortex untersucht. Im vierten und letzten Projekt wurde ein hochmultimodaler Ansatz,welcher fMRT, EEG, Verhalten undModelle verschiedener Komplexität beinhaltete, genutzt, umzu evaluieren, wie die zuvor genannten Repräsentationen von Musik entlang der kortikalen Hierarchie der auditorischen Verarbeitung generiert und wie sie möglicherweise durch Bottom-up- und Top-down-Ansätze beeinflusst werden. Die Ergebnisse von Projekt 1 und 2 demonstrierten die Notwendigkeit für weitere Verbesserungen von MRTUntersuchungen und die Definition eines Funktionsmodells des auditorischen Kortex, daHörxi xii ZUSAMMENFASSUNG schwellen und –fähigkeiten stark in Abhängigkeit der verwendeten Datenerwerbsprotokolle variierten und die Lokalisation, sowie Parzellierung des menschlichen auditorischen Kortex basierend auf den zugrundeliegenden Ansätzen drastisch divergiert. Projekt 3 zeigte, dass das menschliche Gehirn tatsächlich eine spezialisierte Repräsentation vonMusik enthält, da selbige als einzige auditorische Kategorie ein bilaterales Netzwerk mit rechtshemisphärischer Gewichtung evozierte. Aus diesemNetzwerk, welches die Rekrutierung anteriorer und posteriorer Teile des auditorischen Kortex beinhaltete, resultierte eine scheinbar abstrakte Repräsentation von Musik in anterioren Regionen des Gyrus temporalis superior, welche präferiert Musik enkodiert, ungeachtet ob gesungen oder instrumental. Die Resultate von Projekt 4 deuten darauf hin, dass der gesamte auditorische Kortex, erneut mit rechtshemisphärischer Gewichtung, an der komplexen Verarbeitung vonMusik beteiligt ist, besonders aber anteriore Regionen, die bereits genannten abstrakte Repräsentation hervorrufen, welche sich exzessiv über die Zeitdauer derWahrnehmung verändert und nicht hinreichend durch eines der getestetenModelle erklärt werden kann. Die spezialisierten und abstrakten Eigenschaften dieser Repräsentationen wurden weiterhin durch die prädiktiven Fähigkeiten der getestetenModelle unterstrichen, daModelle, welche entweder auf höheren Eigenschaften wie Verhaltensrepräsentationen und mentalen Konzepten oder komplexen akustischen Eigenschaften basierten, stets Modelle, welche auf niederen Attributen wie simplen akustischen Eigenschaften basierten, übertrafen. Zusätzlich konnte kein Effekt von Faktoren, wie z.B. musikalisches Training, welche bekanntermaßen auditorische und daherMusikverarbeitung beeinflussen, nachgewiesen werden. Zusammengefasst deuten die Ergebnisse der Projekte darauf, hin dass die spezialisierte und stabile kortikale Repräsentation vonMusik ein Resultat komplexer Prozesse ist, welche eintreffende Signale entlang der kortikalen Hierarchie auditorischer Verarbeitung in eine abstrakte Repräsentation vonMusik innerhalb anteriorer Regionen des Gyrus temporalis superior durch Top-Down-Prozesse, welche mit akustischen Eigenschaften interagieren und deren Verarbeitung steuern, umwandeln

Exploiting Spatio-Temporal Coherence for Video Object Detection in Robotics

This paper proposes a method to enhance video object detection for indoor environments in robotics. Concretely, it exploits knowledge about the camera motion between frames to propagate previously detected objects to successive frames. The proposal is rooted in the concepts of planar homography to propose regions of interest where to find objects, and recursive Bayesian filtering to integrate observations over time. The proposal is evaluated on six virtual, indoor environments, accounting for the detection of nine object classes over a total of ∼ 7k frames. Results show that our proposal improves the recall and the F1-score by a factor of 1.41 and 1.27, respectively, as well as it achieves a significant reduction of the object categorization entropy (58.8%) when compared to a two-stage video object detection method used as baseline, at the cost of small time overheads (120 ms) and precision loss (0.92).</p

Expressions of Mood in Cinematic Adaptations of Patricia Highsmith’s novels The Price of Salt and The Talented Mr. Ripley

The thesis sets out to explore the ways that mood is adapted from Highsmith’s novels The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and The Price of Salt (1952) to Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and Todd Haynes’s Carol (2015), respectively. The aim is to show the diverging ways in which the novels and the films express the quintessential Highsmith story through mood, and to show how these diverging forms of representation affect the overall experience of the stories. The discussion on the relationship between novels and their film adaptations reveals a traditionally ingrained expectation that film adaptations must fulfill a certain degree of fidelity to the novel. This view holds that film adaptation, as an interpreter, is in a form of artistic commitment to literature as the original source. The main goal of the film is then to pass on the literary work into new artistic territory while preserving the core idea and ‘essence’ of the original work. The thesis aims to shift the course of the discussion of adaptation away from the criterion of fidelity toward a discussion of the ways that these two art forms may in fact complement each other by being a part of a dialogical process between a representation and its source material. I argue in my thesis that the concept of mood, as a technique in literature and stylistic device in cinema, is essential in conveying the feeling of a distinct literary and cinematic world in Highsmith’s stories. Secondly, I argue that the aesthetic dimension of the films emphasizes an expression of moods through which the characters and audience can intuitively navigate the films’ meaning and emotional communication

Perspectives of electroacoustic music : a critical study of the electroacoustic music of Jonathan Harvey, Denis Smalley and Trevor Wishart.

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D174894 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Beyond the analogon; the "transfer of the referent" : the relationship between the external world experienced through culturally generated perceptual models constructed in the human mind, and the transfer of these images, via visual language, onto referen

Within 20th. Century art, the concept of the ‘normative’ image, as an attribute of things, has been challenged. As a consequence, paintings must now picture the ‘real’ world in other ways, incorporating knowledge and meaning beyond the analogon. Such descriptive representations were revealed as paradigmatic, rather than incontrovertible fact. Dependent on pre-conceived notions of stereotypicality, these descriptive images relied on surface illumination. My thesis explores images of things in the world as culturally inspired and information based. I examine paintings and sculptures of other cultures, such as black African, and other historical periods such as the Medieval, which reveal metonymously the basis for variations in representations of the ‘real’ world. The new enhanced representations which Modern artists created in their work were denigrated as deviant from the absolute ‘normative’ or regarded as distortions for purely mannerist and stylistic reasons. Postmodern research has reassessed them as multiple or extended imagings in whose facture new knowledge and human responses can be incorporated. These new forms of representation can be regarded as theoretical constructs rather than stylised depictions of appearance. In this way referents are transferred through the mind onto objects and vistas in the real world to align with our developed view of the physical world and better our understanding of humanity’s symbiotic relationship with nature

Accessible theatre: the application of human ethology and innate neurobiological systems to full-masked devised theatre practice

This thesis is concerned with the challenges of devising a full-masked theatre performance that is largely accessible to audiences of every age, social background and culture. The contribution to original knowledge is in the study's examination of the relationship between the devising processes of a full-masked performance, neurobiology, human ethology and the accessibility of audience reception (Bennett, 1994). The thesis addresses the concept of accessibility by taking a phenomenological approach to devising and audience reception, with particular focus on the role of neurobiological systems and structures, in particular the mirror neuron system, the pleasure-reward system, and pattern recognition systems, in the communication and reception of performance meaning (McConachie, 2008). The research is framed by the concept of a universal theatrical language proposed by practitioners Peter Brook and Tadeshi Suzuki, which has the potential to connect people at the deepest levels of their humanity (Pavis, 1996: 6). Practical approaches adopted in the research are informed and supported by anthropological and human ethological claims of universality (Ekman, 1975; Brown, 1991; Eibl-Eibesfeldt; 2007 [1989]; Schmitt et al. 1997). This thesis theorizes that human beings possess innate neurobiological systems that interact with culturally specific concepts, conditions and knowledge in such a way that when deployed appropriately, these innate neurobiological systems can be a platform for human cognition and for the designing of performances accessible to an audience of different ages, social backgrounds and cultures. It also proposes that innate neurobiological systems create a universal framework that makes it possible for the said broad-based audience to read and receive a performance using similar codes of cognition and aesthetic reference irrespective of age, social and cultural backgrounds. The research process led to the creation of an original full-masked theatrical performance and eighteen performances of this piece were given to different audiences in a range of venues and locations in Northamptonshire. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis of how the various audiences received the performance suggest that the devising methods employed did contribute to making the performance accessible to an audience with a broader constituency than theaters normally envision (Pitts-Walker, 1994: 9-10). This research enables practitioners for whom a wide audience and accessibility are an explicit focus to adopt devising approaches that will help to achieve the desired wide-ranging reception and accessibility in mixed audiences irrespective of race, age, gender and culture

On Rearing an Ugly Head: Joel-Peter Witkin and the Mysticism of the “Ugly Aesthetic”

The contemporary photographer, Joel-Peter Witkin, has described his remaking of some of the most iconic paintings in the history of art as a “divine revolt”. However, there are no attempts to unravel the meaning of this project nor to analyse the visual changes that Witkin has made. This thesis argues that Witkin's re-creations serve to subvert the negation or diminishment of ugliness in art history's depictions of the mystical, and to present the experience of ugliness as alternatively inherently Godly. Through engaging in the problems in philosophical aesthetics, it contrasts the notions “aesthetically ugly” (a quality that cannot be objectively identified and studied because it ascribes aesthetic non-worth) with the “ugly aesthetic”, which refers to the “perceptive-felt” experience of an object. By integrating descriptions of this experience of the ugly aesthetic with those of the early development stage of the “psychoanalytic pre-symbolic”, it provides heuristics with which to identify perceptual identifiers ugly objects, ugly worlds and the expression of ugly feelings in mystical invocations of paintings of three chosen art historical periods and Witkin's recreations. In his reconstructing of the heavenly realms given Renaissance paintings of Leda and the Swan (1510-1515) and The Birth of Venus (1485), Witkin makes a “pre-symbolic” space with ugly objects to present a contrary vision of an ugly dwelling place for God. In amending the Catholic Baroque's Little Fur (1638) and the Protestant Baroque's Still Life of Game, Fish, Fruit and Kitchen Utensils (1646), the artist replaces mystical feelings that imbue scenes of ugly objects with an expression of ugly feelings themselves, thereby guiding the viewer into a full immersion into these objects the real site of Godly experience instead. This theoretical formulation and its application to the works at hand, evidence that Witkin's work points to the mystical power of the ugly aesthetic to unleash a personal and collective memory of Godly reality as ontologically formless and mysterious, and thereby makes a case for ugliness' value

Adaptation as Anarchist: A Complexity Method for Ideology-Critique of American Crime Narratives

Particularly through their relation to ideology, crime narrative adaptations expose the conflict between individuals and communities on one side and the State on the other. Adaptations take the already defamiliarizing effect of narrative and continue to defamiliarize, creating a narrative cubist effect through various audiences and discursive orderings of events. Hence, they question the ideological prefiguring that lies at the foundation of narrative understanding. Insofar as ideologies are simplified ways to legitimate actions and project images of identity, the fact that a society’s narratives necessarily inherit ideology from the State obscures that society and State’s inevitable deviations from their self-images. Ideology misrepresents that which it attempts to legitimate. In order to critique ideological influence, the position from which total, reflective cultural study can extend is the vantage point that consistently and actively questions culture to its limits. It can only come from a position in which the audience’s freedom from domination is maximized. Cultural study and criticism thus arises most completely and honestly when it comes as close as it can from without ideology. By definition, the opposite of ideology is anarchy. In this dissertation I argue that adaptations channel a mechanism by which anarchist principles emerge from the ideological constraints obliged by the State’s pursuit of legitimacy—constraints which are inherent in all cultural narratives. Focusing on transatlantic “narrativizations” of crime events—different tellings of historical criminal events in view of American and European interaction—I demonstrate that adaptations, as dynamic systems of discourse, are self-driven toward anarchist critiques that splinter traditional Western ideologies. Overall, I make a three-part argument, first suggesting a method (based in complexity theory) for critical adaptation studies, then using that method to demonstrate how transatlantic America crime narrative adaptations reveal cultural identity struggles and necessarily tend toward anarchism, and lastly describing how the process of adaptation likewise reflects anarchist principles. Adaptation is anarchist. The anarchist method of adaptation study I propose will indicate 1) the degree to which American crime narrative adaptations stem from and contribute to various ideologies, and 2) how they can make clear those ideologies through necessary, consistent defamiliarization