Writing a Picture : Adolph Gottlieb\u27s Rolling and Yoshihara Jiro\u27s Red Circle on Black

Calligraphy and calligraphic elements in abstract art demonstrate the differences between Japanese and American approaches to abstraction. An examination of the use of calligraphy in Japanese art can reveal how its historic tradition in Japan lends depth and meaning to an image, which is not effectively possible for American artists using the same forms. These differences descend from a Japanese writing system that developed as abstracted images in themselves. Though the Western tradition of Abstract Expressionism art sought to make the experience of painting purely visual without the aid of narrative, explanation, or text, both American and Japanese artists used calligraphic forms. In a word and image analysis, this thesis demonstrates how these calligraphic forms can reveal layers of meaning within their appropriate cultural context. Reconciling calligraphy with abstract art presents the conflict of East meeting West in a new form

SoundScript - Supporting the acquisition of character writing by multisensory integration

This work is introducing a new movement sonification method called 'SoundScript' to support the acquisition of character writing by children. SoundScript creates 'sound traces' from the writing trace in real-time during the process of handwriting. The structural correlation of both - optic and acoustic - traces leads to an integrated audio-visual perception of writing with the expected stimulation of multisensory integration sites of the CNS. Data of a pilot study are introduced indicating that the writing kinematics is reproduced more adequately if additional sound traces are available during writing. In the future SoundScript shall be applied to verify if the establishment of internal character representations can be accelerated, if the conciseness of the specific shape of the particular characters can be made stronger and if thereby the efficiency of the handwriting learning process can be enhanced

Inaka ga Kokoro ni Fureru: The Practices and Parlance of Cultural Exchange in the Japan-America Grassroots Summit

This thesis is an examination of the John Manjiro-Whitfield Commemorative Center for International Exchange (CIE) and its sole undertaking the annual Japan-America Grassroots Summit. The CIE’s goal is to foster greater mutual understanding between Japanese and American citizens through what it terms grassroots exchange. To achieve this, the CIE aids in organizing a weeklong cultural exchange program held alternately in the United States and Japan complete with a three-night homestay. As a participant-observer in the 25th Annual Grassroots Summit held in Japan, I address the underlying influences shaping this cultural exchange program and limits to achieving its goals. I also address how the summit’s structure and use of historical narratives affects the experiences of Americans who attend the summit when it is held in Japan

Animating Race : The Production and Ascription of Asian-ness in the Animation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra

How and by what means is race ascribed to an animated body? My thesis addresses this question by reconstructing the production narratives around the Nickelodeon television series Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-08) and its sequel The Legend of Korra (2012-14). Through original and preexisting interviews, I determine how the ascription of race occurs at every stage of production. To do so, I triangulate theories related to race as a social construct, using a definition composed by sociologists Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer; re-presentations of the body in animation, drawing upon art historian Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concept of the bodyscape; and the cinematic voice as described by film scholars Rick Altman, Mary Ann Doane, Michel Chion, and Gianluca Sergi. Even production processes not directly related to character design, animation, or performance contribute to the ascription of race. Therefore, this thesis also references writings on culture, such as those on cultural appropriation, cultural flow/traffic, and transculturation; fantasy, an impulse to break away from mimesis; and realist animation conventions, which relates to Paul Wells’ concept of hyper-realism. These factors contribute to world-building and the construction of cultural signifiers, which in turn can project identities onto animated bodyscapes. This thesis is structured around stages of production, including art design, writing, storyboarding and directing, martial arts choreography, music and sound design, voice casting and acting, and outsourcing final animation. At each stage, below-the-line personnel make creative decisions that result in the ascription of race. My findings challenge John T. Caldwell’s conceptualization of how production cultures operate, identifying multiple interlinked groups instead of just one. They expand upon the concept of the bodyscape to account for aural components in the construction of a racial identity. Finally, they build upon Maureen Furniss’ definition of animation as a continuum between mimesis and abstraction to incorporate the impulse toward fantasy

Textualization of Experience

The book is an analysis of Greek Hellenistic literature with the help of conceptual tools of cultural studies and media theory. Its main aim is to describe the cultural process during which Greek authors in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C. made the “textualization of experience", that is, transferred phenomenalistically understood qualities of human sensory experience to the categories characteristic for textual description – as far as possible for them. This process is shown by examples from the works of Xenophon, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Philitas of Kos and Archimedes. The author also tries to show some of the consequences that the phenomenon of the Hellenistic textualization of experience had for the later epochs of European culture

The sky rained with millet and the ghosts wailed in the night: An anthropological study of Chinese calligraphy.

This thesis accounts for the social power of calligraphy in China. It begins by examining the phenomena of widespread public calligraphy and inscription. I investigate three dimensions of Chinese calligraphy - as written characters, as handwriting and as an art form. I examine both the popular view of writing, and the theological view of calligraphic experts. The main points of my argument are: 1. Handwriting is considered an extension of the body-person (shen), which makes it a suitable candidate for the Chinese love of reading 'signs' from bodily forms. As a result, handwriting is treated as revelatory of the inner self. 2. The process of learning calligraphy as a 'technique of the body' constitutes an important element in Chinese embodiment. The techniques of the brush create the type of body-person that is classified as a literati. 3. One key chapter in the dissertation focuses on Bloch's criticism of Goody's 'literacy thesis' - that better means of writing transmit knowledge more effectively. To show the fallacy of Goody's assumption, Bloch resorts to the common view of ideograms - Chinese written characters are the repository of knowledge, rather than a mere means of communication. However, analysis of material from the fields of linguistics and the modern Chinese script reform shows that Bloch's assumption is a myth. Notwithstanding, it is a myth embraced by the Chinese themselves. In this folk understanding, written characters are indeed believed to contain in themselves profound information. 4. To disenchant Chinese calligraphy, the relationship between writing techniques and magic is analysed. This explains the phenomenon of 'magical' writings by political leaders. Moreover, writing is also the way socio-political power speaks. This has undoubtedly helped to sustain calligraphy's halo. However, the power of calligraphy cannot be truly understood unless one sees calligraphy - a culturally enriched and empowered category of artefact/artwork - as an active social actor with agency of its own

The Saburo Hasegawa Reader

Published on the occasion of the 2019 exhibition “Changing and Unchanging Things: Noguchi and Hasegawa in Postwar Japan,” The Saburo Hasegawa Reader encompasses a selection of writings by the Japanese artist, theorist, essayist, teacher, and curator Saburo Hasegawa (1908–1957), translated into English for the first time. Credited with introducing abstract art to Japan in the 1930s, Hasegawa also became influential as a lecturer on Japan and its aesthetic and philosophical traditions in New York and San Francisco before his premature death in 1957. A memorial volume, initiated by the Oakland Art Museum but left unpublished since the 1950s, as well as interviews from students at California College of Arts and Crafts, helps to establish Hasegawa as a thoughtful bridge between East and West and an engaging and thoughtful interpreter of classical and contemporary sources

Reading fiction as performance: Shikitei Sanba (1776-1822) and woodblock print.

Japanese popular commercial fiction developed in relation to the performing arts, borrowing elements from the oral tradition and theatre. It flourished using the woodblock printing medium. Edo period woodblock-printed books retained a manuscript-like quality, although could be produced in large numbers. Since the Meiji period, scholars have striven to put Edo fiction into "more accessible" movable-type editions, causing, I believe, modem misconceptions about pre-modern methods of reading. Recent scholarship admits we have forgotten how fiction was read in Edo Japan. We are hindered by the modern practice of swift, silent reading. I combine a bibliographical and theoretical approach in response to these problems. Due to its ties with the theatre, I consider fiction as a type of performance, and suggest the key to understanding how fiction was enjoyed lies in close attention to the original woodblock-printed books. The fiction writer, Shikitei Sanba was the son of a woodblock-carver, and grew up in the publishing trade. He was also a particular theatre aficionado. This thesis uses his example to demonstrate how performance was represented in popular fiction. In Sanba's fiction, the connection between woodblock and theatre emerges in two ways. My first chapter conducts a bibliographical study of (1) theatre-related works written by Sanba and works published by him in his capacity as a publisher. Following chapters explore how (2) the expressiveness of woodblock is used to represent elements of performance in Sanba's fiction. The last chapter indicates how a work of fiction in its entirety reflects conventions of performance. Sanba particularly sought to convey the whole of a (imaginary) performance on the page, in a comprehensive set of cues for oral interpretation and re-enactment by the reader. Many genres of pre-modem Japanese popular fiction are shown to hold clues, of varying degree and subtlety, for recollecting and recreating performance