9,857 research outputs found

    The cultural center of the world : art, finance, and globalization in late twentieth-century New York

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    This article explores why New York City’s municipal government, together with private benefactors, poured an unprecedented amount of money into the arts during the 1980s, a time of broader austerity. While other public expenditures saw dramatic cuts, the arts were considered essential to the city’s future as a center for global capital—as a way to lure financial elites and young professionals to the city, create new forms of revenue-raising consumption, and cement New York’s reputation as the ultimate global city. New York had always had a vital arts scene. But in the 1980s, the arts were monetized in new ways to serve capital—and capitalists. Arts and culture were central to the new urban lifestyle that helped produce the explosion of global finance. But as arts and culture increasingly came to be associated with a luxury lifestyle, the arts themselves became a luxury, inaccessible to most New Yorkers

    A Cornish palimpsest : Peter Lanyon and the construction of a new landscape, 1938-1964

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    The thesis examines the emergence of Peter Lanyon as one of the few truly innovative British landscape painters this century. In the Introduction I discuss the problematic nature of landscape art and consider the significance of Lanyon's discovery that direct description and linear perspective can be replaced with allusive representational elements by fusing the emotional and imaginative life of the artist with the physical activity of painting. Chapter One concentrates on the period 1936-8 when Lanyon was taught by Borlase Smart, a key figure in the St Ives art colony between the wars. Chapter Two examines the influence of Adrian Stokes and the links between Lanyon's painting and the theories developed in books such as Colour and Form and The Quattro Cento. Chapter Three analyses the period 1940-45 when Lanyon was directly influenced by the constructivism of Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo. I look closely at their approaches to abstraction and assess Lanyon's relative position to them. The importance of Neo-Romanticism and the status of St Ives as a perceived avant-garde community is also addressed. In Chapter Four I discuss how Lanyon resolved to achieve a new orientation in his art on his return from wartime service with the RAF by synthesising constructivism, and traditional landscape. The Generation and Surfacing Series demonstrate his preoccupation with a sense of place, a fascination with the relationships between the human body and landscape and his struggle to find a technique and style that was entirely his own. His sense of existential insideness is discussed in Chapter Five through an examination of the work derived from Portreath, St. Just and Porthleven - key places in Lanyon's psychological attachment to the landscape of West Penwith. In Chapter Six I examine Lanyon's attachment to myths and archetypal forms, tracing the influence of Bergson's vitalist philosophy as well as his use of Celtic and classical motifs. Chapter Seven is a discussion of the malaise evident in Lanyon's work by 1955 and the impact of American Abstract Expressionism at the Tate Gallery a year later. In the summer of 1959 Lanyon joined the Cornish Gliding Club and Chapter Eight looks at how this necessitated a dynamic, expanded conception of the landscape and a re-thinking of relations within the picture field. The ability to dissolve boundaries encouraged him to break down distinctions between painting and construction so that abstract sculptural elements were now assembled into independent works of art. Finally, Chapter Nine assesses Lanyon's overall position in relation to his early influences and to St Ives art as a whole, his response to new directions in art coming out of London and NewYork in the early 1960s and the importance of travel as a stimulus for further realignment in his artistic and topographical horizons. His pictorial inventiveness and vitality remained unabated at the time of his death and would undoubtedly have continued to be enriched by travel abroad and contact with new movements in modem art on both sides of the Atlanti

    Pedunculopontine-Induced cortical decoupling as the neurophysiological locus of dissociation

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    Mounting evidence suggests an association between aberrant sleep phenomena and dissociative experiences. However, no wake-sleep boundary theory provides a compelling explanation of dissociation or specifies its physiological substrates. We present a theoretical account of dissociation that integrates theories and empirical results from multiple lines of research concerning the domain of dissociation and the regulation of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This theory posits that individual differences in the circuitry governing the REM sleep promoting Pedunculopontine Nucleus and Laterodorsal Tegmental Nucleus determine the degree of similarity in the cortical connectivity profiles of wakefulness and REM sleep. We propose that a latent trait characterized by elevated dissociative experiences emerges from the decoupling of frontal executive regions due to a REM sleep-like aminergic/cholinergic balance. The Pedunculopontine Induced Cortical Decoupling Account of Dissociation (PICDAD) suggests multiple fruitful lines of inquiry and provides novel insights

    An overview of soil–water characteristic curves of stabilised soils and their influential factors

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    Since unsaturated soil conditions are normally experienced above the groundwater table, most treated or stabilised soils for roadworks, earth dams’ embankments, landfill sites, hydraulic barriers etc. could be regarded as existing in this region. The soil–water characteristic (or retention) curve (SWCC) is a useful conceptual tool by which an evaluation of unsaturated soil's property functions and corresponding macro-scale behaviour (strength, volume change, hydraulic conductivity, fluid flow, diffusivity, etc.) can be carried out. Hence, an examination of some of the various factors that could affect the hydraulic or water retention property of the stabilised soil is very vital both for laboratory studies and field practice. However, a thorough assessment of the water retention behaviour of stabilised soils can be understandably limited sometimes. This could be partly due to some of the perculiar conditions associated with soil preparation methods, soil type, soil-stabiliser mix proportion used, curing conditions, method of compaction, durability assessment modalities and other logistical issues surrounding either laboratory instrumentation or in-situ application. This article presents a critical and comprehensive review of these factors on the stabilised soil’s water retention behaviour and also provides a systematic understanding of the mechanisms of stabilisation occurring at the micro- and macro-mechanical levels. Recommendations are also made to stimulate further discussions on the synthesis of SWCC of stabilised soils vis-à-vis factors influencing them with possible interpreted engineering behaviours such as shear strength and soil consolidation

    Maximizing the potential of digital games for understanding skill acquisition

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    Gaming is a domain of profound skill development. Players’ digital traces create data that track the development of skill from novice to expert levels. We argue that existing work, although promising, has yet to take advantage of the potential of game data for understanding skill acquisition, and that to realize this potential, future studies can use the fit of formal learning curves to individual data as a theoretical anchor. Learning-curve analysis allows learning rate, initial performance, and asymptotic performance to be separated out, and so can serve as a tool for reconciling the multiple factors that may affect learning. We review existing research on skill development using data from digital games, showing how such work can confirm, challenge, and extend existing claims about the psychology of expertise. Learning-curve analysis provides the foundation for direct experiments on the factors that affect skill development, which are necessary for a cross-domain cognitive theory of skill. We conclude by making recommendations for, and noting obstacles to, experimental studies of skill development in digital games
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