Reading the Akedah narrative (Genesis 22:1-19) in the context of modern hermeneutics

(This thesis is an attempt to apply literary criticism, specifically a narratological approach, to the reading of the biblical text.) There is an incongruity in the story of Isaac's (near) sacrifice by Abraham insofar as it is too economical with language in what is otherwise a complex set of important issues about obedience and sacrifice. Interpreters throughout the centuries have tried to resolve the textual difficulties created by the incongruity. Yet the variety of their conclusions are evidence of the impossibility of overcoming the ambiguities of the story. But these ambiguities are scarcely given any thorough investigation by the interpreters, whose assumed duties are commonly to clarify the story either for the sake of religious or moral obligation or, in the pursuit of intellectual satisfaction, as is apparent in many historical readings of the text. A closer look at the story reveals that there are many ambiguities that can be grasped from many angles. By using the focalization theory of narratology one can illuminate differing points of view involved in the process of narration. The narrator's voice should not be regarded as the only representation of the events as there are also the characters' ways of looking and the related events. One should be careful so as not to follow slavishly the narrator's voice while neglecting others' standpoints in the narrative which may contradict the narrator's voice. There should be communicative links seen amongst the voices or focalizations in the narrative which may or may not be verbally said. Here, it is proposed that reading is experiencing the multilayered world of the narrative. Reading is not necessarily and ultimately bound with the task of producing meaning, although it may mean a threat towards rational objectivity

The Creative Mind - DRACLE

Human creativity is not just the result of a cognitive encapsulated process, but is an online process that link together thoughts, emotions and sensory events in a complex fashion. Thanks to this property, that is to the development of mental reflection, we can always (or almost always) create a context in which to give sense to the world. Art and science are clear examples. Scientific research is clearly interested in mechanisms of translating the imagination, the pure thinking into something useful to a community in a social and economic sense. In particular, the contemporary cognitive science, that is slowly abandoning its traditional stand-alone paradigms, is increasingly taking the shape of an open range where it possible to exercise a fruitful cross-fertilization between different disciplines (from computer science to psychology, from art to anthropology and mathematics) that more and more speak a similar language. This new frontier is what we call the paradigm of extended cognition. The performance, presented and discussed in this paper, is aimed at artists, scholars and experts interested in the whole world of creativity and the related psychological and neuro-cognitive mechanisms. In particular, the paper aims at explaining the possible benefits deriving from the contamination of Art and Science in order to understand how the mind and brain shape our experience through the dynamics of conscious and unconscious creativity mechanisms. We aim to contaminate the traditional academic thinking with the suggestions coming from the world of contemporary art and particularly, the installation aims to introduce a discussion on the critical issue of the creativity mediated by technology and, as a counterpart, the creative mood of technology

The Creative Mind – DRACLE

Human creativity is not just the result of a cognitive encapsulated process, but is an online process that link together thoughts, emotions and sensory events in a complex fashion. Thanks to this property, that is to the development of mental reflection, we can always (or almost always) create a context in which to give sense to the world. Art and science are clear examples. Scientific research is clearly interested in mechanisms of translating the imagination, the pure thinking into something useful to a community in a social and economic sense. In particular, the contemporary cognitive science, which is slowly abandoning its traditional stand-alone paradigms, is increasingly taking the shape of an open range where it possible to exercise a fruitful crossfertilization between different disciplines (from computer science to psychology, from art to anthropology and mathematics) that more and more speak a similar language. This new frontier is what we call the paradigm of extended cognition. The performance, presented and discussed in this paper, is aimed at artists, scholars and experts interested in the whole world of creativity and the related psychological and neuro-cognitive mechanisms. The paper aims at explaining the possible benefits deriving from the contamination of Art and Science in order to understand how the mind and brain shape our experience through the dynamics of conscious and unconscious creativity mechanisms. We aim to contaminate the traditional academic thinking with the suggestions coming from the world of contemporary art and particularly, the installation aims to introduce a discussion on the critical issue of the creativity mediated by technology and, as a counterpart, the creative mood of technology

The creative mind : DRACLE II further development

The presented performance, using an EEG-BCI (Brain Computer Interface), is dedicated to artists, scholars and experts interested in the whole world of creativity and the related psychological and neuro-cognitive mechanisms. The aims of this work are: to identify possible biomarkers (EEG) related to the creative process in specific tasks, exploring it in a real-time ecological setting; to investigate the relation between explicit and implicit mechanisms, between creativity personality trait, and semantic memory; to validate a tool to study creativeness. In a previous pilot study, we revealed the presence of significant relations between personality components, EEG indices and creative processes, suggesting that the use of a self-echo setting may be applied also to boost creativity in people with specific thinking styles and personality traits, and to empower creativity in a tailored fashion. In this paper we extended the experimentation, consolidating the previous obtained results

The Creative Mind \u2013 DRACLE II. Further Development

The presented performance, using an EEG-BCI (Brain Computer Interface), is dedicated to artists, scholars and experts interested in the whole world of creativity and the related psychological and neuro-cognitive mechanisms. The aims of this work are: to identify possible biomarkers (EEG) related to the creative process in specific tasks, exploring it in a real-time ecological setting; to investigate the relation between explicit and implicit mechanisms, between creativity personality trait, and semantic memory; to validate a tool to study creativeness. In a previous pilot study, we revealed the presence of significant relations between personality components, EEG indices and creative processes, suggesting that the use of a self-echo setting may be applied also to boost creativity in people with specific thinking styles and personality traits, and to empower creativity in a tailored fashion. In this paper we extended the experimentation, consolidating the previous obtained results