Our Mythical Hope

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapte

Our Mythical Hope

Classical Antiquity is a particularly important field in terms of “Hope studies” […]. For centuries, the ancient tradition, and classical mythology in particular, has been a common reference point for whole hosts of creators of culture, across many parts of the world, and with the new media and globalization only increasing its impact. Thus, in our research at this stage, we have decided to study how the authors of literary and audiovisual texts for youth make use of the ancient myths to support their young protagonists (and readers or viewers) in crucial moments of their existence, on their road into adulthood, and in those dark hours when it seems that life is about to shatter and fade away. However, if Hope is summoned in time, the crisis can be overcome and the protagonist grows stronger, with a powerful uplifting message for the public. […] Owing to this, we get a chance to remain true to our ideas, to keep faith in our dreams, and, when the decisive moment comes, to choose not hatred but love, not darkness but light. Katarzyna Marciniak, University of Warsaw, From the introductory chapte

Fictional Practices of Spirituality I: Interactive Media

"Fictional Practices of Spirituality" provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations

Public poetry, memory, and the historical present: 1660-1745

Public Poetry, Memory, and the Historical Present: 1660-1745 examines the role public poetry played in the fashioning of social memory during the so-called Augustan age of English literature; further, it traces in the rise and decline of public poetry during this period the emergence and subsequent estrangement of two distinctive modes of public memory: one highly emblematic and allusive in nature, fostering and indeed dependent upon a well-endowed collective sense of historical and literary tradition; the other far more literal and individualistic, fashioning social memory of the historical present--the present moment set against the backdrop of historical consciousness--by encouraging a personal awareness of the immediate, prosaic realities of the everyday world. Both modes of memory, the figurative and prosaic, were made broadly available to English society at large with the rise of public poetry in the years after the Restoration. They are generally united in the work of John Dryden, whose rise as a public figure coincides with the rise of public poetry itself in England, but it was the fate of Dryden\u27s greatest literary inheritor, Alexander Pope, to preside over--even accelerate--what one might call the divorce between the figurative and literal modes of public memory, the subsequent decline of the commercial appeal and cultural authority of formal verse, and the gradual eclipse of the figurative mode of public memory, which had tended to accommodate the habits of mind and memory inculcated by poetry. This divorce coincides with the gradual supplanting of occasional, journalistic poetry (broadsheet ballads as well as formal verse) by prose journalism and the novel, but also at work were the continuing shift from orality to literacy and an evolving sensibility--rationalist, individualist, and mercantilist in nature--in which the habit of emblematic allusion to a shared historical and literary tradition ceased to be relevant and viable. In tracing the broad cultural effects of an important poetic mode, therefore, I explore an important moment in the evolution of social consciousness, a moment that stands as the proximate origin of our own habits of memory

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

The Web-controlled mobile Communication Robot Ego Secundus

The R&D project Ego Secundus (ES) is a practical and usable implementation of telepresence for a new type of interpersonal and remote communication. Known technologies are exploited and optimized, while existing deficits are remedied by adding supplemental components. It envisions the creation of a system that enables global use by the lay person over the Internet with standard IT technologies. Ego secundus acts as a userâ??s â??second eg