The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact (A philosophical reflection for graphic design)

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact Current discourses within cultural studies are re-iterating the limitations of language to adequately describe the affective domains of corporeality and materiality in the study of cultural artefacts. Within the discourse of graphic design, however, there remains an enduring focus placed upon models of language and communication to understand the meaning of designed materials. Rather than upholding a focus upon language, this thesis undertakes a theoretical investigation to extend the literature available to the discourse of graphic design to better understand how visual materials ‘come to mean’ within the experience of an embodied subject coupled to an affective environment. This thesis proposes an ontology of images that is emergent as a part of what, within the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is describes as a mind-body-world system through which the ‘meaning’ of visual materials should be grounded. This thesis asks not ‘what’ visual materials mean but rather ‘how’ visual materials come to mean in terms of a complex relationship involving the embodied perceptual experience of the maker and the viewer that is immersed within an affective environment, what the thesis terms the multidimensional depth of the image. A phenomenological theory of art is extended to include a range of materials of popular visual culture to frame a study of how form and style come to mean qua the gestures of an embodied experience as coupled to an environment — a meaning that reciprocally emerges through the embodied experience of the work by the viewer. The environmental processes of which an embodied subject’s movements are coupled are brought into focus through enactive conceptions of mind within the cognitive sciences, describing how mind and meaning are emergent within an autopoietic organism-environment system. This provides a framework in which the affective dimensions of matter can be more fully understood as having a cognitive efficacy. Within this context, Material Engagement Theory (an approach within cognitive archaeology) is utilized to include a more focussed discussion of the affective domains of materials, objects, and artefacts and their role in the emergence of mind and meaning.HER

Affective neuroscience, emotional regulation, and international relations

International relations (IR) has witnessed an emerging interest in neuroscience, particularly for its relevance to a now widespread scholarship on emotions. Contributing to this scholarship, this article draws on the subfields of affective neuroscience and neuropsychology, which remain largely unexplored in IR. Firstly, the article draws on affective neuroscience in illuminating affect's defining role in consciousness and omnipresence in social behavior, challenging the continuing elision of emotions in mainstream approaches. Secondly, it applies theories of depth neuropsychology, which suggest a neural predisposition originating in the brain's higher cortical regions to attenuate emotional arousal and limit affective consciousness. This predisposition works to preserve individuals' self-coherence, countering implicit assumptions about rationality and motivation within IR theory. Thirdly, it outlines three key implications for IR theory. It argues that affective neuroscience and neuropsychology offer a route towards deep theorizing of ontologies and motivations. It also leads to a reassessment of the social regulation of emotions, particularly as observed in institutions, including the state. It also suggests a productive engagement with constructivist and poststructuralist approaches by addressing the agency of the body in social relations. The article concludes by sketching the potential for a therapeutically-attuned approach to IR

Playing with the autoethnographical: Performing and re-presenting the fan's voice

© 2014 SAGE Publications. My article plays with notions of performativity and representation to repudiate assumptions of one-dimensional fandom. In particular, due to its self-reflexive writing style, I argue that autoethnography can articulate and show the subject-fan voice through evocations of first-person, insider experiences. Therefore, staged vignettes are deployed to represent the fan as an assemblage of investments, intensities, and energies that anchor within but fluidly move through broader socio-cultural realities. Illuminating the materialization and salience of affect, these stagings intentionally convey varying levels of invigoration to refute common misperceptions of fandom as singular in its focus, experience, or intensity. Moreover, underpinning these renditions is a degree of playfulness, crafting autoethnography to explore both the subject and fandom as an enacted series of performances. Ultimately, as a performative writing and representational strategy, the vignettes aim to blend, blur, and elicit traces of a culturally bound and multifaceted first-person fandom

Backwards is the way forward: feedback in the cortical hierarchy predicts the expected future

Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models)

Consensus Paper: Current Perspectives on Abstract Concepts and Future Research Directions

Abstract concepts are relevant to a wide range of disciplines, including cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, cognitive, social, and affective neuroscience, and philosophy. This consensus paper synthesizes the work and views of researchers in the field, discussing current perspectives on theoretical and methodological issues, and recommendations for future research. In this paper, we urge researchers to go beyond the traditional abstract-concrete dichotomy and consider the multiple dimensions that characterize concepts (e.g., sensorimotor experience, social interaction, conceptual metaphor), as well as the mediating influence of linguistic and cultural context on conceptual representations. We also promote the use of interactive methods to investigate both the comprehension and production of abstract concepts, while also focusing on individual differences in conceptual representations. Overall, we argue that abstract concepts should be studied in a more nuanced way that takes into account their complexity and diversity, which should permit us a fuller, more holistic understanding of abstract cognition

Geographies of ageing and disaster: older people’s experiences of post-disaster recovery in Christchurch, New Zealand

It was 12:51pm on Tuesday the 22nd of February when a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Canterbury region in New Zealand’s South Island. This earthquake devastatingly took the lives of 185 people and caused widespread damage across Christchurch and the Canterbury region. Since the February earthquake there has been 15,832 quakes in the Canterbury region. The impact of the earthquakes has resulted in ongoing social, material and political change which has shaped how everyday life is experienced. While the Christchurch earthquakes have been investigated in relation to a number of different angles and agendas, to date there has been a notable absence on how older people in Christchurch are experiencing post-disaster recovery. This PhD research attends to this omission and by drawing upon geographical scholarship on disasters and ageing to better understand the everyday experiences of post-disaster recovery for older people. This thesis identifies a lack of geographical attention to the emotional, affective and embodied experience of disaster. In response to this the thesis draws upon qualitative material collected from a six months fieldwork period to better understand the ways in which everyday life is lived out in an environment which has been social and materially altered. This thesis identifies three main interrelated themes which are productive for advancing understandings of how older people are situated in a post-disaster context. The first is that the concepts of emotion, affect and embodiment matter as they help inform how disasters are experienced and negotiated and the implication this has on various social and spatial relations. The second is that the disruption of the disaster to everyday places has implications on senses of belonging which is illustrated in highly temporal and affective dimensions. The third theme highlights the importance of recognising mundane and everyday practices as a means of coping and persisting with ongoing impacts of the disaster. This thesis argues that older people should not be seen as passive or homogenous agents in a disaster context but, in fact, are experiencing highly emotional impacts of disaster.Economic and Social Research Counci