Chinese Annals in the Western Observatory

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of documents of all sorts have been unearthed in China, opening whole new fields of study and transforming our modern understanding of ancient China. While these discoveries have necessarily taken place in China, Western scholars have also contributed to the study of these documents throughout this entire period. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of these Western scholars to the field of Chinese paleography, and especially to study of oracle-bone inscriptions, bronze and stone inscriptions, and manuscripts written on bamboo and silk. Each of these topics is provided with a comprehensive narrative history of studies by Western scholars, as well as an exhaustive bibliography and biographies of important scholars in the field. It is also supplied with a list of Chinese translations of these studies, as well as a complete index of authors and their works. Whether the reader is interested in the history of ancient China, ancient Chinese paleographic documents, or just in the history of the study of China as it has developed in the West, this book provides one of the most complete accounts available to date

Glass as ink: seeking spontaneity from the casting process

This practice-based research addresses internal form in cast glass. That is, ink- like imagery, which is wholly contained within clear, colourless glass. For the purposes of this project, ‘ink’ refers to liquid ink as is used in Chinese brush painting and calligraphy rather than to ink applications such as those used in print media. The aim is not to use ink itself. Rather, it is to emulate ink, rendered inside glass, while exploring the material similarities between the two media, including their liquid properties and their ability to be worked opaque or translucent. The project examines the interface between control and chance; where the artistic process ends and the unique properties of glass take over and are governed by heat, time and gravity. It also addresses the transformation of two- dimensional line drawing and ink wash into the third dimension. My research question is how the kiln and furnace casting processes can best be exploited to render the fluid, gestural and expressionistic immediacy of brush and ink painting, three-dimensionally, in solid glass. Following 14 years of studying and making art in Korea (1997‒2003) and China (2003‒2010), I have developed an affinity for brush and ink painting and, more specifically, for Chinese Grass script calligraphy and traditional landscape. This project aims to explore various methods of capturing apparent gesture and spontaneity in cast glass, in the form of ‘ink’ abstractions that evoke these styles of Chinese painting. My methodology includes identifying and isolating the elements that characterise Chinese brushwork in calligraphy and landscape painting, which are intimately linked fine art forms in China. Studio tests include manipulating different types of glass to create a dynamic, rhythmic, assured and graceful ink aesthetic, interpreted in the third dimension. I use flameworked inclusions to explore ink-like line and experiment with glass powders to evoke different intensities of ink wash. All tests are recorded in detail and are used to anticipate and loosely control glass movement. My research into Chinese brushwork characteristics is used to identify a framework within which the studio work sits. The variety, order and combination of techniques used to create the work constitute original knowledge in the field of cast glass. My method for reinterpreting the characteristics of Chinese painting, including line quality, ink wash, composition and balance, embedded three-dimensionally within the framework of cast glass, also contributes new knowledge. Based on systematic research and analysis, the terms ‘casting’, ‘moulds’, ‘spontaneity’ and the ‘third dimension’ are examined and defined anew

Contested constitutionalism: constitutionalization in contemporary China

This thesis was written on the constitutional changes of contemporary China, with the 1982 Constitution as the object of researches. This constitution is the currently valid constitution in China, and is expected by constitutional scholars to be put in “juridification”. However, for thirty years since its birth, this task is yet to be realized. What is more, the claim of “judicialization of the constitution” as Chinese legal constitutionalists held especially during the 1990s, is now contested by emergent constitutional schools as one of many constitutions in China. They are arguing that China’s constitutional reality should not be colonized by the Western-originated constitutional science –classical constitutionalism. Having perceived the critical merits of China’s new constitutional schools, this thesis is wary of confirming unconditionally the other end of arguments, namely, applying critical theories to condense into “constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics”. The use of “constitutionalism” to describe the Chinese model, however, should be examined against whether it has indeed resolved the material problems in China’s constitutionalization, or is merely an inflationary application of the terminology. If China’s legal constitutionalism is seen as implanting formalism of Hayekian theory in service of global capitalism, in the second-generation constitutional discourse, have we opted out of this mentality and re-constituted ourselves? Constitutionalization in contemporary China hence is a complex issue covering the grounds of institutional, political as well as conceptual controversies, more than a practical issue of applicable mechanisms. The conceptual arguments on “what is constitutional” are especially challenging to classical constitutionalism, when combined with “identity politics” and “constitutional pluralism”. Between the material and conceptual level, I am insisting that the ‘democratic deficit’ caused by China’s 1990s economic reforms and the market mentality still needs a redress, before we could render its hybrid outcomes as “constitutionalism with Chinese characteristics”

Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]

No abstract available

Dissecting Deep Language Models: The Explainability and Bias Perspective

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Redrawing Taiwanese spatial identities after martial law: text, space and hybridity in the post-colonial condition

Colonial powers exert dominance over their subject countries in multiple registers, for example, education and spatial constructions, which foster the colonised other‘s identification with the colonial power centre. Racial and local cultures of subject nations are thus systematically distorted and the transmission of memory through material culture is obscured. Focusing on contemporary Taiwan, this research examines how architectural and ideological strategies were employed by the dominant authorities to consolidate the power centre and explores possible means for shaping Taiwanese spatial subjectivity in the historical aftermath of such situations. The research examines the Formosans‘ ambiguous identification with local cultures and marginal spatial propositions, as well as discussing the inculcation of the 'great Chinese ideology‘ by analysing the teaching materials used in modern Taiwanese primary education. Reviewing aspects of contemporary post-colonial theory, the research explores the spatial implications of Taiwanese post-colonial textual narratives and argues for them as a potential source for the construction of contemporary spatial conditions, as these novels are shaped by an awareness of the importance of local cultures and the voices of marginalised people. The thesis thus suggests that a re-thinking of Taiwan‘s public spaces can be stimulated by spatial metaphors in textual narratives that associate peoples‘ memories of political and local events with spatial images that were previously suppressed. To explore the potential for the generation of space through reference to literary works, this research studies the ‗narrative architecture‘ experiments of the 1970s and 80s and goes on to propose a series of representational media for the construction of spatial narrations in Taiwan. Multiple spatial propositions concerning the island‘s post-colonial condition can be suggested by the visualisation of spatial metaphors that are embedded in Taiwanese textual narratives. At the end of the thesis, two proposals for post-colonial spatial narration are put forward, which transform the spatial propositions latent in the devices developed through a new juxtaposition with existing urban contexts. The intention of the research is to indicate a new urban spatial strategy for Taiwan, one that can allow its people to grasp the multiple layers of their conflicted spatial history while at the same time responding to the ongoing spatial confrontation between the power centre and the voices in the margins

Seeking Cultural Originality: A Critical Study on Contemporary Product Design in China

The intention of this thesis is to explore, by a critical perspective, the originality of product design in China, along with the expression of Chinese cultural values in product design in the contemporary international arena. Starting from literature reviews of design in China, this research focuses on both historical and cultural aspects of product evolution. It will take into account the indigenous innovation phenomenon – ‘shanzhai’ and ‘Chineseness’ in order to pursue a comprehensive understanding of the origin of product design and innovation trends in a contemporary context. Also, interview data from senior designers and professors from various design institutions and companies in China has been elicited in order to understand different perspectives. IKEA and MUJI have been selected as the main case examples to demonstrate their design principles, brand loyalty and cultural impact, based upon their experiences in transcending national borders through global policies. Xiaomi has also been used as a case study to support the study of Shanzhai phenomenon, while the case study on PINWU and SHANGXIA has also been conducted to study the current interpretation of contemporary Chinese product design in China. Furthermore, there will be interpretation of their brand management, marketing strategies and brand philosophies as case examples, which may indicate new directions for design in China. Ongoing, extensive literature searches and data analysis have revealed significant relationships between design, creativity, culture, branding and marketing. This research has identified the important influences of cultural values in product design in globalised markets which are needed in order for Chinese design institutions and companies to deliver their indigenous values to a competitive world

Command and commitment: terms of kingship in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions and in the Book of Documents

What is usually referred to as Zhou kingship in early China studies are the symbolic forms of an enhanced politico-religious identity we find articulated in the Zhou grand narrative in numerous passages throughout transmitted and excavated literary sources. In other words, our understanding of the concept of Zhou kingship in the main mirrors the order of ideas which came to stand for the former in the early Chinese literary tradition (ca. 950 - 350 BCE). How this order relates to historical forms and practices of political organization and their concerns in Western Zhou elite society has so far not been considered systematically. The present study sets out to analyse the development of the model of Zhou kingship in literary sources from the context of the central issue of political organization addressed in elite Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, namely the conferral and the receipt of royal commands. Based on the analysis of the exchange of speech acts between king and appointee, it aims to show that kingship was first and foremost perceived in these sources as a relational framework within which the king and his allied elites defined their mutual dependency in terms of quasi patron-client relations. It argues that royal commands were not issued on the basis of pre-existent authority relations. Instead they called for the appointee‘s decision to assume a commitment on which the latter‘s participation in the institution of Zhou kingship ultimately relied. From this basic assumption, developed on the basis of texts from early to mid- Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, this study proceeds to analyse how the commemoration of the Zhou alliance‘s foundational origins as well as the elaboration of the ideology of the Heavenly Mandate in mid- to late Western Zhou bronze inscriptions and in the transmitted Book of Documents ultimately built around this contractual element, the dynamics of command and commitment. At the core there always stands a delegation of authority or a perpetuation of authority relations. Yet as we proceed into the mid- and late Western Zhou period, the terms of kingship begin to transcend the implicitness and immediateness of the formulae used to seal the conferral of royal authority in early to mid- Western Zhou bronze inscriptions as they were rendered explicit within a rhetoric of crisis and of motives. The present study describes this process as a transformation of the terms of kingship from the level of the constitutive bond formula onto the level of cultural meta-reflection. Lastly I will demonstrate how the concept of Zhou kingship delineated in this study was inextricably linked to the idea of the autonomous or self-determined individual as the basic unit in the conception of the Zhou ruling organization. Kinship and marriage alliance, as most scholars suggest, may have constituted the main factor in the overall cohesion of Western Zhou elite society, but at least on the discursive level retained in texts from bronze inscriptions, the autonomous individual, defined through the ability to reach political decisions and to assume commitments, forms the basic unit in the fabric of Western Zhou kingship understood as the sum of proto-political bonds. This point will be illustrated based on a set of concepts centred on the image of the heart (xin 心), most prominent among them de 德, that entered the idea of Zhou kingship in form of a rhetoric of commitment. Together, these three points provide a framework to understand the literary construct of Zhou kingship from the perspective of its institutional context and its early historical development