Virtual Reality

At present, the virtual reality has impact on information organization and management and even changes design principle of information systems, which will make it adapt to application requirements. The book aims to provide a broader perspective of virtual reality on development and application. First part of the book is named as "virtual reality visualization and vision" and includes new developments in virtual reality visualization of 3D scenarios, virtual reality and vision, high fidelity immersive virtual reality included tracking, rendering and display subsystems. The second part named as "virtual reality in robot technology" brings forth applications of virtual reality in remote rehabilitation robot-based rehabilitation evaluation method and multi-legged robot adaptive walking in unstructured terrains. The third part, named as "industrial and construction applications" is about the product design, space industry, building information modeling, construction and maintenance by virtual reality, and so on. And the last part, which is named as "culture and life of human" describes applications of culture life and multimedia-technology

3D Information Technologies in Cultural Heritage Preservation and Popularisation

This Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences presents recent advances and developments in the use of digital 3D technologies to protect and preserve cultural heritage. While most of the articles focus on aspects of 3D scanning, modeling, and presenting in VR of cultural heritage objects from buildings to small artifacts and clothing, part of the issue is devoted to 3D sound utilization in the cultural heritage field

Usable Pasts

In Usable Pasts, fourteen authors examine the manipulation of traditional expressions among a variety of groups from the United States and Canada: the development of a pictorial style by Navajo weavers in response to traders, Mexican American responses to the appropriation of traditional foods by Anglos, the expressive forms of communication that engender and sustain a sense of community in an African American women\u27s social club and among elderly Yiddish folksingers in Miami Beach, the incorporation of mass media images into the C&Ts (customs and traditions) of a Boy Scout troop, the changing meaning of their defining Exodus-like migration to Mormons, Newfoundlanders\u27 appropriation through the rum-drinking ritual called the Schreech-In of outsiders\u27 stereotypes, outsiders\u27 imposition of the once-despised lobster as the emblem of Maine, the contest over Texas\u27s heroic Alamo legend and its departures from historical fact, and how yellow ribbons were transformed from an image in a pop song to a national symbol of resolve.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1068/thumbnail.jp

Carnival in Tel Aviv

The Tel Aviv annual Purim celebrations were the largest public events in British Palestine, and they played a key role in the development of the urban Jewish experience in the Promised Land. Carnival in Tel Aviv presents a historical-anthropological analysis of this mass public event and explores the ethnographic dimension of Zionism. This study sheds new light on the ideological world of urban Zionism, the capitalistic aspects of Zionist culture, and the urban nature of the Zionist project, which sought to create a nation of warriors and farmers, but in fact nationalized the urban space and constructed it as its main public sphere

The Contribution of Small-scale, Rural Festivals to the Social Sustainability of their Host Communities in Northumberland, UK

PhD ThesisSmall-scale festivals, as occasions for communal gathering and celebration, have long held a place in the respective local calendars of many towns and villages throughout the United Kingdom. By their nature, they are sites for social interaction, performance and participation on many levels. Some have an historic precedent going back several centuries, while a great many arose post 1980 as a result, in part, of the burgeoning tourism and heritage industries and the regeneration policies and development strategies of the pre-millennium era. The proliferation of the UK festival field raises questions of sustainability, purpose and effectiveness and of the need for greater social evaluation in response to a perceived over-emphasis on economic outcomes. While some cultural and developmental strategies do acknowledge the potential social impact of small-scale festivals, to date the emphasis has been predominantly upon the economic contribution with research into festival impact taking a particularly urban focus. This research project examined the contribution of small-scale festivals to the social sustainability of their host communities within a rural context through a case study approach in Northumberland. A comprehensive overview of the dynamic of festivals within the county between 1980 and 2012 allowed for the selection of the four case studies. The mixed-method approach combined a review of the literature, archival and field research with a range of semi-structured interviews with festival and community stakeholders. Four principle indicators were identified through which to measure the contributions of the festivals to community social sustainability. These indicators are: contribution to community pride and localness, enhancement of knowledge and understanding, contribution to the continuity of local culture, and enablement of networks of connectivity. By examining these events through a lens of social sustainability, the thesis presents an argument, as outlined in the conclusion, which supports the potential for small-scale, rural festivals to make a positive contribution to their communities. The findings within the thesis suggest that small-scale, rural festivals make a significant contribution to the social sustainability of their host communities through the networks of connections they enable temporally (with heritage), spatially (with place) ii and socially (with the individuals and groups which interact with the event). In order for these festival connections to contribute to sustainability, these events must demonstrate a balance within these connections of both consistency and innovation and an accessibility and openness within the locale. It is this accessibility and the balance of consistency and innovation which ultimately determines the festival’s contribution to the social sustainability of its host community.Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) who provided funding for my PhD, and the School of Arts and Cultures (SACs) at Newcastle University for funding a number of conference attendances

The Quest for Zhuang Identity: Cultural Politics of Promoting the Buluotuo Cultural Festival in Guangxi, China

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Museum stores: Curators and marketers of culture

Visiting museums rank among the top three activities for U.S. cultural tourists, who also enjoy shopping and seek pleasurable and educational experiences as part of their travels. Many museums expanded their retail operations during the 1990s. Costa and Bamossy (1995) was the only scholarly article about museum retailing published to date. They proposed a model that connected the goals of a museum store to key decision-makers and market segments, which served as the foundation for the initial conceptual model developed for this research. The purpose of this study was to explore how cultural museum stores protect and market the culture, using Spradley\u27s (1979) definition of culture;Unstructured interviews with an open response format were the primary means to collect data. Questions focused on decision-makers, mission and goals, product selection and acquisition, and the retail environment. Twenty-two informants were interviewed, and included museum directors, store managers, and a cultural resource manager. They were associated with twelve museums across five U.S. Midwestern states that represented European-American (n = 6), Native American (n = 3), African-American (n = 2), and Latino-American (n = 1) cultures. Museum stores\u27 annual gross sales ranged from 10,000 to 850,000;Two sets of goals were generated: Store Goals and Product Goals. Store Goals included Curator, Revenue, Education, Cultural Pride, and Shopping as Entertainment. Product Goals included Curator, Education, Quality, Uniqueness, and Revenue. Revision of the initial conceptual model also incorporated relating the decision-makers of Board of Directors, Executive Director, Store Manager, and Cultural Expert to their influence on Store and Product Goals. Three goals emerged as relevant for the retail environment: Education, Cultural Pride, and Shopping as Entertainment. Store attributes of staff, displays, and interior design were linked as means by which these goals were achieved. Finally, purchase by consumer was broadened to include a two-by-two matrix of primary and secondary consumers;Emergence of the store and product goals promotes a linkage between cultural tourists and museum stores. The goals of Education, Cultural Pride, Shopping as Entertainment, Uniqueness, and Quality speak directly to the cultural tourist\u27s motivation for traveling. Due to the lack of other scholarship, there is a strong need to continue studying museum stores

PAINTING THE MOUNTAINS: AN INVESTIGATION OF TOURIST ART IN NORTH AMERICA

This study examines the use of regional cultural icons, like hillbillies, nineteenth century pioneer caricatures, and rural/wilderness landscapes, in paintings from an Appalachian tourist center. These icons, produced by the public media’s portrayal of the Appalachian region over several generations, contribute to a sense of cultural difference associated with people of Appalachia. The research question driving this project is: would cultural distinctiveness exist if cultural stereotypes were not a part of the tourist center’s local economics, politics, and social life? Building on ideas from consumption studies, this project explores consumption practices of artists and tourists as they interact with icons in art galleries and other commercial spaces located in a popular vacation destination. Artists and tourists both play out the role of consumer because they choose and make use of icons. This project also draws on ethnographies from tourism and tourist art and from theories of ritual and performance studies. Data gathered from formal interviews, gallery surveys, content analysis of paintings, observations, and participant-observation is analyzed to describe the kinds of images consumed in an Appalachian tourist art market, as well as the marketing techniques employed by business owners to facilitate the tourist’s consumption of images, the performative qualities of consumer behavior and gallery spaces, the various meanings signified by images to consumers, and the structural ways individuals are taught to associate certain meanings with images. This project deconstructs notions of cultural distinctiveness associated with the Appalachian region, while showing some cultural icons to be personally important to artists and tourists. Showing how the tourism industry affects cultural perceptions of marginalized groups, this research also reveals the ways dominant cultural assumptions, like racial and class categories as well as experiences with the past, are communicated via art images. Recounting artists’ stories of working within a tourism context enables this research to describe how individuals and communities employ sales strategies to minimize their perceptions of economic risks. This project concludes that the perpetual use of stereotypes is motivated by the need for a tourist setting to seem different and by the values stereotypes bear for consumers’ personal identities and preferences

Prospects for Anthropological Research in South-East Europe

The book marks a new phase in the fruitful collaboration between the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Ethnography Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is an important publication for any future research on the development of ethnology and anthropology in Southeast Europe. The papers presented here, the topics they raise and the methods they employ, comprise an overview of the issues, concepts, phenomena and research methodologies anthropology in this has been dealing with in the early 21st century. Positions of the discipline itself, transformations of traditional culture and various phenomena of contemporary culture in Southeastern Europe are subjected to a theoretical scrutiny in the papers of this volume