Semiotics of art reception: In between semiotic translation and synesthetic response

[Abstract] Humans — and artists — are capable of complex semiotic and experiential translations: we can translate reality, be it nature or culture, into an experience of sound, image, touch, smell, mime, emotion. We speak about ‘semiotic’ translation when we translate artistic work into another semiotic medium, when we translate the outer conditions of the experience — e.g. translating a novel into a movie, a painting into a song, a performance into a narrative. But before experiencing semiotic translation, humans experience ‘synesthetic’ translation, moving beyond different possibilities of inner responses towards an artistic setting: for example by way of feeling, smelling, or hearing what can be seen. One holistic perception of artistic expression can be transposed into different modes, each one enriching the other. Both translations originate in the human possibilities of multimodal experience (e.g. blending theory of Turner and Fauconnier), cognitive fluidity (Mythen 1998) — both theories referring to complex neurological responses. Since long, semiotics has analyzed translation on the level of the sign or sign system, neglecting the (neurological) origins/counterparts of these processes. This presentation will consider the importance of the human synesthetic possibilities and integrate these into a broader account of semiotic theory (Kress 1998, p76). It will analyse the complex experience of an artistic manifestation realized by way of an ‘outer’ and an ‘inner’ semiotic translation: at one hand an ‘outer’ complex comprehension which encompasses memory, cultural and aesthetic conventions, personal narratives, knowledge and expectations (Zeki & Lamb 1994), at the other hand the ‘inner’, rich synesthetic and multimodal cognitive and kinesthetic responses in body and brain acknowledged by recent neuropsychological and cognitive research (Spence 2001, Edelman & Tononi 2000, Thibault 2004)

Through Using a Multi-Level Approach, What Role do Women Play in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution in the Acholi Ethnic Group of Northern Uganda?

Northern Uganda is home to the Acholi people, the predominant ethnic group of the region. The northern region of Uganda has been impacted the most by the civil war the country faced from 1981-1986 and, thereafter, the 20-year war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that spanned from 1986-2006. Using such conflict-settings as a predisposition, the article aims to examine the role of women in peacebuilding and conflict resolution through a Social Ecological Perspective approach. In taking a gendered approach to a vital area within peace studies, it uses a multi-level approach in examining what role women play in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in the Acholi ethnic group of northern Uganda

Experiential knowledge and improvisation: variations on movement, motion, emotion.

Improvisation is a way of knowing that is experiential, pivotal to the body's movement and growth in the world. It allows us to manage constraint and freedom in a rich world of possibility. Within this article we trace a trajectory from improvisation in life to improvisation in art. By focusing on practitioners who work with improvisation in precise ways in the fields of anthropology, ecology, visual art and music, we explore how improvisation and experiential knowledge are profoundly interconnected. To achieve this, we use the four characteristics of improvisation developed by anthropologists Ingold and Hallam as a framework for the evaluation of art practices of improvisation including the authors' own project work. We expand the framework through Dewey's analysis of art as experience. The article concludes with an evaluation of how the techniques and processes of improvisation from the case examples may be useful ways to shed light on the workings of experiential knowledge

Movement and moment: in-between discreteness and continuity.

This paper explores a paradox. We breathe in, and then out. We walk by making paces, alternating left and right feet. Walking and breathing are made up of discrete intervals of space and time, involuntary actions of the living body, sustaining continuity. Continuity in movement is constituted by its opposite. The necessity to transpose the weight of our body between first the left and then the right foot creates motion. By analysing these discrete movements, it becomes possible to transpose them into languages of signs and symbols‰“‰notation, drawing, documenting what has happened to inform what might happen. Creativity intervenes, allowing us to vary the patterns playfully, because it is possible to do so with this kind of notational knowledge or trace. Languages of form building in art thereby constitute an effective, visual, embodied method of understanding how the body moves: a complex dialogue between gravity's pull towards stasis, the centre of the earth, countered by the urge to move from that centre into motion, into life. We will take two examples of artistic processes: one in the visual arts and the other, musical performance to explore how notational practices such as scores that are used by artists in the process of developing their work, can and do inform understandings of embodiment more generally

Improvisation as experimentation in everyday life and beyond.

In this chapter we analyse two interrelated projects across the fields of visual art and music, philosophy and anthropology. Calendar Variations (2010-11) is a visual activity initiated by Anne Douglas, visual artist and researcher. A Day in My Life (2011-12) mirrors this activity in music and is developed by Kathleen Coessens, pianist and philosopher. The two projects are research driven and frame questions about the relationship of improvisation to experiential knowledge. First, what might experimentation be in the context of experience of life and experience of art? Does improvisation as a concept and a practice offer new potential to inform experimentation in a distinctive way? We will use Dewey as a starting point for a phenomenological approach to experience as a form of ongoing experimentation and adjustment, a process of learning endemic to life itself. We will map this articulation onto Hallam and Ingold's four characteristics of improvisation. These closely resonate with Dewey while nuancing/inflecting the resulting learning as an experience between people, formed socially and culturally. Moving deeper into experience, experiment, and improvisation as three key interrelated concepts, we look briefly at Bergson, who offers a way of imagining experience as time dependent: life is constantly in a process of formation that is unstoppable even in reflection. This implies a conflation of intuition and intellect into one single activity, leaving the artist-as-researcher in a paradoxical situation. How is knowledge created if we cannot look back on experience by stepping outside what is ongoing? Arnheim helps us to unravel this paradox: intellect and intuition are distinctive but interrelated modes of being. We limit ourselves in life, Arnheim argues, to what is useful and necessary to know, working within this contingent. Art enriches possible ways of imagining. These challenge and extend experience. We lay out this theoretical ground as the basis from which to analyse the two artistic projects. By interpolating between the theoretical and artistic experiences, we enlarge not only our perspectives on but also our actions in the world

Calendar variations.

This small book offers a visual and verbal reflection on the process of artistic practice and the ephemeral traces left by these. It is part of the exhibition 'Calendar Variations', held at the woodend barn, Banchory, Scotland in April 2011. It considers the links of artistic practice with the world, experience and improvisation. This all started in the summer of 2010 with an artistic project, Calendar Variations, a dynamic visual art creation in Scotland, at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, which happened at the same time as the musical project 'Unexpected Variations' in Belgium, at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music, Ghent. A deep interaction between artist-anthropologist Anne Douglas and artistphilosopher Kathleen Coessens, members of both artistic research groups, as well as the commitment and collaboration of the visual artists, shaped the artistic project into an engaged dynamic movement. Our gratitude goes to all our friends and colleagues, to the different institutions mentioned above, to the artists, philosophers and everybody without whom this endeavour would not have been possible. It is the motion and emotion emerging from this project that we hope to convey here

Statistical sampling for record and archive groups: A practical guide

We introduce statistical sampling for the record manager/archivist, its various options and how to correctly apply these techniques with modern aids. Using the mathematical concept of confidence intervals, we propose a statistically sound method for determining sample size and quality. Illustrated by means of examples and graphs, this guide aims to show statistical sampling as a valuable option when defining a successful record and archive management strategy

Improvisation and embodied knowledge: three artistic projects between life, art and research.

In life there exists no script. The primacy of experience in the form of 'trying out' or improvisation, a moving from an indefinable and undifferentiated state to feeling our way by creating a direction. In art, improvisation is differently nuanced. As artists, we cast a critical eye on the predetermined structures of social, cultural, material experience while recognising that freedom and constraint are profoundly interrelated. Improvisation in art across cultures is a specific approach to form making that centres the imagination (of creator/performer/spectator) precisely on managing the interplay between freedom and constraint

TXTGate: profiling gene groups with text-based information

We implemented a framework called TXTGate that combines literature indices of selected public biological resources in a flexible text-mining system designed towards the analysis of groups of genes. By means of tailored vocabularies, term- as well as gene-centric views are offered on selected textual fields and MEDLINE abstracts used in LocusLink and the Saccharomyces Genome Database. Subclustering and links to external resources allow for in-depth analysis of the resulting term profiles

The artistic turn: a manifesto.

Despite innovative developments in research in-and-through the arts in the past decade, the emergent field of artistic research remains controversial, and is accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm in academic institutions. It is our contention that the challenges and opportunities presented by this burgeoning discipline may be better understood by re-emphasising the centrality of the artist. Through a study of the interrelationship between artistic fields and theories of knowledge, and through some consciously metaphorical readings, we examine the contexts within which artistic research has developed. Using this information as a means of interrogating both scientific and artistic research paradigms, and case studies concerning specific artist-researchers, the case is set out for a fresh paradigm - an artistic turn. The aim is to create a field of meaning that may illuminate the most promising, though correspondingly problematic, aspects of artistic research: the essential ineffability of artistic creativity, and the consequent insufficiency of verbal and written accounts - something which inevitably impacts upon the text presented here. Accordingly, the discourse articulated in this volume does not propose definitive approaches, but charts a constellation of ideas that outlines the new discipline and points to its manifold and open-ended possibilities