VISUAL TRANSLATION FOR ART INTERPRETATION. A NEW METHODOLOGY INFORMED BY CRITICAL THEORY

This paper is concern with investigating a new methodology for art interpretation that operates visual translation in order to understand the work of art in its political, social, historical and cultural context. This new methodology is informed by critical theory ‒in the extended meaning of the term‒, which questions traditional aesthetic approaches over the work of art: concepts as beauty, truth, sensoriality, which had been problematized in the field of aesthetics are now reproblematized in the field of critical theory. Nevertheless, the endeavor intended trough visual translation doesn’t just entail the process of rethinking traditional aesthetics, but also a radicalization of thinking over the artistic practices, as well as over the reception and production of artistic work in the socio-political and cultural context, and over the consequences of its public reception. More and more perspectives on art historicization and art interpretation transgressed the limits of traditional disciplines –as the aesthetics and the history of art– and engages in the exploration of other theories from political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, urban geography, linguistics or literary theory. In this respect, visual translation could facilitate interdisciplinary conceptual relations, generating hybrid theories that could inform a new methodology of work for interpreting the contemporary artistic phenomenon.In the field of contemporary art, the application of this hybrid theories can generate interpretative openings from the perspective of a series of critical theories of culture, from critical semiotics to ideological critical theory, from Marxist criticism to feminist critical theory, or from psychoanalytical critical theory to postcolonial theory. Also these interpretative methods, constituted heterogeneously, can be composed combinatorically in a manner in which we can find a Marxist critique psychoanalytically oriented, a psychoanalytic critique semiotically oriented, or various permutations between Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives, or between Marxist and feminist thoughts. In other words, translation, from a transcultural perspective, opens up a new interpretative instrumentary, unfamiliar to traditional approaches over the work of art, instituting a new conceptual apparatus, informed by critical theory which rethink the old premises of art history, reevaluating the position of art historians within the pre-existing institutional structures and questioning the power dinamics inherent in this field of study. Este artículo propone la investigación de una nueva metodología para la interpretación del arte que, desde la traducción visual - entendida como una forma de mediación entre el lenguaje del arte y el lenguaje de la cultura -, analiza la obra de arte en su contexto político, social, histórico y cultural. Esta nueva metodología se basada en la teoría crítica, en el sentido extendido del término, que cuestiona los enfoques estéticos tradicionales sobre la obra de arte. Así, conceptos como belleza, verdad, sensorialidad, que habían sido problematizados en el campo de la estética, se reproblematizan ahora en el campo de la teoría crítica. Sin embargo, el esfuerzo que se pretende con la traducción visual no solo implica el proceso de replanteamiento de la estética tradicional, sino también una radicalización del pensamiento sobre las prácticas artísticas, así como la recepción y producción de las obras en el contexto sociopolítico y cultural y sobre las consecuencias de su recepción pública. Cada vez más perspectivas sobre la interpretación del arte transgreden los límites de las disciplinas tradicionales como la estética y la historia del arte, involucrándose en la exploración de otras teorías nacidas dentro de las ciencias políticas, la sociología, la psicología, la antropología, la geografía urbana, la lingüística y la teoría literaria. En este sentido, la traducción visual podría facilitar las relaciones conceptuales interdisciplinares, generando teorías híbridas que conformarían una nueva metodología de trabajo para interpretar el fenómeno artístico contemporáneo

Fluorescence in situ hybridization of genes in environmental microbiology

Our knowledge concerning the metabolic potentials of as yet uncultured microorganisms has increased tremendously with the advance of sequencing technologies and the consequent discovery of novel genes. On the other hand, it is often difficult to reliably assign a particular gene to a phylogenetic clade, because these sequences are usually found on genomic fragments that carry no direct marker of cell identity, such as rRNA genes. Therefore, the main objective of the present study was to develop geneFISH - a protocol for linking gene presence with cell identity in environmental samples. This protocol combines rRNA-targeted Catalyzed Reporter Deposition Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (CARD-FISH) and in situ gene detection. The method of rRNA-targeted CARD-FISH was previously developed (Pernthaler et al., 2002a). The gene detection method was adapted from Pernthaler and Amann (2004). It uses multiple digoxigenin labeled polynucleotide probes to target genes, followed by the binding of HRP-conjugated antibodies and catalyzed reporter deposition (CARD), to amplify and visualize the gene signal. However, the specificity of polynucleotide probes has not been thoroughly investigated and a rational probe design concept is still missing, because the well established concept for oligonucleotide probe design cannot be transferred to polynucleotides. Therefore, we developed a concept and software (PolyPro) for rational design of polynucleotide probe mixes used to identify particular genes in defined taxa. PolyPro consists of three modules: a GenBank Taxonomy Extractor (GTE), a Polynucleotide Probe Designer (PPD) and a Hybridization Parameters Calculator (HPC). Applying this probe design concept to three metabolic marker genes revealed the following about the use of polynucleotide probes in FISH: (i) a single probe is not sufficient to detect all alleles of a gene; (ii) single probes can be used mostly at the genus level; (iii) probe mixes cannot be used to detect all alleles of a gene, because of differences in the melting temperature; (iv) probe mixes can be used for identifying a gene mostly at the genus and family level. The newly developed concept for polynucleotide probe design was further applied to the probe design for the geneFISH experiments. The geneFISH protocol was first developed and tested in Escherichia coli. In a second phase, it was applied on seawater samples from Benguela upwelling system on the Namibian shelf, in which the presence of putative amoA gene was directly visualized in crenarchaeotal cells. This involved a specially designed polynucleotide probe mix (amoA-Nam) that targets the crenarchaeotal putative amoA alleles present in these environmental samples. Additionally, geneFISH was applied on two more systems, an enrichment sample, targeting rdsrA genes, and an eukaryotic host - bacterial symbiont system, targeting hynL and aprA genes in the symbionts. Further development of this method will in the direction of improving the gene detection efficiency, from less than 50% to 100%. This will allow a quantitative use of the geneFISH protocol

Developmental changes in the influence of conventional and instrumental cues on over-imitation in 3- to 6-year-old children

This research was funded under the Undergraduate Research Internship Programme (URIP) organized by the University of St Andrews.Previous studies have shown that children in the preschool period are fastidious imitators who copy models with such high levels of fidelity that task efficiency may be compromised. This over-imitative tendency, and the pervasive nature of it, has led to many explorations and theoretical interpretations of this behavior, including social, causal, and conventional explanations. In support of the conventional account, recent research has shown that children are more likely to over-imitate when the task is framed using conventional verbal cues than when it is framed using instrumental verbal cues. The aim of the current study was to determine whether 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 185, mean age = 60 months) would over-imitate when presented with instrumental and conventional verbal cues, which varied only minimally and were more directly comparable between instrumental and conventional contexts than those used in previous studies. In addition to varying the overall context, we also varied the instrumental prompt used such that the cues provided ranged in the extent to which they provided explicit instruction to omit the irrelevant actions. Counter to our predictions, and the high levels of over-imitation witnessed in previous studies, the older children frequently over-imitated irrespective of the context provided, whereas the youngest children over-imitated selectively, including the irrelevant actions only when the task was presented in a conventional frame. We propose that the age differences found following an instrumental presentation are a result of the youngest children being more open to the motivation of learning the causality of the task, whereas the older children were more strongly motivated to adopt a social convention.PostprintPeer reviewe

Consumption and hysteresis: the new, the old, and the challenge

Consumers are reluctant to change immediately their consumption patterns when confronted with budgetary changes, in spite of fluctuating economic conditions. Their reluctance evokes the notion of hysteresis used by economists to describe the persistent influence of past economic events. The importance of hysteresis in economic research represents a natural consequence of the development of economic sciences and of the pursuit of understanding economic systems’ evolution by taking into account their ‘memory’, their conscience of the past. The present paper represents an attempt to review some of the most relevant approaches to hysteresis in economics and to emphasise the impact of the phenomenon on macroeconomic consumption in Romania. The paper aims at reviewing the application of hysteresis to economic models, and subsequently at constructing a two-phase research on households’ individual final consumption in Romania during 1990 and 2016, employing both the unit root and the so-called ‘true’ approach to hysteresis. The research results indicated the existence of hysteresis at the macroeconomic consumption level, thus revealing several implications for economic policy, inaccessible through the standard economic models

A synthetic profile of the rural tourism consumer

The rural tourism and, in particular, the agritourism have become increasingly popular activities, as a result of the multiple benefits generated. The rural tourism is attractive for visitors with different motivations and different market profiles. This paper aims to find the most common profile of the tourists visiting the rural areas. In order to segment the rural tourism market, a series of customer indicators can be used, such as: reasons, preferences, needs and expected benefits; geographical origin; economic and demographic status; psychographic characteristics and consumer behavior etc. As the consumer needs and expectations regarding the rural tourism products are highly varied, there are several types of tourists, the differences being determined mainly by geographical origin, but also by the different perceptions on the quality of tourism products and services. In general, it can be said that these tourists come mainly from urban areas, are middle-aged or above middle-aged, have a high level of education and training, have above-average incomes and travel in small groups, usually with family and friends

The environmental impacts of rural tourism

Tourism development in rural areas has drawn attention not only to its economic and social effects, but also to its ecological impact, being closely related to the quality of the natural and man-made environment. Rural tourism takes place in areas that usually are sensitive to external pressures and the impact of tourism on the ecological environment is more visible in rural areas. Tourism can have a useful influence on the rural tourist destination, but it can also be a detrimental factor. There are various studies claiming that the development of rural tourism can also have both positive and negative consequences. Between tourism and environment is a very close relationship, environmental degradation contributing overwhelmingly to the loss of tourist value. Thus, environmental conservation and protection are more important than some potential economic and social benefits. The negative effects are multiple and their intensity and origin depend on different elements that influence the sustainability of tourism. In general, it is estimated that the positive aspects of rural tourism are much more numerous than the negative ones

Contemporary Public Arts and the Contested Urban Public Space

Art is a defining element of urban culture through creative dynamics that reflect territorially embedded mechanisms but also particular social and cultural processes. Public art presents us with the possibility of unmediated social interaction that leads to greater access to the production and use of urban public space. Public art’s presence in the urban space is dynamic and interactive that communicates the complex forms of globalization, cultural hybridity, and plurality in contemporary daily life—where we experience politics. Through a multi-disciplinary lens, that combines urban studies, visual studies, sociology, artistic research, art history and political philosophy, this issue maps the contemporary landscape of public art to capture art’s critical place in the reified politics of the urban space. The aim is not to provide an exhaustive description of the politics of arts in the public spaces but rather to provisionally reconcile the lack of a dialectical perspective in the critical discursive tools of the scholarship on urban public arts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS FOR A SOLID CONSTRUCTION

The article aims at analysing the debate regarding the future of the European Economic and Monetary Union as a core structure that will be capable to ensure the development of the European Union and to reach the fundamental goal of the free movement of the capital. Considered by many built on a week foundation, the discussion regarding how the European Economic and Monetary Union must be restructured became an urgent problem to be solve in the light of the last ten years political and economic events (international financial crisis, euro crisis, the radical view of several European political leaders elected after 2014). Our research focuses on different points of view regarding the future structure and regulation framework of the European Economic and Monetary Union as a critical qualitative research in order to put together the advantages and disadvantages of such opinions and the validity of arguments in their favour. Our research has as starting point the 2012 Four Presidents Report and the 2015 Five Presidents Report facing the opinions of the academia and the European financial market reality. We analysed different future developments proposals in order to identify the validity of concepts such as a banking union, new tools and mechanisms designed to contribute to the accomplishment of a functional Economic and Monetary Union. The article ends with several conclusions regarding the process to develop a deeper Economic and Monetary Union in the EU

MediaMTool: Multimedia content management tool

With the proliferation of mobile devices, multimedia streaming over wireless networks has increased in popularity. To overcome a number of challenges as well as to enhance mobile users' experience, much research effort has been placed into multimedia content adaptation and personalisation. Supporting adaptive multimedia can pose itself a number of challenges, especially when considering the fast growing rate at which multimedia content is being produced. This paper explores the idea of automatic multimedia content management and authoring to support adaptive multimedia delivery to mobile devices. A multimedia content management tool (MediaMTool) is presented which automatically creates multiple versions of the multimedia clips based on a set of specified multimedia clip features. For testing purposes, MediaMTool was used in conjunction with EcoLearn, a m-learning system that adapts the quality of the educational multimedia clips in order to save battery power on the learner mobile device