Weltuntergang im Film: zwischen Spektakel und Vision. Sinn und Gefahren apokalyptischer Rede. Kritische Auseinandersetzung mit ethischen, ästhetischen und theologischen Aspekten zeitgenössischer Filme

Apokalyptische Vorstellungen, Bilder, Symbole, Erwartungen und Ängste prägen die Bildkultur der neunziger Jahre. Der Weltuntergang. als Vision und Simulation findet sowohl im Kino als auch in den elektronischen und digitalen Medien statt. Die aktuelle Renaissance des Katastrophenfilms im Kino ist ein erstes Anzeichen für das wiedererwachte Interesse vor allem der amerikanischen Populärkultur am Weltuntergang. In "Volcano" und "Dante's Peak" erscheinen gewaltige Vulkanausbrüche als Auslöservon Furcht und Schrecken. Der Untergang der "Titanic" wird vom Regisseur James Cameron mit gewaltigem Aufwand neu verfilmt. Weitere neue Hollywood-Produktionen wie zum Beispiel "Deep Impact" oder "Armageddon" greifen zur Inszenierung der Zerstörung der Welt auf die apokalyptische Erzähldramaturgie zurück. (...) EnglishMatthias Loretan/Charles Martig: Doomsday in Cinema: between Special Effects and VisionsApocalyptic imagination has a strong influence on the visual culture of the nineties. Doomsday happens in the media everyday: in the shape of special effects, visions and simulations. The authors research on the aesthetic disourse of apocalyptic representation and refer to five outstanding movies. They develop ethic, aesthetic and theological criteria from "The Day After", ",ndependence Day", "Strange Days", "Dreams" and "Lost Highway"; criteria which can help to handle the inflation of apocalyptic representation in the media. This article is based on research within the international project "Film and Theology ", in cooperation of the theology jaculties from Freiburg i.Br. (Germany), Freiburg i. Ue. (Switzerland) and Graz (Austria).

An HST/WFC3-IR Morphological Survey of Galaxies at z = 1.5-3.6: II. The Relation between Morphology and Gas-Phase Kinematics

We analyze rest-frame optical morphologies and gas-phase kinematics as traced by rest-frame far-UV and optical spectra for a sample of 204 star forming galaxies in the redshift range z ~ 2-3 drawn from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS). We find that spectroscopic properties and gas-phase kinematics are closely linked to morphology: compact galaxies with semi-major axis radii r <~ 2 kpc are substantially more likely than their larger counterparts to exhibit LyA in emission. Although LyA emission strength varies widely within galaxies of a given morphological type, all but one of 19 galaxies with LyA equivalent width W_LyA > 20 Angstroms have compact and/or multiple-component morphologies with r <= 2.5 kpc. The velocity structure of absorption lines in the galactic continuum spectra also varies as a function of morphology. Galaxies of all morphological types drive similarly strong outflows (as traced by the blue wing of interstellar absorption line features), but the outflows of larger galaxies are less highly ionized and exhibit larger optical depth at the systemic redshift that may correspond to a decreasing efficiency of feedback in evacuating gas from the galaxy. This v ~ 0 km/s gas is responsible both for shifting the mean absorption line redshift and attenuating W_LyA (via a longer resonant scattering path) in galaxies with larger rest-optical half light radii. In contrast to galaxies at lower redshifts, there is no evidence for a correlation between outflow velocity and inclination, suggesting that outflows from these puffy and irregular systems may be poorly collimated. (Abbrev.)Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures. Revised version accepted for publication in ApJ. Version with full-resolution figures is available at http://di.utoronto.ca/~drlaw/Papers/wfc3_uvspec.pd

An HST/WFC3-IR Morphological Survey of Galaxies at z = 1.5-3.6: I. Survey Description and Morphological Properties of Star Forming Galaxies

We present the results of a 42-orbit HST/WFC3 survey of the rest-frame optical morphologies of star forming galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts in the range z=1.5-3.6. The survey consists of 42 orbits of F160W imaging covering ~65 arcmin^2 distributed widely across the sky and reaching a depth of 27.9 AB for a 5 sigma detection within a 0.2 arcsec radius aperture. Focusing on an optically selected sample of 306 star forming galaxies with stellar masses in the range M* = 10^9 - 10^11 Msun, we find that typical circularized effective half-light radii range from ~ 0.7 - 3.0 kpc and describe a stellar mass - radius relation as early as z ~ 3. While these galaxies are best described by an exponential surface brightness profile, their distribution of axis ratios is strongly inconsistent with a population of inclined exponential disks and is better reproduced by triaxial stellar systems with minor/major and intermediate/major axis ratios ~ 0.3 and 0.7 respectively. While rest-UV and rest-optical morphologies are generally similar for a subset of galaxies with HST/ACS imaging data, differences are more pronounced at higher masses M* > 3 x 10^10 Msun. Finally, we discuss galaxy morphology in the context of efforts to constrain the merger fraction, finding that morphologically-identified mergers/non-mergers generally have insignificant differences in terms of physical observables such as stellar mass and star formation rate, although merger-like galaxies selected according to some criteria have statistically smaller effective radii and correspondingly larger SFR surface density.Comment: 42 pages, 2 appendices, 25 figures. Revised version accepted for publication in ApJ. Version with full-resolution figures is available at http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~drlaw/Papers/wfc3morph.pd