Firenze University Press: E-Journals
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Culture and Affect in Aesthetic Experience of Pictorial Realism: An Eighteenth-Century Korean Literatus’ Reception of Western Religious Painting in Beijing
Get PDFCultural factors are operating in the aesthetic experience of pictorial realism, occurring in a transcultural manner, and their effects are salient in beholder’s affective reaction correlated with perceptual-cognitive operation. This paper aims to demonstrate this hypothesis, by developing two analytical tools that might explain the anti-hedonic valence of Hong Taeyong, an eighteenth-century Korean literatus’ aesthetic experience of a Western religious fresco depicting the Lamentation of Christ in a Jesuit Catholic church in Beijing. First, a complex multifold conflict between «actual affect» and culturally modeled «ideal affect», operating simultaneously in his visual experience, might be translated into a highly negative valence of his global affective state. Second, the variance of processing fluencies at different levels would have made his global processing operation less fluid, and it might play a role in his negative affective valence, since the affect is inherent in processing fluency signal
Techno-aesthetic Thinking. Technicity and Symbolism in the Body
Get PDFThis paper investigates the reciprocal implications between aesthetics and technics, to show how technicity, as a cultural and symbolic attitude, is constitutively rooted in the aesthetic dimension of human experience. The analysis conducted aims to bring into focus the originarity of technicity in the development of the living body, understood in its inseparable connection with the mind, as junction between the sensible and the symbolic, the organic and the cultural, the perceptive and the expressive. I address this question through a parallel analysis of Simondon’s groundbreaking reflection on technics and the less explored account of technics in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. If the latter inscribes our attitude towards technics in the motricity and symbolism inherent to the living body, the former ascribes to aesthetics a form of thinking, thus playing a fundamental role in our relationship to the technical dimension. Despite the differences in their approach to technics, I combine their theoretical perspectives to encompass their internal limits and to outline possible convergences
Is aesthetic mind a plastic mind? Reflections on Goethe and Catherine Malabou
Get PDFWhat is the relationship between thinking and seeing a form? In his morphological writings Goethe answers this question by saying that seeing is not pure passivity, but a thoughtful look because it invokes the mobility and plasticity of our thinking. For this reason this kind of aesthetic gaze is useful to understand the world of life, equally mobile and plastic. In this article, I will try to find out whether Goethe’s considerations about aesthetic idea and plasticity can find a new-look in the reflections of Catherine Malabou, one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary French debate, in whose works the concept of plastic form is central
Density - intensity. Material and immaterial elements in assessing urban quality
Get PDFThe objective of this research is to produce a critical scientific analysis of some aspects related to urban resilience to offer planners and decision-makers a deft intervention tool to mitigate high temperatures in urban areas. Densification, morphology, and materials are used to suggest strategies aimed at improving the quality of life in cities. This point of view analyses climate change and its connection to humans, urban density and its energy value, the evolution of materials, and the management of environmental comfort, considering the horizontal/vertical relationship as one of the morphological parameters capable of determining the connections between density, the form of the spaces, and the urban heat island
Vertical/horizontal Milan: notes on urban quality in the recent transformation cycle of the city
Get PDFInterpreting some dimensions of the horizontal/vertical relationship in the transformation cycle of Milan, this article develops a reflection on the current urban planning phase of this city referring to some of its specific characteristics.Despite the emphasis on the common debate as well as the scientific one, considering the vertical development of Milan, this paper argues that the increasing quality of the city, as perceived in recent years, derives from its improved ‘horizontality.’This article, also resorting to sources from the local debate, argues this thesis in a discussion on peculiar features of some of the most recent, and the near future, transformations of the city, including those of the former trade fair site (City Life project), Garibaldi-Repubblica area (Porta Nuova project), and the abandoned railway yards
Designing contemporary skyscrapers. Remarks on the technical and architectural evolution of tall buildings
Get PDFIn recent decades the number of tall buildings has increased exponentially, worldwide. When considering buildings surpassing the 200-meter height threshold, only a select few were constructed in the years before 200, while in 2017 alone, 144 buildings with this height were completed (CTBUH, 2018). New tall buildings are very different from what was built in the past and these design changes have derived from a number of factors: new technologies, new architectural styles, and above all, an unprecedented attention to the social issues and the well-being of the occupants. These changes, which continue to be introduced in order to adapt to the newest demands of the market, must go through an “experimental” phase to verify if they will serve as a successful, distinctive feature for tall buildings of the future. Skyscrapers have been used in books and movies to represent the corruption and redundancy of modern society; as they adapt to modern needs, are they now perceived as a new urban Eden
Herakles und die Schafe der Hesperiden
Get PDFBased on the homonymy of the Greek nounμῆλον, several mythological sources attest to a tradition according to which the golden μῆλαguarded by the Hesperides were in fact not golden apples, but beautiful sheep. This article discusses two literary allusions to this version that have not been fully examined before, Apoll. Rhod. Arg.4.1413 and Anth. Gr.16.91.3. In both cases, the nature of the allusion indicates that the sheep tradition must have been widely known and that it was more than just an intellectual game by rationalizing mythographers
La metamorfosi invocata: Ov. Pont. 1.2.27-40 e l’impossibile eutanasia dell’esule
No full textIn Ov.Pont. 1.2.27-40 the poet underlines the difference between the fate of Niobe and of the Heliades, whose metamorphoses put an end to their suffering, and his own endless sorrow. The choice of these myths seems to be aréécritureand a correction of theMetamorphosesversion, where Niobe and the Heliades, instead, are among the few cases of metamorphosed beings that continue to suffer after the transformation