Tài liệu miễn phí Chụp ảnh - Quay phim
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The use of artificially
simple material overcomes this drawback but may be open to the criticism that it is a
long way from anything that could be regarded as art and may thus prevent us from
identifying essential components of real-life aesthetic behavior” (Berlyne, 1971,
p. 12). We believe that the introduction of adequate control procedures reduces
many of the disadvantages of using artistic and decorative materials, and that the
use of simple visual patterns might engage different cognitive operations to those
that enable aesthetic appreciation in natural conditions. Furthermore, given that
symmetry is a very salient feature of the materials used by Jacobsen et al. (2006),
their results...
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Regarding the results of the three studies, we shall consider only the contrasts
performed between the conditions of positively and negatively valued stimuli.
Kawabata and Zeki (2004) and Vartanian and Goel (2004) obtained interesting
results when comparing brain activity before different categories of stimuli, such as
abstract vs representational, but such issues will not be commented on here, given
that this review is primarily concerned with the neural basis of general aesthetic
preference.
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We believe that two fundamental developments afforded
researchers a third chance to consolidate the field of neuroaesthet-
ics around the turn of the millennium. First, the notion of a single
special mechanism underlying aesthetic experiences has been
dropped in favor of the view that aesthetic appreciation and re-
lated phenomena rely on several general mechanisms, including
processes of perception, memory, attention, decision-making, and
reward and emotion (Chatterjee, 2004a; Leder, Belke, Oeberst, &
Augustin, 2004). Given what we know of the neural correlates of
such processes, it follows that aesthetic experiences must emerge
from the dynamic interaction of activity in multiple brain regions
at different time frames....
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The second shift is methodological in nature. Until recently only
two strategies were available for studying the biological mecha-
nisms underlying artistic appreciation and creation: first, making
theoretical conjectures based on general understanding of brain
structure and function; and second, single case-studies of brain
injuries affecting art-related activities. The former produced theo-
ries that often went untested (and were sometimes untestable),
while the latter generated accounts that were often anecdotal,
incomplete and difficult to interpret. However, the advent and
refinement of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques has permit-
ted the empirical study of healthy participants’ aesthetic experi-
ences in controlled situations, affording the opportunity to draw
general conclusions about the neural processes underlying the...
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One of the main issues raised at the Conference was the defini-
tion and scope of the field. Neuroaesthetics is often conceived as
the study of the neural basis of the production and appreciation
of artworks (Changeux, 1994; Nalbantian, 2008; Zeki, 1998,
2001; Zeki & Lamb, 1994). However, Brown and Dissanayake
(2009) argued that because art goes beyond aesthetic concerns,
this definition is too broad in that it attempts to account for the
biological underpinnings of artistic behavior, which includes a
number of cognitive and affective mechanisms that have no aes-
thetic relevance. Hence, they contend that in addition to neuroaes-
thetics, a field of neuroartsology is required. In contrast...
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Several of the conference’s participants presented the results of
fMRI studies of participants performing aesthetic appreciation
tasks. As in other areas of neuroscience, however, blobs of signifi-
cant BOLD response tell us little unless one really understands
their relation to the cognitive and affective processes involved in
the specific task. Helmut Leder’s contribution to the conference,
Why do we like art? Psychological explanations, described a five-
stage psychological model of aesthetic appreciation, and argued
that it can function as an interpretative framework for neuroimag-
ing and brain-damage studies....
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The first of these stages is perceptual analysis, which is con-
cerned with organization, grouping, symmetry analysis, complex-
ity and other perceptual features that are known to influence
aesthetic appreciation. In the second stage, the analysis of familiar-
ity, prototypicality and meaning is performed, together with the
implicit and automatic integration of information with pre-exist-
ing memory structures. Processes involved in explicit classification
are performed in the third phase, including those related with the
style and the content of the stimulus. Thereafter, in the cognitive
mastering stage, the stimulus is interpreted on art-specific and
self-related grounds. Finally, the model provides two different out-
puts: a cognitive state, product of the earlier...
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In addition to visual art, the conference also covered a topic of
special interest in visual neuroaesthetics: facial beauty. Other peo-
ple’s faces constitute highly relevant stimuli for humans, and face
perception is mediated by distributed neural regions (Ishai, 2007),
including the extrastriate cortex, which is specially dedicated to
processing individual identity, and the superior temporal sulcus,
which processes facial movements involved in speech and direct-
ing gaze. Regions of the limbic system, such as the amygdala and
insula, are involved in recognizing facial expressions of emotion.
Research during the last decade has revealed that facial beauty is
processed by regions of the reward circuit, especially the nucleus
accumbens and orbitofrontal...
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Research presented by Alumit Ishai at the conference aimed to
throw light on the role of gender and sexual orientation on ratings
of attractiveness for male and female faces. Participants included
heterosexual and homosexual men and women. The results
showed that for heterosexual women and homosexualmen, activa-
tion in orbitofrontal cortex was higher for attractive male faces
than attractive female faces, whereas the converse was true for
heterosexual men and homosexual women. According to Ishai,
the orbitofrontal cortex represents the reward value of faces of po-
tential sexual partners, rather than reproductive fitness. It should
be noted, however, that the relationship between facial beauty
and reward is not necessarily straightforward. Aharon...
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Dewey holds that the capacity for aesthetic experiences of art arises out of basic
mechanisms, present even in animals, that are employed throughout everyday life.
We are in a continual process, Dewey notes, of falling out of sync with our
environments—whenever we are hungry, cold, tired, afraid, or in pain—and regaining
our sense of union and harmony. We continually detect signs of dissatisfaction or
discomfort within ourselves and attempt to alleviate that discomfort. When we
achieve ‘an adjustment of our whole being to the conditions of existence,’ we
experience ‘a fulfillment that reaches to the depths of...
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What, then, makes for the distinction between mere experience and an
experience? First, there are the related issues of unity and closure. Mere
experience, Dewey notes, is continuous, often ‘inchoate’, and characterized by
‘distraction and dispersion’ (p. 35). In mere experience, ‘we are not concerned with
the connection of one incident with what went before and what comes after. …
Things happen, but they are neither definitely included nor decisively excluded; we
drift’ (p. 40). ...
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Regarding most of my examples, it seems implausible to suggest that a
special unifying quality is present, that there is some kind of culmination or that
energies have run their proper course. If there is anything that gives these
examples a sense of closure, it is that my attention turns away from the moment of
experience and moves on to something else. But sometimes the attention is only
partially present in such cases; and very often it simply drifts away, rather than
being consciously redirected in recognition that a circumscribed moment of
experience has come to a close....
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Another aspect of the distinction between mere experience and an experience
involves the relationship between doing and undergoing. ‘A man does something; he
lifts, let us say, a stone. In consequence he undergoes, suffers, something: the
weight, strain, texture of the surface of the thing lifted. The properties thus
undergone determine further doing’ (p. 44). Dewey goes on to say, ‘An experience
has pattern and structure, because it is not just doing and undergoing in alternation,
but consists of them in relationship. … ...
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My examples satisfy some aspects of this requirement, but not others. In
each of the examples, there clearly are relations, however simple, between doing
and undergoing. I undergo an experience, such as feeling that my hands are cold,
and take action in response, warming my hands by caressing the sides of my mug. I
adjust what I am doing in response to sensations that indicate the mug is too hot to
grasp for any extended period; and I put the mug down once my sensations suggest
that my hands have been sufficiently warmed. This...
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However, it is far from clear that this satisfies Dewey’s further requirement
that doing and undergoing be joined in perception: very often, the action of
scratching my scalp or toying with my ring is one of which I am hardly conscious. In
addition, as we have already noted, it seems that a certain quality of attention is
required in order to give experience a sense of consummation or closure, and that
this may be absent in some or most of my examples even when I am aware of what
is happening: I do not have an expectation about the...
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Dewey seems prepared to dismiss this sort of
thing as non-aesthetic (or, as he would say, ‘anesthetic’) (p. 40). Indeed, it seems
plausible to deny that experience can have an aesthetic character (or, perhaps, that
it can be experience at all) if it is completely unconscious. If there were really
nothing that it’s like for me to swing my foot up and down while engrossed in a
novel, how could the foot swinging make any aesthetic contribution to my
experience? Given that we are minimally conscious, if at all, of so many aspects of
what we experience...
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There are three things to be said in response to this concern. First, even if it
is sometimes true that sensing and adjusting is done automatically or unconsciously,
it is not always the case. When, after a long bout of reading, I straighten my frame
and enjoy a delicious sensation of stretching, this may be very consciously
appreciated and adjusted so as to work out subtle areas of tension that have built
up. The reciprocal relation of doing and undergoing is quite conscious: ‘the action
and its consequence’ are ‘joined in perception’ . ...
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The first response focuses on the possibility of developing conscious
awareness of one’s sensory experience. A second response suggests that the
development of such awareness may not be necessary for one’s sensory experience
to be aesthetically relevant. In psychological studies of unconscious cognition, such
as the cocktail party effect, subjects listen to two streams of spoken language, one
through each side of a pair of headphones, but are instructed to attend to only one.
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Similar effects may be quite common in everyday life: information which we
are not aware of processing contributes to the tenor of our experience, and even to
the nature of our activity, in the reciprocal relationship of doing and undergoing. I
see no reason to deny that this may be an aesthetic phenomenon, since it seems
that something similar may be true in an experience of art: even when we are
attending quite carefully, the complexity of the experience may be such that some
elements will fail to be consciously noticed, but will still contribute to the...
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For the HR context there is a supplementary and vital research question: ‘How should an
HR manager respond to the competing pressures of recruiting and retaining attractive employees
while at the same time keeping legislative and professional competence intact?’ What stance,
either personal or organisational, gives rise to potential ethical anxieties?
Unanswered here but noted are gender differences for aesthetic labour and also for
sprezzatura, treated historically as the male mind at work. The emotional aspect of responses to
beauty and links to emotional intelligence are left for development.
...
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The literature on aesthetic labour provides some definitions. Martin describes aesthetic
labour as ‘the requirement to have the management-determined mix of appearance, age, weight,
class, and accent characteristics.’(2001, 106). He cites the work from Strathclyde University with
‘a hotel seeking to project a total image concept, with the hotel building representing the
hardware and the staff the software’ (2001, 106). He remarks further that staff are expected to
mould themselves into the required characteristics. Martin builds on the work of Lamb (1999)
whose views on the subject of discrimination states ‘Qualified staff whose “faces don’t fit” are
being shown...
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Mulford et al conclude that attractive people ‘have more opportunities for social
exchange, but those opportunities are with others who are relatively inclined to cooperate.’
(1998, 1585). Significantly, the same researchers also identify subjects’ perceptions of their own
attractiveness as important determinants of behaviour.
It is important to recognise the emotional aspect of beauty. Kirwan considers ‘not the
objective qualities of the beautiful, but rather the dynamics of the event of beauty, the perception
of beauty that is the mental state which issues in the feeling that a thing is beautiful’. (Kirwan
1999, 4). In a...
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The problem of subjectivity is a profound one. Jackall’s very powerful book, out of print,
gives at least some guidance. Looking at ‘the occupational ethics of corporate managers’ (1998,
4) he asserts that career minded managers do not have to work hard but well: that a bureaucracy,
which he considers the main structure of organisations, ‘transforms all moral issues into
immediately practical concerns.’ (ibid 1988, 111) He anticipates the work of the PRS-LTSN of
Leeds University below, by suggesting the integration of ethical concerns to the point where they
become hard to determine. ...
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The American Indians repeatedly warned John Wesley Powell against his
first trip through the Grand Canyon. The canyon once contained a trail made
by the god Tavwoats for a mourning chief to go to see his wife in a heaven
to the West. Then the god filled up the trail with a river and forbade anyone to
go there. Powell would draw Tavwoats' wrath.
2
But Powell saw the canyon
geologically. He too experienced awe, but of the erosional forces of time and
the river flowing. He went on to direct the US Geological Survey, and,
interestingly, to head the US...
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Or consider what our great grandfathers thought about the mountains,
which we now consider so scenic.
4
They were 'monstrous excrescences of
nature'.
5
God originally made the world a smooth sphere happily habitable
for the original humans; but, alas, humans sinned, and the earth was warped
in punishment. Thomas Burnet is repelled by these 'ruines of a broken World',
'wild, vast and indigested heaps of Stones and Earth' that resulted when 'con-
fusion came into Nature'.
6
John Donne called them 'warts, and pock-holes in
the face of th'earth'.
7
Now we know better. After geology, we are more likely to approach
mountains, as...
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But then another side of the issue comes to the fore. The landscapes that we
ordinarily know are not pristine nature, but cultivated landscapes, rural or
pastoral, with their towns and cities. Over the centuries, people have worked
out their geography with multiple kinds of industry and perception, mixing
nature and culture in diverse ways, no doubt some better, some worse. But
who is to say that a science-based appreciation is the only right one?
9
Nature
as seen by science is just the way we Westerners currently 'constitute' our
world—so the phenomenologists may say. There is no reason to think...
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The Japanese love their landscapes tamed and manicured, more parks than
wilderness.
12
They like artfully to prune their pines, cultivate simple flower
and rock gardens, arrange a waterfall, attract some geese, walk a path with a
geometrically rising curve, look back, and enjoy the moon rising over the
temple, silhouetting it all. They are hardly interested in admiring a pristine
ecosystem or geological formations. Should we say that the Japanese are enga-
ging in some aesthetic deception? Yet who are we to argue they should give
up their art and learn our science? The argument is rather that humans are
always...
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Consider my parents. My mother did not know any geomorphology or
landscape ecology. Yet she enjoyed her familiar, Southern US rural land-
scapes. My father enjoyed the fertility of the soils in the Shenandoah Valley
in Virginia; he admired a good field. On visits around, he would take a spade
and turn the soil to see whether it might make a good garden. He always
knew what watershed he was in, what crops were growing where. He loved
a good rain. Both enjoyed the changing seasons, the dogwood and redbud in
the hills in the spring, the brilliant and subtle colours...
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Yes, but the eye of the beholder is notoriously subjective, hopelessly narrow
in its capacities for vision. One has only to consult smell or taste, for example,
to realize that much more is going on than the eye can see. Science, by
extending so greatly human capacities for perception, and by integrating these
into theory, teaches us what is objectively there. We realize what is going on
in the dark, underground, or over time. Without science, there is no sense of
deep time, nor of geological or evolutionary history, and little appreciation
of ecology. Science cultivates the habit of looking...
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Daniel Boone, exploring the wild Kentucky landscape, was too uneducated
to see much of what was there, supposes Aldo Leopold. 'Daniel Boone's
reaction depended not only on the quality of what he saw, but on the quality
of the mental eye with which he saw it. Ecological science has wrought a
change in our mental eye. . . . We may safely say that, as compared with the
competent ecologist of the present day, Boone saw only the surface of things.
The incredible intricacies of the plant and animal community . . . were as
invisible to Daniel Boone as...
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