Humanities & Social Sciences

Light symbolises the highest good, it enables all visual art, and today it lies at the heart of billion-dollar industries. The control of light forms the foundation of contemporary vision. Digital Light brings together artists, curators, technologists and media archaeologists to study the historical evolution of digital light-based technologies. Digital Light provides a critical account of the capacities and limitations of contemporary digital light-based technologies and techniques by tracing their genealogies and comparing them with their predecessor media. As digital light remediates multiple historical forms (photography, print, film, video, projection, paint), the collection draws from all of these histories, connecting them to the digital present and placing them in dialogue with one another. Light is at once universal and deeply historical. The invention of mechanical media (including photography and cinematography) allied with changing print technologies (half-tone, lithography) helped structure the emerging electronic media of television and video, which in turn shaped the bitmap processing and raster display of digital visual media. Digital light is, as Stephen Jones points out in his contribution, an oxymoron: light is photons, particulate and discrete, and therefore always digital. But photons are also waveforms, subject to manipulation in myriad ways. From Fourier transforms to chip design, colour management to the translation of vector graphics into arithmetic displays, light is constantly disciplined to human purposes. In the form of fibre optics, light is now the infrastructure of all our media; in urban plazas and handheld devices, screens have become ubiquitous, and also standardised. This collection addresses how this occurred, what it means, and how artists, curators and engineers confront and challenge the constraints of increasingly normalised digital visual media. While various art pieces and other content are considered throughout the collection, the focus is specifically on what such pieces suggest about the intersection of technique and technology. Including accounts by prominent artists and professionals, the collection emphasises the centrality of use and experimentation in the shaping of technological platforms. Indeed, a recurring theme is how techniques of previous media become technologies, inscribed in both digital software and hardware. Contributions include considerations of image-oriented software and file formats; screen technologies; projection and urban screen surfaces; histories of computer graphics, 2D and 3D image editing software, photography and cinematic art; and transformations of light-based art resulting from the distributed architectures of the internet and the logic of the database. Digital Light brings together high profile figures in diverse but increasingly convergent fields, from academy award-winner and co-founder of Pixar, Alvy Ray Smith to feminist philosopher Cathryn Vasseleu.

Das Verhältnis von Film und Fotografie ist, gerade seit der Digitalisierung, neu zu definieren: Bewegung und Stillstand, Film und Fotografie, gehen ineinander über (z.B. durch filmisches Fotografieren), die mediale Grenzziehung verschwimmt. Die historische und aktuelle Beziehung beider Medien wird durch die PostProduktion zu erfassen versucht: Wie lassen sich Film und Fotografie über diese begreifen? Wo finden sich Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten? Ein Zusammenspiel? Es wird nach dem Austauschprozess und der ästhetischen Versuchsanordnung von Film und Fotografie gefragt. Der vorliegende Band dokumentiert die Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Tagung am Seminar für Filmwissenschaft der Universität Zürich, die sich mit dieser Fragestellung/den Medien Film und Fotografie im Kontext ihrer PostProduktion auseinandersetzte.

The here collected contributions relating to the 46th International Conference of the Representation Disciplines Teachers, organized jointly by Sapienza University of Rome, Roma Tre University, and San Raffaele Roma University, aim to offer the scientific community a reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects related to the concept of èkphrasis, a term that, in the field of representation, concerns descriptive, analogical, and digital activities that generate new knowledge in several areas of application. The Conference aims to place at the center of the discussion an interpretation of the concept of research that, without neglecting an idea of study, protection, and enhancement of environmental and cultural heritage, focuses on the needs of contemporary society and its possible developments, making use of innovative theoretical, methodological, and operational activities, including those characterized by an interdisciplinary approach. According to this interpretation, research can also be seen as a foreshadowing of the definition and testing of experimental proposals aimed at exploring new areas of investigation: this opens up imaginative and utopian perspectives in the relationship between the sciences, the arts, and the disciplines that contribute to common goals, through the experimentation of methods, techniques, and languages for conceiving, prefiguring, designing, and representing.

Fake News und Hate Speech sind Phänomene, mit denen wir fast tagtäglich konfrontiert sind, sei es im beruflichen, ehrenamtlichen oder privaten Kontext. Die Beiträge des Bandes bieten Einblicke in die ostbelgische »Speak Up!«-Werkstatt, in der sich Wissenschaftler*innen, Praktiker*innen und Menschen aus der Zivilgesellschaft mit den Ursachen, Erscheinungsformen und Folgen von Fake News und Hate Speech auseinandergesetzt haben. Die Beiträge wurden von Menschen mit den unterschiedlichsten beruflichen, (mutter-)sprachlichen und kulturellen Hintergründen verfasst. Offen und authentisch legen sie die Herausforderungen und Erfahrungen aus der ostbelgischen »Speak Up!«-Werkstatt dar und liefern neue Denkanstöße. Die Darstellungsformen der Beiträge reichen von Tagebucheinträgen über Reflexionsberichte, Handlungsleitfäden, Gedankenprotokolle und Interviews bis hin zum Werkstattgespräch.

This open access book presents an in-depth analysis of data from ICCS. An international group of scholars critically address the state of civic and citizenship education in the four Nordic countries that participated in the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) in 2009 and 2016. The findings are of particular relevance to educators at all levels, from school education through to teacher education. Nordic countries have long traditions of democracy and their students have performed relatively well in the ICCS assessments. Nonetheless, citizenship education continues to evolve and has received increasing attention in recent educational reforms, indicating policymakers understanding that schools play an important role in establishing democratic values among future citizens. Data from ICCS can be used to analyze, discuss, and reflect on the status of civic and citizenship education and can contribute to the discourse on the potential role of education in contributing to sustainable democracies for a common future. However, teaching citizenship and learning democracy are two different things. While young people can be taught about democracy in school, it is vital that schools work together with the wider community in which youth operate to strengthen civic understanding and values for all young people regardless of their social and economic background.

Fifty years after her first fieldwork with Ju/'hoan San hunter-gatherers, anthropologist Megan Biesele has written this exceptional memoir based on personal journals she wrote at the time. The treasure trove of vivid learning experiences and nightly ponderings she found has led to a memoir of rare value to anthropology students and academics as well as to general readers. Her experiences focus on the long-lived healing dance, known to many as the trance dance, and the intricate beliefs, artistry, and social system that support it. She describes her immersion in a creative community enlivened and kept healthy by that dance, which she calls "one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind.

In the long run economic growth does not improve people's well-being. Traditional theories – adaptation and social comparisons – explain this evidence, but they don't explain what shapes the trend of subjective well-being and its differences across countries. Recent research identified in social capital a plausible candidate to explain the trends of well-being. This dissertation adopts various econometric techniques to explore the relationship over time among social capital, economic growth and subjective well-being. The main conclusion is that social capital is a good predictor of the trend of subjective well-being, both within and across countries. Hence, policies for well-being should aim at preserving and enhancing social capital for the quality of the social environment matters.

Paul Rameder widmet sich der Frage, in welcher Form und in welchen Bereichen die Freiwilligenarbeit einen Beitrag zur Genese und Reproduktion sozialer Ungleichheiten leistet. Durch die Aura der Freiwilligkeit und Uneigennützigkeit entziehen sich die sozial nachteiligen Effekte der Freiwilligenarbeit der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und expliziten Kritik. Die multivariaten Analysen von Mikrozensusdaten aus Österreich zeigen, dass der Zugang zur Freiwilligenarbeit in hohem Maße durch die Ressourcenausstattung der Individuen geprägt ist. Auch die Funktionsverteilung innerhalb der Freiwilligenarbeit reproduziert die ungleichen sozialen Machtverhältnisse. So tragen die Mechanismen der sozialen Schließung und Hierarchisierung auch in den Feldern der Freiwilligenarbeit zu einer Verfestigung gesellschaftlicher Ungleichheiten bei.

The rise of China and India could be the most important political development of the twenty-first century. What will the foreign policies of China and India look like in the future? What should they look like? And what can each country learn from the other? Bridging Two Worlds gathers a coterie of experts in the field, analyzing profound political thinkers from these ancient regions whose theories of interstate relations set the terms for the debates today. This volume is the first work of its kind and is essential reading for anyone interested in the growth of China and India and what it means for the rest of the world. “This brilliant volume shines a light on the two great civilizations that will once again drive world history. No volume could be more timely, more relevant, and more needed than this one.” — KISHORE MAHBUBANI, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Research Institute, NUS, and author of The Asian 21st Century “With the recently elevated economic and political power of China and the great potential of India in the twenty-first century, interdisciplinary dialogue and engagement such as is found in this book is necessary for contemporary debates in political theory and international relations.” — KUIYI SHEN, Professor of Asian Art History, Theory, and Criticism, University of California, San Diego"

This open access book constitutes selected papers presented during the 30th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, held in Munster, Ireland, in December 2022. The 41 presented papers were thoroughly reviewed and selected from the 102 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on ​machine learning, deep learning and applications; responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence; natural language processing and recommender systems; knowledge representation, reasoning, optimisation and intelligent applications.

In Narrationen des 19. Jahrhunderts gab es zahlreiche textuelle Repräsentationen der Wunderkammer. Valerie Ahlfeld zeigt anhand von Adalbert Stifters »Der Nachsommer«, Theodor Fontanes »Vor dem Sturm« und Wilhelm Raabes »Das Odfeld«, wie diese Denkfigur in einer Zeit transformiert wird, in der sich die Sammlungspraxis in Richtung spezialisierter Museen verlagerte. Dabei verknüpft sie literatur- und sammlungswissenschaftliche Perspektiven und verbindet textanalytische Detailarbeit mit kulturhistorischer Kontextualisierung – ein innovativer Beitrag zur Erforschung der Literarisierung vormusealen Sammelns.

Species are going extinct, forests are burning, and children are worried about the future and their peers worldwide. But that is not the whole story: One Friday in 2018, a few young people joined Greta Thunberg to protest, and the global climate strike movement was born. Scientist David Fopp spent 250 Fridays with the newly formed grassroots movements. Together with activists Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille, he offers an insider perspective on how scientists and activists can fight for a just and sustainable global society. The volume also offers both an introduction to ecophilosophy and a unified science of democracy in times of interdependent crises. How can research in all disciplines - from (drama) education and economics to psychology - help with this struggle? And how can we all fight the climate crisis by transforming and deepening democracy?

nutrition; agriculture; sustainable development

In order not to intimidate students by a too abstract approach, this textbook on linear algebra is written to be easy to digest by non-mathematicians. It is also designed such that no other material is required for an understanding of the topics covered. As the basis for courses on space and atmospheric science, remote sensing, and satellite communications, applications of the formal theory in physics and engineering are discussed as well.

Scientific integrity is defined by the French Research Code as "the set of rules and values that must govern research activities in order to guarantee their honest and rigorous nature". It applies to all knowledge production and dissemination practices. It is essential not only to the smooth running of scientific communities, and to the robustness and reliability of the knowledge produced, but also to the sustainability of public confidence in science. In France, as in other countries, an institutional and legal framework for research has gradually been established, encouraging all players in the world of research to rigorously exercise their responsibility for self-regulation. This book recalls the essential principles of scientific integrity and the stakes involved in respecting them, as well as the role that each player in research must play. It also outlines the context in which this notion has been mediatized, and suggests ways of building a favorable ecosystem. This book is aimed at students and all research professionals.