Aesthetic Production Research Articles

Gringo in Mañanaland: Latin America in Hollywood

ABSTRACT: This article presents an analysis of Gringo in Mananaland , a 1995 documentary by the American media activist and producer DeeDee Halleck. This documentary offers a revisionist perspective about the US representations of Latin America especially by Hollywood films. Thus, Halleck’s production is representative of the reflexive aesthetics of contemporary documentary production. Such aesthetics is revealing of a fruitful political, economic and cultural debate, as an alternative to the commercial film production. As support for the discussion of Gringo in Mananaland as a revisionist documentary, this analysis relies on the studies about Hollywood films and their representations of Latin America by Robert Burgoyne, Tunico Amancio and David Bordwell, as well as on Robert Rosenstone’s studies on film as tools to revision of history.

To Sit with Refusal: A Roundtable

To Sit with Refusal:A Roundtable Huey Copeland (bio), Sampada Aranke (bio), Athi Joja (bio), Mlondi Zondi (bio), and Frank Wilderson (bio) In this text—edited from the November 17, 2017 transcript recording the closing conversation of the "Afro-Pessimist Aesthetics" symposium held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—scholars Sampada Aranke, Huey Copeland, Athi Mongezeleli Joja, Frank B. Wilderson III, and Mlondolozi Zondi compare and discuss the ways in which Black radical thought puts pressure on both aesthetic theory and practice, regardless of medium or discipline. Building on and referring back to the other pieces included in this [End Page 266] dossier, the roundtable provides fresh insight into how cultural practitioners navigate life and work in a social field produced through and saturated by the logics of anti-Blackness. —Sampada Aranke and Huey Copeland Huey Copeland/ I thought we might start our conversation by trying to think a little bit between and across the presentations, particularly through the terms that recur and that matter so deeply to all of the pieces: placelessness, social death, the void, and violence, all of which, of course, are crucial to Afro-pessimist theorizations of the Black's positionality. How do we think about how those terms shift or persist based upon the kinds of practices that you're each engaging so we can begin to understand the links and differences between modalities of Black aesthetic practice? Frank, you're very much thinking with 12 Years a Slave in order to deepen the Afropessimist theory of positionality. Mlondi, you're looking at minor matter in order to think about how that work opens up a discrepant space within the larger landscape of performative practices to find something else, even as the practice itself is symptomatic of the spaces in which it's emplotted. Sam, you are very much trying to use Afro-pessimist theory to think with and deepen how we understand David Hammons's performative interventions. And of course, Athi, you are tracing this other modality of the aesthetic that puts pressure on the ways in which we traditionally conceive it. So, it seems like we have the aesthetic operating on a number of different levels here and being mobilized in different ways even as those key terms differently recur and inflect each other, a movement across registers that allows us to think both the range of aesthetic production and the work that Afro-pessimist theory can do with and against those registers. Sampada Aranke/ The question is really provocative because it's also asking us to think in relation to radically different contexts and historical moments. It's asking, what are the lines of continuity, but also, what ways can we think about different fault lines. For me, one answer to this question is materiality. The thing that makes Hammons's performance particularly generative as a location is that he is taking this [biological] material that is absolutely organic and internal and toxic waste and mobilizing it as [aesthetic] material. And so the rust that appears against Serra's steel becomes tactile. That material for me becomes particularly dynamic. I think that the first thing I thought of, Mlondi Zondi, in your presentation is sweat, or Frank Wilderson, you give us this really rich description of the materiality of the scene, the things that we have to fill in. Athi Joja/ Back home in South Africa, I have been noticing a return to arguments made in Wilderson's "Grammar and Ghosts," which is one of the texts that made me think about the possibilities and impossibilities of Black aesthetics. Of course, this carries from his Red, [End Page 267] White and Black. The question, for example, of how many Black cultural practices under apartheid were easily available for incorporation, meaning whatever political response they had toward the system was questionable. "Grammar and Ghosts" brought these questions back to us, about what the aesthetic can do in the event that power is always already welcoming it and opening up spaces for it to displace its capacities. When Julian Mayfield said, in effect, well, my Black aesthetic is not John Coltrane necessarily, but it is when the young Jackson brother takes...

Performing Hospitality in Elizabeth Bowen's A World of Love

Performing Hospitality in Elizabeth Bowen's A World of Love Sarah Harsh (bio) For Elizabeth Bowen, the Big House was always a haunted house. Yet this haunting could be a source of comfort. For Bowen and like-minded Anglo-Irish writers, traces of the ancestral past legitimized the Ascendancy's presence in twentieth-century Ireland. In her 1940 essay "The Big House," Bowen welcomed "the indefinite ghosts of the past" who lent a house its history and imposed upon its living residents a sense of purpose.1 Within the walls of Bowen's Court, she argued, "the dead who lived here and pursued the same routine of life in these walls, add something, a sort of order, a reason for living, to every minute and hour." Bowen celebrated how "each house seems to live under its own spell," exuding a sense of mystery. She was so enchanted that she even wanted to share the magic of the Big House with her countrymen. She issued a call for the remaining owners to throw open the doors of their Big Houses. The Big Houses themselves, she claimed, beg to be a part of a modern, inclusive Ireland: "'Can we not,' the big, half-empty rooms seem to ask, 'be as never before, sociable? Cannot we scrap the past, with its bitterness and barriers and all meet, throwing in what we have?'" ("BH" 76). Bowen assumed that her colonial counterparts, the "Irish-Irish" as she called them, would be equally willing to overlook the traumas of history and take similar delight in Ascendancy pleasures. Bowen's open-doors enthusiasm would prove short-lived. In her essay for The Bell, Bowen claimed the Big House was "planned for spacious living—for hospitality above all" ("BH" 73). Yet Bowen was envisioning a very specific form of hospitality bound by Ascendancy conventions and limited to Ascendancy values. The Anglo-Irish, in other words, would entirely dictate the terms of this hospitality. Following her interest in living "life with the lid on," Bowen's version of Anglo-Irish hospitality was one where civility reigned.2 In this social setting, individual opinions are not welcome. "What is fine about the social idea," she wrote, "is that it means the subjugation of the personal to the impersonal" ("BH" 76). This meant that debates about contentious topics, like history and politics, were off the table. Rather, "in the interest [End Page 100] of good manners and good behavior," Bowen claimed, "people learned to subdue their own feelings" ("BH" 76). Bowen's insistence on decorum over emotion precluded the possibility of any meaningful dialogue. Ultimately, Bowen's Anglo-Irish hospitality is a hollow performance that upholds colonial power structures. Big House novels, like Bowen's The Last September and A World of Love, may resist or reaffirm this colonial authority. The latter novel, in particular, reveals an under-studied aspect of the Big House genre: the ways in which the performance of a culturally specific and exclusive type of hospitality reenacts colonial violence. The Big House has long been a prism through which to view the colonial past. Seán Ó Faoláin commissioned Bowen to write "The Big House" for the inaugural issue of The Bell, his magazine intended to offer "a survey of Irish life." In her contribution, Bowen explored her ancestral past while presenting a vision of an inclusive Ireland that fit with The Bell's mission. In newly independent Éire, the team behind The Bell was more interested in bridging the colonial divide than reaffirming tribal loyalties. Ó Faoláin articulated this mission in his introduction to the first volume with language that explicitly invokes Bowen's essay: "Whoever you are then, O Reader, Gentile or Jew, Protestant or Catholic, priest or layman, Big House or Small House, The Bell is for you."3 In this editorial preface, Ó Faoláin signaled his own shift away from his republican activism and toward an aesthetic production of cultural harmony.4 Ó Faoláin's broad-minded inclusivity in The Bell anticipates by fifty years the revisionist turn in Irish studies scholarship. In the 1990s, as scholars scrutinized the ways in which the Irish canon had been shaped by nationalist narratives, Bowen proved...

Consumers’ perceptions of visual product aesthetics based on fashion innovativeness and fashion leadership levels: A research study in Mersin

The main objective of the study is to determine whether consumers’ visual product aesthetic perception differs according to the level of fashion innovations and fashion leadership. The study was conducted in five counties of Mersin, and the population was 20-64-year-old consumers. The sample consisted of 420 consumers, 213 of whom were male, and 207 of whom were female. Data were obtained through surveys and were analyzed electronically. Descriptive statistics, factors, clustering, and chi-square analysis with t-test were used. As a result of the study, it was found that consumers’ perception of visual product aesthetics is three-dimensional, and it differs depending on consumers’ levels of fashion innovativeness and fashion leadership. Since the divergence of consumers’ desires and expectations, and increasing competition among businesses, are driving manufacturers and marketers to produce new products that can appeal to consumers, it is expected that results of this study will contribute to this field.

Understanding the influence of submission devices on online consumer reviews:A comparison between smartphones and PCs

Online consumer reviews (OCRs) are of immense value to businesses and consumers. With the rapid development of mobile Internet, smartphones have become an important device for consumers to publish OCRs. Information input is more difficult on smartphones than on PCs because of the screen size, the convenience of using keyboard and the interference of use situation. Based on cognitive cost theory, this study compares the differences of the statistical characteristics of OCRs (study 1) and the narrative content of OCRs (study 2) submitted via smartphones and PCs about material purchases in B2C websites. In study 1, an analysis of 24,933 OCRs across six products shows that OCRs submitted via smartphones have fewer words, more images, higher star rating, and shorter time interval than via PCs. In study 2, by coding and analyzing 1001 OCRs, the results show that OCRs submitted via smartphones are less likely to mention price, product functionality, product quality, product aesthetics, service quality, logistics quality, and attitudinal loyalty than via PCs, whereas no significant difference is observed in the dimensions of seller trustworthiness, cognitive attitude, emotional attitude, and recommendation expression. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The Real End of a Nightmare

This article considers Jane Arden’s 1972 film The Other Side of The Underneath, a neglected work of British feminist experimental cinema that focused on experimental group therapy. Building upon the theatrical productions of Holocaust, a short-lived feminist group that Arden started in 1970, Arden’s theatrical and cinematic projects from the early 1970s involved both professional actors and untrained participants in a strange admixture of theatre exercises, group therapy, and feminist ritual. Illuminating overlooked cross-currents between the women’s liberation group-work, the anti-psychiatry movement, and the post-1960s avant-garde embrace of amateur modes of aesthetic expression and production, Arden’s work from this period refuses to accede to the tyranny of professionalised expertise – whether of the artist, actor, filmmaker, or psychiatrist.

A 3D shape generative method for aesthetic product design

This work describes a generative method for the exploration of product shapes in the conceptual design stage. The method is based on three concepts: the notion of grammars to capture product appearance, the implementation of sketching transformation rules to produce design variations and the use of a parametric modeller to build shapes. We represent product solutions as 3D sketches using combinations of basic shapes arranged in simple and schematic product structures. This procedure allows creating many varied configurations with a minimal number of shapes, and facilitates the adaptation of the generative model to different products. The performance of the method is demonstrated through several examples from the literature.

Multi-criteria decision analysis in Bayesian networks - Diagnosing ecosystem service trade-offs in a hydropower regulated river

The paper demonstrates the use of Bayesian networks in multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) of environmental design alternatives for environmental flows (eflows) and physical habitat remediation measures in the Mandalselva River in Norway. We demonstrate how MCDA using multi-attribute value functions can be implemented in a Bayesian network with decision and utility nodes. An object-oriented Bayesian network is used to integrate impacts computed in quantitative sub-models of hydropower revenues and Atlantic salmon smolt production and qualitative judgement models of mesohabitat fishability and riverscape aesthetics. We show how conditional probability tables are useful for modelling uncertainty in value scaling functions, and variance in criteria weights due to different stakeholder preferences. While the paper demonstrates the technical feasibility of MCDA in a BN, we also discuss the challenges of providing decision-support to a real-world habitat remediation process.

Does Sustainable Perceived Value Play a Key Role in the Purchase Intention Driven by Product Aesthetics? Taking Smartwatch as an Example

In the face of a wide range of consumer electronic products, how can consumers take into account the sustainable development of the ecological environment during their purchase and consumption? This study established a new product aesthetics classification, divided it into interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics, and proposed a new conceptual model to test the impact of interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics on sustainable perceived value and purchase intention. In this study, smartwatches were used as the subject and a two-stage survey was carried out to collect samples from common consumers of consumer electronic products. Partial least squares (PLS) was employed to test the conceptual model and corresponding hypotheses on data collected from 425 survey samples. The research results suggested that interface aesthetics and product form aesthetics must be mediated by sustainable perceived value so as to have a positive impact on consumers’ purchase intention. Therefore, sustainable perceived value is a mediating variable for adjusting product aesthetics and purchase intention. In addition, sustainable perceived value greatly affects consumers’ green consumer behavior. Increasing the emotional durability established between consumers and products through sustainable perceived value to prolong the life of products reduces resource consumption and wave costs, and promotes sustainable development of ecological resources.

The Influence of the Centrality of Visual Website Aesthetics on Online User Responses: Measure Development and Empirical Investigation

This study develops a scale to measure individual differences in the centrality of visual website aesthetics (CVWA) and then examines the impact of the CVWA on users’ responses. Drawing on the concept of individual differences in the centrality of product aesthetics (CVPA), we conducted a series of three experiments to examine the CVWA. In the first experiment, the CVPA measure was used to assess online users’ CVWA and test the CVWA’s effects on online user responses, which included perceived visual appeal, trust, and intention to use the websites. In the second experiment, the CVWA measure was developed and validated. Finally, in the third experiment, the effects of the CVWA were examined using the CVWA measure. Overall, our findings suggest that the moderating effects of the CVWA are strong when users interact with websites with a high level of visual appeal and when the CVWA is captured using the CVWA measure.

Kirsty Johnston, Disability Theatre and Modern Drama: Recasting Modernism

What do you think of when you hear the words “Disability performance” together? I will not guess, because I know my answer may be different as a Disabled theatre artist in Toronto, but bringing attention to what we think of and how we consider Disability in performance, and specifically modern drama, is the crux of Johnston’s new contribution to the growing field of critical disability theatre studies. Johnston asks us to consider early on in the text: “how art is changed when we conceive of disability as an aesthetic value in itself. In particular, it is worth asking how the presence of disability requires us to revise traditional conceptions of aesthetic production and appreciation” (5-6). This book decentres the familiar to subvert cultural assumptions of Disability and open up aesthetic, representational, and cultural possibilities of considering Disability content in modern drama plays, and Disability representation (Disabled performers in iconic roles).

The Teleological Nature of Digital Aesthetics – the New Aesthetic in Advance of Artificial Intelligence

If aesthetic and teleological judgments are equally reflective, then it can be argued that such judgments can be applied concurrently to digital objects, specifically those that are products of the rapidly developing sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence (AI). Evidence of the aesthetic effects of technological development are observable in more than just experienceable objects; rooted in inscrutable machine learning, AI’s complexity is a problem when it is presented as an aesthetic authority, particularly when it comes to automated curatorial practice or as a progressively determinative aesthetic force originating in an independent agency that is internally self-consistent. Rooted in theories of the post-digital and the New Aesthetic, this paper examines emerging new forms of art and aesthetic experiences that appear to reveal these capabilities of AI. While the most advanced forms of AI barely qualify for a ‘soft’ description at this point, it appears inevitable that a ‘hard’ form of AI is in the future. Increased forms of technological automation obscure the increasingly real possibility of genuine products of the imagination and the creativity of autonomous digital agencies as independent algorithmic entities, but such obfuscation is likely to fade away under the evolutionary pressures of technological development. It’s impossible to predict the aesthetic products of AI at this stage but, if the development of AI is teleological, then it might be possible to predict some of the foreseeable associated aesthetic problems. Article received: April 10, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

As interações entre os produtos estéticos para cabelos crespos e as mulheres negras

Neste artigo visa-se tratar sobre as interações entre novas mercadorias de consumo e a beleza negra, mais especificamente o cabelo crespo. Desta maneira, procura-se observar e analisar a possível construção da identidade estética das mulheres negras. Através de uma etnografia digital em canais do Youtube que tratam sobre cabelos crespos, busca-se compreender a relação entre o consumo de produtos para o cabelo crespo e a construção de uma beleza negra pelas mulheres negras. O intuito de fazer uma etnografia digital, que se relaciona também a militância fora das redes sociais, é de compreender os usos dos produtos, além das relações entre as mulheres negras, as mídias, e as novas mercadorias estéticas, a fim de perceber possíveis espaços de visibilidade para a beleza negra através do consumo. Assim, através das youtubers afirma-se uma luta para visibilidade e inclusão da mulher negra através da beleza como pauta política e atual que vai além do consumo e além da esfera digital.

The Influence of Product Aesthetics on Consumer Inference Making

Product aesthetics can enhance consumer welfare in numerous ways. Aside from simply making products more pleasurable, product aesthetics can also influence the inferences that consumers make about functional attributes. In some instances, an attractive design can accurately provide information regarding utility. In other instances, however, an attractive design can be a misleading signal that prompts consumers to assume more utility than justified. Across five studies, the present research examines whether aesthetics can exert an unwarranted influence on the estimation of missing attribute information in favor of an aesthetically superior product. We show that aesthetics can bias consumers’ inferences about functionality, sometimes overriding other more diagnostic information. Boundaries to this effect are also identified that may serve to correct the bias and preserve consumer welfare.

Neuromarketing – The Potential Tool for Sales of Aesthetic Lasers

Marketing began in 1920s during economic prosperity as the supply was greater than demand. Industries started innovations to sell their products to unwilling customers in the scientific manner analyzing the consumer behaviors. Scientific analysis and research spread towards many fields, from economics to medicines, engineering and marketing, leading to new disciplines, such as Neuro economics, Neuro designs and Neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is the integration or coming together of distinct and separate factors or convergence of evolutionary biology, psychology, genetic, neuroscience, with marketing and economics. Neuromarketing is gaining momentum and the brain science is ruling the market for the consumer buying behavior. In the last two decades, cognitive neuroscience and psychology has made progress in the study of the human mind and behavior. Neuro design” provides the knowledge on the functioning of the human brain for the design of more effective products, size, colours, packaging etc. This paper emphasizeNeuromarketing as an effective marketing tool for sales of aesthetic laser products, so as to make products and messages more effective. Neuromarketing is everything in understanding the design cues and aesthetics, that appeal to human beings’ inner truths and sensibilities, which formed a lakh year ago. Therefore, in this study, the researcher has highlighted the opinion of the field experts that neuro variables play a decisive role in the minds of customers while choosing and buying aesthetic products.

Ecological Aesthetics of Industrial Product in Urban Design

     تناول البحث موضوعة التأثير الايكولوجي للمنتج الصناعي بوصفه أحد العناصر الجمالية الأساسية في التصميم الحضري. وناقش البحث طبيعة النظم الايكولوجية الشاملة للمنتج الصناعي في الفضاءات الحضرية، ونوع التأثير الذي يحدثه كل منهما في الاخر. وكانت مناقشة التأثيرات انطلاقا من تحديد وجهات النظر المعرفية وغير المعرفية في رؤية الجماليات الايكولوجية، مرورا بمدخلات النظم المعرفية التي ترى ان النظام الايكولوجي المكون من الفضاء الحضري بوجود المنتج الصناعي كأحد العناصر المكونة له، هي في واقع الامر نظم تعتمد التطابق الوظيفي ما بين تصميم الفضاء الحضري وتصميم المنتج الصناعي واعتماد أحدهما الاخر على اغناء عناصرهما الجمالية. فضلا عن عد النظام الايكولوجي المكون من الفضاء الحضري والمنتج الصناعي، نظاما تفاعليا يوفر تجربة كلية وغامرة. وقد عمد الباحثان الى تحليل النظم الايكولوجية المكونة من الفضاء الحضري والمنتج الصناعي على وفق استراتيجيات محددة تتيح تكوين منظومة ايكولوجية موحدة ذات اعتبارات جمالية مميزة بالاعتماد على أربع استراتيجيات أساسية هي: 1. أكبر التأثيرات بأقل الوسائل. 2.الوحدة في التنوع. 3. الأكثر تطورا ولازال مقبولا. 4. التطابق المثالي. اذ تمت مناقشة طبيعة الجماليات الايكولوجية للفضاءات الحضرية بوجود المنتج الصناعي بوصفه أحد العناصر المهمة في تكوين الفضاءات الحضرية، على وفق الاستراتيجيات الأربعة السابقة

Juventude(s) periférica(s) e subjetivações: narrativas de (re)existência juvenil em territórios culturais

Este artigo apresenta certas linhas singulares de subjetivação experimentadas pela juventude enquanto produção estético-cultural que configura a periferia como território existencial. Pretendemos contribuir para a discussão da relação entre hierarquização socioespacial das cidades e os processos de subjetivação de forma crítica aos processos de vitimização, criminalização e estigmatização juvenil. Buscamos nos orientar por um estudo com os sujeitos e não sobre os sujeitos. Três jovens envolvidos em ações culturais autônomas no território (como sarau, cinema, hip hop) foram acompanhados nestas e em outras atividades de seu cotidiano numa perspectiva etnográfica, descrita no diário de campo, bem como por meio da realização de entrevistas em história oral. Estas foram transcritas, textualizadas, transcriadas e organizadas em categorias temáticas. Privilegiamos as categorias relativas ao “território” e às “invenções estéticas na periferia” que nos permitiram evidenciar que o engajamento da juventude na produção estética na periferia opera como tática, estratégia de luta diante dos estados de dominação hegemônicos e de estigmatização aí presentes. A arte agencia possibilidades de invenção de territórios existenciais e de novos modos de subjetivar-se quando o estigma se converte em emblema; no orgulho de ser jovem, negro, pobre e periférico.

El carnaval criollo: apuntes para un análisis discursivo de la colección de los cuentos La mesa de los galanes

ABSTRACTThe work of Roberto Fontanarrosa has the peculiarity of encompassing different fields of aesthetic production (graphic humor, comics, literature, theater and more) without losing its coherence. A close examination of these works reveals the fact that Fontanarrosa resorted to local clichés and the “Argentinization” of foreign subjects (westerns, spy novels, classic works of literature, superhero comics), which in turn accounts for their influence upon his own original fictional universe. In this article we propose to carry out a discursive analysis of the collection of short stories entitled La mesa de los galanes, from the perspective of Bakhtin’s concepts of discursive genre and “carnival literature.”

Defining contemporary metal music: Performance, sounds and practices

Contemporary metal music (CMM) features, usually down-tuned, harmonically distorted timbres, and from a performance perspective regularly contains fast and frequently complex subdivisions, as well as highly synchronized instrumentation. The combination of these elements results in a significant concentration of dense musical sound usually referred to as ‘heaviness’. From a performance, sounds, practices and production aesthetics perspective, this article proposes the broad musical parameters for CMM’s heaviness, and from this viewpoint likewise seeks to distinguish CMM from traditional heavy metal music.

Comparative Study of Regulations of Devices for Aesthetic Purposes: US, European Union, China, and Taiwan

PurposeThe aim of this study is to examine how aesthetic devices are defined and managed. Regulation discrepancies between clinical use and home use in four regions are also described.MethodsThe official websites and databases of US, European, Chinese, and Taiwanese authorities were used to collect regulation information for aesthetic devices. Moreover, the regulations for eight aesthetic products, four used in clinics by experts and four used at home by lay people, were compared.ResultsThe results show that the principle of operation and intended use are key points for determining whether an aesthetic device is a medical device (MD). Although the term “aesthetic” is not included in the MD definition, most aesthetic devices are regulated as MDs by the four regional authorities based on the devices’ technical specifications and intended use, especially for high-risk devices and high-end products. For home-use aesthetic devices, the control measures also depend on function and intended use, but different authorities have different acceptance ranges. Manufacturers should pay more attention to regulation requirements in difference regions before putting devices on the market.ConclusionWith the fast growth of aesthetic devices, government authorities need to make regulations to keep up with new products. Determining whether an aesthetic product is an MD on the basis of its risk could be a practical option for administrators. This study evaluated the regulation of aesthetic devices as MDs in the US, European Union, China, and Taiwan, and provides important information for further policy and regulation development.