Avant Garde Research Articles

A Multi-Dimensional Data-Driven Study on the Emotional Attachment Characteristics of the Renovation of Beijing Traditional Quadrangles

In recent years, the development of China’s megacities has entered the stage of stock renewal. Research and practice concerning old city renewal in cities with a long history, represented by Beijing, has also become a hot spot for researchers and designers in the fields of urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture. As one of the main spatial components of the old city, Beijing’s traditional quadrangles are closely related to the spatial perception and emotional experience of citizens and tourists due to their near-human scale characteristics. However, current research focuses more on the evaluation of the historical value of the quadrangles in the early stage of renovation and the specific design and construction methods in the process of renovation, and few studies pay attention to the characteristics of the built environment that promote the emotional experience of users after renovation is completed. Under these circumstances, the study focuses on the emotional attachment between people and the spatial composition and built environment characteristics of the renovated traditional Beijing quadrangles; the avant garde small-scale quadrangle renovation type, which has a wider coverage, more types of user, and pays more attention to people’s emotional experience in the renovated space, was selected as the research object. Four typical quadrangle cases were selected for in-depth discussion. Based on the theory of emotional attachment from a multidisciplinary perspective, this study constructed a series of scales that can measure the degree and dimension of emotional attachment between people and the built environment, coupled with local observation and interviews, to obtain multi-dimensional data reflecting attachment, and used SPSS to conduct correlation analysis and exploratory factor analysis to quantitatively explore the effects of different built environment characteristics on attachment. The results show that: (1) As for the material characteristics, the organic integration of traditional and modern materials, structures and colors can effectively enhance people’s positive emotional experience and promote the establishment of emotional attachment. The combination of these characteristics and the process of people’s three-dimensional spatial experience can further enhance the degree of attachment. In addition, the consistency of materials and technologies, the organic integration of the old and the new, and the carrying capacity of the renovation method for traditional history and culture are the basis for promoting this kind of emotional attachment, which needs to be further explored and considered. (2) As for the non-material characteristics, the diverse, variable, recognizable, unique, and digital spatial function settings that respond to changes in people’s need and current developments can significantly promote the establishment of emotional attachment between people and the environment. This further emphasizes the importance of positioning the space in the early stage of the renovation and the operation of the space in the later stage. (3) The results further support the validity and rationality of the series of scales constructed in this study in quantitatively measuring the attachment characteristics between people and the built environment. As a result, the study provides a reference for emotion-oriented design means, research logic and quantitative evaluation methods in the practice and research of urban renovation and renewal in the future.

Deviant Devising

Devised theater genealogies too often take shape around a set of primarily white, Western “ensemble-based” theater companies and training schools working in modes that emerged in Europe and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s in response to contemporary political circumstances and eventually found acceptance in the high-brow, avant garde cultural milieu. This cowritten, copresented article works to trouble that narrative by taking up the forms of queer and trans cocreated performance associated with underground queer spaces that have been excluded from histories of devised theater (drag, burlesque, ballroom, cabaret, parties, etc.). Using three case studies written in three different voices—the Chicago Kings, Sean Dorsey Dance and Fresh Meat Productions, and The Fly Honey Show—we examine what an alternative genealogy of devising, one that centers queer and trans artists, might look like.

Anthropocentric Disturbance and Devastation in Edward Albee’s The Goat

Edward Albee is one of the most prestigious contemporary American playwrights whose works tend to be engrossing for their avant garde expressions of the postmodern plight. Compared with his other works, The Goat or Who is Sylvia (2002), premiering at the turn of the millennium, pays relatively more attention to human-non-human relationship instead of interactions within the human community. Given the inadequacy of interdisciplinary studies on the play, this paper takes the philosophy of ecological ethics as the theoretical framework and juxtaposes Martin’s disturbance and Stevie’s devastation to nature, especially to the innocent goat, which share the same essence of anthropocentric exploitation, and which can lead to tragic consequences both for nature and for human-beings. Hopefully, this study can not only shed some light on the contemporary crisis of the coexistence between nature and humanity, but provide some reference for subsequent scholars to conduct more diversified cross-field studies of Albee.

Bogdanov's Tectology: Between the World Revolution and Science

This article is an analysis of A.A. Bogdanov's tectology. The author of the article tries to look at the genesis and essence of tectology from the point of view of socio-cultural methodology, that is, by attracting an idea of socio-cultural factors that can be considered to set the direction and nature of this theorist's thinking. The main content of the analysis is to show the contradiction between metaphysics and science, which is characteristic of the avant-garde theories-practices of the first half of the twentieth century and which is present in Bogdanov's teaching. On the one hand, Bogdanov's theory can be seen as an expression of the avant–garde pathos of world transformation, and on the other hand, an expression of the intention to assert one's knowledge and one's orientation as scientific, that is, corresponding to the essence of the reality to which it is directed, and is opposed to philosophy as a purely theoretical approach to understanding problems and not based on a single method. The specificity of Bogdanov's position is expressed in the statement of a single method — the “organizational point of view”. His world revolution is transformed by this point of view into a world organizational revolution. The “organizational point of view”, claimed in tectology, is containing the intention to bring harmony into a world filled with chaos. The desire to make his position scientific expresses Bogdanov's intention for the objectivity-practicality of his approach. Nevertheless, this does not negate the fact that Bogdanov was originally set by the magic of the world revolutionary transformation, which in modern interpretations of his tectology turns into nothing more than an anticipation of a scientific theory — the theory of systems.

Augmenting Vehicular Ad Hoc Network Security and Efficiency with Blockchain: A Probabilistic Identification and Malicious Node Mitigation Strategy

This manuscript delineates the development of an avant garde dual-layer blockchain architecture, which has been meticulously engineered to augment the security and operational efficacy of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). VANETs, which are integral to the infrastructure of intelligent transport systems, facilitate the critical exchange of information between vehicular nodes. Despite their significance, these networks confront an array of formidable security vulnerabilities. Our innovative approach, employing a dual blockchain framework—the event chain and the reputation chain—meticulously tracks network activities, thereby significantly enhancing the trustworthiness and integrity of the system. This research presents a transformative dual-layer blockchain architecture, which was conceived to address the intricate security challenges pervasive in VANETs. The architecture pivots on a sophisticated reputation assessment framework, thus leveraging the principles of Bayesian inference and the analytical rigor of historical data to markedly diminish observational errors, as well as elevate the accuracy of reputation evaluations for vehicular nodes. A salient feature of our methodology is the implementation of an attenuation factor, which has been deftly calibrated to modulate the impact of historical behaviors on current reputation scores, thereby ensuring their relevance and alignment with recent vehicular interactions. Additionally, the numerical threshold serves as an indispensable mechanism, thus establishing a definitive criterion for the early identification of potentially malicious activities and enabling the activation of proactive security measures to safeguard the network’s integrity. Empirical validation of our dual-layer blockchain model has yielded a remarkable 86% efficacy in counteracting malevolent behaviors, thus significantly outperforming extant paradigms. These empirical outcomes underscore the model’s potential as a vanguard in the domain of secure and efficient reputation management within VANETs, thereby heralding a substantial advancement in the sphere of intelligent transportation systems.

The vernacular modern in the shadow of totalitarianism: Hans Döllgast’s Alte und neue Bauernstuben

The architect Hans Döllgast (1891–1974) has steadily gained in international recognition. His works of postwar reconstruction in Munich have been heralded as original contributions to modern architecture that resist historiographic classifications, such as modernist vs regionalist, avant garde vs traditionalist, or internationalist vs nationalist. Döllgast was also a revered pedagogue and prolific author, and his varied writings have yet to receive much scholarly attention. Döllgast’s books and essays present a significant body of sources that shed light on the complexity of architectural discourse in the formative years of modern architecture in Germany. This article considers Döllgast’s study of farmhouse ‘parlours’, entitled Alte und neue Bauernstuben (‘Old and New Farmhouse Parlours’) was first published in 1937. It was both his most popular book and the one that critics and historians have paid least attention to. Though it may appear antiquarian at first glance, it is in fact both critical and contemporary in spirit. Döllgast’s study sheds light upon his mature thinking about the relevance of the vernacular for the modern house. It also serves to question a general assumption in the existing literature that Döllgast only engaged with tenets of modern architecture after the war, having been a regionalist aloof from the discourse of the modern movement prior to the war. Scholars have shown that the loaded motif of the vernacular was never the sole preserve of anti-modernist conservatives and played a significant, if ambivalent, role within modernist discourse, from the late Wilhelmine period to postwar West Germany. While it reflects these wider trends, Alte und neue Bauernstuben also eschews alignment with the dominant strands of architectural discourse of its time by charting an independent-minded path in the context of imposed totalitarian uniformity. Döllgast’s text thus stands out in modern architectural discourse less for adducing the farmhouse as such, than for developing such a close, multifaceted reading of a particular vernacular interior, while alluding to more than elaborating its relevance for contemporary architecture. Ultimately, Döllgast’s study served him to develop a practical phenomenology of dwelling.

The ‘Translated’ Cityscape: A Study of Select Satyajit Ray Films

The present paper attempts to examine the ‘translated’ nature of the cityscapes in Satyajit Ray’s films. With a select reading of films like ‘Mahanagar’ (lit. The Big City, 1963) and ‘Pratidwandi’ (The Adversary also called Siddhartha and the City, 1970), I argue for the ways in which the city becomes a space of contestation, debate, negotiation and translation between clashing ideologies of the old and the new, the rural and the urban, the ancient and the modern. Ray’s films have been studied from several perspectives, in terms of thematic, stylistic and ideological development. However, it seems to me that the city and its ‘translational’ aspect have not received enough attention. The present paper proposes to understand the role the city plays in Ray’s cinema. As an avant garde film maker, Ray’s cinema is replete with moments of conflicting ideologies, transitions and crossovers. It seems to me that the city provides the base for several such negotiations and intersections in Ray. Using certain recent developments in Translation Studies, I propose to read episodes in select Ray films as indicative of a larger ideological and cultural shift necessitated and made possible by/in the new space of the city. As a translating and translated space, the city’s agency enables other changes and transformations which would not have been possible in the absence of this primary actor – the city. The present paper is an attempt to look at several such moments of intersections and translations that Ray’s films make available to us. 1 An earlier version of this article was presented at the17th International MELOW Conference on ‘Space, Place and Language in Literatures of the World’, Dharamshala, 9-11th, March, 2018. I am grateful to the questions and discussion from the audience and conference participants which helped me rethink some ideas presented here.

A Burglar of the Better Sort: Poems, Dramatic Works, Theoretical Writings

A Burglar of the Better Sort: Poems, Dramatic Works, Theoretical Writings

FabNet: A Features Agglomeration-Based Convolutional Neural Network for Multiscale Breast Cancer Histopathology Images Classification.

The definitive diagnosis of histology specimen images is largely based on the radiologist's comprehensive experience; however, due to the fine to the coarse visual appearance of such images, experts often disagree with their assessments. Sophisticated deep learning approaches can help to automate the diagnosis process of the images and reduce the analysis duration. More efficient and accurate automated systems can also increase the diagnostic impartiality by reducing the difference between the operators. We propose a FabNet model that can learn the fine-to-coarse structural and textural features of multi-scale histopathological images by using accretive network architecture that agglomerate hierarchical feature maps to acquire significant classification accuracy. We expand on a contemporary design by incorporating deep and close integration to finely combine features across layers. Our deep layer accretive model structure combines the feature hierarchy in an iterative and hierarchically manner that infers higher accuracy and fewer parameters. The FabNet can identify malignant tumors from images and patches from histopathology images. We assessed the efficiency of our suggested model standard cancer datasets, which included breast cancer as well as colon cancer histopathology images. Our proposed avant garde model significantly outperforms existing state-of-the-art models in respect of the accuracy, F1 score, precision, and sensitivity, with fewer parameters.

КАРТИНА «ЧЁРНЫЙ СУПРЕМАТИЧЕСКИЙ КВАДРАТ» К.С. МАЛЕВИЧА - СИМВОЛ НОВОГО ИСКУССТВА

The article presents information about K.S. Malevich's painting “The Black Suprematist Square”, which greatly influenced the development of a new style of avant–garde art - suprematism. It is proved that the square is the main geometric figure in the formation of images. The information is given that K.S. Malevich's new style is a synthesis of fine art, philosophy and religion, which allowed him to further influence the development of other types of art. Despite its apparent simplicity of the image, the black square continues to arouse the interest of many researchers of contemporary art today.

Vision-Based Semantic Segmentation in Scene Understanding for Autonomous Driving: Recent Achievements, Challenges, and Outlooks

Scene understanding plays a crucial role in autonomous driving by utilizing sensory data for contextual information extraction and decision making. Beyond modeling advances, the enabler for vehicles to become aware of their surroundings is the availability of visual sensory data, which expand the vehicular perception and realizes vehicular contextual awareness in real-world environments. Research directions for scene understanding pursued by related studies include person/vehicle detection and segmentation, their transition analysis, lane change, and turns detection, among many others. Unfortunately, these tasks seem insufficient to completely develop fully-autonomous vehicles i.e., achieving level-5 autonomy, travelling just like human-controlled cars. This latter statement is among the conclusions drawn from this review paper: scene understanding for autonomous driving cars using vision sensors still requires significant improvements. With this motivation, this survey defines, analyzes, and reviews the current achievements of the scene understanding research area that mostly rely on computationally complex deep learning models. Furthermore, it covers the generic scene understanding pipeline, investigates the performance reported by the state-of-the-art, informs about the time complexity analysis of avant garde modeling choices, and highlights major triumphs and noted limitations encountered by current research efforts. The survey also includes a comprehensive discussion on the available datasets, and the challenges that, even if lately confronted by researchers, still remain open to date. Finally, our work outlines future research directions to welcome researchers and practitioners to this exciting domain.

On the Dichotomy of the Elegant and the Popular

The theoretical dichotomy of the elegant (ya) and the popular or common (su) has a long history and many branches, provoking Babel-like confusion of tongues. Both have their own aesthetic origins, and each is interpreted in relation to sociological categories such as social class and social strata. No abstract and absolute definition of the two concepts exists. The yayue (formal ceremonial music) of ancient China is an important early example of the elegant or refined, whereas the popular usually prevails at the lower levels of mass society. In the course of history, the accumulation of professional knowledge, selected classics, avant garde “art for art’s sake,” and leisure class activities have often been considered “elegant,” while the experience of the masses, folk revelry, and the content of mass media have been considered “popular.” In modern literary history, the concepts of enlightenment and class were drawn into the dichotomy of the elegant and the popular in different ways. In Chinese culture in the second half of the twentieth century, this dichotomy began to be reorganized around the notions of “art” and “commodity.” The reconceptualization of elegance and popularity at each stage of history has often indicated a reconnection between aesthetic tastes and history. In this sense, the differentiation of elegance and popularity has always testified to culture’s participation in history.

Response Towards Timang Xekory

Music is a form of entertainment that is enjoyed by people of all ages from every culture. It does not require any formal education to be understood or appreciated by the listeners. However, music is divided into several categories, and one of them is avant garde music which can be fully appreciated through a specific approach because it contains elements, motifs and beats that are inconsistent. It is also known for its complex and abstract music and has its own group of fans. A study of avant garde music composition, Timang XekorY was conducted at Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. The respondents were categorised into two groups, the first was a group of musicians of music background and the second group is not of music background. Timang XekorY was inspired by the timang tuah ritual, which is commonly observed in Kapit, Sarawak. The research which was done against the backdrop of the rituals of the Iban community has yielded several findings. Firstly, a respondent said that a detailed explanation of the storyline of the ancient Iban singing text is needed. In addition, listeners or viewers who read of the programme book before the Timang XekorY show were found to have a better understanding of the storyline compared to those who have not been given the programme book or explanation of the original work.

Gertrude Stein: A Physician Who Wasn't to Be.

After a tumultuous time in the United States, including flunking out of medical school in 1901, Gertrude Stein, an iconic American author, art lover, and critic, moved to Paris in 1903 as an avant garde modernist who became a leading and legendary guru in the Parisian art and literature world.

Environmental Pollution

Final project planning aims to create a party fashion design that combines the source of ideas and fashion style chosen. The source of ideas from the final project design is Enviromental Pollution. Environmental Pollution poured into clothing with a pattern application patchwork dan tie dyed techbiques as fashion motifs, meanwhile fashion style is avant garde. The type of clothing chosen is eveing dress. The materials used in the final prpject design are linen, tulle, and silk catton fabric for tie dyed. The colors of the material in the final project design follow the color of the source of ide, namely blue

Preserving the past or past preserving: sustaining the legacy of postmodern museum architecture

The publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1964 signaled the end of Modernism. The reality was that the modern movement had already jettisoned its ideological underpinnings and had become merely another ‘style.’ The avant garde architects in Europe and in North America were ready to move on and saw Postmodernism as a liberating antidote to the strictures of high Modernism. Historic architectural styles, which had been vilified as antiquated and out of step with modern culture, were revived, reinterpreted, and manipulated. However, Postmodernism, which had burned brightly during the 1970s and 1980s, was superseded by other architectural movements, namely, Deconstructivism, Pluralism, during the waning years of the 12th century.Even though new building forms and design theory changed during Postmodernism, building technology remained the same. Exterior walls continued to be built as skins, comprised of either glass, masonry, metal, or synthetic cladding, which were hung of steel or concrete framing. Rubberised membranes covered essentially flat roofs. Moisture infiltration was managed in ever complex composite wall assemblies. More important, environmental systems decoupled nature from interiors and were designed to manage ever demanding humidity control requirements. Through the development of new building technology, Modernism severed design style from traditional construction. In re-introducing historical forms back into architecture, Postmodernism complicated constructability. Moreover, Postmodernism and its successors rarely developed new technological ideas by introducing more intricate building forms, which were based on theoretical ideas rather than technical ones, while continuing to employ Modernism building technology into their buildings. This inherent paradox is the most consequential challenge in preserving Postmodernism. Today, approximately 40 years after its inception, we must consider if, in some cases. is it tenable to preserve Postmodern buildings?This paper reassesses three museums of the Postmodern era through the twin lenses of historic preservation and their legacy as cultural artifacts. It analyses how three iconic Postmodern museums, the Wexner Centre for the Arts in the USA, the Neue Staatsgalerie in Germany, and the Hedmark Museum in Norway, became cultural artifacts and how each of them present technical challenges for their future preservation. These museums represent late 20th century theoretical ideas, which were more a melding of pluralistic influences than design ideology, and the utilisation of Modernist technology. All of which present unique conditions for conservation.

Introduction

Introduction

Status of the Mourned by Hugh Seidman

Reviewed by: Status of the Mourned by Hugh Seidman Jon Curley (bio) status of the mourned Hugh Seidman Dispatches Editions/Spuyten Duyvil Press http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/status-of-the-mourned.html 84 pages, Print, $15.00 For over a half century, Hugh Seidman has crafted a formidable body of work that reflects the Objectivist mandate for sincerity, honesty, and clarity in poetic representation. A student of Louis Zukofsky, who theorized Objectivism as primarily a set of guidelines rather than an actual avant garde movement, [End Page 108] Seidman emerged in 1970 with Collecting Evidence (1970), dedicated to describing "a difference in reference/an epiphany." In Status of the Mourned, his newest collection, he is not only collecting the evidence but taking stock: composing a chronicle of his life and the lives of others, as elegist, fabulist, and witness to personal loss and historical catastrophe. It is a weird, arresting requiem that can veer abruptly from mournful meditation to quickened reverie. This whiplash movement across a spectrum of sentiment guarantees that it pulses with vitality and inquiry, probing "The living lives lived." In his eighty-second year, Seidman refuses the grandiose pronouncement of a presumed poetic elder statesman, the lofty utterances of a pretentious self-fashioned Bard, or the complacent curatorial considerations of a career bringing finality or semi-closure to his musings. As with his contemporary and close friend Michael Heller's recent work (whose Telescope: Selected Poems was published by New York Review Books in 2019), his so-called Late Style is an advancement in reckoning, a refusal to be settled in either particular moods or modes. These poems are at times frustrated, forlorn, and ferocious; they are always on fire. A Seidman requiem is a sustained recording of grief and loss but also the establishment of a sequence of resurrection songs "amid the remarkable fervor that raises/the dead to the status of the living." Memorial markers are occasions for conjuration, bringing dead kin and friends back to conscience, back to the poet's page, assembling threshold portraits of the dead in duel perspective: gone and beyond; here and animate. These remembrances are brought to bear on Seidman's sense of how he reckons with their occasions—how they shape his sense of self and self-judgement. As Burt Kimmelman has noted in the publication Jacket, a "singular characteristic of Seidman's work is its ethical imperative, of how to live." Childhood reminisces, international historical events ranging over decades, homages to forebears and influences, and exacting tributes in the form of raw obituaries predominate here. Seidman's preoccupations and passions are vast and differentiated into multiple frames for discerning the poet's role in remembering his and others' experiences. Always there is the awareness of mortality's fragility and the imminent end of all as "Einstein on the Beach" succinctly telegraphs the final journey awaited: "All passports stamped for the underworld." [End Page 109] The verse is volatile, moving frenetically across moods, critiques, and judgements, established then cancelled, modified and then, as often as not, jettisoned. After numerous inventories of international conflict and barbarity, the reckoning would seem clear, following Adorno's dictum about lyric poetry after Auschwitz being untenable as in "Writing and Catastrophe": "Poem implodes—cannot hold 'holocaust.'" Or from "Statements for Poetry": Not magic, logos, light.What "hope"? But Seidman remains twitchy and any sense of these lines being final conclusions are soon undermined elsewhere (but the quotations surrounding "holocaust" and "hope" still express frustration with the inadequacy of such terms and meanings). Elsewhere, however, in the poem defiance of resignation registers, even the fragile force of language can bring possibility; so arise more promising equations "Failed fate/art? Still—bloody heart!" and "History: stubborn, shrill,/Most dreams, dreams will." In "Two Poems," a tribute to his teacher and fellow poet Adrienne Rich, Seidman writes the following in the second section subtitled "The Hope of Poetry": I type this as time stopsI attain the workshop I graduate to the hopeless cosmosI labor because of you with the hope of poetry Hope against hope is the fulfillment of a poetic gesture unsuited to the world and therefore so crucial to it. Restless then...

An Organizational Analysis of the Schismatic Church of Satan

Background The Church of Satan, the seminal example of organizational Satanism, was founded in 1966. During the 1970s, the Church of Satan was wracked by a history of numerous schisms. Despite the notoriety of Satanism in popular culture, few scholars have analyzed the Church of Satan as a religious organization. Furthermore, not many scholars have directly discussed the schisms that it has undergone. Purpose The purpose of this research is to analyze the Church of Satan, an understudied case in American religious organizational history, and its schisms. A theoretical framework based on religious economies and organizational ecology is introduced to account for schism in Satanism, which hitherto has been dominated by European cultural milieu arguments. Methods A historical case study is performed on the case of the Church of Satan, using primary and secondary documentation, in order to address four theoretical propositions. Results Findings demonstrate costliness, authority, doctrine, and niche/environment were all potential causes for the schisms that impacted the Church of Satan. Conclusions and Implications The Church of Satan conforms to religious economies and organizational ecology theory expectations of schism. Further research is needed to understand organizational aspects of Satanism and other avant garde religious groups.

Introduction

On behalf of myself and the editors for this debut edition, Yunus Tuncel and Francesca Ferrando, we are most pleased to offer the first issue of the Journal of the World Posthuman Society, 'Infinity: A Journal for Posthumanists'. The papers collected here were presented at the 24th World Congress of Philosophy held in Beijing in 2018. Paper are drawn from Roundtables and Workshops organized to accommodate the surging interest in Posthumanism. The reader may accept my assurance that within these pages is contained some of the most avant garde thinking in this bourgeoning movement in philosophy.