Iconic Representations Research Articles

Postcards and Emotions: Modernist Architecture in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar and Woody Allen

Modernism has emerged as the preeminent iconic representation of Barcelona. However, the process through which this peculiar style has attained its iconic status is an arduous and multifaceted endeavor. This paper examines the challenges inherent in the categorization and periodization of Modernisme, followed by a succinct review of its initial filmic representations, culminating in a comprehensive analysis of two films in which Modernisme assumes a pivotal role: All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar 1999) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen 2008). We conclude that Modernisme’s transformation into a cultural brand is largely attributable to the erosion of its ideological component in favor of a touristic and globalizing gaze.

History and variations of Lindsay's wheel of acoustics: From a nested pie chart including words to a drawn acoustics world

In 1964, Robert Bruce Lindsay introduced “The Science of Acoustics,” a graphical representation that has become popular and is often called the Wheel of Acoustics. This communication first recalls the historical context and initial versions of this representation. Adaptations to its original design are then introduced. Some follow the idea of a wheel representation but focus on specific acoustic domains or perceptual descriptions of sound. Other adaptations propose a slightly modified arrangement of the wheel's elements while including icons to illustrate covered topics. We introduce a wheel that blends realistic and iconic representations following a primarily hand-drawn and artistic vision. This visual tool can be used for acoustics teaching and popularization to improve audience engagement and provide more in-depth and concrete examples. The Drawn Acoustics World is provided in English and French versions, and also in a text-free version that can be used to adapt to any language.

Utilizing Metaverse Technology for the Preservation of Indigenous Houses in Southeast Sulawesi: A Study of Bajo, Tolaki, Muna, and Buton Cultural Heritage

Abstract - Southeast Sulawesi, as one of the Provinces in Indonesia, has cultural artifacts that serve as diverse reflections of its culture and need to be preserved to ensure their continuity for future generations. There are four major indigenous ethnic groups in Southeast Sulawesi, namely Tolaki, Muna, Buton, Moronene, and Bajo, which represent the cultural diversity of the region. These ethnic groups have traditional houses that serve as cultural hubs, preserving cultural values and acting as iconic representations of the local culture in Southeast Sulawesi. The development of metaverse technology, a tangible proof of recent technological advancements, is known for its ability to create spatial environments in virtual reality. The urgency of this research arises from the lack of community interest in traditional houses, as evidenced by the eclectic and minimalist architectural designs, as well as the threat of extinction faced by traditional houses in Southeast Sulawesi. This study aims to preserve traditional houses in Southeast Sulawesi by integrating them with metaverse technology, enabling the transmission of cultural values to future generations. The research will employ a qualitative descriptive method. Additionally, this research aims to fill the gaps in previous studies by introducing metaverse technology as a groundbreaking innovation in addressing the threat of cultural artifact extinction in Southeast Sulawesi province. Keywords : Metaverse, Artifact, Preserving, Architectural.

Re-gendering Art: A Study of Ravi Varma’s Shakuntala Writing a Love Letter on a Lotus Leaf

As a reflection of social patterns, culture is bound to change and the representations from the past distorted in the present need to be decoded to remove the staleness and fixation on various notions passed as absolute truths. This dichotomy inspires an investigation into an iconic representation of womanhood from the stature of an episode from mythological epic Mahabharata and the paintings of Shakuntala by the painter Prince Ravi Varma of erstwhile Travancore in the state of Kerala in colonial India to unravel the stories that characterized popular imagination of women in history. The theoretical framework of aesthetics in the depiction of human forms that define perceptions of gender directs this study to avail a close reading to evaluate the growth of empowerment of women within the dialectics of history and culture. ‘Ekphrasis’ studies mainly how visual arts are represented in literature and here interestingly visual art becomes the ekphrasis of the written text. A proposal of the theory of ‘elimination’, the study intends to debunk the societal gaze of the feminine form as fragile hindering the strength of character by analyzing the hidden details in art. The relevance becomes manifold in the twenty-first century as the new generation is ardently trying to break stereotypes. The limitations of binary ideas of masculine and feminine are interwoven mainly with physical characteristics. The pressure to mimic these attributes leads to the exclusion of anything beyond that idea which disturbs the balance of gender equality and justice.

Beyond the Melody: The Symbolic Meaning of Kɔkɔsakyi by Augustine Adu Safo

This research delves into the musical iconicity found within Adu Safo's music composition, "Kɔkɔsakyi" (Vulture), going beyond its mere melody to explore its cultural and symbolic dimensions. Employing a semiotic framework, the composition was sampled purposefully and used as case study to examine how various musical elements evoke and symbolize non-musical concepts, particularly focusing on the representation of the vulture as a symbol of procrastination within Ghanaian society. Using the idea of the theory of semiotics and its inherent analytical frame, the study unravels the understanding of Adu Safo's compositional techniques, shedding light on the creation of iconic music. Key findings indicate that "Kɔkɔsakyi" skillfully utilises melody, rhythm, and lyrics to depict the character of the vulture, offering insightful reflections on the perils of procrastination. By integrating sound and text within the cultural context of Kɔkɔsakyi, the composition underscores the capacity of a musical composition as a potent medium for conveying socio-cultural values. Ultimately, this paper serves as a valuable resource for educators, students, and composers alike, offering insights into the use of iconic representations in art music compositions.

Open-class-ness, Aspect, Iconicity, and Other Characteristics of Japanese Ideophones Viewed through the Lens of Closed-class Semantics

Abstract This paper adopts closed-class semantics (Talmy, 2000) to examine the semantics and morphophonology of Japanese ideophones. First, it considers the class category status of ideophones, arguing that the membership expansion of ideophones as open-class forms is impeded by iconicity, or the sound-symbolism of a phoneme. Next, it explores the relevance of three grammatical concepts expressed by closed-class forms (aspect, force dynamics, and perspective) to the meaning of ideophones, arguing that: (i) the forms of ideophones are iconic representations of (un)boundedness; (ii) ideophones can elaborate on the force enacted by the antagonist or agonist; and (iii) a proximal perspective underlies commonly used descriptions, such as dramaturgicness. The discussion touches on cross-linguistically common characteristics of ideophones, including use of a closed-class means such as reduplication to create aspect-informed forms. The paper shows that the class category status is an important measure to seize characteristics of ideophones, corroborating Dingemanse (2019, 2023).

Allegorical Representations of Tudor Princes

The problem of studying various types of allegorical discourses is topical. The current research devoted to allegories as a special device in the literary and pictorial art of sixteenth-century England is concerned with three different types of figurative mode of representation, their cognitive content, and their pragmatic effect. The poets, playwrights, and artists developed iconic representations of the Tudor monarchs by means of three forms of allegories: comparisons, impersonations, and personifications whose public aim was the consolidation of the dynastic power and hermeneutic interpretation of abstract concepts which made up the core of Tudor cosmology. The study provides an integrated approach to the allegorical paradigm as the totality of all means (textual and visual) expressing the same conceptual theme. The analysis has a strictly historical character and is put in the context of contemporary events and prevailing philosophical views. The corpus of literary material is discussed in rhetorical and ideological terms, Keywords: allegorical comparisons, impersonations, personifications, Moon culture.

Cell redistribution of G quadruplex-structured DNA is associated with morphological changes of nuclei and nucleoli in neurons during tau pathology progression.

While the double helical structure has long been its iconic representation, DNA is structurally dynamic and can adopt alternative secondary configurations. Specifically, guanine-rich DNA sequences can fold in guanine quadruplexes (G4) structures. These G4 play pivotal roles as regulators of gene expression and genomic stability, and influence protein homeostasis. Despite their significance, the association of G4 with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been underappreciated. Recent findings have identified DNA sequences predicted to form G4 in sarkosyl-insoluble aggregates from AD brains, questioning the involvement of G4-structured DNA (G4 DNA) in the pathology. Using immunofluorescence coupled to confocal microscopy analysis we investigated the impact of tau pathology, a hallmark of tauopathies including AD, on the distribution of G4 DNA in murine neurons and its relevance to AD brains. In healthy neurons, G4 DNA is detected in nuclei with a notable presence in nucleoli. However, in a transgenic mouse model of tau pathology (THY-Tau22), early stages of the disease exhibit an impairment in the nuclear distribution of G4 DNA. In addition, G4 DNA accumulates in the cytoplasm of neurons exhibiting oligomerized tau and oxidative DNA damage. This altered distribution persists in the later stage of the pathology when larger tau aggregates are present. Still cytoplasmic deposition of G4 DNA does not appear to be a critical factor in the tau aggregation process. Similar patterns are observed in neurons from the AD cortex. Furthermore, the disturbance in G4 DNA distribution is associated with various changes in the size of neuronal nuclei and nucleoli, indicative of responses to stress and the activation of pro-survival mechanisms. Our results shed light on a significant impact of tau pathology on the dynamics of G4 DNA and on nuclear and nucleolar mechanobiology in neurons. These findings reveal new dimensions in the etiopathogenesis of tauopathies.

On Block's delineation of the border between seeing and thinking

Abstract This note is concerned with Ned Block's claim that cognition differs from perception in being paradigmatically conceptual, propositional, and non-iconic. As against Block, it maintains that large stretches of cognition constitutively involve, or depend on, iconic representations.

The Girl in the Hijab

The image of a young girl wearing a hijab can be seen to be an iconic representation of the complex intersection between feminism on the one hand, and religion and culture on the other. While the hijab is a visible marker of traditional gender norms in some Islamic communities, many modern Muslim women and girls have reclaimed it as a symbol of faith, identity, and choice. In keeping with contemporary feminist dialogue, we seek to understand and respect these nuanced perspectives.

Iconicity bias and duration.

Descriptions of durational relations can be ambiguous, for example, the description "one meeting happened during another" could mean that one meeting started before the other ended, or it could mean that the meetings started and ended simultaneously. A recent theory posits that people mentally simulate descriptions of durational events by representing their starts and ends along a spatial axis, that is, an iconic representation of time. To draw conclusions from this iconic mental model, reasoners consciously scan it in the direction of earlier to later timepoints. The account predicts an iconicity bias: People should prefer descriptions that are congruent with an iconic scanning procedure-descriptions that mention the starts of events before the ends of events-over logically equivalent but incongruent descriptions. Six experiments corroborated the prediction; they show that iconicity biases in temporal reasoning manifest in cases when reasoners consciously evaluate the durations of events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Revisiting gradability in American Sign Language (ASL)

This paper addresses gradability in American Sign Language (ASL). The literature has argued that languages may or may not introduce degree variables, i.e., there is cross-linguistic variation as to whether languages should be analyzed as degree- or degreeless. For ASL, the degree-based analysis has been assumed or explicitly proposed. For example, due to the visual nature of ASL (as a language that uses the physical signing space), it has been suggested that it may be able to readily represent scales iconically in the signing space. In contrast, we argue that ASL is a degreeless language, which further means that its modality does not necessarily readily translate into the iconic representation of scales in the signing space. Our discussion is based on a comprehensive examination of 31 adjectives across different constructions (e.g., different comparison strategies, questions targeting degrees, crisp judgments, etc.). We offer evidence from elicitation data from 6 consultants with different profiles.

'Hello Darkness, My Old Friend ': The Company of Music in a Cinema of (Shared) Loneliness

How have cinema's representations of loneliness changed over time, in keeping with the changing technological mediation of loneliness? What can these representations tell us about how the experience of loneliness is made sense of in everyday life? And, crucially, how has cinema's own technicity remediated loneliness in the process of representing it? In order to unpack some of these complexities, this article narrows its focus to a mere two minutes of screen time: the opening of The Graduate (1967), with its iconic representation of a lone character traversing Los Angeles International Airport to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence'. The Graduate opens an important window into a particular sociohistorical moment when technologies, techniques, industry concerns and social conditions placed the audio-visual aesthetics of loneliness at the core of American cinema. I interpret this moment as the symbolic beginning of what Robert Kolker has termed 'a cinema of loneliness', a body of films that frequently featured solo drifters at plot level and that were made by directors working in isolation due to the collapse of the old Hollywood studio system. Notably, The Graduate forces us to deal with a fundamental aspect of the 'cinema of loneliness' that Kolker intentionally sidesteps: the use of preexisting popular music to offer a glimpse into a character's state of mind. Moving beyond the confines of film and narrative theory, and situating the film in broader histories of listening, cinema-going and audio technologies, I argue that the soundtrack of The Graduate reflected new ways of listening 'alone together' that were developing both within and without the cinema theatre. I show that the film employs music in a manner consistent with how transistor radios were being used and discussed in 1960s America, and I explore how – in the very process of placing loneliness at the centre of its audio-visual aesthetics – it enabled heavily mediated experiences of shared loneliness. More specifically, I propose that 'The Sound of Silence' is central not only to how The Graduate conveys loneliness but also to how the film provides a provisional and non-political way out of it.

The Iconic-Symbolic Spectrum

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of rule have divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures.

Before the Holocene humid period: Life-sized camel engravings and early occupations on the southern edge of the Nefud desert

The Neolithic of northern Arabia is characterised by monumental stone structures, ephemeral ‘hearth sites’ indicative of a highly mobile lifestyle, and a rich rock art heritage with iconic representations of domesticated livestock. However, the character and timing of occupation prior to the spread of pastoralism (ca. 6000 BCE) remains elusive, with only one stratified Epipalaeolithic site and two surface early Neolithic sites so-far known in the Jubbah Oasis. Here we present Sahout, a newly documented rock art site with Neolithic and earlier occupations, on the southern edge of the Nefud desert. The rock art is dominated by life-sized, naturalistic, engravings of camels, which are in some cases superimposed with Neolithic imagery of domesticated sheep. Surveys and test excavations carried out in the vicinity of the rock art revealed a lithic assemblage with similarities to the late Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Levant. Radiocarbon ages from two test trenches and two hearths indicate repeated occupation at Sahout between the Terminal Pleistocene and the Middle Holocene, which partly mirror the rock art sequence. Investigations at Sahout indicate that rock art production in northern Arabia may have begun earlier than previously thought. Research also suggests a broader geographical extent to human occupations prior to the Holocene humid period.

Structuring Jewish Buenos Aires at the end of the long nineteenth century

ABSTRACT A common Jewish Argentine creation story begins in 1889, with 824 Russian Jews disembarking in Buenos Aires and ushering in three decades of massive Jewish migration to that city. In six key themes, this article expands the parameters of that story chronologically, spatially, culturally, and politically. It focuses on the Jewish gaucho (skilled horseman) as an iconic representation of the intersections of Jewish and non-Jewish Buenos Aires; the meanings of neighborhood; the tragedy of ‘white slavery’; cultural institutions; Sephardic porteños (Buenos Aires residents); and the Jewish anarchists and socialists.

When walls collapse! Rethinking the sites of memory in Hakim Belabbes’s Collapsed Walls (2022)

ABSTRACT Hakim Belabbes’s Collapsed Walls (2022) is an innovative Moroccan film that visually retells a set of stories from the life experience of the filmmaker in the city of Bejaad (Morocco). Grounding our work in transnational cinematic approaches and in cultural studies, our reading of Collapsed Walls attempts to holistically (de)encode the filmic construction of the contextual, the formal, and the thematic narratives that suffuse the film. We shed light on how this film engages with Belabbes’s cinematic style and how the Moroccan cultural identity is reshaped through his poetic filmic narratives. The methodology is bolstered by non-participant observation at the avant-première of the film in Casablanca on 20 May 2022, as well as an interview with the film director. Belabbes was trained in Chicago, where he lives, but the transnationality of his films is blurred by his heavy focus on his hometown, as a source of inspiration and as an iconic representation of his cultural identity. The other main characteristic of the disruptive approach to transnationalism in Belabbes’ films is permeated by what we have dubbed the ‘genre’s transnomadism’, considering the liminal, dialogic and transborder use of genres in Belabbes’ work. Collapsed Walls’ transnational resonances create a disruptive version of experimentation at the heart of the real narrative of the film, creating a knot of contrasts and ambivalent discourses through the negotiation of the real and the unreal, the spiritual and the sublime, the sacred and the profane.

Tectonics of the Familiar: The Transposed Landscapes of Zoe Zenghelis

AbstractAs a founder member of the now international practice OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), Zoe Zenghelis was responsible for some of the group's early iconic representations of its buildings. In recent times she has practised as a lone painter creating a plethora of work that is at once abstractly Constructivist yet gorgeously architectural as she mixes form and colour. Architect, teacher and writer Hamed Khosravi describes her artistic trajectory and influences.

More Than Just a Strongman: The Strategic Construction of Viktor Orbán’s Charismatic Authority on Facebook

Populist leaders are often described as “strongmen,” receiving a somewhat two-dimensional Western press coverage that cannot explain their local popularity. Based on visual and textual analysis of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Facebook, we argue that he has a more complex social media persona. Orbán’s Facebook shows him as (1) a fighter against a variety of enemies, (2) a symbolic condensation of the nation, (3) a relatable politician with (4) a gentleness toward children and animals, and (5) a strong competence in elite political contexts. Orbán uses his charismatic authority on Facebook to draw the boundaries of the Hungarian nation, presenting himself as the iconic representation of “Hungarian-ness.” The building blocks of his image are constantly being adapted to the current political situation and to shifts in public opinion. The Orbán image is, thus, a fluid and pragmatic material with only a few core principles and its popularity remains steadfast despite the brand’s contradictions. Understanding the appeal of Orbán’s self-representation may help us better grasp populist regimes’ variation and success worldwide.

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera