Place For Contemplation Research Articles

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation

<i>Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation</i>

LIGHTING DESIGN IMPROVEMENT FOR ENHANCING INDOOR VISUAL QUALITY OF GPIB IMMANUEL CHURCH MALANG

&lt;em&gt;Lighting affects how people feel, react, and function in various settings, therefore lighting design strategy for worship room at churches should be aimed not only at fulfil the standard visual performance but should also be set as to enrich the room’s perception i.e. as the God’s holy place as well as a place for contemplation. Lighting problems found at the worship room of GPIB Immanuel Malang are not merely on the inappropriateness of lighting level and distributions, but also on the absence of the church’ nuance as a place for contemplation. This paper is intended to report a proposed schematic lighting design for improving the situation. Using visual hierarchical approach, the lighting design aspects such as intensity, colour rendering, type, direction and arrangement of luminaires are determined and integrated. The proposed lighting design strategy is expected to be able to solve luminous problems and create the designated room’s nuance/perceptions.&lt;/em&gt;

River and Civilization in Sumatera’s Historical Perspective in The 7th to 14th Centuries

The study of the relationship of civilization and the river as a natural path resulting from the interaction process between hydrological behaviors with the surface of the earth, vary over time and strongly influenced by the nature of the river, river function, and human behavior in the effort to utilize the river and its resources. The dynamics of water flow and river sediments are not only influenced by natural behavior, but also human behavior or activity. All living things that exist on earth also need a river, including humans. Rivers are often controlled to be more useful or reduce their negative impact on human activities. The benefits of the river for human life are very important and vital, for an example to retain water, to flow the water downstream, the source of sustenance, and the river is often considered as a place for contemplation, relaxation, and even to get enlightenment. It has long been acknowledged that the river became the beginning for the emerge and the development of a civilization, both in the perspective of "A Hydraulic Empire Civilization" and "The Cradle of Civilization". According to the spirit of the time (zeitgeist), humans began to develop technology in the growth areas around the river, the dam was built to control the water flow, to store water or produce energy; the embankment is designed to prevent the river from flowing over flood border; canals are built to connect rivers for transfer the water or navigation. The development of settlements and cultural centers between the 7th and 14th centuries in Sumatera Island cannot be separated from the existence of the Musi River, Batang Hari, Siak, and Kampar River. In that period left a very clear historical trail, namely the kingdom of Sriwijaya as a maritime kingdom, Bahal, Muara Takus Temple, and Muaro Jambi temple.

The Relentless Memorial

This manuscript, per the author, will explain “Environmental Melancholia” and “Collective Social Mania,” and describe how they are connected in a hedonic loop of capitalism and buyer's remorse. This manuscript will also explain the role of symbolism and symbolic acts in healing one's grief, and the connection it has to art. The materials used in the artwork, Relentless Memorial, reference the unyielding pollution and mass production of goods created by the petroleum industry, as well as creating a dichotomy between a clean, white, virgin plastic to an ever-increasingly polluted, contaminated world. The formal presentation of Relentless Memorial as an installation is intended to provide a place of contemplation and mourning. Furthermore, the presentation of the installation as a panorama is related to the phenomenon of panoramas of the nineteenth century, and the onset of environmental pollution during the industrial revolution of that time. It invites a layered investigation into how that industry has influenced the environmental melancholia felt by society today.

Between Ima Summis and nearness. Dom Hans van der Laan’s Roosenberg Abbey as an example of a contemporary space of worship

Bloomsbury Journals, Spaces of Faith (Vol. 6 Issue 3 – 2015). This paper interweaves the architectural concepts and elementary architecture of Roosenberg Abbey in Belgium with the motivations and search of its creator: the Dutch monk-architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904–1991). The abbey was built in 1975 for the Marian Sisters of Franciscus, who sought an austere place that adhered closely with their own experience of Catholic faith. Dom Hans van der Laan designed the building as a materialization and testing ground of his ideas put forward in his publications Architectonic Space (1970) and The Play of Forms (1985). Although the religious concepts behind his thoughts grew from his own Benedictine background, he developed an architectural philosophy that aimed to define spaces of worship through universal characteristics as dwelling and living. He interpreted the Dyonisian concept of ‘Ima Summis’ (the lowest in reconciliation with the highest) not from a transcendental perspective, but through the concrete material world of architecture that grew from human experience. For that, he developed the concepts of nearness and superposition, an architectural methodology that combines a classical ordering system with a modern dynamic spatiality. For van der Laan, building a space of faith is to create an order as a layered inside in constant but gradual relation to an outside. He called this concept of interweaving mass and space ‘nearness’. Although his writings are quite poetic, his design methodology with the central concept of ‘superposition’ is very concrete and practical.For two years, the Marian Sisters of Franciscus have worked together with the philosopher Dr. Marc Colpaert to open up their abbey as a place for contemplation and the study of interreligious dialog. They count amongst their guest lecturers Islamic scholars such as the Pakistani psychologist Prof. Durre Ahmen, who introduces the abbey to Muslims as a place for Ressourcement, and Omar Nahas and Sergio Scattolini, who organize seminars on the reading of the Koran. This shows that the requirements put forward by van der Laan from a Benedictine perspective for the Maria Sisters of Franciscus overcome a specific ideological focus, offering a more universal approach towards the design of spaces of faith. This paper will analyze Roosenberg Abbey as a testimony of these requirements.

English

Art museums can be complex, confounding, boring, exciting, absurd, and breathtaking. They can be sad, enlightening, hurtful, alive, dead, mainstream and avant-garde. They can, at once, be all of these things. Or they can be any one of these things separately. Museums can be more. Art museums might provide a place for contemplation, a place for social commentary, a place for political discourse, a place for lunch. They can identify us, deconstruct us, or illuminate our experiences for everyone. They can be an index for the health and vibrancy of our culture and our time. The Smithsonian American Art Museum provides such an index. American Art’s collections and exhibitions compile the permanent record of our aspirations, character and imagination. The museum has been a leader in identifying and collecting significant and sometimes unconventional aspects of American visual expression. One of the more vibrant artistic expressions of late, (not only nationally, but globally), has been in and around video gaming. Video games are an undeniably important contributor to our cultural discourse. They cannot be marginalized because they might be commercial, popular, or competitive. The creative and artistic expressions captured in video games are vital to our cultural heritage. Video games are art.

Conservation of The Shell Grotto, Margate

We usually associate grottos with post-Renaissance European landscape garden design. However, grottos also existed in biblical and other ancient periods, as well as those of early China and early Christianity. Grottos' features may include a natural or artificial subterranean location, isolation from the outside world, a place for contemplation and private worship or a shrine to a deity. Grottos are often associated with water and water-spirits, naiads, nereids or nymphs, and are sometimes known as nymphaea. Shellwork can be an important element of their decoration. The Shell Grotto at Margate embodies some of these features. It is an artificially formed structure of unknown provenance, cut into the existing chalk and lined internally with seashells. Discovered in 1835, by 1999 the fragile structure had fallen into disrepair caused by the poor environmental conditions underground. After thorough investigations, the programme for conservation included reinforcement of the chalk bedrock, removing overlying concrete and installing land drainage, followed by internal conservation works using the methods described.

Robert Boyle, Izaak Walton, and the Art of Angling

Robert Boyle's meditative narrative on angling and Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler consider in their responses to an unsettled interregnum society the values of the contemplative and the active life. Walton's well-known treatise on the sport of fishing celebrates the innocent, carefree recreation found amidst the appealing rural ambience of the river banks, “the quietest and fittest place for contemplation.” For him the camaraderie of kindred spirits and the hours enjoyed away from the consuming demands of law and politics provide the prudent, peaceable angler a means of contrasting rather than engaging the outside world. For Boyle the river encourages another means of reflection, a “way of thinking” apparent in the distinctly different discourse and demeanor of his anglers. More so than Walton's congenial anglers, they reflect upon the realities beyond the world of angling. Though each author shares a contemporary understanding of civility and appreciates the value of competency, the premium Boyle places upon conversation as well as reflective monologue is conducive to both contemplation and the prospect of action. Fundamental to his moral and spiritual reflections is Boyle's awareness of the humanistic relationship between wisdom and duty.

Changing Lives through Literature

There is something ugly about incarceration. Over 2.2 million people are locked in jails and prisons in the united states; $60 billion a year is spent to support this effort. But there is also the old comparison of the prison with the monk's cell, a place of contemplation and self-reflection, and Jean Genet's sense of “a close relationship between flowers and convicts” (9). As a probation officer I know likes to remind me, “If you want to find Jesus, just go into the prisons. He is always there.” In any discussion of prisons, there are always opposing terms to consider: incarceration and freedom, body and consciousness, the hard core and the vulnerable, mind-forged manacles and visionary imagination.

Essay: Healing gardens—places for nature in health care

Essay: Healing gardens—places for nature in health care

Social context and the subjective experience of different types of rock music

The psychological impact and meaning of rock music for adolescents needs to be addressed as a joint function of the type of music and the social context in which it is listened. Young adolescents in this study carried pagers for one week and reported their affect, arousal, and psychological involvement in their activities, including music listening, when signaled at random times. Regression analyses indicate that social context has its greatest impact on soft rock where subjective states are dramatically higher when this music is listened to with friends, as opposed to alone. This suggests that intimate companionship transforms the themes of longing and sadness characteristic of this music into a more positive and binding experience. Subjective states experienced listening to this music are also high when listening occurs in the bedroom, a finding that indicates a consistency between the music's themes and the use of the bedroom as a place for contemplation and reflection. Top 40 and hard rock/heavy metal music are experienced positively across a variety of social contexts, suggesting that their energy and collective message allows teens to experience mastery and power over their environment, even in contexts that are ordinarily lonely and alien. The one exception is when hard rock/heavy metal is listened to in the presence of family members, a situation that creates very negative subjective states. This is undoubtedly due to the dissonance of this music's themes with parental values.

The Place of Contemplation in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle has often been charged with indecision, and sometimes with holding contradictory views about the relative merits of a comprehensive practical life and one devoted primarily to contemplation.1 Sometimes he intimates that practical affairs might well be ordered so as to give the greatest opportunity for such theorizing (II77aI2-I8; II45a6-II).2 But he thinks we are endowed with a range of practical and productive capacities as well as powers of growth, motion, perception and scientific understanding, all as essential to us as contemplation. A full and happy life involves the proper development and exercise of these potentialities, actualizing them for their own sakes, because engaging in these activities is living the life of a human being, and not merely because they also promote and assure the sort of life that gives contemplation its widest play. I want to suggest a way of reading Aristotle that shows how the contemplative and the comprehensive practical lives need not be competitors for the prizes of a life well-lived. Properly understood, they not only perfect and enhance each other, but provide the conditions for one another's fullest development. If there is a criticism of Aristotle in this area, it is political, not conceptual. The reading I present is not the one that Aristotle himself advances as a resolution of the tensions in the Ethics; it is not even clear that Aristotle was aware of the strains in his account. But the reading I propose is woven out of threads and materials provided by Aristotle: even though it is not the solution Aristotle himself explicitly formulates, it is an Aristotelian solution to the problems