Symbolic Level Research Articles

The concept of european identity and its significance for EU policy

The article examines the process of formation and establishment of European identity. The process of forming European identity is directly related to traditional and current ideas about Europe itself and the community of European citizens. Strengthening the identification of its citizens with the process of European integration in general and with EU institutions and policies in particular has become one of the main challenges for the European Union today. The peoples of Europe, creating an increasingly close union among themselves, decided on the concept of a European identity based on common values. Aware of its spiritual and moral heritage, the European identity is based on the universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; it is based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law. It puts man at the heart of its activities by establishing citizenship of the Union and creating an area of freedom, security and justice. The European Union contributes to the preservation and development of these common values, respecting the diversity of cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe, as well as the national identity of the member states and the organization of their public authorities at the national, regional and local levels; it seeks to promote balanced and sustainable development and ensures the free movement of people, services, goods and capital, as well as freedom of establishment. European identity still continues to develop through aspects such as the currency and common policies and values, as well as on a more symbolic level with the EU flag and anthem.

Anachronism at Work: Villains and Enemies as Turks in Early Modern Religious Art in Genoa and Liguria

In western Early Modern imaginaire, the Ottoman enemy was often perceived, at a symbolic level, as the quintessence of threat and persecution against the Catholic faith. Figures of ‘Turks’, identified by way of easily recognizable attributes (such as the turban), were therefore substituted for other, radically different characters in a plurality of visual narratives. In a semantically significant anachronism, Turks populated Old and New Testament scenes as well as the depictions of the martyrdoms of Christians persecuted by the Romans in the first centuries. In parallel, the same attributes were also sometimes superimposed on the figures of other, contemporary enemies of the faith, who lacked an established iconographic tradition of their own: namely the Protestant ‘heretics’. This paper aims to illustrate this visual device through a selection of significant case studies taken from the territory of the Republic of Genoa, a state characterized by a long-standing involvement in the fight against Ottoman forces and Barbary corsairs.

STUDY OF THE ROLE OF MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS IN BUILDING MENTAL MODELS AND SELF-EFFICACY OF BIOLOGICAL STUDENTS

The concept of biological studies is divided into four levels of representation, namely macroscopic, microscopic, molecular, and symbolic levels. The interconnection of these four levels makes a major contribution to the development of students' mental models in building the meaning and conceptual understanding of biological materials. Mental models are ideas in the minds of students that are used to develop, explain, and predict a phenomenon. The formation of mental models is influenced by the experiences they have, their confidence or selfefficacy, and the problems they face. Multiple representations are believed to influence the formation of mental models and students' self-efficacy. For this reason, an in-depth study of the role of multiple representations in building mental models and students' self-efficacy is needed. This research is qualitative research with descriptive analysis techniques and a literature review (library research). The analysis is carried out by reviewing articles that are relevant to the study being discussed. In the search for articles, four keywords were used, namely: multiple representation learning, biology learning, mental models, and self-efficacy. The articles used in this study were 25 international articles obtained from Google Scholar and ERIC. From the results of the study, it was found that learning multiple representations is very effective in building mental models and self-efficacy in biology students. From the results of this study, it is recommended for lecturers and teachers to use multiple representations learning in the learning process to build mental models and self-efficacy in students.

Dva cvjetna soneta antuna Gustava Matoša

Flowers are frequent and priveleged literaray motifs in Matoš’s work, elevated to a symbolic level. This paper interpretatively analyzes literary representations of two flowers of great symbolic potential: pansy and lily-of-the-valley from the sonnets Maćuhica (Pansy) and Srodnost (Kinship), the hallmarks of Matoš’s poems, and anthology and canonical texts of Croatian poetry. It is determined through analysis that flowers are a poetical expressions of Matoš’s longing for the ideal of beauty on a concrete, symbolical, poetological and programmatic level. It is established in the conclusion that Matoš’s poetical flowers are highly artistically treated and cultivated, that is, aestheticized, representing aestheticism as the first period of the age of modernism.

Censers in the Incense Culture of Japan: From Mainland Borrowing to Creating a Unique Tradition

Incense culture has long played an important symbolic and sociocultural role in countries of East Asia, reflecting general trends in the development of culture throughout different historical periods. At this time, traditional incense culture in Japan can be observed in three key areas: religious, sanitary and hygienic, and artistic. All these spheres represent a certain projection of historical and cultural processes in the region. Since the introduction of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, mainland traditions were assimilated through religious, everyday life, and artistic practices. At the same time, new principles at the level of concepts, forms, and symbolism of products were being developed to make the most of the rich arsenal of incense culture. The article briefly presents the evolution of censers as the main element of the incense culture toolkit and identifies the key trends of their manufacture in Japan. Through the analysis of the specific characteristics of Japanese censers, a brief overview of the existing incense culture and production centers is given and their continuity with mainland traditions is emphasized. Simultaneously, specific characteristics have been identified that make it possible to consider the Japanese tradition of making censers from ceramics, porcelain and bronze as a unique national achievement.

Automating Adaptive Execution Behaviors for Robot Manipulation

Robotic manipulation in semi-structured and changing environments requires systems with: a) perception and reasoning capabilities able to capture and understand the state of the environment; b) planning and replanning capabilities at both symbolic and geometric levels; c) automatic and robust execution capabilities. To cope with these issues, this paper presents a framework with the following features. First, it uses perception and ontology-based reasoning procedures to obtain the Planning Description Domain Language files that describe the manipulation problem at task level. This is used in the planning stage as well as during task execution in order to adapt to new situations, if required. Second, the proposed framework is able to plan at both task and motion levels, intertwining them by incorporating geometric reasoning modules to determine some of the symbolic predicates needed to describe the states. Finally, the framework automatically generates the behavior trees required to execute the task. The proposal takes advantage of the ability of behavior trees to be edited during run time, allowing adaptation of the action plan or of the trajectories according to changes in the state of the environment. The approach allows for robot manipulation tasks to be automatically planned and robustly executed, contributing to achieve fully functional service robots.

GIM Training Supervision as Personal Growth and Development Process: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry

Little research exists to date concerning Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) advanced trainees' experiences of supervision. This study seeks to fill a gap in the literature by presenting a thorough heuristic self-inquiry into the researcher's experiences of personal growth and development related to GIM advanced training supervision. Three primary themes are identified and discussed: Knowing, Willfulness, and Relationality/Voice. Creative syntheses in the form of a poem and a music program are presented to further explore and express the researcher's experiences at symbolic and archetypal levels.

APOCALYPSE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO ENDLESS SUFFERING: REVISING THE ORIGINS OF THE ARTISTIC CONCEPTUALISATION OF HISTORY AND ART

The article considers the final book of the Bible, The Book of Revelation, to be defining for the artistic vision of history, formed in the space of European culture. With reference to N. Frye’s paradigm, the article analyses individual motifs of the Revelation, the interpretation of which is of particular importance in the context of the development of European literature, in particular, in terms of the vectors of the artistic conceptualization of history. According to the picture created in the Revelation, symbolically consistent with the Old Testament and evangelical preaching, each individual person and humanity as a whole are faced with the choice between a catastrophic end of history and a qualitative transformation of time that may come as a result of people’s spiritual efforts, opting for repentance and purification. The ability of the symbols in the Book of Revelation to convey the meanings relevant for interpreters in each new historical era accentuates the problem of understanding historical events and reflection on the course of culture genesis, primarily in the space of artistic discourse. The article characterizes the mechanisms of understanding individual and general existence, involved in the process of literary and artistic creation, as derived from the religious worldview, art preserving the connection with the latter at the level of symbolization of the depicted. According to C. G. Jung’s depth psychology, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are perceptible in the symbolic constructions of art, emphasizing that the meaning-making processes are deeply rooted in religious experiences, their mythologizing/identification. In this context, the very phenomenon of literary and artistic creation, which seems to be superimposed on the religious and mythological vision and understanding of existence, acquires particular importance. The apocalyptic motif of the catastrophic end of existence of the fictional world that gained decisive importance in the literature of the postmodern era is interpreted as a derivative of simulacrization of postmodern art, its separation from the leading artistic traditions of the past, rooted in the syncretic elements of spiritual culture.

Joint Symbol Level Precoding and Receive Beamforming Optimization for Multiuser MIMO Downlink

Consider a multi-casting system where a multi-antenna base station (BS) sends multiple data streams to multiple users via symbol-level precoding (SLP). Unlike most of the existing literature which assume single-antenna users, we consider joint SLP and linear receive beamforming (SLP-RBF) design, to investigate the performance boost brought by multi-antenna users. The SLP-RBF problem minimizes the total transmission power subject to the user symbol error probability (SEP) constraints. It turns out that, due to the RBF, the problem involves a large number of non-convex bilinear terms and is much more challenging to handle. In this paper, our goal is to develop computationally efficient algorithms to tackle the SLP-RBF problem. We first introduce several convex approximation forms for the bilinear terms and develop a successive convex approximation (SCA) based algorithm. Furthermore, by exploiting the problem structure and a rank-reduction transformation (RDT), we equivalently write the problem as a dimension-reduced problem with simple box constraints. The reformulated problem enables us to develop a highly efficient iterative algorithm based on accelerated gradient descent methods. We also extend the study to the SLP-RBF problem with one-bit transmission constraints. Since the RDT is no longer applicable, we develop an algorithm based on successive upper-bound minimization (SUM) and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Simulation results show that the joint SLP-RBF design offers significant power efficiency gains over SLP methods, and the proposed algorithms is time efficient and can handle a large scale system.

Rehabilitation of persons by means of art therapy

The article analyzes scientific sources on the problem of rehabilitation of persons by means of art therapy. The author substantiated that art therapy as a method of personality rehabilitation plays one of the leading roles, because the ability of creativity to heal the soul has been known since ancient times. A variety of treatment and art methods are effective in rehabilitation and socialization. Their widespread implementation in practical activities allows to increase the quality of the process of social and psychological rehabilitation, normalize mental health, as well as maximally integrate people with special educational needs into society. The author also highlights the characteristics of art therapy: it promotes creative self-expression, development of imagination, aesthetic experience, practical skills of fine arts, artistic abilities; relieves fatigue, reduces negative emotional states and performances; creates a positive emotional mood in the group; allows you to process a person's thoughts and emotions; it is used for oppression, it makes it possible to transform them into positive ones; provides an opportunity on a symbolic level to experiment with a wide range of feelings, explore and express them in a socially acceptable way; creates conditions for experimentation with kinesthetic and visual sensations, stimulates the development of sensorimotor skills and the right hemisphere as a whole. the brain, which is responsible for intuition and orientation in space; facilitates the process of communication with other people; promotes the creation of relationships of mutual acceptance and empathy; allows solving those real problems that are difficult to discuss; develops a sense of internal control; increases a person's adaptability to everyday life; effective in correcting various deviations.

A Wine Flight of Gendered Sociology: Vignettes of (Apparent) Trivialities

This paper discusses the genderedness of wine through a focus on seven illuminative vignettes. Academic studies about wine, women and men have approached the subject by focussing on professional wine worlds, gendered wine consumption, and more general patterns of the genderedness of wine. Here I discuss what sorts of boundaries wine builds and breaks, and what kinds of taboos and threats are connected to wine-gender relations. What emerges from my approach is a cultural gendered sociology of wine, inspired by Mary Douglas. The boundaries discussed are more than symbolic, they are often deeply embodied, too. Yet the symbolic level is where meaning of wine-gender relations is constructed, recognised, and acted upon, in terms of powerful taboos to do with sexuality, gendered bodies, human reproduction, and gender boundaries. I argue that a deep understanding of why and how wine continues to be gendered cannot be gained through only researching forms of industry and social discrimination, and strategies of survival and success. To explain the enormous power of wine and gender and wine’s genderedness, a deep cultural sociology is needed.

Signs and meanings of sacrifice in J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”

The article discusses symbolic means that express different meanings of the victim concept and the idea of sacrifice in J. K. Rowlings novel Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. The books title refers to the alchemical understanding of a philosophers stone as a means of immortality. Since the main purpose of the sacrifice rite is the magic of the appropriate death and rebirth essence, i.e. immortality, the philosophers stone can be interpreted as a symbol of sacrifice, and the stages of obtaining it as the rite stages of selection and preparation of the future victim for her / his sacralization or sanctification. There are at least two criteria for a typical victim, and they are the ones that determine the purity of a soul: the degree of innocence and the severity of the suffering. On a symbolic level the novel describes the transformation of a victim into sacrifice the essence of which is the soul purification. Only innocent victims, who have suffered personally but at the same time did not make other people suffer intentionally, may become a sacrifice. The main characteristic feature of Harry Potter as the novels protagonist is his readiness for self-sacrifice, which consists of such components as absence of greed and desire for power, as well as the ability to love, to overcome suffering and fear, to take risks and pose a challenge to prohibitions in the name of love, accepting both victories and defeats.

The Development of E-Learning Chemistry Learning for SMA / MA based on Project Based Learning on Quantum Number Material with the Flipped Classroom Approach in Class X Senior High School

Educational Chemistry is a material which in its study requires 3 levels of representation known as the triangle, namely macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic. At the microscopic level, chemical materials study abstract things such as atoms, molecules, compounds so that they must be a concrete picture to study them. At the symbolic level contains formulas, structures, and reaction equations. Meanwhile, at the macroscopic level it was carried out by means of experiments. However, in its implementation, the experiment requires a long time and complete facilities and infrastructure. So that what happens in the field students only remember and memorize, do not understand and have the ability to think at a high level in accordance with the demands of the 2013 curriculum. There have been many studies that have shown that these learning models are able to improve students' higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and creative thinking. So that the authors make this research into the Development of a Content Learning System (CLS) Flipped Classroom Model Based on Project Base Learning on Quantum Number in 1st Class (X) term to Improve Higher-Level Thinking Ability. This research is a research development (R&D) using the Borg and Gall model.

Domesticating Technology in Pandemic Social Work

On March 12th, 2020 the Norwegian government announced what later became known as ‘the lockdown’ of Norway due to the outbreak of Covid-19. This led to major changes in society where social distancing became the ‘new normal’ in everyday life. For social workers, it meant adapting to ‘new’ social problems among vulnerable groups as well as comprehensive changes in their working conditions and interactions with clients.
 Many social workers communicated with clients on digital platforms before the pandemic, but Norway’s Covid-19 social distancing policies changed the terms for using these platforms. This article investigates the impact of the pandemic on the ways Norwegian social workers involve themselves with digital technology in their interactions with clients. We employ domestication theory to investigate how social workers shape and navigate these new circumstances triggered by the pandemic using a three-dimensional model that includes practical, symbolic, and cognitive levels of analysis.
 The data underlying this article consist of 16 semi-structured interviews with social workers from seven different social services in Norway. The interviews were conducted approximately one month after the lockdown. The digital transformation within Norwegian social services, together with the changes related to the pandemic, have created new ways of practicing social work. We turn our attention to the following research questions: What characterized social workers’ digital interactions with clients during the first months of the pandemic? What can be learned from their experiences with domesticating technology? How has digital technology supported, challenged, and changed professional values in practice?

Development of Augmented Reality-Based Learning Media on Concept of Hydrocarbon to Improve Multi-representation Ability

This study aims to design and develop learning media based on augmented reality on hydrocarbon material and its validity to determine the media's feasibility and increase students' multi-representation ability. This research is a type of development research using Design Research and Development (R&D). The product validity test phase was carried out by two material experts and three media experts. In addition, testing was carried out on the responses of the participating students. The implementation stage of learning was carried out by class X TKJ 2 SMK Gondang Pekalongan with a total of 32 students. The data analysis technique used a questionnaire instrument and the technical descriptive statistical analysis. The results of this study are: (1) the development of augmented reality-based learning media on hydrocarbon material in the form of an android application consisting of five main menus, namely basic competencies and indicators, materials, AR camera, practice questions, and the identity of the researcher, as well as seven molecular cards of the structure chemical compound molecules; (2) validity assessment by material experts with an average score of 85% in the "very valid" category and the validity assessment by media experts with an average score of 94% in the "very valid" category; (3) the feasibility test results for using media in the implementation of learning obtained an average student response score of 78%, with the "feasible" category used as learning media. The increase in multi-representation abilities is shown by increasing student learning outcomes using multi-representation questions, including macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic levels. The macroscopic level increased by 27.50%, the submicroscopic increased by 36.70%, and the symbolic level increased by 33.30%. The results of this study indicate that augmented reality-based learning media on hydrocarbons is very suitable for use in chemistry learning and has been proven to increase students' multi-representation abilities

DESIGN OF THE CONTEMPORARY GARMENTS ON THE BASIS OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF STYLISTIC AND ARTISTIC-COMPOSITIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADITIONAL DECORATIVE ART

The purpose. This research aims to analyze artistic-compositional characteristics of Ukrainian traditional embroidery and decorative-applied art (using the example of M. Prymachenko’s art) used in the decoration of the actual ethno-styled garments. Methodology. A systematic approach was used in this research to project authorial contemporary garments: literary-analytical, morphological, and comparative analysis of the creative primary source, associative means of its adaptation to the actual fashion trends. The methodology of the research is based on the systematic analysis of the design projects using elements of the cultural heritage of Ukraine. Systematic-informational and visual-analytical methods were used in this research. Systematic-structural analysis was used to analyze the transformation of artistic-compositional elements in the process of shaping contemporary costumes based on associative transformations. Results. In the process of design project of the authorial collection of female Ethno-style clothes, it was found that decorative art and national garments have a high level of authentic symbolism if used for the actual projection image in conditions of contemporary design activity. Characterizations were given to some principles of implementation of the national image in contemporary trends of fashion industry development. Symbolic image of the floral ornament adapted from Prymachenko’s works as well as stylization of her works in ornamental motifs of the collection were used. Based on pre-project analysis and customer survey it was defined that there is significant interest in national motifs. A collection of female clothes targeted at a wide group of customers was designed. Scientific novelty. Principles of design-project of the collection of contemporary garments with authorial embroidery were proposed using an adaptation of national traditions of female clothes embroidery and folk-art decoration as a basis. Usage of different floral motifs and geometric ornament in ethno-style and implementation of this image as popular among contemporary women in their everyday life were justified. Practical significance lies in the development of principles of formation of authorial costume collection project-image, in justification of principles of ethnographically oriented prints and embroidery and the choice of decoration methods of contemporary female clothes.

REPRESENTASI PEREMPUAN DALAM VIDEO KLIP GIRLBAND KOREA (ANALISIS SEMIOTIKA VIDEO KLIP DALLA DALLA DARI GIRLBAND ITZY)

Feminism is a social movement that demands justice and equal rights of women with men. Gender equality is still a matter of debate. One of them is in South Korea. Women who support feminism are considered to hate, do not need, and will feel their position is higher than men. This demand for equality covers the fields of economy, politics, social, lifestyle, culture and so on. This research was conducted with the aim of knowing how the representation of women displayed by Korean Girlband Itzy in their video clip entitled Dalla Dalla. Dalla-Dalla's video clip with the theme of women's freedom depicts the life movements of women who want freedom from the criticisms of others who consider them weak and discriminate. This video clip also shows them different from the others. Although in this video clip it is not clearly stated the relevance of feminism in it. Therefore, in order to get a detailed description of the issue of feminism and women in the video clip, the researcher uses John Fiske's semiotic theory with the main theory, namely The Codes of Television, to see that behind the video clips there are connotative and denotative representations. According to John Fiske's Semiotics, there are 3 levels, namely the level of reality, representation and ideology. So it is hoped that the representation of women in this video clip is clearly described. The results of the study show the meaning of signs at the level of reality, and representations indicate freedom, self-confidence, and personal existence. At the ideological level, it shows the existence of postmodern feminism. So at the level of signs and symbols related to the representation of post-modern feminism, namely creating new discourses or messages that are meaningful and provide positive energy to other women, so that they dare to fight oppression and discrimination. The song lyrics and narrative code in the video clip show several scenes that lead to on postmodern feminist symbols

Learning to solve sequential physical reasoning problems from a scene image

In this article, we propose deep visual reasoning, which is a convolutional recurrent neural network that predicts discrete action sequences from an initial scene image for sequential manipulation problems that arise, for example, in task and motion planning (TAMP). Typical TAMP problems are formalized by combining reasoning on a symbolic, discrete level (e.g., first-order logic) with continuous motion planning such as nonlinear trajectory optimization. The action sequences represent the discrete decisions on a symbolic level, which, in turn, parameterize a nonlinear trajectory optimization problem. Owing to the great combinatorial complexity of possible discrete action sequences, a large number of optimization/motion planning problems have to be solved to find a solution, which limits the scalability of these approaches. To circumvent this combinatorial complexity, we introduce deep visual reasoning: based on a segmented initial image of the scene, a neural network directly predicts promising discrete action sequences such that ideally only one motion planning problem has to be solved to find a solution to the overall TAMP problem. Our method generalizes to scenes with many and varying numbers of objects, although being trained on only two objects at a time. This is possible by encoding the objects of the scene and the goal in (segmented) images as input to the neural network, instead of a fixed feature vector. We show that the framework can not only handle kinematic problems such as pick-and-place (as typical in TAMP), but also tool-use scenarios for planar pushing under quasi-static dynamic models. Here, the image-based representation enables generalization to other shapes than during training. Results show runtime improvements of several orders of magnitudes by, in many cases, removing the need to search over the discrete action sequences.

Young Slovene Speakers in Italy and Their Attitudes towards the Republic of Slovenia

Abstract On the 30th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Slovenia, the article offers an insight into the basic social and cultural characteristics of the population of young speakers of Slovene in Italy. The authors attempt to define the role that young Slovene speakers in Friuli - Venezia Giulia can play in the common Slovene space and explore their attitudes towards the Republic of Slovenia on an emotional, symbolic and practical level. In doing so, they rely mainly on research conducted over the last fifteen years. They conclude that this population is not fully centred on preserving traditional cultural values and language: it is primarily a population with high human and intellectual potential, which is already an important player in cross-border and other forms of cooperation along the Slovene-Italian border and attaches greater value to multilingualism than to nationality, ethnicity and the development of the Slovene minority in Italy.

Hagar and the Symbols of Slavery: Reading Fredrika Bremer’s the Neighbours through Carhlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

ABSTRACT Using Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) as a backdrop, this article examines the symbol of slavery in Fredrika Bremer’s novel The Neighbours (1837). In particular, the character Hagar (mirrored in Jane Eyre by Bertha Mason) is analysed. The Neighbours depict slavery both on a literal and a symbolic level; firstly, in the representation of colonial plantations and transatlantic slave trade and secondly as a symbol of white women’s submission. The slave trade is described as fundamentally un-Swedish, and Swedes complicit in slave trade as corrupted by foreigners. The wrongs of oppression are doubled with the wrongs of being oppressed, and both owning and being slave are constructed as non-Swedish positions marked by race. Building on the slave as a symbol, submission appears as a counter image of white femininity. Being a proper woman equals not allowing oneself to be treated as a slave.