Indigenous Digital Art as Politics in Australia

This essay contributes to discussions about Indigenous politics and debates about contemporary democracy. It uses a case study of video art produced by young indigenous people and a community development organisation in the Pilbara, Australia. Those involved in the project use digital media under the auspices of the Big hART Yijala Yala Project to produce an interactive comic series. The essay addresses the following questions: Do contemporary community development projects play a conservatising role serving the interests of a neoliberal polity? Given the long-standing practice of representing modern media as a vehicle for western domination what, if anything, do these projects imply about the political relations between Aboriginal and non-indigenous Australians? Are Indigenous media and cultural work inherently political? What conceptions of the political are at stake in such arguments? We focus on how certain groups of young people use new media, and how their activities are political. The argument is that Indigenous media like these are ‘inherently political’ because they are about efforts to reclaim the images of indigenous peoples for themselves.     

与林谷芳先生对话中国音乐

我曾几次访问过一位白衣布履的智者,他就是来自台湾的著名学者、禅人、文艺评论家林谷芳先生。他贯通中国传统文化中的音乐、绘画、文史哲各大门类,在台湾被称为几十年来唯一持中国牌的文化标杆。少年时泛舟湖面,一曲空灵笛乐触发了林谷芳的生命情思。如此这般不可思议之因缘使得音乐最终成为林谷芳生命观照中的焦点。三十多年后,他出版了著作《谛观有情—中     

虚拟更新:数字媒介艺术在历史文化空间改造中的应用研究

数字媒介艺术嵌入历史文化实体空间,成为历史文化空间的一部分,能够延伸人们对历史文化空间的场所体验.不同于真实的物质建造,数字媒介艺术可以在不改变已有物理空间的前提下,为参与者提供易于理解的文化信息和复合的感官体验.这一特定类型的数字介入不仅为历史文化空间的更新提供新的设计策略,而且进一步将原有的历史文化空间转变成为一种...     

Creativity at work: the production of work for sale by brand ambassadors

Creative work has emerged at the core of the new economy and is primarily studied in the art and the media, music and advertising business. This article presents data from an ethnographic research with professional rock climbers. It argues that the production of work for sale by these climbers is a form of creative work. The thread of the argument is twofold. First, their work is inextricably intertwined and paced with highly creative activities. Second, it is anchored in a complex system of communication aiming for the production and dissemination of experiences through media production.     

双梅竞艳话黄龙

杭州西湖北山有个黄龙洞,历史上是南宋护国寺的道场。当年这里的住持和尚、一代高僧无门慧开曾在此向其东瀛弟子传授佛法和“尺八”演奏技艺,是中日佛教和音乐交流的圣地。那时的黄龙洞曾经是梵呗绕梁、清音袅袅。岁月荏苒,这方洞府灵山注定与艺术结缘。新中国成立后,这里又成了我省最高艺术学府浙江职业艺术学院的前身——浙江省艺术学校的所在地。     

Urban Planning and the Spaces of Democracy: New York of the Great Depression in 42nd Street,Dead End,and The City

Abstract

Three New York films of the Great Depression and its aftermath, 42nd Street (1932, Lloyd Bacon), Dead End (1937, William Wyler), and The City (1939, Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke), embodied a new political aesthetics in screening urban democratic spaces during moments of social breakdown. This article draws from urban and cinema studies, as well as from social and cultural theory (Lefebvre, Benjamin, Kracauer), to show how these films contributed to a discourse of urban planning and cinematic democratic aesthetics on the possibility of an egalitarian, inclusive, participatory community in diverse city spaces. The article argues that the reshaping of this cultural discourse, through the films’ emphasis on the conflicting material domains of the skyline and the slum, came at the cost of undermining the metropolis and, in The City, of limiting the urban spaces of democracy.     

An Icelandic medieval stave church made of drift timber: the implications of the wood identification

This paper aims to view the implications of an identification of wood species found during an archaeological excavation on a medieval church building and a surrounding graveyard at Thorarinsstadir in Seydisfjordur, east Iceland. The excavation in Seydisfjördur is a part of a project entitled ‘The transition from paganism to Christianity in Iceland’ sponsored by The East Iceland Heritage Museum, the Research Council of Iceland and The European Commission. It started in 1997 and from 1998 it has been a part of the PARABOW project, in the frame of the Raphael project. The project involves archaeological researches on pagan and Christian remains from the early medieval times in Iceland. The aim is to examine the origin and development of the Christian religion in Iceland. Furthermore, it is the intention to investigate how Christianity evolved alongside paganism assuming the conversion to Christianity was a long process, climaxing in the year 1000 when Christianity was adopted as a national religion. The wood identification uncovered evidence concerning church architecture, limiting actors for building traditions, Icelandersˈ ritual practices as well as their contacts with the foreign countries during the Viking Age and early medieval times. It did show that the native species were mainly used as fuel but drift timber was probably mainly used for construction purposes and for making coffins. According to the results from the wood identification, for instance, the excavation at Thorarinsstadir in Seydisfjördur revealed a wooden church made of drift timber.     

“难得壶徒”周荣金

在前后两届全国十大紫砂名壶评选中,前一届他以作品《云开旭日照苍松》跻身其中,这一届又以《梅竹提梁壶》中奖,连续两届获此殊荣,实属不易。此人名叫周荣金,40多岁,已是宜兴紫砂工艺二厂的高级工艺美术师。难怪壶艺泰斗吕尧臣给他题词：“难得壶徒”;另一位壶艺大师谭泉海为他题词：“扬紫艺为荣,捏砂泥成金”;评上全国十大能工巧匠的徐安碧以书相赠：“砂海人才济济,壶徒别有创意”。这些题词既是对年轻有为的周荣金的评价,又是对他的激励。     

Middle East and other futurisms: imaginary temporalities in contemporary art and visual culture

This article focuses on recent contemporary art of Gulf Futurism and Arab Futurism with a specific geographical focus on the Near and Middle East. Still only occasionally addressed and analysed in contemporary academic discussions, these art discourses and practices can be understood as particular forms of counterfuturisms and cultural politics of imaginary times; they continue the earlier work of Afrofuturism in using an aesthetic repertoire to complicate normalised notions of time and technology but in an alternative geopolitical context. Some of the analysed works such as Larissa Sansour’s films outline political questions about territories and architectures of control but these are also other contexts that address how experience of time is being infrastructured in material media culture. The article analyses these post-colonial artistic practices in dialogue with contemporary theoretical debate about cultural politics of time including the discourses about cancellation of future (Berardi) as well as the idea of counterfuturisms as a form of audiovisual practice.     

20th century artists’ oil paints: The case of the Olii by Lucio Fontana

During the 20th century, many innovative binders have been rapidly introduced to the art world and soon became popular as artists’ paints and pictorial media. However, despite the advantages that new synthetic materials presented, oil paints have never been entirely substituted. Indeed, this paper focuses on the results provided by the scientific analysis of a group works from the oeuvre of Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), all of which created between 1960 and 1964 using oil-based media, and aims to illustrate how oils contained in the pictorial media have influenced these works’ respective ageing and degradation processes. Despite the apparent coherence in the behaviour of many of Fontana's creations, some artworks revealed discrepancies in terms of the physical and mechanical behaviour of the pictorial films and in alterations resulting from degradation processes. Samples taken from case studies belonging to the Olii and Fine di Dio series were analysed using optical microscopy, X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy in attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) in order to study and identify the materials employed by the artist and the products of their degradation processes. These analyses gave unexpected but useful results (such as the presence of non-drying or slow-drying oils in the paint formulations) which not only provided us with new insight into the nature of the constituent materials, but also facilitated the elaboration of correct conservation measures and suitable restoration interventions.     

Are Multiple Art Markets Rational?

We advance and subsequently test the proposition thatmarkets for fine art are rational, namely, that, inthe determination of price, traders make use of allrelevant art historical and critical information, asrevealed by hedonic content analysis, as well as allinformation on authenticity of the works offered forsale. If true, the proposition has consequences forpublic policy. Museums optimize choices among art historicallysignificant authentic paintings distributed asstochastic rare events in the tertiary market for art. Such paintings have few, if any, art historicallyequivalent substitutes, causing the demand for suchworks of art to be extremely inelastic. Museums tendto buy at the top of the information curve; payingprices which exceed market averages for similar art. As a result, society pays the cost of institutionalrisk aversion. In contrast, collectors often purchaseart before all art historical information is complete,and often earn a reward for assuming a risk due toincomplete information (Singer, 1991; Pomerhene, 1994).Collectors who can borrow to accumulate the highestcategory art can consume the services of their artcollection at zero cost. Stochastic transferfunctions fitted to time series of sales volume at thetwo top international auction houses confirm thehypothesis that the highest category of art is a quasisubstitute for financial instruments (liquid wealth).     

提升翰墨文化含量——书法家王玉玺其人其作

从报道中,从牌匾上,我早就熟悉了王玉玺这个名字。他的字根基传统,醇厚端庄,尽显朴茂本色。我走近他之后,觉得他更是一位功力深厚、以书法艺术弘扬优秀传统文化的学者型大书家。     

People-based marketing and the cultural economies of attribution metrics

This article examines People-Based Marketing (PBM) to theorize the cultural economies of attribution metrics. Through an analysis of marketing discourses, acquisition patterns, and marketing collaborations, it examines how platform capitalism is increasingly directed towards developing cross-device identity standards that consolidate performance metrics across digital markets. PBM extends the processes of platform capitalization across media properties, and the ways that claims of value and relevance are imbricated with the metricization of behavioral change in digital markets. The imperative of PBM to standardize techniques of identification and to make media increasingly measurable across markets has been a catalyst for new forms of data resolutions through strategic acquisitions and identity resolution consortiums. Moreover, emerging regulatory changes such as GDPR may in effect further reinforce trends towards the consolidation of data management and analytics platforms necessary to resolve identity across markets.     

Rivalry and externalities in secondary art markets

Summary As is the case with other field theories, Urban Economics, Environmental Economics, etc. the microeconomics of the arts attempts to derive a set of particular propositions from the general propositions of Economic Theory. In the process a substantial amount of cross-fertilization takes place. The specific characteristics of art markets require modification or amplification of some general propositions of economic theory, which in turn may offer novel and possibly useful insights as well as testable hypotheses. The following propositions appear to emanate from the present paper.In general markets R & D efforts are directed towards product or process innovation. For the most part, a known consumer technology exists. Innovation in art markets involves product creation as well as the creation of a consumer technology capable of deriving satisfaction from consumption of the new product. In open markets, a non-patentable product would entail excessive free ridership. Such a state of affairs may discourage innovation. Primary sellers would tend to adapt to narrowly changing consumer technologies. Such was the case during most of art history up to the late 19th century. At present, museums and art critics act as quasi patent offices, which fosters innovation by assuring a positive sum game.A new consumer technology is expected to be demand-augmenting. Not necessarily in the sence of McCain [12] where discontinuous jumps in demand are postulated. Even if such shifts were to occur in individual demand curves, market demand will nevertheless be continuous. The present model presumes that the augmentation is mostly due to increasing numbers of art buyers entering as the new consumer technology casues substitution of one style for another (or one fad for another). Syndicate behavior is induced by the winners of the race who have successfully established a new consumer technology and subsequently extend an umbrella over the membership. In this manner the spoils are shared more equitably. This is a peculiarly modern phenomenon. In the past one could not put a Teniers above a Rembrandt or a Polidoro above a Raphael. The generally accepted rules of decorativeness, that is, craftmanship and composition were obvious and immediately perceptible by all.In certain instances syndicate behavior favors single leadership by an established dealer, or a small group of dealers with a proven track record in spawning new technologies. Collectors, too, are involved, by overpaying for art. The discovering collector creates entry barriers for other collectors and thus has a monopoly of discovery of purely intellectual appeal art. Followers may opt to reduce their rivalry in exchange for assurances that once the new technology is in place, they will be given the opportunity to recycle the art brought into being by the leader or leaders. Under certain conditions, as analyzed in the foregoing, this constitutes an optimal strategy.As in the classical case, entry reduces investment and drives rents to zero, if each firm invests a roughly equivalent amount in support of the prevailing consumer technology. There arises the limiting case, equivalent to pure competition (see EQ. 10). On the other hand, several counterveiling strategies are possible. For example, overpayment, as in the case of Rothko. This limits the artists' output in the market. Leftover art is donated or acquired by museums. Such art is no longer competitive, as opposed to art held by other collectors, which, diminishes art'sscarcity value.The most probable outcome of a Cournot-Stackelberg type behavior is a succession of leader-follower or leader-recyler type syndicates, each successively dissolving as new consumer technologies replace old ones. It is, of course, possible for several specialized syndicates to operate contemporaneously. The rate of turnover clearly depends on the speed of dissemination of information. The curator, critic, trustee, consultant has a vested interest in episodic art and an spawning new consumer technologies: if this were not so, there would be no need for the pre-eminance of the critic. He is the magician, the priest, the medicine man who knows the secret language and penetrates the mysteries.     

The Anthropology of Giving: Toward A Cultural Logic of Charity

Modern elite charity is class-centered and exclusionary, employing charitable exchange ritual, like the primitive potlatch, for structured loss and exchange, both affirming and concealing status and power, obfuscating yet illuminating privilege. Traditional models of charitable giving are often Eurocentric and monocultural, employing a market model-based ‘exchange theory’ assuming that giving is a series of dyadic, reciprocated ‘purchases’ by donors seeking maximum utility. Looking at modern charitable giving as a ‘total social fact’ (Mauss) we can detect patterns behind elite charitable giving that make seeming relinquishment of wealth a declaration of power. Nonprofits are embedded in these dynamics as the elite gift economy expresses itself through modern charitable giving.     

Trust the artist versus trust the tale: performance implications of talent and self-marketing in folk music

Based on a unique dataset of artists that are active in the German market for folk music—the third largest music genre in terms of popularity and sales—I study what factors determine the artists’ success. Following Rosen (Am Econ Rev 71(5):845–858, 1981), I test if differences in artistic performance have a direct effect on financial rewards as regards physical and digital record sales (“direct superstar effect”). Following Adler (Handbook on the economics of art and culture. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1985), I also study sales effects of a media presence of artists (“classical superstar effect”). Controlling for various contingency factors (e.g., record labels’ support, artists’ socio-demographics), I deal with an economic issue of general interest: Does it pay more to develop your skills in your core business to perfection or to maintain the current level of skills and invest in self-marketing; and do these effects apply to all folk artists alike? Rather contrary to studies on pop and rock genres, I find that higher ability increases artists’ revenues disproportionately, but simultaneously, openly competing for the recognition of one’s talent holds substantial economic risk. I also observe a positive effect of various types of media presence on financial rewards. However, these income determinants have different impacts on sales in physical versus in digital markets, and their effects vary across the success distribution from low- to top-selling artists as well.     

D. H. Lawrence: Letter‐writer and craftsman in verse

Art history has lost and rediscovered semiotics several times since the 1950s, and at the moment writers employ an eclectic mixture of theories derived mainly from Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. Of the two, Peirce is possibly the more influential model, on account of his tripartite theory of iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs. (The Saussurean model is identified more closely with the poststructuralist moment in art history, beginning in the 1970s.) The question of semiotics is once again topical now that visual culture is consolidating as a discipline, because the new field can choose from a wide range of semiotic practices – or it can choose to bypass semiotics altogether. This essay is a contribution to that current state of affairs. My principal point is that Peirce is much stranger than he is taken to be: he is idiosyncratic and demanding, and at times outlandishly hermetic. For most of what art history and visual studies aim to do, Peirce is simply not necessary; and when he is pertinent, he is so mainly as a model for concertedly logical thinking of a sort that is rare in visual studies or art history.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ex-ante</Emphasis> versus <Emphasis Type="Italic">ex-post</Emphasis>: comparison of the effects of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012 on tourism and employment

The estimation of the economic effects of cultural events is a topic that has stirred numerous debates in cultural economics. Although economic impact studies and contingent valuation have been the most frequently used methods, both suffer from numerous problems. In this article, we use ex-post econometric verification as a new and promising method in cultural economics in the estimation of the economic effects of cultural events and apply it to the estimation of the effects of the 2012 European Capital of Culture Maribor on tourism and employment. This enables us to compare results from economic impact and ex-post econometric verification studies to find significant differences in particular in terms of new employment. We determine the net effects on new tourism and find that they were mainly present in Maribor, the holder of the project, and not in the other five partner cities. We conclude by reflecting on the state of the art of the studies of economic effects of cultural events in cultural economics and their relevance for the study of cultural tourism.     

Financial returns,price determinants,and genre effects in American art investment

Past studies on art investment generally have found that returns are low and risk is high. In this study we find that the return to art investment is more in line with traditional investments and thus the cost for consumption associated with art seems fairly small. Employing a large sample of paintings by 66 American artists sold at auction between 1971–1992, average returns are found to be over 9 per cent and 3 per cent in nominal and real terms, respectively. The model employs a log linear price regression estimated by pooled cross section and time series data, and allows rates of return as well as hedonic values for various painting and auction attributes to be estimated. These include size, media, age of execution, authenticity of the work, and auction month and house. In addition, rates of return are differentiated by artist, time period of investment, price range and genre of the painting. The findings indicate significant sensitivity of rates of return to these data stratifications.This paper was presented at the 9th international conference of the Association for Cultural Economics, held in Boston, May 8–11, 1996.