Search Results (74)

The Western genre has traditionally been associated with American identity and male-dominated narratives. However, recent decades have seen increasing attention to female protagonists, particularly the European woman as a cultural mediator within the frontier context. This study aims to identify the archetypes of the European woman in the Western genre through a diachronic and comparative analysis of the visual language found in European painting from the late 17th to early 19th centuries and in 20th–21st century cinema. The research methodology combines narrative, visual, and semiotic analysis, with a focus on intermedial and intertextual parallels between visual art and film. The study identifies nine archetypal models corresponding to goddesses of the Greek pantheon and traces their transformation across different aesthetic systems. These archetypes, rooted in artistic traditions such as Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, and others, reappear in Western films through compositional, symbolic, and iconographic strategies, demonstrating their persistence and ability to transcend temporal, medial, and geographical boundaries. The findings suggest that the woman in the Western genre is not merely a central character, but a visual sign that activates cultural memory and engages with deep archetypal structures embedded in the collective unconscious. Full article

This paper interprets Stanisław Lem’s novella Professor A. Dońda as a thought experiment. In the novella, Lem proposes Dońda’s law, a formulation that allows for a sophisticated theory of creation, at once theological and scientific. This is based on the equivalence of mass-energy-information and on the existence of Dońda’s barrier, which limits the accretion of knowledge. The novella is discussed in the context of Lem’s conception of the art of writing as the art of translating—in this case, translating theological issues into the language of physics and computer science. The result of this translation, which is effectively a thought experiment, is that even if man were to discover the real mechanism of the creation of the world, neither the existence of God nor the non-existence of God could be unambiguously deduced from understanding the mechanism. The protagonist of the novella articulates a theory of being whose initial premise and fundamental category is the concept of error. The paper provides a thorough analysis of the issues raised by the novella and a discussion of genre. The discussion broadens to include the context of contemporary theories in physics, mainly the mass-energy-information principle (MEIE) and the information catastrophe. Full article

This study explores how contemporary text-to-image models interpret and generate Classical and Baroque styles under Wölfflin’s framework—two categories that are atemporal and transversal across media. Our goal is to see whether generative AI can replicate the nuanced stylistic cues that art historians attribute to them. We prompted two popular models (DALL•E and Midjourney) using explicit style labels (e.g., “baroque” and “classical”) as well as more implicit cues (e.g., “dynamic”, “static”, or reworked Wölfflin descriptors). We then collected expert ratings and conducted broader qualitative reviews to assess how each output aligned with Wölfflin’s characteristics. Our findings suggest that the term “baroque” usually evokes features recognizable in typically historical Baroque artworks, while “classical” often yields less distinct results, particularly when a specified genre (portrait, still life) imposes a centered, closed-form composition. Removing explicit style labels may produce highly abstract images, revealing that Wölfflin’s descriptors alone may be insufficient to convey Classical or Baroque styles efficiently. Interestingly, the term “dynamic” gives rather chaotic images, yet this chaos is somehow ordered, centered, and has an almost Classical feel. Altogether, these observations highlight the complexity of bridging canonical stylistic frameworks and contemporary AI training biases, underscoring the need to update or refine Wölfflin’s atemporal categories to accommodate how generative models—and modern visual culture—reinterpret Classical and Baroque. Full article

This contribution aims to explore the composite nature of the theatrical character, with a focus on the comedy genre. The objective is to outline a theoretical framework for the development of a formal ontology that encompasses the editorial, performative, and receptive dimensions involved in the creation of dramatic characters. This article incorporates three perspectives: those of the author, the actor, and the spectator/reader. Drawing on the research of Manfred Pfister and Anne Ubersfeld, this contribution highlights how the study of theatrical characters requires specific methodologic attention, especially when compared with those of the narrative character, given the medial duality of the dramatic context. Since the theatrical character is the product of complex interplay between intentions and perceptions, the role of both the audience and the reader merit particular attention. The comedy genre lends itself to a categorical approach due to the historic configuration of stock types in classical comedy and masks in commedia dell’arte. Theoretical reflections will be supported by an analysis of Machiavelli’s comedies as a case study. The Machiavellian example most effectively illustrates the critical stratification underlying the perception of a character and the classes and properties that are essential to formalize its digital ontology. Full article

This text explores the life and legacy of Sergei Kuriokhin, a multifaceted artist who profoundly impacted Soviet and post-Soviet culture. Known for his radical experimentation in music, theater, and film, Kuriokhin defied conventional genres through his groundbreaking project, ‘Pop Mechanics’, which blended jazz, classical music, rock, circus acts, and more. His provocative performances often included surreal elements and bizarre satire, challenging cultural norms and the boundaries of Soviet censorship. Kuriokhin’s influence extended into politics, where his satirical “Lenin was a Mushroom” program questioned historical and ideological narratives, stirring public debate. His charisma, intellectual depth, and penchant for the absurd made him a central figure in Leningrad’s avant-garde scene. Kuriokhin collaborated with prominent artists and philosophers, leaving an indelible mark on Russian art and political discourse. This work, presented through the reflections of his close associates, offers insights into his lasting impact on Russian culture, blending history with personal mythologies. Full article

Grammatical error correction (GEC) has become increasingly important for enhancing the quality of OCR-scanned texts. This small-scale study explores the application of Large Language Models (LLMs) for GEC in German children’s literature, a genre with unique linguistic challenges due to modified language, colloquial expressions, and complex layouts that often lead to OCR-induced errors. While conventional rule-based and statistical approaches have been used in the past, advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence have introduced models capable of more contextually nuanced corrections. Despite these developments, limited research has been conducted on evaluating the effectiveness of state-of-the-art LLMs, specifically in the context of German children’s literature. To address this gap, we fine-tuned encoder-based models GBERT and GELECTRA on German children’s literature, and compared their performance to decoder-based models GPT-4o and Llama series (versions 3.2 and 3.1) in a zero-shot setting. Our results demonstrate that all pretrained models, both encoder-based (GBERT, GELECTRA) and decoder-based (GPT-4o, Llama series), failed to effectively remove OCR-generated noise in children’s literature, highlighting the necessity of a preprocessing step to handle structural inconsistencies and artifacts introduced during scanning. This study also addresses the lack of comparative evaluations between encoder-based and decoder-based models for German GEC, with most prior work focusing on English. Quantitative analysis reveals that decoder-based models significantly outperform fine-tuned encoder-based models, with GPT-4o and Llama-3.1-70B achieving the highest accuracy in both error detection and correction. Qualitative assessment further highlights distinct model behaviors: GPT-4o demonstrates the most consistent correction performance, handling grammatical nuances effectively while minimizing overcorrection. Llama-3.1-70B excels in error detection but occasionally relies on frequency-based substitutions over meaning-driven corrections. Unlike earlier decoder-based models, which often exhibited overcorrection tendencies, our findings indicate that state-of-the-art decoder-based models strike a better balance between correction accuracy and semantic preservation. By identifying the strengths and limitations of different model architectures, this study enhances the accessibility and readability of OCR-scanned German children’s literature. It also provides new insights into the role of preprocessing in digitized text correction, the comparative performance of encoder- and decoder-based models, and the evolving correction tendencies of modern LLMs. These findings contribute to language preservation, corpus linguistics, and digital archiving, offering an AI-driven solution for improving the quality of digitized children’s literature while ensuring linguistic and cultural integrity. Future research should explore multimodal approaches that integrate visual context to further enhance correction accuracy for children’s books with image-embedded text. Full article

This paper presents a novel approach to audio classification leveraging the latent representation generated by Meta’s EnCodec neural audio codec. We hypothesize that the compressed latent space representation captures essential audio features more suitable for classification tasks than the traditional spectrogram-based approaches. We train a vanilla convolutional neural network for music genre, speech/music, and environmental sound classification using EnCodec’s encoder output as input to validate this. Then, we compare its performance training with the same network using a spectrogram-based representation as input. Our experiments demonstrate that this approach achieves comparable accuracy to state-of-the-art methods while exhibiting significantly faster convergence and reduced computational load during training. These findings suggest the potential of EnCodec’s latent representation for efficient, faster, and less expensive audio classification applications. We analyze the characteristics of EnCodec’s output and compare its performance against traditional spectrogram-based approaches, providing insights into this novel approach’s advantages. Full article

The Transformer, a deep learning architecture, has shown exceptional adaptability across fields, including music information retrieval (MIR). Transformers excel at capturing global, long-range dependencies in sequences, which is valuable for tracking rhythmic patterns over time. Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs), with their dilated convolutions, are effective at processing local, temporal patterns with reduced complexity. Combining these complementary characteristics, global sequence modeling from Transformers and local temporal detail from TCNs enhances beat tracking while reducing the model’s overall complexity. To capture beat intervals of varying lengths and ensure optimal alignment of beat predictions, the model employs a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN), followed by Viterbi decoding for effective post-processing. This system is evaluated across diverse public datasets spanning various music genres and styles, achieving performance on par with current state-of-the-art methods yet with fewer trainable parameters. Additionally, we also explore the interpretability of the model using Grad-CAM to visualize the model’s learned features, offering insights into how the TCN-Transformer hybrid captures rhythmic patterns in the data. Full article

The authors requested to add the following to the Acknowledgments section of the original publication (Lončar and Pavlović 2024): We want to thank Martin Depken (TU Delft) for his kindness in opening the door to art and science dialogues, organizing concerts and lectures, and establishing links with the scientists at the Bionanoscience department, TU Delft [...] Full article

Partaking in the editorial process of an academic journal is both a challenging and rewarding experience. It takes a village of dedicated individuals with a vested interest in the dissemination and sharing of high-quality research outputs. As members of the editorial team of an open access data journal, we reflect on the emergence of data-driven open research, a new journal genre (data paper), and a new journal type (data journal) in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS). Access to data—the currency of empirical research—is valuable to the research community, crucial to scientific integrity, and leads to cumulative advancements in knowledge. It therefore requires significant investment and appropriate venues for dissemination. We illustrate the necessity of raising awareness about data-driven open research and best practices in data-driven publishing. We discuss how it involves building a community of authors and readers, establishing a company of editors, reviewers, and support staff, and passing on the practice, which has been challenging the status quo in research and publishing. Potential future directions are considered, including data peer review and reward, recognition, and funding structures for data sharing. Full article

In this text, we discuss the “Beyond Quantum Music” project, which inspired pianists, composers, researchers, and innovators Sonja Lončar and Andrija Pavlović (LP Duo) to go beyond the boundaries of classical and avant-garde practices to create a new style in composition and performance on two unique DUALITY hybrid pianos that they invented and developed to create a new stage design for multimedia concert performances and establish a new musical genre as a platform for future musical expression. “Beyond Quantum Music” is a continuation of the groundbreaking art and science project “Quantum Music”, which began in 2015; we envisioned it as a long-term project. In order to build an experimental dialogue between music and quantum physics, we created the DUALITY Portable Hybrid Piano System. This innovative instrument was essential for expanding the current sound of the classical piano. As a result, new compositions and new piano sounds were produced using various synthesizers and sound samples derived from scientific experiments. The key place for this dialogue between music and science was the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, where Andrija Pavlović, as a Kavli artist in residence, and Sonja Lončar, as an expert, spent several months in 2022 collaborating with scientists to compose new music. Later on, we collaborated with the visual artist “Incredible Bob” to develop the idea for the multimedia concert “LP Duo plays Beyond Quantum Music” to be performed at various locations, including the Scientific Institute MedILS Split (Croatia), the Theater Hall JDP Belgrade (Serbia), the Congress Hall TU Delft (the Netherlands), and open-air concerts at the Kaleidoskop Festival (Novi Sad, Serbia) and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (Austria). Full article

This article focuses on the influence of Western progressive rock music on some innovative members of the Union of Soviet Composers, who were open to new trends and influences. These Soviet composers’ interest in progressive rock was not only intellectual, but also had serious practical implications. During the 1970s, several composers made attempts to create original works following various styles of prog rock. Occasionally, they incorporated elements of prog rock into their otherwise experimental compositions. One can see the influences of prog rock in the works of prominent composers such as A. Pärt, S. Gubaidulina, V. Martynov, V. Silvestrov, V. Artemiev, G. Kancheli, and A. Schnittke. After discussing the development of the prog rock tradition in the USSR and dwelling on the peculiarities of prog rock as a genre, I focus on three works created by Soviet composers under the influence of prog traditions: the 4th Symphony for orchestra and rhythm section by Latvian composer Imants Kalniņš, which follows the traditions of symphonic rock; an avant-garde rock opera titled “Flemish Legend” by Leningrader Romuald Grinblat, written to the lyrics by dissident bard Yulii Kim and heavily influenced by the twelve-tone system; and a suite of art-rock songs titled “On the Wave of My Memory” composed by pop composer David Tukhmanov, based on the poems of poets with a “decadent” reputation in the Soviet ideological context. All of these composers had to create within the Soviet ideological restrictions on modern and rock music, in particular, and all of them had to engage in their own trickster-like antics to produce and perform their works. Although they are little remembered today, these works stand as unexpected and singular achievements of Soviet composers during complex times. Full article

This work marks a significant advancement in the field of cognitive science and gaming technology. It offers an in-depth analysis of the effects of various video game genres on brainwave patterns and concentration levels in virtual reality (VR) settings. The study is groundbreaking in its approach, employing electroencephalograms (EEGs) to explore the neural correlates of gaming, thus bridging the gap between technology, psychology, and neuroscience. This review enriches the dialogue on the potential of video games as a therapeutic tool in mental health. The study’s findings illuminate the capacity of different game genres to elicit varied brainwave responses, paving the way for tailored video game therapies. This review contributes meaningfully to the state of the art by offering empirical insights into the interaction between gaming environments and brain activity, highlighting the potential applications in therapeutic settings, cognitive training, and educational tools. The findings are especially relevant for developing VR gaming content and therapeutic games, enhancing the understanding of cognitive processes, and aiding in mental healthcare strategies. Full article

This work studies one type of artistic production from the Viceroyalty of New Spain during the second half of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the following century. Furniture decorated with the technique of enconchado is studied to point out the influence of Namban lacquer as well as the relationship with enconchado painting, a better known and studied corpus than furniture, and also its link to Mexican lacquer, maque. The identification and study of three pieces of furniture that feature the enconchado technique, and a cross, probably decorated with maque, offer a complementary vision of the art of enconchado and allow us to consider enconchado furniture an independent artistic genre. Full article

This study aimed to explore students’ musical genre preferences, exploring variations across gender and age groups in Hungary. Additionally, we investigated the relationships among the popularity of musical genres and connections between musical programs and related activities. With the help of stratified sampling, we examined the opinions of students aged 9–19 about each genre (N = 1159) using specific musical examples. In this study, musical genres were classified into four main types based on related music videos, including classical popular music (CPM), rock music (RM), classical art music (CAM), and folk music (FM). Different types of analyses, such as t-tests, one-way and two-way ANOVAs, and correlational analyses such as correlation coefficients (r), chi-square tests, and eta squares, were employed in this study. The results showed that the popularity of the four pieces of music classified as CPM, RM, CAM, and FM had a moderately strong correlation with each other. The correlations between FM, CPM, and RM did not differ from each other, but they showed significantly weaker correlation values than the correlation between FM and CAM. Moreover, significant differences were found in the students’ perceptions of the genres based on their gender and age groups. Among the four performances, the girls had a greater preference compared to the boys for each one, except for the folk music piece. The youngest age group (9–12) showed the highest preference for the CPM, although the difference compared to the oldest age group (17–19) was not statistically significant. Therefore, this study is beneficial for music education, focusing on students’ genre preferences, including CPM, RM, CAM, and FM. Full article