Search Results (117)

This article sets out an assertion that a mass art project can make a virtue of ‘network extension’ through an Instagram account, to build creative community, new connections, and physical artwork outcomes. We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher is an example of a ‘manifested artwork’, where Fisher’s ideas on capitalism and community are explored through electronic media. We have taken the work of critical theorist, Mark Fisher, and subjected it to a process of détournement, alluding to the work of Guy de Bord and The Situationists. The thing in itself—Fisher’s processed ideas—are reprocessed and held up against the posthumous period between 2017 and now, since he died. The assertion in the work is that while the tools are circumscribed by a set of ‘standards’ and ‘production processes’, this does not delimit them from being employed towards the evolution of embodied and shared actions that develop a counter-narrative or something that eschews the methods of Hollywood or broadcast television documentaries. We just have to learn ways to do this. ‘Decapitalising’ a process, working with human agency and good will, turns the platform of Instagram into a tool of empowerment—reappropriating the algorithm and capturing the collective back from the closed corporate system of control. We see that a form of value is pulled back out of the machinic effects of a proprietary platform. Full article

Dance can enhance older adults’ well-being by fostering social connection, physical activity, and creative expression. Yet it is often framed primarily as a health intervention rather than an accessible and enjoyable form of life enrichment. This study explored older adults’ perspectives on the benefits of dance and factors influencing accessibility in the Greater Toronto Area. A qualitative video elicitation study was conducted on 22 January 2025, with nine older adults participating in a Sharing Dance Older Adults class at Canada’s National Ballet School. The class was professionally recorded from fixed positions, and six participants subsequently took part in semi-structured focus groups to review selected footage and discuss their experiences. Data were analyzed by a three-member team using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings identified themes related to perceived health benefits, dance class design, and accessibility, with participants emphasizing that accessible program features enhanced enjoyment and engagement. These findings suggest that prioritizing accessibility in dance programming may support joyful participation among older adults. This study contributes to research on aging and the arts, informs inclusive program design, and demonstrates the utility of video elicitation for examining embodied dance experiences. Full article

Recreational dance offers significant psychological well-being potential. However, traditional instruction emphasizes technique while limiting attention to nervous system development and embodied meaning-making. Despite empirical support for polyvagal theory, motor learning science, somatic education, and phenomenology, their systematic integration into unified structures is not clearly established in recreational dance contexts. This protocol integrates nervous system regulation, motor learning, and creative expression within structured Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD) modern dance syllabus for recreational adults. It presents a 12-week integrated dance-mindfulness intervention addressing this gap through a three-phase structure grounded in neuroscience and embodied pedagogy. The intervention comprises eight standardized components delivered weekly. The randomized controlled trial evaluates intervention effects using the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21), the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), and the Leisure Involvement Scale (LIS). Qualitative assessment via semi-structured phenomenological interviews (Weeks 8 and 12) and weekly journaling captures somatic awareness, nervous system resilience, technical confidence, creative expression, relational and social belonging, and embodied meaning-making. Intervention participants are expected to show significantly greater improvements compared to controls. Results will establish evidence-based practice standards for recreational dance and demonstrate neuroscience integration’s efficacy for psychological wellbeing and embodied meaning-making. Full article

This study investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban informal spaces through a rhythmanalytical lens, offering critical insights for sustainable urban governance and the development of inclusive night-time economies. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s theory of everyday life practices and Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, this study interprets the night market as a rhythmic assemblage. This assemblage is interwoven with the strategic, disciplinary rhythms imposed by managers and the tactical, subsistence-oriented rhythms crafted by the vendors. The research finds that urban managers impose a strategic rhythm aimed at order and controllability through the standardization of time, homogenization of space, and institutional clearance. In response, vendors, driven by a subsistence logic shaped by survival pressures develop a repertoire of sophisticated tactical variations. These tactics manifest as flexible uses of time and space to disrupt the established disciplinary framework. Furthermore, based on strong relational networks of “blood, professional, and geographical ties”, dispersed individual tactics can coalesce into a powerful collective rhythm, thereby gaining the capacity for dialog and negotiation in spatial games. The most constructive interactions embody a creative cadence, where vendors proactively integrate local cultural elements into their operations, transforming their practice from resistance into symbiosis, achieving a form of rhythmic harmony with urban development strategies. By integrating rhythmanalysis with the theory of everyday practice, this study constructs the “rhythm game” analytical framework. Its main contribution lies in revealing that the core of power interactions in urban informal spaces is not perpetual confrontation, but rather the contingent possibility of evolution from resistance to rhythmic harmony. This provides crucial theoretical and empirical grounding for understanding the source of vitality in informal spaces and for building a flexible, coordinated, and sustainable governance model. Full article

Traumatic experiences can disrupt one’s sense of safety, self-efficacy, and relationships. Prolonged stress may lead to anxiety, depression, and diminished agency. The embodied, subjective manifestations of trauma call for personalized therapeutic approaches that address symptoms and foster resilience. Group Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) offer relational aesthetic interventions that promote resilience and trauma recovery. Incorporating body-based methods, movement, materials and visual expression, CATs support interoceptive awareness, multisensory integration, embodiment, and emotional–cognitive processing. This article presents a review and conceptual framework of group CAT interventions during wartime, focusing on challenges related to body awareness, self-efficacy, and autobiographical memory. It examines how creative aesthetic approaches help process trauma and strengthen resilience. Drawing on predictive processing accounts of brain function, the article explores the neuropsychological impact of trauma and how creative group work may modulate related brain mechanisms. Creative techniques can foster bodily anchored self-awareness, self-efficacy and processes of traumatic memory reconsolidation. Aesthetic experiences are associated with changes in brain activation and connectivity through processes of embodiment, externalization, and meaning making. On an intrapersonal level, converging evidence highlights the role of sensory and sensorimotor processing, along with the dynamic interplay between Default Mode, Executive Control, and Salience networks, as conceptualized in the Triple Network Model. On an interpersonal level, the literature points to the dynamics of brain and body synchronization, as emerging phenomena during shared creative engagement. These neurodynamics provide a coherent framework for understanding how creative arts-based psychotherapeutic group work can support trauma processing and the cultivation of resilience. Full article

This article presents an arts-based and polyvocal account of Gira Ingoma (One Drum per Girl), a women- and girl-led cultural initiative in Rwanda that reconstructs drumming, warrior dance, and self-praise poetry to advance gender equality and contribute to everyday peace power. Based on arts-based qualitative methods (workshops, rehearsals, festivals, interviews, and youth-led Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning), we show how repetitive public performance materialises gender equality beyond policy texts. The article explores core theoretical frames—gender performativity, everyday peace power, spatial approaches to peace, and performance-as-knowledge—while aligning key findings to research questions concerning (1) negotiation of gender through performance, (2) micro-processes of everyday peace power, and (3) observable change in confidence, community engagement, and institutional practice. We conclude with policy measures to embed gender-responsive arts education, resource girls and women across the creative value chain, and set parity targets within cultural institutions. Full article

The relationship between sound and visual representation has long intrigued artists and educators, with historical explorations ranging from colour–music correspondence to alternative notations and graphic visualisations of music. Recent advances in digital technologies have significantly expanded the pedagogical potential of visual information in music education. However, there is still no comprehensive review mapping how visual information is applied in digital music education tools. This scoping review maps the application of visual modalities in original digital tools for music teaching and learning, drawing on 63 studies published between 2014 and 2024. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s five-stage framework and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) reporting guidelines, this review analyses the methodological characteristics, pedagogical foundations, and design features of these tools. Findings reveal a dominant focus on performance skills and individual learning, often supported by visual feedback and interactivity. However, other aspects of learning such as creativity, responsiveness, and collaboration remain underexplored. While references to concepts such as multimodality and embodied learning are common, a robust theoretical grounding is frequently lacking or implicit. This review calls for a shift from technology-driven innovation toward pedagogy-led design, advocating for a more holistic educational approach and more rigorous empirical research. Implications highlight the potential of visual information not only to support performance skill acquisition but also to foster creative, expressive, and collaborative dimensions of music learning. Full article

The Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritages (ICH) Law was passed in 2011, followed by the Regulation on Copyright Protection of Folk Literature and Art Works (Draft calling for comments) released in 2014, which finally called for opinions from experts and practitioners again in 2024. This article examines the challenges in directly applying copyright law to protect ICHs in Mainland China, emphasising the fundamental differences in the rationales of ICHs and copyright, despite partial overlap in their subject matters. Although copyright is not suitable for directly safeguarding ICHs, it can play a constructive role in protecting derivative works and creative expressions embodying ICHs. When granting copyright to the creations, certain limitations should be imposed on the exercise of these rights, particularly respecting the local communities and avoiding distorting the original cultural expressions of the ICHs. Such a design could benefit the preservation of Chinese ICHs and also promote the exchange of culture. It also provides a reference to other nations to avoid directly transplanting copyright law onto ICH protection without adaptation. In light of recent international developments, the findings contribute to comparative and cross-border debates on international collaborations, fair remuneration and benefit-sharing, supporting more equitable and sustainable global preservation of ICHs. Full article

While scholarship has predominantly focused on the “harmony” of Confucian ethics or the functional and generative “harmony” of pre-Qin Lao-Zhuang Daoism, this study identifies a unique conceptual system of “harmony” in Han Dynasty Daoism through a textual excavation of Yan Zun’s Laozi zhigui. Yan Zun transcends the relatively abstract generative narratives of pre-Qin Daoism by creatively substantializing “harmony” into “supreme harmony”, positioning it as a pivotal stage in the four-tiered cosmogonic schema of “Dao–De–Shenming–supreme harmony”. By regarding “supreme harmony” as the “ancestor of Heaven and Earth” and the ontological foundation for the nature and life of all things, Yan Zun endows “harmony” with a definitive ontological status. This cosmological and ontological category further permeates the domains of self-cultivation and state governance. In the realm of self-cultivation, Yan Zun advocates for “valuing the body and nourishing the spirit”, promoting the practice of spirit and qi embracing and tranquil non-action to achieve the existential realization and transcendence of individual life; in the realm of state governance, he criticizes rites and laws for harming natural harmony, proposing that the ruler should “embody the Dao and tread upon harmony”. This approach establishes a governance of non-action that aligns with the “utmost softness” of supreme harmony, thereby reconstructing an ideal political order where “harmonious qi flows freely.” The concept of “supreme harmony” advocated by Yan Zun not only marks the maturation of Han Daoist qi-cosmology, but also offers a new theoretical horizon for re-understanding the transformation of the concept of “harmony” from ethics to ontology in Chinese philosophy. Full article

There has been a surge in interest in and implementation of motion capture (MoCap)-based lessons in animation, creative education, and performance training, leading to an increasing number of studies on this topic. While recent studies have summarized these developments, few have been conducted that synthesize existing findings into a theoretical framework. Building upon the Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL), this study proposes the Cognitive Affective Model of Motion Capture Training (CAMMT) as a theoretical and research-based framework for explaining how MoCap fosters creative cognition in computer animation practice. The model identifies six affective and cognitive constructs: Control and Active Learning, Reflective Thinking, Perceptual Motor Skills, Emotional Expressive, Artistic Innovation, and Collaborative Construction that describe how MoCap’s technological affordances of immersion and interactivity support creativity in animation practice. The findings indicate that instructional and design methods from less immersive media can be effectively adapted to MoCap environments. Although originally developed for animation education, CAMMT contributes to broader theories of creative design processes by linking cognitive, affective, and performative dimensions of embodied interaction. This study offers guidance for researchers and designers exploring creative and embodied interaction across digital performance and design contexts. Full article

In the era of digital intelligence, cultural heritage is undergoing a profound transformation. This study investigates how digital technologies facilitate the inheritance and innovation of traditional culture in China, focusing on the case of Huangyan’s Song Rhyme Culture in Zhejiang Province. Drawing on the framework of “glocalized intelligent heritage,” the research explores how global technological systems interact with local cultural practices to produce new forms of cultural continuity. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative case study approach supported by empirical data. It combines policy analysis, semi-structured interviews with twenty-six stakeholders, field observations, and quantitative indicators such as visitor statistics, online engagement, and project investment. This mixed design provides both contextual depth and measurable evidence of digital transformation. The findings show that digital intelligence has reshaped cultural representation, platform-based public engagement, and local sustainability. In Huangyan, technologies such as AI-based monitoring, 3D modeling, and VR exhibitions have transformed heritage display into an interactive and educational experience. Digital media have enhanced public engagement, with more than 1.2 million virtual visits and over 20 million online interactions recorded in 2024. At the same time, the project has stimulated cultural tourism and creative industries, contributing to a 28.6% increase in cultural revenue between 2020 and 2024. The study concludes that digital intelligence can function as a cultural bridge by strengthening heritage mediation, widening access, and enabling platform- and institution-based participation, while noting that embodied intergenerational cultural transmission lies beyond the direct measurement of this research design. Full article

This article focuses on the choice of the religious life for women during the early modern period, following a Rule that ensured harmony within the cloister. We trace the emergence of codes of life for female communities across time, with particular attention to the Rule of St. Benedict and its adoption by Cistercian communities, where silence assumed a particular significance. Silence, sounds, and monastic daily life as governed by the Rule, by the Tridentine decrees and, in the case of Portuguese Cistercian communities, obedience to the Autonomous Congregation of Alcobaça and to its supervisory mechanism of Visitations, were elements that shaped both the discourse presented here and its interpretive framework. While the Council of Trent emphasized the importance of vocation and simultaneously imposed upon women the so-called “fourth vow” (enclosure), documentary evidence allows us to observe to what extent the conventual milieu, composed of women from diverse social origins, remained engaged with the wider world outside cloister; nunneries became both a mode of existence and a space of affirmation for women, one that fostered creativity (in music, writing, painting) and upheld authority and power, embodied in the figure of the abbess and in the acts, rituals, and ceremonies associated with her. Full article

In his innovative and creative attempt to reconcile empiricism and religion, William James made the case for finite theism and a pluralistic conception of the cosmos involving overlapping minds of several scales. In doing so, James also cautioned against abandoning functional psychology in favor of what he called entitative points of view. In his work, Ralph Barton Perry critiqued James for understating the role of embodiment in cognition. In Perry’s view, the central role the body plays in cognition suggests that so-called social or composite minds lack integration and are thus cognitively inferior to embodied minds. However, Perry also believed that the emergent character of embodied cognition provides grounds for an alternative, humanistic spirituality. In this article, I compare James and Perry on theology, and I argue that Perry’s concerns about the importance of embodiment in cognitive integration help illuminate a tripartite distinction between what I call impersonal, subpersonal, and personal theologies that scholars looking for more embodied approaches to theology would do well to consider. Full article

This article offers a comparative study of two closely linked constellations of early Ṣūfī thought: the ascetic–mystical program of al-Fuḍayl ibn ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) and that of his renowned disciple Bishr al-Ḥāfī (d. 227/841). Moving beyond hagiographic anecdote, the study advances the thesis that the pair articulate two complementary modalities of tawba (repentance) that generate distinct ascetic habitus and pedagogical lineages: al-Fudayl’s “ethic of awe” (fear, juridical redress, and renunciation of patronage) and Bishr’s “aesthetics of reverence” (beauty-induced modesty, evident humility, and fame avoidance). Drawing on primary sources (Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ, al-Sulamī’s Ṭabaqāt al-Ṣūfiyya, al-Qushayrī’s Risāla, al-Sarrāj’s Lumaʿ), the article reconstructs each thinker’s core concepts, practices (e.g., returning wrongs, ḥafāʾ/barefoot humility), and teaching styles and maps how the teacher–disciple nexus transmits, adapts, and ritualizes these ethics into durable Ṣūfī dispositions. Methodologically, the article combines close textual analysis with practice theory to show how emotions—such as fear and modesty (ḥayāʾ)—are choreographed into public, socially legible acts, thus reframing repentance as embodied discipline rather than interior feeling alone. A prosopographic appendix traces transmission from al-Fudayl to Bishr to Sarī al-Saqaṭī and al-Junayd, clarifying how each modality survives in later Baghdad sobriety and Malāmatī self-effacement. The contribution is twofold: first, it supplies a granular typology of early Ṣūfī repentance that explains divergent stances toward money, publicity, and power; second, it models how to read early Ṣūfī biography as anthropology of practice, recovering the lived grammar by which “conversion stories” become social programs. In doing so, the article nuances standard narratives of early Ṣūfism, showing that Bishr is not merely al-Fuḍayl’s echo but a creative reframer whose “reverential” path complements—rather than imitates—the awe-driven ethic associated with al-Fuḍayl. Full article

Regarding Judah’s exilic realities and forced migration experience, this article proposes that the sage responsible for this poem functioned as a carrier group in articulating a narrative of collective trauma. The paper begins by summarizing key components of cultural trauma theory as developed by Jeffrey C. Alexander. It also situates the shared socio-historical context of the final textual forms of Jeremiah and Proverbs within the exilic/post-exilic realities of the Judahite community. It next traces the trope of wine inebriation across several Jeremiah texts, focusing especially on Jeremiah 25:15–29 to show how this motif is integrally woven into the book’s overarching themes of indictment, judgment, and exile. A conventional wisdom reading of Proverbs 23:29–35 yields a moralistic warning about the self-destructive cycle of wine intoxication of the fools in the book of Proverbs. But a cultural trauma hermeneutic of the poem—when paired with intertextual echoes of Jeremiah 25:15–29—opens the poem to a deeper reading. Within this framework, the sapiential poem emerges as a creative, dramatic and theologically rich act of trauma storytelling, depicting foolish Judah’s metaphorical intoxication as an embodiment of exilic indictment, woes and suffering, yet gesturing toward the possibility of healing and restoration through wisdom reflection and re-narration of their past. Full article