Search Results (35)

Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days explores the intersection of cinema and architecture through a phenomenological lens. The film examines public restrooms in Tokyo, each with unique architectural characteristics, delving into how these spaces are perceived and how they enhance the viewer’s spatial experience. In the film, spaces transcend their traditional role as mere backdrops to become central components of the narrative. The restrooms featured in the film stand out as significant elements that shape individuals’ sensory awareness, social contexts, and personal experiences from both architectural and phenomenological viewpoints. Architectural design integrates phenomenological qualities of space, such as the interplay of light, shadow, sound, and textures, enriching the viewer’s experience of these locations. This study investigates how these restrooms are conveyed to the audience through the film’s structure and narrative and how they shape sensory and emotional experiences. Qualitative research methods were employed, using document analysis and content analysis to frame the conceptual foundation of the study. It was found that these spaces form layers of both individual and collective meaning through their design elements and relationships with the urban context. The study demonstrates how the concept of phenomenological space can be interpreted through cinema. Full article

Boron nitride (BN) ceramic is an important support material in aerospace, arc discharge devices, and vacuum electronics. The electron emission properties of BN surfaces are of significance among various space applications. In this work, by preparing BN thin films and microstructured BN bulks, we have investigated the influence of the surface physical properties on the electron emission coefficient (EEC). The results showed that the surfaces of BN films, which were prepared by magnetron sputtering, produced serious gas adsorption and organic contamination when they were left for 10 days, and these surface modifications made the EEC of BN film surface decrease to a certain extent. The argon ion cleaning experiments indicated that the process of ion cleaning was able to partly eliminate the surface adsorption and contamination for the BN film. The EEC of the cleaned BN film surface was significantly improved compared to that of the original polluted BN film surface, with an EEC peak value of about 3.2 instead of 3.0 for the original polluted surfaces. By contrast, the EEC curves of the BN bulk show some difference, with the peak values of the EEC curves being 2.62 for the untreated BN bulk. The results of laser etching on the BN bulk surface to form microarray structures show that the EEC of BN bulk decreases significantly with the increase of the average aspect ratio of the microstructures. The EEC peak values of the BN bulks decrease from 2.62 to 1.16 when the porosity of the BN bulk reaches 49.11% and the aspect ratio reaches 1.36, indicating that constructing a surface microstructure is an effective method to achieve EEC reduction. By employing the electron trajectory tracking algorithm and the phenomenological model of electron emission, the effect of microstructure on EEC for BN bulk was quantitatively explained. The results of the study are of engineering application significance for vacuum devices involving the electron emission process of BN ceramic. Full article

Thin films of the superconductor YBa₂Cu₃O_7−δ (YBCO) were modified by low-energy light-ion irradiation employing collimated or focused He⁺ beams, and the long-term stability of irradiation-induced defects was investigated. For films irradiated with collimated beams, the resistance was measured in situ during and after irradiation and analyzed using a phenomenological model. The formation and stability of irradiation-induced defects are highly influenced by temperature. Thermal annealing experiments conducted in an Ar atmosphere at various temperatures demonstrated a decrease in resistivity and allowed us to determine diffusion coefficients and the activation energy $\Delta E=(0.31\pm 0.03)$ eV for diffusive oxygen rearrangement within the YBCO unit cell basal plane. Additionally, thin YBCO films, nanostructured by focused He⁺-beam irradiation into vortex pinning arrays, displayed significant commensurability effects in magnetic fields. Despite the strong modulation of defect densities in these pinning arrays, oxygen diffusion during room-temperature annealing over almost six years did not compromise the signatures of vortex matching, which remained precisely at their magnetic fields predicted by the pattern geometry. Moreover, the critical current increased substantially within the entire magnetic field range after long-term storage in dry air. These findings underscore the potential of ion irradiation in tailoring the superconducting properties of thin YBCO films. Full article

The question of aesthetics in film-theoretical discourse today is split between, on the one hand, a film-phenomenological or “filmosophical” approach that values the putatively immanent relation between film and the mind and, on the other, the naturalizing epistemology of post-theory, which reduces the question of film aesthetics to one of poetics. What unites these otherwise disparate projects is the consideration of aesthetics divorced from the question of politics; in both cases, the social or political significance of the film–spectator relationship has been summarily purged. In this article, I will offer an alternative account of film aesthetics that draws on Jacques Rancière’s theory concerning the mutually determining relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, I will consider the relevance of Rancière’s thesis concerning what he calls the distribution of sensible to current accounts, as well as taking up his novel consideration of aesthetic distance and the “emancipated” spectator. With respect to film phenomenology, I will examine how its film-theoretical program rests on the flawed concept of a de-politicized spectator enchained by the film image. With respect to post-theory, I will examine how its appropriation from cognitive science of the rational agent model of meaning making inappropriately limits the political potential of film aesthetics. Full article

The effects of the coolant pulsation and the plasma aerodynamic actuation (PAA) on the film cooling are herein explored via large eddy simulations. The electrohydrodynamic force derived from the PAA was solved through the phenomenological plasma model. The Strouhal number of the sinusoidal coolant pulsation and the averaged pulsation blowing ratio were 0.25 and 1.0, respectively. Comprehensive analyses were carried out on the time-averaged flow fields, and the results reveal that the pulsed cooling jet might cause a deeper penetration into the crossflow, and this phenomenon could be remarkably mitigated by the downward force of the PAA. Comparing steady film cooling to pulsed film cooling revealed a modest 15.1% reduction in efficiency, while the application of the dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator (DBDPA) substantially enhanced the pulsed film cooling efficiency by 42.1%. Moreover, the counter-rotating vortex pair (CRVP) was enlarged and lifted off from the wall more poorly due to the coolant pulsation, and the PAA weakened the detrimental lift-off effect and entrainment of the CRVP. Then, the spatial–temporal development of the coherent structures was figured out by the alterations in the centerline temperature, reflecting the formation of the intermittent coherent structures rather than hairpin vortices due to the coolant pulsation, and their size and upcast behaviors were reduced by the PAA; thus, the turbulent integration of the coolant with the crossflow was suppressed fundamentally. Finally, the three-dimensional streamlines confirmed that the coherent structure dynamic behaviors were significantly regulated by the PAA for alleviating the adverse influences of the coolant pulsation. In summary, the PAA can effectively improve the pulsed film cooling efficiency by controlling the spatial–temporal development of the dominant coherent structures. Full article

The article is a preliminary effort to join neo-positive and historical institutional analysis from comparative politics with insights from discursive and phenomenological analysis. It highlights a message arising from a South Korean film related to moral–ethical dimensions and the implications of development policy. Taken in symbolic as well as empirical terms, the film proffers that economic development policy not attending to political institutional development—including correct institutional practices at the micro-level—is feeding Asia’s demons (e.g., asuras) rather than its forces of stability and (rational, democratic, participatory) political order. The film suggests that institutional atrophy and social decay may emerge from the breakdown of political institutions and participatory politics as a political system moves from rationalized institutions and practices into what the current work calls, “mafia politics.” Political ritual and political theatre are actively employed in the film in ritualized acts of the desecration of political order. The current work suggests that the analysis of symbolic representations relating to ritual politics and performativity (e.g., “political theatre”) located in certain art forms, such as international film, may be useful in studies of religion and politics, and in qualitative comparative political and historical institutional analysis more broadly. Full article

Haniya Yutaka (1909–1997) was one of the leading figures in postwar Japanese literature and avant-garde art movements, chiefly remembered today for his unfinished metaphysical novel Dead Souls [Shirei, 1946–1997]. This essay, however, examines his hitherto unknown theoretical writings on film. Haniya and other writers gathering around the literary magazine Kindai bungaku [Modern Literature, 1946–1964] shared a keen interest in film’s unparalleled importance in twentieth-century modernity. And their collective efforts to transgress conventional boundaries between literature and film culminated in the 1957 publication of the anthology entitled Literary Film Theory [Bungakuteki eigaron]. Above all, Haniya’s film writing was clearly distinguished for its tendency to explicate film’s paradoxical mode of existence philosophically, an approach that the film critic Matsuda Masao later called an “ontological film theory” [sonzaironteki eigaron]. Looking closely at his essays and interviews collected in Literary Film Theory and two other volumes on this topic—Thoughts in the Darkness [Yami no naka no shisō, 1962] and Dreaming in the Darkness [Yami no naka no musō, 1982]—the present essay reads Haniya’s theorization of cinema in relation to both Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology and recent scholarly debates on non-Western film theory. Full article

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who called tourism an industry “whose production is identical to its advertisement”, also wrote about the pitfalls of what he called the “tourism of the revolution” that flourished between the world wars in Soviet Russia. This essay combines both perspectives in a discussion of the experience of making a film about ecology in Cuba in 2019, Cuba: Living Between Hurricanes, which includes a section on the tourist industry. Informed by the perspectives of autoethnography and phenomenology, the author explores the cognitive dissonance of the filmmaker’s ambiguous relationship, as a professional tourist, to the contradictions of the tourist industry as refracted through the small coastal town of Caibarién on the north coast where Hurricane Irma made landfall in 2017. Full article

Environmentally friendly lead-free K_1-xNa_xNbO₃ (KNN) ceramics possess electromechanical properties comparable to lead-based ferroelectric materials but cannot meet the needs of device miniaturization, and the corresponding thin films lack theoretical and experimental studies. To this end, we developed the nonlinear phenomenological theory for ferroelectric materials to study the effects of non-equiaxed misfit strain on the phase structure, electromechanical properties, and electrical response of K_0.5Na_0.5NbO₃ epitaxial films. We constructed in-plane misfit strain ($u_1-u_2$) phase diagrams. The results show that K_0.5Na_0.5NbO₃ epitaxial film under non-equiaxed in-plane strain can exhibit abundant phase structures, including orthorhombic $a_{1}c$, $a_{2}c$, and $a_1{a}_2$ phases, tetragonal $a_1$, $a_2$, and $c$ phases, and monoclinic $r_{12}$ phases. Moreover, in the vicinity of $a_{2}c-r_{12}$, $a_{1}c-c$, and $a_1{a}_2-a_2$ phase boundaries, K_0.5Na_0.5NbO₃ epitaxial films exhibit excellent dielectric constant ${\epsilon }_{11}$, while at $a_{2}c-r_{12}$ and $a_{1}c-c$ phase boundaries, a significant piezoelectric coefficient $d_{15}$ is observed. It was also found that high permittivity ${\epsilon }_{33}$ and piezoelectric coefficients $d_{33}$ exist near the $a_{2}c-a_2$, $a_1{a}_2-r_{12}$, and $a_{1}c-a_1$ phase boundaries due to the existence of polymorphic phase boundary (PPB) in the KNN system, which makes it easy to polarize near the phase boundaries, and the polarizability changes suddenly, leading to electromechanical enhancement. In addition, the results show that the K_0.5Na_0.5NbO₃ thin films possess a large electrocaloric response at the phase boundary at the $a_1{a}_2-r_{12}$ and $a_{1}c-a_1$ phase boundaries. The maximum adiabatic temperature change $\mathsf{\Delta }T$ is about 3.62 K when the electric field change is 30 MV/m at room temperature, which is significantly enhanced compared with equiaxed strain. This study provides theoretical guidance for obtaining K_1−xNa_xNbO₃ epitaxial thin films with excellent properties. Full article

In the field of horror film studies, the question of trauma is generally related to the spectator’s experience. The trauma of images occurs in the context of socio-cultural actualization. The degree of violence involved in the images, either graphic or symbolic, implies an experience that marks the viewer. Trauma, in this way, acts as a sensitive degree of perception, the image being an event. We start from this theoretical point but decide to take as our object of study only films where the horrific experience is based on a figurative representation of trauma. Therefore, we want to detach ourselves from a symbolic reading of the horrific image, leaving aside the psychological implications of the image’s effect. We decide to adopt a phenomenological and enactive reading of the image in order to include our spectatorial sensations in the narrative and aesthetic analysis of the representations issues of trauma as a horrific experience. Thus, in our corpus, trauma does not intervene in the cognitive formation of the spectator but is built into the experience of the filmic corpse according to a visual and narrative continuity specific to the films. We designate two types of traumatic events that occur in the corpus films: Halloween II; Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. We try to understand the emergence of the traumatic feeling within the spectator and demonstrate that the trauma experienced by the viewer arises from the horrific experience specific to the aesthetic and narrative aims of the films, mirroring the symptoms and the wounds of the characters. Full article

The reaction–diffusion equation approach, which solves differential equations of the development of density distributions of mobile and immobile dislocations under mutual interactions, is a method widely used to model the dislocation structure formation. A challenge in the approach is the difficulty in the determination of appropriate parameters in the governing equations because deductive (bottom-up) determination for such a phenomenological model is problematic. To circumvent this problem, we propose an inductive approach utilizing the machine-learning method to search a parameter set that produces simulation results consistent with experiments. Using a thin film model, we performed numerical simulations based on the reaction–diffusion equations for various sets of input parameters to obtain dislocation patterns. The resulting patterns are represented by the following two parameters; the number of dislocation walls ($p_2$), and the average width of the walls ($p_3$). Then, we constructed an artificial neural network (ANN) model to map between the input parameters and the output dislocation patterns. The constructed ANN model was found to be able to predict dislocation patterns; i.e., average errors in $p_2$ and $p_3$ for test data having 10% deviation from the training data were within 7% of the average magnitude of $p_2$ and $p_3$. The proposed scheme enables us to find appropriate constitutive laws that lead to reasonable simulation results, once realistic observations of the phenomenon in question are provided. This approach provides a new scheme to bridge models for different length scales in the hierarchical multiscale simulation framework. Full article

Current technology has produced a wide range of advanced micro-structured surfaces, designed for achieving the best wettability and adhesion performances for each specific application. In the context of in-flight icing simulations, this opens new challenges since the current most popular and successful ice accretion prediction tools neglect the details of the droplet behavior opting for a continuous film model. Here, a phenomenological model, following, in a Lagrangian approach, the evolution of the single droplets from the impinging to the onset of rivulets, is developed to simulate the performances of super-hydrophobic surfaces in icing application. Possible rebound and droplet spread on the impact, coalescence, single ice bead formation and droplet to rivulet transition are taken into account. The first validation shows how the models are able to predict the anti-icing capability of a super-hydrophobic surface coupled with a heating system. Full article

Nanocomposite films of polybutylene succinate (PBS)/graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) with a GnP content ranging from 0 to 1.35 wt.% were prepared by melt processing. The morphology of both the neat PBS and PBS/GnP nanocomposites were investigated and revealed no significant impact of GnP on the crystalline microstructure. Moisture sorption at 10 °C, 25 °C, and 40 °C were analyzed and modeled using the Guggenheim, Andersen, and De Boer (GAB) equation and Zimm-Lundberg theory, allowing for a phenomenological analysis at the molecular scale. An understanding of the transport sorption properties was proposed by the determination of the molar heat of sorption (ΔH_s), and the activation energy of the diffusion (E_d) of water in the matrix since both solubility and diffusion are thermo-activable properties. Both ΔH_s and E_d showed a good correlation with the water clustering theory at high water activity. Water and dioxygen permeabilities ( and ) were determined as a function of temperature and water activity. and decreased with the addition of a small amount of GnP, regardless of the studied temperature. Moreover, the evolution of as a function of water activity was driven by the solubility process, whereas at a given water activity, was driven by the diffusion process. Activation energies of the permeability (E_p) of water and dioxygen showed a dependency on the nature of the permeant molecule. Finally, from the ΔH_s, E_d, and E_p obtained values, the reduction in water permeability with the addition of a low content of GnP was attributed mainly to a tortuosity effect without diffusive interfaces rather than a significant change in the transport property mechanism. Full article

A timely replacement of the rather expensive indium-doped tin oxide with aluminum-doped zinc oxide is hindered by the poor uniformity of electronic properties when deposited by magnetron sputtering. Recent results demonstrated the ability to improve the uniformity and to decrease the resistivity of aluminum-doped zinc oxide thin films by decreasing the energy of the oxygen-negative ions assisting in thin film growth by using a tuning electrode. In this context, a comparative study was designed to elucidate if the same phenomenology holds for gallium-doped zinc oxide and indium-doped tin oxide as well. The metal oxide thin films have been deposited in the same setup for similar discharge parameters, and their properties were measured with high spatial resolution and correlated with the erosion track on the target’s surface. Furthermore, the films were also subject to post annealing and degradation tests by wet etching. While the tuning electrode was able to reduce the self-bias for all three materials, only the doped zinc oxide films exhibited properties correlating with the erosion track. Full article

Phase and domain structures in ferroelectric materials play a vital role in determining their dielectric and piezoelectric properties. Ferroelectric thin films with coexisting multiple domains or phases often have fascinating high sensitivity and ultrahigh physical properties. However, the control of the coexisting multiple domains is still challenging, thus necessitating the theoretical prediction. Here, we studied the phase coexistence and the domain morphology of PbTiO₃ epitaxial films by using a Landau–Devonshire phenomenological model and canonic statistical method. Results show that PbTiO₃ films can exist in multiple domain structures that can be diversified by the substrates with different misfit strains. Experimental results for PbTiO₃ epitaxial films on different substrates are in good accordance with the theoretical prediction, which shows an alternative way for further manipulation of the ferroelectric domain structures. Full article