Search results for "Metaphor"
showing 10 items of 271 documents
The popularization of plate tectonics: presenting the concepts of dynamics and time
1996
There have been many attempts to describe and represent the theory of plate tectonics to laypeople. In the context of a study conducted at the request of a museum, we have tried to determine how the concepts of both geological time and the movements of the plates have been reformulated. After having systematically studied in detail publications aimed at more or less educated readers, we have selected a corpus of twelve articles from nine different magazines or journals. Among the different means of expression used by the popularizers, rhetorical figures constitute a significant resource. Procedures based on analogy (metaphor, comparison, analogical reasoning) were brought together in a sing…
Come un tenero virgulto: termini e ideologie della crescita nel pensiero greco pre-aristotelico
2020
Dopo un inquadramento terminologico atto a presentare le più comuni radici che esprimono in greco antico i concetti di crescita e di sviluppo del vivente, l’attenzione è rivolta alle modalità con cui in testi di varia natura e datazione (da Omero sino al Corpus ippocratico) si descrive la crescita dell’essere umano a partire dal costante confronto con il mondo vegetale, in modo che dal configurarsi delle teorie possano risaltare le più o meno implicite mentalità. Attraverso il massiccio ricorso al ragionamento analogico, le fonti considerate permettono di farsi un’idea non solo del processo di crescita in sé, ma anche del ruolo assegnato nella cultura e nel pensiero della Grecia antica alla…
Taking Aim and Hitting the Target. Some Remarks on the Aristotelian Notion of eustoichia
2018
L’articolo è dedicato alla nozione aristotelica di eustochia (la capacità di fare buone congetture), nella convinzione che essa possa contribuire al ripensamento della nostra costitutiva precarietà. Diversamente da una lettura tradizionale che vede Aristotele principalmente come il filosofo del ragionamento deduttivo, l’articolo sostiene invece l’importanza di questa capacità cognitiva nel pensiero aristotelico. Con questo scopo, vengono analizzati i tre principali contesti in cui Aristotele fa riferimento all’eustochia: la costruzione del sillogismo (APo, 89b 10), il raggiungimento della virtù (EN, 1106b 16) e la creazione di metafore ((Rh. 1412a 13). Nonostante le evidenti differenze, que…
Female Cyborgs, Gender Performance, and Utopian Gaze in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina
2020
The cyborg as a metaphor for cultural encodings of the interaction between humans and technology has been an accepted trope since the publication of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto.” Alex Garland’s 2015 film Ex Machina shares many of its key themes and motifs with earlier science fiction films, from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. A first viewing of the film thus suggests an interpretation that focuses on the film’s portrayal of its female cyborgs Ava and Kyoko as another version of the “pleasure model” in the mode of Lang’s Maria or Scott’s Pris. However, it is the tension between Ava’s intelligence and visual attractiveness and her performance of a female gender …
Simulation and visualization of thermal metaphors in a virtual environment for thermal building assessment
2014
International audience; The current application of the design process through energy efficiency in virtual reality (VR) systems is limited mostly to building performance predictions and design review, as the issue of the data formats and the workflow used for 3D modeling, thermal calculation and VR visualization. The importance of energy efficiency and integration of advances in building design and VR technology have lead this research to focus on thermal simulation results visualized in a virtual environment to optimize building design, particularly concerning heritage buildings. The emphasis is on the perception of thermal data of a room simulated in a virtual environment (VE) in order to…
A Metaphor for Identities in Transition through Urbanization and Globalization: Tofu and One Hundred Surnames
2019
The Chinese artist Chen Qiulin has been taking displacement and the resulting unrest in people’s identity as her persistent theme since the early 1990s. Focusing on a series of her works made since 2004 dealing explicitly with tofu and Chinese surnames, this paper examines her exploration of identities in transition in the context of China’s mass urbanization and globalization. By showing the artist’s conceptual evolution, her preference for materials and mediums, and her exhibition strategy, this paper explores two issues. First, it illuminates how the artist has transformed “tofu” and “surname” into a metaphor for the dilemma of identity under the urbanization in China. Second, it discuss…
The metaphorical species: Evolution, adaptation and speciation of metaphors
2015
Studying cartoons about the economic crisis and focusing on a pair of scissors as a symbol, I prove how they first turn into unambiguous metaphor for the economic crisis and then experience an evolution in order to adapt to new communication contexts. Along these processes, they undergo more complex changes such as coadaptation and speciation. This has allowed for the scissors meme as a symbol of economic cutbacks to permeate society, and for its metaphorical use to occupy many disparate communication scenarios, unlike other symbolic elements that were also used, but turned out to be less cognitively efficient and therefore offered fewer evolutionary possibilities.
La identidad de la diversidad funcional en la comunicación mediada por la tecnología
2017
El objeto de estudio de la investigación que a continuación se presenta gravita sobre el cambio ontológico que impone la tecnología en el ser humano. En concreto, el desarrollo de tecnologías de ayuda aplicadas a Sistemas Alternativos de Comunicación representa un interesante ejemplo de cómo dichos soportes actúan en la base de las interacciones sociales, la comunicación y, cómo esta mediación modifica la propia autoimagen e imagen social de la persona que la emplea. El presente estudio se centra en las personas con parálisis cerebral o enfermedad degenerativa neuronal y en la transformación identitaria que padecen al poderse comunicar con soportes autónomos de alta tecnología. La hipótesis…
From Metaphors to Simulations to Idioms: Supporting the Conceptualisation Process
2004
The concept of metaphor has been used in UI design in a loose manner. There is a need to conceptually separate it from related concepts to restore the power it used to have in rhetoric. It is also important to understand the life cycle of metaphor, how it changes over time in the conceptualisation process. This is especially topical in ubiquitous computing, in which entirely new concepts and interaction styles are introduced. In this paper, we describe the use of metaphors and related concepts in theory and apply the approach in a mobile application.
Investigating metaphors of musical involvement : Immersion, flow, interaction and incorporation
2018
The concept of immersion, despite being relatively unknown within music research, presents a potentially productive way for understanding the well acknowledged phenomenon of "being drawn into music". This paper 1) discusses immersion as a metaphor for conceptualizing musical involvement by drawing on the research into video games and virtual reality and 2) aims to clarify the metaphor of immersion by utilizing the concept of image schema to analyze it in relation to alternative metaphors of flow, interaction and incorporation. The theoretical stance of the paper is based on the paradigm of enactive cognitive sciences, which stresses the bodily, constructive and interactive nature of experie…