Aleksandra Sushchenko, Olena Yatsenko, Teemu Leinonen
The pervasive presence of digital technology in everyday life has intensified discussions about the shift to digital culture—an environment where our virtual and physical selves continually intertwine. This raises a question: which reality holds greater sway over our agency? Such inquiry requires close attention to design decisions, as they play a key role in shaping digital culture through the aesthetic experiences they enable and carry substantial ethical responsibility. In this paper, we explore how human agency is transformed within digital culture, offering a philosophical reflection on the concept of the metainterface as the discursive domain within which this transformation happens. Our central claim is that a critical interrogation of interface design is imperative to move beyond commercially driven models of digital metainterfaces that privilege control and efficiency toward autonomous agency. Instead, we advocate for design approaches rooted in enactivist theory, which emphasize participatory sense-making and embodied engagement. We argue that enactivist-informed, aesthetically oriented interfaces can provide conditions for autonomous agency, allowing users to engage with technology in reflective, value-driven, and ethically mindful ways. This shift is aimed at repositioning interface design as a meaningful cultural practice capable of supporting richer, more responsible forms of interaction.
Este trabajo explora la expansión del audiovisual en las prácticas escénicas contemporáneas desde la perspectiva de los estudios intermediales. A partir de un enfoque teórico-metodológico basado en los planteamientos de Rajewsky (2005), Bruhn y Schirrmacher (2021), se analiza cómo el cine se integra dentro de las artes en vivo, generando nuevas experiencias de percepción estética. La investigación propone un modelo analítico centrado en las interacciones entre medios y su impacto en la experiencia del sujeto-espectador. Esta aproximación permite profundizar en prácticas híbridas, especialmente en aquellas dramaturgias construidas a partir del lenguaje y las tecnologías audiovisuales. Para aplicar estas nociones y examinar sus manifestaciones en proyectos concretos, se recurre al análisis de tres estudios de caso que representan distintas formas de intermedialidad escénica contemporánea: Los días afuera (Lola Arias, 2024), Festen (La dramática errante, 2023) y Cosmogony (Gilles Jobin, 2021). Los resultados permiten aproximarse a una comprensión más profunda y analítica de las prácticas escénicas intermediales, al tiempo que evidencian la diversidad de enfoques y el potencial artístico que la intermedialidad aporta a la creación escénica contemporánea.
Este número reúne cinco artículos de investigaciones en y a través del arte, el diseño, la ciencia y la tecnología, proponiendo formas de conocimiento crítico, encarnado y situado. Se incluyen también dos artículos más en la sección de Miscelánea.
The study aims to identify the trends of scientific research (master’s and PhD theses) at Al Wasl University by analysing and tracking the following elements and indicators: Degree awarded, Gender of the researcher, Nationality of the researcher, Gender of the research supervisor, Nationality of the research supervisor, Annual distribution of research, Research specialization, Type of research. Considering the above, there is a clear need to conduct a statistical analytical study to answer the following main question: What are the trends of scientific research (master’s and PhD theses) at Al Wasl University,Dubai, United Arab Emirates? A systematic bibliometric analysis was conducted using the Theses and Dissertations Approved in The University of Alwasl published between 1999 and August 2025. A total of 425 Theses and Dissertations were identified, involving 364 authors. The study recorded the theses approved at the master's and doctoral levels since the establishment of graduate studies at the university up to August 2025. showing a consistent growth in the number of master's and doctoral degrees and an increased approval rate in recent years, the languages thesis to master's and doctoral research. It is evident that the percentage of Arabic language is higher than that of other languages completed (99.07%), while other languages for (0.93%). The specializations of Master's and Doctoral theses at Al Wasl University, varied across five main areas. Leading these was the field of Emirati culture and society studies, with 203 theses, making up 46.99%, which is logically consistent with the university's context.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Arts in general
Moa Johansson, Vyacheslav Tykhonov, Sophia Alexandersson
et al.
Creating an inclusive art environment requires engaging multiple senses for a fully immersive experience. Culture is inherently synesthetic, enriched by all senses within a shared time and space. In an optimal synesthetic setting, people of all abilities can connect meaningfully; when one sense is compromised, other channels can be enhanced to compensate. This is the power of multimodality. Digital technology is increasingly able to capture aspects of multimodality. To document multimodality aspects of cultural practices and products for the long-term remains a challenge. Many artistic products from the performing arts tend to be multimodal, and are often immersive, so only a multimodal repository can offer a platform for this work. To our knowledge there is no single, comprehensive repository with a knowledge base to serve arts and disability. By knowledge base, we mean classifications, taxonomies, or ontologies (in short, knowledge organisation systems). This paper presents innovative ways to develop a knowledge base which capture multimodal features of archived representations of cultural assets, but also indicate various forms how to interact with them including machine-readable description. We will demonstrate how back-end and front-end applications, in a combined effort, can support accessible archiving and data management for complex digital objects born out of artistic practices and make them available for wider audiences.
Clarisse Bardiot, Pierre-Carl Langlais, Bernard Jacquemin
et al.
Many heritage institutions hold extensive collections of theatre programmes, which remain largely underused due to their complex layouts and lack of structured metadata. In this paper, we present a workflow for transforming such documents into structured data using a combination of multimodal large language models (LLMs), an ontology-based reasoning model, and a custom extension of the Linked Art framework. We show how vision-language models can accurately parse and transcribe born-digital and digitised programmes, achieving over 98% of correct extraction. To overcome the challenges of semantic annotation, we train a reasoning model (POntAvignon) using reinforcement learning with both formal and semantic rewards. This approach enables automated RDF triple generation and supports alignment with existing knowledge graphs. Through a case study based on the Festival d'Avignon corpus, we demonstrate the potential for large-scale, ontology-driven analysis of performing arts data. Our results open new possibilities for interoperable, explainable, and sustainable computational theatre historiography.
As AI art generation becomes increasingly sophisticated, HCI research has focused primarily on questions of detection, authenticity, and automation. This paper argues that such approaches fundamentally misunderstand how artistic value emerges from the concerns that drive human image production. Through examination of historical precedents, we demonstrate that artistic style is not only visual appearance but the resolution of creative struggle, as artists wrestle with influence and technical constraints to develop unique ways of seeing. Current AI systems flatten these human choices into reproducible patterns without preserving their provenance. We propose that HCI's role lies not only in perfecting visual output, but in developing means to document the origins and evolution of artistic style as it appears within generated visual traces. This reframing suggests new technical directions for HCI research in generative AI, focused on automatic documentation of stylistic lineage and creative choice rather than simple reproduction of aesthetic effects.
During the interwar years, military music experienced significant growth thanks to the efforts of one of the genre's leading lights, conductor Egizio Massini, a highly regarded individual who also happened to be an accomplished soldier. His conducting skills and European vision, along with his organizational tenacity and musical aptitude, led to an amazing military career that had a direct impact on Romania's military and civilian fanfare band scene. During his tenure as the inspector general of the military bands (1932–1940 and 1944–1947), significant advancements were made for the military music bands and their members' musical education, as well as for the repertoire reform and the execution of lengthy international tours.
این مطالعه به بررسی تعامل پیچیدۀ بین معماری و معناشناسی در ساختمانهای میانی لالهزار میپردازد و نشان میدهد که چگونه فرمهای فیزیکی روایتهای فرهنگی و تاریخی را تجسم میدهند. بر نقش معماری بهعنوان وسیلهای برای بیان فرهنگی و مخزن ارزشها و خاطرات اجتماعی تأکید میکند. هدف این تحقیق تحلیل عمیق ساختارهای معنایی در ابعاد فیزیکی معماری لالهزار است. بهدنبال درک چگونگی ارتباط این سازهها با زمینههای فرهنگی و تاریخی است و از این طریق به حوزه وسیعتر مطالعات معماری و شهری کمک میکند. این مطالعه از یک رویکرد ترکیبی جامع استفاده میکند، که هر دو روش تحقیق کیفی و کمی را ادغام میکند. جمعآوری دادهها شامل بررسی، مصاحبه و مشاهدات است که با اسناد تاریخی و نظرات کارشناسان تکمیل میشود. این تحقیق بهصورت روششناختی ارزشهای معنایی تعبیه شده در معماری را با تمرکز بر عناصری مانند تعادل، تناسب و تداوم بررسی میکند. یافتهها ادغام هماهنگ طرحهای مدرن و سنتی در معماری لالهزار را در تعادل، تناسب و تداوم نشان میدهند. این مطالعه همچنین عناصر معنایی کلیدی مانند خط افق و ورودیها را شناسایی میکند که بهطور منحصربهفردی به هویت معماری خیابان لالهزار کمک میکنند. بهطور خلاصه، این تحقیق درک دقیقی از معماری معنایی لالهزار ارائه میدهد و تابلوی غنی از معانی را که بناهای تاریخی منتقل میکنند، روشن میکند. این درک برای حفظ میراث فرهنگی و هدایت مداخلات معماری آینده در زمینههای تاریخی مشابه بسیار مهم است.اهداف پژوهش:تحلیل و بررسی عمیق ساختارهای معنایی در ابعاد فیزیکی معماری لالهزار.بررسی و شناخت ارتباط معماری لالهزار با زمینههای فرهنگی و تاریخی.سؤالات پژوهش:ساختارهای معنایی در ابعاد فیزیکی معماری لالهزار به چه صورت است؟آیا بین معماری لالهزار و زمینههای فرهنگی و تاریخی ارتباطی وجود دارد؟
Abstract Art is an immensely popular, discussed form of art that often has the ability to depict the emotions of an artist. Many researchers have made attempts to study abstract art in the form of edge detection, brush stroke and emotion recognition algorithms using machine and deep learning. This papers describes the study of a wide distribution of abstract paintings using Generative Adversarial Neural Networks(GAN). GANs have the ability to learn and reproduce a distribution enabling researchers and scientists to effectively explore and study the generated image space. However, the challenge lies in developing an efficient GAN architecture that overcomes common training pitfalls. This paper addresses this challenge by introducing a modified-DCGAN (mDCGAN) specifically designed for high-quality artwork generation. The approach involves a thorough exploration of the modifications made, delving into the intricate workings of DCGANs, optimisation techniques, and regularisation methods aimed at improving stability and realism in art generation enabling effective study of generated patterns. The proposed mDCGAN incorporates meticulous adjustments in layer configurations and architectural choices, offering tailored solutions to the unique demands of art generation while effectively combating issues like mode collapse and gradient vanishing. Further this paper explores the generated latent space by performing random walks to understand vector relationships between brush strokes and colours in the abstract art space and a statistical analysis of unstable outputs after a certain period of GAN training and compare its significant difference. These findings validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, emphasising its potential to revolutionise the field of digital art generation and digital art ecosystem.
In this paper, we explore how performers' embodied interactions with a Neural Audio Synthesis model allow the exploration of the latent space of such a model, mediated through movements sensed by e-textiles. We provide background and context for the performance, highlighting the potential of embodied practices to contribute to developing explainable AI systems. By integrating various artistic domains with explainable AI principles, our interdisciplinary exploration contributes to the discourse on art, embodiment, and AI, offering insights into intuitive approaches found through bodily expression.
Tacita Dean’s art relies on the perception of liminalities, of moving in-between, of one medium unfolding into another through dispersed, “molecular” sensations, either subverting or augmenting impressions of art forms perceived on the level of larger, structural wholes. Arguing against the wide-angle perspective employed by media studies approaches and for a close-up analysis of an “affective intermediality” in Tacita Dean’s art, the author looks at the landmark exhibitions at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Academy in London organised in 2018. The article singles out some of the individual works in the context of the exhibition as a work of art, and focuses on questions like the cross-media phenomenon of the “cinematic”, the affective performativity of the various <i>dispositifs</i> employed in her installations of celluloid films, the affordances of Dean’s signature aperture-gate masking technique, as well as the relation between narrative cinema experienced in a theatrical space and film as the medium of a visual artist. The essay concludes with a brief analysis of her gallery film, <i>Antigone</i> (2018), unravelling an allegorical journey through cosmic time and atmospheric landscapes, viewed as an ode to the “blind vision” of photochemical film and as a synthesis of key features of her intermediality conceived as a strategy for the re-sensitization of mediums by approaching one art from the point of view of another.
We are interested in the so-called "combined effect" of two different kinds of nonlinear terms for semilinear wave equations in one space dimension. Recently, the first result with the same formulation as in the higher dimensional case has been obtained if and only if the total integral of the initial speed is zero, namely Huygens' principle holds. In this paper, we extend the nonlinear term to the general form including the product type. Such model equations are extremely meaningful only in one space dimension because the most cases in higher dimensions possess the global-in-time existence of a classical solution in the general theory for nonlinear wave equations. It is also remarkable that our results on the lifespan estimates are partially better than those of the general theory. This fact tells us that there is a possibility to improve the general theory which was expected complete more than 30 years ago.
This work proposes a complete methodology to colorize images of Fakemon, anime-style monster-like creatures. In addition, we propose algorithms to extract the line art from colorized images as well as to extract color hints. Our work is the first in the literature to use automatic color hint extraction, to train the networks specifically with anime-styled creatures and to combine the Pix2Pix and CycleGAN approaches, two different generative adversarial networks that create a single final result. Visual results of the colorizations are feasible but there is still room for improvement.
We prove the density property for generalized Calogero--Moser spaces with inner degrees of freedom. This allows us to describe the holomorphic automorphism group of these complex affine manifolds. These generalized Calogero--Moser spaces can also be understood as quiver varieties corresponding to moduli spaces of $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ instantons on a non-commutative $\mathbb{R}^4$.
In this work, we establish a direct connection between generative diffusion models (DMs) and stochastic quantization (SQ). The DM is realized by approximating the reversal of a stochastic process dictated by the Langevin equation, generating samples from a prior distribution to effectively mimic the target distribution. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the DM can serve as a global sampler for generating quantum lattice field configurations in two-dimensional $φ^4$ theory. We demonstrate that DMs can notably reduce autocorrelation times in the Markov chain, especially in the critical region where standard Markov Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) algorithms experience critical slowing down. The findings can potentially inspire further advancements in lattice field theory simulations, in particular in cases where it is expensive to generate large ensembles.
New scientific ideas drive progress, yet measuring scientific novelty remains challenging. We use natural language processing to detect the origin and impact of new ideas in scientific publications. To validate our methods, we analyze Nobel Prize-winning papers, which likely pioneered impactful new ideas, and literature review papers, which typically consolidate existing knowledge. We also show that novel papers have more intellectual neighbors published after them, indicating they are ahead of their intellectual peers. Finally, papers introducing new ideas, particularly those with greater follow-on reuse, attract more citations.
I introduce a survey of economic expectations formed by querying a large language model (LLM)'s expectations of various financial and macroeconomic variables based on a sample of news articles from the Wall Street Journal between 1984 and 2021. I find the resulting expectations closely match existing surveys including the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF), the American Association of Individual Investors, and the Duke CFO Survey. Importantly, I document that LLM based expectations match many of the deviations from full-information rational expectations exhibited in these existing survey series. The LLM's macroeconomic expectations exhibit under-reaction commonly found in consensus SPF forecasts. Additionally, its return expectations are extrapolative, disconnected from objective measures of expected returns, and negatively correlated with future realized returns. Finally, using a sample of articles outside of the LLM's training period I find that the correlation with existing survey measures persists -- indicating these results do not reflect memorization but generalization on the part of the LLM. My results provide evidence for the potential of LLMs to help us better understand human beliefs and navigate possible models of nonrational expectations.