Connections:
- Try to finish each spot on the map at the first time.
- Agree with the educating function of museum.
- The Met has a large number of collections but lacks some peerless work.
Month: May 2016
Instantiations–Week 1
If I’m an alien visiting Earth, what’s the main reason for this unknown adventure calculated by light-year? I bet it’s nothing about entertainment. It’s more like a prelude to an ambitious invasion or advanced science research. Either way my focus object should be human, the most intellectual animal on Earth. It’s a long term project. I don’t want to be invisible, I’d like to be a participant more than an observer. I prefer to communicate to them directly since I believe this is a more efficient and effective way to experience their daily life and get my first-hand information. I don’t want to be treated as a dangerous outsider. But I definitely look so different. Lucky it’s four millennia ago, an era deities are lived in human’s stories and songs. To present the ties of blood, I must have some part resemble a human. And nothing is more persuasive than a human’s head. Probably have three eyes to develop the fantasy. I might have a giant animal body to show my sacred origin and great power. I prefer to be a lion king, the representation of sun and forest. My size is much larger than ordinary people, so I’ll easily be the center of a group. As for my gender, female is more suitable for the matriarchal society.
All myths are started with disasters or “requests”. I need to pick an appropriate time for my debut, like a natural disaster, an endless war or an epidemic disease. My existence brings the light and hope for those desperate people who have suffered long years’ of pain and misery.
After my appearance, they tend to worship me and even bow to my power. I start to live with them as their guardian goddess. People come to see me with sincere begs. I’ll sit in my temple, listen and answer their requests. Occasionally I’ll tour around as a real king to inspect their life and reinforce my power as well. They can’t lie to me because deadly punishments and curses. Faithless people will be stapled up on the pillar inside the temple as a symbol of crime, waiting for the natural torment.
After I gather enough information and finish my job, I decide to design a perfect ending for my leaving. It should be a miracle happened in a normal day without any signs. At night, a bright light captures me and leads me up to the “heaven” with the accompany of divine tune. Only some people will witness this scene to leave room for imagination.
Origins of Architectural Pleasure
“Refuge and prospect” offer a protective place of concealment close to a foraging and hunting ground. “Enticement” invites the safe exploration of an information-rich setting where worthwhile discoveries await. “Peril” elicits an emotion of pleasurable fear and so tests and increases our competence in the face of danger: thus the attraction of a skyscraper or a house poised over a vertiginous ravine. “Order and complexity” tease our intuitions for sorting complex information into survival-useful categories.
Grant Hildebrand’s thesis in Origins of Architectural Pleasure uses Darwinian concepts of origin and evolution, sifted through recent theories of biophilia and transdisciplinary inquiries into humanity, to argue that the pleasure we experience in some architectural spaces is directly linked to various congenital behaviors used in the assessment of a place.
These form the root of a universal, species-wide pleasure principle: the desire to have a place of refuge from which one can survey a broad prospect; enthusiasm in being the subject of an enticement, tempered by an occasional delight in peril; and the need for the intellectually soothing, mildly stimulating antinomies of simultaneous complexity and order.
Hildebrand adopts British geographer Jay Appleton’s concepts of a prospect-refuge model of the environment. Refuge being not only a place of protection, but of concealment; prospect the opportunity for clear vistas and command. Paradoxi-cally these two opposing conditions provide a sense of comfort, generating at once a feeling of intimacy and control.
When illustrating an architectural principle he entitles “enticement” with the appeal of light levels in Chartes cathedral, he states, “One moves and seeks, drawn by the light of the window’s complex brilliance, yet never fully arrives.”
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh: An Epic Obsession by Theodore Ziolkowski
The author tries to seek an understanding of the reasons underlying the conspicuous recent obsession with Gilgamesh: The epic of Gilgamesh was written in an obscure Assyrian, people read it almost wholly second hand and based on translations and adaptations. It was only after the Second World War that the epic of Gilgamesh began to make itself felt more broadly in a variety of genres; and in works by writers, painters, and musicians who succeeded the generation known as the classic “moderns”. It became a positive statement consistent with the postwar optimism of a generation confident of its ability to tame the gods and nature to its own useful purposes.
- Feminist writers and critics, scrutinizing the work as ancient evidence for the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy, cast a critical eye on the Sumerian attitudes toward women.
- Gilgamesh’s search for understanding regarding the death of Enkidu provides the pattern for the hero’s quest to determine the murderer of his friend.
- Christian Kracht’s 1979 (2001), in which the epic provides the pattern for the homoerotic theme set against the background of the Iranian Revolution.
Custom Masculinity and Feminism in The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Book of Genesis
The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Book of Genesis remain the two most cited stories of creation in classic literature. The relationship between Eve and Adam is similar to that between Enkidu and the harlot. In this sense, both stories have far-reaching implications for understanding the role of women and men in societies that created those stories. In both stories, a woman is an agent of seduction and change: the unnamed harlot seduces Enkidu to bring him to the world of humans, while Eve persuades Adam to taste the apple of sin, thus causing their rejection by God. In both stories, sexuality plays one of the primary roles in the relationship between the man and the woman, and sexuality is primarily responsible for the events that follow the act of seduction. In both The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Book of Genesis, women are the carriers of negativity and even evil: by trusting themselves into the hands of women, men in these stories face isolation and rejection from those who used to be their support and assistance. However, while The Epic of Gilgamesh positions the woman as subordinate to the man, The Book of Genesis presents an entirely different picture, in which a woman is the center of the universe and the triumph of creation, whose role of the carer and mother enable her to retain this leading feminine position in the world of masculinity.
The Heroic Pattern in the Epic of Gilgamesh by Martin S Olivier
The hero is typically born of a royal virgin and a king (where one of the two is typically a god), we are told that Gilgamesh is the son of Ninsun — a goddess — and a priest (Sandars 1972, p. 122). He is two thirds god and one third man.
Gilgamesh’s quests include the slaying of Humbaba and of the Bull of Heaven — typical actions for a hero.There are striking parallels between the hero’s typical journey to the underworld and Gilgamesh’s journey to Utnapishtim: Gilgamesh’s journey over the waters of death is very similar to the journey into Hades in Greek myths.
However, the hero also typically marries a princess and becomes a king after his quests, whereas Gilgamesh is already king at the beginning of the Epic and no marriage is described.The third phase deals with the demise of the hero. Gilgamesh’s fatal mistake is the slaying of the Bull of Heaven.
According to the pattern, the hero now dies under strange circumstances, is not buried and is not succeeded by his children. The Epic gives little information about these aspects of Gilgamesh’s death. It does, however, clearly state that Gilgamesh was indeed buried in a tomb. Finally, holy sites are typically devoted to the hero; again the Epic is silent, but, as has been pointed out above, Gilgamesh was indeed later honoured as a god.
Mind Download–Reaction
Mind Download–Uncomfortable Question
What do you do when you’ve become the person you hate?
Mind Download–My Own Behavior
“Tomorrow is another day.”
Mind Download–The Nature of Entertainment
The real life sucks.
Mind Download–Political Statement
Ancient China Political Strategists–School of Diplomacy
The School of Diplomacy (纵横家) was a political and diplomatic clique during the Warring States period of Chinese history (476-220 BCE).
The origins of the terms “Vertical” and “Horizontal” are geographic and are based on either a North-South axis (i.e. vertical) or an East-West axis (i.e. horizontal). Thus the six states allied on the North-South axis were known as the “Vertical Alliance” whilst those on the East-West axis aligned with the State of Qin were termed the “Horizontal Alliance”.
“Zong” indicates the “He Zong”, or Vertical Alliance, the “weak multitude against the one strong side”, made up of the six states of Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao and Wei united against Qin. “Heng” indicates the “Lian Heng”, or Horizontal Alliance, the “one strong side to smash the weak multitude”, thus illustrating the different diplomatic policies of the two sides.
Mind Download–Text
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligence/
As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. We’ll spend the next decade—indeed, perhaps the next century—in a permanent identity crisis, constantly asking ourselves what humans are for. In the grandest irony of all, the greatest benefit of an everyday, utilitarian AI will not be increased productivity or an economics of abundance or a new way of doing science—although all those will happen. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.
Summer Seminar 