July 3, 2011
Manqué [mahng-key] (feminine, manquée) is a term used in reference to a person who has failed to live up to a specific expectation or ambition. It is usually used in combination with a profession: for example, a career civil servant with political prowess who nonetheless never attained political office might be described as a ‘politician manqué.’
It can also be used relative to a specific role model; a second-rate method actor might be referred to as a ‘Marlon Brando manqué.’ The term derives from the past participle of the French verb manquer (‘to miss’). In English, it is used in the manner of a French adjective: coming after the noun it is modifying instead of before.
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June 30, 2011
Action origami is origami that can be animated. The original traditional action model is the flapping bird. Typically models where the final assembly involves some special action, for instance blowing up a waterbomb, are also classed as action origami., More rarely models like paper plane and spinners which have no moving parts are included. Some traditional action origami involved cuts but modern models typically are built with no cuts.
Action toys include birds or butterflies with flapping wings, beaks that peck, and frogs that hop, as well as popular traditional models like the fortune teller. Bangers are models that make a nose when flicked down hard. Some models are far more complex than can be classed as toys. They are built to amaze and astonish. For instance Robert J. Lang’s ‘Bassist, Pianist, and Violinist’ is a set of action models where each one plays an instrument when pulled on appropriately.
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June 30, 2011
Tutting is a contemporary abstract interpretive street dance style modeled after Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is performed with attention to the musics’ rhythm by altering the position of the body and limbs in a synchronized, robotic manner. The size of poses, or tuts, varies from large body tuts to intricate finger tuts. The transitions between poses can be elaborate and expressive. Moreover, certain sub-styles have emerged such as boxing (creating and manipulating box-like or rectangular shapes predominantly with ones arms) and a liquid-influenced style that some tutters use to make the joints appear as hinges that can then be manipulated by another body part.
Both techniques are special applications of the mime concept ‘fixed point.’ Much as a mime conveys a wall by always keeping one hand on the wall, or shows a rope by always keeping one hand on the rope, a tutter shows a shape by always maintaining at least one side of the shape. To do this, a tutter will use his body parts to assemble a shape segment by segment and disassemble it in the same piecemeal fashion. The electronic dance community has played a large role in the increasing robustness of tutting due to the more abstract nature of its own predominant style, liquiding. Tutting is highly regarded in both the electronic and popping communities for its technical depth and distinctiveness.
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June 30, 2011
The Bildungsroman [bil-doongz-roh-mahn] (German: ‘education novel’) is a genre of novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which character change is thus extremely important. The term was coined by philologist (scholar of language in written historical sources) Karl Morgenstern in 1819, and later famously reprised by German historian Wilhelm Dilthey in 1905. The birth of the genre is normally dated to the publication of Goethe’s ‘The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister’ in 1795 in Germany. A Bildungsroman tells about the growing up or coming of age of a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son going out in the world to seek his fortune.
Typically, in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on his journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist who is in turn welcomed back into the fold. There are many variations and subgenres: An Entwicklungsroman (‘development novel’) is a story of general growth rather than self-cultivation. An Erziehungsroman (‘education novel’) focuses on training and formal schooling, while a Künstlerroman (‘artist novel’) is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.
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June 30, 2011
‘Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth’ is a 1919 novel by Herman Hesse. It is a bildungsroman, a novel showing a character’s maturation from youth to adulthood. The book was first published under the pseudonym ‘Emil Sinclair,’ the name of the narrator of the story, but Hesse was later revealed to be the author.
Emil Sinclair is a young boy raised in a bourgeois home, amid what is described as a ‘Scheinwelt,’ a play on words that means ‘world of light’ as well as ‘world of illusion.’ Emil’s entire existence can be summarized as a struggle between two worlds: the show world of illusion (related to the Hindu concept of maya) and the real world, the world of spiritual truth. In the course of the novel, accompanied and prompted by his mysterious classmate ‘Max Demian,’ he detaches from and revolts against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self.
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June 30, 2011
‘Abraxas‘ [uh-brak-suhs] is the second studio album by the latin band Santana. Consolidating their live success at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, and the interest generated by their first album the band took some time to issue a follow-up. Released in 1970, the album’s mix of rock, blues, jazz, salsa and other influences made it a classic that defined Santana’s early sound, and showed a musical maturation from their first album. The album’s cover features the 1961 painting ‘Annunciation,’ by Mati Klarwein.
Abraxas is the name of a deity in Gnostic cosmology. The title of the album comes from a line from Herman Hesse’s book ‘Demian.’ Abraxas is used as a symbol throughout the text, idealizing the harmonious union of all that is good and evil in the world. Demian argues that the Christian God is an insufficient god; it rules over all that is wholesome, but there is another half of the world. The symbol of Abraxas appears as a bird breaking free from an egg or a globe.
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June 29, 2011
Hypervigilance is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. Hypervigilance is also accompanied by a state of increased anxiety which can cause exhaustion. Other symptoms include: abnormally increased arousal, a high responsiveness to stimuli and a constant scanning of the environment for threats. Hypervigilance can be a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and various types of anxiety disorder. It is distinguished from paranoid states, such as in schizophrenia, which can seem superficially similar, but are characteristically different.
Hypervigilance is differentiated from dysphoric hyperarousal in that the person remains cogent and aware of his or her surroundings. In dysphoric hyperarousal the PTSD victim may lose contact with reality and re-experience the traumatic event verbatim. Where there have been multiple traumas, a person may become hypervigilant and suffer severe anxiety attacks intense enough to induce a delusional state where the effect of the traumas overlap: e.g., one remembered firefight may seem too much like another for the person to maintain calm. This can result in the ‘thousand yard stare’ (a phrase originally coined to describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary warrior).
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June 29, 2011
Samizdat [sah-miz-daht] (Russian for ‘self-published’) was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader.
This grassroots practice to evade officially-imposed censorship was fraught with danger as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials.
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June 28, 2011
In typography, rivers, or rivers of white, are gaps appearing to run down a paragraph of text, due to a coincidental alignment of spaces. They can occur regardless of the spacing settings, but are most noticeable with wide inter-word spaces caused by full text justification or monospaced fonts.
Typographers try to minimize or eliminate the river effect. They can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down (top to bottom) to examine the text. From this perspective, the eye is less likely to recognize words and the type can be viewed more readily as an overall pattern. Other related terms are ‘lakes’ and ‘holes,’ which refer to a cluster of adjacent or intertwined rivers that create a lighter area within a block of type.
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June 27, 2011
Neophile [nee-uh-fahyl] is a term used by counterculture cult writer Robert Anton Wilson to describe a particular type of personality. A neophile or neophiliac can be defined as a personality type characterized by a strong affinity for novelty.
Neophiles/Neophiliacs have the following basic characteristics: The ability to adapt rapidly to extreme change. A distaste or downright loathing of tradition, repetition, and routine. A tendency to become bored quickly with old things. A desire, bordering on obsession in some cases, to experience novelty. A corresponding and related desire to create novelty by creating or achieving something and/or by stirring social or other forms of unrest.
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June 24, 2011
A fictional crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings, or universes into the context of a single story. They can arise from legal agreements between the relevant copyright holders, or because of unauthorized efforts by fans, or even amid common corporate ownership.
Crossovers generally occur between properties owned by a single holder, but they can more rarely involve properties from different holders, provided that the inherent legal obstacles can be overcome. They may also involve using characters that have passed into the public domain with those that currently enjoy copyright protection.
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June 23, 2011
The dolly zoom effect is an unsettling in-camera special effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception in film. In its classic form, the camera is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice-versa.
Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject.
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