June 7, 2012
A smile is a facial expression formed by flexing the muscles near both ends of the mouth. The smile can also be found around the eyes (‘Duchenne Smiling’). Among humans, it is an expression denoting pleasure, joy, happiness, or amusement, but can also be an involuntary expression of anxiety, in which case it is known as a grimace. Smiling is something that is understood by everyone despite culture, race, or religion; it is internationally known.
Cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communicating emotions throughout the world. But there are large differences between different cultures. A smile can also be spontaneous or artificial. Many biologists think the smile originated as a sign of fear. Primalogist Signe Preuschoft traces the smile back over 30 million years of evolution to a ‘fear grin’ stemming from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless. Biologists believe the smile has evolved differently among species and especially among humans. Continue reading →
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June 7, 2012
A cultural universal is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human condition. Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. Some anthropological and sociological theorists that take a cultural relativist perspective may deny the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are ‘cultural’ in the narrow sense, or in fact biologically inherited behavior is an issue of ‘nature versus nurture.’
Anthropological universals include: Language and Cognition (e.g. language employed to manipulate others, language employed to misinform or mislead, binary cognitive distinctions, color terms for black and white, figurative speech and metaphors, taboo utterances, and units of time); Society (e.g. personal names, families, laws, moral sentiments, promises, prestige inequalities, statuses and roles, leaders, property, gender roles, male dominated public/political realm, males more aggressive and more prone to violence and theft, marriage, incest avoidance, rape prohibitions, etiquette, inheritance rules, gift giving, redress of wrongs, sexual jealousy, shame, territoriality, visiting, and trade); Myth and Ritual (e.g. magical thinking, dream interpretation, proverbs, poetry, medicine, rites of passage, music, dance, play, toys, mourning, feasting, body adornment, and hairstyles); and Technology (e.g. shelter, control of fire, tools, weapons, containers, cooking, levers, tying and weaving).
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June 7, 2012
The evolutionary psychology of religion is the study of religious belief using evolutionary psychology principles. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain and cognition’s functional structure have been argued to have a genetic basis, and are therefore subject to the effects of natural selection and evolution. Like other organs and tissues, this functional structure should be universally shared amongst humans and should solve important problems of survival and reproduction. Evolutionary psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes, religion in this case, by understanding the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.
There is general agreement among scientists that a propensity to engage in religious behavior evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. There are two schools of thought. One is that religion itself evolved due to natural selection and is an adaptation, in which case religion conferred some sort of evolutionary advantage. Alternatively, religious beliefs and behaviors may have emerged as by-products of other adaptive traits without initially being selected for because of their own benefits (called spandrels).
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June 7, 2012
The evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution. Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived between four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor.
Anthropologist Barbara King argues that while non-human primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of ‘self’ and a concept of continuity. There is inconclusive evidence that Homo neanderthalensis may have buried their dead. Elephants are the only other species known to have any recognizable ritual surrounding death. Ecologist Marc Bekoff, however, argues that many species grieve death and loss. Continue reading →
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June 6, 2012
The Neo Geo is an arcade system board and home video game console released in 1990 by Japanese game company SNK. The MVS (Multi Video System), as the Neo Geo was known to the coin-operated arcade game industry, offered arcade operators the ability to put up to six different arcade titles into a single cabinet, a key economic consideration for operators with limited floorspace.
With its games stored on self-contained cartridges, a game-cabinet could be exchanged for a different game-title by swapping the game’s ROM-cartridge and cabinet artwork. Several popular franchise-series, including ‘Fatal Fury,’ ‘The King of Fighters,’ ‘Metal Slug,’ and ‘Samurai Shodown,’ were released for the platform. The Neo Geo system was also marketed as a very costly home console, commonly referred to today as the AES (Advanced Entertainment System). Continue reading →
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June 6, 2012
Sanwa Denshi (‘Three Harmonies Electronics Company’) is a general electronics manufacturer, but is best known internationally as a leading manufacturer of arcade parts; i.e. joysticks, buttons, coin feeds etc.
Its parts are commonly used in Japanese arcade machines and held in high regard by custom builders (especially in the fighting game community). Continue reading →
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June 6, 2012
Vedanta [veh-dahn-ta] was originally used a synonym for the part of the Vedas (Hindu scripture) known as the Upanishads (the appendix to the Vedic hymns, which are passed down orally). ‘Vedanta’ is the end of the Vedas both literally and metaphorically: it bookends the Veda, but is also in some ways ‘the purpose or goal [end] of the Vedas.’ By the 8th century CE, the word also came to be used to describe a group of philosophical traditions concerned with the self-realization by which one understands the ultimate nature of reality (Brahman, the godhead, the divine source of being, through which all emanates).
Vedanta can also be used as a noun to describe one who has mastered all four of the original Vedas. The Vedanta is also called Uttara Mimamsa, or the ‘latter enquiry’ or ‘higher enquiry,’ and is often paired with Purva Mimamsa, the ‘former enquiry’ (usually simply called Mimamsa), which deals with explanations of the fire-sacrifices of the Vedic mantras and the Brahmanas (expositions of the Vedas). Continue reading →
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June 5, 2012
Matt Mullican (b. 1951) is a American artist and son of abstract painter Lee Mullican. He received his BFA from CalArts in 1974, and rose to prominence as a member of the ‘Pictures Generation,’ a group of artists know for their appropriation of images from the consumer and media saturated age in which they grew to maturity.
Mullican’s work is concerned with systems of knowledge, meaning, language, and signification. Mullican also works with the relationship between perception and reality, between the ability to see something and the ability to represent it. Mullican has taught and lectured at Columbia University, The Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), The London Institute, Chelsea College of Art and Design, and The School of Visual Arts (NY).
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June 5, 2012
Jim Woodring (b. 1952) is an American cartoonist, fine artist, writer, and toy designer. He is best known for the dream-based comics he published in his magazine ‘Jim,’ and as the creator of the cartoon character Frank, a bipedal, bucktoothed animal of uncertain species with a short tail, described by Woodring as a ‘generic anthropomorph’ and ‘naive but not innocent,’ ‘capable of sinning by virtue of not knowing what he’s really about.’ The character design is reminiscent those of old American animated shorts from the 1920s and 1930s, such as from Fleischer Studios.
Since he was a child, Woodring has experienced hallucinatory ‘apparitions,’ which have inspired much of his surreal work. He keeps an ‘autojournal’ of his dreams, which have formed the basis of some of his comics. His most famous creation is fictional—the pantomime comics set in the universe he calls the Unifactor, usually featuring Frank. Continue reading →
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June 5, 2012
assume vivid astro focus (avaf) is both an alias of Brazilian-born New York-based artist Eli Sudbrack, and the name of an international group of visual and performance artists, with French multimedia artist Christophe Hamaide-Pierson as a main collaborators. Sudbrack was born in 1968 and moved to New York in 1998.
He exhibited there in 2000, at which time he used the name Superastrolab, switching to assume vivid astro focus in 2001, the name always rendered in lowercase. The name derives from two musical sources: Throbbing Gristle’s album ‘Assume Power Focus,’ and the band Ultra Vivid Scene. avaf’s work includes painting, drawing, photography, film, and digital technology.
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June 5, 2012
DEARRAINDROP is a Brooklyn-based artist collective formed in Virginia Beach that incorporates diverse disciplines to create multifaceted sculptures and installations. Their work includes painting, collage, video art, large-scale, interactive installation pieces, and hand-fabricated musical instruments.
Part of the collective’s operating philosophy is modeled on the ideal that the greatest human capability is the ability to work together to achieve a larger goal. Joe Grillo and Laura Grant founded DEARRAINDROP in 1998 as a clothing line, Billy Grant joined subsequently. They have also worked with digital artists Owen Osborn and Chris Kuscinski, as well as painter Alika Herreshoff.
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June 5, 2012
Kenny Scharf (b. 1958) is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, whose works consist of popular culture based art with made up science-related backgrounds.
Scharf came to prominence in the 80s interdisciplinary art scene making sparkly, pop-ed, and monstrous paintings and installations. Continue reading →
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