Glossary 7.3 Masks and disguises Masks were used in classical Greek theatre to exaggerate expressions so that they could be seen in the large open-air amphitheatres. Most of us are familiar with the famous stereotypes for tragedy and comedy, but masks were also identified with particular types, whether comic or tragic, such as old man, or king, courtesan or queen. Masks have not been part of the dramatic conventions in Britain, but have been used to reflect social conventions of the Restoration period. The connotations of †Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit: 3.5 Emotions as passions I have already suggested that in stressing the connection between emotions and bodily changes, James might be seen as endorsing the intuitive picture of emotion that I set out earlier on. James's thesis could also be taken to sanction the view that emotions are passive, involuntary responses. Perceptual states are often regarded as passive, involuntary states. To say this is to say that we cannot exercise direct control over our perceptual states. If my mouth is full of pickled herring, 3.1 William James In 1890, the philosopher and psychologist William James published his influential work The Principles of Psychology. The book included a chapter on the emotions, in which James advanced a bold new thesis about the nature of the emotions. James's thesis has had an enormous influence on subsequent debate. Reading 1 is a short extract from James's chapter on the emotions. In the passage that precedes this extract, James castigates earlier psychologists who have written on the subjec References 2.5.1 The reductionist perspective Although theology had been thought of as ultimate knowledge, in post-Enlightenment thought, religion came to be seen by many in the West as a hindrance to progress and the advancement of human knowledge. Some came to believe that a rational and scientific way of looking at the world, unconstrained by religious belief and ‘superstition’, would lead to religion becoming redundant. In the nineteenth century, this idea was boosted by Darwinian theories of evolution. Charles Darwin’s < 1.10 Religion and the individual How formal or informal, how personal or impersonal, how loose or how tight, how casual or demanding the religious community is will depend on the form of religion, the extent to which it is enforced and the level of the individual's commitment to it. It is worth remembering that just as people have certain expectations of religion, religions tend to have certain expectations of adherents. The sociologists Rodney Stark and Charles Glock (1968) have argued that although religious organizations 1.8 Religion and spirituality A good example of polysemy can be found in the different ways in which people regard the terms ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’, and this is the subject of the first exercise below. Give some thought for a moment to Introduction There is a widespread perception in the West that we live in a secular age, an age in which religion is at best an optional extra, if not a false delusion completely out of place. However, religion still arouses passion and causes controversy; it controls and transforms lives. An informed understanding of the contemporary world thus requires an appreciation of the role of religion in shaping ideas, world-views and actions that have an impact on the social as well as on the personal life of th 3.3 The musicians at work 3.1.1 Background information Gamelan is the name given to a number of related musical ensembles in Indonesia. These ensembles comprise various types of instruments, the majority made of metal and most struck with beaters. There are several gamelan traditions, of which three are particularly well-known. These three are, moving from east to west, the Balinese, Javanese and Sundanese gamelans. (The term Javanese gamelan normally refers to the tradition developed in central Java; the Sundanese, who occupy the western part of 2.3 Conclusion As I warned you, it has been necessary to introduce here a fair amount of technical detail on North Indian music. You will not need to remember all of this – indeed, apart from a little basic terminology (such as rag and tal), some instrument names (tabla, tanpura) and the name of this genre (khyal), you may not come across any of these terms again in this unit. What I hope you will remember is what this has taught you about the way North Indian art music is put together, and what this tell 2.2 Notation The next thing to consider is the role of notation in this tradition. At one point on the video you saw Veena Sahasrabuddhe singing from a printed notation, from a collection first published in the first quarter of the twentieth century by the famous Indian musicologist Pt V.N. Bhatkhande (originally in the Marathi language, this is now best know in its Hindi translation in volume 5 of Bhatkhande, 1987). Actually, she did this at our request – she would not normally sing from notation, but 1.2 Different perspectives on the creation of music If a simple division into composition and improvisation is not going to be adequate, particularly when considering music beyond the Western art tradition, then what can we usefully say about the different ways in which music is created? A starting point might be to remind ourselves of the similarities between composition and improvisation. Both the improviser and the composer create music. Both of them, in doing so, draw on a range of skills and experience: their musical training and k 4.18.2 Information visualisation We read increasingly of the problem of information overload. Earlier, we emphasised the importance of designing appropriate information representations to assist human interpretation in order to create actionable knowledge. Information visualisation is concerned explicitly with designing representations using intuitive visual metaphors and graphics to highlight the most important aspects of information structures and processes. Information visualisation is a rapidly emerg 4.18.1 Data mining Data mining refers to techniques for analysing databases or information systems to try to identify hidden but significant patterns that are not possible to detect by standard querying of the database. Moxon defines data mining as follows: Data mining is a set of techniques used in an automated approach to exhaustively explore and bring to the surface complex relationships in very large datasets … most likely im 4.14.1 Metadata
Metadata is descriptive data about data. This has also come to refer to a way of tagging documents (on the Web or any other repository) with structured, descriptive information. For example, to describe a unit in B823, we would expect to have concepts such as title and author, but perhaps also prerequisite or core concepts. Translated into a metadata scheme, this might appear as follows (typically metadata fields use 4.13.2 Example: an ‘intelligent’ email system Let us work through an email example of making a system ‘smarter’. We are all familiar with the standardised fields in an email system: From, To, Subject. The computer needs the To/From information, expressed in a standard format, to direct the message to its addressees and allow them to reply. It has no concept of who the sender and recipient are, or what the Subject field means. We can imagine simple knowledge-level email categories which add status information to t 4.12.1 Communities of practice and technology Communities of practice are technical and social networks which set the context in which new knowledge arises in daily work, and determine how it is shared and interpreted, what counts as important knowledge and how people become recognised as members of that community: A good deal of new technology attends primarily to individuals and the explicit information that passes between them. To support the flow of knowledge,
Amphitheatre
a circular structure with seats rising behind and above each other around a central open space or arena; originating in classical Greece, they are the first known specifically designated theatre spaces.
Apostrophe
a rhetorical convention in which the speaker either addresses a dead or absent person, or a
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