ŠVADLENOVÁ, Jana. The phenomenon of tattoo, body as a socio-cultural and art document. Prague, 2013. Thesis. Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Education, Department of Fine Arts. Supervisor PhDr. Jan Šmíd, Ph.D., 126 pages. Thesis "The phenomenon of tattoo, body as a socio-cultural and art document" is about tattoo as not only a form of body decoration, but as a possible theme in arts teaching. The author tried to map the history of this ancient ornamentation, to justify rising interest in it in the present and last but not least, tried to find a way how to present it to elementary school students in a comprehensible way. The thesis includes examples of possible reasons and ways of tattoo, while trying to find a connection to rituals (traditional and modern). The important part is finding options how to include this topic in the arts teaching at elementary schools and how to approximate possible pros and cons of this ornamentation.

In this diploma thesis I deal with the issue of a musical sign. My goal is to introduce theory of musical sign, which would primarily address the question of its object. It seems that the object of the musical representation is the most problematic part of this thesis. I have based my arguments on theories of Eduard Hanslick, Susanne Langer and Felicia Kruse. Also, the emotions are heavily connected to this question. I attempt to find out if emotions may be the actual object of musical sign and what should its character be. I do so through a critical assesement of the above mentioned theories. The hypotethical outcome of this thesis such theory of musical sign which would address the dilema of musical emotions but also a paradox of composer - listener part in musical representation.

Le parallèle entre Król-Duch de Juliusz Słowacki et Aurélia de Gérard de Nerval est une comparaison narratologique des deux œuvres (en dehors de l’étude d'influences réciproques, comme de l’étude de sources). Le rapprochement des deux auteurs (enrichi par l’apparition, en arrière-fond, de Novalis - toujours dans la perspective d'un parallèle) se construit autour du thème de l’écriture de la révélation onirique. Elle laisse apparaître une rupture fondamentale entre le contenu de la révélation – une existence continue du moi - et la forme discontinue et inachevée sous laquelle elle s’exprime. L’autobiographie onirique qui raconte l’expérience indicible d’une « seconde vie » infinie, entrevue en rêve, apparaît ainsi comme un seuil narratif qui s’interpose entre le fragment et la totalité. Dans les trois parties de l’étude comparée, consacrées respectivement aux modèles de composition, aux modalités de l’inachèvement et aux profils narratifs des deux textes, est posée la question de la limite entre les images mentales d’une extrême subjectivité et leur avatar textuel. Le rapport entre l’invisible et sa représentation y apparaît au travers du rapport entre le rêve du moi infini et le récit de ce rêve, qui se construit comme une perpétuelle réincarnation du « je » en tant que sujet. / « Dream is a second life », Gérard de Nerval writes. « I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread ». He sees dream and real life as asunder though parallel compartments, while Juliusz Słowacki sees them a continuum, without precise boundary where one ends and the other begins. But they do agree on one point: poetry and dream are intimately united.Juliusz Słowacki’s Król-Duch and Nerval’s Aurélia have in common to be oneiric biographies, i.e. written from naked truth as revealed in dreams, where « life is free of space and time ». The outcome is well-nigh as disconnected and incoherent as dream itself. Words cannot represent adequately heavens opened. It is somewhat uncanny that, in both cases, the fragments of the « infeasible book » look like an initiation into sacred mysteries.

The Massacre of Chios (1824) by Eugéne Delacroix illustrates the titular genocide from the Greek War of Independence. This genocide was a veritable razing of the entire island by Ottoman Turks in 1822. Today, a replica of Delacroix's painting resides on the island inside the entrance of the Chios Byzantine Museum, located in a converted mosque built on the ruins of a Christian church. This site is a case for the existence of non-Western temporalities, including liturgical and Aegean temporalities, as they pertain to the commemoration of the massacre through interaction with the replica. These temporalities are not causal or linear as in the West. On Chios, everyday interactions with history happen through the orthodox devotions and concomitant emotions of the present, with temporally transcendent icons, relics, and rituals promoting the imbrication of temporalities. The layout of the mosque, in its simplicity, conforms roughly to the plan of a Greek Orthodox church with the museum space organized to emphasize this, encouraging a liturgical temporality. Given that Chiots remember the massacre victims as tantamount to saints, the saturation of Christian elements in Delacroix's composition communes with the museum space to create an active site of memory, with the replica functioning like the Holy Greek Orthodox icons in the adjacent room, inviting a liturgical temporality. A comparable site, Agio Minas, a major massacre site in Southern Chios, also exhibits genocide victims as saints through eikonic imagery; here, victims' remains are displayed as relics alongside an icon of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, setting the stage, so to speak, for the naos where blood still stains the stone floor. In a similar way, the replica located in the "narthex" of the museum mediates a preparatory experience that overlays a narrative of Christian martyrdom onto the museum's "naos," where visitors engage with the icon collection. The proximity of replica and Byzantine collection overlays Chios' destruction with that of Constantinople's, collapsing time and presenting the two as related events. The Chios Byzantine Museum exemplifies what anthropologist Nicolas Argenti has termed "Aegean temporality," where past and present overlap in physical and incorporeal sites of memory. Orthodox icons do just that: transcendent and a-temporal by nature, their efficacy lies in bringing the pictured figure into the present moment and "enfleshing" remembrance as a current reality. The replica Massacre of Chios likewise acts as an active a-temporal object. Because of affordances granted by the narthex space and eikonic associations, it sacralizes the museum space into a living site of memory. With Aegean temporality facilitating a constant re-experiencing of the massacre, the massacre's presence and potency is not something left in the past. The painting's status as a semi-icon supports the immediacy of the massacre, as the viewer spiritually interacts with the image in the present.

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Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) are large structures consisting of depleted plasma that generally form on the nightside of Earth's ionosphere along magnetic field lines in the upper thermosphere/ionosphere. While referred to as `bubbles', EPBs tend to be longer along magnetic latitudes and narrower along magnetic longitudes which are on the order of thousands and hundreds of kilometers, respectively. EPBs are a well documented occurrence with observations spanning many decades. As such, much is known about their general behavior, seasonal variation of occurrences, increasing/decreasing occurrences with increasing/decreasing solar activity, and their ability to interact and interfere with radio waves such as GPS. This dissertation expands on this understanding by focusing on the detection and tracking of EPBs in the upper thermosphere/ionosphere along equatorial to low latitudes. To do this, far ultraviolet (FUV) emission observations of the recombination of O$^+$ with electrons via the Global-Scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission are analyzed. GOLD provides consistent data from geostationary orbit with the eastern region of the Americas, Atlantic, and western Africa. The optical data can be used to pick out gradients in brightness along the 135.6 nm wavelength which correlate with the location of EPBs in the nightside ionosphere. The dissertation provides a novel method to look at and analyze 2-dimensional data with inconsistent time-steps for EPB detection and tracking. During development, preprocessing of large scale (multiple years) data proved to be the largest time sync. To that end, this dissertation tests the possibility of using convolution neural networks for detection of EPBs with the end goal of reducing the amount of preprocessing necessary. Further, data from the Ionospheric Connection Explorer's (ICON's) ion velocity meter (IVM) are compared to EPBs detected via GOLD to understand how the ambient plasma around the EPBs behave. Along with the ambient plasma, zonal and meridional thermospheric winds observed by ICON's Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging (MIGHTI) instrument are analyzed in conjunction with the same EPBs to understand how winds coincident with EPBs behave. An analysis of winds before EPBs form is also done to observe the potential for both zonal and meridional winds' ability to suppress and amplify EPB formation. / Doctor of Philosophy / Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) are large structures that generally form during post- sunset along Earth's magnetic equator. While referred to as `bubbles', EPBs tend to be thousands of kilometers from north to south and hundreds of kilometers from east to west and well over a thousands kilometers in altitude. EPBs are a well documented occurrence with observations spanning many decades. This includes their ability to interfere with radar and GPS. This dissertation expands on the scientific community's understanding by focusing on the detection and tracking of EPBs along the magnetic equator. To do this, observations from the NASA Global-Scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission are analyzed. GOLD provides consistent observations looking over the eastern region of the Americas, Atlantic, and western Africa. A unique method to look at and analyze this data for EPB detection and tracking is developed. This dissertation also tests the possibility of using machine learning for detection of EPBs. Further, data from the NASA Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission is compared to EPBs detected via GOLD to understand how the behavior of the upper atmosphere and the conductive region therein, known as the ionosphere, interact with the EBPs themselves.

This thesis is a reception study of Susanne Ostens book, theatre play and children’s film Flickan, mamman och demonerna. The study aims to examine how proffesional crituiqe, published in daily press and journals, handles the crituiqes genre conventions with the theorie that if the cirtic averts from the crituiqes genre conventions that their/societys doxa on what we expect from children’s art will become more visible, and the inescapable follow up question: does this ecpectation mirror how we perceive children and their capabilities?  The theorie is an investigation of the professor and litterary scholar Anders Johansson’s essay Slitas itu publisched Critica Obscura: Litteraturkritiska essäer, where Johansson makes the claim that socitys doxa will become visible if the ciric does not follow the crituiqes genre conventions and that this will lead to an erosion of the crituiqes porpose. Johanssons theory is acompanied by, amongst others, Jaquline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, Or, The Impossibility of Children's Fiction, and Perry Nodelmans article “The Other: Orientalism, Colonialism, and Children’s Literature” pulished in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly17, no, chosen since the thesis as a whole practices a post colonial reading of the chosen crituiqe. The result of the investigation is that: where the critic averts from the crituiques genre conventions, and involves their own oppinions without porper motivation (E.g. where affective failures has occurred) in the text, a clear pattern of our conteporary doxa of how we perceive children and how the art made for them should behave/be. The pattern/tendancy found is that children’s art is expected to have a didactic value, that the piece of art should mirror the childs “reality”, have an indisputable and understandable point, and not evoke too many negative feelings. The thesis is woven, in a esseyistic style, with hard-to-grasp memories of the authors childhood and the academic form.

In this dissertation on Nat Nakasa I argue, in Chapter 1, that he is one of South Africa's first literary flaneurs. Walking the city as an urban spectator, part journalist, part sociologist, his modernist writings of the metropolis celebrate Johannesburg and also place him in a broad international context. His `tactics of the habitat', in Foucault's phrase, become subversive ruses, a navigation through the cultural seam of South Africa in the 1960s, and this approach offers an alternative to a reductionist anti-apartheid critique. Chapter 2 analyses the excavation of his memory and subsequent elevation to media icon, with the naming of the SANEF Award for Media Integrity after him. Chapter 3 discusses how his auto/biographical writings and representation of self and other contribute to `making history's silences speak'. Finally in chapter 4, I discuss his elusive identity as part of the Drum generation, an insider/outsider, and his exile and suicide in America. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This thesis research is concerned with the exploration, design, and validation of novel haptic technologies and signals that feel natural and meaningful in a calm and pleasant way. Our ultimate goal is to expand the possibilities of human-machine interaction by developing a single tactile display and a set of signals through a systematic design approach. It is generally a challenge to evoke a broad range of emotions with vibrotactile stimulation, especially at low signal intensities. During the first part of this thesis research, three types of prototypes were developed and explored using novel haptic technologies. The first was a circular array braille display consisting of eight small six-pin braille modules. The forty-eight pins were arranged in a circular shape to deliver circular tactile information such as time and direction. The second was a braille stick consisting of sixteen six-pin braille modules arranged in a row. The entire display could be easily grasped in the hand so that tactile information can be easily accessible. The third was a 3-by-3 electroactive polymer actuator array driven at high voltages that gives a subtle “tapping” feel on the skin. However, each of the three prototypes suffered from a limited range of expression and was not pursued further.<br> After the initial prototyping efforts, a 2-by-2 vibrotactile display, the palmScape, was conceived and developed. Custom-designed stimulation patterns based on natural phenomena that feel calm and pleasant were designed and implemented with the palmScape. We use text labels to set the context for the vibrotactile icons that attempt to capture and expresses natural metaphors through variations in signal amplitude, frequency, duration, rhythm, modulation, spatial extent, as well as slow movements. Fourteen participants evaluated twenty vibrotactile icons by rating the perceived valence and arousal levels. The twenty stimuli included sixteen custom-designed vibrotactile icons from this thesis research and four reference patterns from two published studies. The results show that our custom-designed patterns were rated at higher valence levels than the corresponding reference signals at similar arousal ratings. Five of the sixteen vibrotactile icons from this research occupied the fourth quadrant of the valence-arousal space that corresponds to calm and pleasant signals. These findings support the validity of the palmScape display and our signal design approach for achieving a calm and pleasant experience and the possibility of reaching a broader range of expressiveness with vibrotactile signals.<br> Future studies will continue with the design of signals that can express a broader range of metaphors and emotions through the palmScape, and build an emotional evaluation database that can be combined with other modalities. Our work can be further expanded to support an immersive experience with naturalistic-feeling vibrotactile effects and broaden the expressiveness of human-computer interfaces in media consumption, gaming, and other communicative application domains.

This thesis deals with designing of reality during the Ice Hockey World Championship 2011 in Bratislava, for which Robert Zaruba devised a unique project built on the myth of friendship and cohesion of the Czechs and the Slovaks.The theoretical basis of this work is the social construction of reality, according to which the reality in our minds is shaped by society. In the analysis of the structure of the broadcast channel CT 4, I am trying to find out how much does ice hockey push on viewer's mind and what is the amount of the Czech Republic and Slovakia national teams involvement. As a means of construction and reconstruction of the fictional world, the world created by its author, narrative is applied. The narratives typical for the structure of the CT4 are descibed in the next part in order to find a narrative that could serve as a template for the narrative of the championship. The final form of the narrative is shaped both by the narrator (presenter,commentator), who verbally describes what is happening and also the director whois responsible for the visual composition of the story. Features used in brodcasting, whose final analysis leads to the ability of distinction of the characters creating on the basis of similarity and context of highlighted object or those having arisen from anagreement among...