Making sense of the senses across species boundaries: designing the Animal Senses gallery at National Museums Scotland

As one of a suite of natural science galleries in the National Museum of Scotland, Animal Senses presents a comprehensive overview of how animals have evolved senses as they have adapted to different ecological niches in order to find food or avoid predation. Using different sensory channels, they also have evolved means of communication to attract mates, deter rivals, and remain hidden from predators and prey. Some of the most extraordinary examples of evolution are those which mimic the appearance of another unrelated species or some feature of the environment such as a thorn on a bush or a piece of coral. New taxidermy and models, engaging text presented hierarchically, and fun interactives were developed specifically for this gallery in order to present an up-to-date review of senses and communication. However, its real strength is the wide array of real specimens and life-size models which allow visitors to see what these animals really look like and how big they are, experiences which cannot be emulated by books or electronic media. By taking a thematic approach, we have created an unrivalled opportunity to compare animals from different taxonomic groups to see how they have solved the problems of life by evolving similar structures or completely different ones in order to find food, avoid being eaten, navigate, find mates and deceive rivals and predators.     

费希特《论学者的使命》与学生培养

德国哲学家费希特在《论学者的使命》的演讲里阐述了学者的三种追求:信仰、理性和道德。对学生的培养也应从这三个方面入手:教育者要引导学生忠于自己的信仰;教育者要帮助学生形成批判的意识;教育者要养成学生在专业上追求卓越的意识。     

A sensorial No Man’s Land: corporeality and the Western Front during the First World War

ABSTRACT

During the First World War in France and Belgium life on the Western Front was predominantly lived below the surface. The proliferation of hitherto unimaginably powerful weaponry rendered surface existence untenable. This retreat into the earth necessitated a complete revision of soldiers’ somatic engagement with their immediate environment. In my work as an archeologist of modern conflict landscapes, I have devised a methodology which combines archeological exploration with participant sensation or “sensory ethnography” to interrogate these complex, ambiguous and often dangerous subterranean places. In this article I show that as the war destroyed it also created new realities in which the senses were forced to work together like never before under the pressures of industrialized warfare. My work suggests how a holistic investigation (grounded in sensorality) of particular modern conflict landscapes can take the form of an ethnographic archeology, or an ethnography of the dead, demonstrating the potential for archeology and anthropology to work together in the increasingly interdisciplinary field of modern conflict studies.     

《百种神秘感官》中的他者

《百种神秘感官》是美国当代著各的华裔女作家谭恩美的第三部小说,具有浓厚的后殖民主义特色,为当今漂泊异乡的现代人提供了精神慰藉。从后殖民主义文艺批评视角出发,对作品中的他者现象进行解读,探讨通过文化交流和杂糅方式得到人类普遍友爱,彰显各民族之间的和谐关系,为当今全球化语境下流散民族的文化身份寻求和各民族之间的文化交流提供启发和借鉴。     

The senses and virtual environments

Designers and developers of immersive 3D virtual environments typically aim to faithfully recreate real-world scenarios yet, traditional emphasis is placed on recreating the visual, and to a much lesser extent, auditory scenes, while ignoring the other senses despite their importance in the real world. However, simulation all of the senses in real-time with a high level of fidelity is still not feasible and recent work has shown that high fidelity reproduction of the real world doesn’t necessarily lead to the greatest user experience and outcomes. In the real world, senses interact with one another and alter each other’s processing and ultimately perception. An understanding of this multi-modal interactivity can, therefore, inform our development of virtual environments. Through perceptual-based rendering, we can exploit multimodal effects to reduce computational requirements while creating more compelling scenarios that take advantage of current technology. In this article, we provide a brief review of fidelity, multimodal interactions and perceptual-based rendering in the virtual domain. We emphasize the perception of reality in the virtual world is subjective and not necessarily a reproduction of reality, but rather a combination of personal experiences including those pertaining to media consumption, which can ultimately lead to better user experiences.     

Sensorial Place-Making in Ethnic Minority Areas: The Consumption of Forest Puer Tea in Contemporary China

This article examines sensorial place-making through analysing the taste and other sensory experiences of forest Puer tea in its consumption among the urban middle class in mainland China. In the process of creating the ‘terroir’ of forest Puer tea, sensorial experience has been frequently linked to its place of origin. I argue that ethnic minorities who cultivate the tea play a vital part in the imagination of the tea's terroir. Trips by consumers to the mountains where the tea is cultivated, which aim at facilitating a ‘full experience’ of the tea and its culture, have generated a special pattern of interactions between the urban middle class who consume the tea and the ethnic minorities who cultivate it. The consumption of Puer tea, which brings about social imaginary and transcendent economic value, has become a driving force for producing the locality of ethnic minority areas.     

The senses at the National Gallery: art as sensory recreation and regulation in Victorian England

ABSTRACT

In 1850, the keeper of the National Gallery in London described the museum as being frequented by “school boys eating bread and cheese” and country folk who “drew their chairs round and sat down, and seemed to make themselves very comfortable”. As for the pictures on the walls, these were smeared with the fingerprints of inquiring gallery-goers. The tension between the National Gallery as an unfussy place of recreation, in which visitors could enjoy themselves at their ease, and as a prim site of regulation, in which visitors must learn to exercise tight control over their behavior, played itself out in elite nineteenth-century debates over the role of the Gallery as a public space. This article examines nineteenth-century representations of the ideal sensory role of the National Gallery and its problematic actual sensory life. This leads into a discussion of the ways in which the National Gallery and other public art institutions were imagined to function as the soft fingertips of the long arm of the law, transforming social disorder into social order and destructive sensuality into compliant sensitivity.     

从二元对立到第三空间杂糅——奥立维亚的双重文化身份认定之路

美国当代著名的华裔女作家谭恩美的第三部长篇小说《百种神秘感官》具有浓厚的后殖民主义特色,尤其是东方主义的神秘色彩。其女主人公奥立维亚是中美混血的“香蕉人”,为了全力美国化,她否认自己的华人文化身份,但是美国主流社会却将她视为“他者”,二元文化冲突使她陷入文化身份危机。困境中的奥立维亚放弃了对立的二元文化,接受自己的华人文化身份,用双重文化重塑自我,走出文化身份危机,进入了文化身份的第三空间杂糅,获得新生。奥立维亚的文化身份寻求之路经历了从东方主义的二元对立到第三空间的杂糅,是“他者”的典型身份寻求之路,这个文学人物的心路历程,对越来越多的流散族裔的寻根现象和文化认同经历具有案例价值,为民族文化交流和融合研究提供借鉴。     

解读谭恩美《百种隐秘感官》中的"种族影像"

谭恩美在《百种隐秘感官》中营造的诡秘气氛具有特殊含义:姐姐琨实际上是妹妹奥利维亚的“种族影像”,即第二自我;通过琨为奥利维亚寻找记忆从而帮助她回归完整的自我这一贯穿全书的主线,作者暗示了重拾种族记忆和向祖居国的心理回归才是解决美籍华裔身份焦虑的出路。     

一首无尽的歌——《灵感女孩》中的叙事声音解读

基于当代美国叙事学家苏珊.兰瑟的女性主义叙事理论,研究谭恩美的长篇小说《灵感女孩》中作者所运用的双重叙事声音及其产生的效果,以此分析作者所建立的女性主义叙事权威,理解美国亚裔女性对自身文化身份的认知和确立,以及在男权社会中女性主义意识的觉醒,旨在管窥谭恩美独特的创作风格和写作策略,为研究谭恩美小说提供新的角度。