The #metoo movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists. In Why It's OK to Enjoy the Work of Immoral Artists, Mary Beth Willard argues for a more nuanced view. Enjoying art is part of a well-lived life, so we need good reasons to give it up. And it turns out good reasons (...) are hard to find. Willard show that it's reasonable to believe that most boycotts of artists won't succeed, so most of the time there's no ethical reason to join in. Someone who manages to separate the art from the artist isn't making an ethical mistake by buying and enjoying their art. She then considers the ethical dimensions of canceling artists and so-called "cancel culture," arguing that canceling is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding. Willard concludes by arguing that the popular debate has overlooked the power of art to change our lives for the good. It's of course OK to decide to give up the artwork of immoral artists, but--as Willard shows in this provocative little volume--it's OK to continue to enjoy their art, as well. Key Features Offers accessible discussions of complicated philosophical topics like aesthetic value, collective action problems, and epistemic justice Provides a unique perspective and underexplored argument on the popular issue of cancellation Explores the role of aesthetic value in our lives, including its relation to our ethical decisions and our well being. (shrink)

A dealbreaker, in the sense developed in this essay, is a relationship between a person's psychology and an aspect of an artwork to which they are exposed. When a person has a dealbreaking aversion to an aspect of a work, they are blocked from embracing the work's aesthetically positive features. I characterize dealbreakers, distinguish this response from other negative responses to an artwork, and argue that the presence or absence of a dealbreaker is in some cases an appropriate target of (...) moral evaluation. I then use the concept of dealbreakers to develop a new approach to the question of our moral obligations with respect to the work of immoral artists, arguing that there is no general obligation binding us to cultivate or eliminate a dealbreaking aversion to their work. I conclude by suggesting several other philosophical debates that could benefit from a focus on dealbreakers. (shrink)

Renunciation as a creative force is the animating idea behind Ross Posnock s new book. Taking up acts of abandonment, rejection, and refusal that have long baffled critics, he shows how renunciation has reframed the relationship of writers, philosophers, and artists to society in productive and unpredictable ways.".

In this study, we analyze the development conditions of and trends in Ukrainian scientific art during the ongoing war with the Russian Federation. Based on our own experience, we demonstrate how the emphasis, values, and goals of scientific art shift under martial law. We also highlight the challenges and difficulties faced by Ukrainian artists and researchers who found themselves in the occupied territories. Our own experience involves the promotion of the scientific and artistic project “Nanoart. Science is art” and its (...) transformation into a socio-patriotic project “Nanoart. New symbolism of science.” We use this example to show how trends in art, culture, and science change very quickly under critical conditions. Art during the war has military and liberation themes, while artists and scientists during the war are warriors on the cultural and scientific fronts. (shrink)

What triggers the act of creating? What role do sensory cues, environmental factors, and interdisciplinary exchanges play in this? The semiotic theories of Jacob von Uexküll, a Baltic German biologist, served as an important starting point in addressing these questions. In 1934 he proposed the concept of the Umwelt as a means to assess the behaviour of humans and animals, their realm of experience, and capacity to act. An investigation into the complexity of these Umwelten, from the natural world to?inner (...) worlds? and?time worlds?, is carried out by theorists, artists, and architects such as Andrés Jaque, Esther Venrooy, Bart Decroos, Isolde Vanhee, Joseph Kohlmaier, and more. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nishida’s and Merleau-Ponty’s “perceptual ontologies” lead to other notions of self, spirituality, and faith, bringing out the distinctive and comparable religious paths of Buddhism and embodied phenomenology entered by deepening the prereflective openness to the world’s “voices of silence.” Loughnane’s study highlights how Nishida’s and Merleau-Ponty’s turn towards a series of artists in their respective cultural contexts brings out the particular groundedness in the materiality of the beings of the world in this “mutual interexpressivity” or “reversibility.” Faith is revisioned (...) as the dropping of egoistic control to allow perception to be carried into the depths of the world of spiritual hearkening. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser were primarily media communication theorists and new media philosophers. Both thinkers were deeply concerned with electronic and digital technologies and the impact of technology on human society. Likewise, both thinkers were critical and probably cynical about these developments, however, they believed in the notion that one has to fully understand technology to be able to use and discuss positive models of these new technologies for a better future. Independently, McLuhan and Flusser became interested in the (...) role of the artist in this new digital society, and Flusser in particular elaborated on the means of artistic production. Both theorists delved into collaborative projects with artists; and they produced films and other artistic output over their lifetimes. In our essay we highlight this particular interest and focus on the artist and modes of artistic perception. McLuhan’s understanding of the artist as society’s safety antenna was, indeed, personified by both men. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1-2, January–December 2024.

This study sets out to examine the ways Nigerian cyber-fraudsters (Yahoo-Boys) are represented in hip-hop music. The empirical basis of this article is lyrics from 18 hip-hop artists, which were subjected to a directed approach to qualitative content analysis and coded based on the moral disengagement mechanisms proposed by Bandura (1999). While results revealed that the ethics of Yahoo-Boys, as expressed by musicians, embody a range of moral disengagement mechanisms, they also shed light on the motives for the Nigerian cybercriminals' (...) actions. Further analysis revealed additional findings: “glamorization/de-glamorization of cyber-fraud” and “sex-roles-and-cultures”. Having operated within the constraint of what is currently available (a small sample size), this article has drawn attention to the notion that Yahoo-Boys and some musicians may be “birds of a feather.” Secondly, it has exposed a “hunter-and-antelope-relationship” between Yahoo-Boys and their victims. Thirdly, it has also highlighted that some ethos of law-abiding citizens is central to Yahoo-Boys’ moral enterprise. Yahoo-Boys, therefore, represent reflections of society. Arguably, given that Yahoo-Boys and singers are connected, and the oratory messages of singers may attract more followers than questioners, this study illuminates the cultural dimensions of cyber-fraud that emanate from Nigeria. In particular, insights from this study suggest that cyber-fraud researchers might look beyond traditional data sources (e.g., cyber-fraud statistics) for the empirical traces of “culture in action” that render fraudulently practices acceptable career paths for some Nigerian youths. (shrink)

In this essay, I respond to Mary Beth Willard's commentary on Drawing the Line. I focus on responding to a number of questions and objections that Willard poses concerning the role of arts institutions in addressing the problem of immoral artists. Focusing on the case of museums in particular, I defend the idea that they can exercise their power to play a productive and important role in societal conversations about moral criticism of artists.

Reframing reveals possibilities. This article highlights how conceptual shifts regarding ‘sustainability’ occurring inside China’s municipalities and major corporations are opening the way for new collaborations with technology companies and technology artists. These shifts – from predetermined accounting to systems thinking – reveal new opportunities to intervene in the biophysical and economic challenges facing China today. In companies, this shift implies placing financially relevant environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors at the core of business strategy. In municipalities, this shift necessitates designing (...) and implementing systems that track ecosystem services rather than simply stocks of natural resources and recognizing interdependencies between these services and economic development. This article suggests that this sustainability reframing can draw heavily on systems thinking from environmental science, technology companies’ drive to develop products that meet these emerging demands, corporations’ need to compete in an uncertain developing market and the reframing skills of artists, particularly digital artists. This article concludes with opportunities for digital artists to intervene and collaborate with sustainability practitioners to open new directions for cities and companies in China. (shrink)

_Lux: A Decade of Artists' Film and Video_ Edited by Steve Reinke and Tom Taylor Toronto: YYZ Books, 2000 ISBN 0-920397-26-3 373 pp.

Erich Hatala Matthes’s (2021)Drawing the Line is about what we ought to do when we discover that an artist whom we love has committed a great moral wrong. As it turns out, Matthes and I agree almost entirely on the moral obligations of the individual consumer. We both agree that it is necessary to ascertain whether the life of the artist affects the aesthetic quality of their work, and that we should attend to how continuing to engage with their work (...) publicly expresses our ethical values. Both of us wind up with a morally permissive stance, according to which individuals can, in some contexts, continue to engage with the artwork of immoral artists.There is one distinct difference in how we approached the problem. Matthes took up the question of the role and responsibility of institutions in his third chapter, a question I set aside almost entirely. In this article, I want to delve more deeply into the question of art institutions and their responsibilities to reform themselves. I will argue that the nature of aesthetic practice means that it is harder for an institution to tread the desirable middle ground between uncritically endorsing an immoral artist and cancelling them. (shrink)

This study aims to explore the musical identity of Thai contemporary jazz artists by examining their attitude, musical content, and music creation process. Thirteen informants participated in this qualitative study through in-depth interviews. The results demonstrated that musical identity could be divided into three categories: 1) regional musical identity, 2) individual musical identity and 3) cultural musical identity. The factors associated with the emergence of musical identity include musical movements and phenomena, integration between two musical styles in terms of articulation (...) and contextual elements, and contemporary and hybrid-crossover music approaches in today’s world. These factors, along with social interactions both within and outside the jazz community, affect the transformation of musical identity. The findings of this study will help Thai jazz artists and those involved in the jazz industry effectively build their musical identity, create value for their music, and elevate their works to an international level. (shrink)

There have been only sporadic attempts to understand Chinese women’s role and influence in the field of visual arts, even though their contribution has been major. This article highlights the significance of women’s participation in modern Chinese culture through the works of several contemporary Chinese women artists who have been professionally active in visual arts in the last two decades. Using an interdisciplinary framework, drawing on concepts from theories of feminism, modernism and postcolonialism, this article seeks to understand a culturally (...) specific field in the history of art, and the relationship of various factors that have contributed to it. (shrink)

Hip hop artists are early adopters of digital media in the township areas of Grahamstown. This article describes the emergence of particular media ecologies that depend on a do-it-yourself ethic where young people are always ‘hustling’ to get hold of data bundles, software and computer parts, and assembling them in novel ways. This mobile-first generation are increasingly adopting desktop and laptop computers to supplement their media production, and could provide insights into the evolution of low-income digital media practices and the (...) transition from mobile-only to mobile-first (computer-second) practices, as well as how the computer’s increased affordances for production influence such digital media practices. Living in backyard shacks made from corrugated iron and mud, where there are makeshift electrical connections criss-crossing the roof and no flowing water inside, here there is indeed Internet connectivity, although exclusively through the mobile phone. These hip hop artists are supported by various digital service providers, such as WAP-site designers who hack together sites that function both to promote and distribute local media as well as pirated content, to backyard computer repairers who cannibalize parts from discarded old PCs to create workable township machines. This article will provide a digital ethnography of these young people and how they work collectively to record and mix music, design posters, album covers and avatars, and then distribute these through their phones via Bluetooth and online social media. The article will tie these digital practices to the identity formation of these young people, who resist ­succumbing to the despair of unemployment through embracing notions of themselves as artists, hustlers and ‘explorers of technology’, identities they attribute to the local culture of hip hop music production and its values of consciousness, creativity and resilience. (shrink)

Does martial arts practice contribute to psychological well-being in professional martial artists? If so, what are the specific ways that martial arts practice accomplishes this? It has been a long-standing and widely held belief that martial arts practice can contribute to psychological well-being, however, there has been a lack of empirical research in the psychological literature focused on investigating the details of this hypothesis. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate the impact of a paradigmatic martial arts practice—shadowboxing—on (...) the psychological well-being of professional martial artists. In this article I present the results from an original empirical study on professional Muay Thai practitioners (n = 14) that reveals how a martial arts practice (shadowboxing) contributes to their overall psychological well-being by contributing to their positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. I present general results for how shadowboxing contributes to the psychological well-being of these professional martial artists overall, as well as more specific results for how shadowboxing contributes to the psychological well-being of these professional martial artists based on factors such as their gender, fight experience, and training location. This article also provides qualitative first-person reports from professional Muay Thai practitioners (n = 14) about their use of visualization and mental imagery and their experience of flow while shadowboxing, offering unique insight into the minds of professional martial artists as they are actively engaged in their craft. Finally, this article discusses the value and limitations of the present study and outlines suggestions for future research. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the abrupt closure of circus schools, venues, and companies, introducing a myriad of novel stressors. Performers and students must now attempt to maintain their technical, physical, artistic, creative, and cognitive abilities without in-person support from their coaches and must manage the isolation from their training and performing spaces. For circus artists, the transposition of the work space to a home environment is not possible, which creates novel stressors that could lead to the exacerbation and escalation (...) of mental health issues. The purpose of this study is to develop, implement and evaluate a holistic interventional program based on the socio-ecological model of resilience and operationalized through physical literacy. This will be a prospective longitudinal study with a retrospective comparison to data from a similar student cohort pre-pandemic. Interventions were designed using a population-specific, participant-based developmental model within a knowledge translation framework. The interventional program includes group webinars, small group information sessions, and one-on-one Zoom meetings, in addition to the distribution of electronic educational materials. The interventions will holistically provide psychological, physical, social, technical, artistic, and creative supports. Resources will be deployed throughout the closure period and through recovery, as transitions to return to training after prolonged hiatus will magnify known psychological and physical difficulties. Repeated, longitudinal assessment of students will be utilized to track changes over time at key transitions in the pandemic and school year and will be compared to a pre-pandemic school year. The framework for this program will be translatable to other performing arts and high-performance contexts. The program has implications for the mental health and overall wellbeing of artists and for cultural and economic recovery of the industry. (shrink)

This paper examines how Soviet and post‑Soviet history is presented and reflected upon in select works of contemporary artists from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As the contemporary art scenes of these newly independent states developed and joined the global contemporary art circuit, a number of Baltic artists have participated in the recent “historiographic turn” in art. Through the analysis of examples, we look at four approaches employed by these artists when tackling the subject of history seen through personal narratives; history (...) told from the point of view of ethnic/linguistic minorities; a focus on women’s experiences; and a debate on the preservation, removal, and building of commemorative monuments. This paper aims to show how these artists integrate reflections of the Soviet and post‑Soviet experience into the building of complex, inclusive, positive post‑Soviet identities. (shrink)

Current research in artificial intelligence (AI) sheds light on algorithmic bias embedded in AI systems. The underrepresentation of women in the AI design sector of the tech industry, as well as in training datasets, results in technological products that encode gender bias, reinforce stereotypes and reproduce normative notions of gender and femininity. Biased behaviour is notably reflected in anthropomorphic AI systems, such as personal intelligent assistants (PIAs) and chatbots, that are usually feminized through various design parameters, such as names, voices (...) and traits. Gendering of AI entities, however, is often reduced to the encoding of stereotypical behavioural patterns that perpetuate normative assumptions about the role of women in society. The impact of this behaviour on social life increases, as human-to-(anthropomorphic)machine interactions are mirrored in human-to-human social interactions. This article presents current critical research on AI bias, focusing on anthropomorphic systems. Moreover, it discusses the significance of women’s engagement in AI design and programming, by presenting selected case studies of contemporary female media artists and designers. Finally, it suggests that women, through their creative practice, provide feminist and critical approaches to AI design which are essential for imagining alternative, inclusive, ethic and de-biased futures for anthropomorphic AIs. (shrink)

Herder already very early in his career, in the 1760s, established two vitally important and epoch-making principles in the philosophy of language: that thought is essentially dependent on and bounded by language; and that meanings or concepts should be identified - not with such items as the referents involved, Platonic forms, or empiricist 'ideas' - but with word-usages. What did Herder do for an encore? His Treatise on the Origin of Language from 1772 might seem the natural place to look (...) for an answer to this question (since it is his best known work in the philosophy of language by far), but it is really the wrong place to look, because it temporarily regresses to a more conventional and less philosophically interesting position. However, Herder did succeed in making impressive progress in a broader array of works, namely by striving to identify prima facie problem cases confronting his two principles and to reconcile them with the latter. The main ones which he identified were God, animals, and non-linguistic art. In each of these cases, having initially proposed a reconciliation which did not work, he went on to develop a much more plausible one, indeed one which (at least in the two cases that really require one: animals and non-linguistic art) seems broadly correct. (shrink)

This book frames the current social and political condition through the prism of Perfection; an idea which has had great historical resonance and mutability, but which has had little attention as a recent area of academic concern or art ...

In this paper I explain what the duty of artists could be according to the philosopher R.G. Collingwood. My aim is not only to focus on Collingwood’s writings on the philosophy of art, but to show the parallel between the concepts used in his aesthetics and his ethics. In fact, the major role of “emotion” in both his art and moral theory gives me the occasion to develop an understanding of artists’ tasks within their communities. Moreover, it provides an occasion (...) to define what, for Collingwood, the subject of ethics is and to explore an almost uncharted part of his work: his “Lectures on Moral Philosophy” delivered from 1921 to 1940. (shrink)

Despite the conclusions from the contemporary philosophy of science, many economists cherish the ideal of positive science. Therefore, value-free economics is still the central paradigm in economics. The first aim of the paper is to investigate economics' axiomatic assumptions from an epistemological perspective. The critical analysis of the literature shows that the positive-normative dichotomy is exaggerated. Moreover, value-free economics is based on normative foundations that have a negative impact on individuals and society. The paper's second aim is to show that (...) economics' normativity is not a problem because the discussion concerning values is possible and unavoidable. In this context, Weber and other methodologists are investigated. The conclusion of the paper is that science can thrive without strict methodological rules thanks to institutional mechanisms. Therefore, economists could learn from artists who accept the world without absolute rules. This perspective opens the possibility for methodological pluralism and normative approaches. (shrink)

Self-portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography— a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self-portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self-portraiture in a way that is (...) radically different from previous visual arts. In Section I, I explain why self-portraiture offers a way to address the apparent conflict between automatism and agency that is debated in the philosophy of art. In Section II, I explain why mirrors play an important function in the production of a traditional self-portrait. In Sections III and IV, I discuss how photographers may create self-portraits with and without the use of mirrors to show how photography offers unique and important new forms of self-portraiture. (shrink)

This article examines the historically embedded relations of three 19th-century phenomena in which the non-consuming body is constituted as a spectacle of admiration. These three phenomena, known as Fasting Women, Living Skeletons and Hunger Artists, all emerged and disappeared in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Viewing the emergence and disappearance of the three phenomena as embedded in the historical crossroads of pre-modern and modern ethics, the article argues that each of these phenomena corresponds differently to the clash between (...) modern `rationality' and the pre-modern celebration of `miracles'. The article maintains that while Fasting Women epitomized that clash by becoming (a highly contested) spectacle of `the miraculous', the Living Skeletons transcended the clash by portraying a spectacle of liminal corporeality (the `living dead') and the Hunger Artists announced the dissolution of that very clash by performing a spectacle of `the controlled self'. Through a focus on the spectacle of fasting (i.e. the appeared, performed, `gazed at' act of fasting), a phenomenological typology of the three phenomena is outlined. I suggest that while Fasting Women and Living Skeletons embodied a spectacle of a lean body, which does not require suffering, the Hunger Artists embodied a spectacle of hunger centred on suffering and pain. The phenomenological `mapping' of these phenomena is then considered in the context of `performativity theory' and proposed as a frame of reference for a sociological study of anorexia nervosa. (shrink)

Newton’s Opticks was in no way directed at artists, but the great prestige of its author, as well as its proposal of possible principles of color-harmony, and its establishment of the circle as the most graphic format for illustrating color-relationships, ensured the book a place in the repertory of coloristic art-theory from the eighteenth century until the present day. And, although it was implicit rather than explicit in the Opticks, the idea of complementarity continued to fascinate painters well into the (...) twentieth century. But in painting, the long-standing focus on chiaroscuro as the essential basis of pictorial structure inhibited the acceptance of the notion that colors are inherent in light alone; and Newton’s theory failed to make much headway against the traditional Aristotelianism, which was revived most eloquently by Goethe at the close of the eighteenth century. It was only two centuries later, in the new light-based art of holography, that the Opticks again became a text to conjure with. (shrink)