Spatial Dunhuang

Spatial Dunhuang
Author: Wu Hung
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2023-02-28
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0295750219

Constructed over a millennium from the fourth to fourteenth centuries CE near Dunhuang, an ancient border town along the Silk Road in northwest China, the Mogao Caves comprise the largest, most continuously created, and best-preserved treasure trove of Buddhist art in the world. Previous overviews of the art of Dunhuang have traced the caves' unilinear history. This book examines the caves from the perspective of space, treating them as physical and historical sites that can be approached, entered, and understood sensually. It prioritizes the actual experiences of the people of the past who built and used the caves. Five spatial contexts provide rich material for analysis: Dunhuang as a multicultural historic place; the Mogao Cave complex as an evolving entity; the interior space of caves; interaction of the visual program with architectural space; and pictorial space within wall paintings that draws viewers into an otherworldly time. With its novel approach to this repository of religious art, Spatial Dunhuang will be a must-read for anyone interested in Buddhist art and for visitors to Dunhuang.

Dunhuang Art

Dunhuang Art
Author: Wenjie Duan
Publisher: Abhinav Publications
Total Pages: 466
Release: 1994
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9788170173137

Dunhuang Although Internationally Known Is Infrequently Visited. The Mogao Shrine At Dunhuang Is A Cluster Of 492 Caves, Containing 45,000 Square Metres Of Frescoes And 2,415 Stucco Statues. These Caves Were Created, Renovated And Maintained Continually With Devotion And Care From The 4Th Upto The 14Th Century. In This Volume We Have Provided An English Translation Of Selected Writings Of Prof. Duan Wenjie, Director Of The Dunhuang Academy Who Has Given A Chronological Study Of The Contents Inside The Mogao Caves With Several Decades Of Research Of The Dunhuang Academy Under His Command. Prof. Tan Chung, The Editor, Has Furnished An Illuminating Introduction, While Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan, The Driving Spirit Behind This Volume, Has Made Succinct Comments In Her Foreword . A Valuable Information On All The Mogao Caves Has Been Added. Colour And Black And White Photographs And Fine Sketches By Vineet Kumar Supplement The Text. The Indira Gandhi National Centre For The Arts Is Committed To Exploring All Dimensions Of Art. It Feels Privileged To Place Before Art Historians And Art Lovers Of The English-Speaking World First-Hand Information About His Unique Art Gallery Going Back To One-And-A-Half Millennia.

Mani's Pictures

Mani's Pictures
Author: Zsuzsanna Gulácsi
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 555
Release: 2016-04-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004308946

The founder of Manichaeism, Mani (216-274/277 CE), not only wrote down his teachings to prevent their adulteration, but also created a set of paintings—the Book of Pictures—to be used in the context of oral instruction. That pictorial handscroll and its later editions became canonical art for Mani's followers for a millennium afterwards. This richly illustrated study systematically explores the artistic culture of religious instruction of the Manichaeans based on textual and artistic evidence. It discusses the doctrinal themes (soteriology, prophetology, theology, and cosmology) depicted in Mani’s canonical pictures. Moreover, it identifies 10th-century fragments of canonical picture books, as well as select didactic images adapted to other, non-canonical art objects (murals, hanging scrolls, mortuary banners, and illuminated liturgical manuscripts) in Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China.

Lost Enlightenment

Lost Enlightenment
Author: S. Frederick Starr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 694
Release: 2015-06-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691165858

The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

Cave Temples of Dunhuang

Cave Temples of Dunhuang
Author: Neville Agnew
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2016-05-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606064894

The Mogao grottoes in northwestern China, located near the town of Dunhuang on the fabled Silk Road, constitute one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. Preserved in some five hundred caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert are one thousand years of exquisite wall paintings and sculpture. Founded by Buddhist monks in the late fourth century, Mogao grew into an artistic and spiritual center whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the far western kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are 45,000 square meters of murals, more than 2,000 statues, and over 40,000 medieval silk paintings and illustrated manuscripts. This sumptuous catalogue accompanies an exhibition of the same name, which will run from May 7 through September 4, 2016, at the Getty Center. Organized by the Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Research Institute, Dunhuang Academy, and Dunhuang Foundation, the exhibition celebrates a decades-long collaboration between the GCI and the Dunhuang Academy to conserve this UNESCO World Heritage Site. It presents, for the first time in North America, a collection of objects from the so-called Library Cave, including illustrated sutras, prayer books, and other exquisite treasures, as well as three full-scale, handpainted replica caves. This volume includes essays by leading scholars, an illustrated portfolio on the replica caves, and comprehensive entries on all objects in the exhibition.

Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT)

Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT)
Author: Wei Li
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9811387079

This book discusses the use of advanced techniques to produce and understand music in a digital way. It gathers the first-ever English-language proceedings of the Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT), which was held in Xiamen, China in 2018. As a leading event, the CSMT reflects the latest advances in acoustic and music technologies in China. Sound and technology are more closely linked than most people assume. For example, signal-processing methods form the basis of music feature extraction, while mathematics provides an objective means of representing current musicological theories and discovering new ones. Moreover, machine-learning methods include popular deep learning algorithms and are used in a broad range of contexts, from discovering patterns in music features to producing music. As these proceedings demonstrate, modern technologies not only offer new ways to create music, but can also help people perceive sound in innovative new ways.

Traveling Light

Traveling Light
Author: Lisa Mastny
Publisher:
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2001
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Architects of Buddhist Leisure

Architects of Buddhist Leisure
Author: Justin Thomas McDaniel
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 082487675X

Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture.

The Conservation of Decorated Surfaces on Earthen Architecture

The Conservation of Decorated Surfaces on Earthen Architecture
Author: Leslie Rainer
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2006
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0892368500

For millennia, people of all cultures have decorated the surfaces of their domestic, religious, and public buildings. Earthen architecture in particular has been, and continues to be, a common ground for surface decoration such as paintings, sculpted bas-relief, and ornamental plasterwork. This volume explores the complex issues associated with preserving these surfaces. Case studies from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas are presented. The publication is the result of a colloquium held in 2004 at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, co-organized by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and the National Park Service (NPS). The meeting brought together fifty-five conservators, cultural resource managers, materials scientists, engineers, architects, archaeologists, anthropologists, and artists from eleven countries. Divided into four themes--Archaeological Sites, Museum Practice, Historic Buildings, and Living Traditions--the papers examine the conservation of decorated surfaces on earthen architecture within these different contexts.

ETourism

ETourism
Author: Dimitrios Buhalis
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780582357402

This book addresses the digitization of all processes and value chains in the tourism, travel, hospitality and catering industries. By exploring the new technological trends it provides a solid basis for analysing the impacts of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) revolution on the tourism industry. The book adopts a strategic management and marketing perspective for tourism enterprises and destinations. It suggests that ETourism revolutionizes all business processes, the entire value chain as well as the strategic relationships of tourism organizations with all their stakeholders. It additionally focuses on how ICTs are employed in airlines, hotels, travel agencies, tour operators and destinations management organizations. The book demonstrates that tourism ICTs increasingly determine the competitiveness of the organization, and therefore, they are critical for the competitiveness of the industry in the longer term. The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students in business, tourism and hospitality programmes that need to explore how they can use ICTs in a strategic context. It is also anticipated that researchers and practitioners will find it useful and stimulating. Features and benefits: Strategic perspective demonstrates the contribution of ICTs to the competitiveness of tourism organizations and destinations A wealth of international examples ensure global application and relevance Extensive use of case studies and illustrative examples demonstrate the link between theory and real world tourism situations Discussion topics encourage students to analyse further the information covered Extensive bibliography and further reading encourage more advanced study Associated website featuring up-to-date FT articles and power point slides create a comprehensive teaching and learning package. Dr Dimitrios Buhalis is Course Leader of the MSc in eTourism and Director of the Centre for eTourism Research (CeTR) at the University of Surrey. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Institut de Management Hotelier International (Cornell University - ESSEC Business School) in Paris. He serves as Vice President of the International Federation of Information Technology and Tourism (IFITT) and has chaired several ENTER conferences. He regularly works as adviser for the World Tourism Organisation, the World Tourism and Travel Council and the European Commission.