Search Results (6)

Among the multiple zoomorphic and geometric images that dominate Upper Paleolithic decorated cave walls in Europe, some intriguing human hand stencils and finger flutings stand out. Dozens of these marks are attributed to toddlers and children aged 2–12. Accompanied by older group members, they entered these deep, oxygen-depleted and sensory-deprived spaces, climbing and crawling in dark, wet, difficult-to-navigate environments where one might easily get lost or separated from the group. So, why would anyone bring young children into such dangerous locations? Relevant archaeological and anthropological studies form the basis of our hypothesis that the journeys of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to the depths of deep caves along with their young children should be seen in the framework of active connection with the cosmos as practiced by many indigenous societies worldwide. Indigenous societies often view children as liminal agents with unique physical, cognitive, and mental qualities that allow them to return to the supernatural realm more easily than adults. This makes them especially adept mediators between the world of the living and that of the spirits. In this paper, we examine children’s contribution to the creation of Paleolithic cave art as active agents. Their presence in caves (liminal spaces in themselves) and their participation in the creation of rock art might thus reflect their unique role in early human cosmology and ontology. Full article

There is currently a certain pressure from various mnemonic communities, animated by vernacular interests, to canonize new saints within what is regarded as the flawed saints’ cultural-political movement. Among these new, uncanonized saints, whose memory is commemorated unofficially in various cultural-political registers, there is also the football star Diego Armando Maradona, called by his millions of fans “the Hand of God” (La Mano de Dios). The commemorative culture that thrived around Maradona’s persona—materialized in artefacts, shrines, icon-like paintings, prints, graffiti, stencils, and other memorabilia—do not fit the customary narratives of sainthood, nor to the display and content of the recently inaugurated (2023) memorial to the new martyrs of both the 20th and 21st centuries at Saint Bartholomew Basilica in Rome. The article argues that the commemoration of Maradona by his fans in Italy, Argentina, and worldwide is enacted in pop culture formats aimed at addressing different sets of contemporary mnemonic and spiritual needs. The aim is to offer a fresh conceptual engagement with the contemporary cultural-political phenomenon of “flawed saints” commemoration through the lens of contemporary popular culture, taking the culture of commemoration of Diego Maradona as a case study. Full article

In this work, we introduce liquid metal patterned stretchable and soft capacitive sensor with enhanced dielectric properties enabled by graphite nanofiber (GNF) fillers dispersed in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. We oxidized gallium-based liquid metal that exhibited excellent wetting behavior on the surface of the composites to enable patterning of the electrodes by a facile stencil printing. The fluidic behavior of the liquid metal electrode and modulated dielectric properties of the composite (k = 6.41 ± 0.092@6 wt % at 1 kHz) was utilized to fabricate stretchable and soft capacitive sensor with ability to distinguish various hand motions. Full article

The motivation of this research was to evaluate the main memory performance of a hybrid super computer such as the Convey HC-x, and ascertain how the controller performs in several access scenarios, vis-à-vis hand-coded memory prefetches. Such memory patterns are very useful in stencil computations. The theoretical bandwidth of the memory of the Convey is compared with the results of our measurements. The accurate study of the memory subsystem is particularly useful for users when they are developing their application-specific personality. Experiments were performed to measure the bandwidth between the coprocessor and the memory subsystem. The experiments aimed mainly at measuring the reading access speed of the memory from Application Engines (FPGAs). Different ways of accessing data were used in order to find the most efficient way to access memory. This way was proposed for future work in the Convey HC-x. When performing a series of accesses to memory, non-uniform latencies occur. The Memory Controller of the Convey HC-x in the coprocessor attempts to cover this latency. We measure memory efficiency as a ratio of the number of memory accesses and the number of execution cycles. The result of this measurement converges to one in most cases. In addition, we performed experiments with hand-coded memory accesses. The analysis of the experimental results shows how the memory subsystem and Memory Controllers work. From this work we conclude that the memory controllers do an excellent job, largely because (transparently to the user) they seem to cache large amounts of data, and hence hand-coding is not needed in most situations. Full article

Affordances necessary for the making of hand traces in the form of stencils and prints—primarily the availability of pigment and a suitable surface—bear on our understanding of their emergence as early exograms. Matters relating to the question of how pigment was/is applied, the placement and embellishment of images, the procurement and preparation of ochre, and the selecting and priming of surfaces, are discussed here—as well as the intriguing occurrence of variant hands. Advantage is taken of Australia’s position as a zone of ongoing hand-marking practice to suggest what can be learned from ethnography. Finally, avenues for future research are proposed with a view to opening out a discussion of external information storage possibilities in relation to hand traces. Full article

Hand stencils and prints are found globally in rock art, reflecting the sine qua non role of the hand in human evolution. The body itself is the tool, and it affords the registering, in the form of a trace, of what perceptual psychology terms an “ecological self”. More than a “signature”, a hand mark is uniquely “proprio-performative”, combining inscription of individuality with direct address. The first part of this paper looks at what might get in the way of a universally readable primary meaning by methodically addressing issues of technique and cultural specificity. Having cleared the ground, it proceeds to make its argument for hand stencils and prints as constituting a special category of rock art imagery. It does this by having recourse to ideas currently under discussion in cognitive psychology: awareness of self-agency and body-ownership, as well as the notion of perceived looming in pictures. Finally, an appeal is made to the claim for a key mirror neuron role in communication. Because they are traces of actions eliciting mirror-neuronal responses, hand marks are seen as affording a readily accessible external term in an exchange of meaning on which a system of graphic communication might be built. Full article