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1. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Paul Majkut

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2. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Gerardo de la Fuente Lora Orcid-ID

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One of the most surprising elements, within the already unprecedented situation created by the COVID-19 pandemic, is the space suddenly occupied by mathematics in the world, in terms of processing public policy decisions, as well as in forms of daily communication about the disease. This essay explores ten theses about how mathematics is, and will be perceived, in a world altered by the pandemic. The different human groups facing the COVID-19 pandemic and the proliferation of messages, figures, concepts, and quantitative debates that it entails, reveals an aesthetic rather than mathematical use of the numerical. Moreover, the presence of mathematics in public debate is an indicator of the very high capacity for formal and deductive reasoning and abstraction that humanity as a whole currently possesses. However, as governments mistrusted their populations’ ability to understand, on one hand, they resolved to establish media communication about the disease in mathematical terms, and on the other, they promoted intense campaigns of fear to make people accept the unprecedented confinement due to the pandemic. Nonetheless, in the future, mathematics will increasingly become the language of politics.

3. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Bas de Boer Orcid-ID

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Starting from March 12th 2020, the Netherlands entered a period of what has come to be known as an “intelligent lockdown”, enforced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All public meetings were prohibited, institutions of higher education was temporarily shut, and stores and public transport were asked to take measures allowing people to keep 1.5m distance. More generally, people were strongly advised to stay inside. It was only then that many in the Netherlands started to understand COVID-19 intimately. This intimacy meant getting to know the virus as a threat to oneself, as a threat to others, and notably, as introducing new responsibilities and a new idea of what it means to live “normally”. The reconstruction of events of such a phase of the pandemic serves to show how the felt proximity of the virus strongly shapes both individual and societal perception of it. Further discussions might reveal the installment and challenging of science as the sovereign when being treated as offering the ultimate answer on whether certain measures will lead to a decrease in the number of infections. Other discussions might reveal politics as the sovereign, deciding which members of the biopolitical body are in need of protection, such as those asking whether the economic burden put on some citizens is proportionate to the number of lives of other citizens being saved. However, the relative ease with which a large portion of the Dutch society has been willing to sacrifice some of their privileges as a mark of solidarity during this pandemic, makes one not entirely cynical about the willingness to sacrifice some more, in light of the ecological crisis we are living through as well.

4. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Nokta Celik Orcid-ID

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From artists like Michelangelo to Andy Warhol, art has played an interesting role in conveying messages to society. Worldwide increase in media consumption and increasing time spent on the Internet make art previously concerning niche audiences more widespread. In December 2019, Art Basel, one of the most important art platforms in the world, came to such attention with artwork exhibited in one of its galleries. When Maurizio Cattelan's work titled “Comedian”, which consisted of a banana affixed to a wall with duct tape, was sold for $150,000, it came to the limelight through the media. It was then transformed into a simulation with the interest of marketers and communicators and took its place among real-time marketing examples. In this study, Cattelan's “Comedian” is analyzed in terms of similarly prepared and published Turkish social media advertisements inspired by the artwork. It was seen that simulations most associated with the artwork in terms of visual and meaning had most online interaction and even won awards. Jean Baudrillard’s perspective that a vast process of simulation is taking place over the span of daily life, similar in style to ‘simulation models’ through which operational and cybernetic sciences work, is discussed in this context. The evidence from this study suggests that ‘banana copycats’ are creating by combining features or elements of reality.

5. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Olya Kudina Orcid-ID

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The COVID-19 pandemic confronts people with moral uncertainty, where they balance daily the individual values, rights, and needs with the collective perspective. COVID-19 contact-tracing apps offer digital media to correlate the movement of people with COVID-19 cases with the help of integrated date from public health organizations. This helps to notify people when they come in proximity with carriers of the disease. Regardless of the differences in the technical setup and manner of introduction globally, the values of privacy and solidarity are often pitted against each other when discussing COVID-19 apps. In this paper, I reframe the COVID-19 tracking apps from being neither a messiah nor a destroyer of pandemic management, but as a localized and complex sociotechnical system helping to shape and qualify moral concerns. This will allow to not only expand the scope of discussion beyond privacy and solidarity, but demonstrate how the two can be bridged under careful consideration of the technical, sociocultural, and institutional embedding.

6. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Paul Majkut

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Plagues have a physical existence. They also have mediated existence. The two are only circumstantially related, for, as is the case of all media and mediation, biological and digital existence do not necessarily correlate accurately, and media are as often used as a lamp to project political and philosophical idealism, that is, propaganda, as they are to serve as a mirror that reflects the external world realistically. Objective journalism, news spin, and fake news, conflated in the collective mind of the populace, are tools in the class struggle to control the social, cultural and political narrative. Plagues have been and continue to be mediated in drama, oral storytelling, in books, printed and manuscript, on the radio, on TV and in films, and in social media while the populace rails against and shouts its rage at TV screens.

7. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Obiageli Pauline Ohiagu Orcid-ID

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This chapter provides a Nigerian perspective to the global COVID-19 public health crisis that began in 2019. Two approaches were used to explain the impact of COVID-19 on the media in Nigeria and the effect of the latter on the spread/containment of the virus. The pandemic directly limited the operations of the media in many ways: socially, economically, and otherwise. On the other hand, both mainstream and social media was instrumental in curtailing the spread of COVID-19 through information, education, and infotainment.

8. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Junichiro Inutsuka

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the reality of the world, revealing the contradictions within society that we have pretended not to see. Although measures are urgent, it is also clear that we must reconsider the meaning and form of this new society in its essence. A remarkable aspect has been the rapid digitalization of various sectors of society. We are already aware that information technology is not merely a means for, but also a representation of the changes in the structure of society as well as in humanity. What we should demand is not only a means for digitalization but also a meaning and direction for it, and to ensure that a public forum exists to resolve questions regarding meaning and direction within the society and community. Art is a symbol of the human activity of re-questioning the depths of reality in which one is involved, making hypotheses for the future, and asking the community about it. However, art itself is also undergoing a crisis. I would like to set a framework for grasping this situation to reconsider the issue of art as a medium responsible for publicness.

9. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Sarah Lwahas

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Journalism like many other professions is facing a crucial phase with the emergence of Coronavirus pandemic. The impact of Coronavirus phenomenon is enormous on social and cultural relationships of many communities who depend on the media for information to connect with each other and participate in governance freely. Journalists globally are facing enormous crisis of managing the infodemic of the pandemic streaming particularly from social media; as well as controversies of the media perpetuating disinfodemic or disinformation and distrust in the society. Besides arrests and restrictions of movement, journalists are also under intense threats of losing their jobs, and exacerbated psychological and physical pressures owing to the devastating effects of COVID-19. Using the Social Responsibility theory, that emphasises improved standards of journalism, safeguarding the interests of journalism and journalists among others, and the Agenda setting theory, that controls access to news, information, and entertainment; this research interrogates how journalists from selected states in Northern Nigeria are responding to the challenges of reportage of COVID-19. This research sampled the views of journalists using structured questionnaire administered online and interviewed seven senior journalists holding managerial positions. Findings revealed that journalists are embracing fact checking of the avalanche of information even within familiar sources to verify reports on COVID-19. Similarly, they are deploying digital and multimedia strategies to provide a continuum of media services and sensitive reporting to engage this new infodemic of COVID-19, now globally considered the “new normal”. This research recommends that, since COVID-19 is a novel disease, professionals across countries need to talk with each other, and journalists particularly from Africa and indeed Nigeria; need to put some structure and some science in place, especially in the performance of their jobs, so that professionalism can be sustained without compromising the future of the journalism.

10. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Duygu Onay-Coker Orcid-ID

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The COVID-19 pandemic both highlighted and exacerbated deep societal inequalities. Vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, especially women, faced even more unequal treatment. During the lockdown, women at home performed more childcare, and shouldered more cooking and cleaning duties, while husbands spent most of their time in virtual meetings. The media played a crucial role during this situation through its representation of women. An analysis of the reportage of two bestseller print mainstream media, Sabah and Hürriyet, compared to two alternative media channels on the internet, GazeteDuvar and T24, highlighted a serious difference in perspective in news stories about women. Bestseller mainstream Turkish media ignored the difficulties faced by women and followed dominant hegemonic discourse emphasizing women as wives and mothers who sacrifice themselves for their children and families. They ignored the plight of women victims subjected to violence during the lockdown and reproduced the idea of traditional gender roles through their news items. However, alternative newspapers provided a voice to the women, as well as to the voiceless, disadvantageous groups. They were critical of the government, local authorities, related powers, and their health politics. They did not prefer to ignore women and their voices but instead announced them in detail.

11. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Lj Theo Orcid-ID

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Film scholars often label cinema that features strange spaces and odd narratives as ‘liminal’. Without further explanation, however, the term is somewhat of a blunt instrument that tends to provide overly neat explanations that are perhaps too broadly abstracted from the larger cultural and creative context. Some cinematic genre statements of ‘liminality’ derive from predominantly historico-materialist framings that see the notion as primarily about politically contingent space/place-based notions of borders, rather a subjective sense of ‘strangeness’ derived from a complex combination of the political, the social, and the personal. Eva Näripea’s description of the cinema of 1960’s Soviet Estonia as an innately liminal phenomena and her accompanying assertion that liminality is an inherent part of local Estonian identities, is perhaps somewhat problematic as an underpinning for a genre statement. This essay explores why and how liminality may indeed seem to serve as a kind of genre for Estonian films as Näripea suggests, but perhaps not for the (historico-materialist) reasons she argues.

12. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Ryan S. Schroeder

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This paper explores how operations of the mechanical uncanny in the iconic techno-dystopian film, The Terminator, directed by James Cameron in 1984, facilitate a deepening of apperception among sci-fi viewers regarding the perils of naïve technological progressivism. Some significant aspects of the film which have hitherto gone uncriticised pertain to the relationship between bodily discipline and the mechanical uncanny. In the Terminator, we see the extents to which the disciplinary mechanisms of modernity render our bodies docile, and the ways by which our bodies become organized according the logics of a totalizing mechanistic ethos. Therefore, in The Terminator, the uncanny effect created through uncertainty regarding who is human and who is replicant, may not seem so sophisticated or so subtle, but I insist that the uncanny effect leaves the viewer poised with an uncertain affect pertaining to the contents of their own humanity.

13. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Tracy Powell

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Silence, an intangible something, through silencing creates, reveals, and transforms. It provides a space to examine psychological well-being as it removes the anchor tethering us to the temporal existence of our logical mind. From silence comes sound, and from sound silence. Neither mutually exclusive, sound and silence co-create one another, inextricably bound together through intentional force. The artistic expression of silence, as both ephemeral and ambiguous, allows for a personal transformative experience of opening to an authentic self. Music holds the power to envelop us within its sensorial embrace, enabling emotions to swell to the surface thereby creating a pause where self-revealment becomes possible. Existentialist ideology suggests the innate terror of nihilism clouds the human psyche, giving credence to our fear of non-existence. However, failure to leave the external noise and enter the silence between the notes resorts in a disillusionment of being, where the false self will ultimately crumble under the pressure to maintain its façade. Between the notes fosters introspection, allows an opening to well-being. It is here, in that silent space, that the authentic self can be discovered.

14. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 2
Duygu Onay-Çöker Orcid-ID

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In this paper, I focus on the representation of motherhood from a two-fold perspective by choosing the bestselling Turkish baby diapers advertisements as a case study of broadcasting in Turkish media. The first perspective analyzes the representation of motherhood by applying the concept of “Male Gaze” by Laura Mulvey, according to whom a woman is objectified by the male gaze and becomes a bearer of meaning rather than a maker of meaning. Further, the themes emerging from a careful reading of representations of women in advertisements of baby diapers are discussed. The second perspective consists of looking at discursive strategies of the term “motherhood” by problematizing the fact that baby diapers are always identified with women, thereby also reducing them to commodities in the market. The second perspective applies Julia Kristeva’s “The Semiotic Chora” to reveal the myths about motherhood created by the ruling ideology of the males, and to seek possible alternatives through that perspective.

15. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

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16. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Remy Demichelis

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If you figure out how machines learn, then you will figure out how the brain works, and what the brain’s functions are. Such an idea is widespread among philosophers and computer scientists who agree with a functionalist reductionist point of view of consciousness. This theory leads to hold that the more accurate the simulation of cognitive behavior is, the more the math behind it must be true – when true means what really happens in our brain. In this article, we aim to show that, on one hand, brain simulation is nothing more than just another simulation, and it offers very little help to understand – nor to produce – the vivid experiences (qualia) of cognitive functions. On the other hand, we would like to emphasize that when it succeeds at predicting a mechanism with less ambiguity and more accuracy than without a simulation nor direct observation, it really develops the knowledge of our brain. As long as brain simulation follows scientific principles, it should be regarded as valuable, even though the knowledge it brings to science must not be confused for the real phenomenon. Brain simulation, like all simulation, cannot fill any reality or epistemic gap. It is a consolation prize.

17. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Martha Erika Mateos Genis, Luis Daniel Herrera Romero, Uriel Hidalgo Lerma

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Animation, defined as a process utilized to suggest motion to image or drawings, has evolved towards different techniques and styles offered by the industry. Its esthetic nature meets a progressive technologization of art and creativity, and therewith it responds to esthetics enrichment not only in animated object, but also in its creation process. The possibility to have an expanded form in techniques and formats has therefore prompted it to explore and to enrich various elements of its visual narrative. One of the most prominent elements has been the application of vertical format, while also acknowledging the consumption of digital content in smartphones. MOJITO LAB of ARPA/BUAP has focused on this technique as a line of research for 2D animation. This article herein presents some areas with considerable interest in the impact of vertical format in animation as follows: 1) The antecedents of vertical format in both still and moving image; 2) the relation between vertical format and digital media generated by smartphones; 3) observations based on the image analysis of 2D animation utilizing vertical format which provides esthetic qualities to visual narrative language of 2D animation.

18. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Martta Heikkilä Orcid-ID

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In this article, I examine the idea of the portrait from two viewpoints: the ‘classical’ portrait as it appears in Jean-Luc Nancy’s post-phenomenological philosophy, and the recent self-portrait photographs or ‘selfies’ on social media. First, I consider the portrait’s value in Nancy’s theories of art: for him, portraits hold an important position among the genres of visual art, since they present themselves as distinctive images by extracting the innermost force of the portrayed person. Secondly, I take up the philosophical and political implications of Nancy’s notion of the portrait vis-a-vis the contemporary selfie culture. I suggest that, instead of emphasizing the model’s singularity as traditional artistic portraits do, the flow of selfies tends to create similarity. I begin by clarifying Nancy’s paradoxical claim that the human portrait may resemble a person only on the condition of not representing him or her. After this, I inquire about the philosophical position of selfies as constructed portraits that make visible the absence of the self. However, as I argue, they do this in a sense that differs from Nancy’s account of the portrait. As a result, I propose that the repetition and circulation of selfies has remarkably changed our view on the significance and, finally, the ontology of the portrait.

19. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
C. E. Harris

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As digital cinema becomes increasingly dematerialized, in the vein of milestones such as Avatar (2009) and Gravity (2013), the role of CGI and other digital film technologies shift from a complement/corrective of filmed images to a means of creating images proper. In these films created without celluloid, without physical decors, and, increasingly, even without a camera, the insistence on retaining artifactual film formal techniques, codes, and devices from analog cinema is nonetheless striking: camera movements are simulated, lens flares are rendered digitally in the absence of lenses, editing proceeds according to classical codes of continuity, etc. This paper investigates the simulation of analog film forms and ‘dispositifs’ in digital cinema through the question of perception: what does it mean to perceive a camera that is not actually there? Or more generally, when are these simulated devices meant to be apparent, and when are they meant to be imperceptible? In order to approach these questions, this paper will look at cases in which perceptual objects may go unregistered, cases in which perceptual objects are rendered more perceptible by virtue of their digital simulation, and cases in which perceptual objects are meant to be perceived otherwise, in order to posit a skeuomorphic sensibility that links analog and digital cinema through experience.

20. Glimpse: Volume > 22 > Issue: 1
Ģirts Jankovskis

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This paper analyzes the phenomenon of the new in the context of social media using the interpretative phenomenological approach based on interviews with social media users. The new, which is mostly used as an adjective (a property), in this paper is treated as a noun (an object), a phenomenon of perception described in three aspects: (1) as the future in presence, (2) as the opposite, (3) as a value. Usually, the new is associated with time, but in the context of social media perception, it rather appears as a value-saturated phenomenon. Two opposing attitudes can be distinguished: on the one hand, the new is seen as a desired progress, on the other hand, it includes an alienation from the being. This alienation also prevents us from seeing the new media as it is.