Louis i kahns phenomenah Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 7000 words

Louis i kahns phenomenah - Essay Example But more than that, the buildings that are created become the living testimony of the coming together of men, of the institution of men. This whole manner of looking at the intricate connection of man, of buildings and of the institution of men is given to humanity by a man who himself changed the image, the very esse of architecture in the contemporary milieu – Louis I Kahn. The aim of this paper is to address one poignant question Why Louis I Kahn’s work is important in the history of architecture in particular and in the history of humanity in general? In order to answer this question, this paper will look into three factors that are integral into the analysis of the question. First part of the paper will be the presentation of Louis I Kahn as the man, the architect and the philosopher. Second, the paper will delve into some of his buildings which attest to the great legacy that Kahn has left humankind - Salk Institute, the National Assembly in Sher-e-bangla in Bangladesh and the Kimbell Art Museum. Third, drawing heavily from what have been elucidated in the first and second parts of this paper, the paper will present the answers to the main question of this paper. And as the task of answering the main query of this paper throws light to the gift and brilliance of Louis I Kahn, it is acknowledged that to be able to fully understand Louis I Kah n it â€Å"involves the rewriting of the history of architecture† 1 the paper holds that this simple exposition is minute in comparison to the greatness of Louis I Kahn the architect, the philosopher, the man. â€Å"Man is born with what to do but not how to do it; how to do it takes a long, long, long time.†2 Louis I Kahn said this statement in his 1966 Berkeley Lecture. This claim thrust the reader into the conception that Kahn’s notion of the human nature is anchored on the age old philosophical ideal that human nature is beaming with potentiality for action and that what determines

Leonardo Davinci aritist or scientist Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Leonardo Davinci aritist or scientist - Essay Example (Catholic Encyclopedia) Leonardo da Vinci is best described as one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance. He was born in a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 14th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe. He was a multi-talented artist-scientist who excelled in various fields as painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scholar. "Leonardo was one of the greatest men of science in history, but the world which admired him as an artist did not discover the man of science until many centuries after his death" (Dibner, 380). He was chosen the 13th among the "Immortals of Science" by nearly 1,200 college and university presidents, editors of science periodicals, science editors of the world's great newspapers, and professors of science at scores of universities. (Dibner, 380) Leonardo's fascination with machines probably began during his boyhood. Some of his earliest sketches clearly show how various machine parts worked. As an apprentice in the studio of the artist Verrocchio, Leonardo observed and used a variety of machines. By studying them he gained practical knowledge about their design and structure. (Museum of Science) During the Renaissance, European artists began to study the model of nature more closely and to paint with the goal of greater realism. They learned to create lifelike people and animals, and they became skilled at creating the illusion of depth and distance on flat walls and canvases by using the techniques of linear perspective. (Holmes, 87) In the fifteenth century, Italy was not the unified country we know today; rather it was divided into many small independent states. Naples in the south was ruled by a series of kings. Popes of the Roman Catholic Church ruled the middle section. To the north different families controlled the largest and wealthiest city-states of Florence, Milan, and Venice. They fought wars against each other and against smaller neighboring states to increase their power. (Museum of Science) In that time of the renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci trained as a painter, and his amazing power of observation and skill as an illustrator enabled him to notice and recreate the effects he saw in nature. Leonardo was curious and observant, and wrote down and sketched so many of his observations in his notebooks. He was among the very first to take a scientific approach towards understanding of the world. (Museum of Science: Leonardo's Perspective) Leonardo wrote in Italian using a special kind of shorthand that he invented himself. He used "mirror writing", starting at the right side of the page and moving to the left. He did this probably to make it harder for people to read his notes and steal his ideas. Another reason is that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church; and also, writing left handed from left to right was messy because the ink just put down would smear as his hand moved across it; therefore he chose to write in reverse because it prevented smudging. (Museum of Science) As an artist, Leonardo borrowed almost nothing from the past - a few details in a candelabrum in the small "Annunciation" of the Louvre, rare sketches such as the "Dancers" of the Academy of Venice, a warrior's head at London (British Museum). Leonardo, therefore,

Logistics and Webiste Hosting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Logistics and Webiste Hosting - Essay Example For a novice entrepreneur, venturing into the corporate world, this not only amounts to added burden, but is also far more time-consuming. Both of these factors contribute negatively to the potential survival and subsequent growth of the business in the future. As an entrepreneur I need to be looking for ways to minimize cost and maximize efficiency, and hosting my own website is at the opposing end of this. With a business venture in its embryonic stages, it is not wise to be investing any unnecessary time or money when cheaper and effective alternatives are readily available. I know from experience that using a web-hosting website is convenient and cost-effective. 1and1.com is one of the many available service providers. All I had to do was sign up and register my unique domain name like logisticspartner.net, and now my website will be hosted by their server at modest charges. They also provide the opportunity to buy all similar domain names for example logisticspartner.org or logisticspartner.co to ensure the originality of my brand name. The only effort I needed to make was to verify the authenticity of the service provider, and to look for technical services compatible with my business type. A logistics business should not expect any extraordinarily heavy traffic therefore a service with a reasonable bandwidth and storage capacity should work just fine (Top10bestwebsitehosting.com, 2014). To top it all off, web-hosting websites provide customer assistance as well. Thus, as a business owner who is not very well equipped with technical expertise, I woul d prefer to use a web-hosting service instead of hosting my own website. Top10bestwebsitehosting.com. (2014). The top 10 web hosting companies of 2014. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.top10bestwebsitehosting.com/index.php?kw=web%20hosting&c=37398489468&t=search&p=&m=e&adpos=1t1&a=2710&gclid=CIDEtKK3nbwCFUVa3goduz0A6g

Oil Paintings Essay Example for Free

Oil Paintings Essay The oil painting technique traces its roots all the way back to a time between the fifth and ninth century when it was first used in Western Afghanistan, yet it was made famous and the premier means of expression by the Renaissance movement in the 15th century by men like Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael (Davide 46). The reason the oil painting technique gained this newfound popularity was due in large part to its ability to convey things such as human flesh more accurately while also giving the painter weeks in drying time to work. However, in order for us to properly understand the oil painting technique, we must first understand its composition and ability to create. The paint itself is created using two elements: pigments and oil. The pigments are dry colorants, such as mineral salts and other earth types, ground-up into a fine powder and separated by color. But since the pigments could not adhere to the painting alone, oil was used as a binder to do just that. Typically, linseed oil was used because it can polymerize, and therefore is a drying oil (Mayer, Ralph, and Sheehan 123). However, other oils such as walnut oil, sunflower oil, and tung oil are also used, especially if the artist would want to alter the drying times of the paint or lessen faint colors. A good example of an artist who even used different oils in the same painting was Leonardo Da Vinci, who â€Å"†¦ used a combination of oils while painting Adoration of the Maji, which some speculate was for the benefit of the artist to takeover this unfinished work† (www. henryfordgroup. org). Additionally, there are other elements to the composition of the oil painting that help altar the paint. In order to make alterations and correct elements, artists like to paint multiple layers; this also gives them the luxury of stripping off the paint already applied to the gesso (white glue that covers the medium on which the painting will be applied) without ruining the portions, which they would like to remain permanent. However, for the artist to do this, they need to apply thin layers of paint initially (‘under painting’), meaning they must mix the oil with a solvent such as white spirits or turpentine to dilute the oil. This is especially good for the artist using the â€Å"fat over lean† ethod, where each layer of paint contains more oil than the previous layer. Additional additives would also include varnishes that are usually made from damar gum crystals dissolved in turpentine, thus sealing the work and giving the painting a greater glossiness (Davide 47). The advantages of oil paintings include durability and versatility; oil paintings completed using proper drying time and properly created are very durable. Oil itself is non-polar and hydrophobic, meaning it will repel water, a key element in the deterioration of many pieces of art. Furthermore, oil actually dries through oxidization, in which â€Å"†¦non-polar covalent bonds are governed by the ionic forces between functional groups and the metal ions present in the pigment† (Mayer, Ralph and Sheehan 125). The consequential result is a stable film that’s bit of elasticity helps prevent any bleeding or flow from gravitational pull. In terms of versatility, varnishes allow for one to work on and complete independent elements over a vast time frame, while also the stripping of the varnish allow for the proper cleaning of paintings after many years of display. Moreover, the fine pigments ground into the oil allow for greater optical effect and translucency, which makes things such as human skin appear far more life-like. And with the use of a smooth surface greater lightness is reflected in the oil painting, which the varnish will help accentuate color and depth (Mayer, Ralph and Sheehan 125). This is due to the multiple refractions the varnish helps create, thus creating more perspective in the painting itself. There aren’t many disadvantages when it comes to oil painting, yet there are issues with drying time, aging, and blending. Drying time is an advantage to quite a few artists, yet those who like to use a sequence of washes in quick succession often find the oil painting technique difficult (Davide 48). Also, most curators would tell you that it takes from 60-80 years for an oil painting to finish drying. Aging concerns also are a major disadvantage, especially when artists use linseed oil, which tends to yellow or darken with age. However, this aging can be stifled if the artist has the proper tools. Finally, blending can also be a key concern because the oil tends to blur together causing the painting to become muddy and taking away from istinctive properties. The oil painting technique is typically applied to a canvas that is composed of a linen or cotton cloth and wooden â€Å"stretcher. † The canvas can then be coated with animal glue and primed with a mixture of white paint and chalk. This medium has been very popular since the 16th century; however, other mediums for oil paintings such as panels, linoleum, paper, and slate were also used (Davide 48). The canvas, though, was highly regarded for its lightweight, cheaper, and not prone to warping like a panel. In conclusion, the oil painting technique is still a very popular method used by artists today. However, many artists don’t make their own paint, rather they buy tubes from specialty stores, but still many of them stress the importance of knowing the components of the paint in which they are using. And as a result, those artists are able to showcase their works to the best of their abilities, because their understanding of the materials allows them to make adjustments and highlight key elements, thus putting their knowledge on par with the great painter’s of the Renaissance.

Humanities’ Irrational and its Effects on a Utopian Society Essay

The human psyche is divided into rational and irrational drives. Courtesy of Sigmund Freud, it is divided into the id, ego, and super-ego. According to Freud, although the super-ego controls the other two to present ourselves in a rational state within society, the id often tends to be out of complete control by the conscious, making it an unconscious action. For Freud, it’s the recognition that the irrational is there, that it must be controlled to take over. Man’s aggressive nature does tend to overpower the mind, leading to irrational actions. Both Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents and Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground show how humans are controlled by their irrational drives and that, as a result, the attempts to create a utopian society are futile. To take a different view of the irrational actions in humans, a cinematic frame of reference was introduced, Joss Whedon’s sci-fi film, Serenity tells of a civilization that has become cont rolled by aggressive groups, the Alliance and the Reavers. Both factions take the form of an antagonistic society, maintaining a sense in fear in all those who go against or stand in their way. Actions to make a civilized society utopian leads to the creation of a dystopia due to human’s irrational drives. Through his writing and research, Freud outlined that man was initially driven by his irrational impulses, specifically, his aggression. The aggression he was referring to pertained to man’s primitive instincts. Freud’s views and established philosophies shifted away from the previous Enlightenment ideologies of rationality of the mind. Freud’s ideas contradicted â€Å"the individual’s essential goodness and rationality† and sided with the notion that the human mind was driven by â€Å"irrati... ...id, and symbolizes the universe in its entirety of being a dystopian society. Thus concluding that actions to make a civilized society utopian leads to dystopian reactions due to man’s irrational drives. This claim being supported based on examples in the film Serenity, as well as theoretical support analysis from Freud and Dostoyevsky. Works Cited Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Lawall 1250-1327. Freud, Sigmund. Civilzation and Its Discontents. Lawall 1693-1699. Lawall, Sarah, ed. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2006. Print. Perry, Marvin, ed. Western Civilization: Ideas, Politics, and Society. 9th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. Print. Serenity. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, and Adam Baldwin. Universal, 2005. DVD.

Customers For Life By Carl Sew Essay -- essays research papers

"Customers for Life" Carl Sewell’s book â€Å"Customers for Life† is devoted to teaching the businessperson of today ways in which they can turn one-time buyers into customers for life. He states that every customer has the ability to be worth 332,000 dollars to your business if you can keep them for life. Mr. Sewell is the number selling luxury automobile dealer in the country. He started from the bottom and manipulated his automobile business into a 250,000,000-dollar business. In his book he explains the things that he has found to work for his business in great detail so that you may also apply them to your business. The entire book revolves around these 10 commandments to customer service: The Ten Commandments of Customer Service 1. Bring ‘em back alive. Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again. Do not try and guess what the customers want, just ask them. They are more than willing to tell you. You should make it easy for the customer to tell you what they want by giving them a short questionnaire. Most importantly, you do not want to pester the customer; if you bother the customer, they are not going to be happy. 2 Systems, not smiles. Saying please and thank you does not ensure you’ll do the job right the first time, every time. Only systems guarantee that. There are two major components of a system. The first being to do the job right the first time and the second one is having a plan in place to deal with things when they go wrong. Bei...

Aura in Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations Essay

In Walter Benjamin’s book Illuminations, two particular chapters are relevant to the corpus of works that make up film study. â€Å"Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproductions† and â€Å"The Storyteller† outline a progressive history from oral traditions to the modern traditions such as film that resulted and the bumps that have been encountered along the way. Central to these two chapters is the idea of aura. Aura, though difficult to define, is a concept that is easy to perceive because of its engaging qualities. From oral to written to visual representations including film, the story is the nucleus that produces entertainment and ideally educates the audience. To be entertained does not require much of the audience, but education is an engaging process that preserves culture and maintains the aura. Because of the absence of proverbs, morals, or other trite composite statements, the effective storyteller is kin to the guru. The advice the storyteller offers is found throughout the course of the story and the listener or reader is able to draw the meaning out from the speech or pages of their own accord. As a patient fisherman learns at the end of a long day, not all adventures are fruitful. The timeless quality of the works of Nicolai Leskov can encourage the reader to lose track of the parts of the story that, when later assembled, can be taken as advice. In this way, an attentive reader may find advice or counsel for many situations and the story can continue to unfold through the suggestions that good counsel offers. The â€Å"White Eagle† encourages quotation of different passages in order for a summary to be made and offered as a sacrifice to the luke-warm reader. However, the storyteller’s traditional place is not one of summaries, annotated bibliographies, or cliff notes. Time was meant to be integral in the creation of a story which is only preserved in the social fabric of history. The uniqueness of any event, object, or idea depends upon its temporal qualities. Time and space dictate absolutely everything according to Quantum Physicists who are considered to be on the forefront of the combination of all knowledge. These revolutionary inter-disciplinarians have shown that gravity depends on time and space, that speed depends on time and space, and that even decisions depend on time and space[1]. The decision to tell a story depends on the time, traditionally evening when there is less work to be done, and the space, made up of gathering people encouraging the story to be told. Without these two conditions, ample time to tell the story and one’s willingness to listen, a story cannot take place. Because storytelling is an interchange between the one telling the story and the one who is destined to re-tell the story, the oral tradition is dependent upon listeners for its survival. However, since the transference of the events of the tale are not verbatim, the re-telling is in fact an original telling because the details have been molded to fit the circumstances of the re-telling. If the audience is comprised of mainly children, perhaps more attention will be made to the magical parts of the story. If the audience is teenage boys, more emphasis and elaboration may be made on the graphic images in the story. In the best case scenario â€Å"the perfect narrative is derived through the layers of a variety of retellings† (Benjamin p. 93). When a storyteller chooses to relay some advice that has been intertwined in the fabric of a story which is dependent on the social fabric of the group without an audience present for the telling, the unraveling of oral traditions begins. Written history has certainly provided benefits to society that are too numerous to even attempt to summarize. The unfortunate fact is that none of the advancements resulting from changing production methods have benefited the beautiful intergenerational tapestry of storytelling. A common misconception is that a novel is in continuity with oral tradition when it is, in fact, quite a discontinuity. The novel has different properties and different purposes. For one, the novel is composed in solidarity, far from the social fabric where meaning was derived and solely existed. The reader is forced into solidarity as well and his interpretations may no longer have any bearing on those around him. That is not to say that personal meanings are unimportant, only that writing signifies the beginning of a new timeline in tradition whose grand purpose is â€Å"to carry the incommensurable to extremes in the representation of human life† (Benjamin p. 87). As personal importance and interpretation is difficult to verify, society centralizes on information which depends on its verifiability for survival. Writing is the conveyance of information and in modern times information is of paramount importance. The outcome of wars or the accrual of wealth often results from the timely reception of pertinent information. Reported events are subject to immediate verifiability which causes most contemporary novelists to tread lightly when including supernatural or mystical events in their novels. As the transference of quick and efficient information is increasing, â€Å"the communicability of experience is decreasing† (Benjamin p. 86). Storytelling in a social context was recreating the enjoyable social setting the storyteller once experienced that was moving enough for him or her that he or she decided to provide the same experience for future generations. Even further back in the tradition are the actual events themselves. A character in the story was once a person who, through fortuitous circumstances, participated in the events that produced the story. Although exaggerations have been added for entertainment value and alterations have been made, the attempt was always to communicate an awesome experience. In Leskov’s â€Å"The Left Handed Craftsman,† the namesake is not by far the protagonist, but his involvement with the steel flea from Brittan resurrected the tale which was, among many other things, a tribute to ancient craftsmen. The relationship of the storyteller to his material is that of a craftsman to his medium. Benjamin asks â€Å"whether it is not his [the story teller or craftsman] very task to fashion the raw material of experience, his own and that of others, in a solid, useful, and unique way† (p. 108). If the writer is as acutely aware of his or her audience as an oral story teller would be, it is possible to craft a utilitarian product. The solitary production method of writing that removes the writer from his or her immediate context makes this very difficult to achieve. What is lost is the mystical aura that electrified and preserved oral storytelling for so many generations. Writing by hand inevitably led to the printing press and other forms of art, such as visual art, which soon became easily reproducible. The degradation continues as the mode of production evolves. With the advent of the lithograph, whose origins lie in etching and engraving, works of art were beginning to lose their aura. Just as a written novel is not the same as the oral story from which it may have been derived, reproducing visual art leaves the third printing, especially when dealing with wood as was the case with etching and engraving, less clear than the first printing. In rhythm with the march of advancement, technology made pictorial reproductions more effective and efficient in their representations of real life. The march continued past the incorrigibly life-like photograph to film, silent at first, then at a speed that could keep up with speech. In contemporary times, film reproductions of actual events are so accountable that they can be used as evidence in court cases. As wonderful (for the plaintiff) as that may be, the aura that was so present and integral to the authenticity of storytelling is vanishing into the background just as wood engraving has been subsumed by photography. The ramifications of interest here are those of social orientation, specifically social perceptions. In film, the viewer is not allowed the uniqueness of visual perception that can be found when viewing a piece of art in a gallery. The perspective is derived from variations in the height of the viewer, distance of the viewer from the art, other people possibly surrounding the viewer and the background that changes in the case of traveling art pieces. Film, â€Å"being based on changes of place and focus which periodically assail the spectator,† gives the viewer only two options: eyes open or eyes closed. To view is to give in to the filmmaker’s point of view. The social context that has been created is that the other viewers have given in as well. As for the integrity of the aura, the production method of film, which is far removed from the stage-like presentation of storytelling, is even more fabricated because of the fragmented production method of feature films. Additionally, the aura is lost to the audience of whom nothing more than keeping their eyes open is asked. In hopeful efforts one asks, can the aura be resurrected in film if a storyteller is united with the power of film? Indigenous tribes in modern times are the least removed from their oral traditions and thus the most hopeful for a positive response to the above question. In terms of production, the â€Å"Video in the Villages Project†, headed by most notably Vincent Carelli, is a prime example. The project essentially taught indigenous people from various tribes throughout Brazil how to operate video equipment as well as to edit the final project. The indigenous people were the think tank and the executive board for the choosing of the subject of the separate films. The aura was also lost in the final project which can neither be defined as a documentary or a feature film. The people in â€Å"A Day in the Village,† have chosen to show some of their daily routines. As the events are displayed in a fragmented way, one can assumed they were also taped in a fragmented manner. There is no central story, just the theme of activities of this tribe. As for the aura emanating from a guru like storyteller, there is none. A film like the Inuit produced and directed â€Å"The Fast Runner† is the telling of an Inuit tale in the context of a tribal gathering. The storyteller is present throughout the whole tale but he is, obviously, on screen. With film, the context is always mutable because the same film can be shown simultaneously in innumerable locations. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Prague, and Minsk could all choose to premier a film at the exact same time but the social context is completely unique in each of these situations. The languages change and the people in the theater or viewing space are unique to that particular showing. According to Benjamin â€Å"The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well† (p. 222). If the historical circumstances can be so easily changed, the meaning can also just as easily be changed. To the people in the sweat lodge hearing that story, the aura could have been part of the captivating presence that maintained the story and created a central meaning for that society. But to an urban citizen who has had no direct contact with these traditions, the aura is not engaging and the meaning, if any has been found, is personal. The active participation of the audience is the same as any other film: unnecessary. There is no tradition in this context and the film will survive even if no viewer is enchanted to listen attentively enough to later replicate the story. The fragmented production of this feature film, like any other, degrades the aura of the original story to a level which is unnoticeable. This film’s attempts to be part of the Hollywood entertainment genre, which almost categorically excludes the necessarily engaging aspects of oral traditions from which the story derives, fails to maintain its original aura. The lessons of our ancestors have always been an important aspect of physical and cultural survival. Through film and indigenous attempts at film, the aura has been lost and it does not seem that it can be resurrected. Cultures are being subsumed into â€Å"melting pots† that neglect individuality and suppress autonomy. Information is more important than the unique nuances a storyteller can combine with sound advice to preserve and at the same time progress a culture. If the good of all is in question, the storyteller must survive. The only issue is if there will be a context for the storyteller to survive in.