Untrained modern youths and ancient masters in self(ie) portraits

What do modern youths and ancient masters have in common? One possible commonality is they way they depict themselves in self portraits – specifically whether they tend to prefer giving preference to their left cheek or the right one. “[…] a set of selfies and wefies by modern youths reveals comparable biases to self-portraits and […]

‘Reversed Paintings’ (Possibilizations for Thing-Theorists)

Before considering the history and implications of reversed paintings, we need a definition – and we have one provided by Richard Read, who is Winthrop Professor in Art History at the University of Western Australia. “I define the reversed painting as a painting of a painting reversed against the spectator.” Professor Read is writing in […]

Podcast #33: Make sure colonoscopy patients will not explode

Chimpanzees recognizing photographs of the rear ends of other chimpanzees;  colonoscopy patients who explode, and the patent for the bagel-making machine — all these all turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. Click on the “Venetian blinds” icon — at the lower right corner here — to select whichever week’s episode you want to hear: SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify […]

Empty Photographic Frames : Punctuating the Narrative

Nancy Pedri, who is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Literature at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a comparatist. And, as such, is one of the few scholars to have examined the implications of empty photographic frames in multimodal narratives. “In its capacity to open up the possibility for variance in meaning, […]

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