Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Australasian Tokens"

History of Seal and Printing Cultures Implications of the four important Chinese inventions, the compass, gun powder, papermaking, and printing, have far-reaching significance for human civilisation. The Chinese seal is intimately related to printing. Seals have the practical function of duplicating impressions of words or patterns. This process shares a very similar concept to printing on a small scale. Printing originated from the function of seals for making duplicated impressions, and for this reason Wang believes that seals constitute the prototype of printing. Seals in Traditional Commere Seals in certain Asian countries, such as Taiwan and Japan, play a vital role similar to that played by signatures in Western society. Particularly, the Chinese seal has been an integral part of Chinese heritage and culture. Wong states that seals usually symbolise tokens of promise in Chinese society. Ancient seals in their various forms have played a major role in information systems, in terms of authority, authentication, identification, certified proof, and authenticity, and have also been used for tamper-proofing, impression duplication, and branding purposes. To illustrate, clay sealing has been applied to folded documents to detect when sealed documents have been exposed or tampered with. Interestingly, one of the features of digital signature technology is also designed to achieve this purpose. Wong records that when the commodity economy began to develop and business transactions became more frequent, seals were used to prove that particular goods had been certified by customs. Moreover, when the goods were subject to tax by the government, seals were applied to the goods to prove the levy paid. Seals continue to be used in Chinese society as personal identification and in business transactions, official and legal documents, administrative warrants and charters. Paper-based Contract Signing with Seal Certificates In Taiwan and Japan, in certain circumstances, when two parties wish to formalise a contract, the seals of the two parties must be affixed to the contract. As Figure 1 illustrates, seal certificates are required to be attached to the signed and sealed contract for authentication as well as the statement of intent of a voluntary agreement in Taiwan. Figure 1. Example of a contract attached with the seal certificates A person can have more than one seal; however, only one seal at a time is allowed to be registered with a jurisdictional registration authority. The purpose of seal registration is to prevent seal forgery and to prove the identity of the seal owner. Namely, the seal registration process aims to associate the identity of the seal owner with the seal owner’s nominated seal, through attestation by a jurisdictional registration authority. Upon confirmation of the seal registration, the registration authority issues a seal certificate with both the seals of the registration authority and the registration authority executive. Digital Signatures for Electronic Commerce Handwritten signatures and tangible ink seals are highly impractical within the electronic commerce environment. However, the shift towards electronic commerce by both the public and private sector is an inevitable trend. ‘Trust’ in electronic commerce is developed through the use of ‘digital signatures’ in conjunction with a trustworthy environment. In principle, digital signatures are designed to simulate the functions of handwritten signatures and traditional seals for the purposes of authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation within the electronic commerce environment. Various forms of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are employed to ensure the reliability of using digital signatures so as to ensure the integrity of the message. PKI does not, however, contribute in any way to the signatory’s ability to verify and approve the content of an electronic document prior to the affixation of his/her digital signature. Shortcomings of Digital Signature Scheme One of the primary problems with existing digital signatures is that a digital signature does not ’feel’ like, or resemble, a traditional seal or signature to the human observer; it does not have a recognisably individual or aesthetic quality. Historically, the authenticity of documents has always been verified by visual examination of the document. Often in legal proceedings, examination of both the affixed signature or seal as an integral part of the document will occur, as well as the detection of any possible modifications to the document. Yet, the current digital signature regime overlooks the importance of this sense of visualisation. Currently, digital signatures, such as the OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) digital signature, are appended to an electronic document as a long, incomprehensible string of arbitrary characters. As shown in Figure 2, this offers no sense of identity or ownership by simple visual inspection. Figure 2. Example of a PGP signature To add to this confusion for the user, a digital signature will be different each time the user applies it. The usual digital signature is formed as an amalgam of the contents of the digital document and the user’s private key, meaning that a digital signature attached to an electronic document will vary with each document. This again represents a departure from the traditional use of the term ‘signature’. A digital signature application generates its output by firstly applying a hash algorithm over the contents of the digital document and then encrypting that hash output value using the user’s private cryptographic key of the normal dual-key pair provided by the Public Key cryptography systems. Therefore, digital signatures are not like traditional signatures which an individual can identify as being uniquely theirs, or as a recognisable identity attributable to an individual entity. New Visualised Digital Signature Scheme Liu et al. have developed the visualised digital signature scheme to enhance existing digital signature schemes through visualisation; namely, this scheme makes the intangible digital signature virtually tangible. Liu et al.’s work employs the visualised digital signature scheme with the aim of developing visualised signing and verification in electronic situations. The visualised digital signature scheme is sustained by the digital certificate containing both the certificate issuer’s and potential signer’s seal images. This thereby facilitates verification of a signer’s seal by reference to the appropriate certificate. The mechanism of ensuring the integrity and authenticity of seal images is to incorporate the signer’s seal image into an X.509 v3 certificate, as outlined in RFC 3280. Thus, visualised digital signature applications will be able to accept the visualised digital certificate for use. The data structure format of the visualised digital certificate is detailed in Liu. The visualised signing and verification processes are intended to simulate traditional signing techniques incorporating visualisation. When the signer is signing the document, the user interface of the electronic contracting application should allow the signer to insert the seal from the seal image file location into the document. After the seal image object is embedded in the document, the document is referred to as a ’visually sealed’ document. The sealed document is ready to be submitted to the digital signing process, to be transmitted with the signer’s digital certificate to the other party for verification. The visualised signature verification process is analogous to the traditional, sealed paper-based document with the seal certificate attached for verification. In history, documents have always required visual stimulus for verification, which highlights the need for visual stimulus evidence to rapidly facilitate verification. The user interface of the electronic contracting application should display the visually sealed document together with the associated digital certificate for human verification. The verifier immediately perceives the claimed signer’s seal on the document, particularly when the signer’s seal is recognisable to the verifier. This would be the case particularity where regular business transactions between parties occur. Significantly, having both the issuing CA’s and the signer’s seal images on the digital certificate instils confidence that the signer’s public key is attested to by the CA, as shown in Figure 3. This is unlike the current digital signature verification process which presents long, meaningless strings to the verifier. Figure 3. Example of a new digital certificate presentation Conclusions Seals have a long history accompanying the civilisation of mankind. In particular, certain business documents and government communities within seal-culture societies still require the imprints of the participating entities. Inevitably, the use of modern technologies will replace traditional seals and handwritten signatures. Many involved in implementing electronic government services and electronic commerce care little about the absence of imprints and/or signatures; however, there is concern that the population may experience difficulty in adapting to a new electronic commerce system where traditional practices have become obsolete. The purpose of the visualised digital signature scheme is to explore enhancements to existing digital signature schemes through the integration of culturally relevant features. This article highlights the experience of the use and development of Chinese seals, particularly in visualised seals used in a recognition process. Importantly, seals in their various forms have played a major role in information systems for thousands of years. In the advent of the electronic commerce, seal cultures still remain in the digital signing environment. References Housley, R., et al. RFC 3280 Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure: Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile. The Internet Engineering Task Force, 2002. Liu, V., et al. “Visually Sealed and Digital Signed Documents.” 27th Australasian Computer Science Conference. Dunedin, NZ: Australian Computer Science Communications, 2004. Liu, V. “Visually Sealed and Digital Signed Electronic Documents: Building on Asian Tradition.” Dissertation. Queensland University of Technology, 2004. Wang, P.Y. The Art of Seal Carving. Taipei: Council for Cultural Planning and Development, Executive Yuan, 1991. Wong, Y.C., and H.W. Yau. The Art of Chinese Seals through the Ages. Hong Kong: The Zhejiang Provincial Museum and the Art Museum of the Chinese University Hong Kong, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Liu, Vicky. "Seal Culture Still Remains in Electronic Commerce." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/03-liu.php>. APA Style Liu, V. (Jun. 2005) "Seal Culture Still Remains in Electronic Commerce," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/03-liu.php>.

Literary history can be viewed alternately in a perspective of continuities or discontinuities. In the former perspective, what I perversely call postmodernism is simply an extension of modernism [which is], as everyone knows, a development of symbolism, which … is itself a specialisation of romanticismand who is there to say that the romantic concept of man does not find its origin in the great European Enlightenment? Etc. In the latter perspective, however, continuities [which are] maintained on a certain level of narrative abstraction (i.e., history [or aesthetic description]) are resisted in the interests of the quiddity and discreteness of art, the space that each work or action creates around itself. – Ihab Hassan Ihab Hassan’s words, published in 1975, continue to resonate today. How should we approach art? Can an artwork ever really fully be described by its critical review, or does its description only lead to an ever multiplying succession of terms? Michel Foucault spoke of the construction of modern sexuality as being seen as the hidden, irresolvable “truth” of our subjectivity, as that secret which we must constantly speak about, and hence as an “incitement to discourse” (Foucault, History of Sexuality). Since the Romantic period, the appreciation of aesthetics has been tied to the subjectivity of the individual and to the degree an art work appeals to the individual’s sense of self: to one’s personal refinement, emotions and so on. Art might be considered part of the truth of our subjectivity which we seem to be endlessly talking about – without, however, actually ever resolving the issue of what a great art work really is (anymore than we have resolved the issue of what natural sexuality is). It is not my aim to explicate the relationship between art and sex but to re-inject a strategic understanding of discourse, as Foucault understood it, back into commonplace, contemporary aesthetic criticism. The problems in rendering into words subjective, emotional experiences and formal aesthetic criteria continue to dog criticism today. The chief hindrances to contemporary criticism remain such institutional factors as the economic function of newspapers. Given their primary function as tools for the selling of advertising space, newspapers are inherently unsuited to sustaining detailed, informed dialogue on any topic – be it international politics or aesthetics. As it is, reviews remain short, quickly written pieces squeezed into already overloaded arts pages. This does not prevent skilled, caring writers and their editorial supporters from ensuring that fine reviews are published. In the meantime, we muddle through as best we can. I argue that criticism, like art, should operate self-consciously as an incitement to discourse, to engagement, and so to further discussion, poetry, et cetera. The possibility of an endless recession of theoretical terms and subjective responses should not dissuade us. Rather, one should provisionally accept the instrumentality of aesthetic discourse provided one is able always to bear in mind the nominalism which is required to prevent the description of art from becoming an instrument of repression. This is to say, aesthetic criticism is clearly authored in order to demonstrate something: to argue a point, to make a fruitful comparison, and so on. This does not mean that criticism should be composed so as to dictate aesthetic taste to the reader. Instead, it should act as an invitation to further responses – much as the art work itself does. Foucault has described discourse – language, terminologies, metaphorical conceits and those logical and poetic structures which underpin them – as a form of technology (Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge and History of Sexuality). Different discursive forces arise in response to different cultural needs and contexts, including, indeed, those formulated not only by artists, but also by reviewers. As Hassan intimates, what is or is not “postmodernism”, for example, depends less on the art work itself – it is less a matter of an art work’s specific “quiddity” and its internal qualities – but is, rather, fundamentally dependent upon what one is trying to say about the piece. If one is trying to describe something novel in a work, something which relates it to a series of new or unusual forms which have become dominant within society since World War Two, then the term “postmodernism” most usefully applies. This, then, would entail breaking down the “the space that each work … creates around itself” in order to emphasise horizontal “continuities”. If, on the other hand, the critic wishes to describe the work from the perspective of historical developments, so as to trace the common features of various art works across a genealogical pattern running from Romanticism to the present day, one must de-emphasise the quiddity of the work in favour of vertical continuities. In both cases, however, the identification of common themes across various art works so as to aid in the description of wider historical or aesthetic conditions requires a certain “abstraction” of the qualities of the aesthetic works in question. The “postmodernism”, or any other quality, of a single art work thus remains in the eye of the beholder. No art work is definitively “postmodern” as such. It is only “postmodern” inasmuch as this description aids one in understanding a certain aspect of the piece and its relationship to other objects of analysis. In short, the more either an art work or its critical review elides full descriptive explication, the more useful reflections which might be voiced in its wake. What then is the instrumental purpose of the arts review as a genre of writing? For liberal humanist critics such as Matthew Arnold, F.R. Leavis and Harold Bloom, the role of the critic is straight forward and authoritative. Great art is said to be imbued with the spirit of humanity; with the very essence of our common subjectivity itself. Critics in this mode seek the truth of art and once it has been found, they generally construct it as unified, cohesive and of great value to all of humanity. The authors of the various avant-garde manifestoes which arose in Europe from the fin de siècle period onwards significantly complicated this ideal of universal value by arguing that such aesthetic values were necessarily abstract and so were not immediately visible within the content of the work per se. Such values were rather often present in the art work’s form and expression. Surrealism, Futurism, Supremacism, the Bauhaus and the other movements were founded upon the contention that these avant-garde art works revealed fundamental truths about the essence of human subjectivity: the imperious power of the dream at the heart of our emotional and psychic life, the geometric principles of colour and shape which provide the language for all experience of the sublime, and so on. The critic was still obliged to identify greatness and to isolate and disseminate those pieces of art which revealed the hidden truth of our shared human experience. Few influential art movements did not, in fact, have a chief theoretician to promote their ideals to the world, be it Ezra Pound and Leavis as the explicators of the works of T.S. Eliot, Martin Esslin for Beckett, or the artist her or himself, such as choreographers Martha Graham or Merce Cunningham, both of whom described in considerable detail their own methodologies to various scribes. The great challenge presented in the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Hassan and others, however, is to abandon such a sense of universal aesthetic and philosophical value. Like their fellow travellers within the New Left and soixante huit-ièmes (the agitators and cultural critics of 1968 Paris), these critics contend that the idea of a universal human subjectivity is problematic at best, if not a discursive fiction, which has been used to justify repression, colonialism, the unequal institutional hierarchies of bourgeois democratic systems, and so on. Art does not therefore speak of universal human truths. It is rather – like aesthetic criticism itself – a discursive product whose value should be considered instrumentally. The kind of a critical relationship which I am proposing here might provisionally be classified as discursive or archaeological criticism (in the Foucauldian sense of tracing discursive relationships and their distribution within any given cross-section or strata of cultural life). The role of the critic in such a situation is not one of acknowledging great art. Rather, the critic’s function becomes highly strategic, with interpretations and opinions regarding art works acting as invitations to engagement, consideration and, hence, also to rejection. From the point of view of the audience, too, the critic’s role is one of utility. If a critical description prompts useful, interesting or pleasurable reflections in the reader, then the review has been effective. If it has not, it has no role to play. The response to criticism thus becomes as subjective as the response to the art work itself. Similarly, just as Marcel Duchamp’s act of inverting a urinal and calling it art showed that anyone could be an artist provided they adopted a suitably creative vision of the objects which surrounded them, so anyone and everyone is a legitimate critic of any art work addressed to him or her as an audience. The institutional power accorded to critics by merit of the publications to which they are attached should not obfuscate the fact that anyone has the moral right to venture a critical judgement. It is not actually logically possible to be “right” or “wrong” in attributing qualities to an art work (although I have had artists assert the contrary to me). I like noise art, for example, and find much to stimulate my intellect and my affect in the chaotic feedback characteristic of the work of Merzbow and others. Many others however simply find such sounds to constitute unpleasant noise. Neither commentator is “right”. Both views co-exist. What is important is how these ideas are expressed, what propositions are marshalled to support either position, and how internally cohesive are the arguments supplied by supporters of either proposition. The merit of any particular critical intervention is therefore strictly formal or expressive, lying in its rhetorical construction, rather than in the subjective content of the criticism itself, per se. Clearly, such discursive criticism is of little value in describing works devised according to either an unequivocally liberal humanist or modernist avant-garde perspective. Aesthetic criticism authored in this spirit will not identify the universal, timeless truths of the work, nor will it act as an authoritative barometer of aesthetic value. By the same token though, a recognition of pluralism and instrumentality does not necessarily entail the rejection of categories of value altogether. Such a technique of aesthetic analysis functions primarily in the realm of superficial discursive qualities and formal features, rather than subterranean essences. It is in this sense both anti-Romantic and anti-Platonic. Discursive analysis has its own categories of truth and evaluation. Similarities between works, influences amongst artists and generic or affective precedents become the primary objects of analysis. Such a form of criticism is, in this sense, directly in accord with a similarly self-reflexive, historicised approach to art making itself. Where artists are consciously seeking to engage with their predecessors or peers, to find ways of situating their own work through the development of ideas visible in other cultural objects and historic aesthetic works, then the creation of art becomes itself a form of practical criticism or praxis. The distinction between criticism and its object is, therefore, one of formal expression, not one of nature or essence. Both practices engage with similar materials through a process of reflection (Marshall, “Vertigo”). Having described in philosophical and critical terms what constitutes an unfettered, democratic and strategic model of discursive criticism, it is perhaps useful to close with a more pragmatic description of how I myself attempt to proceed in authoring such criticism and, so, offer at least one possible (and, by definition, subjective) model for discursive criticism. Given that discursive analysis itself developed out of linguistic theory and Saussure’s discussion of the structural nature of signification, it is no surprise that the primary methodology underlying discursive analysis remains that of semiotics: namely how systems of representation and meaning mutually reinforce and support each other, and how they fail to do so. As a critic viewing an art work, it is, therefore, always my first goal to attempt to identify what it is that the artist appears to be trying to do in mounting a production. Is the art work intended as a cultural critique, a political protest, an avant-garde statement, a work of pure escapism, or some other kind of project – and hence one which can be judged according to the generic forms and values associated with such a style in comparison with those by other artists who work in this field? Having determined or intuited this, several related but nominally distinct critical reflections follow. Firstly, how effectively is this intent underpinning the art work achieved, how internally consistent are the tools, forms and themes utilised within the production, and do the affective and historic resonances evoked by the materials employed therein cohere into a logical (or a deliberately fragmented) whole? Secondly, how valid or aesthetically interesting is such a project in the first place, irrespective of whether it was successfully achieved or not? In short, how does the artist’s work compare with its own apparent generic rules, precedents and peers, and is the idea behind the work a contextually valid one or not? The questions of value which inevitably come into these judgements must be weighed according to explicit arguments regarding context, history and genre. It is the discursive transparency of the critique which enables readers to mentally contest the author. Implicitly transcendental models of universal emotional or aesthetic responses should not be invoked. Works of art should, therefore, be judged according to their own manifest terms, and, so, according to the values which appear to govern the relationships which organise materials within the art work. They should also, however, be viewed from a position definitively outside the work, placing the overall concept and its implicit, underlying theses within the context of other precedents, cultural values, political considerations and so on. In other words, one should attempt to heed Hassan’s caution that all art works may be seen both from the perspective of historico-genealogical continuities, as well as according to their own unique, self-defining characteristics and intentions. At the same time, the critical framework of the review itself – while remaining potentially dense and complex – should be as apparent to the reader as possible. The kind of criticism which I author is, therefore, based on a combination of art-historical, generic and socio-cultural comparisons. Critics are clearly able to elaborate more parallels between various artistic and cultural activities than many of their peers in the audience simply because it is the profession of the former to be as familiar with as wide a range of art-historical, cultural and political materials as is possible. This does not, however, make the opinions of the critic “correct”, it merely makes them more potentially dense. Other audiences nevertheless make their own connections, while spectators remain free to state that the particular parallels identified by the critic were not, to their minds, as significant as the critic would contend. The quantity of knowledge from which the critic can select does not verify the accuracy of his or her observations. It rather enables the potential richness of the description. In short, it is high time critics gave up all pretensions to closing off discourse by describing aesthetic works. On the contrary, arts reviewing, like arts production itself, should be seen as an invitation to further discourse, as a gift offered to those who might want it, rather than a Leavisite or Bloom-esque bludgeon to instruct the insensitive masses as to what is supposed to subjectively enlighten and uplift them. It is this sense of engagement – between critic, artist and audience – which provides the truly poetic quality to arts criticism, allowing readers to think creatively in their own right through their own interaction with a collaborative process of rumination on aesthetics and culture. In this way, artists, audiences and critics come to occupy the same terrain, exchanging views and constructing a community of shared ideas, debate and ever-multiplying discursive forms. Ideally, written criticism would come to occupy the same level of authority as an argument between an audience member and a critic at the bar following the staging of a production. I admit myself that even my best written compositions rarely achieve the level of playful interaction which such an environment often provokes. I nevertheless continue to strive for such a form of discursive exchange and bibulous poetry. References Apollonio, Umbro, ed. Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1903-27, published as 2 series. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. by Annette Lavers. London: Vintage, 1993. Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1998. Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Trans. by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Harcourt, 1978. Breton, André. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Trans. by Richard Seaver and Helen Lane. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 1972. Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. London: Faber, 1963. Esslin, Martin. Theatre of the Absurd. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. by A.M. Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock, 1972. ———. The History of Sexuality: Volume I: An Introduction. Trans. by Robert Hurley. London: Penguin, 1990. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin, 1992. Graham, Martha. Blood Memory. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Hassan, Ihab. “Joyce, Beckett and the Postmodern Imagination.” Triquarterly 32.4 (1975): 192ff. Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Dominant of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53-92. Leavis, F.R. F.R. Leavis: Essays and Documents. Eds. Ian MacKillop and Richard Storer. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995. Malevich, Kazimir. In Penny Guggenheim, ed. Art of This Century – Drawings – Photographs – Sculpture – Collages. New York: Art Aid, 1942. Marshall, Jonathan. “Documents in Australian Postmodern Dance: Two Interviews with Lucy Guerin,” in Adrian Kiernander, ed. Dance and Physical Theatre, special edition of Australasian Drama Studies 41 (October 2002): 102-33. ———. “Operatic Tradition and Ambivalence in Chamber Made Opera’s Recital (Chesworth, Horton, Noonan),” in Keith Gallasch and Laura Ginters, eds. Music Theatre in Australia, special edition of Australasian Drama Studies 45 (October 2004): 72-96. ———. “Vertigo: Between the Word and the Act,” Independent Performance Forums, series of essays commissioned by Not Yet It’s Difficult theatre company and published in RealTime Australia 35 (2000): 10. Merzbow. Venereology. Audio recording. USA: Relapse, 1994. Richards, Alison, Geoffrey Milne, et al., eds. Pearls before Swine: Australian Theatre Criticism, special edition of Meajin 53.3 (Spring 1994). Tzara, Tristan. Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. Trans. by Barbara Wright. London: Calder, 1992. Vaughan, David. Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Ed. Melissa Harris. New York: Aperture, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Marshall, Jonathan. "Inciting Reflection: A Short Manifesto for and Introduction to the Discursive Reviewing of the Arts." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/08-marshall.php>. APA Style Marshall, J. (Oct. 2005) "Inciting Reflection: A Short Manifesto for and Introduction to the Discursive Reviewing of the Arts," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/08-marshall.php>.