The squat, noisy duck occupies a prominent role in the human cultural imagination, as evidenced by everything from the rubber duck of childhood baths to insurance commercials. With Duck,Victoria de Rijke explores the universality of this quacking bird through the course of human culture and history. From the Eider duck to the Brazilian teal to the familiar mallard, duck species are richly diverse, and de Rijke offers a comprehensive overview of their evolutionary history. She explores the numerous roles that the duck plays in literature, art, and religion—including the Hebrew belief that ducks represent immortality, and the Finnish myth that the universe was hatched from a duck’s egg. The author also highlights the significant role humor has always played in human imaginings of duck life, such as the Topographia Hibernia, a twelfth-century tome contending that ducks originated as growths on tree trunks washed up on a beach. But the book does not neglect the bird’s role in everyday life as well, from food dishes to jokes to beloved animated characters such as Daffy Duck and Donald Duck. Duck is an entertaining account of a bird whose distinctive silhouette is known the world over.
This book offers new definitions, vocabularies and insights for “scribbling”, viewing it as a fascinating and revealing process shared by many different disciplines and practices. The book provides a fresh and timely perspective on the nature of mark making and the persistence of the gestural impulse from the earliest graphic marks to the most sophisticated artistic production. The typical treatment of scribbling in the literature of artistic development has cast the practice as a prelude to representation in drawing and writing, with only occasional acknowledgment of the continuing joy and experiment of making marks across many arts practices. The continuous line the author traces between the universal practice of scribbling in infancy and early childhood and the work of radical creativity for contemporary and historical artists is original and clarifying, expanding the range of drawing behaviors to that of avant-garde painters, performance and the digital.
This book offers new definitions, vocabularies and insights for “scribbling”, viewing it as a fascinating and revealing process shared by many different disciplines and practices. The book provides a fresh and timely perspective on the nature of mark making and the persistence of the gestural impulse from the earliest graphic marks to the most sophisticated artistic production. The typical treatment of scribbling in the literature of artistic development has cast the practice as a prelude to representation in drawing and writing, with only occasional acknowledgment of the continuing joy and experiment of making marks across many arts practices. The continuous line the author traces between the universal practice of scribbling in infancy and early childhood and the work of radical creativity for contemporary and historical artists is original and clarifying, expanding the range of drawing behaviors to that of avant-garde painters, performance and the digital.
The squat, noisy duck occupies a prominent role in the human cultural imagination, as evidenced by everything from the rubber duck of childhood baths to insurance commercials. With Duck,Victoria de Rijke explores the universality of this quacking bird through the course of human culture and history. From the Eider duck to the Brazilian teal to the familiar mallard, duck species are richly diverse, and de Rijke offers a comprehensive overview of their evolutionary history. She explores the numerous roles that the duck plays in literature, art, and religion—including the Hebrew belief that ducks represent immortality, and the Finnish myth that the universe was hatched from a duck’s egg. The author also highlights the significant role humor has always played in human imaginings of duck life, such as the Topographia Hibernia, a twelfth-century tome contending that ducks originated as growths on tree trunks washed up on a beach. But the book does not neglect the bird’s role in everyday life as well, from food dishes to jokes to beloved animated characters such as Daffy Duck and Donald Duck. Duck is an entertaining account of a bird whose distinctive silhouette is known the world over.
This book, geared towards both students and professionals, examines the synthesis of artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology in detecting mis-/disinformation in digital media content, and suggests practical means to intervene and curtail this current global ‘infodemic’. This interdisciplinary book explores technological, psychological, philosophical, and linguistic insights into the nature of truth and deception, trust and credibility, cognitive biases and logical fallacies and how, through AI and human intervention, content users can be alerted to the presence of deception. The author investigates how AI can mimic the procedures and know-hows of humans, showing how AI can help spot fakes and how AI tools can work to debunk rumors and fact-check. The book describes how AI detection systems work and how they fit with broader societal and individual concerns. Each chapter focuses attention on key concepts and their inter-connection. The first part of the book seeks theoretical footing to understand our interactions with new information and reviews relevant empirical findings in behavioral sciences. The second part is about applied knowledge. The author looks at several known practices that guard us against deception, and provides several real-world examples of manipulative persuasive techniques in advertising, political propaganda, and public relations. She provides links to the downloadable executable files to three AI applications (clickbait, satire, and falsehood detectors) via LiT.RL GitHub, an open access repository. The book is useful to students and professionals studying AI and media studies as well as library and information professionals. Examines how artificial intelligence (AI) and psychology can aid in detecting mis-/disinformation and the language of deceit in digital media content; Suggests practical computational means to intervene and curtail the global ‘infodemic’ of fake news; Presents how AI can sift, sort, and shuffle digital content, to reduce the amount of content needed to be reviewed by humans.
Playful and inquisitive, seals have long been interested in humans—and humans have reciprocated that interest, falling for their beauty, grace, and charm as they frolic alongside our boats or loll on sandy shores. In this newest entry in the Animal series, Victoria Dickenson traces the history of our interaction with these beautiful, fascinating swimmers, from the centuries of hunting—in which people killed countless seals for their skin, oil, and meat—to the present, when the white-furred baby seal has become one of the most potent symbols of the need for ecological conservation. Along the way, she offers an approachable account of seal biology and behavior, and she delineates the threats they face from habitat destruction and climate change. Beautifully illustrated and packed with stories from folklore, myth, and history, Seal offers a richly immersive view of a much-loved, storied creature.
From Benjamin Bunny to Peter Cottontail, the Velveteen Rabbit to the Flopsy Bunnies, the Rabbit of Caerbannog to Bugs Bunny and Roger Rabbit, the winsome long-eared animal is a permanent fixture of our childhoods. We know rabbits for their place in our stories, myths, and legends, and also for how they helped us learn to tie our shoes. In this richly illustrated book, Victoria Dickenson explores the natural and cultural history of the most familiar of the lagomorphs. Tracing the history of the species, Dickenson brings to life the giant extinct rabbits of Minorca and the tiny endangered Volcano rabbits of Mexico while focusing on the European rabbit. She explains how humans became this particular rabbit’s greatest predator, coveting its fur and flesh, and how they distributed rabbits to such far-flung places as New Zealand and Australia to provide food and sport for settlers. Dickenson also examines the paradox of the rabbit as prey and trickster who outwits all rivals, as cuddly companion for children and symbol of unbridled animal passion. She looks at the use of the rabbit’s foot to charm away evil, celebrates the Year of the Rabbit, and discovers the Jade Moon Rabbit, who lives on the moon. Hopping from B’rer Rabbit to the Energizer Bunny, Rabbit is the perfect gift for anyone who loves these intelligent, adorable creatures.
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