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Emotions and aesthetic preferences evoked by animals in the context of nature conservation
Janovcová, Markéta ; Landová, Eva (advisor) ; Stibral, Karel (referee) ; Prokop, Pavol (referee)
People have always seen animals as an important part of their lives. As a result of human activity and other factors, an increasing number of species are becoming endangered. Recently, nature conservation has become increasingly important, but conservation activities cannot do without public support, not only financial. For this reason, it is necessary to understand how people perceive animals and what implications this may have for planning conservation programmes. In this paper, we focused on positive perceptions of animals ascertained through aesthetic preferences (the beauty of the animal) and negative perception through emotions (fear and disgust). It was found that the beauty of the animal and attributed dangerousness have a decisive influence on the support of conservation activities in the preferred group of mammals, while body size and attributed intelligence do not. In contrast, reptiles are an often neglected group of vertebrates, yet they are perceived by humans quite consistently. Humans distinguish reptiles on the basis of external appearance, namely the presence of limbs. Thus, there is a separate group of legless reptiles represented mainly by snakes and legless lizards (e.g. Amphisbaenia), which have their own rules for evaluating beauty and emotions. As it was found in the...
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"Plant hunting" in the Context of Science, Culture and Mentality in the 19th and Early 20th Century
Kocurek, Jakub ; Hermann, Tomáš (advisor) ; Neustupa, Jiří (referee) ; Stibral, Karel (referee)
This dissertation examines the phenomenon of 'plant-hunting' and 'plant-hunters' characteristic of Victorian and interwar Britain in particular. It defines and situates this phenomenon in time and space, and attempts to explain it. It primarily focuses on the questions of why the phenomenon arose in the given time and place, why and whether it disappeared at all, and whether it was eventually replaced by something and by what. It also examines what the existence of this phenomenon says about people's relationship to plants and the living world as such. The phenomenon is thus viewed through the plants sought by the plant-hunters themselves, and the plants are taken as the key to understanding the phenomenon. The work shows what distinguishes these particular plants from other plants. They are juxtaposed with the results of recent research on phytophilia, as well as with patterns in the more general human perception of the natural world. Furthermore, the work attempts to find appropriate functional-typological comprehensions, and places them within a theoretical explanatory framework. The whole phenomenon of plant-hunting is approached in the context of its era and contemporary science, technology, politics, and society.
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The changes of reflection of landscape in the Czech art and its new concepts in last fifty years intented on photography
Dlabáčková, Barbora ; Stibral, Karel (advisor) ; Dadejík, Ondřej (referee)
Our thesis contents the description of the progress of landscape art reflection from the very antique beginning. In that time, at first just the natural detailes entered the art. After, in Renesssaince the landscape attracted artists as a whole. Later, landscape established itself as an independent topic and even as a visual art genre. The first big break in landscape art reflection came in romantism when even tabooed topics, mountains in the most important way, got in the people's subconsciousness. In the 20th century, the decrement of landscape painting happened, on the contrary an era of landscape photography arrived making subsequent steps within the technical progress. Traditional Czech landscape comes from the landscape painters of 19th century, centered on horizontal and vertical lines of fields and meadows composed in a mosaic. This traditional model is no longer valid and actual. Landscape has changed so much, it has been filled by mines, tips and factories. Thanks to the process of artealisation, we can reflect also these new landscapes, having no aesthetic value in reality, with pleasure. We are convinced by photographies made by Sudek, Koudelka, Holomíček as well as Spurný. In their works, we are finding concepts of new landscape, metalandscape, original (great-) landscape or silent landscape...
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The history and development of imaging and illustration insect entomology
Chobot, Karel ; Stibral, Karel (advisor) ; Janko, Jan (referee) ; Komárek, Stanislav (referee)
The depictionof insectsis a remarkableportion of the historyof science,historyof entomologyandthehistoryof art,too.The thesisfollowsthehistoryof visual representation of insectswith emphasison the realistic depiction,thenthe style variationof entomology illustrationin scientific works. Next to that,the role of insectsin human culture is also followed,becauseof theinfluenceof,sucha rolein thedepictions. Analogicallyto thearthistoryis necessaryto refusethesimply positivisticapproachof regularprogÍess.The effortof preciserepresentationof tiny details,insectsor detailsof their bodies,is pursuablevery early. Relatively precise,determinabledepictionsof insectsare knownin ancientEgypt or ancientGreece,or in latemedievalbook illuminations.Precision, aftertoday'scriteria,is reachedby artistsof laterenaissanceandbeginningof baroque,artists of flower still life, expertson detailedrepresentationof shapesoshinesand surfacesof tiny natural objects,incl. insects.In the same time the entomologyis established,thank to publicationof Aldrovandi'sDe AnimalibusInsectisitt 1602. ThethesisestablisheŠin thehistoryof theinsectdepictiontwo phases'In thefirst,pre- Aldrovandian,is it requiredto follow the developmentof the insect depictionin arts in particular.The role of illustrationsin thattime scientiťrcproductionis minor...
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Aesthetics as a norm of life
Jarošová, Helena ; Zuska, Vlastimil (advisor) ; Marcelli, Miroslav (referee) ; Stibral, Karel (referee)
Title: Aesthetics as a norm of life Author: PhDr. Helena Jarošová Department of Aesthetics Supervisor: Prof. PhDr. Vlastimil Zuska, CSc. The thesis focuses on body (corporeality), things and private (home) interior as the exemplary areas of a contemporary aesthetics of life. In the thesis, I do consider this relatively autonomous domain of general aesthetics (a field of aesthetic function outside art, according to Mukařovský), or more precisely a sphere of growing influence of all-embracing aestheticization of the world (G. Lipovetsky) not only as a phenomenon, with which we have to deal today, but as a much older process, the roots of which can be traced back at least two centuries to the past. In this subject matter I especially emphasize primary and derived relations of this kind of aestheticization to a public space, i.e. an aesthetic function that originally only supports the main function of a given thing or event can eventually become dominant and independent and finally influence the very domain from which it originated (e.g. female decorative make-up used to be, historically, an accompanying effect of male dominance in the society, later it became a mean of female emancipation or of an individually designed style of life). I also pay attention to a phenomenology of an aesthetic experience;...
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Aesthetic Values of Cartographic Works: User-focused Aspects of Assessment of Cartographic Works
Bláha, Jan Daniel ; Stibral, Karel (advisor) ; Drápela, Milan Václav (referee) ; Kaňok, Jaromír (referee)
In the second decade of the 21st century, new technology plays an ever increasing role in our lives. The proposed study will contribute to the discussion about the effective use of modern information technology in cartographic creation, about its aesthetic and utilitarian value, about the possibility for a creative approach to production of cartographic works and about the relation between art and cartography. The study presents the author's activity over ten years in the area of human approaches to cartographic production, as well as numerous field studies among users of cartographic works, two research projects supported by the Charles University Grant Agency, and it is a continuation of his coursework and thesis. The study's theoretical point of departure (Chapter 2) draws from inspirational sources that are virtually unknown in the field of cartography. Above all, this includes the development of the concept of "art" and its significance for cartography, using the work of the philosopher of hermeneutics Hans-Georg Gadamer, the cartographer Eduard Imhof, and the Czech cartographer Karel Kuchař. Among other topics, the study addresses the division between practical and aesthetic functions of a cartographic work. A second ...
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Metaphors of Nature in the Weekly Magazine Reflex
Vacířová, Martina ; Češka, Jakub (advisor) ; Stibral, Karel (referee)
The M.A. thesis Metaphors of Nature in the Czech Weekly 'Reflex' explores the question of how the changing human-nature relationship is reflected in this journal's writing on nature over the period of the last twenty years. The rationale for the choice of the Reflex weekly magazine is that it is not focused on nature or nature-related themes, and thus what we find in it can help us understand how the relationship between humans and nature has changed not only in the journal, but also in society. The principal assumption underlying the present effort is that the many and variegated existing forms of the relationship between humanity and nature transform themselves into various metaphors. By uncovering and analyzing these metaphors we are able to better understand this relationship itself. The theoretical section of this thesis discusses various ways of understanding the metaphor in general, including the conceptual metaphor approach developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson which is applied to the textual material in the subsequent empirical section. The theoretical chapters also present a number of metaphors of nature that have previously been analyzed in the literature, and their implications for the human-nature relationship are indicated. The empirical section contains an analysis of the...
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