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The
following selected definitions were derived from various sources:
abstract abstractionartillusionlyricalorphicvoxel
ABSTRACT:
\Ab"stract'\ a. [L. abstractus, p. p. of abstrahere
to draw from, separate; ab, abs + trahere to draw. See Trace.]
1. Withdraw; separate. [Obs.]
The more abstract . . . we are from the body. —Norris.
2. Considered apart from any application to a particular object;
separated from matter; existing in the mind only; as, abstract
truth, abstract numbers. Hence: ideal; abstruse; difficult.
3. (Logic)
(a) Expressing a particular property of an object viewed apart
from the other properties which constitute it; — opposed to
concrete; as, honesty is an abstract word. —J. S. Mill.
(b) Resulting from the mental faculty of abstraction; general as
opposed to particular; as, "reptile'' is an abstract or general
name. —Locke.
A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract
name which stands for an attribute of a thing. A practice has grown
up in more modern times, which, if not introduced by Locke, has
gained currency from his example, of applying the expression "abstract
name'' to all names which are the result of abstraction and generalization,
and consequently to all general names, instead of confining it
to the names of attributes. —J. S. Mill.
4. Abstracted; absent in mind. "Abstract, as in a trance.''
—Milton.
An abstract idea (Metaph.), an idea separated from a complex
object, or from other ideas which naturally accompany it; as the
solidity of marble when contemplated apart from its color or figure.
Abstract terms, those which express abstract ideas, as beauty,
whiteness, roundness, without regarding any object in which they
exist; or abstract terms are the names of orders, genera or species
of things, in which there is a combination of similar qualities.
Abstract numbers (Math.), numbers used without application
to things, as 6, 8, 10; but when applied to any thing, as 6 feet,
10 men, they become concrete.
Abstract or Pure mathematics. See Mathematics. Abstract
\Ab*stract"\, v. t.
To perform the process of abstraction. [R.]
I own myself able to abstract in one sense. —Berkeley.
ABSTRACT:
\Ab"stract'\, n. [See Abstract, a.]
1. That which comprises or concentrates in itself the essential
qualities of a larger thing or of several things. Specifically:
A summary or an epitome, as of a treatise or book, or of a statement;
a brief.
An abstract of every treatise he had read. —Watts.
Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven
hath modeled. —Ford.
2. A state of separation from other things; as, to consider a subject
in the abstract, or apart from other associated things.
3. An abstract term.
The concretes "father'' and "son'' have, or might have,
the abstracts "paternity'' and "filiety.'' —J. S.
Mill.
4. (Med.) A powdered solid extract of a vegetable substance mixed
with sugar of milk in such proportion that one part of the abstract
represents two parts of the original substance.
Abstract of title (Law), an epitome of the evidences of ownership.
Syn: Abridgment; compendium; epitome; synopsis. See Abridgment.Abstract
\Ab*stract"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Abstracted; p.
pr. & vb. n. Abstracting.] [See Abstract, a.]
1. To withdraw; to separate; to take away.
He was incapable of forming any opinion or resolution abstracted
from his own prejudices. —Sir W. Scott.
2. To draw off in respect to interest or attention; as, his was
wholly abstracted by other objects.
The young stranger had been abstracted and silent. —Blackw.
Mag.
3. To separate, as ideas, by the operation of the mind; to consider
by itself; to contemplate separately, as a quality or attribute.
—Whately.
4. To epitomize; to abridge. —Franklin.
5. To take secretly or dishonestly; to purloin; as, to abstract
goods from a parcel, or money from a till.
Von Rosen had quietly abstracted the bearing-reins from the harness.
—W. Black.
6. (Chem.) To separate, as the more volatile or soluble parts of
a substance, by distillation or other chemical processes. In this
sense extract is now more generally used.
ABSTRACT:
adj 1: existing only in the mind; separated from embodiment;
"abstract words like 'truth' and 'justice'" [ant: concrete]
2: not representing or imitating external reality or the objects
of nature; "a large abstract painting" [syn: abstractionist,
nonfigurative, nonobjective]
3: based on specialized theory; "a theoretical analysis"
[syn: theoretical]
4: dealing with a subject in the abstract without practical purpose
or intention; "abstract reasoning"; "abstract science"
n 1: a concept or idea not associated with any specific
instance; "He loved her only in the abstract —not in
person." [syn: abstraction]
2: a summary of the main points of an argument or theory [syn:
outline, synopsis, precis]
v 1: consider a concept without thinking of a specific example;
consider abstractly or theoretically
2: make off with belongings of others [syn: pilfer, cabbage, purloin,
pinch, snarf, swipe, hook, sneak, filch, nobble, lift]
3: consider apart from a particular case or instance; "Let's
abstract away from this particular example."
4: give an abstract (of)
ABSTRACTION:
\Ab*strac"tion\, n. [Cf. F. abstraction. See Abstract, a.]
1. The act of abstracting, separating, or withdrawing, or the state
of being withdrawn; withdrawal. A wrongful abstraction of wealth
from certain members of the community. —J. S. Mill.
2. (Metaph.) The act process of leaving out of consideration one
or more properties of a complex object so as to attend to others;
analysis. Thus, when the mind considers the form of a tree by itself,
or the color of the leaves as separate from their size or figure,
the act is called abstraction. So, also, when it considers whiteness,
softness, virtue, existence, as separate from any particular objects.
Note: Abstraction is necessary to classification, by which things
are arranged in genera and species. We separate in idea the qualities
of certain objects, which are of the same kind, from others which
are different, in each, and arrange the objects having the same
properties in a class, or collected body. Abstraction is no positive
act: it is simply the negative of attention. —Sir W. Hamilton.
3. An idea or notion of an abstract, or theoretical nature; as,
to fight for mere abstractions.
4. A separation from worldly objects; a recluse life; as, a hermit's
abstraction.
5. Absence or absorption of mind; inattention to present objects.
6. The taking surreptitiously for one's own use part of the property
of another; purloining. [Modern]
7. (Chem.) A separation of volatile parts by the act of distillation.
—Nicholson.abstraction
n 1: a concept or idea not associated with any specific instance;
"he loved her only in the abstract —not in person"
[syn: abstract]
2: the act of extracting something [syn: extraction]
3: the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common
properties of instances [syn: generalization]
4: an abstract painting
5: preoccupation with something to the exclusion of all else [syn:
abstractedness]
6: a general concept formed by extracting common features from
specific examples
ABSTRACTION: 1.
Generalisation; ignoring or hiding details to capture some kind
of commonality between different instances. Examples are abstract
data types (the representation details are hidden), abstract syntax
(the details of the concrete syntax are
ignored), abstract interpretation (details are ignored to analyse
specific properties).
2. <programming> Parameterisation, making something a function
of something else. Examples are lambda abstractions (making a term
into a function of some variable), higher-order functions (parameters
are functions), bracket abstraction (making a term into a function
of a variable).
Opposite of concretisation.
ABSTRACTION:
Abstraction is characterized by the notion of cloaking the
relationship between the observed world and a created image. To
abstract means to "withdraw";
to "take away secretly"; to "draw off or apart";
to "disengage from"; to "separate in mental conception";
to "consider apart from the material embodiment, or from particular
instances" (Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary,
s.v. "abstract"). These meanings can be documented as
far back as the sixteenth century. Taken individually or in combination,
they were central to discussions about abstraction in the early
years of the century. Descriptions of the process of abstraction
have ranged throughout the twentieth century from secret removal
to the creation of something visionary.
The
association of abstraction in art with meaninglessness is derived
in large measure from Wilhelm Worringer's Abstraction and Empathy:
A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, originally published
in Munich in 1908. Worringer equated abstract with angular
and antinaturalistic. Guillaume Apollinaire further divorced
the abstract from reality when he devised the concepts of "pure
painting" and "pure art": an art that would be to
painting "what music is to poetry." In a 1913 or early
1914 sketchbook annotation Piet Mondrian elaborated: "One
passes through a world of forms ascending from reality to abstraction.
In this manner one approaches Spirit, or purity itself" (quoted
in Robert P. Welsh and J.M. Joosten, Two Mondrian Sketchbooks
1912-1914 [Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1969]). Wassily Kandinsky
similarly distinguished the abstract, a style of painting with
few references to representational motifs, from the gegenstandlos,
literally "without object or objectless."
Art
criticism from the 1940s through the early 1970s has encouraged
the association of abstraction with nonrepresentation. Recent scholarship,
however, has reasserted the subject in abstraction and has begun
to rediscover meanings that were neglected by these previous generations
of scholars and critics. In this new work scholars are echoing
Worringer's thoughts of nearly seventy years earlier: "Now
what are the psychic presuppositions for the urge to abstraction?
We must seek them in these peoples' [artists, writers, philosophers]
feeling about the world, in their psychic attitude toward the cosmos
. . . the urge to abstraction is the outcome of a great inner unrest
inspired in man by the phenomena of the outside world; in a religious
respect it corresponds to a strongly transcendental tinge to all
notions" (Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy [Cleveland:
Meridian, 1967], 15).
(From
"A Glossary of Spiritual and Related Terms," by Robert
Galbreath and Judi Freeman, in The Spiritual in Art: Abstract
Painting 1890-1985, LA County Museum of Art Exhibition Catalogue,
November 1986. Abbeville Press, Inc., New York, NY.)
ABSTRACTION:
Often used interchangeably with non-objective; more precisely,
imagery which departs from representational accuracy (often to
an extreme degree) for some affective or other purpose unrelated
to verisimilitude. Abstraction has been treated to a good deal
of revision by critics who practice a type of semiotics: Peter
Wollen, for instance, sees the move to abstraction as a gradual
separation of signifier and signified, until the signified is suppressed
altogether in favour of an art of pure signifiers (Semiotic Counter-Strategies:
Readings and Writings [1982]). See also Craig Owens' "The
Discourse of Others" in Hal Foster's The Anti-Aesthetic (1983).
[http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/a_list.html]
AFFECT:
In an essay in Social Text (Fall 1982), Frederic Jameson
characterized the move from modernism to postmodernism as a move
from affect to effect, from emotional engagement to slick superficiality.
Jeff Koons' works could be so described.
[http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/a_list.html]
ART:
Any simple definition would be profoundly pretentious and tendentious,
but we can say that all the definitions offered over the centuries
include some notion of human agency, whether through manual skills
(as in the art of sailing or painting or photography), intellectual
manipulation (as in the art of politics), or public or personal
expression (as in the art of conversation). As such, the word is
etymologically related to artificial – i.e., produced by human
beings. Since this embraces many types of production that are not
conventionally deemed to be art, perhaps a better term would be
culture. This would explain why certain preindustrial cultures
produce objects which Eurocentric interests characterize as art,
even though the producing culture has no linguistic term to differentiate
these objects from utilitarian artifacts.
DEFINITIONS OF ART: Ellen Dissanayake's What is Art For?
(a shorter version of which appeared in Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism [Summer 1980]), tries to avoid partisanship
by simply listing the various ways art has been understood through
history: (in no particular order) the product of conscious intention,
self rewarding activity, a tendency to unite dissimilar things,
a concern with change and variety, aesthetic exploitation of familiarity
and surprise or tension and release, the imposition of order on
disorder, the creation of illusions, indulgence in sensuousness,
the exhibition of skill, a desire to convey meanings, indulgence
in fantasy (cf day-dreaming), aggrandizement of self or others,
illustration, the heightening of existence, revelation, personal
adornment or embellishment, and so on. In a brief review of new
cave paintings discovered in France in 1995, critic Robert Hughes
wrote: "art – communication by visual images – ...
is, at its root, association – the power to make one thing
stand for and symbolize another, and to create the agreements by
which some marks on a surface denote, say, an animal, not just
to the markmaker but to others" ("Behold the Stone Age,"
Time [February 1995]: 42). Cf craft, high art, low art.
[http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/a_list.html]
ILLUSION:
n. 1. something that deceives by producing a false impression.
2. act of deceiving; deception; delusion; mockery. 3. state of
being deceived, or an instance of this; a false impression or belief.
4. Psychol. a perception of a thing which misrepresents it, or
gives it qualities not present in realtiy. 5. a very thin, delicate
kind of tulle.
–Syn. 1. ILLUSION, DELUSION, HALLUCINATION, refer to
mental deceptions which arise from various causes. An ILLUSION
is a false mental image or conception which may be a misinterpretation
of a real appearance or may be something imagined. It may be pleasing,
harmless, or even useful: a mirage is an illusion; he
had an illusion that the doorman was a general. A DELUSION
is a fixed mistaken conception of something which really exists,
and is not capable of correction or removal by examination or reasoning.
Delusions are often mischievous or harmful, as those of a fanatic
or lunatic; the delusion that all food is poisoned. A HALLUCINATION
is a completely groundless, false conception, belief, or opinion,
caused by a disordered imagination; it is particularly frequent
today in the pathological sense, according to which it denotes
hearing or seeing something that does not exist; hallucinations
caused by nervous disorders. —Ant. 1. Reality
ILLUSION
\Il*lu"sion\, n. [F. illusion, L. illusio, fr. illudere, illusum,
to illude. See {Illude}.]
1. An unreal image presented to the bodily or mental vision; a
deceptive appearance; a false show; mockery; hallucination.
To cheat the eye with blear illusions. —Milton.
2. Hence: Anything agreeably fascinating and charning; enchantment;
witchery; glamour.
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise! —Pope.
3. (Physiol.) A sensation originated by some external object, but
so modified as in any way to lead to an erroneous perception; as
when the rolling of a wagon is mistaken for thunder.
Note: Some modern writers distinguish between an illusion and hallucination,
regarding the former as originating with some external object,
and the latter as having no objective occasion whatever.
4. A plain, delicate lace, usually of silk, used for veils, scarfs,
dresses, etc.
Syn: Delusion; mockery; deception; chimera; fallacy. See {Delusion}.
{Illusion}, {Delusion}.
Illusion
refers particularly to errors of the sense; delusion to false hopes
or deceptions of the mind. An optical deception is an illusion;
a false opinion is a delusion. —E.
Edwards.
ILLUSIONISM:
n. a theory or doctrine that the material world is an illusion.
ILLUSIONIST:
n. One subject to illusions. 2. a conjurer; 3. an adherent
of illusionism.
ILLUSORY:
adj. Causing illusion; deceptive; of the nature of an illusion;
unreal.
LYRICAL:
adj. 1. (of poetry) having the form and musical quality
of a song, and esp. the character of a songlike outpouring of the
poet's own thoughts and feelings (as distinguished rom the epic
and dramatic poetry with their more extended and set forms
and their presentation of external subjects). 2. Pertaining to
the writing of such poetry; a lyric poet; 3. characterized
by or indulging in a spontaneous, ardent, expression of feeling;
4. pertaining to, rendered by, or employing singing; 5. pertaining,
adapted, or sung to the lyre; or composing poems to be sung to
the lyre; ancient Greek lyric odes; 6. (of a voice) relatively
light of volume and modest in range (most suited for graceful cantible
melody). — n. 7. A lyric poem. 8. Colloq. The
words of a song.
LYRISM:
n. 1. lyricism, especially of expression; 2. lyric enthusiasm.
ORPHIC
\Or"phic\, a. [L. Orphicus, Gr. ?.]
Pertaining to Orpheus; Orphean; as, Orphic hymns.
VOXEL
<jargon> (By analogy with "{pixel}")
Volume element. The smallest distinguishable box-shaped part of
a three-dimensional space. A particular voxel will be identified
by the x, y and z coordinates of one of its eight corners, or perhaps
its centre. The term is used in three dimensional modelling. "
" A voxel is a point in space." –Ron Davis,
upon being asked "What's a voxel??"
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