Contemporary social and cultural life is increasingly organised around a logic of self-transformation, where changing the body is seen as key. Transforming Images examines how the future functions within this transformative logic to indicate the potential of a materially better time. The book explores the crucial role that images have in organising an imperative for transformation and in making possible, or not, the materialisation of a better future. Coleman asks the questions: which futures are appealing and to whom? How do images tap into and reproduce wider social and cultural processes of inequality? Drawing on the recent ‘turns’ to affect and emotion and to understanding life in terms of vitality, intensity and ‘liveness’ in social and cultural theory, the book develops a framework for understanding images as felt and lived out. Analysing different screens across popular culture – the screens of shopping, makeover television programmes, online dieting plans and government health campaigns – it traces how images of self-transformation bring the future into the present and affectively ‘draw in’ some bodies more than others. Transforming Images will be of interest to students and scholars working in sociology, media studies, cultural studies and gender studies.

The author seeks to discern the distinctive character of photography as an art, asking why similar images affect us differently and how our reaction to a photograph of a painting is different to the response to the painting. She demonstrates "perceived realism" and the transformation of images.

Contemporary social and cultural life is increasingly organised around a logic of self-transformation, where changing the body is seen as key. Transforming Images examines how the future functions within this transformative logic to indicate the potential of a materially better time. The book explores the crucial role that images have in organising an imperative for transformation and in making possible, or not, the materialisation of a better future. Coleman asks the questions: which futures are appealing and to whom? How do images tap into and reproduce wider social and cultural processes of inequality? Drawing on the recent ‘turns’ to affect and emotion and to understanding life in terms of vitality, intensity and ‘liveness’ in social and cultural theory, the book develops a framework for understanding images as felt and lived out. Analysing different screens across popular culture – the screens of shopping, makeover television programmes, online dieting plans and government health campaigns – it traces how images of self-transformation bring the future into the present and affectively ‘draw in’ some bodies more than others. Transforming Images will be of interest to students and scholars working in sociology, media studies, cultural studies and gender studies.

Winner of the ACE / Mercers' Book Award 2014 Spectacular Miracles confronts an enduring Western belief in the supernatural power of images: that a statue or painting of the Madonna can fly through the air, speak, weep, or produce miraculous cures. Although contrary to widely held assumptions, the cults of particular paintings and statues held to be miraculous have persisted beyond the middle ages into the present, even in a modern European city such as Genoa, the primary focus of this book. Drawing upon rich documentation from northwest Italy and elsewhere, Spectacular Miracles shows how these images “work” in a range of historical contexts. Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser vividly evoke ritual animation of the image and the phenomenology of the beholder’s experience. These images, they demonstrate, have the subversive potential of the miraculous image to bypass clerical and secular authority, a power enhanced by reproducibility—devotion is hard to control when a copy of a venerated image is held to carry the same supernatural potential as the original, even when in a digital form mediated by the Internet. Engaging with the history, anthropology, and visual culture of images and religion, Spectacular Miracles is a convincing study of the continuing power of faith and art.

Philippine Folk Literature: The Riddles constitutes Volume V of the author's eight-volume Philippine Folk Literature series. This work is intended to be a national collection of Philippine riddles--a putting together of available collections of riddles from all over the country, from Batanes to Jolo. The riddles are listed, according to solution, under nineteen subject categories and one "Miscellaneous" category. Within each group, the riddles are arranged alphabetically, according to answer, or solution, in English translation. For each entry, the riddle in English translation is given first. Then under it are listed the different Philippine versions of the riddle, in georgraphical order: Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao. Every Philippine version carries with it a language label and source (collector/collection). To give the reader an idea of the richness and variety of the images of comparison used in the metaphorical riddles, the most dominant and striking of these ar listed in an index.

This book first introduces classic as well as recent computational models for just-noticeable-difference (JND) applications. Since the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is applied in many image and video standards (JPEG, MPEG-1/2/4, H.261/3), the book also includes a comprehensive survey of computational models for JND that are based on DCT. The visual factors used in these computational models are reviewed in detail. Further, an extensive comparative analysis of these models using quantitative and qualitative performance criteria is presented, which compares the noise shaping performance of these models with subjective evaluation and the accuracy between the estimated JND thresholds and subjective evaluation. There are many surveys available on computational models for JND; however, these surveys seldom compare the performance of computational models that are based on DCT. The authors’ survey of the computational models and their in-depth review of the visual factors used in them will help readers understand perceptual image coding based on DCT. The book also provides a comparative analysis of several perceptual image coders that are based on DCT, which are compatible with the highly popular and widely adopted JPEG standard.

Break open this ancient contemplative practice of listening deeply for God's voice in sacred texts. Drawing on her own experience as a monk in the world, Christine Valters Paintner introduces the foundations for a practice of lectio divina. She closely examines each of the four movements of lectio divina as well as the rhythm they create when practiced as a process.