After Uniqueness

Images have never been as freely circulated as they are today. They have also never been so tightly controlled. As with the birth of photography, digital reproduction has created new possibilities for the duplication and consumption of images, offering greater dissemination and access. But digital reproduction has also stoked new anxieties concerning authenticity and ownership. From this contemporary vantage point, After Uniqueness traces the ambivalence of reproducibility through the intersecting histories of experimental cinema and the moving image in art, examining how artists, filmmakers, and theorists have found in the copy a utopian promise or a dangerous inauthenticity—or both at once. From the sale of film in limited editions on the art market to the downloading of bootlegs, from the singularity of live cinema to video art broadcast on television, Erika Balsom investigates how the reproducibility of the moving image has been embraced, rejected, and negotiated by major figures including Stan Brakhage, Leo Castelli, and Gregory Markopoulos. Through a comparative analysis of selected distribution models and key case studies, she demonstrates how the question of image circulation is central to the history of film and video art. After Uniqueness shows that distribution channels are more than neutral pathways; they determine how we encounter, interpret, and write the history of the moving image as an art form.

The concept of the uniqueness of Christianity often blocks attempts at dialogue with other religions. Traditionally, the argument goes: if Christianity is unique, then to dialogue with others somehow diminishes the weight of the claim that Jesus and the Gospel are unique. But what if uniqueness, properly defined, actually constitutes the key for understanding both Jewish and Christian traditions? Author Gabriel Moran frames his analysis of uniqueness by discussing the implications of that question. In this fluent and conversational work, Moran examines the paradox surrounding the concept of uniqueness in Christian and Jewish religious traditions. He uncovers the layers of meaning that accrue in a word that is in some sense both illogical and yet indispensable for human religious conversation. Tracing a logic of uniqueness embodied in revelation, faith, chosenness, covenant, and mediator, Moran opens a conversation between Jews and Christians that will lead readers to greater wisdom and religious depth.

A classical problem in the calculus of variations is the investigation of critical points of functionals {\cal L} on normed spaces V. The present work addresses the question: Under what conditions on the functional {\cal L} and the underlying space V does {\cal L} have at most one critical point? A sufficient condition for uniqueness is given: the presence of a "variational sub-symmetry", i.e., a one-parameter group G of transformations of V, which strictly reduces the values of {\cal L}. The "method of transformation groups" is applied to second-order elliptic boundary value problems on Riemannian manifolds. Further applications include problems of geometric analysis and elasticity.

How do we know what is true about God and religion? Ultimately this question boils down to whether we consider our supreme authority to be tradition or revelation. In The Uniqueness of the Bible, author Dr. Larry Siekawitch explains that self and tradition fail as final arbiters of truth because humans are both finite and sinfulincapable of supplying truth without error. But if God has revealed His truth by revelation in such a way that is completely trustworthy and without error, then that revelation is the obvious candidate for supreme authority because it is God Himself speaking. God has revealed Himself and His ways in the Bible, but how can we convince Jews, Muslims, Catholics, and Mormons of this wonderful fact? We do so by simply showing them the uniqueness of the Bible and convincing them of Gods ultimate authority. This study deals with the Hebrew Scriptures and demonstrates how reliable and miraculous they are. It then compares the Bible to the Koran, particularly focusing on the New Testament and its amazing supernatural nature. Finally, The Uniqueness of the Bible examines Roman Catholicisms exaltation of tradition to equality with Scripture and the Mormon addition of the Book of Mormon. This study seeks to present convincing evidence in order to help people see the superiority of the Bible to all other means of discovering spiritual truth.

This book analyses the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particular the experience of colour.