Bastion Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Bauhistorische Untersuchung der Stadtbefestigung von Bruck an der Leitha (Niederösterreich), einer Gründungsstadt aus der Zeit der letzten Babenberger Herzöge (um 1230ff.).

Female figures routinely appear in popular fiction as ostensibly critical correctives to masculinity who can inadvertently retrench problematic divisions between “Woman” and “Man.” In video games, these figures are often aural rather than... more

Female figures routinely appear in popular fiction as ostensibly critical correctives to masculinity who can inadvertently retrench problematic divisions between “Woman” and “Man.” In video games, these figures are often aural rather than visual; whether they are off-screen narrators, nonplayer characters, framing devices, or divinities, players regularly hear voices without seeing their source. While many games leave voices off-screen for reasons of technical and economic constraint, developers may restrict voices in this manner for other reasons as well—or at least with other consequences. The voice is a particularly potent site for the production of sexual difference, and the restriction of the female voice to relatively narrow protocols can result in the reduction of female characters to mere agential functions. This article offers brief critical readings of the acousmatic female voice in five recent games—BioShock (2007), Gone Home (2013), The Stanley Parable (2013), The Talos Principle (2014), and Firewatch (2016)—that illustrate the complicated connections between gender, games, technology, and the political. It then turns to the work of Super-giant Games, a small developer responsible for four critical and popular successes. Rather than reducing women’s voices to agential player functions, Supergiant’s first two games, Bastion (2011) and Transistor (2014), pose these voices as an affirmation of the characters’ agency. Moreover, because of the distressing character of this affirmation for certain players, Supergiant at first represses these characters’ speech. Although they are rendered voiceless, they are anything but powerless.

The paper deals with a issue of dating of a medieval Turkestan city. Its 1500th anniversary has been celebrated in Kazakhstan on a nationwide scale in 2000. Since then, as a result of systematic archaeological excavations an ancient... more

The paper deals with a issue of dating of a medieval Turkestan city. Its 1500th anniversary has been celebrated in Kazakhstan on a nationwide scale in 2000. Since then, as a result of systematic archaeological excavations an ancient citadel has been discovered and the new evidence obtained suggesting that the first solid buildings of the city are dated back to an earlier age and original castle, the core of the ancient citadel has been excavated. The castle and all fortifications were made of rammed clay and sun-dried earth brick. As it turned out construction of the citadel began with a monumental cross-shaped castle, which during the period of its existence has lived through two main construction periods and several stages. It had 2–3 floors, thick rammed clay walls of the first floor were originally perforated with slot-like loopholes. The next step was building of the long corridor-shaped vaulted rooms with an opening in plan. The whole citadel was fortified with rammed clay wall and bastions in the corners. A complex of artifacts and observations allow us to date the first buildings of the ancient Yassy citadel back to the 2nd –1st centuries B.C.

The making of the 3D Reconstruction of the Renaissance Bastion at the Langenbrücker Gate in Lemgo (Germany)