LEARNING AND PLASTICITY : THROUGH THE CHINESE ARTS, CALLIGRAPHY AND PAINTING
Yolaine ESCANDE幽蘭 is Research Professor at French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), member of the Center for Research on the Arts and Language (CRAL, EHESS, Paris, UMR 8566), associate member of the Center for Studies on Modern and Contemporary China (CECMC, EHESS, Paris), specialist in the practice and theory of Chinese graphic arts, calligraphy, and painting. Her research field is on Chinese aesthetics, graphic arts, and theory of arts (calligraphy and painting), and comparative aesthetics. She has translated from Chinese to French Chinese calligraphy and painting fundamental treatises (Notes sur ce que j’ai vu et entendu en peinture 1994, Traités chinois de peinture et de calligraphie (des Han aux Sui), vol. 1, 2003, (les Tang et les Cinq Dynasties), vol. 2, 2010; Esquif sur l’océan de la peinture de Shen Zongqian, 2019) and has presented Chinese aesthetics principles (L’Art en Chine, 2001; Montagnes et eaux. La culture du shanshui, 2005; Jardins de sagesse en Chine et au Japon, 2013; Trésors du musée d’Art de Pékin, 2018). Her research concerns their artistic, philosophical, aesthetical, cultural interactions with Western art (book editing together with Jean-Marie Schaeffer: L’Esthétique : Europe, Chine et ailleurs, 2002; with Johanna Liu: Frontières de l’art, frontières de l’esthétique, 2008 ; Culture du loisir, art et esthétique, 2010; with Vincent Shen and Chenyang Li, Inter-culturality and philosophic Discourse, Cambridge SP, 2013; with Jean-Noël Bret, Le Paysage, entre art et nature, 2017). Since 2006, she has also co-edited thirteen issues of the journal Universitas, Monthly Review in Philosophy and Culture (listed in A&HCI), in English and Chinese, in collaboration with Johanna Liu. This article explores the tradition of learning in painting and calligraphy in China, which has been greatly influenced by Confucianism. This field encompasses artistic experience and Chinese art theory. The Chinese concept of “learning” (xue 學) is central to this, emphasising repetition, practice and “self-cultivation”, and allowing plasticity to be approached as a dynamic process of knowledge. Arts such as poetry, music, writing and painting are considered to be means of education and personal development rather than mere techniques. The artistic apprenticeship is based on copying the works of the masters, repeating gestures, and integrating established norms. This process aims to develop technical mastery and improve personality and social behaviour. Artistic creations are valued when they are rooted in tradition yet innovative, enabling transmission and continuity while establishing new norms. The traditional relationship between master and apprentice is often based on family or social ties and is essential. Nowadays, apprenticeship can also take place in prestigious institutions such as fine arts academies or universities, which have adopted Western-inspired educational systems while incorporating Chinese artistic traditions. Finally, the article emphasises the importance of “unlearning” to achieve artistic maturity. This involves going beyond technical mastery to rediscover a natural simplicity and freshness inspired by Daoist philosophy. Learning the arts in China is thus a complex process that combines technique, culture, philosophy, and “self-cultivation”, shedding light on the concept of plasticity as knowledge or non-knowledge of the world.
THE FIGURES, FRAMING, CONTEXTUALIZING, INFORMING
Bernard TROUDE
Bernard TROUDE holds a degree in industrial architecture and product design (CNAM Paris) and a PhD in art sciences, material studies, and the philosophy of the social sciences (Panthéon-Sorbonne and Descartes University Paris V). His current research focuses on end-of-life sciences and medical ethics in hospitals, touching on various fields of neuroscience, physiology, and psychology (intuition, perception, understanding). He regularly presents on these topics internationally—in England, Italy, Tunisia, Morocco, and the USA—and publishes regularly in PLASTIR (PSA Éditeur), with Elsevier-Masson, and in the journals M@gm@ International (Italy) and TAKTIK (Tunisia). In full alignment with his research on the study of the relationship between philosophy and mathematics—a topic Plastir has been pioneering for several years (Plastir N°55-09/2019, Plastir No. 59-12/2020, Plastir N°63-12/2021, Plastir N°65–06/2022, Plastir N°70–09/2023, Plastir N°77–06/2025), this one, as he succinctly and compellingly states: “From all the texts in the previous issues, I must highlight a dynamic. Admitting to a touch of Cartesianism, I must acknowledge that our worlds are composed of sensations common to all human beings, accompanied by a scientific mechanism designed for a total reason that is more or less perceptible in everyone, with the adventure of the One and the Other One: the existence of a collective effect of a certain relationship between things and precise, heterogeneous ideas. It should be noted that comparing numbers goes beyond the scope of arithmetic calculation. Understanding is thus narrowed by aligning with all things, because both are regarded as the supreme work—the source of the World—which ensures that the mathematics born of the human mind are adapted to it. Let us consider acknowledging that the birth and actuality of the human spirit become a pivotal stage in the evolutions to follow, and this has been the case since the beginning, continuing even now: “More” or “Less” geographical space, logical space, time, money, pages of emotions, happiness… well-being. Is it up to our modernity to participate in how, then, to conceive of the actual relationships between time and movement in each instance where they take form under the guise of a particular choreography—be it the manifest gesture of the entire body, the folding of a wing, or the movements of clouds or waves across various surfaces? This brings us back to the three realms: Earth, Sea, Atmosphere. The impetus for profound introspection comes from these encrypted technologies and the numerical patterns that have slipped beyond our understanding, offering opportunities—whether as continuations of existing technological states or as avenues for innovation. The overarching question is: Is our current legal and regulatory framework suited to this new digital era? The foundation of all morality and philosophy has traditionally been rooted in sustainability and principles derived from the mathematical sciences as well as ethical frameworks. Another question arises: in today’s world, does having a scientific mindset still mean having a critical mindset?”
Laurent ZAHRA is a physician involved in the care of complex conditions, disability, and neurocognitive disorders. His clinical experience informs an in-depth reflection on perception and lived experience. He conducts independent research at the intersection of neuroscience, phenomenology, and medicine. His work explores how sensory systems contribute to the construction of reality, particularly within zones of ambiguity and transition. He is especially interested in atypical perceptual phenomena, sensory integration disorders, and the dynamics of intuition. His approach is grounded in a rigorous transdisciplinary framework, attentive to the articulation of different levels of reality. As a member of the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research (CIRET), he contributes to methodological reflections on these interface zones. He develops conceptual models aimed at better understanding the complexity of perceptual phenomena, particularly in clinical contexts. His work emphasizes the formalization of cognitive processes and their therapeutic implications. Through his publications, he seeks to sustain a dialogue between scientific rigor and the exploration of this “in-between”, where perception still hesitates, and sometimes begins to see differently. Perception is traditionally described as the reception and processing of distinct sensory signals. This paper proposes a shift in this paradigm by introducing the concept of a sensory matrix, understood as a dynamic system of embodied inference within which reality emerges from a continuous interaction between biological constraints, sensory signals, and internal models. More specifically, Laurent Zahra proposes to build on the contributions of contemporary neuroscience — notably the framework of the predictive brain and Bayesian inference — where perception is viewed as an active process of minimizing prediction error, in which the relative weighting of sensory modalities depends on their contextual reliability. This approach is contrasted with an analysis of the architecture of living organisms, particularly the bilateral symmetry of the body and its relationship to functional asymmetries, informed both by current data on cerebral lateralization and by Xavier Bichat’s foundational insights into the duality of life’s functions. The article then explores the plasticity of this matrix through the phenomena of sensory substitution and cortical reallocation, demonstrating that variations in the perceptual system do not merely alter access to reality but reconfigure the ways in which it emerges. This perspective is extended through the study of hypersensory experiences and neurodivergent profiles, where differences in signal filtering and prioritization reveal the dependence of perceived reality on the structure of the system that generates it. Finally, a continuum is proposed between perception, illusion, and hallucination, viewed as different configurations of the same predictive system, characterized by a variable imbalance between sensory data and internal models. From a transdisciplinary perspective, this article thus proposes to conceive of perception not as a passive access to the world, but as an active, situated, and modifiable construction, opening up a phenomenology of reality as an inhabited rather than a given space.”
ART AND RELATIVITY: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
Filipe Mattos de SALLES is a photographer, filmmaker, philosopher, and visual artist. He holds a degree in Social Communication (Cinema) from the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP, 1994), a master’s and doctorate in Communication and Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP, 2002 and 2011), and HDR in Theoretical Foundations of the Arts from UNICAMP (2024). As a researcher, he is part of CIRET – Centre International de Recherches et études Transdisciplinaires and also DASMind UNICAMP – Transdisciplinary Cooperation Network in Research and Innovation, and works mainly in the research line that integrates Philosophy, Analytical Psychology, and Art, with the aim of fostering research with scientific rigor in the field of Philosophy of Art and Aesthetic Theory. He is also an amateur musician and researches the symbiosis between music and image and its unfolding. He is the author of several articles on art and analytical psychology, as well as three published books in this area: Música visual (visual music), A Ideia-imagem (the image-idea), and Harmonia Mundi. He published an article with Mariana Thieriot Loisel on the gray area between humans and machines in the previous issue of Plastir (Plastir 79, 01/2026) and here presents a previously unpublished piece on the connections between art and relativity. For him, the definition of art has historically been problematic due to the inherent subjectivity of aesthetic appreciation and the impossibility of establishing universal objective criteria. This article proposes a transdisciplinary approach to understanding the artistic phenomenon by applying the principles of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to the field of aesthetics, seeking to overcome the theoretical impasse of traditional definitions of art. The work uses a comparative theoretical-conceptual analysis, establishing parallels between the concepts of relativistic physics (reference frames, observers, invariants) and aesthetic perception. The method consists of contrasting the Newtonian model, which considers the artistic object as an absolute, pre-existing entity, with the relativistic model, which considers the multiplicity of observational reference frames.