The undersigned has previously discussed the Agelast, a non-smiling archetype, demarcated as a character to be re-evaluated through AI-generated humour. In artistic terms, there was an attempt to depict this newly generated humour in oil paintings, where portraiture reached the point of being transformed into buffoonery.
The smile of the Agelast is not comical; rather epitomizes a smile of the unsmiling, formed as the Uncomical Humorous. Defining a meta-agelast is an investigation on this problematic. In direct contrast to the "Agelastos" stands the natural philosopher Democritus, a counterpart who is famously referred to as the "constantly laughing" or the "laughing philosopher." Art, in this context, expands into the subterritories of philosophy, from the sublime, extended towards a laughingstock; it may produce an “eternal laughter,” a seriously problematic, petrified projection of the ideal. This juxtaposition delineates a profound philosophical antinomy, wherein the Agelast, an archetype of feigned solemnity and the renunciation of laughter, rather stands in a distinctly dialectical opposition to Democritus, the archetypal "laughing philosopher," whose ceaseless laughter signifies an ontological engagement with the absurd. As a crucial dichotomy, it encapsulates conflicting existential approaches, reflecting the epistemic and aesthetic tensions between gravitas and levity, problematising the boundaries of philosophical and artistic discourse.
Devolved into absurdity, perpetual laughter, as denoted through art, is a profound philosophical stance on the incoherence of the human predicament.
Y. Melanitis’s work initiates from a conceptualization on the strategies of contemporary art. Recent research focuses on the role of information on the arts considering “INFORMATION AS THE NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION. (Latest example is his gene micro-injected into the butterfly named Leda Melanitis for the creation of a transgenic, adult butterfly breed). Yiannis Melanitis holds degrees in painting, sculpture and digital arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts and is presently a PhD candidate at the School of Architecture, (NTUA) with a thesis entitled: Biological Dynamics in Art. Exhibited in Austria, Mexico, Brasil, Belgium, UK, Portugal, Switzerland, US, Scotland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Germany, Greece. Latest work presentations include Ars Electronica 2020, MACRO Museum (Rome); at the National Museum of Brasil; Biblioteque of Brasil; Museu D. Diogo de Sousa, Braga, Portugal; the Tongeren Museum and Praetorium, Belgium. As a subject of criticism, his work is included in international editions as "Art Tomorrow" (Ed.L.Smith), Leonardo MIT, Lomonosov Moscow University, by Seung-Chol Shin, Assimi Kaniari, Mario Savini among others.
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