ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts

INTEGRATING PERFORMING ARTS INTO HUMANISTIC TOURISM FOR DESTINATION DEVELOPMENT IN CHENGDU CITY, SICHUAN PROVINCE, CHINA

2026-04-16T10:46:21+00:00

This study explores how performing arts influence destination development through humanistic tourism. It examines four aspects of the performing arts availability, accessibility, diversity, and visibility using sustainable development theory and presents a conceptual framework for destination growth. The research used a quantitative approach, gathering cross-sectional data from participants through purposive sampling Development in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, China. A total of 349 valid responses were analyzed with SPSS. Results show that all four dimensions have a significant positive effect on destination development. Humanistic tourism also has a moderate positive impact. The model accounts for a significant amount of variance, supporting the strength of the proposed framework. This research adds to both theory and practice by integrating humanistic tourism and cultural elements into destination development, offering a new perspective grounded in sustainable tourism theory. Integrating culture and humanistic values into tourism planning gives policymakers practical ways to use performing arts for inclusive and sustainable destination development.

A PERCEPTUAL HASH-BASED APPROACH TO VISUAL SIMILARITY RECOGNITION IN DIGITAL ART IMAGES

2026-04-16T11:14:49+00:00

With the advancement of artificial intelligence, digital art increasingly depends on image-based creation, distribution, and reproduction through online platforms. This trend has generated significant demand for robust methods to identify visual similarity, safeguard digital artworks, and facilitate intelligent image management. While deep neural network (DNN)-based visual recognition techniques demonstrate strong performance, their substantial size and computational demands often hinder deployment in lightweight application contexts. This study introduces a perceptual hash-based method for visual similarity recognition in digital art images. By combining image preprocessing with a progressive three-tier similarity-matching framework, the approach generates stable, consistent visual fingerprints for images with similar formal attributes. Experimental findings reveal that the proposed method achieves 100% precision and 96% recall, with a payload increase of only 2.47 MB and a memory footprint below 2%. These outcomes suggest that the model is efficient, lightweight, and well-suited for practical applications, including digital artwork authentication, visual archive management, image copyright protection, and intelligent art platform security. This research establishes a technical foundation for integrating computational image analysis with the protection and management of contemporary digital visual culture.

THE IMPACT OF ARTISTIC ABILITY ON LEARNING OUTCOMES OF DIGITAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGY FOR UNDERGRADUATES BY LEARNING STRATEGIES AND SELF-EFFICACY

2026-04-16T07:29:07+00:00

With the global digital economy increasingly adopting Outcome-Based Education (OBE), it is essential to elucidate the mechanisms underlying technical mastery in Digital Media Technology (DMT). This study examines the influence of Artistic Ability on DMT learning outcomes among undergraduates, focusing on the parallel mediating effects of Digital Self-Efficacy and Learning Strategies. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory and Self-Regulated Learning Theory, the research employs an integrated mediation model within a quantitative, cross-sectional survey framework. Data were obtained from 286 undergraduate students participating in project-driven DMT programs, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to demonstrate that Artistic Ability is a significant predictor of DMT learning outcomes (β = 0.184, p = 0.001). Additionally, this relationship is significantly mediated by Digital Self-Efficacy (β = 0.131, p < 0.001) and Learning Strategies (β = 0.111, p < 0.001). The results indicate that although innate creative talent serves as an important catalyst, technical proficiency is primarily shaped by psychological confidence and systematic behavioral regulation. This study offers a strategic framework for educational institutions to enhance digital adoption by promoting self-efficacy and metacognitive debugging practices within creative-technical curricula.

PERFORMANCE ART AND CULTURAL DIPLOMACY IN WEST ASIA

2026-04-13T11:33:14+00:00

In an era where geopolitical competition increasingly unfolds through symbolic and cultural arenas, performance art has emerged as a significant yet under-theorized instrument of cultural diplomacy. This study examines how live artistic performance functions as a distinct diplomatic practice in West Asia by introducing the Embodied Cultural Diplomacy Model. Moving beyond conventional frameworks that treat cultural diplomacy primarily as institutional projection or national branding, the article conceptualizes performance as an affective and spatial mechanism operating through embodied interaction, emotional engagement, identity reframing, and soft power transformation. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights from cultural diplomacy scholarship, constructivist international relations, and performance studies, the study develops a theoretical typology comprising three configurations: institutional performance diplomacy, narrative-resistance diplomacy, and heritage-reconstruction diplomacy. These configurations are analytically applied to illustrative cases in West Asia, including state-supported cultural platforms, grassroots diasporic initiatives, and exilic heritage revival projects. The findings demonstrate that performance diplomacy is structurally diverse and extends beyond state-centric models, encompassing civil society and transnational actors. By foregrounding embodiment and affect as central diplomatic mechanisms, the study expands existing debates on soft power and sustainable cultural diplomacy and positions performance art as a core arena in which geopolitical narratives, collective identities, and symbolic legitimacy are negotiated.

SPECIAL ISSUE ON TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE IN VISUAL ARTS: INTEGRATING AI, DATA-DRIVEN SYSTEMS, AND IMMERSIVE MEDIA FOR CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

2026-04-11T06:13:36+00:00

The Special Issue “Technological Convergence in Visual Arts: Integrating AI, Data-Driven Systems, and Immersive Media for Creative Transformation” invites original research, reviews, and creative–critical works that examine how rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, data-driven systems, and immersive technologies are reshaping visual arts. It focuses on the evolving intersections of computational intelligence, virtual and augmented environments, and artistic practice—highlighting shifts in creation, curation, authorship, ethics, and audience experience. Emphasizing interdisciplinary inquiry across visual arts, media studies, design, and cultural studies, the issue seeks theoretically rigorous, methodologically innovative, and practice-based contributions that explore new forms of storytelling, interactive installations, virtual exhibitions, and digitally mediated cultural expression, ultimately advancing discourse on the transformative impact of technological convergence on contemporary creative practices.

Issue Editor:

Dr. Chaitanya Shinkhede
Assistant Professor, School of Media and Communication, MIT World Peace University, Pune
Email: chaitanyashinkhede@gmail.com

Dr. Tejee Isha
Head of Department & Assistant Professor, Faculty of Mass Communication & Media Technology, Shree Guru Gobind Singh Tricentenary University, Gurugram, Haryana – 122505, India
Email: totejeeisha@gmail.com

Dr. Harish Barapatre
Yadavrao Tasgaonkar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Karjat, Maharashtra, India
Email: Jksa.Saudi@gmail.com

Dr. Balkrishna K. Patil
Assistant Professor & Head of Department, PhD in Computer Science, Former Tech Lead, Nashik, Maharashtra, India
Email: balkrishnapatileng@gmail.com

Dr. Bayram ÇAĞLAR
Lecturer, Kocaeli University Ömer İsmet Uzunyol Vocational School,Department of Auditory Techniques and Media Production, Turkey
Email: bcaglar@kocaeli.edu.tr

ALGORITHMIC EMOTION AND INFLUENCER IMAGERY: A MULTIMODAL VISUAL MEDIA ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER PERCEPTION IN SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING

2026-04-12T08:11:05+00:00

The rapid development of social media platforms has revolutionized the field of advertising and made it a highly personalized, image-oriented, and algorithmically-driven process. This experiment will look into the relationship between algorithmic emotion and influencer imagery and how they will produce an effect on consumer perception within the digital advertising environment. The hypothesis of this research is a multimodal analysis based on the extraction of the visual characteristics of the content, sentiment analysis, and engagement rates to determine to what extent the emotionally resounding influencer content is boosted by the platform algorithms. The data obtained on prominent social media platforms, with the examples of Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube, are processed with the help of deep learning algorithms in the form of convolutional neural networks to process the image and natural language processing to detect the sentiment. The results indicate that the content of influencers that is aesthetically pleasing and has a positive emotional impact on the user has a huge boost on user engagement and perception. Platform analysis provides insights into how short-form content platform is more engaging since it is more immersive and algorithm-driven. The study underlines the importance of integrating emotional intelligence and using visual stories as the part of the digital marketing strategy and the need to address the ethical concerns related to the manipulations in algorithms. Overall, the proposed framework can be highly beneficial to marketers, researchers, and the creators of the platforms to optimize consumer engagements in social media advertising.

VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN GOVERNMENT WELFARE CAMPAIGNS: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL PUBLIC RELATIONS

2026-04-13T05:19:05+00:00

The integration of digital platforms into the dissemination of government welfare information signifies a remarkable advancement in visual communication and public relations strategies. This holds significant importance within the framework of the Global South, specifically emphasizing the case of India. This thorough investigation explores the potential opportunities and obstacles associated with the adoption of digital visual communication technologies. This encompasses a diverse array of platforms, including various social media channels, e-government structures, and integrated digital systems, all carefully designed to enhance the worldwide execution of public relations related to welfare initiatives. This study offers a comprehensive examination of the evolution of digital communication interactions, the methodologies associated with visual media, and the complex relationships involved in stakeholder involvement. This research is grounded in an extensive assessment of 56 scholarly articles that have undergone rigorous peer review, alongside modern case studies that trace back to the year 2012. The findings uncover a complex landscape where visual and digital communication significantly contribute to fostering prompt collaboration, broadening outreach initiatives, and strengthening accountability in the dissemination of welfare-related information. Simultaneously, individuals can persist in addressing ongoing obstacles such as the digital divide, the proliferation of misinformation, limited accessibility, and the vital concern of trust in the online environment. This study utilizes a strong theoretical foundation, particularly highlighting the insights provided by Mergel in 2012 and the work of Hussin and associates in 2024. Additionally, it incorporates the e-Government 2.0 frameworks to perform a comprehensive examination of the efficacy of communication across multiple channels. The scenario in India concerning its MyScheme platform, which has effectively united over 2.34 crore users by October 2024, stands as a remarkable example of the potential and limitations embedded in digital visual communication for delivering services to the broader community. This document advocates for a thorough, stakeholder-centered methodology that employs visual media tactics, emphasizing the importance of accessibility, inclusivity, and proactive involvement in behavior. The results carry significant weight for individuals in leadership roles, experts in communication, and development collaborators engaged in the domain of digital wellbeing ecosystems.

CLIMATE CHANGE AS VISUAL DISCOURSE: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF NEWSPAPER REPRESENTATION AND AUDIENCE PERCEPTION IN HIMACHAL PRADESH

2026-04-15T10:23:37+00:00

Climate change has become a significant issue of global concern and it has become important to employ effective communication strategies to increase the awareness and participation of people. In different media outlets, the newspapers still have a major role to play in terms of spreading environmental information especially in places where the print media still hold sway. This paper explores climate change as a visual discourse through an examination of visual representations of climate change in newspaper images and how such representations are perceived by the audience in Himachal Pradesh which is a climate-sensitive area within the Indian Himalayan ecosystem. The study assumes the mixed-method approach, which involves visual content analysis of the chosen newspapers and the analysis of audience perception through surveys. The results indicate that the newspaper coverage is mainly characterized with disaster oriented images, including floods, landslides and forest fires that highlight the immediate effects of climate change. Although these images are helpful in attracting attention and creating emotional appeal, they can be rather shallow and cannot convey the processes and solutions to climate in the long-term perspective. Audience analysis shows that there is a high level of awareness and emotional response with a high correlation between visual perception and exposure to visuals. Nevertheless, the study also finds out that there is a disconnection between awareness and behavior change, since more awareness does not necessarily lead to sustainable environmental behavior. The paper highlights the need to have a more balanced visual representation that incorporates informative as well as solution-oriented visuals to increase the level of knowledge and encourage people to act. The work is an interdisciplinary contribution as it combines the ideas of the media studies, environmental science, and social psychology. It also provides valuable information to policy makers, environmental communicators and journalists to enhance effective communication of climate change. This study underlines the significance of strategic media representation in the context of tackling one of the most urgent issues of our days by focusing on the role of visual discourse.

EMBODIED INTELLIGENCE AND ALGORITHMIC EXPRESSION: RETHINKING DANCE IN THE AGE OF AI

2026-04-16T05:53:48+00:00

Dance is increasingly becoming an artificial intelligence dependent technical space of generation, correction, improvisation, preservation of culture, co-performance. But most evaluations of AI-dance systems still focus on motion realism, beat correspondence or benchmark precision, but not on as much embodiment, expressive agency or agency sharing between dancer and algorithm. This paper is a unique multiple-case technical research of fifteen published AI-dance systems, published between 2021 and 2026. The study constructs an analytic case corpus and makes comparisons between systems in terms of a common coding matrix, which records technical objective, input modality, output form, interaction mode, locus of control, evaluation regime and four layers of embodied intelligence: kinematic, semantic, relational and cultural, rather than the field being a review problem. The results show that the current systems are very advanced in terms of kinematic intelligence and are increasingly becoming capable of giving semantic guidance with the aid of text, style labels and language-model prompting. Yet, relational reciprocity and cultural grounding is much less common. Co-performance systems that are live have the highest scores of embodied intelligence, with offline generators at the level of motion fidelity. Based on these findings, the article proposes a technical form of expression of algorithms that is designed on the premise of five design specifications: bodily alignment, semantic articulation, reciprocal responsiveness, contextual grounding, and reflexive human control. The article argues that the future of AI-dance studies should not be viewed in terms of its capacity to produce plausible movement but in terms of how it is able to sustain embodied agency, interpretive openness, and culturally situated expression.

EVALUATING THE CREATIVE POTENTIAL OF STABLE DIFFUSION MODELS IN CONCEPT ART PIPELINES

2026-04-12T08:14:50+00:00

Stable Diffusion models have become a groundbreaking technology in the field of generative artificial intelligence that has impacted concept art pipelines in the world of creative industries. This paper will assess the artistic capabilities of Stable Diffusion through the lens of its capability to produce high-quality, heterogeneous, and contextual visual images based on textual prompting. This study examines the main aspects such as dataset selection, prompt engineering strategies, model configuration, and fine-tuning techniques to gain more control over artworks and the faithfulness of output. A hierarchical pipeline that incorporates text conditioning, latent diffusion and post-generative refinement is suggested to streamline the process of concept art generation. The comparative analysis to conventional generative techniques, especially Generative Adversarial Network (GANs) shows that image coherence is improved, it is also stylistically diverse, and it is computationally efficient. The results of the experiment prove that Stable Diffusion outperforms in terms of visual realism, flexibility, and creative adaptability and can be a useful tool in the hands of artists, designers, and game developers. In addition, the paper covers applied implications, such as minimized production time and expanded ideation functionality, and limitation, such as timely sensitivity and ethical issues regarding data utilization. The results would indicate that Stable Diffusion models have a potential of transforming the workflows of digital concept art and enhancing the collaboration of human and AI creativity.