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Automatism |
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An involuntary act such as sleepwalking that is performed in a state of unconsciousness. The subject does not act voluntarily and is not fully aware of his or her actions while in a state of automatism. Automatism has been used as a defense to show that a defendant lacked the requisite mental state for the commission of a crime. A defense based on automatism asserts that there was no act in the legal sense because at the time of the alleged crime, the defendant had no psychic awareness or volition. Some American jurisdictions have recognized automatism as a complete, Affirmative Defense to most criminal charges. An Insanity Defense, by comparison, asserts that the accused possessed psychic awareness or volition, but at the time of the offense, the accused possessed a mental disorder or defect that caused them to commit the offense or prevented them from understanding the wrongness of the offense. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| Lines hastily thrown together with a sort of jittery, automatist flair form more or less absurd "con-figurations": sketchy figures, both elegantly drafted and shapeless, in fantastical scenarios. Each artwork is a finished product of this "inspirational" process and incorporates elements of two-dimensional design ranging from automatist drawings, transverse value, various color schemes, simulated texture, symbolism, pointillism, bas relief, and other techniques. No longer made using a more or less automatist process, the preparatory drawings that accompanied these later sculptures have none of the artist's original metamorphic power, by which ordinary objects changed before our eyes into extraordinarily suggestive forms, often nightmarish as well as sexual, as happens in the weirdly tragicomic Two Fagends Together 1, 1968. |
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