'Hidden treasures, hidden voices' : an ethnographic study of movement and dance in psychosocial work with war-affected refugee children and adults (Serbia 2001-2002)

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Immersion and interaction: Creating virtual 3d worlds for stage performances

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis formulates an approach towards the creation of a gesture activated and body movement controlled real time virtual 3d world in a dance performance context. It investigates immersion and navigation techniques derived from modern video games and methodologies and proposes how they can be used to further involve a performer into a virtual space as well as simultaneously offer a stimulating visual spectacle for an audience. The argument presented develops through practice-based methodology and artistic production strategies in interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts. Two choreographic performance/installations are used as cases studies to demonstrate in practice the proposed methodologies. First, the interactive dance work Suna No Onna, created in collaboration with Birringer/Danjoux and the Dap Lab, investigates the use of interactive pre-rendered animations in a real time setting and in real time by incorporating wearable sensors in the performance. Secondly, the potentials offered by the sensor technology and real time rendering engines led to the “creation scene", a key scene in the choreographic installation UKIYO (Moveable Worlds). This thesis investigates the design, creation and interaction qualities of virtual 3d spaces by exploring the potentialities offered by a shared space, between an intelligent space and a dancer in a hybrid world. The methodology applied uses as a theoretical base the phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty and Mark Hansen‟s mixed reality paradigm proposing the concept of the “space schema", a system which replicates and embeds proprioception, perception and motility into the space fabric offering a world which “lives”, functions and interacts with the performer. The outcome of the research is the generation of an interactive, non-linear, randomized 3d virtual space that collaborates with a technologically embedded performer in creating a 3d world which evolves and transforms, driven by the performer‟s intention and agency. This research contributes to the field of interactive performance art by making transparent the methodology, the instruments and the code used, in a non-technical terminology, making it accessible for both team members with less technological expertise as well as artists aspiring to engage interactive 3d media promoting further experimentation and conceptual discussions

Masks praxis: theories and practices in modern drama

Mask Praxis is an investigation of the theories and practices behind the uses of the mask in modern drama from 1896 to 2004. The study traces the crisis in humanism through the use of idealist and materialist masks by theatre practitioners and explains how the search for a unified field was overlaid by fractured identities and a slide into dissonance. How important are the masks that people adopt on the stage for understanding their actions in society? How does the metaphorical power and perceptual ambiguity of the mask correlate with intentions of its maker and performer? What is the relationship between the mask and the face of the actor, and what does the mask do that cannot be done unaided? What are the main approaches to actor training that have used masks, and how are these training systems connected to wider belief systems? What do we learn from the act of masking about self-perception and social being, and what are the principal considerations that this gives rise to? This investigation proceeds from a consideration of major theories and practices. Chapter 1 examines mask performance theories, conventions, and typologies. Chapter 2 analyses the specificity of the mask, materials and methods, representative mask-makers and provides casebook studies on the Sartori family and the Masks for Menander Project. Chapter 3 evaluates actor-training under the mask from Copeau to Lecoq. Chapter 4 assesses the masks of idealist modernism and Chapter 5 considers the masks of materialist modernism. The final chapter is dedicated to transnational flows, multinational productions and the notion of connectivity. It brings new evidence to bear on the emergent field of masks, puppets and performing objects and sets down a major overview of the mask as a primary iconographic tool and as a liminoid instrument from which to mediate and direct the flow of power in a system

InSEA European Regional Congress: Tales of art and curiosity

Proceedings volume from the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) European Regional Congress

Performative authenticity: Chinese transgender people’s digital gender practices

In the post-socialist Chinese context, where the state retreats from private sectors and the families and market intervene in reproducing the gender norms under the gender binary system, transgender people have limited visibility and marginalised social space. Against this backdrop, this study seeks to understand how digital technologies mediate Chinese transgender people’s everyday gender practices and shape online trans communities. To answer how such mediation works, I conducted fieldwork in three Chinese cities for 12 months from 2019 to 2020 including 75 semi-structured interviews and observation online and offline. This study finds that Chinese transgender individuals actively use different digital platforms and applications to articulate transgender terminologies within the online trans communities and negotiate with cis-normative gender regulations on non-conforming gender practices through alternative meaning-making and appropriation of linear temporality and liminal spatiality. Their everyday mediated and lived experience of time and space challenge both the cis-normative truth regime and the queer critiques of everydayness. And yet, trans-normativity emerges within online trans communities in the form of knowledge hierarchy and emotion regulations hierarchising the intelligibility and liveability of transness. In the growing normative online trans community, transgender individuals develop alternative relations with various forms of gender scripts through self-naming, -writing and -visualisation practices. Transgender authenticity is performatively constructed and experienced in the very digital gender practices which develop alternative relations with gender norms dominant in the cisgender society and trans communities. I propose the framework of performative authenticity to understand transgender individuals’ struggles, collective meaning-making and everyday resistance in depth, instead of transgender identity discourses. Hence, this thesis contributes to digital trans studies through complicating the boundary of man/women, materiality/discourse and essentialism/constructivism by centring understudied Chinese transgender people’s experiences against the backdrop of the imagining of an inclusive and progressive landscape of gender and reality

The Modern Woman's Business Suit - An Investigation into Incorporating Freedom of Movement in the Block-pattern Construction for Soft-tailored Mass-produced Womenswear

This study is situated in the field of garment construction for mass-produced womenswear, as it is the repeatable and time and cost sufficient method of flatpattern construction. In Europe the mass production of womenswear dates from the post World War 2 period. In the 1950s, traditional menswear was adapted and simplified for female customers. As part of the mass production process, garments were constructed on a rectangular pattern base, (as seen in the menswear 'sack' shape in use from the early twenty century onwards) to support the efficient production of the different steps of the industrial production process. When the Italian designer Giorgio Armani developed jackets in 1975 based on the traditional menswear silhouette but without the stiff plastron (interlining) of menswear tailoring he softened the design of formal attire for both men and women. This silhouette and method of construction had a lasting influence. Even though this 'soft-tailoring' originated for high fashion, it freed women from the restrictiveness of the formal stiffened tailoring techniques. It is now commonplace in manufacturing in contemporary mass-market womenswear. Nevertheless, the flat-pattern construction of mass-produced women's business-wear itself is restrictive to the full range of basic body movements. Despite the growing number of technical inventions supporting the industrial production processes serving the purpose of reduction in cost and manufacturing time, no obvious attempts have been undertaken to consider today's lifestyle of constant travel and transit. The active body movements which are involved in travelling and transit situations have not been considered when optimising the fit of formal garments. These not only have to fit the upright standing body, but the body performing movements and therefore should not restrict body movement. The design of mass-market womenswear consists of three areas in which style decisions can be made: the choice of fabric, the use of colour and the choice of the silhouette of the flat-pattern construction together with the positioning of panels, pleats or darts and additional design elements such as the collar style, pockets, cuffs and fastening. In the context of mass-production, the choice of fabric and colour is very important, but far less attention is paid to the design of the pattern construction. This research project combines theory and practice research as it approaches the method of flat-pattern cutting for mass-market woven women's business-wear from a historical angle with giving reason for the necessity of modernizing formal womenswear for contemporary standards of life. The practice-based component targets the basic movements which are involved in every-day life, sets them in relation to flat-pattern cutting systems used in the industry and in education, and targets the widening of the range of movement in woven women's business-wear through adding elements to the block-pattern construction which are inspired by traditional sports- and dancewear. The practical body of work aims to renew the traditional construction principles of flat-pattern construction in order to inform about the possibilities of supporting the performance of every-day movements as an integrated part in the deSign process of womenswear

Immersion and interaction : creating virtual 3D worlds for stage performances

This thesis formulates an approach towards the creation of a gesture activated and body movement controlled real time virtual 3d world in a dance performance context. It investigates immersion and navigation techniques derived from modern video games and methodologies and proposes how they can be used to further involve a performer into a virtual space as well as simultaneously offer a stimulating visual spectacle for an audience. The argument presented develops through practice-based methodology and artistic production strategies in interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts. Two choreographic performance/installations are used as cases studies to demonstrate in practice the proposed methodologies. First, the interactive dance work Suna No Onna, created in collaboration with Birringer/Danjoux and the Dap Lab, investigates the use of interactive pre-rendered animations in a real time setting and in real time by incorporating wearable sensors in the performance. Secondly, the potentials offered by the sensor technology and real time rendering engines led to the “creation scene", a key scene in the choreographic installation UKIYO (Moveable Worlds). This thesis investigates the design, creation and interaction qualities of virtual 3d spaces by exploring the potentialities offered by a shared space, between an intelligent space and a dancer in a hybrid world. The methodology applied uses as a theoretical base the phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty and Mark Hansen‟s mixed reality paradigm proposing the concept of the “space schema", a system which replicates and embeds proprioception, perception and motility into the space fabric offering a world which “lives”, functions and interacts with the performer. The outcome of the research is the generation of an interactive, non-linear, randomized 3d virtual space that collaborates with a technologically embedded performer in creating a 3d world which evolves and transforms, driven by the performer‟s intention and agency. This research contributes to the field of interactive performance art by making transparent the methodology, the instruments and the code used, in a non-technical terminology, making it accessible for both team members with less technological expertise as well as artists aspiring to engage interactive 3d media promoting further experimentation and conceptual discussions.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Bryn Mawr Alumnae Quarterly, 1913-1915

https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_alumnae/1007/thumbnail.jp

Bryn Mawr Alumnae Quarterly, 1913-1915

https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_alumnae/1007/thumbnail.jp

Narrative, social myth and reality in contemporary Scottish and Irish women's writing: Kennedy, Lochhead, Bourke, Ni Dhuibhne and Carr

This thesis is concerned with narrative constructions of women's identities in texts by contemporary Scottish and Irish women writers. I focus on texts by A. L. Kennedy, Liz Lochhead, Angela Bourke, Éilís Ní Dhubhne and Marina Carr. The theoretical framework of my analysis has been inspired by these writers' concerns with the relationship between narrative and reality. An important idea derived from the study of this relationship is that one's voice often, if not always, accommodates others' voices and is modulated by the power they convey. This power, derived from traditions that naturalise legitimate subjectivity constructs, steers and disciplines narrators, characters borne in these narrators' voices, as well as to whom they speak, readers or other characters, affecting the representations of the realities they inhabit. In my thesis, I examine literary explorations of the power through which narratives voices operate to constitute identities. The vision of voice as necessarily accommodating others' voices has suggested the use of Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia in my analyses. The idea that an other's voice speaks in one's voice has sent me to Derrida's theory of citationality and to Judith Butler's theory of discursive reiteration and subjectivity. Regarding the act of narrating as an act of citation, I examine the role of narratives in shaping identity by providing subject positions derived form a citational chain of stories. The analysis of the relationship between narrative and reality undertaken in this thesis is interdisciplinary, involving elements of narratology theory, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology and social theory. The main argument can be summarised thus: myth is a manifestation of authority in the discursive acts through which we present ourselves to ourselves and to others in social reality. These discursive acts are to an extent acts of citation that reiterate subjective identities which, through this reiteration, have become naturalised, normative and constraining. The kind of subject they constitute is produced at the expense of alternative possibilities of cultural expression