703 research outputs found
Dataremix: Aesthetic Experiences of Big Data and Data Abstraction
This PhD by published work expands on the contribution to knowledge in two recent large-scale transdisciplinary artistic research projects: ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night and their exhibited and published outputs. The thesis reflects upon this practice-based artistic research that interrogates data abstraction: the digitization, datafication and abstraction of culture and nature, as vast and abstract digital data. The research is situated in digital arts practices that engage a combination of big (scientific) data as artistic material, embodied interaction in virtual environments, and poetic recombination.
A transdisciplinary and collaborative artistic practice, x-resonance, provides a framework for the hybrid processes, outcomes, and contributions to knowledge from the research. These are purposefully and productively situated at the objective | subjective interface, have potential to convey multiple meanings simultaneously to a variety of audiences and resist disciplinary definition. In the course of the research, a novel methodology emerges, dataremix, which is employed and iteratively evolved through artistic practice to address the research questions: 1) How can a visceral and poetic experience of data abstraction be created? and 2) How would one go about generating an artistically-informed (scientific) discovery?
Several interconnected contributions to knowledge arise through the first research question: creation of representational elements for artistic visualization of big (scientific) data that includes four new forms (genomic calligraphy, algorithmic objects as natural specimens, scalable auditory data signatures, and signal objects); an aesthetic of slowness that contributes an extension to the operative forces in Jevbrattâs inverted sublime of looking down and in to also include looking fast and slow; an extension of Corbyâs objective and subjective image consisting of âinformational and aesthetic componentsâ to novel virtual environments created from big 3 (scientific) data that extend Daviesâ poetic virtual spatiality to poetic objective | subjective generative virtual spaces; and an extension of Seamanâs embodied interactive recombinant poetics through embodied interaction in virtual environments as a recapitulation of scientific (objective) and algorithmic processes through aesthetic (subjective) physical gestures. These contributions holistically combine in the artworks ATLAS in silico and INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night to create visceral poetic experiences of big data abstraction.
Contributions to knowledge from the first research question develop artworks that are visceral and poetic experiences of data abstraction, and which manifest the objective | subjective through art. Contributions to knowledge from the second research question occur through the process of the artworks functioning as experimental systems in which experiments using analytical tools from the scientific domain are enacted within the process of creation of the artwork. The results are âreturnedâ into the artwork. These contributions are: elucidating differences in DNA helix bending and curvature along regions of gene sequences specified as either introns or exons, revealing nuanced differences in BLAST results in relation to genomics sequence metadata, and cross-correlation of astronomical data to identify putative variable signals from astronomical objects for further scientific evaluation
Lost and Found In Translation
âLost and found in translationâ explores gaps in communication and mistranslations between languages and cultural identities. My art practice has evolved from traditional printmaking in Shanghai to installations and screenprints as a student in the U.S., to my doctoral work which draws from my research and my experiences and encounters in London. My research centres on three generations of Chinese artists who brought their own culture to bear on the experience of living and making work in the West. The first generation was led by Xu Beihong in the 1920s. The second generation was led by Xu Bing, Ai Weiwei and Tan Dun, who lived together in New York in the 1980s. The third generation, which includes myself, Yang Yuanyuan and Liu Yefu, were born in the 1990s and 2000s and studied abroad. This generation uses multiple media, including social media, in a globalized art world where their identity as âChineseâ artists is less central. My own artwork is located also in the context of contemporary artists who use text in their work, such as Jenny Holzer and Jens Haaning. When facing the clash of cultural and linguistic environments, my aim is to find a balance between inclusive and exclusive language systems. What seems to be âlostâ in translation can be used creatively in art practice, through hybridized forms and often through humour, to âfindâ new meanings for myself, and hopefully for the audiences of my work
Montana Kaimin, September 28, 1977
Student newspaper of the University of Montana, Missoula.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/studentnewspaper/7691/thumbnail.jp
SEEDS OF AGRIBUSINESS: GRANT WOOD AND THE VISUAL CULTURE OF GRAIN FARMING, 1862-1957
This dissertation uses selected works of Grant Wood's art as a touchtone to investigate a broader visual culture surrounding agriculture in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By doing so I argue that Wood engaged with pressing social questions, including the phenomenon now referred to as agribusiness. Although agribusiness is often associated with the Green Revolution of the 1940s and 1950s, its beginning dates to the nineteenth century. Indeed, Wood's lifetime was an era when land was consolidated, production and distribution were vertically integrated, and breeding became scientifically informed. To access the power dynamics of this transition, I begin each chapter with work by Wood, and then analyze it in conjunction with imagery produced by or for individuals with diverse cultural agendas. This wide range of voices includes government officials, members of socialist farm organizations, newspaper publishers, plant breeders, owners of large and small farms, auction house managers, and university educators. To show precedents for and the legacy of Wood's work I begin my analysis of visual culture before his birth and end after his death. The dissertation thus begins in 1862âthe year that land in the Midwest began to be parceled out for grain farming as small 160-acre homesteads and gargantuan bonanza farms thousands of acres in size. The dissertation ends in 1957âthe year that the term agribusiness was coined by the Harvard-based economists John Davis and Ray Goldberg. I take an interdisciplinary approach anchored most fully within the norms of art history, but also engage with strategies from visual, cultural, and agricultural studies. My argument, ultimately, is that agribusiness is a cornerstone of modern thinking, and that Grant Wood was not only aware of the experiences, debates, institutions, and theories of agribusiness emerging in his midst but engaged with them in his fine art. More broadly, by using a wide range of imagery, including photography, advertising, penmanship, film stills, crops, cartoons, architecture, and diagrams I show that the way Americans came to understand and accept agribusiness as the basis of their food system was negotiated, in part, through visual materials
The relaxation effect of nature images and coloured light on healthy people and hospital patients in China
The use of nature scenes in photographs, digital media and colours for stress reduction
has increased in recent years. However, there are few studies of the effects of such
initiatives. This study began with the researcherâs observation that whilst the practice of
meditation could reduce stress and increase relaxation, many people who could benefit
from it were unwilling to carry it out. They may however be willing to gain some of the
benefits of meditation by engaging in other ways.
The research started with a developmental investigation into the effects of three
different media - photographs, coloured light and film - on participants in the UK. A
large number of nature photographs and video footage was created and collected for this
study. The selection of the nature scenes for the tests on participants, and the inclusion
of coloured lights, was based on the researcherâs own experience and knowledge in the
fields of visual art, meditation and alternative therapy practice, notably Traditional
Chinese Medicine (TCM).
These UK investigations were used as developmental studies to refine the methodology
for China, where the research for this thesis was carried out. In China, collaboration with
two different hospitals in three locations was established, and investigations were carried
out with three different groups of participants: hospital patients, relatives of patients
(relatives who were staying in the hospital to look after the patientâs living needs) and
âhealthyâ staff and students at associated universities. Because of the facilities provided in
China, the part of the study which looked at the effects of photographs was dropped.
Collaborations were formed with film makers and with hospitals to achieve the
maximum research benefits. Whilst slight changes were made during the data collection
phase to suit the participants and the differing environments offered by the hospitals,
every attempt was made to keep the tests similar to one another. Quantitative data on
pulse rate and blood pressure changes, along with participantsâ post-test ratings of their
relaxation levels were collected, as was qualitative information from participants
consisting of their own descriptive words, phrases and comments.
The process was designed to avoid any research method that might negatively affect
participants, and to achieve maximum similarity of methods and fieldwork environments
for the different groups of participants. This was so that the numbers of participants in
each group in the different hospitals could be added together, thus creating three large
groups overall, and the data from the three different groups compared.
The tent structure (which was used for the coloured lights and created to provide an
immediate therapeutic environment), the analytical method used and the âkey elementsâ
diagram which describes the results of the qualitative data relating to nature films, were
new developments which emerged during the study.
The major quantitative and qualitative results, both positive and negative, are reported.
Comparisons are made which show how the three different groups in China were impacted
by experiencing the coloured lights and watching the films. The different impacts of the
coloured lights and the films are also compared. A memory stick is included with the
thesis which contains all the still and moving images used, as well as photographs of the
tent structure and of some of the hospital environments encountered in China. The thesis
concludes with a summary and discussion based on the findings. This argues that
coloured lights and visual imagery of nature scenes both had a positive effect on
participants, and that this effect could be understood as similar to some of the beneficial
effects of meditation. The conclusion also discusses some of the other findings in more
detail
Drawing water, drawing breath, drawing thread: a synthesis of clinical and creative practice through space-time
This practice led research demonstrates the synthesis of clinical and creative practice through the concept of space-time, by addressing the idea of transferable skills and language across science and art. Clinical practice is focussed on the work of a highly specialist respiratory therapist. Creative practice includes a hybrid of land and textile art situated in the littoral, using the body as a transformative medium, writing and drawing.
The work is underpinned primarily through the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Henri Bergson and Henri Lefebvre and interrogation of the Japanese aesthetic of ma
The study explores two dualisms, time and space and mind and body, appraising research that challenges the separation of each binary. Space-time, evaluated through the Japanese aesthetic of ma, is considered alongside Bakhtinâs concepts of unfinalisability and chronotope. Bergsonâs key writings on space and time (durĂŠe) and Lefebvreâs The Production of Space and Rhythmanalysis are reviewed and linked to chronotope, unfinalisability and space-time.
âDrawing Waterâ references work on location where the interaction of the body with the sea and the littoral served as a metaphor for clinical practice. The chapter on mind and body addresses advances in the cognitive sciences, encompassing neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of the mind.
Connections are made between the concept of space-time and the human body through âDrawing Breathâ, representing both clinical and creative activity. Links between the two areas are developed further by identifying and examining the significance of a common terminology.
A wide range of drawing methods and theories is examined and related to both clinical and creative practice. The portfolio comprises work on paper including text images, photography, videography and cloth; âDrawing Threadâ.
The key lines of enquiry for the research are space, time, space-time, rhythm, the body, embodiment, emplacement, enaction and experience. Medical terminology is used throughout
The enigma of development :building a reflexive point of view across remote contexts
PhD ThesisThis thesis singles out point of view (POV) as the governing technical choice in creative
writing. As such it integrates creative practice with an essay on the theoretical basis for a
POV across remote contexts. The methodology follows Mikhail Bakhtinâs call for a new
story telling position through an enquiry into Western literary history, Classical Chinese
novels and Gao Xingjianâs partitioning of POV by narrative angle.
Part One
Chapter one establishes the importance of POV to motives in my own creative work and sets
out the case for Bakhtin over normative theorists, calling for a reconfiguration of POV to
withstand contextual aberrations arising from cultural or historical differences, or from the
boundaries of what Bakhtin refers to as Small Time presentism. Further, it argues against
Tzvetan Todorovâs generic view of the novel as a property of discourse, an ahistorical
constant, by considering Bakhtinâs meta-historic survey of Western literature with periods of
intensified novelistic discourse in given contexts.
Chapter two considers POV in the separate context of Chinese literature focussing on the
historiographic POV taken in Classical Chinese novels, namely The Four Great Works.
Comparisons are drawn between these and Western short story cycles noting forms given in
Andrew Plaksâ Chinese Narrative (1977) and aesthetics in François Chengâs Chinese Poetic
Writing (1982). Critical contemporary concerns arising between Classical and Modern
Chinese are addressed with reference to essays by Xi Chuan, Yang Liang and Henry Zhao.
Chapter three begins with reflexivity as an inherent property of what Bakhtin identifies as
discrete double voicing and draws parallels with the bi-polar unity of Daoism and its Chan
iv
(Zen) hybrid, consulting Victor SĹgen Horiâs studies of capping phrases and contemporary
techniques in the fiction, drama and essays of Gao Xingjian.
Part Two
Creative enquiry takes the form of a novel, Interesting Times, (working title: The Enigma of
Development), in which a first person protagonistâs narrative alternates with third person
short stories embedded in a historical schema. The novel depicts economic development
through the construction of a power station, following a schema of short story settings in one
location from pre-industrial salt making to sophisticated intellectual piracy, indentured
peasant labour to chaotic collateral debt finance. These short stories alternate with chapters
from the linking protagonist whose narrative encircles the whole from the rural location of his
familyâs ancient English heritage. With the cognitive ground of one POV set against that of
the other, the resulting novel is intended to create an interpretive domain for the reflex
between the two, in this case a cyclical relationship between exploiter and exploited,
interchangeable as subjects and objects
Off the Orbit: Works of Art for Long-Term Space Travellers. Outline of a novel artistic practice
Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.This research combines the arts with human spaceflight. The aim of the investigation is to identify the aesthetic parameters for display in works of art on extended crewed missions. The study claims that, within the research area of human spaceflight, novel working methods should be developed that can integrate the artist into the scientific process.
The extraordinary challenges of extended space exploration not only concern technical and human-bodily aspects, they will also affect the enormous psychological and psychosocial restrictions the spacefarer will face. These limitations are due to the unusual distance and the long timeframes; the future explorers will live confined and isolated within the habitat environment far away from their place of origin. In addition, the consequences of sensory deprivation caused by the high-tech indoor habitat, the emptiness of outer space, the effects of social monotony and limited contact with home will dominate their life in the extreme environment and the emotional state of the future explorer. Many cultural techniques for recreation and stress mitigation are already in use or will be tested in human spaceflight in the near future. However, in this context the implementation of works of art has not been evaluated.
The production of works of art for future astronauts represents a new research area. From the artistic perspective, creativity will expand in an unusual manner. Artists will not only have to develop significant metaphors, they will also be confronted with an unknown responsibility, because the confined and isolated astronaut will become the exclusive audience and user of their works. Furthermore, works of art must follow the particular demands of verifiability, safety, and reliability. These specific conditions will give the artistic work a unique meaning which makes the work a part of the life-sustaining system. The outcome will be an experiment that combines both artistic and scientific strategies
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