87 research outputs found

    Paint: It is pre-occupation with space

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    Painting and space are two terms often spoken of concurrently in the critique of painting. Some of the ways that painting has investigated space on and off the picture plane is by developing a pictorial language that manipulates surface, form and matter. Over time investigations into what painting can be has developed a visual language that is able to dip in and out of paintings tradition while persistent investigations into space within painting has allowed individual practice to branch into three-dimensions and perhaps further. This enquiry begins with the Pre-Renaissance. This is an era within painting’s history that is heavily laden with Religious iconography and the beginnings of Western Perspectival painting. Yet some of the paintings of this era are still able to engage a viewer physically, mentally and emotionally even now, centuries later. Lucio Fontana’s claim that a spatial artwork is not reliant on form uncovers the notion that a spatial artwork should move freely through time and space. A focus on painting in its expanded field reveals how the manipulation of painting’s spatial constructs is instrumental in the pursuit of a “truly spatial” artwork. Painting’s expansion may have broadened its material and aesthetic possibilities, but at its core, painting has worked within its foundation as a practice that works with the tension between spatial reality and spatial illusion. Exploring this tension reveals how working within a system of contradictions can open a dialogue with the body that elicits affect and an artwork’s spatial possibilities. The accompanying creative work to this enquiry engages with the notion that painting inherently engages with space. By working within a dialogue of pictorial and material tensions

    Thinking time through difference and repetition: duration, memory, perception and the virtual time of media events

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    "This dissertation examines two ways by which duration can come to be experienced in analog cinema and digital installations: the interstice and the fold. Whereas the interstice is a material fissure that brings about temporal disruptions between shots/images, the fold is the ontological ground upon which the continuous relations between image and mind arise. These two conceptual figures of time are contradictory, asymmetrical and unequal, giving rise to the question: how might duration be examined from two contrasting and contradictory points of view? If interstices present temporal disjunctions, how might temporal continuities also be a valid point of view? The fold introduces a difference by which a different type of thinking might occur about duration: it introduces a rupture in the orientation of thought about the interstice. Each figure is a different node of thinking of the rhizome, making up the multiplicity by which duration can come under scrutiny in media-objectiles. Each is part of the difference that constitutes the whole. Time is also the method and process by which duration is examined. As method, time is examined through the difference and repetition of the image. Important to the return is the nature of what returns: does the return bring about the same duration, or does it bring difference? Whereas the time-images of cinema give rise to movements between pasts and futures, the digital installations examined give rise to a continual ""now,"" or to presentism. The digital-image as the returning difference to the analog-image presents its ontological difference, producing a different image of time. As process, the lived time of media-events queries the type of duration endured in nonlinear, asynchronous time. Pivoting between pasts and futures, this open and free time of duration gives rise to memories and visions in the experience of media. The media examples discussed are Claire Denis' s film L'lntrus (2004), Susan Collins's installations Glenlandia, Fenlandia and The Spectroscope (2004-7), Andrei Tarkovsky's film Mirror (1975), Sound Research Laboratories's performance in Barcelona (1991), Granular Synthesis's performances Modell 5 (1997) and POL (1998) and Toni Dove's interactive cinema Spectropia (2008).

    Designing for self-transcendent experiences in virtual reality

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    This thesis contributes to Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research with a focus on the design of immersive experiences that support self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is defined as a decrease in a sense of self and a increase in unity with the world. It can change what individuals know and value, their perspective on the world and life, evolving them as a grown person. Consequently, self-transcendence is gaining attention in Psychology, Philosophy, and Neuroscience. But, we are still far from understanding the complex phenomenological and neurocognitive aspects of self-transcendence, as well as its implications for individual growth and psychological well-being. In reviewing the methods for studying self-transcendence, we found differing conceptual models determine different ways for understanding and studying self-transcendence. Understanding self-transcendence is made especially challenging because of its ineffable qualities and extraordinary conditions in which it takes place. For that reason, researchers have began to look at technological solutions for both eliciting self-transcendence to better study it under controlled and replicable conditions as well as giving people greater access to the experience. We reviewed immersive, interactive technologies that aim to support positive experiences such as self-transcendence and extracted a set of design considerations that were prevalent across experiences. We then explored two different focuses of self-transcendence: awe and lucid dreaming. First, we took an existing VR experience designed specifically to support the self-transcendent experience of awe and looked at how the mindset and physical setting surrounding that VR experience might better support the experience of and accommodation of awe. Second, we delved deep into lucid dreaming to better understand the aspects that could help inform the design of an immersive experience that supports self-transcendence. We put those design ideas into practice by developing a neurofeedback system that aims to support lucid dreaming practices in an immersive experience. Through these review papers and design explorations, we contribute to the understanding of how one might design and evaluate immersive technological experiences that support varieties of self-transcendence. We hope to inspire more work in this area that holds promise in better understanding human nature and living our best lives

    Haute games : innovative self and self-identity blendings

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    This thesis introduces the original idea that it is possible, and productive, to consider the ‘blending’ of (or deliberate creative combining of methods from) the fields of fine art practice and science practice, using selected empirical research methods to investigate constructions of self and self-identity that emerge between disciplines. In particular, the thesis investigates how the scientific aspects of modern computer games, for instance, can be seen to affect emotional responses from viewers and how those responses are, in turn, affected by the ‘blending’ of aesthetic concerns with consideration of alternative cognitive processes that induce relaxation to connect with participant-players’ self-identities. This process created a method to access cognitive processes, hitherto unexplored by computer-game developers. This research locates its arguments primarily in and between the disciplines, Art and Game Studies and supports the findings with examples taken from art practice and with theories of Psychology and Gaming. This thesis documents the creation of the author’s original hybrid ‘art- work-game’, known as ‘Star World’. It describes the process of ‘Star World’s’ creation, with analysis of the efficacy of this environment as a space where the mapping of narrative, and where perceptual and interactive ‘blendings’ of self and self-identity were employed and tested, with both qualitative and empirical studies of the experiences and perceptions of participant-players. The research focuses on how the distinctive abstract environment, ‘Star World’, affords and facilitates personal expression and interaction for computer-game players. It reveals specific cognitive processes undergone by participant-players; evidence that supports and validates the conjecture that participant-players use personal frames of reference when navigating, exploring and interpreting computer games. Teach-back protocols and their impact are shown to improve the interactivity and immersive potential of the environment. Overall, this thesis classifies ‘haute game’ rules that are formulated to identify virtual environments creating unique, alternative ‘blendings’ with participant-players and assembles a framework for developers to pursue, when producing original computer-game genres. It offers an innovative case study of value to future scholars of Game Studies, as well as to game developers, with cautionary examples provided to assist in dealing with situations where emotional states are accessed by game play. This thesis highlights the potential of interactive art and game design to produce beneficial outcomes for its participant-players, moreover, it demonstrates, with empirical evidence, the effect of the virtual environment on its participant-players.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

    The construction of likeness in some contemporary high portrait painting

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    A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Arts. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Fine Arts. Johannesburg 1996Likeness is a central issue to the tradition of portrait painting. This dissertation examines the notion of likeness in some contemporary high portrait painting. Likeness is viewed as constructed socially through the complex relations between artist, sitter and viewer. Faced with the problematic notions of realism and naturalism and their philosophical ramifications, the dissertation confronts the question of What in our world can be regarded as natural or given, and what is constructed or acquired. The discussion, framed by the debate set up between Nelson Goodman and E.H. Gombrich, leads to the conclusion that the 'natural' and the 'real' are not neutral, they are highly constructed. The dIfferences between various conventions; various ways of representing others, are extrapolated from the debate, and once acknowledged. the final position taken is a less linear conventionalist stance. The constructed nature of likeness is tested against the portraits by American artist, Andy Warhol and British artist. Lucian Freud, contemporary painters working in direct antithesis to one another. The aim is to show that both of their portrait likenesses. whether private or public, painterly Or mechanical, are embedded within socially constructed conventions. Recognition of 'the conventions can guide the viewer in deconstructing the work and locating the meaning. I discuss my own work in relation to the contents of this dissertation

    PROTOTYPING PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES : Reading Frank Gehry’s experiments through Deleuze and Guattari

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    This thesis attempts to describe and interpret the design practice of an American architect, Frank O. Gehry through concepts developed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator, French psychotherapist, philosopher and activist, Félix Guattari. At the same time, prototyping a website-based interactive project called PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES, it explores an alternative form for the Doctoral thesis. In addition to connections with visual arts, such as painting and cinema, the experimental project PLATEAU GEHRY_CONNECTIVES includes references to concepts and phenomena from various areas of knowledge revealing distinctive, unusual qualities of Gehry’s creative approach in the production of design artefacts. The thesis documents and discusses means of representation in architectural design fused into the specific creative culture of Frank O. Gehry. It notices that the discourse in architectural theory and practice, often neglects what occurs on a particular molecular level of the architectural design process. It shows that elements of micro-level of design procedures render Gehry’s idiosyncratic design phenomena intelligible and perceptible in a new way. It claims that it has been possible because Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts become perceptibly operational in the interpretation of such phenomena, at the level of elementary units of Gehry’s design procedures. Moreover, through this close-up perspective, the thesis’ investigations identify certain similarities in the operational modes of the architect and the painter. It demonstrates how Gehry, who has anchored his interest in painting, and specifically in what he defined as ‘immediacy in painting,’ was able to transform the practice of architectural drawing from projective to a cognitive one. It also shows, how the architect re-defines the commonly applied projective geometries from passive, arbitrary role to an active agent, and how the architect links drawing practice with the construction process on a new, almost palpable level. While stressing its the manual character, the thesis demonstrates that Gehry’s explorative culture of challenging means of representation employed in architectural design production facilitates the re-disciplining of architecture culminating in the integration of the CATIA system in the design procedures. This study of Gehry’s design actions and strategies can help the reader to understand the significance of experimental and intuitive design practices. The thesis proposes the Deleuzian interpretation of Gehry’s experiments in the aesthetics of design thinking and acting. It renders perceptions of patterns, according to which, other design practices can operate

    English for Design Students

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    В пособии содержатся тексты из оригинальных источников, раскрывающие фундаментальные понятия изобразительного искусства и рассказывающие об основных направлениях в искусстве и дизайне. Тексты сопровождаются комплексом упражнений, помогающих обучаемым совершенствовать навыки и умения работы с текстом. Предназначено для эффективной организации самостоятельной работы студентов специальности «Дизайн»

    Robert Smithson: writings, sculptures, earthworks.

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    The thesis examines the writings, sculptures and earthworks of the American artist Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973). Its aim is to reconstruct and analyse the major theoretical concerns that informed his practice. Various critical and theoretical aspects of his writings are examined in order to show how each was developed in relation to his reading. After demonstrating the relations between his library and his critical concerns, it then analyses the ways in which these concerns informed his artistic practice. These reconstructions and analyses also build up a broader picture of the ways in which Smithson's work changed in its underlying concerns over the course of his career. The thesis traces Smithson's concerns over six different areas of intellectual enquiry. The first chapter is concerned with religion, and focuses on his early work of the period 1959-63. This includes a detailed reconstruction of the influence of Catholicism and the English Imagist movement on his conception of art and art history. The second chapter traces his sources and arguments as an art critic, specifically his use of Mannerism as an interpretative critical paradigm for Minimalism. It also examines his rejection of formalist criticism, showing how his differences with the critic Michael Fried were pursued using a form of deconstruction different from the methods of Jacques Derrida. The third chapter addresses his concern with philosophy, particularly his use of the dialectics of materialism / idealism and mind / matter. It then examines his understanding of phenomenology to show how his conception of the' Site / Non-site' provided an alternative philosophical basis to that of Conceptual art. The fourth chapter concerns linguistics, showing how Smithson utilised the work of Wittgenstein, Carnap and communications theory in developing his own physicalist theory of language. It discusses how he adapted these analytic theories of language to suit his materialist and phenomenological concerns. The fifth area of concern to be traced is that of psychoanalysis. In order to analyse Smithson's psychoanalytic understanding of vision, an early sculpture is interpreted in terms of Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and the objet (petit) a. After discussing Smithson's reading in psychoanalytic theory, it is shown how this theory was played out in his conception of the earthwork sculpture Spiral Jetty. The sixth and final chapter traces his preoccupation with making a socially engaged earthwork art. An examination of his general political views leads to a discussion of how Smithson developed a politically oriented conception of earthwork art that drew eh1ensively on his understanding of psychoanalysis and structuralist anthropology. It is shown how he tried to develop a general theory for the arts in which they acted to mediate in social conflicts
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