10 research outputs found
ARTiVIS Arts, real-time video and interactivity for sustainability
Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Media DigitaisPortuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BD/42555/2007
A practice-led investigation into improvising music in contemporary Western culture
This thesis presents improvised practice with accompanying contextualisation alongside a discussion of the broader issues involved in improvising music in contemporary Western culture.
The first chapter explores aesthetic and philosophical issues relating to improvisation in general while also establishing a context for the practice that follows. Starting by examining the role of a musical instrument in an improvising situation, this chapter goes on to discuss how improvisation challenges distinctions such as art and craft or subject and object. The issues of risk, vulnerability, dialogue and collaboration are then considered leading to an exploration of the role that memory, the familiar and habit play in improvisation. The chapter finishes with an investigation into the
relationship between ethics and improvisation.
The second chapter consists of improvised practice presented as four separate projects: The Quartet, Spock, CCCU Scratch Orchestra and a duo with Matthew Wright. Each of these projects consists of a commentary discussing particular issues raised through this research followed by the presentation of the relevant improvised practice. This practice is documented through and presented in the form of audio recordings.
A concluding section reprises and identifies the overall themes of the thesis and provides contextualisation for the final live performance that forms an important practical component of this research
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Learning During a Digital Transformation in Communication Design: Faculty, Professional, and Student Views on Changing Pedagogical Practices
Digital technologies have become fundamental to communication designers in their professional practice. The speed of technology change has been profound, and communication design educators, professionals, and students are challenged with reimagining what constitutes an education responsive to digital transformation. Attempts to address these changes have often been reactive, emphasizing digital skills requirements without always examining what practices best support design students as they prepare to pursue careers in various communication design-focused positions. The question of how educators can best prepare and support communication design students for what awaits them in the workplace is at the center of this study. Through mixed-methods research, including both survey analysis and in-depth semi-structured interviews (N=202), this dissertation attempts to answer that question by analyzing practices incorporated by communication design educators, professionals, and students
Landscapes of ephemeral embrace : a painter's exploration of immersive virtual space as a medium for transforming perception
The following text has been written to illuminate the research embodied In Ephemere, a fullyimmersive
virtual environment which integrates stereoscopic 3D computer-generated images and
spatialized 3D sound, with a user interface based on breathing, balance, and gaze. This artwork was
begun when I entered the doctoral program at CAiNA (Centre of Advanced Inquiry Into the Interactive
Arts) in 1997, and was completed in 1998.
The work Ephemere is grounded in a very personal vision, developed over more than 25
years of artistic practice, including, most significantly, painting. Ephemere follows on its
predecessor Osmose, and as such, Is a continuation of my efforts to: (I) explore and communicate
my sensibility of what it means to be embodied, here now, in the living Rowing world; and (ii) use
the medium of immersive virtual space to do so, necessarily subverting its culturally-biased
conventions to achieve this goal.
The contents of this text are most clearly indicated by its title: Landscapes of Ephemeral
Embrace: A Painter's Exploration of the Medium of Immersive Virtual Space for Transforming
Perception. And further, by its chapter headings: (I) Context: Rethinking Technology in the "Reign
of King Logos ; (II) Defining Terms: Key Concepts and Concerns in the Work; (III) Origins of the
Work in Prior Artistic Practice: Emergence of Key Concerns and Strategies; (IV) First Explorations in
Immersive Virtual Space: Osmose; (V) Continuing Explorations In Immersive Virtual Space:
Ephemere; and (VI) Strategies and Their Implications In the Immersive Experience. In this text, I
have focused my discussion on artistic Intent, rather than on whether I have been successful, for
this can only be evaluated with the passing of time
Gabriele Münter's America travels (1898-1900) and art of dailiness
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 433-457).This study explores the fashioning of Gabriele Münter as a German modernist with a focus on the eclipse of her struggles in coming to representation, the rich complexity of her processes, and the importance of dailiness for her work. Drawing on feminist readings of autobiography and on the relationships elaborated by Henri Lefebvre and Georg Simmel between modernity and the everyday, the daily is described here as an expansive site encompassing subjugating repetition and familiarity as well as discourses of worldliness and possibilities for subversion. The discussion centers on Münter's travels in the United States as an emblem of the stretch of her dailiness and its instructive vantage on issues of authenticity and documentation governing her output. Miinter's pocket calendars, sketchbooks, photographs, photograph album, and retrospective writings about America are considered as a project of forging Heimat and visuality. With its associations of effortlessness, the use of "cakewalking" in the title evokes the erasure of Miinter's daily processes in their messiness. The cakewalk was a form for African Americans to parody their masters in the antebellum period and was taken up by whites at the time of Münter' s visit; she herself designed a postcard of a young relative performing the dance. Though the daily enabled Münter to come into representation, by its slightness and imbrication in mass culture, it would go underground in service of authenticity. The argument is grounded in the American context through readings of period guidebook literature, discourses of shopping and fldnerie, and Kodak advertising; theatrical productions and tourist sites Münter visited; and relationships between her work and contemporary Arkansas photographers such as Harry Miller.(cont) The 19th-century German popular literary figuration of America as adventure elaborated by Charles Sealsfield, Karl May, and others shapes the interpretation, as do Wilhelmine discourses of empire lodged in Die Gartenlaube, the Vilkerschauen, and the shifting meanings of Kultur. The conclusion develops the relevance of the lens of dailiness for Münter by turning to four of her paintings - Man in an Armchair, Interior, Return from Shopping, and Boating - with an interwoven treatment of her writings, photographs, sketchbooks, and ephemera.by Ann Vollmann Bible.Ph.D
An ethnographic study of a comprehensive school
This thesis is an ethnographic study of a purpose built,
co-educational Roman Catholic comprehensive school that
was conducted between April 1973 and July 1974, when the
researcher took a part-time teacher role in the school.
The main methods of social investigation were: participant
observation, unstructured interviews and documentary
evidence. The study examines the operation of the school
from a teacher's point of view. Special attention is
given to the ways in which teachers and pupils define and
redefine situations within the school. An opening chapter
surveys the problems, theories and methods that were used
in the study.
Part one locates the school in a social context and
examines the extent to which its physical division into
Houses and Departments influenced the Headmaster's
conception of the school and the definitions and
redefinitions of the situation that were advanced by Heads
of Houses and Departmental staff. There are chapters on
the Headmaster's conception of the school, House staff
and Department staff, and an analysis of the social
processes involved in three social situations. Similar
themes are examined in part two in relation to Newsom
pupils and their teachers. There are chapters on Newsom
pupils and Newsom teachers and the definitions,
redefinitions and strategies that were used in classrooms
by teachers and pupils.
The thesis concludes that the physical division of
the school into Houses and Departments influenced staff
recruitment, school organization and the ways in which
teachers and pupils defined and redefined their activities.
The evidence in this study suggests that although
different pupils were brought together in a comprehensive
school on a single site, it is doubtful whether one
school was in operation as the label 'comprehensive'
appeared to cover a diverse set of activities. An
appendix examines the problems of conducting ethnographic
research in a comprehensive school
Shifting Interfaces: art research at the intersections of live performance and technology
Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/809 on 08.20.2017 by CS (TIS)This collection of published works is an outcome of my practice-led inter-disciplinary
collaborative artistic research into deepening understanding of creative process in
the field of contemporary dance. It comprises thirty written works published from
1999 to 2007 in various formats and platforms. This collection is framed by a
methodological discussion that provides insight into how this research has
intersected over time with diverse fields of practice including contemporary dance,
digital and new media arts and non-art domains such as cognitive and social
science. Fields are understood in the context of this research to be largely
constituted out of the expert practices of individual collaborators.
This research starts from an interest in the Impact of new media technologies on
dance making/ choreography. The collection of works show evidence, established in
the first two publications, of an evolving engagement with two concepts related to
this interest: (1) the 'algorithm' as a process-level connection or bridge between
dance composition and computation; (2) the empirical study of movement
embedded as a 'knowledge base' in the practices of both computer animation and
dance and thus forming a special correspondence between them.
This collection provides evidence of this research through a period of community-building
amongst artists using new media technologies in performance, and
culminates in the identification of an emerging 'community of practice' coming
together around the formation of a unique body of knowledge pertaining to dance.
The late 1990s New Media Art movement provided a supportive context for
Important peer-to-peer encounters with creators and users of software tools and
platforms in the context of inter-disciplinary art-making. A growing interest in
software programming as a creative practice opened up fresh perspectives on
possible connections with dance making. It became clear that software's utility
alone, including artistic uses of software, was a limited conception.
This was the background thinking that informed the first major shift in the research
towards the design of software that might augment the creative process of expert
choreographers and dancers. This shift from software use to its design, framed by a
focus on the development of tools to support dance creation, also provided strong
rationale to deepen the research into dance making processes. In the second major
phase of the research presented here, scientific study is brought collaboratively to
bear on questions related to choreographic practice. This lead to a better
understanding of ways in which dancers and choreographers, as 'thinking bodies',
interact with their design tools and each other in the context of creation work.
In addition to this collection, outcomes of this research are traceable to other
published papers and art works it has given rise to. Less easily measureable, but
just as valuable, are the sustained relations between individuals and groups behind
the 'community of practice' now recognised for its development of unique formats for
bringing choreographic ideas and processes into contact, now and in the future, with
both general audiences and other specialist practices