Simulacra : constructing narrative in the studio tableau

Bibliography: pages 61-63.The content and form of the work completed for this degree is intended as a narrative. This narrative is constructed to tell stories of my family, and of myself, in a way that openly stresses the playful, mythical, and fictional nature of such narratives in the family and in history. These narratives are not always easily recognisable, believable, or unified, and are read through an arrangement of details. Initially, I intended my tableaux to function as 'emblematic' portraits. In other words, I intended to describe the members of my family by distilling their essential characteristics into a descriptive arrangement of symbolic objects. Although I became aware of the limitations of symbolism, and became more interested in narrative and display, the content of my work has remained personal and descriptive, even though I have emphasised the fictional over the elegiac. My family is not really one of collectors - my grandmother tore up and burnt many of our family photographs when my grandfather died, before she went into an old-age home. She wanted to 'travel light'. What we have left are the stories, the anecdotes and the proverbs: an oral history, or a ·postmemory'. These inherited tales are told through the snapshots that did survive, as they are in all families who take pictures. I have retold and reconstructed my own narratives, because this is the nature of the family romance for everyone - it resides in a world of images, incidental details, and surfaces

The machine and the aesthetics

This new edition further explores the connection between the cultural analysis provided by the contemporary philosopher Jean Baudrillard and the new 'star' of global culture - architecture. In a world in which images have become a substitute for reality - i.e. simulacra capable of both stimulating and satisfying collective needs - the question arises as to whether architecture could be seen as a 'super-fetish', capable of both mirroring and shaping western society's culture and identity. The aim of this book is thus to provide new methodologies and to suggest new meanings for the comprehension and development of contemporary architecture. In Baudrillard's terms, architecture could be seen as the supreme medium of contemporary visual culture, especially in its potential to influence the individual's perception of reality as a component of the mass-media system. This kind of cultural analysis of the built environment and its effect on everyday life is still a relatively new phenomenon - both in the fields of critical theory and even more so in mainstream architectural criticism. This book, which forms a significant resource on the work of an immensely important writer, should appeal to a wide range of readers. Through highly evocative writing, it provides a theoretical, illuminating pathway for everyone who, either directly or indirectly, is involved or interested in architecture, urbanism and related subjects

Investigating the potential of on-line 3D virtual environments to improve access to museums as both an informational and educational resource

New digital technological possibilities allow physical museum artefacts to be transferred into a virtual environment using 3D computer models with rich information content for educational purposes. However, although several museum websites have applied relevant educational theories to learning activities in these 3D environments, these alone are not enough to develop 3D museum environments without consideration of virtual visiting styles in the learning context. This research addresses the relationship between visiting styles and the design of 3D museum environments based on pedagogic approaches for learning efficacy. Relevant literature on the nature of web-based museum systems was reviewed. Three stages of primary research (a critical review, observations and interviews) were also conducted in this study. The critical review examined the use of 3D technologies in current museum websites in terms of informational aspects and the learning context. The observation studies identified the relationship between visitor behaviours and associated learning activities within 3D museum environments. The interviews further elicited experts’ views and were used to test the research hypotheses. A theoretical design reference model was developed. Initially based on the Reeves multimedia design model, the model consists of three phases: analysis, design and assessment. A prototype 3D exhibition was created based on the theoretical model and two pedagogic approaches. Evaluation of this showed that the design of the exhibits with rich multimedia formats had the potential for more effective visitor learning. The two pedagogic approaches encouraged the related visiting style(s), leading to a deeper engagement with the content and ultimately improving learning efficiency

The psychasthenia of deep space: evaluating the ‘reassertion of space in critical social theory’

The aim of this work is to question the notion of space that underlies the claimed ‘spatial turn’ in geographical and social theory. Section 1 examines this theoretical literature, drawing heavily on Soja as the self declared taxonomist of the genre, and also seeks parallels with more populist texts on cities and space, to suggest, following Williams, that there is a new ‘structure of feeling’ towards space. Section 1 introduces two foundational concepts. The first, derived from Soja’s misunderstanding of Borges’ story The Aleph, argues for an ‘alephic vision’, an imposition of a de-materialized and revelatory understanding of space. This is related to the second, an ‘ecstatic vision’, which describes the tendency, illustrated through the work of Koolhaas and recent exhibitions on the experience of cities, to treat spatial and material experience in hyperbolic and hallucinatory terms. Section 2 offers a series of theoretical reconstructions which seek to draw out parallels between the work of key theorists of what I term the ‘respatialization’ literature (Harvey, Giddens, Foucault and Lefebvre) and the work of Hillier et al in the Space Syntax school. A series of empirical studies demonstrate that the approach to the material realm offered by Space Syntax is not only theoretically compatible but can also help to explain ‘real world’ phenomena. However, the elision with wider theoretical positions points to the need for a reworking of elements of Space Syntax, and steps towards this goal are offered in section 3. In the final ‘speculative epilogue’ I reopen the philosophical debates about the nature of space, deliberately suppressed from the beginning, and suggest that perhaps the apparent theoretical and empirical versatility of Space Syntax, based upon a configurational approach to space as a complex relational system, may offer an alternative approach to these enduring metaphysical debates

Authenticity and cultural heritage in the age of 3D digital reproductions

This volume represents the first attempt to collate an organic collection of contributions on authenticity and the digital realm in heritage and archaeology. It analyses the concept of authenticity from different perspectives and with different multidisciplinary contributions, together with theoretical debate. The collection of papers explores the concept of authenticity in a comprehensive way, engaging with theories relating to the commodification of ancient material culture, heritage-making processes, scholarly views and community engagement. These papers also take into account current digital practices for the study of past material culture and how their use affects and redefines interpretation processes in archaeology. This will provide a key reference text for archaeologists, museum and heritage specialists, and other readers interested in authenticity, cultural heritage and 3D reproductions.This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), DIGIFACT 625637 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187953_ en.html) and ADS3DV 625636 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/ rcn/187952_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot)

The ontology of generative music listening

Ph.D ThesisGenerative music, manifesting a perpetually new music which transcends the temporal limitations of both live and recorded music, presents us with continuously new possibilities and perspectives which in turn enable new modes of being. As specific compositional choices are automated, the sonic possibility space thus becomes the operative creative field. The new concern with structural possibilities as they come to presence yields a new listening ontology. Brian Eno’s specific manifestation of generative music has evolved along a distinctly technological trajectory of creativity. Through his own liminal position between popular and avant garde musical cultures, his ambient aesthetic has found a new mode of expression and materialization. The music is environmentally utilized as an absent presence rather than as an object of focus, and this position is preserved and mirrored textually in this inquiry; the music is not directly treated as an object of scrutiny but rather informs the text as a background, ambient presence. The experience of listening to generative music carries with it the possibility of transcending the duality of the subject–object relationship and its impedance of the transformative power of the aesthetic experience in its traditional aesthetic conception. Generative music thus inherently evades both traditional methods of analysis and traditional modes of aesthetic commentary. As the music foregrounds the moment in which reception occurs, while simultaneously existing as a background presence, it elicits a transformation in the way in which we perceive and conceptually order the sound, the environment, and our subsequent relation between the two. Generative music itself becomes a structure through which one can engage with a new way of being through listening, one in which we apprehend our creative capacity through being receptive to alterity. In this way, listening itself has an ontology, one which can only be revealed through new forms of textual engagement. Ontologically, Heidegger provides the language to explore a music that reorients us at the level of being. Phenomenologically, he examines and reveals the structures of being which manifest our earth and world, our very possibilities of and for being, and these structures are precisely those which are technologically represented in generative music. Aesthetically, Heidegger views the artwork as almost a generative system in itself—one which sets truth to work as it manifests a dynamic between revealing and concealing. Art and technology, and thus poiesis and techne respectively, are examined as orientations of being which have an ideal configuration for Heidegger that manifests at the level of thought. Thus, Heidegger’s specific philosophic configuration which is pre-eminently concerned with ontological structures and coming to presence provides a structure through which generative music can emerge and find resonance. Heidegger’s philosophy evolves and unfolds in new generative iterations through his student Hans Georg Gadamer, who extends the hermeneutic nature of being to include the process of mediation. This enables an exploration of the temporality of the moment of the aesthetic encounter—a point of convergence at which the perceiver or listener undergoes self-transcendence through entering the unifying and structuring force of play. Play manifests sonically in generative music, during which the preexisting temporal and subjective structures are reconfigured and transformed through technological mediation. Similarly, Emmanuel Levinas reveals new variations on Heidegger’s ontology as he explores notions of alterity and the ways in which these are formative of our subjectivity. As he delineates the moment of encounter with the Other, we recognize its constitutive elements as they play out technologically within the generative music listening encounter. As the notion of infinity is played out sonically through each passing generative iteration, it manifests a constant overflowing of itself in both thought and presence. This process arises through a dynamic movement between interiority and exteriority, in which an internal desire for the Other is ignited and perpetuated by the external, radical Other. This simultaneously internal and external encounter with alterity situates a fundamentally radical passivity, one which reflects our ontological situation which comes to be mirrored in the technological, generative manifestation of the same structural relations. The philosophical approach of the present inquiry is not a commentary on generative music; it is a demonstration of its genesis—embodying the generative motion between being and becoming which comprises generative music, rather than engaging with traditional textual commentary about music. Between the textual presence and musical absence, a space arises in which music can emerge not as an object but as a way of being into which we enter. In this way, the subject–object structure of traditional aesthetics is transcended in a move toward a new aesthetic which encompasses the larger truth at issue—that the process of configuration, combination, juxtaposition and subsequent emergence is the very point of the genesis of meaning, or the origin of truth. Thus, generative music embodies not only a technological but also a textual path to this moment in which we engage with the origins of our own ontological possibilitie

Modelling Affective Labour: On Terry Richardson’s Photography

Photographer Terry Richardson works in a digital aesthetic vernacular that looks more to underground hardcore pornography of yesteryear than traditions associated with the institutionalisation of erotica, as associated with Playboy. And yet his images, in Kibosh and Terryworld, anticipate the contemporary public recalibration of ideas of intimacy as associated with Social Media, tally with contested ideas of the sexualisation of female empowerment as associated with contested elements of Third Wave Feminism, and can be read as a contemporary phase of Antonio Negri’s theory of art and immaterial labour in their evidencing of the affective labour on the part of the photographer himself. This critical commentary, the first such academic writing on Richardson, explores his work in these contexts, and considers Richardson’s return to the figure (over abstraction) as evidencing and exploring of the nature of work, and the nascent eroticisation of working relations, under Western neoliberal regimes