An Investigation of the Dynamics of Human Metamorphosis Triggered by Perception and Environment

This thesis describes the artist\u27s sculptural work, a body of sculpture which explores the interactions between humans and their environment, and how they undergo metamorphoses triggered by internal and external forces

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Master of Fine Arts

thesisThis thesis focuses on metamorphosis, defined as a dynamic state of in-betweens, the meeting point of the paradoxical and absurd, a junction where extreme opposites may coexist. It is a constant collage of isolated and alienated parts that have been ripped, cut, and torn and then reorganized into a new state and transformed. I was led to this research by a personal history of migration and fragmentation, and feeling trapped inside the limits of my own body. Through choreographing solos designed for my physique and capabilities, I began seeing possibilities. My thesis research began with embodying the state of metamorphosis through solo physical practice (dance improvisation and investigative choreographic exercises), and continued through the creation of two new dance pieces set for female dancers - a solo, Clay Passerine, and a trio, In/To(o) Parts. The supporting theoretical context for my research of metamorphosis lies within visual art and literature through the lens of collage and the grotesque body. By embracing metamorphosis as a process of growth and change, as well as a state of in-betweens, I have sought to deepen aesthetic and physical possibilities of dance performance and choreography by challenging ideals, embracing distortion of form, and unleashing wild imagination. This work has led me to discover a deeper understanding of myself as an artist. It redefines limitations, and has become an alternative inroad to dance and choreography for those who may want to challenge, redefine, and expand traditional notions of "beauty" and form, make sense of their own experience of alienation or "otherness," and understand who they are and their place in the world

I Love It When You Make Me Coffee In The Morning

This written thesis explains the “how” and “why” of my art practice as it stands in August 2020, as well as to situate my work among other artists and overlapping non-art fields. This practice is presented in in the form of a cookbook memoir titled I love it when you make me coffee in the morning., which includes recipes cooked by three generations of men in my family, with a narrative from their wives. In this book, I am examining material culture, particularly food, recipes, and cookbooks, to explore issues of gender and domesticity. I am looking to scholars in the fields of history and folklore to understand how cookbooks have been used to create community, to create or preserve a cultural feminine ideal, and provide first-hand documentations of women’s lives. Drawing on that history coupled with my creative practice as an intermedial artist and book artist, I am following in the tradition of feminist ethnography and autoethnography by starting from my own story and family history to honor the care and labor in home food preparation and normalize non-traditional gender roles in the home. Through my authority as an artist, I am designating this cookbook as art, and thus worthy of contemplation, but still retaining its utilitarian purpose as an intermedial object residing in the overlapping but distinct areas of art and life. In this, I create the opportunity for shared understanding with my audience through narrative, emotional triggers, multi-sensory experience, and recipe as instruction set. The medium of artist’s book has additional value in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as through a book I can distribute my art into people’s domestic space when COVID-19 has prevented me from having people experience my version of a domestic space in a gallery setting. And as the pandemic has led to many people cooking more at home, this work is also timely in its ability to create connection with others through cooking and narrative when we must be physically apart

Strange Woods

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own experience of being a woman do not coincide. Images derived from the concept of woman as a symbol of beauty and sexuality are images I have culturally assimilated as a result of growing up in a patriarchal society. However, images representing a female identity developed from my experience, from childhood to adolescence to womanhood, do not correspond with the images that have been forced upon me. This conflict undermines my knowledge of “woman” and transfers it into the unknown. This conflict evokes anxiety and fear as I confront that unknown

Chance would be a fine thing : digitally driven practice-based research at Huddersfield

Emerging software based processes are challenging the role of the maker as author as well as introducing new areas of practice. Recent developments in digital art and design at the School of Design Technology, University of Huddersfield have included two areas covering the application of digital techniques to the process of making in very different contexts: Product Design and manufacture; and Visual Arts. Much of this work represents a convergence of art and science, of aesthetics and technology, of process and production. These developments have emerged from two programmes of practice-based research at the University and at the Digital Research Unit at The Media Centre, Huddersfield. The first of these is the Designer in Residence programme based in the Design Department, which aims to employ professional designers in order to embed practice-based research activity into the department’s delivery of 3D design pathways. In the second of these, the Department of Architecture has been working with the Digital Research Unit to deliver a dynamic and challenging range of work from artists at the forefront of digital media practice, bringing new ideas and working practices to the fore. Together, these programmes bridge academia, commercial R&D and the cultural and creative industries. Though they utilise very different approaches, the projects are connected in the ways in which they explore the role of chance, of unforeseen elements in the production of the ‘finished’ work. In a research context, the accidental, the random and even the unaware as contributory constituents are considered as aspects which have considerable impact on the definitions, roles and expectations of the author, the mediating technology and the consumer within the creative process. Aspects of ‘control’ over the results of creative endeavour which are normally taken as a given are here questioned and ownership of the process debated. As high level pieces of original practice-based research such uncertainty is understandably problematic. Through the presentation of two case studies, this paper will explore the implications of these approaches to making. The first of these case studies is the ‘Future Factories’ project by the designer Lionel Theodore Dean, which explores the creation, selection and digital manufacture of randomly generated computer models to produce finished physical artefacts via rapid prototyping technologies. The second case study is the ‘QQQ’ commission by the artist and programmer Tom Betts, which is an interactive installation constructed from the code of the graphics engine for the computer game ‘Quake’, modified using generative programming techniques. The two case studies will then be analysed through the perspective of the writings of Alfred Jarry, with particular respect to his notion of ‘Pataphysics’ and the writings on chance and play of Paul Virilio, in order to highlight how both projects utilise real-time networked technologies in their final manifestation. The case studies also contextualise the shifting relationships between the maker, software techniques and the participation of the audience or consumer in playful and game-like processes in the production of the finished environment or artefact.</p

Between Morality and Myth: A Parodic Visual Manifesto

Acting on the belief that art communicates, that an image speaks all languages, these works were created as a visual manifesto responding satirically to the absurd way in which myths are elevated to the status of moral values. The photographic works created for this thesis challenge long held beliefs and emotions that associate sex with shame and guilt, and that grow out of the moral traditions we have inherited. Judeo-Christian traditions and religious beliefs have created widely unchallenged social/moral constructs, which regard sexuality and sexual awareness as sinful and woman as subservient to the moral authority constructed by men. I am reacting to the moral concepts that originate from myths. With a post-modernist approach, I visually explored ways to present metaphoric characters that communicate my ideas by dressing a male penis as a puppet and creating a new mythical narrative to substitute for those that we inherited and continue to believe. The works created for this thesis challenge that tradition. This supporting paper is a product of my research for my Master in Fine Arts entitled Between Morality and Myth: A Parodic Visual Manifesto, a photographic body of work consists of two photographic suites: first the portrait suite entitled Mr. Peter; secondly the narrative suite entitled Peter\u27s Lament, created at Georgia Southern University in the School of Visual Arts in the year two thousand and eleven

Impact of Visuomotor Feedback on the Embodiment of Virtual Hands Detached from the Body

It has been shown that mere observation of body discontinuity leads to diminished body ownership. However, the impact of body discontinuity has mainly been investigated in conditions where participants observe a collocated static virtual body from a first-person perspective. This study explores the influence of body discountinuity on the sense of embodiment, when rich visuomotor correlations between a real and an artificial virtual body are established. In two experiments, we evaluated body ownership and motor performance, when participants interacted in virtual reality either using virtual hands connected or disconnected from a body. We found that even under the presence of congruent visuomotor feedback, mere observation of body discontinuity resulted in diminished embodiment. Contradictory evidence was found in relation to motor performance, where further research is needed to understand the role of visual body discontinuity in motor tasks. Preliminary findings on physiological reactions to a threat were also assessed, indicating that body visual discontinuity does not differently impact threat-related skin conductance responses. The present results are in accordance with past evidence showing that body discontinuity negatively impacts embodiment. However, further research is needed to understand the influence of visuomotor feedback and body morphological congruency on motor performance and threat-related physiological reactions

Realism and Otherness in the Science Fiction Film District 9

As a popular culture genre, science fiction is in a constant state of transition. Science fiction critics have debated on the nature of the genre for decades, but the problem of a stabile definition remains unsolved. The science fiction film District 9 can be considered as a starter of a new wave of science fiction film in the twenty-first century and thus it is the subject of the thesis. Previous research of the field shows that science fiction has not been granted the prestige of realistic fiction. Even though its extraterrestrial aliens have been connected to the study of otherness, their connection to reality in an allegorical way has been denied. This M.A. thesis set off from the hypothesis that science fiction today is capable to represent reality allegorically and as such it is capable of examining otherness in a realistic manner. The previous studies of the science fiction genre and otherness were used as a basis for the case study. The study revealed the existence of an undeniable realistic allegorical link between the subject film's diegetic world and the empirical world. The realisation of this allegory was built on the science fictional novum and it was based on transrealism. The allegory of the subject film refers to the history of apartheid in South Africa. Otherness as a theme in the film has been based on this allegorical link to apartheid. In this allegory, the science fictional aliens represent the black population of South Africa during the apartheid.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format