Reading Between the Lines: Clothes, Linens and Washing-Lines in Film and Practice

This research investigates the creative use of expressive drapery and textiles, and in particular the line of washing, in three films that have rich displays of fabrics and costume: The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, 1993), The Governess (dir. Sandra Goldbacher, 1998) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (dir. Peter Webber, 2003); and provides the inspiration for a series of short films that explore positive and negative aspects of clotheslines and textiles. The research areas of Film Costume, Fashion Studies and Art History each provide relevant context and background to the study of the clothes and linens in the three films under consideration. Significant themes that are considered include: cinema’s ambivalent relationship with costume; dress, undress and the male gaze; representations of historical and character-coded clothing; the expression of fantasy and desire through textiles and costume; and the contribution of art history towards creating an understanding of fabrics that denote a separation between the ordinary and extraordinary and between reality and an imaginary sphere. Mary Ann Doane’s study of the gaze at the interface of the interior and exterior of the home in the ‘woman’s film’ leads her to consider the frequent portrayal of women waiting by or looking through windows in relation to Freud’s theory of The Uncanny and leads me to recognize that the line of washing in cinema also denotes the limits of a woman’s space within the grounds of her home and marks a formal boundary between the familiar and the unknown. Similarly, the line of washing reflects notions of The 5 Uncanny in displays that portray tensions between the opposing themes of the seen and unseen, the spoken and unspoken, of presence and absence and of purity and contamination. The idea of familiar clothes and linens displayed on the line of washing as alternately comforting and disconcerting has become the focus of my practice. Some of the works have been shown individually during the course of this study in group and open art exhibitions, and a solo exhibition at Galeri Caernarfon 15th January – 24th February 2017 showed the collected short films and supporting material resulting from the research

Embodied Continuity: Weaving the Body Into a Web of Artistry and Ethnography

abstract: Embodied Continuity documents the methodology of Entangled/Embraced, a dance performance piece presented December, 2011 and created as an artistic translation of research conducted January-May, 2011 in the states of Karnataka and Kerala, South India. Focused on the sciences of Ayurveda, Kalaripayattu and yoga, this research stems from an interest in body-mind connectivity, body-mind-environment continuity, embodied epistemology and the implications of ethnography within artistic practice. The document begins with a theoretical grounding covering established research on theories of embodiment; ethnographic methodologies framing research conducted in South India including sensory ethnography, performance ethnography and autoethnography; and an explanation of the sciences of Ayurveda, Kalaripayattu and yoga with a descriptive slant that emphasizes concepts of embodiment and body-mind-environment continuity uniquely inherent to these sciences. Following the theoretical grounding, the document provides an account of methods used in translating theoretical concepts and experiences emerging from research in India into the creation of the Entangled/Embraced dance work. Using dancer and audience member participation to inspire emergent meanings and maintain ethnographic consciousness, Embodied Continuity demonstrates how concepts inspiring research interests, along with ideas emerging from within research experiences, in addition to philosophical standpoints embedded in the ethnographic methodologies chosen to conduct research, weave into the entire project of Entangled/Embraced to unite the phases of research and performance, ethnography and artistry.Dissertation/ThesisM.F.A. Dance 201

Narrative-Based Visual Theology for Oral Learning Pastor Training

In the realms of popular education, literates hold the day, yet they are not the majority. Even in our highly-advanced world, non-literates or oral communicators, still comprise the largest class of potential learners awaiting an education. The problems they face are complicated and challenging. Physical and financial access to education stop most oral communicators before they even start. If they had access to a local educational institution, more massive hurdles await, including literacy itself followed closely by lack of attention to the learning styles of oral learners. Yet there is hope. When educators determine to address the unique needs and challenges faced by the non-literate world majority, new schemas arise. This paper examines some of those efforts while focusing on one segment of oral societies, those individuals in spiritual leadership, pastors. Oral learning pastors bear the significant burden of providing spiritual guidance in a field where this knowledge is usually gained through literate means. I will offer a clear explanation of the problems faced by these leaders, what means and methods have been attempted to reach them in the past as well as more recent efforts to address more appropriate andragogic methods. This paper will explore learning style preferences for oral communicators while giving attention to field tested methods examined in the last thirty years. A review of ancient oral communications brought into modern practice will demonstrate effective models of verbal and visual teaching and learning. An emphasis on theological accuracy and reproducibility will present compelling evidence that oral learners represent the largest untapped resource of the global church

Spartan Daily, March 7, 1996

Volume 106, Issue 30https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8815/thumbnail.jp

A Museum of Bottled Sentiments: the ‘beautiful pain syndrome’ in twenty-first century Black South African theatre making

Includes bibliographical references.This study is about contemporary black theatre makers and theatre making in the 'now moment'; this moment of recovery and gradual transition after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. The 'now moment', for these theatre makers, is characterized by a deliberate journey inward, in a struggle towards self-determination. The 'now moment' is the impulse prompting the 'beautiful pain syndrome', and through performances of uncomfortable attachments and rites of passage, generates and dwells in the syndrome. Uncomfortable attachments are unsettlement and anxiety wrought by the difficulty of the 'now moment'. These manifest in the work of Black South African-based contemporary theatre makers, Mandla Mbothwe, Awelani Moyo, Mamela Nyamza and Asanda Phewa, within the duality of the 'beautiful pain syndrome'. The 'beautiful pain syndrome' is a cultural dis-ease revealed by the individual theatre makers through the aesthetic interpretation, or beautiful consideration of inherently painful material – a condition or predicament that best contains and yet attempts to unpack this shifting impulse of the 'now' moment. The works around which this study revolves, namely Mbothwe's Ingcwaba lendoda lise cankwe ndlela (the grave of the man is next to the road) (2009), Moyo's Huroyi Hwang – De/Re Composition (2007), Nyamza's Hatched (2009) and Phewa's A Face Like Mine (2008) are rites of passage works, representing a passage or transition from one phase of life to another, which occurs on multiple levels. Through guiding thinking tools, which include intuition, my own positioning, observation and comparative and cultural performance analysis, the four selected works are described, probed and, interrogated; with their purposes and poetics investigated and articulated in different ways. The study does not complete the assignment of unpacking the four works but continues to wonder and worry at them, while investigating a particular aesthetic of dis-ease through the artistic assemblage of symbolic categories. These rites of passage works reflect or echo the transitions in the country's shifting identity, along with the identities of the individuals who inhabit it

Snakes and Funerals: Aesthetics and American Widescreen Films

The study of widescreen cinema historically has been under analyzed with regard to aesthetics. This project examines the visual poetics of the wide frame from the silent films of Griffith and Gance to the CinemaScope grandeur of Preminger and Tashlin. Additionally, the roles of auteur and genre are explored as well as the new media possibilities such as letterboxing online content. If cinema’s history can be compared to painting, then prior to 1953, cinema existed as a portrait-only operation with a premium placed on vertical compositions. This is not to say that landscape shots were not possible or that lateral mise-en-scene did not exist. Cinematic texts, with very few exceptions, were composed in only one shape: the almost square Academy Ratio. Before 1953, cinema’s shape is that of portraiture; after 1953 cinema’s shape is landscape. Widescreen filmmaking is not simply an alternative to previous visual representation in cinema because no equivalent exists. Widescreen is quite simply a break from previous stylistic norms because the shape of the frame itself has been drastically reconfigured. With the proliferation of HDTV and widescreen computer monitors, certain aspect ratios that were once regarded as specifically “cinematic” are now commonplace both in the home and in the workplace. This project outlines a project that traces the innovations and aesthetic developments of widescreen aspect ratios from the silent era of D.W Griffith, Buster Keaton and Abel Gance all the way through to current widescreen digital manifestations of web-based media and digital “blanks” such as those created by Pixar. Other chapters include close textual analyses of “experimental” widescreen films of 1930, the development of “norms” for widescreen filmmaking in the early CinemaScope era of the 1950s and examinations of the experimental multi-screen mosaics of 1968 and beyond

A Cognitive Systems Framework for Creative Problem Solving

This thesis provides a theoretical framework for a wide variety of types of cognitively-inspired creative problem solving. The framework (CreaCogs) is formalized and its various creative processes detailed. The framework is put to the test in a few computational implementations: a solver to the Remote Associates Test - comRAT-C, its adaptation to the visual domain - comRAT-V, and an object replacement and object composition system in a household domain - OROC. The performance and process of these implementations are then (i) compared to human answers and performance in creativity tests or (ii) assessed with the same toolkit that would be used to assess human answers. A set of practical insight problems with objects are given to human participants in a think aloud protocol, which is then encoded and compared to the framework. The experiments and data analysis show that the framework is successful in computationally modeling creative problem solving across a wide variety of tasks

Conversations : computer mediated dialogue, multilogue, and learning

The purpose of this dissertation is to argue in favor of a "pedagogy of textual conversation," a pedagogy made possible in large part by electronic technology, by computer mediated communication. Informing the argument is a deep philosophical commitment to conversation itself as the primary mode of meaning-making in both social and personal life. Material presented in support of the main argument is drawn from current and past pedagogical and communications theory as well as from ethnographic research conducted in the fall semester of 1994 in which students in an English composition class were linked to students in an education class via a single VAX electronic conference. Actual experiences in the electronic medium are forwarded to suggest that those who engage in extensive textual conversation with one another benefit from improved rhetorical skills, understanding of course content, the ability to make connections between ideas, and a liberalization of ideological views

Examining Tacit Exchange, Embedded Within Socially Shared Hand-Stitching Practices, With The Shipibo Artists Of Peru

This exegesis reflexively examines the role of the tacit in my intercultural creative exchange with a number of the Shipibo artists of Peru. Central to the research was a three month residency spent in Peru with these artists. The research reflexively examines the impact of the residency on my creative praxis. In particular, the research explores how the process of hand-stitching, embedded within the day to day lifeworld, can offer a space for such intercultural exchange. Furthermore, the research focuses on the shared hand-stitching practices as part of a socially communicative process. This creative exchange is placed in the social and public space of a western art gallery to facilitate a broader critique with an audience regarding concepts such as the tacit, and the role of creative, intercultural exchange. This creative research uses the methods of praxis and reflexivity as a way for my art practice to be critically situated among relevant theorists, artists and associated ideas. Two lenses are adopted to examine the creative praxis. The first is the tacit and how it locates the ineffable creative exchange between artists within an intercultural context. The second draws on critical theory, proposing the concept of reflexivity as a means for examining our shared hand—stitching practices. In particular it focuses on questions concerning the tacit, intercultural exchange facilitated by shared hand-stitching practices between us, as artists situated within a post-traditional, globalised world

Models and Modelling between Digital and Humanities: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

This Supplement of Historical Social Research stems from the contributions on the topic of modelling presented at the workshop “Thinking in Practice”, held at Wahn Manor House in Cologne on January 19-20, 2017. With Digital Humanities as starting point, practical examples of model building from different disciplines are considered, with the aim of contributing to the dialogue on modelling from several perspectives. Combined with theoretical considerations, this collection illustrates how the process of modelling is one of coming to know, in which the purpose of each modelling activity and the form in which models are expressed has to be taken into consideration in tandem. The modelling processes presented in this volume belong to specific traditions of scholarly and practical thinking as well as to specific contexts of production and use of models. The claim that supported the project workshop was indeed that establishing connections between different traditions of and approaches toward modelling is vital, whether these connections are complementary or intersectional. The workshop proceedings address an underpinning goal of the research project itself, namely that of examining the nature of the epistemological questions in the different traditions and how they relate to the nature of the modelled objects and the models being created. This collection is an attempt to move beyond simple representational views on modelling in order to understand modelling processes as scholarly and cultural phenomena as such