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

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

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

Inhabiting the virtual city : the design of social environments for electronic communities

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (p. [101]-111).Judith Stefania Donath.Ph.D

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