ASTRAL PROJECTION: THEORIES OF METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ART O F SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

This thesis provides an intellectual context for my work in computational scientific visualization for large-scale public outreach in venues such as digitaldome planetarium shows and high-definition public television documentaries. In my associated practicum, a DVD that provides video excerpts, 1 focus especially on work I have created with my Advanced Visualization Laboratory team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Champaign, Illinois) from 2002-2007. 1 make three main contributions to knowledge within the field of computational scientific visualization. Firstly, I share the unique process 1 have pioneered for collaboratively producing and exhibiting this data-driven art when aimed at popular science education. The message of the art complements its means of production: Renaissance Team collaborations enact a cooperative paradigm of evolutionary sympathetic adaptation and co-creation. Secondly, 1 open up a positive, new space within computational scientific visualization's practice for artistic expression—especially in providing a theory of digi-epistemology that accounts for how this is possible given the limitations imposed by the demands of mapping numerical data and the computational models derived from them onto visual forms. I am concerned not only with liberating artists to enrich audience's aesthetic experiences of scientific visualization, to contribute their own vision, but also with conceiving of audiences as co-creators of the aesthetic significance of the work, to re-envision and re-circulate what they encounter there. Even more commonly than in the age of traditional media, on-line social computing and digital tools have empowered the public to capture and repurpose visual metaphors, circulating them within new contexts and telling new stories with them. Thirdly, I demonstrate the creative power of visaphors (see footnote, p. 1) to provide novel embodied experiences through my practicum as well as my thesis discussion. Specifically, I describe how the visaphors my Renaissance Teams and I create enrich the Environmentalist Story of Science, essentially promoting a counter-narrative to the Enlightenment Story of Science through articulating how humanity participates in an evolving universal consciousness through our embodied interaction and cooperative interdependence within nested, self-producing (autopoetic) systems, from the micro- to the macroscopic. This contemporary account of the natural world, its inter-related systems, and their dynamics may be understood as expressing a creative and generative energy—a kind of consciousness-that transcends the human yet also encompasses it

Improving the understanding of cosmological horizons through the use of interactive animations

Animations for educational purposes have been studied for more than 40 years. The results of the research have over time defined some general canons shared by the developers [Adams et al., 2008a, R. E. Mayer, 2009]. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of an interactive didactic graphic software developed ad hoc in a contest of introductory cosmology.\\ The Physics topic addressed in this teaching unit is that of cosmological horizons. The choice of this topic stems from two main reasons: our willingness to test the use of interactive educational animations in an advanced Physics context and the fact that there are documented difficulties in learning these concepts [Davis and Lineweaver, 2004]. In the development of the interactive software we have followed general guidelines that have been defined on the basis of cognitive load theory [Sweller et al., 1998]. In addition, we have try to include in the work a new paradigm, the so-called "Perceptual symbol systems" approach [Barsalou, 1999], which has been used in the context of Physics education with good results [Z. Chen and Gladding, 2014]. In the first chapter of this thesis we will make an analysis of the literature on educational animations. After a brief historical overview of the documented use of these media in literature, we will cover the theoretical aspects involved. In our theoretical analysis we distinguish mainly two levels: “understanding”, or the clarity with which information is used, and “learning”, or the mechanisms by which mental models are built in the student. Next we will consider the guidelines for a successful project developing simulation useful for the teaching of Physics: "PhET" from the University of Colorado. In the second chapter we analyse the Physics involved in the so called Horizon problem in cosmology. First we outline the necessary prerequisites; then, starting from these concepts, we will set a discussion on the cosmological horizons and which problems are connected to its understanding. Finally, we will conclude by talking about the perspectives that are opened in the cosmological field starting from this problem. In the third chapter we continue the analysis of the same topic from the teaching perspective. We describe the fundamental steps in learning these concepts and identify the teaching objectives. In the forth chapter we explain in detail the individual choices in the design of a new proposal of interactive simulations useful for the teaching of the cosmological horizons in the light of what emerged in previous chapters. This discussion addresses not only the design of the simulations but also some technical aspects related to data creation and optimization. In the fifth chapter we discuss the development of a protocol of questions which have guided the interview with three respondent for a first test of the effectiveness of our animation in favoring the learning of cosmological horizons. In the sixth chapter we discuss on the outcomes of the interviews in relation to our teaching objectives. The seventh and last chapter is dedicated to final consideration and suggestion for a possible development of the project

Neosublime, Reframing the Philosophical

Why have the sunsets and sunrises become so amazingly colorful and awe inspiring recently? Eighteenth century philosophers said such events were examples of the sublime. They defined the sublime as that which is the most absolutely great combined with an underlying element of fear usually caused by the actions of God. This infers that the sublime is something that you can’t fully understand or wrap your head around and leaves you speechless and spell bound. Contemporary art critics say that the sublime is no longer applicable to art because it has been overused. I disagree, and in my art, I look for examples of the sublime in present day events. The slow, insidious, imperceptible, disastrous effects of global warming is one example of the contemporary sublime that I call the Neosublime. The brilliantly red sunrises and sunsets are awesomely great but the realization that they are caused by air pollutants brings a fearful reminder of how global warming is destroying the world. Other examples of the Neosublime are the COVID pandemic and worldwide political turmoil. The most frightening part of the Neosublime is that it is the result of the actions of humans and not God. Like global warming my paintings show beautiful sunsets and giant ocean waves from sea level rise, and yet the impending disaster is not readily apparent. So far humans have not responded to the outcries of climate activists and scientists, but perhaps the warnings within my paintings will be a catalyst for action

“Some people write fanfiction as love letters to canon. This is hate mail”: Negotiating authorship and reader agency in Avengers: Endgame Fix-it Fics.

This masters thesis engages with the concepts of the author, the reader, canon, text and paratext, in the context of fanfiction as a literary genre. The study of fanfiction furthers explorations of the concept of the author and reader as seen through a post-structuralist lens following Roland Barthes’s and Michel Foucault’s texts regarding authorship as well as a fan theory lens, championed by Kristina Busse and Katherine Tosenberger, in their writings explaining authorial ethos and models of fandom interpretation. To do so, I will be analysing twelve fics that belong to the Fix-It Fic subgenre in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) fandom, specifically relating to the movie Avengers: Endgame (2018). Evaluating these pieces and how their authors use characters, space, storylines, and tropes to challenge preconceptions regarding authorship, intertextuality and reader-writer figures and asks new questions that allow us to adapt theory to contemporary texts.English - Master's ThesisENG350MAHF-LÆFRMAHF-EN

Pavel Florensky and his world

This is an overview of the life and works of Pavel Florensky, an important and singular figure of the period rightly described as the \emph{Silver Age of Russian mathematics}, with a substantial overlap with the \emph{Silver Age of Russian literature, poetry and philosophy}. Florensky is certainly among the great scientists, philosophers, theologians and historians of art of the twentieth century, with a very atypical trajectory of life. He had a mathematical background and his work in philosophy, theology and history of art is imbued with mathematical ideas. Talking about his life and works is also an opportunity to reflect upon the Russian mathematical school of the first third of the twentieth century, its philosophical foundations and the conflicts it underwent. It is also an occasion for discussing poetry, literature and art during the Russian Silver Age. This article will appear as a chapter in the Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, edited by Bharath Sriraman, published by Springer, to appear in 2023

Yayoi Kusama: Biography and Cultural Confrontation, 1945–1969

Yayoi Kusama (b.1929) was among the first Japanese artists to rise to international prominence after World War II. She emerged when wartime modern nation-state formations and national identity in the former Axis Alliance countries quickly lost ground to U.S.-led Allied control, enforcing a U.S.-centered model of democracy and capitalism. As a result, the art world became increasingly internationalized. This interdisciplinary study is the first attempt to comparatively examine postwar artistic developments in Japan, the United States, and Europe, through a focus on Kusama. I consider Kusama not so much in terms that seek to aggrandize the uniqueness of the individual, but that assess her entry into and position within an historical sequence, namely the radical changes which took place after the war. Mine is a material investigation, which addresses how personal and cultural memories may be embedded in objects. By examining her breakthrough work against the backdrop of her milieu, this feminist study will illuminate particular issues Kusama might have encountered in society and analyze how her experiences uniquely shaped her practice. I will also analyze works by Kusama’s peers that help to illuminate the scope and nature of the problems that she encountered. Growing up under Japan’s militaristic totalitarian regime, Kusama embraced art as a non-conformist pursuit. Her defiance of fanatic chauvinism propelled her, after the war, to seek a career overseas. She arrived in 1958 in New York, where a burgeoning cosmopolitanism contributed to her initial success with five nearly identical white Net paintings. Beginning in 1960, the artists affiliated with the German Zero group invited Kusama to exhibit in Europe. By 1962, she had shown with the future Pop and Minimal artists in New York. As New York’s art market became more firmly established, however, multiculturalism tended to become less embraced there. By 1966, this drove Kusama to drop out of the commercial art world. She began creating politically charged site-specific installations and Happenings where the theme of liberatory sexuality was key. But around 1969, as the gallery-money-power-structure became an unchallengeable fact, she ceased her activity in New York