Culture of illusion : landscape gardens, fabricated ruins, and the diorama, c. 1750 - 1850

This project examines questions of fabrication and authenticity in landscape garden design and the Diorama, bridging England and continental Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, proposing that certain sites rely on illusion and the interpretative value of fabrication. As a space characterized as ‘natural’, the English Landscape Garden was also highly designed; a paradox that manifests in the form of the fabricated ruin. Through four case studies, this project examines a variety of uses and values of illusion in the formation of the landscape and its visual representation. The first half of the project focuses on the design and experience of illusion in the eighteenth-century landscape garden. In England, Wimpole and Wrest Park include fabrications as participatory elements that instill the landscape with an imagined history. Illusion and theatricality are essential elements of the English landscape style as it was translated to the continent. At Schwetzingen, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century landscape attached to Elector’s palace relies on illusion to frame the experience of the ‘natural’ in the ‘English’ style part of the landscape. Representation is the focus of the second half of the project. Theatrical effects and illusion were arguably implicit in the landscape experience, forming the basis for the ‘theatrical’ images in Humphry Repton’s Red Books. The reception of those images further connected the landscape garden with forms of theater in the wider visual culture. By the early nineteenth century, landscape scenes featuring ruins became a common feature of the theater without actors called the Diorama. The illusion of this spectacle derived from experiential expectations established in the landscape garden, which then became a framework for viewing Daguerre’s garden designs at Bry-sur-Marne in the mid-nineteenth century. In these studies, fabricated structures in the garden generate and participate in a culture of fiction and theatrical illusion that is an integral part of the landscape experience and its representation. As fictional and experiential spaces, landscapes with fabricated ruins and their representations create a space where the roles of historical authenticity, illusion, and imagination are negotiated, throwing into question the very nature of fabrication and our relation to history.Art Histor

Temporary Ruins: Miyamoto Ryūji's Architectural Photography in Postmodern Japan

This dissertation focuses on the acclaimed Japanese photographer Miyamoto Ryūji (b. 1947), whose work deals with a range of structures and spaces that I describe as ruinous: demolition sites that document the incessant development of Tokyo in the 1980s; man-made shelters of the urban homeless; the ungoverned Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong; Kobe after the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake; pinhole photographs of the late-modern Japanese urbanscape; and, most recently, the Tōhoku region after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. This project intersects an architectural and urban history of postwar Japan with the close visual analysis of Miyamoto’s photographs to show how images of ruins have served as a visual trope to challenge modernist narratives of progress and late-capitalist development. Second, I argue that these images connect multiple layers of trauma in the contemporary Japanese experience, illuminating the relationship between memory and image essential for an understanding of the role of photography in narrations of history. By examining this relationship, I clarify the ways in which postwar history has been narrated in Japan and how certain images (and the memories they spark) complicate the official narrative. Miyamoto Ryūji’s work is a compelling example of the ruin as a key theme in postwar and contemporary Japanese photography because of the diverse social and historical issues that converge in his work: urban planning, the commodification of architecture, historical preservation, natural and man-made disasters, homelessness, and, uniting all of these concerns, memory and its relationship to history. Outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, images of ruins are an underexplored way of understanding and documenting memory in Japan. Throughout the dissertation, I unearth the ruin as a central motif of postwar and contemporary Japanese photography in spite of widespread claims that Japan is a country without ruins. In doing so, I propose new ways of understanding the ruin that are specific to modern Japanese history and culture

Mapping Through Memory: The location and nature of Mass paths in Ireland.

Methodologies that capture the ways in which individuals and communities value places are becoming increasingly attractive to policymakers and authors highlight the need for additional tools and archival material concerning how people engage with landscapes on an everyday basis. This paper addresses that need and argues that oral history and personal memory can be used as effective tools for geographical mapping and analysis, both physical and virtual. Religion involves the collective identity of a people and has strong affinities with the traditions and knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Such traditions and knowledge are often handed down orally and offer potential for geographical enquiry. Oral history can provide unique insights into the history of place, often providing narratives about the recollection of self, relationships with others and place, insights rarely provided in such depth by other methods. Place memory has become an important theme in recent geographical research and landscape can be mapped through memories and stories to create a virtual cartography of place. Using a case study approach in Lackagh, County Galway, the authors use an innovative assemblage of methods to produce one of the most thorough syntheses of information available in respect to the location, history and heritage of Mass paths in Ireland at a parish level

Smlednik Castle

Modern science started studying the Smlednik Castle over a century and a half ago. However, what might be even more important is the fact that more or less intense conservation works have been carried out at this location for over half a century. Regardless of this there is almost no expert literature on the castle to be found: short papers can be counted on the fingers of one hand, while monograph publications are sought in vain. The situation regarding contributions that promotes cultural heritage is somewhat better. The purpose of the book in front of you is thus clear: to present the history of the research and conservation efforts as well as the findings gained from the latest research in one book.This is the English translation of the original publication in Slovenian Grad Smlednik. Raziskave 2011-2012 published in 2013 as the second issue of the series Monografije CPA. The translation differs from the original in two ways. First, it omits the appendices. Secondly, a chapter on 3D scanning of the Smlednik Castle in 2007 including interactive 3D model is added

Disturbed Glass Structures: The Volatile Continuity of Ruin

This practice-led research project investigates structure from the disturbed perspective of ruin and ruination, and is directed toward inventing a sculptural form relevant to the idiosyncratic and prodigious demands of the ruin centred on ideas of fragmentation, isomorphism and entanglement. Within this project I engage both historical and contemporary ruin tropes as a resource to explore ruined fragments and multilayered ruin-forms, altering and re-constructing them in the pursuit of new sculptural forms. The outcome of this investigation is a series of freestanding and quadrated glass sculptures and a comprehensive technical investigation into the emergent fine glass casting techniques necessary for their creation. This project exploits the iconography of ruin, not as a depiction of ruin, but as an experimental interpretation of our contemporary culture in flux

A critical practice-based exploration of interactive panoramas' role in helping to preserve cultural memory

I am enclosing the content of two DVDs which are integral part of the practice-based thesis.The rapid development of digital communication technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries has affected the way researchers look at ways memory – especially cultural memory – can be preserved and enhanced. State-of-the-art communication technologies such as the Internet or immersive environments support participation and interaction and transform memory into ‘prosthetic’ experience, where digital technologies could enable 'implantation' of events that have not actually been experienced. While there is a wealth of research on the preservation of public memory and cultural heritage sites using digital media, more can be explored on how these media can contribute to the cultivation of cultural memory. One of the most interesting phenomena related to this issue is how panoramas, which are immersive and have a well-established tradition in preserving memories, can be enhanced by recent digital technologies and image spaces. The emergence of digital panoramic video cameras and panoramic environments has opened up new opportunities for exploring the role of interactive panoramas not only as a documentary tool for visiting sites but mainly as a more complex technique for telling non-linear interactive narratives through the application of panoramic photography and panoramic videography which, when presented in a wrap-around environment, could enhance recalling. This thesis attempts to explore a way of preserving inspirational environments and memory sites in a way that combines panoramic interactive film and traversing the panoramic environment with viewing the photo-realistic panoramic content rather than computer-generated environment. This research is based on two case studies. The case study of Charles Church in Plymouth represents the topical approach to narrative and focuses on the preservation of the memory of the Blitz in Plymouth and the ruin of Charles Church which stands as a silent reminder of this event. The case study of Charles Causley reflects topographical approach where, through traversing the town of Launceston, viewers learn about Causley’s life and places that provided inspirations for his poems. The thesis explores through practice what can be done and reflects on positive and less positive aspects of preserving cultural memory in these case studies in a critical way. Therefore, the results and recommendations from this thesis can be seen as valuable contribution to the study of intermedia and cultural memory in general

Ministers of ‘the Black Art’: the engagement of British clergy with photography, 1839-1914

This thesis examines the work of ordained clergymen, of all denominations, who were active photographers between 1839 and the beginning of World War One: its primary aim is to investigate the extent to which a relationship existed between the religious culture of the individual clergyman and the nature of his photographic activities. Ministers of ‘the Black Art’ makes a significant intervention in the study of the history of photography by addressing a major weakness in existing work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the research draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources such as printed books, sermons, religious pamphlets, parish and missionary newsletters, manuscript diaries, correspondence, notebooks, biographies and works of church history, as well as visual materials including original glass plate negatives, paper prints and lantern slides held in archival collections, postcards, camera catalogues, photographic ephemera and photographically-illustrated books. Through close readings of both textual and visual sources, my thesis argues that factors such as religious denomination, theological opinion and cultural identity helped to influence not only the photographs taken by these clergymen, but also the way in which these photographs were created and used. Conversely, patterns also emerge that provide insights into how different clergymen integrated their photographic activities within their wider religious life and pastoral duties. The relationship between religious culture and photographic aesthetics explored in my thesis contributes to a number of key questions in Victorian Studies, including the tension between clergy and professional scientists as they struggled over claims to authority, participation in debates about rural traditions and church restoration, questions about moral truth and objectivity, as well as the distinctive experience and approaches of Roman Catholic clergy. The research thus demonstrates the range of applications of clerical photography and the extent to which religious factors were significant. Almost 200 clergymen-photographers have been identified during this research, and biographical data is provided in an appendix. Ministers of the Black Art aims at filling a gap in scholarship caused by the absence of any substantial interdisciplinary research connecting the fields of photohistory and religious studies. While a few individual clergymen-photographers have been the subject of academic research – perhaps excessively in the case of Charles Dodgson – no attempt has been made to analyse their activities comprehensively. This thesis is therefore unique in both its far-ranging scope and the fact that the researcher has a background rooted in both theological studies and the history of photography. Ecclesiastical historians are generally as unfamiliar with the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography as photohistorians are with theological nuances and the complex variations of Victorian religious beliefs and practices. This thesis attempts to bridge this gulf, making novel connections between hitherto disparate fields of study. By bringing these religious factors to the foreground, a more nuanced understanding of Victorian visual culture emerges; by taking an independent line away from both the canonical historiography of photography and more recent approaches that depict photography as a means of social control and surveillance, this research will stimulate further discussion about how photography operates on the boundaries between private and public, amateur and professional, material and spiritual

Videogame Tourism: Spawning the Digital into the Physical Realm in the British Isles

Video game tourism is in its infancy but growing in popularity. This dissertation is an anthropological study of gamers’ attempts to interact with the physical environments in Scotland that influenced the virtual landscapes to which they have an emotional connection. Seven of the locations I identified as potential field sites provided some form of ethnographic material. I traveled with gamers to these seven sites. While at these sites, I observed and interviewed people that I met as well as did participant observations with those I went with. This project was able to demonstrate that gamers and tourists alike attempt to reach toward an unencumbered self but this process is fraught with obligations and is typically unattainable. Whether those obligations or encumbrances are created before or during their travels, there is always an underlying sense of connectivity that makes a complete break from the sociocultural world impossible.Nostalgia is the driving force behind reenactments of precious memories so it is no wonder that gamers who feel a strong connection to their virtual worlds would attempt to recreate those memories through interactions with the physical landscape that shape their virtual worlds. This dissertation demonstrates that while setting out to reenact specific nostalgic moments is one of the motivations for gaming tourists, they have a cyclical relationship with nostalgia. Once they return from their physical journeys to the virtual environment, they are hit with another form of nostalgic reenactment. Gaming tourism is a new phenomenon that allows for gamers to give in to their nostalgic sentiments and recursively represent their identities as gamers in a more public fashion through recreating scenes from the game within the physical landscape