Narrative environments: how do they matter?

The significance and possible senses of the phrase 'narrative environment' are explored. It is argued that 'narrative environment' is not only polysemous but also paradoxical; not only representational but also performative; and not just performatively repetitive but also reflexive and constitutive. As such, it is useful for understanding the world of the early 21st century. Thus, while the phrase narrative environment can be used to denote highly capitalised, highly regulated corporate forms, i.e. "brandscapes", it can also be understood as a metaphor for the emerging reflexive knowledge-work-places in the ouroboric, paradoxical economies of the 21st century. Narrative environments are the media and the materialities through which we come to comprehend that world and to act in those economies. Narrative environments are therefore, sophistically, performative-representative both of the corporate dominance of life worlds and of the undoing of that dominance, through the iterative responses to the paradoxical injunction: "learn to live"

A fragmentising interface to a large corpus of digitized text: (Post)humanism and non-consumptive reading via features

While the idea of distant reading does not rule out the possibility of close reading of the individual components of the corpus of digitized text that is being distant-read, this ceases to be the case when parts of the corpus are, for reasons relating to intellectual property, not accessible for consumption through downloading followed by close reading. Copyright restrictions on material in collections of digitized text such as the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) necessitates providing facilities for non-consumptive reading, one of the approaches to which consists of providing users with features from the text in the form of small fragments of text, instead of the text itself. We argue that, contrary to expectation, the fragmentary quality of the features generated by the reading interface does not necessarily imply that the mode of reading enabled and mediated by these features points in an anti-humanist direction. We pose the fragmentariness of the features as paradigmatic of the fragmentation with which digital techniques tend, more generally, to trouble the humanities. We then generalize our argument to put our work on feature-based non-consumptive reading in dialogue with contemporary debates that are currently taking place in philosophy and in cultural theory and criticism about posthumanism and agency. While the locus of agency in such a non-consumptive practice of reading does not coincide with the customary figure of the singular human subject as reader, it is possible to accommodate this fragmentising practice within the terms of an ampler notion of agency imagined as dispersed across an entire technosocial ensemble. When grasped in this way, such a practice of reading may be considered posthumanist but not necessarily antihumanist.Ope

Performativity of the memory of religious places through sound and image

In this essay, we explore and deepen the confluence between sound and image, linking and relating concepts, purposes and coherence of artistic practices mediating and reconfiguring the memory of religious places. We observed that the performativity of memory, as an autobiographical concept, can be enhanced through live audiovisual performances in religious places. We have established that the performativity of memory in religious places can promote a spatial ‘self’, creating dynamic, immersive and physical experiences in the religious places. And we argue that the construction of this spatial ‘self’ involves processes of social and artistic reconfiguration that contribute to transforming not only the social dynamics within the community but also the artistic representations of memory. These main findings were reached following a process of research through artistic practice, thus a systematization of the processes involved in approaching three religious places. It also assumes the (de)construction of the sense of place throughout a personal reading on the mediation through nonverbal means. In this research, we also observed that the aesthetic and performative configurations can have an impact on the most individual manifestations of religion, religiosity and religious belief, influencing the interpretation and creation of meaning, evoking emotional and spiritual responses.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Immersed in Pop! Excursions into Compositional Design

Recent changes in consumer audio and music technology and distribution - for example the addition of 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos to music streaming services, the recent release of “Spatial Audio” on Apple and Beats products, the proliferation of musical content in virtual reality and 360º videos, etc. - have reignited a public discourse on concepts of immersion and interactivity in popular music and media. This raises questions and necessitates a deepening of popular musicological discourse in these areas. This thesis thus asks: what is the relationship between so-called immersive media and immersive experience? How are immersive and interactive experiences of audiovisual popular music compositionally designed? And to what degree do interpretations of immersion and interactivity in popular music imply agency on part of the listener/viewer? To address these questions, Bresler has authored or co-authored four articles and book chapters on music in immersive and interactive media with a focus on compositional design and immersion in pop music. In the framing chapter, these articles are contextualized through the coining of the term immersive staging, which is a framework for understanding how the perceived relationship between the performer and listener is mediated through technology, performativity, audiovisual compositional design, and aesthetics. Additionally, the chapter makes a case for the hermeneutic methodologies employed throughout.publishedVersio

Ana-Materialism & the Pineal Eye: Becoming Mouth-Breast Visual Arts in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction

Ana-materialism & the Pineal Eye provides a landmark interpretation of materialism, representation and the image using the Cartesian conceit of a pineal gland and its voracious sexually embedded appetites. Developing the argument via Georges Bataille’s re-invention of the pineal gland as an allseeing, all devouring, (pineal) eye, Johnny Golding borrows this move to envision a different analytic approach to digital forms of ‘matter’ and artificial forms of ‘life’. From her critical engagement with Bataille, Giles Deleuze and Judith Butler, Golding shows why the tools provided by these modern, contemporary and postmodern approaches to philosophy, image, the body, indeed representation cannot fully explore, let alone develop these new forms of reality/ies except by retreating into traditional binary divides between male and female, good and evil, mother/child and so forth. Anamaterialism and the Pineal Eye introduces a much needed understanding to oddly cathected sensualities, multiversal realities, digital imaginaries with no weight, no volume, no spatiality, but ‘somehow’ making sense, and with it, creating matter, ethics, art

Mixed Reality Images: Trilogy of Synthetic Realities III

The interplay of physical reality and digital media technologies is getting enhanced by new interfaces. The age of hyper-reality turns into the age of hyper-aesthetics and immersive image technologies - like mixed reality - enable a completely novel form of interaction and user relation with the virtual image structures, the different screen technologies, and embedded physical artefacts for interaction. "Mixed Reality Images" contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of mixed reality images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of mixed reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science

“Game over, man. Game over”:looking at the Alien in film and videogames

In this article we discuss videogame adaptations of the Alien series of films, in particular Alien: Colonial Marines (2013) and Alien: Isolation (2014). In comparing critical responses and developer commentary across these texts, we read the very different affective, aesthetic and socio-political readings of the titular alien character in each case. The significant differences in what it means to ‘look’ at this figure can be analyzed in terms of wider storytelling techniques that stratify remediation between film and games. Differing accounts of how storytelling techniques create intensely ‘immersive’ experiences such as horror and identification—as well as how these experiences are valued—become legible across this set of critical contexts. The concept of the ‘look’ is developed as a comparative series that enables the analysis of the affective dynamics of film and game texts in terms of gender-normative ‘technicity’, moving from the ‘mother monster’ of the original film to the ‘short controlled burst’ of the colonial marines and finally to the ‘psychopathic serendipity’ of Alien: Isolation

Mediation and the PandeTheatre: Digital performativity in the smart staging of Brilliant Mind

One of the negative impacts of the pandemic on creative culture is new limitations imposed on interactive performance in theatrical production. Producers resorted to digitality to explore the potentials of smart staging. A new play titled Brilliant Mind is a case in point for its innovative use of digital alternatives to maintain interactive performativity in what the producers describe as “live theatre in digital landscapes”. The play was digitally performed online in 2021, and members of the audience were allowed to digitally explore parts of the set and interact with characters. This paper examines the play’s use of digital performativity as a form of mediation for pandemic-era theatre by unpacking its digital interactive strategies. The authors offer a close textual and visual analysis of their experience as audience members in addition to employing theatrical principles of psychodrama, as well as concepts of affect theory as an approach to visual communication

Immersive theatre as a strategy for raising eco-awareness

The failure of existing efforts in tackling environmental and man-made catastrophes reiterates the need for transformative understandings about eco-issues. However, the ecoproblem is a massively and complexly distributed phenomenon, which needs to be localized for the public’s consciousness before their perceptions about it and resilience against it can be mobilized. As such, this dissertation studies how immersive theatre can be used as a transformative strategy to raise eco-awareness. Reflecting on the theories and literatures in the fields of ecocriticism, performance studies and immersive theatre, and the working practices of current immersive performances, this study develops a relational model which situates the bodies of spectators at the collapsing aesthetic, territorial and anthropocentric boundaries in the eco-discourse. It argues that based on the affective and emancipating natures of immersive theatre, the tactics of creating intimate encounters in the performance, guiding spectators to perform reciprocal agencies, and allowing a capacity for weakness and negative feelings may culminate to both enhance the immersive experience of the spectators and open up a space for eco-awareness to emerge. These immersive tactics treat the bodies of the spectators as aesthetic sites of sensory exchanges and empathetic imaginations, from which personal connections and perceptual transformations may be enabled. Addressing intercorporeality and intersubjectivity, an eco-conscious immersive theatre may then collapse the boundaries between onlookers and stakeholders, human and non-human through highlighting one’s immersiveness in both the theatre and the ecosphere. To exemplify the above, Rimini Protokoll’s World Climate Change Conference (2014) and Riverbed Theatre’s Hypnosis (2017) will be studied as the major cases of the dissertation. They will be analyzed with the guidance of knowledge from the fields of ecocriticism and immersive theatre, and concepts such as immersion, affect and emancipatio

The digital feminine

This MFA is a visual art critical investigation of digital representations, manipulations, and exploitations of feminine figures in cyberspace. The particular focus of this study is centred on the work of self-titled reality artist Signe Pierce, as well as my own practical body of work: The Digital Feminine. Case studies of Pierce’s practice include Big Sister (2016), Halo (2018), American Reflexxx (2013) and Reality Hack (2016). Through these case studies I examine the nature of identity formation online as underscored by notions of performativity as well as arguments for the use of feminine aesthetics as feminist critique, specifically through the use of the ‘Venus Flytrapping’ method. Jean Baudrillard famously theorised the hyperreal and the simulacra, claiming that human experience is a simulation of reality1. My MFA thesis addresses contemporary concerns relating to issues of reality, perception, the gaze, and identity in an increasingly virtual world. The 20th century witnessed massive changes in technology, and its subsequent commercialisation marked new territories for mass media, politics, entertainment, social life, and the art world. Avant-garde modern art movements shattered previously held standards of traditional artistic production, thus ideas surrounding the ‘art object’ and the role of artists themselves were fundamentally changed. In a postmodern world where nothing is sacred and life is experienced through the simulacra of the screen, the hyperreal takes over. I investigate how real-world socio-political issues, particularly those related to gender, transcend into the digital realm of cyberspace through discussions of Donna Harraway’s ‘cyborg feminism’ and Judith Butler’s ideas of gender performativity, as well as Erving Goffman’s ideas of everyday performativity. My final body of work for the professional art practice component of this MFA is realised in the form of an immersive installation that straddles the virtual and the real. Influenced by digital and hyperreal aesthetics (such as VapourWave), this installation also explores various expressions of femininity that an individual can express both online and in real life