Entanglement : an investigation into the effective union of contemporary art and science communication : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

All Figures are copyrighted and re-used with permission.Virtual reality (VR) technology is increasingly providing opportunities for new contemporary art experiences. This creative practice research has been developed to provide one such contribution. It offers innovative employment of the immersive capabilities of VR to engage with and convey complex scientific theories, and to stimulate changes in mental processes to unlock these concepts. The research highlights empirical similarities between art and science to propose that creative aspects of art can be considered proximate to the creative qualities required to understand quantum theories. In order to reveal this, the body of research engaged specifically with quantum entanglement, because of its well documented existence¹ combined with the more challenging considerations of how ‘communication’ can occur at a quantum level. By providing metaphoric immersive experiences of quantum entanglement, a contribution of ‘scientific communication’ is made as defined by the evocation of awareness, enjoyment, and interest, questioning of opinions and providing new perspectives of understanding.² This research posits that there is a fertile, effective terrain to explore in the union of the fields of contemporary art and science communication. Considerations of constructivist theories of knowledge and the concept of paradigm shifts³ are used whereby new insights into knowledge processes can be experienced through VR art. Here, simulacra, cognitive dissonance and the technological sublime afford a framework to create experiences of conflicting realities. It is due to the immersive strengths of VR which are exploited and subverted through my designs that these experiences can be facilitated for the viewer. The culmination of this research is Entangled, a VR art installation which provides interplays between virtual and physical spaces while also offering entry-points to contemplate and understand quantum theories. Critical analysis of this project is supported by focus group and questionnaire responses. These findings prove how viewers perceived the project as an aesthetic art work and that by recognising scientific underpinnings, an effective engagement and participation in elements of scientific communication occurred at varying levels. The work provided new perspectives on the properties of quantum entanglement. This facilitated cognitive and experiential awareness providing opportunities for viewers to encounter conflicting knowledge systems. The challenge in this creative practice research was to create aesthetic experiences that contravene common sense reasoning and provide insights into the type of thought processes and experiential perception that is required to deepen and expand our understanding of our physical reality. In the present era of an evolution of super- technologies, now past its nascent stage, Entangled offers exposure to the types of interfaces that this thesis asserts will increasingly be encountered when comprehending our reality in the 21st century and beyond.⁴ ¹ References to the proven existence of quantum entanglement are provided in section 1.6. ² This definition of scientific communication is expanded in section 1.1. ³ Paradigm shifts are times when the familiar framework has to be profoundly changed. This is discussed in detail in section 1.3. ⁴ Quantum entanglement is only one possible area that will cause our experience of reality to change radically. For example biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and human/AI interfaces to name some

The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen

Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement with Emerging Technologies in Research and Learning: Final Report

The generation, dissemination, and analysis of digital information is a significant driver, and consequence, of technological change. As data and information stewards in physical and virtual space, research libraries are thoroughly entangled in the challenges presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution:1 a societal shift powered not by steam or electricity, but by data, and characterized by a fusion of the physical and digital worlds.2 Organizing, structuring, preserving, and providing access to growing volumes of the digital data generated and required by research and industry will become a critically important function. As partners with the community of researchers and scholars, research libraries are also recognizing and adapting to the consequences of technological change in the practices of scholarship and scholarly communication. Technologies that have emerged or become ubiquitous within the last decade have accelerated information production and have catalyzed profound changes in the ways scholars, students, and the general public create and engage with information. The production of an unprecedented volume and diversity of digital artifacts, the proliferation of machine learning (ML) technologies,3 and the emergence of data as the “world’s most valuable resource,”4 among other trends, present compelling opportunities for research libraries to contribute in new and significant ways to the research and learning enterprise. Librarians are all too familiar with predictions of the research library’s demise in an era when researchers have so much information at their fingertips. A growing body of evidence provides a resounding counterpoint: that the skills, experience, and values of librarians, and the persistence of libraries as an institution, will become more important than ever as researchers contend with the data deluge and the ephemerality and fragility of much digital content. This report identifies strategic opportunities for research libraries to adopt and engage with emerging technologies,5 with a roughly fiveyear time horizon. It considers the ways in which research library values and professional expertise inform and shape this engagement, the ways library and library worker roles will be reconceptualized, and the implication of a range of technologies on how the library fulfills its mission. The report builds on a literature review covering the last five years of published scholarship, primarily North American information science literature, and interviews with a dozen library field experts, completed in fall 2019. It begins with a discussion of four cross-cutting opportunities that permeate many or all aspects of research library services. Next, specific opportunities are identified in each of five core research library service areas: facilitating information discovery, stewarding the scholarly and cultural record, advancing digital scholarship, furthering student learning and success, and creating learning and collaboration spaces. Each section identifies key technologies shaping user behaviors and library services, and highlights exemplary initiatives. Underlying much of the discussion in this report is the idea that “digital transformation is increasingly about change management”6 —that adoption of or engagement with emerging technologies must be part of a broader strategy for organizational change, for “moving emerging work from the periphery to the core,”7 and a broader shift in conceptualizing the research library and its services. Above all, libraries are benefitting from the ways in which emerging technologies offer opportunities to center users and move from a centralized and often siloed service model to embedded, collaborative engagement with the research and learning enterprise

The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen

Archaeology of Digital Environments: Tools, Methods, and Approaches

Digital archaeologists use digital tools for conducting archaeological work, but their potential also lies in applying archaeological thinking and methods to understanding digital built environments (i.e., software) as contemporary examples of human settlement, use, and abandonment. This thesis argues for digital spaces as archaeological artifacts, sites, and landscapes that can be investigated in both traditional and non-traditional ways. At the core of my research is the fundamental argument that human-occupied digital spaces can be studied archaeologically with existing and modified theory, tools, and methods to reveal that human occupation and use of synthetic worlds is similar to how people behave in the natural world. Working digitally adds new avenues of investigation into human behavior in relation to the things people make, modify, and inhabit. In order to investigate this argument, the thesis focuses on three video game case studies, each using different kinds of archaeology specifically chosen to help understand the software environments being researched: 1) epigraphy, stylometry, and text analysis for the code-artifact of Colossal Cave Adventure; 2) photogrammetry, 3D printing, GIS mapping, phenomenology, and landscape archaeology within the designed, digital heritage virtual reality game-site of Skyrim VR; 3) actual survey and excavation of 30 heritage sites for a community of displaced human players in the synthetic landscape of No Man’s Sky. My conclusions include a blended approach to conducting future archaeological fieldwork in digital built environments, one that modifies traditional approaches to archaeological sites and material in a post/transhuman landscape. As humanity continues trending towards constant digital engagement, archaeologists need to be prepared to study how digital places are settled, used, and abandoned. This thesis takes a step in that direction using the vernacular of games as a starting point

Pessimism, Paranoia, Melancholia: The affective life of austerity

This thesis examines the affective life of austerity with a particular focus on UK public libraries. It moves understandings of austerity beyond simply a fiscal policy towards conceptualising austerity as lived and felt in everyday life. This understands austerity as simultaneously an economic, social and cultural phenomenon. This does not jettison austerity as a fiscal policy, but rather emphasises that austerity is also a phenomenon that is rooted in lived experience. This research is based upon eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in a borough-wide library service, North-East England. This thesis examines a particular form in which austerity is lived and felt – namely its affective presence. It not only explores how austerity becomes individually felt, but also collectively felt and participated in. It conceptualises austerity as an affective atmosphere that envelops multiple space-times of the everyday. The thesis examines how austerity becomes the ‘background noise’ of everyday life that ebbs and flows in its intensity, how it shapes capacities to feel and act, how austerity is in some way always there, ready to make itself present. Three collectively felt affects are explored in great detail: paranoia, melancholia and pessimism. Importantly, this thesis pushes forward debates on the temporality of affect and, in particular, the temporality of affective atmospheres, through examining the ways in which atmospheres re-emerge throughout everyday life. As part of this it turns to psychoanalytic concepts to explore how they can be collectively felt. The thesis examines how psychoanalytic concepts have application beyond the ontological stance of the unconscious towards thinking about collective life. Finally, this thesis develops the concept and practice of lingering within research. The thesis examines how lingering can be become a methodological tool within affective research and ethnographic research more broadly