THE RESEMBLANCE OF CONDENSATION, AN UNSTABLE LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE PAST AND PRESENT

My thesis, Condensation, is centered on seeing and the limits of our perceptions. I’m interested in the psychological and emotional effects of visual phenomena and am exploring this area through glass’s ability to reflect and obscure. I’m also experimenting with photography because it’s simply documentation of reflection. The solidity of reflection whether on glass, photography, or water is something that I’m questioning. The viewer assumes its physicality, but what we accept as conclusive is at times a construct. The palpability of reflection then disintegrates into the residue of sight. I’ve been contemplating our eyes perceptual limits and what our mind sees in relation to what’s shown. The act of seeing works as a catalyst to initiate doubt in our perceptions and reminds us of our eyes ability to reveal and conceal information. Visual shifting has led me to question the idea of boundaries in both physical and mental spheres

Characterization of hexabundles: Initial results

New multi-core imaging fibre bundles -- hexabundles -- being developed at the University of Sydney will provide simultaneous integral field spectroscopy for hundreds of celestial sources across a wide angular field. These are a natural progression from the use of single fibres in existing galaxy surveys. Hexabundles will allow us to address fundamental questions in astronomy without the biases introduced by a fixed entrance aperture. We have begun to consider instrument concepts that exploit hundreds of hexabundles over the widest possible field of view. To this end, we have compared the performance of a 61-core fully-fused hexabundle and 5 lightly-fused bundles with 7 cores each. All fibres in the bundles have 100 micron cores. In the fully-fused bundle, the cores are distorted from a circular shape in order to achieve a higher fill fraction. The lightly-fused bundles have circular cores and five different cladding thicknesses which affect the fill fraction. We compare the optical performance of all 6 bundles and find that the advantage of smaller interstitial holes (higher fill fraction) is outweighed by the increase in modal coupling, cross-talk and the poor optical performance caused by the deformation of the fibre cores. Uniformly high throughput and low cross-talk are essential for imaging faint astronomical targets with sufficient resolution to disentangle the dynamical structure. Devices already under development will have between 100 and 200 lightly-fused cores, although larger formats are feasible. The light-weight packaging of hexabundles is sufficiently flexible to allow existing robotic positioners to make use of them.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. See also a complimentary paper on the development of hexabundles - Bland-Hawthorn et al. 2011, Optics Express, vol. 19, p. 2649 (http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-19-3-2649

An evaluation of auroral all-sky camera observations

From photometric, all-sky camera, and visual observations of a moderate auroral display, it is found that the all-sky camera compares favorably with the visual observer in detecting and recording auroral forms. The visual observer can make instantaneous observations and so can detect rapid changes and auroral forms lasting only a few seconds, whereas the poorer time resolution of the all-sky camera prevents it from recording very short-lived phenonema. However, the ability of the all-sky camera to accurately record the shape and intensity of the majority of auroral forms allows it to yield more precise and complete information about these aspects of auroral morphology than is normally obtained through visual observation.Ye

The Weather Project: Displacements, Scaffolding and Meteorological Models for a Critical Evaluation of the Public Display

En el año 2003 el artista danés Olafur Eliasson inauguraría en la Sala de las Turbinas de la Tate Modern de Londres su ambiciosa propuesta The Weather Project, proyecto por el que se haría mundialmente famoso y que hoy día sigue siendo una de sus obras más conocidas. Durante los cinco meses que duró la exposición un brumoso atardecer permanecería congelado en el tiempo en el interior de esta importante plaza cubierta de la ciudad inglesa. El escenario orquestado por el artista conseguiría invertir el significado mismo del edificio de Herzog y de Meuron. Por un lado una parte de Londres penetraría al edificio, su atmósfera, y, a través de la experiencia y el recuerdo de la obra, el espectador se llevaría su personal sol al exterior. Edificio y ciudad, intervención y preexistencia quedarían así alterados en esta suerte de “accidente” meteorológico provocado por Eliasson. Con el Sol de la Tate como ejemplo de fondo, el texto que aquí se presenta pretende ahondar en los argumentos, conceptos y estrategias desarrolladas por Olafur Eliasson en sus intervenciones en la esfera pública haciendo hincapié en las relaciones y transformaciones que se producen en escenario y espectador como consecuencia de los desplazamientos conceptuales y materiales propuestos por el artista.In 2003, Danish artist Olafur Eliasson would unveil his ambitious proposal, The Weather Project, in the Turbine Hall at the London Tate Modern. This project then went on to become internationally renowned and today, it remains one of his best–known pieces. During the five months on display, a misty sunset would remain frozen in time within this important indoor space located in the English capital. This scene, put together by the artist, would manage to invert the very meaning of the building by Herzog and de Meuron. On the one hand, a part of London would penetrate the building, its atmosphere and through the experience and memory of the piece, the spectator would take their own personal sun outside. Building and city, intervention and pre–existence would thus be altered in this sort of meteorological “accident” provoked by Eliasson. With the Tate Sun as an example of the background, the text here presented seeks to delve into the arguments, concepts and strategies developed by Olafur Eliasson in his interventions in the public sphere, emphasising the relationships and transformations that take place on stage and in the spectator himself as a result of the conceptual and material displacements proposed by the artist

Performers Playing Themselves

An enquiry by Matthew Crippen into how we encounter actors as we perceive them by means of a movies, having encountered them within other movies beforehand. After discussing how we use photographs, he concludes that we cannot help but register the actors as actors as we encounter them enacting rôles. Echoing what filmmakers have said and done and adding to classic accounts of Cavell, Santayana and others, he concludes that the very nature of movies well-nigh invites performers to play themselves

Graphic Content Warning; Personal and Political Traumas

The written portion of this thesis work is meant to address and further investigate the visual work created using mediums of print and found video. This artistic research has been interested in examining varying associations with truth, recollection, and evidence. This includes the recollection of public histories and news-media narratives as well as my own history and trauma. Through this work my aim was to create a deconstruction and revolt against how associations are formed, and how to understand imagery as information. This thesis first discusses my relationship to appropriated imagery, then connects and examines it through the addition of poetic elements and events from my own lived experience

Player identification in American McGee’s Alice : a comparative perspective

In this paper I analyse personal identification in three incarnations of Alice in Wonderland: the original novels, the 1950s Disney animation film and the computer game American McGee’s Alice. After presenting the research corpus, I lay out the analytical framework derived from Kendall Walton’s theory of representational artefacts as props for evoking imagining in games of make-believe. From this perspective, the Alice heritage relies on spectacle rather than plot to entertain. This spectacle differs across media as each medium’s strengths are played out: language-play in the novels, colour/motion/sound in the film and challenges in the game. There are two types of imagining involved: objective, whereby a person imagines a scene outside of himself, and subjective, in which case the imagining revolves around a version of himself. Both the novels and the film primarily evoke objective imagining whereas the game invites the player to be introjected into the Alice character evoking subjective imagining. The picture is not unambiguous, however, as the novels and the film stage a broad array of subjectifying techniques and the game objectifying ones. This gives us some indication as to the nature of representation which, to be of interest, presents a tension between here and there, between the self and an other