Complete 2019 Program

Program and schedule of events for the 30th Annual John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference

Drifting in the Dead Zone in Cyprus: the mediation of memory through expanded life writing

Nicosia, a medieval walled city in Cyprus, was divided by a ‘green line’ in 1964 and remains the last divided capital city in Europe. This thesis deploys poesis and performance to interrogate the border as a site of reminiscence at the intersection of multiple and contested collective memory-narratives. In order to explore the nature of individual and collective memory the thesis challenges a series of physical and conceptual border zones: the disciplinary and discursive boundaries between poetry and philosophy; the border between memory and identity; the border between collective and individual memory and the physical terrain of the border that divides Nicosia. The dérive, translocated from Paris to Nicosia, is used to explore these borders through an autoethnographic poetics that crosses the fields of poetry, anthropology and art practice. Walking and the practice arising from it speak back to the border. The connections between poetry, performance, collective memories and mediated subjectivities are investigated through a multimedia totality of poetics that deploys film, photography and live performance as well as writing. The thesis consists of this written exegesis and documentation of the performance Memory in the Dead Zone, the website MemoryMap, the film-poem DVD An Architecture of Forgetting and The Archive of Lost Objects, a book of poetry and photography. This multimedia collection seeks to capture the complexity, diversity and fluidity of the phenomenological experience of memory and subjectivity. This thesis proposes and identifies a field of expanded life writing that is distinct from but related in ethos to the category of expanded cinema, to define such practice. The knowledge that arises out of the dérives is represented in a thesis that attempts to capture the multiplicity (though not the totality) and interrelationships of the discourses and practices that inform my border memories

Multi-Sensory Interaction for Blind and Visually Impaired People

This book conveyed the visual elements of artwork to the visually impaired through various sensory elements to open a new perspective for appreciating visual artwork. In addition, the technique of expressing a color code by integrating patterns, temperatures, scents, music, and vibrations was explored, and future research topics were presented. A holistic experience using multi-sensory interaction acquired by people with visual impairment was provided to convey the meaning and contents of the work through rich multi-sensory appreciation. A method that allows people with visual impairments to engage in artwork using a variety of senses, including touch, temperature, tactile pattern, and sound, helps them to appreciate artwork at a deeper level than can be achieved with hearing or touch alone. The development of such art appreciation aids for the visually impaired will ultimately improve their cultural enjoyment and strengthen their access to culture and the arts. The development of this new concept aids ultimately expands opportunities for the non-visually impaired as well as the visually impaired to enjoy works of art and breaks down the boundaries between the disabled and the non-disabled in the field of culture and arts through continuous efforts to enhance accessibility. In addition, the developed multi-sensory expression and delivery tool can be used as an educational tool to increase product and artwork accessibility and usability through multi-modal interaction. Training the multi-sensory experiences introduced in this book may lead to more vivid visual imageries or seeing with the mind’s eye

Airport Aura – A Spatial History of Airport Infrastructure

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the emergence of airports as gateways for their cities has turned into one of the most important architectural undertakings. Ever since the first manned flight by the Brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17th 1903, utilitarian sheds next to landing strips on cow pastures evolved into a completely new building type over the next few decades – into places of Modernism as envisioned by Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright (who themselves never built an airport), to eventually turn into icons of cultural identity, progress and prosperity. Many of these airports have become architectural branding devices of their respective cities, regions and countries, created by some of the most notable contemporary architects. This interdisciplinary cultural study deals with the historical formation and transformation of the architectural typology of airports under the aspect of spatial theories. This includes the shift from early spaces of transportation such as train stations, the synesthetic effect of travel and mobility and the effects of material innovations on the development, occupation and use of such spaces. The changing uses from mere utilitarian transportation spaces to ones centered on the spectacular culture of late capitalism, consumption and identity formation in a rapidly changing global culture are analyzed with examples both from architectural and philosophical points of view. The future of airport architecture and design very much looks like the original idea of the Crystal Palace and Parisian Arcades: to provide a stage for consumption, social theatre and art exhibition

Seven Keys to Kentridge

Kentridge’s work crosses borders in every sense. It is local and universal, political as well as moral. It crosses traditional boundaries between media and genres – not only between painting and sculpture, but between two and three dimensions; between collage and continuity of surface; between fragmentation and unity; between the easy workability of cardboard and the permanence of bronze. Kentridge shows the body in movement and the body under pressure both in static and moving images. The ease with which he traverses the boundaries of artistic genres is unparalleled. Similar themes and movements are found repeatedly in his work: often they are combined with music and the spoken word. Yet Kentridge is not merely virtuosic. In his explorations across boundaries he subverts, revises and undoes the conventional definitions of categories and redefines their creative possibilities. One by one the traditional characteristics and limitations of drawing, painting and sculpture fall away. One genre acquires the characteristics of another, and the intrinsic possibilities of each are expanded. Intersections that might have been awkward and difficult to make, now seem effortless. Even when he allows the signs of effort to show, he does so strategically, encouraging viewers to look more attentively in order to see the grace within. They are made aware of the creative possibilities of eye and imagination in bringing together the disjointed and the piecemeal into states of unity and continuity. Kentridge moves with ease from drawing to film, from painting to sculpture, from puppetry to theatre and opera. Yet, as he fully acknowledges, it is in puppetry that many of the sources of his versatile handling of almost every medium lie

The earth and the elements: multi-screen documentary and how the cinema migrates

This research explores responses to global ecological issues via an intercultural and multi-screen approach that focuses on the resources exchange between China and Australia. The project reflects on the proposition that Australia and China are equally implicated in climate change. Drawing on case studies of the work of Bill Viola, Isaac Julian and Yang Fudong, the project begins from a critical enquiry into intercultural documentary and experimental cinema. It proposes the “intercultural” as a key mode through which artists might approach the parallel aesthetic histories found in the treatment of nature and landscape—in both Australian and Chinese contexts. The final chapter examines the history of ecological art making in Australia, locating this practice within the boundaries of ecological thought and documentary film. In the creative component of this project, Daoism provides a framework for a multi-screen installation by offering working metaphors for environmental and cultural interconnectedness. In the creative work, five channels of video explore the movement of coal and mineral ores across the two continents through the elements of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. The “stories” told through these elemental perspectives concern environmental impacts, with particular emphasis on climate change and Australia’s fragile landscape. The architecture of this five-channel installation works in parallel with the non-linearity of the video. This creates a space that contemplates ecological issues in relation to globalisation and the resources relationship between China and Australia

Decoupling and context in new media art

This dissertation presents a novel characterization of new media art, centered on media appropriation: the dialectal insertion of technological knowledge into the art practice. The thesis identifies some defining characteristics of new media art’s language, and indicates the defining role that explicitation plays. While media appropriation is not necessarily linked to the digital realm, it provides a natural substratum for it and so this thesis analyzes some aspects of the relationship between art and technology, where it introduces the user–programmer continuum and the perceptual cloud, a new paradigm of human–computer interaction that emerges from the functional and geographical decoupling of the computational and perceptual layers of interactive systems. Next, it analyzes the sociopolitical inscription of new media art, integrating the economic and political contexts of its practice into the analysis and providing a new reflection on new media art production from the geopolitical periphery. This thesis is proposed as a hybrid research–practice. A selected subset of the artworks created are presented and analyzed within the dissertation’s conceptual framework.Esta disertación presenta una nueva caracterización del new media art, centrada en la apropiación de los medios, es decir, en la inserción dialéctica de conocimiento tecnológico dentro de la práctica artística. La tesis identifica algunas características definitorias del lenguaje del new media art, e identifica el rol fundamental que la explicitación juega. Aunque la apropiación de los medios no está necesariamente unida a lo digital, éste provee un substrato natural para ella. Por ello, esta tesis analiza algunos aspectos entre el arte y la tecnología digital, introduciendo el continuo usuario\2013programador y la nube perceptual, un nuevo paradigma de interacción humano\2013computadora que emerge del desacople funcional y geográfico de las capas computacionales y perceptuales de los sistemas interactivos. A continuación, se analiza la inscripción sociopolítica del new media art, integrando los contextos económico y político, proveyendo una nueva reflexión acerca de la producción artística desde la periferia geopolítica. Esta tesis se propone como un híbrido investigación\2013producción. Un subconjunto seleccionado de las obras creadas durante el programa son presentadas y analizadas desde el marco conceptual de la disertación