136 research outputs found
Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A cumulative index to a continuing bibliography
This publication is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in Supplements 138 through 149 of AEROSPACE MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY: A CONTINUING BIBLIOGRAPHY. It includes three indexes -- subject, personal author, and corporate source
Inventory for a Reverse Journey. Photographic Image and Found Object - An investigation of travel and material transformation as a paradigm of artist's practice: Ed Ruscha, Douglas Huebler, Bas jan Ader, Jimmie Durham, Gustav Metzger, Kurt Schwitters & Cian Quayle.
Inventory for Reverse Journey is the title of a collection of photographic artefacts and found objects, which I have collected over the last twenty years. The title refers to one specific type of artist's journey, which is applicable to the `chronotope' of my archive, as a `metaphorical journey in space and time' (Bakhtin 1981, p. 81). The `city',`provincial town', `road', `threshold' and `interior' are recurrent motifs, which Bakhtin fused together to describe the historical evolution of the novel in relation to its different genres. Bakhtin's motifs are expanded as the basis of an evolutionary nomenclature of the artist's-journey, as a form of spatial mapping and identity formation. Alongside other sources from literature (Alain Robbe-Grillet), cinema (Michelangelo Antonioni), psychoanalysis (Kierkegaard) and critical theory (Walter Benjamin) I have developed a theoretical framework, which initially originated in an empirical process, that is reflected in the antecedents of this project. The research process, as a journey itself, has concretised this approach within a systems-based practice. This is mirrored in the work of the artists under investigation, as their differences and similarities are highlighted within a broad contextual analysis. Accordingly the tone of the writing shifts its register at different points in the thesis.
My journey is just one example of several paradigmatic formations of `travel' as a strategy, which investigates the work of six different artists, as a voluntary or involuntary form of exile. A deskilled use of the photographic image is examined in the work of Ed Ruscha, Douglas Huebler and Bas jan Ader in the spatial mapping of their chosen locations. The work of these artists manifests travel, as a strategy, in a benign form of regional and expatriate exile. The investigation shifts its focus from the New World to Europe, where the work of Jimmie Durham, Gustav Metzger and Kurt Schwitters is analysed in relation to their transformation of found objects and materials, and their relationship with a former 'home'. Their position registers different degrees of the `impossibility of return' to a point of origin, which exists in the mind rather than as a physical location. The transience of their work, and use of disparate materials, is counterbalanced by their physical presence in the work. Conversely Ader, Huebler and Ruscha are linked by a scale of decreasing visibility, as they are sublimated within their work in the formation of, what is now construed as, a unique photographic presence. The starting point for which is a return to the formative years of conceptualism in the 1960's, which set the scene for Durham and Metzger from the 1970's onwards. The spectre of Schwitters practice of forming (Formung) and unforming (Entformung) is significant for my analysis of the dematerialisation of the art-work and artist, by processes of series and repetition, distance and proximity, movement and stasis. Although `travel' is a ubiquitous term, I continue to use it as a portmanteau, which carries with it the themes and `salient' features of a typology of artist's journeys. In a moment of perceived obsolescence as digital information systems engender a culture of `selective-amnesia', these thoughts have informed my work, which runs parallel to the artist case-studies, and the material transformation of the photographic image and found object
Dancing Media: The Contagious Movement of Posthuman Bodies (or Towards A Posthuman Theory of Dance)
My dissertation seeks to define a posthuman theory of dance through a historical study of the dancer as an instrument or technology for exploring emergent visual media, and by positioning screendance as an experimental technique for animating posthuman relation and thought. Commonly understood as ephemeral, dance is produced by assemblages that include bodies but are not limited to them. In this way, dance exceeds the human body. There is a central tension in the practice of dance, between the persistent presumption of the dancing body as a channel for human expression, and dance as a technicity of the bodyâa discipline and a practice of repeated gestureâthat calls into question categories of the human. A posthuman theory of dance invites examination of such tensions and interrogates traditional notions of authenticity, ownership and commodification, as well as the bounded, individual subject who can assess the surrounding world with precise clarity, certain of where the human begins and ends.
The guiding historical question for my dissertation is: if it is possible to describe both a modern form of posthuman dance (turn of the 19th-20th century), and a more recent form of posthuman dance (turn of the 20th-21st century), are they part of the same assemblage or are they constituted differently, and if so, how? Throughout my four chapters, I explore an array of case studies from early modernism to advanced capitalism, including Loie Fullerâs otherworldly stage dances; the scientific motion studies of Muybridge and Marey; Fritz Langâs dancing maschinenmensch (or the first on-screen dancing machine) in the 1927 film Metropolis; the performances of singer-dancer hologram pop star, Hatsune Miku; and American engineering firm Boston Dynamicsâ dancing military robots. The figure of the âdancing machineâ (McCarren) is central to my project, especially given that dance has historically been used as a means of testing machinesâfrom automata to robots to CGI images animated with MoCapâin their capacity to be lively or human-like. In each case, I am interested in how dance continues to be productive of some kind of subjectivity (or interiority, or âsoulâ), even in the absence of the human body, and how technique and gesture passes between bodies, both virtual and organic, dispersing agency often attributed to the human alone.
I propose that a posthuman theory of dance is a necessary intervention to the broad and contradictory field of posthumanism because dance returns us to questions about bodies that are often suspiciously ignored in theories of posthumanism, especially regarding race (and historically racist categories of non/inhumanity), thereby exposing many of posthumanismâs biases, appropriations, dispossessions and erasures. Throughout my dissertation, I look to dance as both a concrete example and as a method of thinking through the potentials and limitations of posthumanism
Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere
Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic
phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of
the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other,
whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion
with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are
encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural
language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of
linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of
altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from
a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela,
and Michael Winkelmanâs work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on
the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene
dâAquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional
organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered
states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the
other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive
interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional
dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that
problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies.
The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of
syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological
structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of
linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic selfexploration.
Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs,
legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not.
Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a
social aspect of the âunspeakabilityâ of these experiences. Academic ASCR has
largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic selfexploration.
This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these
works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what
these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is
constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its
own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to
inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this
practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and
theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive,
artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic
self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic
practice and is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing
the multidimensional visual language Glide
Shadows of Childhood: The Emergence of the Child in the Visual and Literary Culture of the French Long-Nineteenth Century
This thesis examines the evolutionary journey of the concepts of the âchildâ and âchildhoodâ during the French long-nineteenth century, as expressed through the periodâs literary and visual culture. It analyses in what ways these concepts reflect a âshadowlandâ existence in this period, and in turn how the shadow metaphor symbolises both the child itself and its complex, changeable condition. The shadow metaphor not only characterises various concepts associated with children and childhood, but extends to represent the nature of the study itself. The long-nineteenth century forms a stretch of âshadowlandâ reflective of the abstruseness of the topic which lies between pre-Enlightenment âdarknessâ and the illuminating âlightâ of the twentieth century. The thesis focuses on this crucial though oft overlooked developmental period between the scholarly inception of children and childhood in the late Enlightenment, to their establishment as creative blueprints in twentieth-century modernism. Supported by a socio-historical grounding, an exploration of the work of Baudelaire, Hugo, Rousseau, Proust, Redon, Degas, Renoir, and LoĂŻe Fuller, amongst others, enables us to âunpackâ the ways in which this shadowy quality gave rise to not only a curiosity to explore the fascinating âotherâ of the child and its condition in this complex epoch, but also a proclivity to explain and control it. Investigating the rhetoric of children and childhood, considering their artistic and literary significance at this time, the thesis both accounts for how writers and artists reflected upon childhood, and explores the process by which children and childhood were harnessed by intellectual and creative endeavours. Various as the case studies prove, they can all be united in their fulfilment of a regression towards and reimagining of oneâs childhood and personhood, like a re-engagement with the âshadow childâ within, in the face of the disturbing ephemerality of self alongside the destabilising onset of modernity
Unpresentable landscapes and the art of the index
This practice-led PhD determines an aesthetic approach through which a sense of the âunpresentableâ may be exposed within camera-based representations of the industrial landscape. Through an interrogation of contemporary lens-based media, it proposes ways in which experiences problematic to representation â such as the sublime, the uncanny and the traumatic â might be revealed within photographic/filmic images of such landscapes. The culmination of the practical element of the project is a 25-minute narrative-based, single channel video piece entitled Re: Flamingo, which combines HDV and Super-8 footage with digital and traditional still photography. The narrative structure of the work is based on E.T.A. Hoffmannâs short story The Sandman (1816), which Freud cited in his essay The Uncanny (1919). Re: Flamingo is a semiautobiographical variation on that tale, consisting of an email conversation between the artist, his father and the fictional âClaraâ. Through this correspondence, the piece reveals correlations between themes in The Sandman and Ridley Scottâs science fiction film Blade Runner (1982) (e.g. traumatic memory, a fascination with eyes/sight and each protagonistâs obsession with mechanized life). It reflects upon how the industrial landscape of Teesside â which inspired many of the visuals in Scottâs film â has been remembered in different photographic media by three generations of the artist's family. The practical submission is supported by a contextual written element, which consists of two parts. Part One is a theoretical review. Firstly it traces philosophical and aesthetic approaches to the sublime, its representation, its status as a subjective experience and its presence within the industrial landscape (Lyotard, Kant, Derrida, Nye). This is continued through an analysis of the related theories of the uncanny and the traumatic (Freud, Vidler, Luckhurst), their association with industrialization and relationship with lens-based media. The uncanny qualities of the photographic and cinematic image are examined alongside correlations of the indexical properties of such images with trauma (Mulvey, Barthes). Finally, an analysis of the camera imageâs indexical status in the wake of digitization, and its consequent alignment with artforms such as painting (Gunning, Rodowick, Manovich), assesses its potential for expressing subjective experience. Part Two of the contextual element explores creative approaches to the themes outlined in Part One. Firstly, it examines Canadian artist Stan Douglasâs film piece Der Sandmann (1995), which exposes a sense of the uncanny in the landscape of pre- and post-reunification Germany. Secondly, it reflects upon Blade Runnerâs significance to the practical element and its correlations with the Sandman narrative. The final section of Part Two details the development and formation of the studio research, documenting its distinctive approach to figuring a sense of the unpresentable within camera-based representations of the industrial landscape.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceArts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) : Newcastle UniversityGBUnited Kingdo
Flows, Routes and Networks: The Global Dynamics of Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell
The notion that we have entered a global age of human relations has been the
driving force behind many of the most persuasive cultural inquiries published over
the last few decades, including fictional ones, into the conditions of contemporary
existence, perhaps the most prominent of these being Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri's Empire (2000). In the era of mass migrations, proliferating media
technologies and the deterritorialised movements of labour and capital, it has
become increasingly necessary to speak of identity and citizenship in terms of
'flows', 'routes' and 'networks' that cut across the traditional boundaries of the
nation-state. Though it is through various cultural productions that such
transformations are at once performed, symbolised and comprehended, discussions
about how these changes have impacted on modes of literary representation have
largely been framed by the older discourses of postmodernism and postcolonialism,
which anticipate present circumstances while arguably offering rather limited
perspectives on them.
This text-focused thesis explores in detail the narrative strategies and
thematic concerns of three British writers who have risen to prominence since 1990
- Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell - whose work announces
literary developments that may be attributed to the fluidity and multiplicity of
millennial relations and the phenomenon of globalisation. Informed by broader
debates about multinational capitalism, transnational culture, and the emergence
of new cybernetic infrastructures, this research argues that recent novels such as
Lempri6re's Dictionary (Lawrence Norfolk), Transmission (Hari Kunzru) and
Ghostwritten (David Mitchell) demonstrate an aesthetic consciousness of new
patterns of human Interaction and geo-historical interconnectedness that is
substantially different from the conceptual coordinates mapped in the fictions of a
previous generation. The work of these three important authors has yet to enter
fully into the mainstream of critical discussion, and the present study represents the
first sustained critical contextualisation of their fiction. Following an introductory chapter that, firstly, provides a wide-ranging analysis of globalisation understood as
a constellation of multidimensional processes and, secondly, considers how these
material transformations articulated themselves in the cultural context of Britain in
the 1980s and '90's, this thesis engages in close readings of the selected authors'
complex fictions over three extensive chapters
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