Ecocritical Art in Times of Climate Change: Tracing Ecological Relationships Between Humans and Nonhumans Through the Hyperextension of Objects

In recent years, climate change has expanded from a scientific to a broadly cultural concern, fundamentally questioning ideas of nature, society, and ecology. This thesis looks at the contribution of eco-art to the discussions, which seems to lag behind current discourses in ecocriticism. An analysis of selected "climate change exhibitions" shows that, despite its intentions, much of eco-art keeps recreating the modernist Nature-Society dualism which ecocriticism sees as the main obstacle for ecological thinking. Meanwhile, ecology models developed in ecocriticism are also far from resolved. A close look at Bruno Latour's Political Ecology and Timothy Morton's Ecological Thought reveals for example a theoretical alignment of ecology and democracy, which misjudges the behavioural capacities of ecological agents in practical ecology. The critique of eco-art and ecocriticism leads to questions regarding their contradictory artistic and political agency in environmental discourses. To address these uncertainties, an ecocritical art is proposed, investigating the identified problems in eco-art: aesthetic distancing, unknown subject-object relationships, fixation on local environments, and misreadings of practical ecology. Following Donella Meadows' "systems thinking" approach, the thesis suggests focusing on the investigation of concrete ecological agents and their systemic behaviour. Rather than theorising relationships between "closed" objects, it introduces the idea of the "hyperextended object". Hyperextension describes the investigative expansion of an object into an ecological agent, unfolding it contextually according to its social, material, and energetic relationships. The practical part of the thesis develops an artistic methodology, which traces and shapes hyperextended objects through long-term fieldwork, participant observation, site specific performative actions, various documentary approaches, and their convergence in the exhibition. In two case studies exploring the (trans)regional infrastructures, sociopolitical ontologies, and ecological effects of two hydroelectricity projects in Iceland and Scotland, the process of hyperextension is shown to include the artist herself, as increasingly embedded ecological agent

Reframing museum epistemology for the information age: a discursive design approach to revealing complexity

This practice-based research inquiry examines the impact of an epistemic shift, brought about by the dawning of the information age and advances in networked communication technologies, on physical knowledge institutions - focusing on museums. The research charts adapting knowledge schemas used in museum knowledge organisation and discusses the potential for a new knowledge schema, the network, to establish a new epistemology for museums that reflects contemporary hyperlinked and networked knowledge. The research investigates the potential for networked and shared virtual reality spaces to reveal new ‘knowledge monuments’ reflecting the epistemic values of the network society and the space of flows. The central practice for this thesis focuses on two main elements. The first is applying networks and visual complexity to reveal multi-linearity and adapting perspectives in relational knowledge networks. This concept was explored through two discursive design projects, the Museum Collection Engine, which uses data visualisation, cloud data, and image recognition within an immersive projection dome to create a dynamic and searchable museum collection that returns new and interlinking constellations of museum objects and knowledge. The second discursive design project was Shared Pasts: Decoding Complexity, an AR app with a unique ‘anti-personalisation’ recommendation system designed to reveal complex narratives around historic objects and places. The second element is folksonomy and co-design in developing new community-focused archives using the community's language to build the dataset and socially tagged metadata. This was tested by developing two discursive prototypes, Women Reclaiming AI and Sanctuary Stories

Theatre and performance photography: documentation and the unlive.

PhDAlthough theatre and performance photographs often illustrate scholarly works on theatre and performance, and despite recent interest in links between theatre and the still image from both theatre practitioners and theorists, there remains relatively little critical work on theatre photography. This thesis examines theatre photography, implementing approaches that are a departure from habitual conceptions of the photograph as document. Taking the intersection of theatre and photography as a vantage point, this thesis considers how photography might shape theatre rather than recording it, and how this might challenge notions of theatre's constitution, summoning theatre's own stillness, its citation, and its spectrality. This consideration takes place via analysis of a series of instances of theatre photography, interrogating the specific operation of photography and photographs in each. Following the introduction, Chapter 1 gives an overview of existing writing about theatre photography, from questions of archiving to reflection on 'performance documentation'. Chapter 2 concerns photographic studies of the corporeal mime of Etienne Decroux, examining how photographic stillness relates to mime practice. Chapter 3 concerns the theatre photographs of Josef Koudelka, and considers how this work documents disappearance. Chapter 4 focuses on Martine Franck, photographer at the Theatre du Soleil, and examines how theatre photographs correspond to the photographer's other work. The work of this same company is the subject of Chapter 5, where I consider Sophie Moscoso's use of photography as part of a working process, and the ways in which images affect stage practice. Chapter 6 concerns the work of New York performance photographer Dona Ann McAdams, and considers the how photographs perform. The conclusion considers the wider implications of this work, and signals future research that might draw on my findings

Viewpoint-Free Photography for Virtual Reality

Viewpoint-free photography, i.e., interactively controlling the viewpoint of a photograph after capture, is a standing challenge. In this thesis, we investigate algorithms to enable viewpoint-free photography for virtual reality (VR) from casual capture, i.e., from footage easily captured with consumer cameras. We build on an extensive body of work in image-based rendering (IBR). Given images of an object or scene, IBR methods aim to predict the appearance of an image taken from a novel perspective. Most IBR methods focus on full or near-interpolation, where the output viewpoints either lie directly between captured images, or nearby. These methods are not suitable for VR, where the user has significant range of motion and can look in all directions. Thus, it is essential to create viewpoint-free photos with a wide field-of-view and sufficient positional freedom to cover the range of motion a user might experience in VR. We focus on two VR experiences: 1) Seated VR experiences, where the user can lean in different directions. This simplifies the problem, as the scene is only observed from a small range of viewpoints. Thus, we focus on easy capture, showing how to turn panorama-style capture into 3D photos, a simple representation for viewpoint-free photos, and also how to speed up processing so users can see the final result on-site. 2) Room-scale VR experiences, where the user can explore vastly different perspectives. This is challenging: More input footage is needed, maintaining real-time display rates becomes difficult, view-dependent appearance and object backsides need to be modelled, all while preventing noticeable mistakes. We address these challenges by: (1) creating refined geometry for each input photograph, (2) using a fast tiled rendering algorithm to achieve real-time display rates, and (3) using a convolutional neural network to hide visual mistakes during compositing. Overall, we provide evidence that viewpoint-free photography is feasible from casual capture. We thoroughly compare with the state-of-the-art, showing that our methods achieve both a numerical improvement and a clear increase in visual quality for both seated and room-scale VR experiences

The interaction between building layout and display layout in museums

A key issue, theoretical as well as practical, in the design of museums and galleries is how the layout of space interacts with the layout of objects to express an intended message or realise a specific effect. This issue can be addressed against the background of a coherent body of literature which, using the space syntax theory and method, offers a certain rigour in the analysis of spatial layouts, and within the context of a smaller, less systematic body of object layout studies which, focusing on curatorial intent, looks only obliquely at space. It is the intention of this thesis to try to develop a synthetic overview of spatial and object layout within a single theoretical framework, seeking to contribute to a better understanding of museum morphology. This combined framework is built through a series of paired case studies of European museums and galleries specially selected, and designed to allow the pursuit of specific theoretical questions. The aim of these case studies is illuminative and explorative rather than exhaustive, since each case study is intensive and requires a protracted period of field work. The analysis sets out from the conspicuous similarities between each pair of museums, which set the background for exploring critical differences with resp ect to the layout of space and objects, and as manifested in the observable patterns of visiting. The ideas generated from this analysis are then used to describe the main dimensions of variability of spatial layout, display strategies and visiting patterns. On this basis, the study proposes a theoretical model that relates these dimensions of variability, and shows them to derive from a set of basic principles, given as possibilities to be explored and combined. Depending on the way museums use these principles, it is possible to distinguish between museums that intend to convey a pre-given meaning and reproduce information, and museums that aim at creating fields of possible meaning and producing a richer spatial structure

InSEA European Regional Congress: Tales of art and curiosity

Proceedings volume from the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) European Regional Congress

The Agency of Art Objects in Northern Europe, 1380–1520

This monograph book offers a new interpretation of northern European art of the fifteenth century. The author presents it as a conglomerate of objects-things which act on the recipient in a specific – material and spatial – way. He analyzes macro-scale objects that impose movement on the viewer, and micro-scale objects that encourage manipulation. Inspired by the anti-anthropocentric concept of “returning to things” (B. Latour, A. Gell and others), the author searches for the “agency of things” in late-medieval art objects, which evoke specific liturgical, devotional, propaganda-political behaviors, or establish the status of social owner of the object that once co-created the network of material and spiritual culture. This methodologically innovative approach is part of the latest research in early art in Western Europe and the United States

The Agency of Art Objects in Northern Europe, 1380–1520

This monograph book offers a new interpretation of northern European art of the fifteenth century. The author presents it as a conglomerate of objects-things which act on the recipient in a specific – material and spatial – way. He analyzes macro-scale objects that impose movement on the viewer, and micro-scale objects that encourage manipulation. Inspired by the anti-anthropocentric concept of “returning to things” (B. Latour, A. Gell and others), the author searches for the “agency of things” in late-medieval art objects, which evoke specific liturgical, devotional, propaganda-political behaviors, or establish the status of social owner of the object that once co-created the network of material and spiritual culture. This methodologically innovative approach is part of the latest research in early art in Western Europe and the United States

Design And Assessment Of Compact Optical Systems Towards Special Effects Imaging

A main challenge in the field of special effects is to create special effects in real time in a way that the user can preview the effect before taking the actual picture or movie sequence. There are many techniques currently used to create computer-simulated special effects, however current techniques in computer graphics do not provide the option for the creation of real-time texture synthesis. Thus, while computer graphics is a powerful tool in the field of special effects, it is neither portable nor does it provide work in real-time capabilities. Real-time special effects may, however, be created optically. Such approach will provide not only real-time image processing at the speed of light but also a preview option allowing the user or the artist to preview the effect on various parts of the object in order to optimize the outcome. The work presented in this dissertation was inspired by the idea of optically created special effects, such as painterly effects, encoded in images captured by photographic or motion picture cameras. As part of the presented work, compact relay optics was assessed, developed, and a working prototype was built. It was concluded that even though compact relay optics can be achieved, further push for compactness and cost-effectiveness was impossible in the paradigm of bulk macro-optics systems. Thus, a paradigm for imaging with multi-aperture micro-optics was proposed and demonstrated for the first time, which constitutes one of the key contributions of this work. This new paradigm was further extended to the most general case of magnifying multi-aperture micro-optical systems. Such paradigm allows an extreme reduction in size of the imaging optics by a factor of about 10 and a reduction in weight by a factor of about 500. Furthermore, an experimental quantification of the feasibility of optically created special effects was completed, and consequently raytracing software was developed, which was later commercialized by SmARTLens(TM). While the art forms created via raytracing were powerful, they did not predict all effects acquired experimentally. Thus, finally, as key contribution of this work, the principles of scalar diffraction theory were applied to optical imaging of extended objects under quasi-monochromatic incoherent illumination in order to provide a path to more accurately model the proposed optical imaging process for special effects obtained in the hardware. The existing theoretical framework was generalized to non-paraxial in- and out-of-focus imaging and results were obtained to verify the generalized framework. In the generalized non-paraxial framework, even the most complex linear systems, without any assumptions for shift invariance, can be modeled and analyzed