The Drowning World : The visual culture of climate change

A challenging question today is how to understand and act on climate change. Previous analyses of the public outreach of the climate sciences have concluded that the urgent communication of climate change is inadequate. It is foremost the invisibility of carbon dioxide and the lack of a tangible relationship between current emissions and future effects that have been seen as the main challenge to visually represent. The Drowning World questions how the communication problem is articulated, and the analysis focuses on the supplementary images that come with this scientific communication, including cover images to reports, backgrounds to diagrams, or graphic design elements. The conclusion is that even if the scientific images might fail to communicate the complexity of the climate issue, the supplementary images, and the way the story of our changing world is told, manage to bring a feeling of change with them. Images of water are especially recurring, as are projects that use immersive environments like virtual reality, and these representations compete for attention in the media noise of modern society, a world that “drowns” the viewers in auditory and visual stimuli. Thus there are many reasons for the title of this thesis – The Drowning World

Sparks of Yoga : Reconsidering the Aesthetic in Modern Postural Yoga

In this article, I consider aesthetic experiences in Ashtanga Yoga practice. Yoga has become extremely popular, a part of everyday life. Yet, aesthetics and yoga are rarely considered together. Using somaesthetics and everyday aesthetics, I argue, that the aesthetic is essential in practicing yoga because of the performing body, environment-like uniting of postures, and the experiences of liminality, sacredness, liberation, and asceticism. Furthermore, I show that recognizing the aesthetic dimension in yoga doesn’t require approaching yoga as an art form, and that balance and beauty can be considered parallel.Peer reviewe

Ambient Worlds: Description and the Concept of Environment in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

This dissertation explores how the descriptive backgrounds of the Victorian novel helped to shape the emerging concept of environment in the nineteenth century. Thomas Carlyle introduced “environment” into English in 1827, spurring writers, scientists, and social thinkers to forge a diverse conceptual lexicon for describing the relationship between organisms and their material surroundings. Comte developed the idea of a singular organic “medium” that supports and nourishes all living beings, while Darwin imagined the plural “conditions of existence” as a chaotic field of competitive struggle. Whereas Zola’s “milieu” exerted destructive pressure on the individual, Spencer claimed that “environment” was in fact constitutive of life itself. This project argues that novelists turned to vivid description as a means of materializing these competing environmental discourses, and exploring their social and affective implications. From the noxious fogs of Bleak House, to Mary Mitford’s concern for the sufferings of uprooted vegetables, novelists gave detailed attention to the exchanges between individual bodies and the physical world. Each of my four chapters examines how a Victorian writer used a distinct type of description to explore an environmental concept: Mitford’s botanical detail and natural theology’s idea of correspondence between body and world; Eliot’s weather and Comte’s organic medium; Hardy’s architecture and Spencer’s theory of environment; and Stevenson’s islands and the discourse of circumstance. Whereas recent critical re-evaluations of description often prize its detachability from narrative, this dissertation thus argues that description was central to the Victorian novel’s ability to represent interactions between individuals and their surroundings. Through close analysis of the descriptive surrounds of nineteenth-century realist fiction (weather, atmosphere, landscape, architecture), this project shows how the novel’s described backgrounds shape and participate in plot in surprising ways, functioning not merely as static pictorial backgrounds to narrative, but rather as dynamic participants in it. The Victorian novel, this dissertation ultimately shows, places interactions between characters and their environments at the center, rather than the periphery, of its drama

Authenticity and the Use of Multimedia at Cultural Tourist Attractions

Within the area of cultural attractions new developments in modern technologies have brought changes as to how culture and heritage are presented and interpreted. This has evoked debates whether such sites can still be regarded as authentic. While researchers have investigated these issues on a theoretical basis, the perception and experience of authenticity as well as the use of modern interpretative tools have been treated separately and still lack empirical investigation. Therefore, this study explores the perceptions and experiences of authenticity at cultural attractions where modern technologies are applied. The central research questions are: (1) How can the key concepts of authenticity, multimedia and experience of cultural attractions be brought into an integrated measurable model? (2) What are the determinants of an authentic attraction and an authentic experience? (3) What is the role of multimedia in the visitor experience of a cultural attraction? In order to provide answers to these research questions a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied. In the first stage, focus-group discussions, expert interviews as well as a small scale quantitative study at “Ceol” – The Traditional Irish Music Centre were conducted. Based on these findings and a thorough literature review a Structural Equation Model was developed. This model incorporates visitor satisfaction, site specific attributes (including multimedia and perception of authenticity) and experiential aspects (i.e. experienced object-, personal-, and social authenticity). The model was tested using data from different sites in two different cities. These included The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, a modern-type attraction in which multimedia constitutes an integral element of the experience, and the Sisi Museum in Vienna, an old established museum where audio-guides are offered. II The findings revealed that object- and personal authenticity proved to be important concepts. However, the role of experienced social authenticity needs further investigation. The results also show that technology does not undermine the authenticity of a site - many visitors prefer to experience an attraction without such tools and in addition the use of an audio-guide did not lead to a higher satisfaction with the site. The suggested model can be regarded as a promising basis for further modelling the visitor experience at cultural attractions

Reassembling documentary: from actuality to virtuality

At a period of intense technological change, which has led to an increasing degree of modularity in documentary media, Reassembling Documentary: From Actuality to Virtuality takes up episodic documentaries and non-fiction films broken into distinctly conceptualized parts, in order to examine how the evolution of technologies transform documentary film and media\u27s relationship to the audiovisual archive across different historical periods. More specifically, the dissertation challenges the assumption that documentary film is essentially holistic in its discursive orientation and audiovisual aesthetics, by studying the fragmented works of a highly unique and international group of filmmakers, such as Harun Farocki, Werner Herzog, Péter Forgács, Aleksandr Sokurov, and James Longley in relation to the large number of modular, episodic, and mix-media films belonging to the documentary canon. To map the technological and theoretical transformations suggested in these films especially in the digital era, I propose the deployment of what I call assemblistic reading, a type of textual analysis that moves from the distinct parts of a film to the whole, shifting the attention from the hierarchy between the micro and macro elements to their mutual reconfiguration. The project is organized into four chapters, each of which examines a different form of assembly (with individual parts conceptualized as fragments, lessons, installments, and compilations respectively) in documentary media

Carrying others: A feminist materialist approach to research-creation

Everyone is connected and operates with or alongside a maternal structure. As psychologist Bracha L. Ettinger states, we all hold within us an imprint or memory of being carried — carried across landscapes, across time, into destinations unknown (Ettinger, 2006). This doctoral dissertation takes up these poetics through an interdisciplinary investigation of Feminist Materialist Research-Creation practices and strategies. Referencing recent traditions of Art Intervention, Performance Art, Land Art, and the canon of feminist art history, this research mirrors, connects with, and critiques digital imaginaries and considers how the maternal body responds to the agency of things in the world. This research makes a unique contribution to the humanities, feminist scholarship, and Research-Creation practices by exploring strategies and subjectivities, new positions of theorization, and analyses that unsettle contemporary approaches to artistic research. This includes a series of theoretical texts, experimental framing, and a portfolio of eight artworks that were individually and collaboratively created and produced between 2016–2019: Traces of Motherhood; Domestic Cupboards; Magical Beast: The Space Within, Out and In-Between, Hunting Self; Mothering Bacteria: The Body as an Interface; Floating in the In-Between; Carrying Others; and Nostalgic Geography: Mama and Papa have Trains, Orchards and Mountains in their Backyard. Showcased with the artwork are digital and technological ephemera, including curatorial conversations, exhibition and submission text, process documentation, links, posters, and other preparatory information. This document also introduces a series of interludes and refections that construct and demonstrate alternative ways of approaching the central ideas, themes, and methodological and theoretical ideas explored in the thesis. Cumulatively, these creative articulations foreground the complexities, process, and nuances of Feminist Materialist approaches to Research-Creation. This document also presents the three main themes which include: 1) Materiality; 2) the Optical Unconscious; and 3) the Technological Unconscious; and, take up the three salient concepts and theories: 1) Carriance; 2) Feminist Materialism; and, 3) Research-Creation. In particular, I argue that Carriance aligns with ideas of care, co-production and becomes a creative way of thinking about connection. Each of the eight artworks demonstrate aspects of Carriance, collaboration, and connection and present emergent ways to consider creative methods, methodologies, and expanded feminist expressions. By discussing a variety of projects and creative forms, this dissertation is a speculative art-making investigation that foregrounds human and non-human relationships, ecofeminist perspectives, and mothering, opening up the term Carriance in a variety of ways to show how it can be more than one method, form, or approach with much potential to challenge, encourage and elicit embodied ways of knowing

The Wairua of Self: A Path of Love, Simplicity, and Connectedness

Love is an action of freedom until something else steps in – often fear – that insists we create a box of survival. Whether self-imposed, forced, or chosen, it is interesting to notice how we limit ourselves with love. This thesis examines love; love in its purest intent and creation as the simplest way to live. An analysis of personal experiences, illuminated by psychological, mythological, philosophical, and spiritual literature, suggests that living from a place of love can be accomplished through a dedicated journeying back to the Self. The Māori myth of Tāne-Mahuta and Hine-Tītama shows the significance of releasing shame, as well as how a tragic situation might offer a catalytic possibility that shifts a core belief about one’s self. The complications of love that are self-created through loss and grief can easily mask the barely underlying truth of love in its nakedness. Reconnecting with this underlying truth, aroha in its purest sense, is essential for healing and allows for increased connection with the Divine. Doing so is often a difficult task, as hypocrisies fueled by fear and perpetuated by blame are bountiful. When love is used as an instrument and convenience in order to defend a closely held idea, person, or way of life, one often moves further from their true Self, thus surrendering their deepest power and knowing of love. The silent assault of expectations, power, will, and control can turn love into a complication. The complications of being utterly human only serve to further obscure love. Within families, how one initially learns love is often complicated by interrupted attachment, causing rebellion and the need to look for love elsewhere. The components of Tikkun Olam, aroha, mikveh, and wairua of spirit, are intertwined and interconnected, such that the delineation between cultures and spiritual beliefs cannot be divided as oppositional forces. The denominator lives in the magnitude of love for all that has been created; beginning with the Self. In setting the foundation of self-love and allowing it to settle into the fractures and rifts of porousness, love may then be extended without attachment. When freely proffered without agenda, love will seep into every curve of the universe; thus, changing the world. Through the practice of mindfulness and loving-kindness, perception can change. It is this change in perception which can return love to its origin of simplicity. This thesis is a story of love

De-Sign Environment Landscape City Atti

La VI Conferenza Internazionale sul Disegno, De_Sign Environment Landscape City_Genova 2020 tratta di: Rilievo e Rappresentazione dell’Architettura e dell’Ambiente; Il Disegno per il paesaggio; Disegni per il Progetto: tracce - visioni e pre-visioni; I margini i segni della memoria e la città in progress; Cultura visiva e comunicazione dall’idea al progetto; Le emergenze architettoniche; Il colore e l’ambiente; Percezione e identità territoriale; Patrimonio iconografico culturale paesaggistico: arte, letteratura e ricadute progettuali; Segni e Disegni per il Design e Rappresentazione avanzata. Federico Babina, architetto e graphic designer presenta ARCHIVISION, e Eduardo Carazo Lefort, Docente dell’Università di Valladolid e Targa d’Oro dell’Unione Italiana Disegno la Lectio Magistralis. The VI International Conference on Drawing, De_Sign Environment Landscape City_Genoa 2020, deals with: Survey and Representation of Architecture and the Environment; Drawing for the landscape; De-signs for the Project: traces-visions and previews; Margins, signs of memory and the city in progress; Visual culture and communication from idea to project; Architectural emergencies; The color and the environment; Perception and territorial identity; Landscape cultural iconographic heritage: art, literature and design implications; Signs and Drawings for Design and Advanced Representation. Federico Babina, architect and graphic designer presents ARCHIVISION, and Professor Eduardo Carazo Lefort-University of Valladolid and Gold Plate of the Italian Design Union presents his Lectio Magistralis

URBAN CORPORIS X - UNEXPECTED

Starting from the emergency provoked by the Sars-Cov2 that affected the whole world, the book brings the contributions of researchers and artists from all over the world discussing the theme of the \u201cunexpected\u201d, its implication, and inter-action with everyday life. The book presents a series of essays divided into three parts: Living unexpectedly, Missing interactions, and Different sociality. These three categories bring together authors who have had a reading of the unexpected emergency that occurred, pointing out different perspectives upon dynamics and relation caused by this situation, underlining how the isolation period has affected both the domestic and the urban sphere. Moreover, through drawings, photomontages and photographs, several authors gave a visual interpretation of the changed lives, spaces, and routines. All these contributions don\u2019t want to answer to the enormous problems brought by the pandemic. Rather they synthesize an interpretation of the shifting condition that occurred, showing both the great reactive capacity and the fragility of the no longer present reality

Connected Spirits: Adolescent Females and Animal Agents

The novels The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies create a unique opportunity to investigate human and animal relationships given the similarity of their time frames and main characters. Both novels feature adolescent females struggling to resolve their identities against the backdrop of WWII. Frankie Addams in The Member of the Wedding and Esther Evans in The Welsh Girl share the additional characteristics of deceased mothers, distant fathers, and contacts with animals. Because these books are bildungsromans, they permit a comparative analysis as separate experiments in feminine growth with attention to animal influence. Frankie loses her sense of identity and Esther loses focus about her sense of self, yet from the results suggested by the novels, each of the girls finds strength and support from the creatures around and uses these connections as catalysts for completing developmental stages. Frankie and Esther’s growth toward autonomy leads to a solidification of their respective identities and successful preparation for adulthood