Visual Studies Commons^™

Screening Religiosity In Contemporary Polish Films. The Role Of Religious Motifs In Visual Communication., Mariola Marczak

Journal of Religion & Film

In the paper the Polish contemporary cinema has been explored as a vehicle through which films can reflect and communicate social issues, such as religiosity of Polish society, the character of it, the ways of expression and values promoted by it. The main components of modern Polish religiosity are shown as they are exhibited in film works perceived as part of modern visual culture. The examination also comprises most frequently and typically tools used for communicating or revealing the transcendent sphere in the contemporary Polish films, such as Christ-figures - including apocryphal ones and parables. They are considered as a narrative ...

Mata Sueños/ Dream Killer, Lucero Aguirre

Art Practices MFA Theses

The thesis installation, Mata Sueños / Dream Killer, recalls the atmosphere of a birthday party. It also presents a surrogate for the anxiety and fear that permeates the experience of undocumented and mixed-status families living in the United States. As a person born into these circumstances, I reorient this celebration to bring attention to the looming possibility of removal. My installation suggests what remains hidden within domestic spaces. Upon close observation, the handmade paper decorations that adorn the room reveal that they are obsessively bitten. These decorations form an engulfing mass, one that is both familiar and surreal. Together with ...

說不出的痛 : 家暴兒童的內心世界, Suk Mun, Sophia Law

Research Expression through Art : Visual Studies Faculty

自2012年開始，作者專注研究藝術作為圖像語言的本質，以及如何利用藝術創作介入保護家庭及兒童服務，促進家暴兒童受害者的自我表達，為他們在不利的成長環境之中，提供一處或是僅有的安全空間和渠道，讓他們長期被抑壓的情緒得以適當的宣洩，作為導向他們健康成長的開步。

多年來，作者與相關服務單位的社工和專業的藝術治療師，為家暴兒童受害者特別設計連串的藝術創作計劃，所有完成的計劃都是各方專業共同積極參與的成果。最短的計劃為時半年，大多數是一年的計劃，嚴重的個案會個別跟進至年半或更長。

由2012至今，多項完成的計劃已服務超過六十位受家暴創傷的兒童，當中不少的創傷是經年累月的。本書摘錄了這些孩子的作品，當中展現了驚恐、悲傷、憤怒、迷惘和歉疚等，反映的是他們內心那紛亂不安的世界。他們當中承受的創傷或有相同，但每幅圖像都有其獨特的複雜性，非一個孩子能夠用說話和文字說得清楚的。

本書收錄的每一幅圖畫都是一種圖像書寫（image writing）。圖像書寫不需依賴兒童那尚待開發和學習的語言能力。正因如此，這些作品讓我們看見家暴兒童受害者內心那說不出的痛。

Fake Or Visual Trickery? Understanding The Quantitative Visual Rhetoric In The News, Rohit Mehta, Lynette Deaun Guzmán

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In online and video/television spaces, news media discourses incorporate multimodal design as a discursive move capable of steering meaning toward desirable implications. Around the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, while polarized news outlets made their positionality on the candidates obvious, more neutral or central news outlets revealed their preferences through subtle multimodal design choices. One of these design choices is using a quantitative visual rhetoric: persuasive multimodal moves that draw on quantification through visual, spatial, and textual manipulation—involving the choice of data representation, visual images, and illustrations, (im)balance between numeric and alphabetic texts, and general quantitative narrative ...

“Apoleptic” Ironies And “Accident-Ed” Realities: World War I And Berlin Dada Photomontage, Barbara L. Miller

Dada/Surrealism

No abstract provided.

Diasporadical: In Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther,' Family Secrets, Cultural Alienation And Black Love, Terri P. Bowles

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This is a review of the film Black Panther (2018) by Ryan Coogler, which traces the arc of the comic book hero as he faces an unanticipated challenge to his power by a man who threatens not just his throne but also the future of his nation. The review explores the ways in which the legacy of slavery and colonialism inform the distinct political and philosophical ideologies of the two main characters, and how inequality drives political thought.

“Second Looks, Second Chances”: Collaborating With Lifers On A Video About Commutation Of Lwop Sentences, Regina Austin

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

In Pennsylvania, life means life without the possibility of parole (“LWOP”) or “death by incarceration.” Although executive commutation offers long serving rehabilitated lifers hope of release, in the past 20 years, only 8 commutations have been granted by the state’s governors. This article describes the collaboration between an organization of incarcerated persons serving LWOP and the law-school-based Penn Program on Documentaries and the Law that produced a video supporting increased commutations for Pennsylvania lifers. The article details the methodology of collaborative videomaking employed, the strategic decisions over content that were impacted by the politics of commutation, and the contributions ...

In History, The Future: Determinism In The Early History Of Photography In France, Emily Doucet

communication +1

Technological determinism and media specificity have profoundly shaped the history of photography—two strands of thought inherited from nineteenth century predecessors. Media archaeological approaches—while not always explicitly and perhaps, as Thomas Elsaesser has recently suggested, rather as symptom—have been taken up in the history of photography in response to long held narratives shaped by a disciplinary media determinism. This article explores discourses of futurity and historicity in early photographic writing in France, examining one thread in the early trajectory of media determinism in the history of photography. Taking up Eric Kluitenberg’s concept of “imaginary media”, this article ...

Constructing The Invisible - Computer Graphics And The End Of Optical Media, Ricardo Cedeño Montaña, Christina Vagt

communication +1

This media archaeology of early computer graphics tackles the relation between the imaginary and technical media. We focus on the algorithmic procedures and mathematical principles driving 3D computer graphics during the 1970’s and we frame them in a discussion about the end of optical media and a reflection on the current situation in which images, commanded by techno-codes, delineate and structure the dominant code of communication with which we imagine. Even though algorithmic simulations of optical worlds do not represent the end of optical media as Friedrich Kittler once argued, computer graphics can be seen retrospectively as an escalation ...

Challenging Old And New Images Representing The Cambodian Genocide: The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013), Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article focuses on the images used over four decades to represent the Cambodian genocide in photography, cinema, visual arts and the media as the basis for analyzing the documentary-memoir directed by Rithy Panh, The Missing Picture. First, there is a paucity of images which depict, evoke or allude to the crimes perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979); second, scholars raise objections about whether any image can adequately depict a catastrophic event such as genocide. This article begins by categorizing the Cambodian genocide iconography according to the modality of the visual production. After briefly classifying this visual output in four ...

Reflections On The Significance Of Images In Genocide Studies: Some Methodological Considerations, Lior Zylberman, Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This is the editors' introduction to the special issue: "Images And Collective Violence: Function, Use And Memory."

“You Could See Rage”: Visual Testimony In Post-Genocide Guatemala, Lacey M. Schauwecker

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Since the Guatemalan genocide against Maya populations (1981-1983), domestic and international human rights groups have organized truth commissions, forensic exhumations, and legal cases. These efforts to secure justice have achieved minimal success, prompting a reconsideration of the relationship among narrative testimony, visual testimony, and institutional standards of truth. Engaging the ideas of visual studies scholar, Nicholas Mirzoeff, I argue for the political importance of testimony that is critical of such standards, including those enforced by human rights’ legal paradigm. Following Mirzoeff’s understandings of “visuality” and “countervisuality,” I analyze “visual testimony” as that which acknowledges the dynamic interplay between word ...

Bonding Images: Photography And Film As Acts Of Perpetration, Christophe Busch

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical and contemporary cases of collective violence show an incremental use of photography and film to capture and disseminate violent acts. Recording cruelty during conflict seems to be a highly ritualised practice that urges the question what communicative and psychological functions these acts have? Why and how does perpetrator photography shape a binding moral world that divides 'us' versus 'them'? These visualising acts are commonly seen as proof of power that desensitises the perpetrators and dehumanises the victims. This contribution focuses on the imagery of the Holocaust, looks into the functions that capturing and sharing cruelty has on the evolution ...

Mdocs Poster-Fall 2018, Course Offerings, Jesse Wakeman

MDOCS Publications

Fall 2018 Course Offerings:

Documentary Fundamentals:

• Documentary Storytelling
• Intro to Audio Documentary
• Documentary and Narrative Screenwriting

• Storytelling: Video
• Storytelling: Game Development
• Storytelling: Mapping

• The Artist Interview
• Festival Curation

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard ...

That's So Gay!: Queer Texts In The U.S., Jesse S. Rice-Evans, Andrea Stella

Open Educational Resources

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we’re ...

That's So Gay!: Queer Texts In The U.S., Andréa Stella, Jesse Rice-Evans

Open Educational Resources

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we’re ...

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II ...

The Revolution Of Plastic, Marine Brun-Franzetti

School of Arts & Sciences Theses

The Revolution Of Plastic is a fiction film about the overconsumption of plastic in our everyday lives. Leo, a ten year-old girl who loves dolphins, rebels against her father Mister Risso, the Manager of Detergents at Willy Supermarket.

Thematic Fields, Transgressive Religion: Disembodiment And The Will To Nothingness In “Safe Haven”, Adam Lovasz

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies

In my article, I examine a segment of the 2013 horror anthology, V/H/S/ 2. Entitled „Safe Haven” and directed by young directors Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans, this segment stands out for its religious and metaphysical subject matter. Examining broader media theory concerns relating to the „found-footage horror” subgenre, I consider how, during the course of „Safe Haven”, the screen as frame is gradually supplanted by the increasingly unreal events portrayed in the segment. I seek to simultaneously engage with the question of realism in found footage films, while also utilizing Evan Calder-Williams’ notion of „horrible form ...