Visual Studies Commons^™

Historical Realism And Imperialist Nostalgia In Terrence Malick’S The New World, Monika Siebert

English Faculty Publications

The promotional materials for Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) devote considerable time to detailing the extraordinary effort of the production crew to recreate Werowocomoco, the capital of the Powhatan’s paramount chiefdom, and Fort James, the first surviving English settlement in Virginia, in the period from 1607 to 1617. The hour-long documentary on “The Making of The New World” accompanying the DVD release of the film, for example, chronicles the shared work of a research team of historians, archeologists, linguists, anthropologists, and members of Virginia tribes to represent as faithfully as possible Powhatan and English agriculture, architecture, language, and …

Politics And Heidegger: Aristotle, Superman, And Žižek, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

This essay discusses Heidegger's thinking on the political and technology in the context of metaphysics in an age that is increasingly directed to both technology and the imaginary or the virtual. The context of Aristotelian phronesis is traced back to Aristotle's youth in Macedonia and the circumstance of war and world conquest, to the allure of a comic book character (that would be the Action Comic's figure of Superman) and the cinematic seduction of a pair of eyeglasses to conclude with a review of Latour's network actants and Žižek on Marxism (and Occupy Wall Street).

Design And Production Aspects Of An Electroluminescent Segment Display, Veronica Kopp, Chris Nixon

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding of the different ways printed circuits could be constructed and then implemented into creative, visual designs for printed electroluminescent displays. A variety of circuit design variables, such as area and length, were tested that will help create solutions for printed electronics.

This study tested different variables of circuit design, such as length of silver traces and the size of the image area, to help optimize ways to build a printed circuit. Then, findings were implemented into a segmented graphic display in order to analyze innovative ways to utilize multiple …

Pathos, Winter 2012, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Joel Eisenhower

Issue 17

Extending The Local : Documentary Film Festivals In East Asia As Sites Of Connection And Communication, Tit Leung Cheung

Theses & Dissertations

East Asian cinema is receiving increasing global attention. This attention is not focused merely on the fiction and feature films produced in the region, but also on the documentaries produced there; films such as Petition (2009) by Chinese director Zhao Liang which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2009. This attention to East Asian documentary can be traced to the documentary film festivals organised in the region, particularly those that devote their programming to independent documentary productions from the region. These festivals open a window that enables such works to be exhibited for the rest of the world.

But these …

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

The Participating Witness: A Conversation With Jaret Belliveau, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Jaret Belliveau is a Moncton-based photographer and filmmaker whose photographic work addresses illness and loss. Arguably, Belliveau is best known for his series Dominion Street (2003-2008), which began as a visual investigation into family dynamics and the hegemonic balances of power that maintain it. However, ten months into the project, Belliveau’s mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Soon after, the disease spread throughout the rest of her body and in time it took her life. Upon the recent staging of Dominion Street at Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Gallery (April 26, 2012 - June 10, 2012), I conducted an e-mail exchange with Belliveau …

Karin Doleske: The Drama Of Abstraction, Matthew Ryan Smith

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Karin Doleske’s most recent series Embedded Paintings from 2012 maintains a heightened interest in placing the viewer as an arbiter of knowledge. With these works, Doleske has manipulated poetic narrative for the visual sphere so that viewers may experience her paintings as they would written texts. However, in a twist of semiotic mischief, each painting formally characterizes an empty page to be filled by the viewer’s thoughts and imagination. For example, the horizontality of "Ten" subtly points to the lines of a written novel yet alphabetical letters are clearly absent. By doing so, it is as if Doleske has created …

Moving Mountain = 移山, Kwun Lun,Tony Ng, Lap Wing Yip

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

吳觀麟．葉立榮 聯展

序

去年仲夏，我和旅居柏林的藝術家朋友葉立榮，合作參予了一個在外蒙古舉行，由德國藝術策展人籌辦，名為「首屆地景藝術雙年展：蒙古360°」的地景作品展，我們的作品題材及內容，均和人類、環境、現代生活生態、大自然等息息相關，由個人經歷、自身文化、處境出發，對現世人類週遭的環境破壞和失衡，與及大自然規律反應的種種後果，所作出的反思和討論。

今秋，我很榮幸被香港嶺南大學視覺研究系邀請作駐校藝術家，為此我特地邀請葉立榮再一次合作，製作相討了好一陣子的「移山」裝置藝術展覽。

我和葉立榮是中學同學，可說有着共同的起步點：少年時已酷愛中國藝術哲學，學習中國水墨畫，和對當代藝術充滿好奇。我倆都是同一代的人，香港土生土長，居住環境狹窄，生活在都市齷齪擠逼的小空間內，想像及考慮着中國畫和中國藝術哲學中的審美、自然、空間，與及外面不一樣的世界。我倆分享着共同年代中，個人及集體的回憶，我們的文化背景扎根點似乎是相當一致的。後來葉立榮到芝加哥藝術學院修讀，再移居德國，我則一直留在香港。經過長時間的分隔和各自的經歷、成長，然後意外地重逢。從此之後，在不斷的對話和討論中，互相重新發現各自對藝術、人生、大自然，種種我們不約而同重視的課題的考慮、看法、着眼點，和藝術表達上的異同，繼而發展出合作的可行性。

是次「移山」裝置藝術展覽，是我們相討蘊釀了好些時候的結果。對我倆來說，它有着象徵意義：我們覺得，人的現實不易改變，例如香港肆意填海，帶來對生活環境不可恢復的破壞、全球人類社會的各種災難及困局等；藝術則給予我們在另一層面上一個改變的機會。我們的作品所表達的，面貌和手法可能各異，但在其精神上所，可算是殊途同歸的。

Placemarks : Environments And Aesthetics, Department Of Visual Studies, Lingnan University

Conference Exhibition

Preface

Visual Studies at Lingnan University answers the growing interest in Arts & Humanities research with relevance to society by emphasizing environmenal aesthetics, Chinese art, Art and Well-being, and "research expression." The exhibition "placemarks" is an example of research expression, for each of the works on display is a response to a clear question: "What Environment Do We Want?" This question defines the focus of the conference to which the exhibition, and the exchanges that it facilitates, contribute by means other than traditional forms of scholarly talk.

In organizing the conference titled "What Environment Do We Want? Environmental Aesthetics and …

A Model Of Human Scale Tested On Rural Landscape Scenes, Richard K. Sutton

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Landscapes such as the Great Plains have been described as lacking human scale. This study developed a quantitative model of human scale and compared it with viewers' perceptions of visual structure. Visual structure was selected from the physical features of Otoe County, NE, forming boundaries, found as ground textures, vegetative screens, and topographic breaks and was depicted in photographs of landscape scenes. The model used and tested nine classes of scale based on grain and extent of the photos rated by viewers against those from the model. Viewers identified boundaries representing grain and extent that were synthesized into a viewer-perceived …

Pathos, Fall 2011, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Joel Eisenhower

Issue 16

Red-White-Blue And Hong Kong Installation Art, Nga Ying Liu

Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to analyse the interaction between art and contested notions of Hong Kong identity by examining recent installations that employ the red, white and blue-striped plastic fabric, locally known in Hong Kong as red-white-blue (紅白藍). The red-white-blue fabric has, in recent years, become a signifier of the collective identity of Hong Kong people and of the ‘Hong Kong spirit’, with specific reference to the traits of the working class in the 1960s. The repeated articulations of this material in artworks show that there are certain qualities in this material with which local people identify. This …

Appropriateness In Design, Wing Man, Karen Ma

Theses & Dissertations

When the term ‘design object’ is used to refer to artifacts, we presuppose that they can serve mundane functions and provide aesthetic pleasure. In many cases, the visual form of a design object is a result of achieving aesthetic function and practical function. What is the relation between these two functions? In the design process, designers also strike a balance between aesthetic pursuit, utilitarian purpose and other factors, such as environmental protection. What is the balance of these aims (aesthetic aim and the non-aesthetic aims)? My research on this topic suggests that it may be useful to conceive it in …

Wedding Albums, Jim Gabbard

Jim Gabbard

Awarded two blue ribbons for wedding albums.

Vigilance, Vigilantism, And The Role Of The Citizen In Combating German Terror, 1967-1977, Todd Michael Goehle

Re-visioning Terrorism

By closely analyzing the Charles Bronson vehicle Death Wish -released to German speaking audiences as Ein Mann sieht rot- and the controversies that surrounded its West German debut in November 1974, the essay addresses broader debates about vigilance, Selbstjustiz (vigilante justice), and citizenship during the “Red Years” (1967-1977). Conceptualizing Selbstjustiz as a discursive site, I reveal how Ein Mann sieht rot’s representations of Selbstjustiz negotiated broader German anxieties about Americanization, masculinity, urban crime, the fascist past, state power, media effects and sensationalism, constructions of the citizen and the criminalized or terrorist “other,” and the responsibilities of the citizen in …

Deliberate Cultural Curriculum: A Case Study In Online Discourse For Race And Gender Issues In Media, Lorene Wales

Lorene Wales

From Where I Am Standing: Indigenous Narrative And Photo Documentary, Nestor R. Veloz Passalacqua

Ethnic Studies

Latin American Indigenous Peoples (LAIP) are a marginalized segment in Latin America. They inhabit a sub-America and are forced to migrate due to socio-political struggle and cultural coercion. LAIP experience a transnational and transborder migration that reflects the quality of cultural hybridity and of regional, ethnic, and cultural crossings. The purpose of this study is to research LAIP ways of reclaiming and reproducing cultural practices that elicit Indigenous awareness, knowledge, and ethnic identification in a transnational setting. The study examines through interviews and photographs transborder experiences and the lives of the participants. As a result, the project reveals that LAIP …

Partings—A Short Film, Alicia Atterberry

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Love is a powerful force, but the inability to give love to the fullest extent can be an influential force as well. For my capstone, Partings—a Short Film, I wrote a short film centered on the theme of unreciprocated love. Within the context of the film, unreciprocated love means not being able to return the sincerity or the full extent of the love felt, and my short film shows the consequences of a friendship that lacks mutually-expressed love.

Partings, depicts the end of a friendship between two characters: Frank and Angie. Frank is an independent, young woman; she …

Towards A Theory Of Comic Book Adaptation, Colin Beineke

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Contemporary adaptation studies/theories have tended to focus singularly on the movement from the novel/short story to film – largely ignoring mediums such as the theater, music, visual art, video games, and the comic book. Such a limited view of adaptation has led to an underdeveloped and misplaced understanding of the adaptation process, which has in turn culminated in a convoluted perception of the products of artistic adaptation. The necessity of combating the consequences of these limited outlooks – particularly in the field of comics studies – is as vital as the difficulties are manifold. In opposition to this current stream …