Art and Design Commons^™

Evangelizing The ‘Gallery Of The Future’: A Critical Analysis Of The Google Art Project Narrative And Its Political, Cultural And Technological Stakes, Alanna Bayer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the digitization initiative Google Art Project and the ways in which the Project negotiates its place between rapidly developing Web technologies and the often-contradictory fine art tradition. Through the Project’s marketing and website design, Google constructs a narrative that emphasizes the democratization of culture, universal accessibility and a new progressive future for the art world while obscuring more complex political, social and cultural questions. Bringing together scholarship from various disciplines including library studies, digital studies, art history, and cultural studies this thesis highlights how the Project might open up a space to talk about art publics and …

A Photographic Ontology: Being Haunted Within The Blue Hour And Expanding Field, Colin E. Miner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What are the current boundaries of the photographic and how can an ontology of photography take form as a material and conceptual program of research? Responding to the difficulty inherent in any definitive attempt to grasp photography, this dissertation places emphasis on the less determined act of evoking as a model of dialogue, and engagement, with the photographic. This dissertation is composed of two parts that engage both the question “What is photography?” and the ontological anxiety that shadows it. These lines of questioning are pursued in two ways: directly through considering the qualities of the photographic as elucidated by …

Come Together: An Exploration Of Contemporary Participatory Art Practices, Karly A. Mcintosh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the growing trend of participatory art practices employed in the installation works of contemporary artists Roman Ondák, Ann Hamilton, Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett. It focuses on how three art installations use interactive and collaborative methods, each within a different exhibition setting, in order to include and communicate with the public audience. The first chapter discusses how Ondák’s Measuring the Universe draws on shared experience to encourage viewers to interact with the installation within a large art gallery. The second chapter considers how Hamilton’s the event of a thread creates a social event between participants and …

Liquidation, Amanda A. Oppedisano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dossier is an accompanying document to my MFA thesis exhibition, Liquidation (2014). Within my dossier, I articulate the formal and material considerations of my art making practice in which everyday household goods acquired primarily from the dollar store are manipulated in order to consider the “abject” qualities inherent to these items. Observed through the theoretical work of Julia Kristeva in her essay, Powers of Horror, the “abject” as a term is critically and historically applied to the art objects I create in order to explore the dollar store as the basis for my material selection, but also as a …

Following The Turn: Mapping As Material Art Practice, Kyla Christine Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Following the Turn: Mapping As Material Art Practice investigates my artistic practice and MFA research based in London, Ontario. This dossier of research elements includes: an extended artist’s statement, a documentation of artistic practice and development, and a selection of in-process and published exhibition reviews of contemporary artists’ work; in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 respectively. This written document is in part intended to work as a specific accompaniment to my thesis exhibition. In the body of the thesis I propose that a project-based and embodied material art practice can perform mapping of negotiated experiences of the city. Dealing with …

Because I Am Not Here, Selected Second Life-Based Art Case Studies. Subjectivity, Autoempathy And Virtual World Aesthetics, Francisco Gerardo Toledo Ramírez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Second Life is a virtual world accessible through the Internet in which users create objects and spaces, and interact socially through 3D avatars. Certain artists use the platform as a medium for art creation, using the aesthetic, spatial, temporal and technological features of SL as raw material. Code and scripts applied to animate and manipulate objects, avatars and spaces are important in this sense. These artists, their avatars and artwork in SL are at the centre of my research questions: what does virtual existence mean and what is its purpose when stemming from aesthetic exchange in SL?

Through a qualitative …

Out Of Order: Thinking Through Robin Collyer, Discontent And Affirmation (1973-1985), Kevin A. Rodgers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation takes up a particular problematic between formal aesthetic content and discontent (political and aesthetic). This is done in two ways: directly through examining the work of Robin Collyer from 1973-1985 and the writings of Philip Monk, and indirectly through my own practice. While Part One is a written thesis, Part Two documents elements of my material practice developed over the course of my PhD studies: it is the research and working material culminating in the exhibition OUT OF ORDER. The period of time that I write about (1973-1985) and the location (Toronto) is one where thinking, …

Relational Viewing: Affect, Trauma And The Viewer In Contemporary Autobiographical Art, Matthew Ryan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the communicative relationship between contemporary autobiographical art and the viewer. By analyzing the work of six artists, Richard Billingham, Jaret Belliveau, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Lisa Steele and Bas Jan Ader, I maintain that lived experience and personal history condition the way viewers respond to autobiographical art. I turn to literary theory as a critical methodology to argue that autobiographical art operates as a catalyst for identification, memory and self-discovery. I use affect and trauma theory to demonstrate how artwork produces meaning and discourse through the viewer’s feelings, emotions and bodily sensations. Consequently, I survey the importance …

Narrative Brought To Life: The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter, Stefani Klaric

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and the motivations for creating fictive, immersive environments. These can be defined as spaces that generate new physical environments or worlds that engage our senses. The theme park is the experiential space where entertainment, fantasy, and commodity consumption come together. By including recognizable objects, narratives, characters, and the like, taken directly from the Harry Potter books and films, audiences and participants are brought into The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in a way that immerses them in the space and allows them to experience the narrative by participating in a journey …