Visual Studies Commons^™

Pathos, Fall 2008, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Nataliya Pirumova

Issue 7

Studio Practice Course, Visual Studies Programme, Department Of Philosophy, Lingnan University

Visual Studies Programme : Students’ Monographs

Wordings from Klaus

The word document (from Latin "docere", to teach) first describes something that holds clues or provides proof, usually as written evidence. Much of the document remained in the realm of words until the mid-19th century invention of photography. Daguerre's contemporaries' amazement over the fact that the camera would depict reality quasi automatically made photography and film the quintessential documentary media throughout the 20th and early 21 st century.

Learning to question this automatic trust the technological media have been invested with from early implementations to the time of digital manipulation was a trip the students of Lingnan …

Pathos, Spring 2008, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 6

Baroque Glances At Society: The Appropriation Of Decoupage, The Long Take And Depth Of Field Photography In The Early Films By J.A. Bardem., Jesús Urda

Conference Papers

Bardem is often described as a Spanish Neorealist, as a director who followed closely the cinema of Italian directors like Fellini, Pietro Germi, Visconti and of course the early Antonioni. Except for Cómicos (1954), inspired by the reading of Joseph L. Mankievicz’s All About Eve (1950) all the films he made during the 1950s are inspired by an Italian source: Death of a Cyclist (1955) was inspired by Antonioni’s Cronnica di un Amore/Story of a Love Affair (1951); Calle Mayor (1956), shares similarities in plot and concept with Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953); La Venganza (1957) with Pietro Germi’s Il Camino …

Pathos, Winter 2008, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 5

Floating World Projects : Two Views, Delicacies, Inside Out = 浮世, Klaus Peter Knoll, Cella

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

Floating World Projects photographs and exhibition were realized through the Visual Studies Artist-in-Residence Programm and the generous support of the Department of Philosophy.

Pathos, Fall 2007, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 4

Japanese Video Art, Micol Hebron

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of the "Radical Communication, Japanese Video Art, 1968-1988" exhibition, curated by Glenn Phillips, at the Getty Museum.

"Whether Beast Or Human": The Cultural Legacies Of Dread, Locks, And Dystopia., Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

Analyzing the ongoing problem of Caribbean racial exploitation, particularly fear signified through one of the most potent Caribbean symbols, dreadlocks, Kevin Frank offers a paradigm shift in arguing that Medusa's alterity is altered by Rastafarians' snake-like hair, but the transformative power of Rasta dreadlocks is contested through certain cinematic depictions of dread.

Words For Pictures, Jayne Dyer

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

WORDSFORPICTURES intersects with the Lingnan Library site and collection.

The exhibition represents a culmination of a series of discrete interventions that occurred over the residency. The installation operates as a linguistic production offering oblique narratives to explore the notion of the Library as a storehouse of accumulated facts, hypotheses, conjectures and fictions.

"文字圖像" 這項裝置藝術, 結合了嶺南圖書館的埸地和藏書。展覽是藝術家在她駐校期間, 在圖書館內所作的一連串抽象的藝術介入的高潮。這項裝置啟動了語言學上非直截了當的敍述, 來探討圖書館作為存放一個事實, 理論, 推理和小說的寶庫的意圖。

Pathos, Spring 2007, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 3

Female Agency And Oppression In Caribbean Bacchanalian Culture: Soca, Carnival, And Dancehall, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

In this essay Kevin Frank discerningly analyzes agency and gender in public sexual performances emanating out of what Paul Gilroy identifies as part of the compensatory politics of the subordinated within Black Atlantic culture, Jamaican dancehall (dancehall reggae/ dancehall queens).

Movie Poster Advertisements: A Relevance Theory Persepctive, Steven Lawrie Forrett

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis is to examine ten movie posters while hypothesizing whether or not their tagline texts could interest a reader. A linguistic framework Relevance Theory, is used in the analysis of this project.

Pathos, Fall 2006, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 2

Information Professional Or Caretaker Of "Old Stuff", Daniel Davis

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Do archivists emphasize their role as technicians with specialized skills and knowledge or do they emphasize their role as sort of "semi-pro" historians? This debate has been around since the 1930s and is not likely to be decided any time soon. My argument is that young archivists cannot afford to take an either/or approach and must incorporate elements of both paths or risk obsolescence and/or continued low salaries.

The Portrait Of Citizen Jean-Baptiste Belley, Ex-Representative Of The Colonies By Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson: Hybridity, History Painting, And The Grand Tour, Megan Marie Collins

Theses and Dissertations

Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson's Portrait of C.[itizen] Jean-Baptiste Belley, ex-representative of the Colonies, is evidence of the changing ideological situation during the French Revolution. Girodet was one of the most learned and accomplished students of Jacques-Louis David who strove to surpass his teacher in two ways: 1) by painting David's Neoclassical style so well that his handling surpasses that of his master, and 2) by choosing subject matter never before explored by David. Girodet accomplishes both within this work. The Neoclassical handling of the image has been achieved with amazing clarity, and the central figure of an identified black man …

Pathos, Winter 2006, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Laura Pieroni

Issue 1

Through The Window: The Subject And The Voyeur's Gaze Within Cinema And Video, James A. Doohan

Theses : Honours

The underlying theme of this thesis is that cinema and related media create sites in which the viewer becomes a kind of voyeur, and in doing so normalises the voyeuristic gaze. Relationships between those who possess the gaze and those who become the object of that gaze are structured both ideologically and through the apparatus of the camera itself. These ideologies are arguably driven by a patriarchal paradigm, particularly within mainstream cinema where men appear to control the gaze and women are positioned as the object of that gaze. Even within cinema however that appears to be explicitly misogynistic like …

Inaugural Catalogue : Lam Tung-Pang's Work, Tung Pang Lam

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

The First Artist-in-Residence 首位駐校藝術家

Hogarth To Monster Wheels : A Grotesque Connection, Christopher Ridley

Theses : Honours

When an audience is exposed to deformed, altered and abnormal entities, their interpretation relies on some form of cultural awareness of both the expected and the altered shape to stimulate a reaction. I maintain that the stimulus for this reaction has its roots in a dark and terrifying primal force, the manifestation of which we regard as the grotesque. This thesis looks for a commonality in a satirical interpretation afforded to this grotesque force. By using the caricatures in William Hogarth's engravings and the altered cars in three contemporary films. I search for a correlation between the way Hogarth and …

Images Of Women In Contemporary Egyptian Film: Elements Of The Body Sexuality And Consumerism, Nahla Zeitoun

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Among the various cinematic themes which have been studied over the past several years is that of the image of women. Women, taken as cinematic figures, evoke multiple images of a cultural and social discourse and draw attention to gender and family relations in a broader sense in a specific society. Moreover, Egyptian cinema has been a major point of reference for Egyptian culture in this country. It has shaped and expressed the changing of scenarios of modern Egypt to an extent that no preceding art form could ever achieve. It has influenced the way in which people perceive various …

Macromedia Director Audio Project Research - Written Report, Peter Dee

Articles

A written report about the Director Audio Project: Underground Sound to include the four headings of control of audio, thematic coherence, management of assets and originality of approach / design rationale. The Underground Sound Director Audio Project is about contemporary black music in an urban setting. Images of old and young captured in the environment in which they live.

Plato. Spider-Man And The Meaning Of Life, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

Some versions of mysticism have taught that the ordinary world around us is sacred and wonderful, that the meaning of life is to be found not through some extraordinary knowledge or awareness, but in appreciating what already surrounds us. I believe that both Spider-Man comics and Plato’s dialogues offer exactly this deep vision, and that they introduce us to it in some remarkably similar ways. I cannot do any kind of justice here to the richness of either set of works, or to the variations of style and meaning within each of them. Instead I shall focus only on four …

Shifting Representations Of Aboriginality In Australian Cinema : Re-Presenting From An Anti-Colonial Perspective, Kylie Solonec

Theses : Honours

Recently there has been a significant shift in the way that Aboriginal people are being represented in Australian cinema. Some would argue that the social and political movements that have occurred since the 1960s through until today have had a significant effect and in turn have produced a third wave of Australian cinema. Concurrently with this process, there have been a number of Indigenous politicians, academics and filmmakers who have actively been striving to gain better resources and opportunities for Indigenous filmmakers to be able to tell their stories. A combination of these two projects has seen a shift in …

Cultural Studies At R.I.T./U.S.A: Of Visual Culture And Pedagogical Interventions, Amit Ray

Articles

Abstract:

This paper examines the role of Cultural Studies in addressing the limitations of American visual culture through pedagogical interventions at Rochester Institute of Technology. Ray argues that despite globalization's potential to enhance international understanding, American visual media remains largely ethnocentric and resistant to representing the complex realities of global interconnectedness. Using the recent Iraq War as an example, he demonstrates how media coverage systematically obscured cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts while promoting martial nationalism. The author proposes using popular animated television programs like The Simpsons and South Park as pedagogical tools to expose the contradictory nature of contemporary media …

Desire, Heavenly Bodies, And A Surrealist's Fascination With The Celestial Theatre, John G. Hatch

Visual Arts Publications

In 1922, the German Surrealist artist Max Ernst produced a montage work that included a woman's bare buttocks protruding out of the rings of Saturn. It is, to say the least, an unusual combination of images, but one that addresses some very basic human impulses. Largely, It expresses Ernst's understanding that inscribed upon the night sky are some of our deepest held fears and fantasies. Ernst sought to generate contemporary rephrasings of our mythologizing of the cosmos in a complex and often enigmatic way, drawing on such varied sources as Freudian psychology, late nineteenth-century symbolism, alchemy, and Surrealism. Ultimately, Ernst …

Semana Santa En Blanco Y Negro = Semana Santa In Black And White, Renata Strychaz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Semana Santa is an amazing social and religious phenomenon that takes place in Spain during the week before Easter. Various church based groups leave in procession every day to make their pilgrimage around the city. The processions consist of penitentes and nazarenos who wear the familiar pointed hat and hard linen robes tied around the waist by rope. Next comes the mantillas, women dressed up in all black with the traditional hair piece, carrying rosaries and candles as they accompany Jesus and the Virgen who are the stars of the procession. Normally each group has two platforms carried on the …

Law As Film: Representing Justice In The Age Of Moving Images, Shulamit Almog, Ely Aharonson

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Two main theses are presented here. The first is that there is a conceptual resemblance between the ways in which messages are transmitted in the courtroom and the ways in which they are transmitted in the cinema. The second is that the evolution of legal procedure is being influenced by developments taking place in visual culture generally and film specifically. Taken together, these theses lead to the conclusion that the development of a theory of ‘‘law-as-film’’ can provide insights into the contemporary practice of law that might otherwise be overlooked.

The Casasola Legacy In El Paso, Samuel E. Sisneros

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

This article brings to light the historical context of El Paso’s unknown and uncelebrated connection to the legendary Casasola family photo dynasty in Mexico. The local El Paso Casasola portrait studio photographer and owner did not capture iconic Mexican Revolutionary images like those of his contemporary famed photographer family members in Mexico City, but instead he recorded the visual memory of ordinary individuals and families residing in the US/Mexico border region.

Celebrity Memes, Audioshop, And Participatory Fan Culture: A Case Study On Keanu Reeves Memes, Danielle Nielsen, Diane Sabenacio Nititham

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Contemporary meme culture keeps Keanu Reeves' image at the forefront of our imagination. Numerous Keanu-related memes circulate on the internet, featuring images of him from on and off screen. In this article, we argue that the rise of user-generated content, such as memes and social media, requires us to reconsider how audiences and fans consume, adapt, and circulate Keanu’s stardom. Specifically, we contend that memes and their attending participatory culture make Keanu familiar by placing him in knowable spaces and perpetuating his extraordinary ordinariness. To do so, we examine the 2019 ‘Keanu Reeves Walking in Slow Motion’ video clip from …