The thesis describes research into graphical notations for software engineering, with a principal interest in ways of formalizing them. The research seeks to provide a theoretical basis that will help in designing both notations and the software tools that process them. The work starts from a survey of literature on notation, followed by a review of techniques for formal description and for computational handling of notations. The survey concentrates on collecting views of the benefits and the problems attending notation use in software development; the review covers picture description languages, grammars and tools such as generic editors and visual programming environments. The main problem of notation is found to be a lack of any coherent, rigorous description methods. The current approaches to this problem are analysed as lacking in consensus on syntax specification and also lacking a clear focus on a defined concept of notated expression. To address these deficiencies, the thesis embarks upon an exploration of serniotic, linguistic and logical theory; this culminates in a proposed formalization of serniosis in notations, using categorial model theory as a mathematical foundation. An argument about the structure of sign systems leads to an analysis of notation into a layered system of tractable theories, spanning the gap between expressive pictorial medium and subject domain. This notion of 'tectonic' theory aims to treat both diagrams and formulae together. The research gives details of how syntactic structure can be sketched in a mathematical sense, with examples applying to software development diagrams, offering a new solution to the problem of notation specification. Based on these methods, the thesis discusses directions for resolving the harder problems of supporting notation design, processing and computer-aided generic editing. A number of future research areas are thereby opened up. For practical trial of the ideas, the work proceeds to the development and partial implementation of a system to aid the design of notations and editors. Finally the thesis is evaluated as a contribution to theory in an area which has not attracted a standard approach.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Blake Belanger / The pollinator crisis - a catastrophic decline in domestic and feral pollinator populations across the world - has grown in severity over the last decade, and recent rise in the publicity of pollinator decline has brought it to the forefront of conservation work. The decline in pollinator populations is due to many human and environmental factors – one of the most prominent being the decline in natural pollinator habitat as urban and agricultural areas expand. Designed urban pollinator habitat can fill the need for foraging and shelter, however gaining public support for these ecological spaces can be a difficult endeavor. Pollinator gardens and urban ecological habitats are typically viewed as messy or unattractive to users, and landscape architects and designers are often met with resistance when proposing such landscapes for public spaces. What visual elements can be used as communication tools by professionals in landscape architecture and ecological design to increase the understanding and appeal of pollinator spaces to the public? This knowledge could provide insight into the ways designers and landscape architects present their work to improve the chances of public approval, and thus implementation. A visual preference survey was implemented and became a vital strategy to find the relationship between key visual elements in images, and the visual appeal and the quality of habitat they communicate. Previous studies in the field of semiotics show that images contain visual elements of language that imply meaning through the use of signs and visual cues. Participants evaluated images showing naturalistic sites during the growing season, and showing subjects like flowers and pollinators, especially up-close images. The survey revealed various levels of understanding of ecological function in different demographics, and a proportional level of appeal. The relationships revealed from the survey were used to create a set of representation guidelines for landscape architects and designers to use when proposing urban pollinator habitat, and other urban ecological spaces. These tools will help to communicate the functionality and need of these spaces, while portraying their intrinsic beauty and potential for enjoyment. A conceptual design was produced from the literature to illustrate how the guidelines can be used in the context of an urban setting.

My dissertation argues that comics’ unique formal properties are particularly suited toward exploring and representing the complex nature of identity. Just as the comics form is broadly defined by a peculiar tension between word and image, so identity can be conceived as a constant negotiation between abstract (“unrepresentable”) concepts that define identity and an individual’s attempts to represent that identity. Due to its formal negotiation of word and image, the comics form is thus uniquely suited to address the problems of identity and its representation. I begin this project by examining the relationship between word and image in comics. Some comics scholars have argued verbal and visual signification are hybridized, while others go so far as to claim the distinction between word and image is unsustainable. Still others reject these claims, arguing comics’ hybridity necessitates a strict separation of word from image. I argue that words and images in comics function on a spectrum in which the line between word and image must be able to be hybridized and distinct at the same time. This definition of the word/image relationship can describe the most straightforward, illustrative comics as well as the most experimental comics texts; it also provides the methodological framework for my project. In this dissertation, I examine the representation of gendered identity in Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets stories and Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, arguing both authors’ injunction that the reader look at the mothers in their works is evidence of their demand that we understand the women as whole, ambivalent subjects. I explore the way the Gene Yang and Sonny Liew’s graphic novel The Shadow Hero addresses the repressive and racist history of superhero comics. In doing so, Yang and Liew’s text reveals the ways superhero texts constantly negotiate the genre’s conservative instinct to protect the status quo and its revolutionary vision for a better world. Finally, I contend Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams III's Batwoman: Elegy reveals at least one intrinsically progressive theme in superhero genre: its performative and inherently queer conception of identity.

The central material studied in this thesis is a representative group of the earliest surviving Christian icons from the collection of St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, all dated to the sixth or seventh centuries. These are discussed specifically in relation to their possible sources within the preceding Greco-Roman tradition of portraiture. While each of these sources is important to a full understanding of the Sinai icons’ visual languages, original functions and meanings, they have not previously been analysed alongside each other in a single study. By doing so, the aim is to reconstruct a more complete artistic context for the icons’ production, as well as to arrive at a fuller understanding of the historical, social and religious factors that would have conditioned their reception. Three categories of portrait-image are critically considered as possible sources for the Sinai icons in terms of technique, style, iconography and function: Roman imperial portraiture (from the first to the sixth centuries); the funerary portraiture of Roman Egypt (first to third centuries); and the corpus of sacred pinakes or ‘pagan icons’ produced in the Fayum region of Egypt (mainly second century). Following the Introduction in which recent scholarly literature on the topic is critically assessed and definitions of key terms are given, the opening chapter presents a detailed visual analysis of each of the eight selected Sinai icons. Questions of dating and geographical attribution are addressed, with previous proposals either revised or confirmed. In Chapter Two, Roman imperial portraiture is discussed, principally in terms of its meanings and functions, and comparisons are made with early portraits of Christ. Questions of the construction of likeness, and the complex relationship between a portrait (whether of an emperor or of Christ) and its prototype, are addressed. It is argued that while early Christian portraits did adopt various elements of imperial iconography to convey a message of universal authority, at the same time they performed functions which were not shared by imperial portraits – for example, participating in intercessory and anagogical prayer. Chapter Three analyses the techniques and styles used in the corpus of Romano- Egyptian ‘mummy-portraits’, with correspondences and differences highlighted between these and the early Sinai icons, and also discusses the question of whether portrait-mummies performed a devotional function comparable to that of early Christian icons. To this end, importance is again given to the question of the relationship between a portrait-mummy and its prototype (the soul of the deceased), as well as questions of audience, display and reception. On the basis of this discussion it is argued that the portraits participated in a reciprocal ‘exchange of gazes’ with their intended viewers, and that this is likely to have been a key factor in the reception of some of the Sinai icons as well. Chapter Four discusses the smaller extant corpus of painted panels depicting pagan deities, produced in the Fayum concurrently with the portrait-mummies. Some striking correspondences in terms of physical construction, technique and style are drawn between these and the early Sinai icons, and literary evidence is adduced to elucidate the role of the artist’s phantasia, or faculty of visualisation, in the construction of the likenesses of both pagan deities and Christian saints. In sum, it is argued that the formal characteristics of the early Sinai icons can all be derived from the non-Christian portrait-categories discussed above; however, these forms were employed in the service of an expanded range of devotional functions in a Christian context. In particular, the early Sinai icons invited a new mode of reception, characterised by an interpersonal, prayerful exchange with an icon’s prototype(s), which the portrait-image both stimulated and channelled.

Thesis (M.T.S.C.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46).

In fashion design, the designer strives for the development of ideas in view of significant visual goals. The process of specifying and developing ideas is a highly visual process. Based on what has been ‘seen’ as for example in a reference material or in explorations, designers define possible tracks to follow, decide which ideas to deepen or which ones to reject. Their activities can thus be described as a process of seeing. There is nothing novel about the importance of seeing as an act in the design process; on the contrary, seeing, is usually an intuitive act that any designer explicates throughout the process of shaping his/her vision. However, the systematisation of seeing in the design process in order to advance ways of working in the field of fashion design is still very much an area that is open for further research. In this thesis, possible ways of seeing are explored through experiments in different stages of the design process. Based on an image serving as a point of departure, seen elements were derived and put in relation to a body in a two-dimensional photographic sketching stage, in accordance with different ideas of dress. Selected ideas were then further elaborated and explored in terms of their design possibilities. The results of the experiments are propositions of design ideas that have been ‘seen’ in a single sketch or a series of sketches. The contribution of this licentiate thesis are: 1) A thorough mapping of two design stages (point of departure and two-dimensional sketching stage), and how they provide a deeper understanding of the design process, leading to 2) an improved sensibility with regard to design possibilities, their value and developments, and finally 3) the establishing of a methodology with which to discern the composition of a visual language/vision in fashion design based on ‘seeing’. The act of seeing is presented as the fundamental tool of designing for shaping a vision. By delving into the systematisation of the notion of seeing in a fashion design process, a methodology of seeing is introduced, which aims to enhance the possible ways of visualisation when designing.

Masters of Art / This M.A. mini-thesis seeks to open up the post-apartheid South African biopic as a topic for serious historical scrutiny. While book-length written biographies published in the post-apartheid (and apartheid periods) are the subjects of a now quite extensive historiographical literature, biography on film – including in the form of filmic dramas – has been hitherto entirely ignored. Social history or marginalised lives and not political lives of struggle against apartheid have been the predominant subgenre within this emerging field: with sixteen biopics having been produced in the 2010s. But the field is dominated by white men. This thesis showcases the story-telling gifts of one young coloured film-maker through a meticulously detailed analysis of “visual story-telling” and “visual language” used in his two award-winning gang biopics, Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen. Die Stories van Ellen Pakkies (2018). Read in the context of the extended processes of production of these two films in which the central protagonists played a shaping background role, the thesis explores and compares the linear chronological, four-chapter, narrative structure of Noem My Skollie with the architecture of “the parallel narrative” used in the deeply disturbing Ellen. Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018) The thesis is a celebration of the film-making talent of Daryne Joshua.

La presente investigación se centra en analizar la influencia del fenómeno de desterritorialización que ha experimentado la comunidad indígena shipibo-konibo  en la transformación de lenguaje visual del kené, una manifestación cultural que encierra su cosmovisión, creencias y cultura. Se parte de la hipótesis de que la pérdida del referente del territorio y el posterior establecimiento de la comunidad en Cantagallo afectan la práctica del trazado del kené, tanto en la transformación de los valores gráficos de su lenguaje visual, como en el surgimiento de nuevos significados. La investigación está diseñada a partir de una metodología de trabajo documental en articulación con trabajo de campo para profundizar tanto en un análisis bibliográfico y de contenido referido a las variables de la investigación, como en los contextos de producción y comercialización actuales de kené. Los principales resultados indican que la transformación en los patrones de kené se enfoca en el cambio de la estructura lineal del patrón, en la incorporación y dominio del nivel de expresión visual figurativo en la composición, en la transformación de la paleta cromática hacia múltiples tonos saturados y en los cambios de los significados del kené que se adaptan al nuevo contexto de desarrollo. Por tanto se concluye que la transformación del lenguaje visual del kené refleja las tensiones entre los fenómenos de desterritorialización y reterritorialización, pues aunque surge una orientación casi exclusiva a la comercialización de las piezas se mantiene la necesidad de identificación de la comunidad con los patrones de kené. / This research focuses on analyzing the influence of the phenomenon of deterritorialization the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous community in the transformation of the visual language of kené, a cultural manifestation that encompasses its worldview, beliefs and culture. It is based on the hypothesis that the loss of the territory and the subsequent establishment of the community in Cantagallo affect the practice of drawing kené, both in the transformation of the graphic values ​​of its visual language, and in the emergence of new meanings. The research is designed based on a methodology of documentary work in articulation with field work to deepen both a bibliographic and content analysis referred to the research variables, as in the current production and marketing contexts of kené. The main results indicate that the transformation of kené patterns focuses on the change of the linear structure of the pattern, on the incorporation of figurative visual elements in the composition, on the transformation of the chromatic palette towards multiple saturated tones and in the changes of the meanings of kené that adapt to the new development context. Therefore it is concluded that the transformation of the visual language of kené reflects the tensions between the phenomena of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, because although an almost exclusive orientation to the commercialization of the pieces arises, the need of the community to reinforce its identity with the patterns of kené remains. / Trabajo de investigación

Concerned with anxiety and displacement, the artist explores a sense of place within the self. Personal experiences are presented as an accumulation of fragmented symbols, textures and pattern. Symbolic imagery is being created, influenced by a devaluation of established norms and a reorganization of cultural identity. The individualÆs interaction and experience with the surrounding world affirms his idiosyncratic symbolism. The artwork is a visual language that through the use of disparate segments sets up the portrayal of the fragmented self and psychological journeys of the artist. Individuals establish themselves in many ways, including gestures as part of expression. This expression can be in the visual plane, such as works of art with their color and exploration of ideas. Thus there is continuity in life being established by the artist, while looking for meaning in the apprehended sense of place created in response to natural instinct and intuition.

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