This thesis discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of Video Art. It contends that Video Art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. The thesis will analyse, discuss and evaluate the problematic nature and form of Video Art within four major contemporary art museums - the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. By addressing some of the problems that Video Art would present to those museums under discussion, the thesis will reveal how Video Art would challenge institutional structures and demand more flexible viewing environments. As a result, the modern museum would need to constantly modify their policies and internal spaces in order to cope with the dynamism of Video Art. This thesis first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre during the 19th century. It examines the transformation from the classical to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA would be the first major museum to exhibit Video Art in a concerted fashion and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to Video Art. This thesis provides an historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to Video Art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Curatorial strategies, the influx of corporate patronage and the reconstruction of spectatorship within the gallery are analysed in relation to the unique problematic of Video Art. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the thesis contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to Video Art imagery with the period of High Modernism; examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct contemporary art institutions.

The thesis explores the vexed concept of Heimat in recent German culture. Heimat evokes an exclusive group, founded on the idea of the unity and homogeneity of its members. Conflicts arise around the concept because it constructs oppositions between those who belong and those who do not, insiders and outsiders, the domestic and known in opposition to the foreign and strange. Historically, the concept has been used to tell a story about the cohesion of the German nation; it has also, however, been used to assimilate, eliminate, or exile its Others. The thesis examines how the legacies of the concept and its narrative reverberate through the nation-building process of Germany today. The concept of Heimat is active in films, literature, the law and contemporary German society. The argument is that the concept of Heimat still shapes German identity in ways that use old forms and oppositions to respond to recent social changes. It is argued further that the tensions around the concept have not diminished, but are spreading into many different areas of German everyday life. Two films by Edgar Reitz provide the starting point for exploring the tensions around Heimat in contemorary German culture. Following readings of texts by Jewish-German, Austrian- German, Swiss-German, Persian-German, Rumanian-German, East and West German authors show the concept persisting in different forms with different consequences, according to the different cultural contexts. In each of these contexts, the concept of German Heimat produces both social cohesion and social tensions. As much as people are united by the concept, they are also driven apart by its differentiating and disintegrating mechanisms. Motivated by the search for communal intimacy, the concept also has the effect of controlling and manipulating what appears different and alien. As such a network of interests and strategies it is not merely closed, fixed and bounded, as desired perhaps by the dominant cultural groups, but rather open for contestation and negotiation within and across national borders. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

This thesis focuses on the importance of the ballad in constructing national identity in Germany during the 20th century from 1918-1978. It presents a comparative approach using Scotland as a comparator, based on three significant time periods throughout the century: the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era and the German folk revival. In each of these eras the issue of national awareness was most in evidence and national identity was being created or was a particular object of tension. The modern Scottish literary renaissance and the Scottish folk revival will be used for comparative purposes. The comparative approach will also aid a deeper understanding of the concept of national identity itself. The hypothesis is that the ballad has contributed to the development of national identity in specific and differing ways in the two countries. Selected artists; poets, singers and Liedermacher have been chosen as representatives for each particular stage. The ballad in the 20th century has previously received little critical attention, thus this period has been chosen as the time frame of the thesis in an attempt to redress this balance and create new knowledge. The 20th century is also a rewarding area of study because it saw specific developments in the notion of nationalism and evidenced both the devastating results of the abuse of national identity and the positive power of the concept for nation building. The foundation of this thesis is the recognition that national identity is not necessarily natural, inherent and straightforward, but is rather a deliberate construction, created by people or groups within the nation for distinct political, social and cultural ends.

Set against the backdrop of the crisis of cultural expression and global assimilation existing in many cities in China, modern house forms of limited types are copied and mass-produced, regardless of local culture, topography and climate. Typo-morphological study has been identified and developed as a base for theoretical discussion and empirical case studies, mainly focusing on the relationship between elements of form. In this study, it is used to systematically investigate diverse early mass-housing built in China in the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the onset of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937. The mass-housings in Qingdao, Tianjin, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, six significant colonial cities in China, are selected as case studies. The early mass-housing was a new leading building type of the time, successfully meeting the needs of occupants, and becoming valuable assets from which people can derive benefits. However, most scholars have only investigated the early mass-housing from an isolated perspective, thereby forfeiting the opportunity to identify what is important to that particular localized building culture, what distinguishes it from other cultures, and intrinsic characteristics originating from that locale. Therefore, comparative analysis of the early mass-housing is necessary to identify and explore characteristics significant in cultural and environmental adaptation. Moreover, such an analysis helps develop a better understanding of the evolution of the housing in context. Based on an extensive literature review, this research selects significant and representative examples from the six cities. Assisted by a systematic typo-morphological framework formulated by Conzen, Caniggia and Kropf, this study investigates the morphological characteristics of these examples at fabric and building levels. A comparative analysis is then undertaken of the components of these housing estates within a typological process, which is inherent in the sequence of building types and characterizes an area. Finally, it gets the conclusion that such housing in these cities share few morphological patterns; meanwhile, diversity and contradictions also exist for reasons that go beyond varying climates and geographical locations. By building up the typological process, this study (with certain qualifications), is able to explore the constituent parts or elements of housing forms and their interaction in the formation process, which can have implications for the further housing development. / published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Philosophy

A changing perception based on the appreciation for information in our era allows a broader idea and different understanding of life as a system driven by the flow of information. Simultaneously, our understanding of 'the' urban was broadened. It enabled us to perceive urban structures as living organisms beyond their physical manifestation and separated from human control. Like species, our cities are great products of evolutionary forces and contain invaluable information worth preserving.When writing about urban spaces, urban is understood as a system which is constituted not so much by built forms and infrastructures, but as a heterogeneous field that is constituted by intervention and lines of forces and action. These lines form the coordinates of an urban topology that is not based on the human body and its movements in space alone, but also on relational acts and events within the urban system. These relational acts can be economic, political, technological or tectonic processes, as well as acts of communication. The urban is therefore quite different from the physically defined spaces of events and movements.The focal point of this paper is to explore the relationship between the spaces of movement, the spaces of events and the relational systemic 'spaces'. It will be attempted to identify fundamental processes behind urban design. Rules are derived from connective principles in complexity theory, systems theory, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence. / Department of Architecture

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The early 1920s are generally described as a period of transition for American society. Many forces of change collided to create an unsettled atmosphere that appeared to threaten traditional American ideas and values. After World War I, the United States fostered a climate of anti-Catholicism and nativism out of fear that foreign ideas spelled the demise of traditional American values. These ideas were certainly not new to American culture as anti-Catholic sentiments figured prominently throughout the founding of the nation. During the early 1920s, however, a resurrected Ku Klux Klan promoted itself as the protector of American institutions. It won recruits with an identity as a secret society for white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant citizens. The organization also exploited the political issues of the day to ingratiate itself within communities across the nation.