The thesis is a body of work (paintings) and its contextual analysis. Together they constitute a method that aims to 'update' conceptions of the grid for painting, using digital media and poststructuralist philosophy/ theory. The thesis attempts to move beyond Rosalind Krauss' seminal text on the modernist grid, to re-assess its continued in contemporary painting practices. I argue that notions of the grid in painting expand beyond the tenets of modernism* marking a shift in meaning for the grid in terms of its relationship to the visual languages of painting and digital media. The grid is re-assessed under the terms 'emblem', 'sign' and 'metaphor', which appear in Krauss (1986). I then consider the grid as 'device', exploring its use in the construction of the submitted work, the written account of which demonstrates the flexibility of the grid in the production of painted images and the transformation produced by introducing digital media to the imagemaking methodology. I discuss work by Stephen Ellis, Alexis Harding and Sarah Morris, as examples of contemporary practice that use the grid to produce work that engages painting's relationship to the photographic, the digital - and the sheer materiality of the medium. I consider concepts located in poststructuralist work by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattan (1980) and on postmodernism, by Jean-Fran9ois Lyotard (1979). These critical paradigms are used for their deconstructive strategies and critical accounts of technology, to which digital media is integral. Introducing digital media to the methodology of the work has developed a discussion on aesthetics in relation to perception, specifically in terms of the material qualities of the work's surfaces in relation to the haptic. The architectonic structures, methods and processes - at work through the grid in painting - are located in the corporeal experience of touch and vision, considered in relation to the aesthetic conditions of the digital.

My thesis proposes a critical framework for understanding the digital interface in interactive new media installations. I aim at dispelling the instrumental, cybernetic, “action-reaction” myth that surrounds the functions of the interface and that constitutes one of the main limitations in its conceptualization today. I argue that a rethinking of the digital interface in terms of its aesthetic and cultural properties is essential if we are to take digital interfaces seriously as devices that inform or even, to some extent, structure our relationship with technology. Theorists who work in the interdisciplinary field of interface studies have historically been preoccupied with the technical and instrumental functions the interface performs – specifically with how it acts and reacts to pre-programmed information. To do this, they have predominantly drawn on computer science and engineering perspectives. Thus digital interfaces have commonly been understood as the symbolic software that enables humans to use computers. My thesis approaches the digital interface from a different direction, concentrating on the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the digital interface, and drawing on scholarship from the fields of art history and media studies. In particular, I focus on critically examining how various interfaces are defined within art environments and how they influence the way subjects, objects, and the relationships and processes that exist between them are understood in these disciplinary fields and practices. Throughout, I propose a more expansive definition of the digital interface in interactive new media installations, positioning it as a dynamic, hybrid, aesthetic and cultural process. I thus reformulate the problem of the digital interface as a problem of making the often invisible aspects of the device legible. Ultimately, I argue that the interface mediates, thus creates, to an extent, relationships between viewer/participants, artists and artworks as well as influences the movements and perceptions of those interacting with it. This reading enables me to conclude that the digital interface can be seen as an important actor in positioning and (re)shaping specific ways in which the self relates to technology, to artistic practice and to other human and nonhuman beings in the current media culture. At the heart of this thesis is the notion that the digital interface matters and that a critical exploration of it in aesthetic contexts can help us understand and possibly reconfigure our human relationship with technology.

This thesis explores the hypothesis that current industry standard methods used to visualise environmentally hazardous or historically significant shipwrecks can be improved by adopting a number of new, aesthetically considered, methods. The thesis describes the development of occlusion objects, locoramps and the use of digital cinematography, as methods that the author proposes to improve the 3D visualisation of point cloud data from multibeam sonar. Case studies were selected as the basis for experimentation; they include HMS Royal Oak in Orkney and SS Richard Montgomery in the Thames Estuary. The author collaborated with a multi-disciplinary team of forensic maritime archaeologists, marine surveyors and salvage experts to gain access to unique shipwreck sites and the high resolution sonar data gathered from them. Through experimentation with the data, occlusion objects, locally oriented colour ramps (locoramps) and improved depth cueing through digital cinematography were developed and applied in 3D visualisations of the case study wrecks. A real-time application WreckSight was created to exploit the new methods. The resulting 3D visualisations of the wrecks were evaluated by a number of target audience groups by means of an interactive questionnaire that allows a direct comparison of data presented using the new methods with traditional display methods. Analysis of the resulting data shows a statistical significance that supports the hypothesis. The author proposes that the new methods constitute new knowledge in the 3D visualisation of multibeam sonar data of shipwrecks.