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The aim of this thesis was to investigate the creative and generative capacities of a group of savant artists. As savant talent has a higher prevalence in autism, a disorder associated with deficits in imagination and creativity, it is surprising that one should find savant ability in areas such as music and art. Despite the interesting paradox this creates there has yet to be a thorough, empirical investigation into this area of savant performance in artists. The measurement of the concepts of creativity and generativity is alone a contentious area in psychology; however, from the outset they were clearly defined for the purpose of this thesis. Creativity is defined as the capacity to produce novel and meaningful responses, whereas generativity refers to the amount, or quantity, of ideas produced, irrespective of their originality. As the creative and generative capacity of savant artists is a hitherto neglected area of research, this investigation began by measuring this capacity in the domain of ability, using a standardised test where the response was drawn. A second test looked at creative and generative performance on a construction task with no drawn element. Subsequent investigations focused on the processes thought to underlie performance on the initial two tasks, particularly relating to the assets and deficits in the performance of the savant group, which may have occurred as a result of their autism. The results showed that a general autism-specific deficit was evident on tasks that required generativity outside of the direct domain of drawing. On the other hand, in relation to creativity, there were indications that such qualities were spared in the savants on tasks not directly involved with drawing, although still in the visual domain. These contrasting results are discussed in terms of a segmented visual processing style in the savant artists and an autism-specific deficit with regard to the generation of appropriate action plans

The thesis explores the reciprocal relationship between an artwork and the space of its reception. It proposes a distinctive position on spatiality and the virtual. The thesis is submitted in two parts: a written thesis (Part One), and a documentation of my own art practice (Part Two). The artwork that comprises the practice component is not that of a painter, and yet the sculptural installations I present allude to perspectival paintings. Utilising perspectival geometry, these site-responsive works engage the threshold between two and three-dimensional representation in a way whereby implicit and actual beholder’s viewpoints are contrasted or fused. The written thesis focuses on the reception of perspectival painting, rather than on my own artworks. Referencing analytical philosophical arguments on representational seeing, and the reception aesthetics of Wolfgang Kemp, it puts forward a distinctive position that contends that while the visual imagination does not define depiction, it plays a pivotal role in supplementing perception in works where the spectator attends to and/or imagines away the threshold separating the real and fictive realms. After Merleau-Ponty, I call such an imaginative engagement seeing-with, which describes a particular use to which painting is put. In providing a strongly felt pictorial depth, I argue that such an implied pictorial space incorporates the space between painting and spectator position. I investigate two categories of works where such imagining facilitates a distinctive access to the picture’s content: (i) paintings containing what Wollheim refers to as an ‘internal spectator’; and (ii) paintings integrated into their architectural settings, where the internal onlooker is fused with the external spectator. I highlight differences afforded internal and external spectators: with the former, the viewer identifies with a spectator who already occupies an unrepresented extension of the ‘virtual’ space; with the latter, the beholder enters that part of the fictive world depicted as being in front of the picture surface, the work thus drawing the ‘real’ space of the spectator into its domain. This distinction mirrors two distinct types of visualization: where a scene is imagined as elsewhere, and where it is situated, juxtaposed with an existing reality. Imagination provides a reciprocity that replicates the experience of our bodily situatedness, in that it structures our implied spatial access to the depicted scene. In establishing a bodily frame of reference, it draws upon nonconceptual content. The thesis tests the philosophical argument against specific paintings, including works that introduce a break from a situated relationship in order to depict the supernatural or the unconscious.

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Most consumer images serve emotional functions as well as informational ones. The impression of an image can be affected not only by physical properties e. g. size, colour and media but also by the context of images, aesthetic properties and social/personal backgrounds of observers. However in traditional frameworks in image quality studies, the impacts of colour-appearance attributes on image quality have focused on maximising the informational functions of images, considering an image as a reproduced copy of a real scene. Thus, a new approach was adopted in this study in an attempt to investigate the emotional aspect of an image. The goal of this research is to study the impact of colour-appearance attributes of an image on emotional responses, and to develop quantitative models for predicting emotional response considering the context of the image. To achieve this goal, three sets of psychophysical and physiological experiments have been conducted. First, the relationship between colour-appearance attributes and overall affective response to images was investigated for four different types of image contents. It was found that image colourfulness and lightness contrast had a consistent influence on these relationships for all types of images. The relationships between emotional responses of image pleasantness and excitement were significantly different between positive images and negative images. Accordingly, quantitative models of image pleasantness and excitement were developed as a function of image colourfulness and contrast separately for the two groups of images. Finally, models of image pleasantness and excitement for positive and negative images were developed as a linear equation based on models developed for each colour attribute. The relationships between colour-appearance attributes and responses on colour-emotion scales, active-passive, heavy-light and warm-cool, were also studied for four different types of image content. Quantitative models of the three colour-emotion scales were developed as a function of colour attributes of images such as lightness, colourfulness and lightness contrast. As an application of using the colour-emotion model developed for images, the relationships between colouremotion scales and image emotion were investigated and quantitative models of image pleasantness and excitement were developed as functions of three colouremotion scales for two groups of images: positive and negative. The model performance based on the colour-emotion scales was compared with the performance of models based on the colour attributes. As a result, the latter model performed better than former. The impact of image content and colour attributes of an image on emotional responses to images was investigated by measuring physiological responses to images which were compared with the psychophysical responses. It was found that the activities in skin conductance and heart rate showed significantly greater responses for the images with personal meanings and significances. For the effect of colour attributes in images, it was found that more chromatic images generated higher activity in skin conductance responses. It was also found that lower contrast images generated higher activity in corrugator EMG responses

This thesis aims to provide a systematic critical reading of the theory of matrix and metramorphosis proposed by artist and theorist Bracha Ettinger, in order to establish the implications of this proposition. There is a growing literature surrounding Ettinger's work, but only a small number of studies directly approach her theoretical formulations, and even fewer in the mode of a systematic critique. In an opening overview of the emergence and development of the theory of the matrix, Ettinger's theoretical methodology is analysed in some detail. This analysis reveals, among other things, that this theory is implicated in psychoanalysis in such a way that refuses its division into distinct and competing orthodoxies. This thesis aims to take seriously that positioning by opening and examining a series of critical spaces between the theory of the matrix and related but divergent approaches to a number of key issues that identify the limits of psychoanalysis. After the OvelTiew, the thesis is divided into three chapters that represent sites that inform the limits of the psychoanalytic field, two from without-the feminine and aesthetics-and two from within-the unconscious and transference. Chapter 1 considers Ettinger's theory alongside Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, and approaches the feminine from the angle of the limitations imposed upon subjectivity by the representation of intra-uterine life as undifferentiated and as such divorced from all subjectivising potential. Chapter 2 approaches the limitations at play in the negotiation of art and aesthetics by psychoanalysis, looking specifically at the work of Marion Milner as an exemplary psychoanalytic attempt to account for artistic creativity through archaic relationality. Ettinger's own writing on art will appear partly as a critique of the limits of Milner's attempt, but will also present an example of a singular solution to the position of art beyond the limits of psychoanalysis. Chapter 3 considers the unconscious and transference as the sites "vhich can most specifically reflect the relationship of the theory of the matrix to the limits of psychoanalysis. An examination of Jean Laplanche's rigorous re-foundation of the psychoanalytic field alongside Felix Guattari's insistence upon the irrelevance of disciplinary fidelity, situates Ettinger's theory as related, but assimilable to neither position. A final consideration of transference explores the concrete limits of the analytical relationship, and the nature of its relation to a non-analytical exterior. Ettinger's work on this area in particular seeks to position the work of art as an extrapsychoanalytical means of reconfiguring the clinical field. Together, these chapters produce the theory of the matrix as an inter-theoretical assemblage that puts at risk the comfortable demarcation lines of psychoanalytical orthodm,:y, and which, especially in its most recent articulations, insists upon a re-examination and reconfiguration of the various limits that constitute the dynamic and heterogeneous field of psychoanalysis.

La progression de l'informatique dans nos vies s'accompagne de processus de production et de rétention massive de traces. Cette recherche avance l'hypothèse que l'être humain contemporain de l'informatique devenue diffuse fait dans son milieu technique l'épreuve d'un choc. Cette notion, entendue au sens que lui donna Walter Benjamin dans les années 1930, fait référence à la généralisation d'un décalage entre l'expérience vécue et l'expérience réelle. Sur le plan théorique et pratique, il s'agit de considérer la littérature comme une ressource pour donner demeure à ce qui reste inaperçu dans la fréquentation courante de l'informatique, afin de rendre l'expérience qui en est faite communicable. Qu'est ce que l'informatique fait à la littérature? Une pratique d'écriture contemporaine de l'informatique implique-t-elle nécessairement le recours aux nouvelles technologies ? L'analyse d'un corpus d'oeuvres hétérogène mettra en évidence différentes manières de concevoir les relations entre la littérature et l'informatique : l'informatique comme thème, l'informatique comme outil, et l'informatique comme matière ou matrice pour le texte littéraire. Face à l'éparpillement des données et la multiplication des sollicitations, des modalités de l'attention particulières sont à chercher. Il s'agira, compte tenu de ces différentes approches, de considérer certains principes formels de l'informatique (discrétisation, fragmentation, montage, agrégation, compilation, corrélation, etc.) et de les coupler à des principes d'écriture susceptibles de manifester le fait même de l'informatique. Cette tentative littéraire, attenante à la recherche, se présentera sous la forme de deux textes imprimés sur deux volumes distincts présentés en supplément de la thèse / The increased presence of information technology in our lives goes along with a process of massive production and retention of marks. This research puts forth the hypothesis according to which human beings contemporary to widespread information technology experience a shock in their technical environment. This notion, viewed in the sense that Walter Benjamin introduced in the 1930s, refers to the generalisation of a discrepancy between the experience that has been lived and the actual experience. From a theoretical and a practical point of view, literature shall be considered as a resource to bring to light what goes unnoticed to the common use of information technology, in order to give evidence for the experience that is indeed expressible. What does information technology do to literature ? Does a writing practice that is contemporary to information technology necessarily imply having recourse to new technology ? The analysis of a hetereogenous corpus of works will help highlight a variety of ways to consider the relationships between literature and information technology : information technology as a theme, (information technology) as a tool, and (information technology) as a material or matrix for the literary work. Faced with the scattering of data and proliferation of solicitations, specic modes of attention are to be looked for. Taking into consideration these different approaches, some formal principles of information technology (discretisation, fragmentation, montage, aggregation, compilation, correlation, etc.) shall be dealt with and coupled with writing principles that are likeley to express information technology itself. This literary attempt, contiguous to the research, shall take the form of two texts printed on two separate volumes, presented as a supplement to the thesis

The artist uses herself as the object of study. Her subjective position is validated within a theoretical framework provided by feminism, existentialism and Freudian theory. The three world views provide the context for an analysis of sculpture produced between the years 1988 and 1997. Three one-person exhibitions held in 1990, 1993 and 1996, are examined in terms of their iconographic emphasis and their theoretical bias. The role of the unconscious in the genesis of the sculptures and the problem of author/reader dichotomies in interpretation are dealt with as thematic threads throughout the dissertation. / Department of History of Art and Fine Arts / M.A. (Fine Arts)

The artist uses herself as the object of study. Her subjective position is validated within a theoretical framework provided by feminism, existentialism and Freudian theory. The three world views provide the context for an analysis of sculpture produced between the years 1988 and 1997. Three one-person exhibitions held in 1990, 1993 and 1996, are examined in terms of their iconographic emphasis and their theoretical bias. The role of the unconscious in the genesis of the sculptures and the problem of author/reader dichotomies in interpretation are dealt with as thematic threads throughout the dissertation. / Department of History of Art and Fine Arts / M.A. (Fine Arts)