Located in downtown Fredericksburg, VA on the cusp of the residential and commercial zones, Kenmore is a completely restored historic plantation built in the 1770’s. The site consists of three separate buildings located thirty feet apart from each other in a linear arrangement. The architectural details are fully restored and are important aspects to the buildings and Fredericksburg’s architecture community. Kenmore Plantation will be transformed from a historic residence to a therapeutic and wellness center for women of the Fredericksburg community. The existing buildings and gardens served as a metaphor for the design concept and strategies. They are objects on a field that provide destinations and delineate pathways. The goal of this thesis project is to examine the natural setting of the site and transform it into a modern language to use to organize the design decisions.

Conceptions of modernity have tended towards the identification of urban spatial practice as the primary signifier of meaning in this discourse. While much of this work has been crucial in identifying just what is at stake in a reading of modernity as a spatial and political project, this has lead to an oversight of the importance of the increasingly global character of social relations in this narrative. This thesis attempts to engage with this question from the perspective of the steamship, writing a cultural history of the introduction of steam power into colonial shipping during the mid-nineteenth century. Taking as a case study the steamships of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, widely known as P&O, this thesis sets out to highlight the importance of globalised networks of mobility in our conception of the experience of modernity. The introduction of steam is explored through the experiences of the passengers on board these ships. Utilising diaries, letters, contemporary press reports and published accounts of voyages, the impact of technological change is charted through associated cultural attitudes and altered conceptions of global travel. While the transitions which accompanied steam power’s entry into global shipping present a radical historical disjuncture, empirical research points rather to a complex srrucrure ofco-constitution between technology, global capital and the newly mobile human subjects aboard these vessels. The consequences of a departure from sail power gave rise not simply to a transitional society at sea on a difi'erent scale and at a greater velocity, but made possible structural change which allowed for a new kind of specifically modern, idiosyncratically imperial environment, in which global actors reinforced and receded aspects of control through performative instances of imperialism. Calling for an innovative interdisciplinary engagement with the maritime humanities, the thesis utilises a critical approach to historical material, seeing developing attitudes toward sea travel in relation to wider discourses governing conceptions of empire, colonialism and global space in the modern era.

The industrial designer employs a wide variety of design tools to externalise, develop, propose and specify design solutions. This use of tools locates within a rich set of codependent relationships: the character and affordance of individual tools; a designer's expertise in tool use; the influence of the pragmatic requirements of the design process; working culture; and the designer's idiosyncratic use of tools. The research addresses a need to continue to develop an understanding of how design activity is influenced by the use of various established and emergent digital, conventional and hybrid tools and the designer's attitude towards tool use. An adapted model of activity theory was employed together with a taxonomy of design tools and a description of Universal Tool Characteristics (UTCs) to explore the designer's use of tools during practice. Survey studies of two sample groups, design practitioners and design students, were conducted. The study revealed significant differences, between the practitioners and students, in attitudes towards the UTCs of some design tools. In a second phase of research semi-structured interviews were undertaken to further investigate relationships between individual design tools and the practitioner's influence on tool use. Survey and interview findings generated a new framework to comprehensively describe design tool use during industrial design practice. The work was translated into a digital tool (IDsite) that supports less experienced designers in developing awareness of the relationships between tool use and the design process. Findings indicated the ways in which designer attitudes are a reflection of existing approaches to practice. Student designers tended towards a more constrained, convergent approach that can lead to earlier fixation and the crystallisation of concept ideas. Experienced practitioners tend to take a more explorative, divergent and often iterative approach to design work, allowing their design activity to remain open to suggestion and revision. Evidence of this was made explicit through more negative attitudes from students towards those UTCs associated with divergent conceptual design: lateral transformations between design ideas; ambiguity in design embodiment; reflection-in-action during design embodiments. These pre-existing approaches to studio practice are compounded through the use of certain design tools (sketch modelling, 3D printing 3D CAD). The research concludes that awareness of, and engagement with, the relationships between tool use and the dynamic requirements of the industrial design process have a profound influence on attitudes towards design activity. tool selection and use. The research makes explicit some of these differences and how they critically inform the designer's studio practice.

The guiding question of this study was: What were the perceptions of the participants about their experience in the intensive art education program at Florida State University and what do these perceptions suggest about this program and other programs of this type There are two related purposes of this study. One purpose is to determine the perceptions of the participants about their experience of the program. The second related purpose is to evaluate the program qualitatively though their perceptions to see what they suggest for two and related programs. Based on a phenomenological study, data sources included in-depth interviews with six Korean teachers, the FSU program coordinator, the FSU program administrator, the Korean program coordinator at the teacher participants' home university, and two program assistants from FSU, intensive observations of whole events and activities, and review of the teacher participants' research journal notebooks, materials and documents. The intensive, Florida-based, one-month art education and cultural learning program that took place in January and February 2005, was intended to broaden the cultural understanding of the six participating Korean elementary school art teachers and enhance their professional lives. The program's content – units/modules consisting of extensive field trips, coursework, and schools visits – created an umbrella under which the teachers could investigate theories and practices in the field of art education within the diverse cultures of Florida. As both a participant observer and an assistant to the program, I observed all aspects of the program, conducted interviews with the primary stakeholders and read their research journal notebooks after the program was completed. Through these interviews and the analysis of the participants' journals, I was able to conclude that this program gave the teachers a valuable opportunity to understand differences in societies and cultures, and to some extent integrate their resulting insights into their classroom instruction at home. The significance of this program is that it can encourage the teacher participants and other primary stakeholders to understand people in different cultures, provide students who are interested in studying abroad with a beginning experience, and begin, through firsthand experience, to adjust their fixed or stereotypical views of cultures other than their own through the construction of new cultural perspectives. This is especially valuable for people from ethnically homogenous countries such as Japan and Korea who have a particular need for understanding other people and their cultures. One small piece of the solution to this problem may be education emphasizing cross-cultural understandings, such as that which occurred in this program. But the benefits seem to go both ways. From the analysis of the interviews I conducted with the American stakeholders in the program (who are members of a multicultural society, and were not traveling beyond their home borders) there was something to be learned about cultural understanding from the teacher participants. Clearly, such a program benefits both parties, and both have to work hard and stretch to understand other in the exchange. The implication and recommendation that derives from this study is that this program and others like it should be fostered and developed for both art teachers/educators and students in both homogenous countries, and others. While the benefits of this program, designed as it was to immerse Korean teacher participants in the culture of American art and education, are not measurable, this study offers strong evidence that one important outcome is increased cross-cultural understanding and recognition of the value of cross-cultural tolerance and respect from all parties involved. The implication of this insight is that this program should be further developed and fostered, and like programs should be implemented in other venues. Such programs as the one in which the Korean teachers participated may help to correct the inaccurate views that many international students have of the United States, and test the cultural understandings of such students against those of others, toward a better understanding of both. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art Education In partial fulfillment of the Requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2007. / Date of Defense: August 20, 2007. / Art Education, Cultural Experience, Developing International Programs Through Art, Art Teacher Education, Site Visit-Based Art Education, Educational Art Criticism / Includes bibliographical references. / Tom Anderson, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jeff Milligan, Outside Committee Member; Linda Schrader, Outside Committee Member; Pat Villeneuve, Committee Member.

This Doctoral research investigates the role and potential of industrial design to confront product obsolescence in the consumer electronics sector. It investigates how design strategies can be developed to prolong the lifespans of products so to mitigate environmental impacts and contribute towards sustainable consumption. The predominant response by industry and policy makers to environmental problems associated with consumer electronics has been through improved energy efficiency and, more recently, strategies to manage end-of-life waste. However, the volume and speed in which consumer electronics are produced, consumed and made obsolete remains unprecedented. Such circumstances can easily override and negate the effectiveness of efficiency and waste management responses. Moreover, as the lifespan for many of these products, notably personal computers and mobile phones gets shorter many consumer electronics products are still in functional order when disposed of. Product design, technological change, expanding digital infrastructure, replacement verses repair costs, the migration of electronics into new product sectors, in addition to our seemingly insatiable appetite for new and novel goods all contribute to reducing product lifespans. This research investigates design strategies to prolong product lifespans. By investigating existing product features, user behaviours and societal factors lifespans strategies that can prolong product are identified. Three particular design strategies have been developed to explore this proposition - Piggybacking, Reassignment and Scripting. Piggybacking specifically addresses products that are vulnerable to obsolescence from step changes in technology, such as the migration to digital technologies; while a Reassignment strategy is appropriate for products that susceptible to rapid technological change. On the other hand, Scripting is a framework strategy that can guide user behaviour to circumvent premature obsolescence by designing in 'scripts' within the product. These three strategies offer a new direction and opportunity for product innovation to tackle obsolescence in technological product sectors. It is argued throughout this research that design practice can occur both formally and informally. Designers often establish the circumstances within a product that can lead to obsolescence, while it is the user who often determines actual product life. However, if a product can be adaptable for changing circumstances it is better able to avoid obsolescence. Industrial designers can enable user-adaptation of products through the design of open products. An open product delegates a role of design to the user thereby enabling a product to be adaptable to changing circumstances, prolonging its lifespan. This research contributes new knowledge about product lifespans and design practice. It demonstrates the importance of user behaviour in determining product life by documenting many informal examples of prolonged product life. It applies new design strategies that can lead to new design innovation.

Landvaluescape is, conceptually, economic reality. It varies spatially and temporally and can be represented as a response surface, in a manner similar to physical landscape. In this research the author looked at how practical and useful it might be, in Britain now, compared to when "the dynamics of land values" (Howes, 1980) was last studied, in a pre-computer age. This study looked at the collection and use of property market related data for production of digital images revealing the economic landscape of Britain, in 'The Information Age'. The conceptual framework was developed through literature research on valuation, spatial analysis methods and geoinformation polity. A Policy Delphi was used to test this framework and issues that arise around the operation of markets in property and public information, then to develop possible courses of action by Government. Overseas examples of value mapping were investigated and, in collaboration with local authorities in Oxfordshire, data were assembled to demonstrate value mapping for the modelling of property tax options. Howes concluded that large-scale Value Mapping, although impractical then, was likely to become extremely useful to property markets and governments. The hypothesis to be tested was that spatial analysis and valuation techniques and the land use I geodata policy context have changed in thirty years sufficiently to make Value Mapping in Britain viable, so as to justify immediate and coherent steps being taken to overcome any institutional, technical and policy (including tax policy) barriers that might exist. The conclusion is that, at the present time, despite maturity of spatial analysis techniques and developments in automated valuation and property data modelling, the policy and institutional environment is not yet conducive to the necessary property tax or land information market reforms. A business case for Value Maps exists but remains hard to convert into effective demand for products. The unique position of Britain as a developed nation with neither a 'cadastre' nor a comprehensive ad valorem property tax means that the business case is largely dependent on market-led initiatives in spatial information - including land use and value - collection and integration. Significant business benefits would result from a fundamental re-engineering of property market information processes but the policy drivers are diffuse. Climate change is most likely to be the driver that triggers a British Value Mapping programme.

This thesis provides a dialectical conception of relational aesthetics, the state of art given definition by Nicolas Bourriaud’s text Relational Aesthetics (2002), by focusing on the ‘value form of participation’ and the ways in which this gets subsumed into capitalist circuits, to fit its purpose within ‘culture’. One of the original contributions of this research project within the field of political art, or art that aims to be political, is its in-depth critique of relational art’s political economy from the perspective of an engaged practice. The thesis also provides insights into the role of the curator as the interlocutor of this exchange. As part of this analysis I examine the changes in the formal character of this relation of domination, by analysing the ways in which the classic opposition between autonomous art and the culture industry has mutated today. The thesis supplements its Marxist analysis with Jacques Lacan’s theories of discourse to examine the particularities of how art practices are subsumed into University discourse, and in order to further analyse how artistsstudents’ struggle with subjection to the value form is determined by the capitalist economy. By combining the Marxist and Lacanian perspectives I conceptualise the artist-student as the subject or social embodiment of surplus value and surplus jouissance. My research interest is guided by my own position as a ‘transversal’ practitioner and by my desire to ‘curate’ a relative kind of autonomy that manages to de-link the symbolic from value and re-distribute the surplus of participation back to social movements and the communities that support them. The thesis thus is also informed by my commitment to organising educational and curatorial initiatives that imagine a dialogue between organising and art, as guided by practices of political or militant listening processes exemplified, for example, by the political aesthetic collaboration Ultra-Red, found in the fields of grassroots organising and specific forms of political education, as discussed by Paulo Freire. Hence another contribution to the field of social practice art is my concern as a researcher-practitioner to press current discourse on relational art further, from a critique of contradictory social processes to an embodying of critical agencies.

Since the UK government's Waste Strategy was introduced in 2000 there has been sustained emphasis on the diversion of waste material from landfill and it has been acknowledged that stable markets for secondary materials must be developed to ensure that the resources used to recover them are not expended needlessly. This thesis looks at the issues surrounding a designer's ability to select secondary materials for the production of new artefacts and proposes a new framework for supporting that activity. While in the past recycled materials have mainly been used either for highly visible 'one-offs' or hidden components the stance taken here is that both creative design and volume production are essential for stable markets in the short term and effective materials cycles in the future. Therefore product and industrial design was the initial focus of this research. The investigation involved three empirical enquiries: Enquiry 1 employed a survey method to explore the design scenario of product and industrial designers and its influence on their ability to select secondary materials. Enquiries 2 & 3 looked at the issues involved in recovering and using secondary materials (focusing on plastic in London), and the tools currently available to support designers. The primary research suggests that the scenario of product and industrial design consultants is not generally conducive to the consideration and use of secondary materials. Specifications for two tools that could improve the situation are proposed: 1) to build knowledge and awareness of secondary materials, and; 2) to improve materials information for design. However the issues with using secondary materials in design practice are manifold and so the research concludes with a framework identifying five central considerations for supporting the use of secondary materials in design practice. This thesis contributes original knowledge in the field of design research by: • proposing specifications for new tools to support the use of secondary materials in design practice; • presenting a range of approaches to sourcing and using secondary materials in design practice; • furthering understanding of the design scenario and how it may inhibit or enable designers to act in specific ways; • challenging existing approaches to material information provision for designers with a new emphasis on dialogue with specialists and the important role of materials librarians.

Future crewed deep space exploration missions such as those to Mars or a Near Earth Asteroid are characterised by extreme remoteness, high crew autonomy, reliance on the immediate habitat vehicle system, and the limited possibility for resupply or intervention from the ground. Human behaviour and performance issues represent a critical challenge for crew survival and mission success. Current biomedical research and development taxonomies emhpasise the need for addressing the experience of isolation and monotony particularly during uneventful, extended transfer stages to and from a destination in a confined, itinerant habitat vehicle. However, this aspect has received relatively little attention from an integrated habitability design perspective. At the same time, many of the in-flight psychological support measures employed in orbital long duration missions to date rely on close proximity to Earth and cannot be directly exported into an autonomous flight paradigm. This highlights the strategic design issue of establishing and extrapolating existing operational evidence-bases for unprecedented mission scenarios, and the potential for employing speculative approaches currently emerging within the industrial and interaction design disciplines. This research project focused on these two aspects of a deep space mission scenario. Research question 1 addressed autonomous habitat design-based mitigation strategies to monotony. Question 2 considered design approaches in view of novel situational constraints. In response to research question 1, the user experience of monotony was examined as a phenomenon of sensory, spatial and social isolation in relation to design provisions in the habitat vehicle. A review of behavioural health mitigation aspects recorded in published user accounts from extended orbital and simulator missions was conducted. It was found that users experienced aspects of monotony to varying degrees. In terms of countermeasures, three common design themes were identified: off-duty hardware interaction, plant growth facilities, and crew care packages. A set of design studies then translated the themes into the autonomous context of a remote deep space setting: the relationship of users with onboard hardware as manifested in practical jokes and hacking; their experience of the apparently sparse but awe inducing local natural context; and the integration of novelty provisions into an otherwise entirely familiar habitat. This was informed by additional ethnographic cases studies into user behaviour in space and analogue environments, conceptual design development, and operational application in two ground-based mission simulations (basic wear system in Mars500; olfactory intervention in MDRS). In synthesising these, a design rationale for mitigating the somewhat inevitable issue of monotony emerged. It directs emphasis towards accommodating in-flight support measures within existing onboard habitation systems in addition to providing separate support applications; and towards amplifying the positive factors of the local situational context through habitat design affordances, rather than predominantly providing diversions from its stressors. Research question 2 investigated the spectrum of evidence and speculation available to the designer when addressing unparalleled mission settings. While only a limited existing body of evidence from previous missions can be drawn on directly, a range of analogous models exist in human research and operations. A feasibility study was conducted at the astronaut training division of the European Space Agency to develop a framework for capturing and integrating operational user evidence for future systems design. Contextualised by a documentary compilation and taxonomy of functional and representational modes of modelling and simulation, this highlighted the notion of design-relevant insights to be derived from user interaction with training mock-ups and simulators. In order to understand the extension of this interaction with models representing evidence towards the end of the spectrum of novel scenarios, the potential validity and application of speculative design, as manifested in the Designing Emotional Survival 4 fictional models of film production design, was examined. This involved a case study based on archive material from the Stanley Kubrick estate charting the design development of the habitation systems in 2001: A Space Odyssey by its team comprising both aerospace experts and film industry professionals, and the subsequent analysis of 36 film productions sampled according to the relative authenticity of their reference mission. The set of studies suggested that the potential merit of engaging in ‘authentic’ speculative design practice lies not necessarily in offering of a wide range of alternative conceptual design solutions. Rather, it represents a heuristic tool to identify, channel and manifest a range of extended narratives of human activity that traditional evidence-based models only partially afford. Fusing evidence and speculation in integrated, experiential models thus lends itself to facilitating scenario-building efforts early on in the systems planning process. In reflecting its current position in aerospace, it is hence put forward that, beyond translating requirements into applied solutions, design can assume the role of a foresight tool. Finally, in view of a transfer of findings and linking to current interaction design theory, an argument is made from the critical design perspective for reading spaceflight settings and its designed systems as laboratory for the human condition as such. In an effort to contribute to the theoretical and practical consolidation of design as a spaceflight discipline at the interface of life sciences, human factors, space architecture and systems engineering, this exploratory inquiry offers applied and methodological points of departure to inform research and design practice into the behavioural dimension of deep space exploration missions, their analogues, and remote duty contexts in other extreme environments.

The primary site for this research is artistic production, through exhibitions and performances presented in galleries between 2008-2012. The written thesis closely examines the large body of practical work I have made (documented and presented here on a DVD) through discussions with Dean Kenning, a viewer to all the artworks submitted. This is combined with a contextual analysis reflecting on the research behind and ideas provoked by this practical work. The research aims to create an encounter with the photograph or video where the lens-based image, still or moving, is not a window onto a world but operates as a presence sharing the viewer's time and space. I name this changed manner of encounter a live mode of address. I begin the thesis by describing video and films I feel go beyond providing a description and are experienced as a presence. Through looking at the work of Spartacus Chetwynd, John Smith, Laure Provoust, and Ryan Trecartin, I locate reasons for why my concept of a live mode of address happens. I then bring together the different ways it works and greatly expand its limits and possibilities through my own art making. The thesis operates within the field of fine art yet I am challenging the consumption of lens-based images within wider visual culture. This enquiry does not set out to change how the camera works, or question our conventional understanding of what a camera does; its mission is to change how we encounter what it produces. How can I, as an artist operating with a camera - a machine that can only repeat, describe and represent things from the past - engender a live mode of address between a viewer and a lens-based artwork? It is through the production of artwork that this question is explored. In this thesis the artworks are examined in the order they were made, as each one evaluates and takes forward research and ideas present in the previous work. They build on each other to form a cohesive and staged investigation, culminating with my exhibition TO DO (2011) Matt's Gallery. J.L. Austin's theory of performative speech is an important theoretical tool for this thesis. In his series of lectures How To Do Things With Words, Austin asked whether words can produce a reality rather than describe one? I pitch this question not to words, but to the lens-based image and the title of my thesis How To Do Things With Cameras reflects this performative investigation. I go on to examine how the performative use of the camera impacts on a live mode of address and, through considering work by artists including Vito Acconci and John Baldessari, how this must stretch beyond the making of the work to incorporate the artwork's installation. The major element ofthis PhD submission is the exhibition TO DO (2011) at Matt's Gallery, London. Bertolt Brecht's 'Learning Plays' are considered alongside production for this exhibition. TO DO (2011) produces a live mode of address and my examination of how this operates reveals a complicated exchange between the artwork and viewer. The experience of the lens-based images within TO DO (2011) are cut up, fractured, interrupted, non linear and different for each person viewing. They are without limits; they have gone beyond the frame. I describe this as being 'lifelike' - how we experience the world. The term lifelike is normally attached to appearances, which I outline as being the wrong target. A live mode of address has an important relationship to lifelikeness, once lifelikeness is redefined to mean a quality of the encounter.