Taking as a guiding thread the idea of absence or emptiness as a constitutive trait of all images, this dissertation reviews how this idea has been defended or ignored throughout diverse iconoclast moments in Western Christian civilization, focusing on the possible consequences that the basculating movement of acceptance-rejection of the image's emptiness might have for contemporary approaches to the image. The iconoclast debate from the eighth century, and the works of Freud and Lacan will be used as paradigmatic moments to penetrate into the difficult relationship man has had with images and the imaginary throughout an extended period of Western Christian history.

In this thesis, I argue that traditional Chinese thinking and its manner of approaching art can be successfully expanded onto a different platform: digital media art. My research (both in theory and practice) shows how this transformation expands the notions of time and space and forges new interdisciplinary correlations by addressing traditional Chinese culture in four different but interrelated manifestations: the philosophy of Dao, calligraphy, painting and sculpture. As a result, I claim that digital media can shift the notions of time and space from traditional Chinese thinking into contemporary digital art. Conversely, the digital concept of time and space can be interpreted by an analysis of (i) the traditional Chinese philosophy of Dao, so as to understand how ancient Chinese perceived the universe of time and space; (ii) four areas of Chinese art addressed in my theoretical and practical research (as elaborated in subsequent chapters). For example, a new understanding of ‘scroll format’, ‘play-appreciation’ and Chinese digital art has been introduced through my own practice. In fact, this direction has not been sufficiently dealt with in the past, and deserves more attention in the future. The thesis demonstrates how my practical research was heavily influenced and contextualized by my theoretical research, while the result of my practical artwork applies, expands and transforms that theory. This thesis aims, both theoretically and practically, at providing the reader with a new experience – the perception of the notions of time and space inherent in traditional Chinese thinking – by combining these concepts with digital technology.  Many different methods used in traditional Chinese scroll painting and calligraphy have in their day investigated and developed new ideas of time and space – e.g. multiple perspectives, binary visual modes, visible and invisible spaces, reversed images and inverted vision. All of these concepts could be further extended through digital moving images and interactive art in order to provide the audience with a new spatiotemporal dimension as an enhancement of visual experience and knowledge.

Through my experimental practice (i.e. interactive art, moving images, workshop and exhibitions), I have illustrated how digital art and digital technology can build on the notions of guan (觀; ‘to observe’), and you (遊; [1] ‘to tour’, ‘to travel’; or [2] ‘to roam’, ‘to saunter’). Furthermore, digital art can help viewers use the notions of play and appreciation – wan shang (玩賞, ‘play-appreciation’) – in Chinese context exhibition spaces. By exploiting this new dimension of experience, contemporary Chinese artists will, it is hoped, be able to introduce the spirit of traditional Chinese thinking to digital platforms, creating a guide that not only broadens the notions of time and space for digital media artists and audiences, but also forges new correlations between the various disciplines of philosophy and media art.

This thesis, therefore, rests on three investigative pillars: (1) contextual analysis through the history of Chinese art and – to a lesser extent – Western art; (2) the possibilities of modern digital media art; (3) analysis and application of the Chinese philosophical tradition (art theory and the notion of time and space) to elucidate and develop the interface between traditional Chinese and modern digital art. The result of my research has shown that what emerges from – and also motivates – the investigation is an understanding that digital art (moving images and interactive art) is an appropriate and effective medium for the communication and deepening of Chinese cultural awareness. My research structure and development is divided into six steps as follows: Firstly, in developing this thesis, I posit that the ideas of time and space [Chinese terms and terminologies: shi jian (時間,‘time’), kong jian (空間, ‘space’), and yu zhou (宇宙, ‘the universe’)] have been handled in traditional Chinese scroll painting and calligraphy through the application of multiple perspectives, binary visual modes, visible and invisible space, the passing of time, and non-linear narratives. When these potentials are reproduced by media artists, novel insights, experiences and knowledge about time and space are re-interpreted for their audiences, while the history of time and space tends to collapse. Secondly, I examine the idea of the ‘Yellow Box’, whose original aim was to suggest a novel approach to the understanding of the relation between contemporary Chinese artworks and museum-based exhibition space. I argue, however, that such a direction does not consider the potential of digital media art, and my practical projects demonstrate that the ‘Yellow Box’ idea still has room for further development in its application to digital art history. Moreover, the analysis of time and space offered here in the context of my own media-art production process (custom software and hardware) can benefit other researchers and artists. The attempt to illustrate Chinese art theories and to document and reflect upon different ways of perceiving the position and role of the audience can provide a unique and fruitful insight into the incorporation of Chinese thinking and manners into media art practice. Thirdly, I analyse the correlation between traditional art and contemporary digital media art in relation to time. I first illustrate how multiple spatiotemporal experiences merge into one pictorial space in terms of non-linear narrative in some significant traditional Chinese art pieces, and then argue that digital art can actually help to re-interpret the traditional Chinese notion of time in a modern dimension. The results of my study reflect how the notions of (1) cycle, (2) non-linear narrative, and (3) ‘play-appreciation’ in ancient Chinese art correlate to the elements of ‘looping’ and ‘layering of content’ in digital art, which allow viewers to have real-time experience of ‘time passing and transitioning’. My analysis, however, also indicates that some contemporary Asian digital artworks (all relating to time transition) have not yet considered the viewer’s spatiotemporal experience in relation to such idea as ‘play-appreciation’ through viewers’ bodily engagement. Fourthly, I examine the spatial correlations between Chinese and media art, and argue that there are many correlations between the past and contemporary Chinese art in the ways in which viewers’ virtual and physical experiences have been applied. I analyse how the idea of ‘two different positions of the viewer’, through painting, reliefs and gunpowder in China, correlates with digital media art today. Such correlation allows the artist to play with the idea of ‘multiple identities’ through digital media (e.g. dual and multiple screens). The results of the analysis reveal a strong correlation between traditional art forms and modern digital media art that permits the artist and the viewer to manipulate the idea of ‘multiple identities’ through dual and multiple screens in both real and virtual spaces. 
Reflecting this, my practical project demonstrates how pictorial and virtual space function as part of one’s cultural identities through viewers’ bodily engagement. For example, in line with my experience of multiple-identities in relation to my own Indonesian-Chinese background on the one hand, and the ‘upstairs culture’ of Hong Kong on the other, I combined a series of fragmentary stills and moving images in the ‘Upstairs / Downstairs’ project (2004-2012) to demonstrate how digital technology can help visualize the notions of multiple viewpoints through multiple screens. From there I went on to ask whether my Asian cultural background could help transform traditional visual experiences onto a digital platform by integrating a sense of ambiguity and multiple identities.

This thesis considers the ways that critical reflection on normalizations of social meaning and structures can provide sites for learning and transformation in a pluralist, divided, and destructive world. It investigates five recent "uncanny" works of art, in order to illustrate the value of critiquing closed frames of reference and attending to theories of hermeneutics, ideology critique, and aesthetics. The thesis explores the elements of postmodern consciousness which raise questions about self, identity, and agency in an era of fragmentation, difference, and challenges to master narratives. Using a dialogue between theory and text, history and fiction, it outlines part of an interpretive project, in which art provides one site for curriculum and public debate regarding a participatory and inclusionary society, thus contributing to a postmodern pedagogy of transformation.

Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 324-334). / Electronic reproduction. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xii, 334 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This study was concerned with the description of nine college studio art instructors' aesthetic beliefs as exhibited in personal art style and ranking of aesthetic beliefs, compared to the content of their class critiques. The review of related literature provided a system for analysis and description of art works and aesthetic beliefs in three principal styles or trends: Formal Order, Expression, and Imagination.

This work is an attempt of interpretation of philosophical views on art of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, as outlined in its raw form in philosophical writings so called strahovská heritage. Strahovská heritage is a collection of so far unpublished philosophical writings, written approximately in the period of 1939 to 1945. These have never been submitted for publication. Philosopher Jan Patočka - in Czech as well as abroad is generally known mainly as a thinker developing thoughts of his famous teachers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger - in the framework of heritage only refers to dilemma of art in a secondary way. Despite this, some referrals to art, which can be found within the framework of this heritage, contain a great potential for further interpretation. Interpretation of these Patočka references to art are required to be put into the wider context of Patočka's thinking and especially adds to understanding of evolution of Patočka's philosophy of art. Patočka's philosophy of art was only fully extended in his later works, namely 1960's of XX. century.

Guided by the question of what does photography bring into being, 'Against Indexicality' is a proposition to rethink the foundation of the philosophy of photography - to rethink the supposed relation of truth between the photograph and the world. Taking Indexicality as a messy and convoluted conceptual field comprised of the notions of pointing, stillness, and fragmentation, this study works to untangle the three from each other, separately challenging each individual notion. In analysing each of the three through their conceptualisation by prominent thinkers, including Charles S. Peirce, Susan Sontag, Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, André Bazin, Rosalind Krauss, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes, and examining them against and through examples of photographic images, this study points to the imprecisions, insufficiencies, and incompatibilities of Indexicality in relation to the photographic image and form. Undoing Indexicality as a field, this study resists Indexicality as a paradigm, proposing a new theoretical framework for photography: rather than looking at photographic images as truth bearers that can evidence the photographed, it proposes to look at photographic images as formations that form a thought out of the photographed. In that, this study works to remedy the Indexicality fever, or compulsion, which it identifies as the root cause of theoretical mess within the philosophy of photography. By evincing that Indexicality is a wrong, albeit necessary, solution to a problem that is to do with identifying the relation of the photograph to the world, it not only lifts photography out of a Procrustean bed in which it was never comfortable, but also allows for a new solution to develop. This solution is the theory of photo-poiesis: a move beyond the materiality and away from the referentiality of photography towards its being in the world and the thought that it forms and brings-forth - towards thinking.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.