Being Local; a sense of place - details a journey during which I explore the notion that one aspect of art is seen best as a local activity, with the artist exploring his/her sense of place. Reading of relevant texts, and research of the conceptual basis of the notion, resulted in written and visual works. The writing records selected aspects of my thinking, detailing arrivals and discoveries, the development of art objects. Ultimately the research suggests that a sense of place is unfinished business; an ongoing process, a constant part of any vernacular or local activity. ‘Place’ is a story to be told and retold, a relationship constantly being renewed. Specifically, the story told here is from my own past to arrival in the settlement of Gladstone where I live on a three acre farmlet. That farmlet is the particular site in which I have carried out work exploring my thesis during 2007. The idea that art works are intrinsically local, inherently determined by my relationship with the place where I work, is an important part of the story. The acting of creating, is one of many relationships entwined in stories without which there can be no place to have a sense of. Another is the sharing of food. I have combined both the making of objects, and the sharing of food, as relational activities expressing ‘know how’, an art project.

The familiar computer graphic user interface (GUI) makes extensive use of visually representative devices such as folders and files. These symbols help the user deal with computer data and operations that otherwise have little or no physical form. The computer’s underlying complexity is symbolised for the user, who is then able to manipulate the computer by interacting directly with the interface. The early development of computer interface design was largely the domain of software and hardware developers. Many sound principles of user interaction and testing were established and provided essential guidance for new generations of interface designers. As computer technology and its tools became more widely available, a broader range of designers began contributing, including those from product design and visual communication. This study is written from the point of view of a “visual designer” – a designer who began his career in graphic design and who has moved towards interface design out of curiosity and a desire to proffer a different attitude and approach to interface issues. The study therefore will demonstrate a design process that many visual designers will be able to identify with. The process includes research, analysis, methodical progression and artistic inspiration. The artistic inspiration in this case comes from the Constructivist artist El Lissitzky, and will illustrate the significant contribution that art can make to interface design. This art-influenced design process was presented at the 2005 Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Multimedia, (Montreal, 2005). The enthusiastic response and discussion provided encouragement to continue in this direction. In the following year another presentation, which included the working prototype, was presented as part of a keynote speaker presentation at the 2006 Siggraph Taipei Conference, National Chiao Tung University, Taipei. The specific task chosen to work with in this study is that of Web browser history. As a user browses the Web the computer records a list of visited websites. The first few generations of browsers presented this information as a simple list, but this approach incorporated many flaws and caused problems for users. More recent browsers provide more options, but significant issues remain. This study offers solutions to several of these problems. The resulting design prototype is named “isoBrowser”. It is the result of the alternative design process outlined above and offers alternative methods of visualising, organising and manipulating data. The prototype is not intended to be fully functional nor “live”. However, it is sufficiently operable so as to test interface interaction and user response. A fully functional version, operably and aesthetically complete, would be the subject of further development.

Since the first gold-seekers arrived in New Zealand in the 1860s, Chinese have been regarded as outsiders to discussions of national identity. Colonial representations of otherness have left Chinese longing to be recognised as established settlers. Fresh interpretations are much needed to align myth with the longstanding realities of settlement. The absence of a recognisable Chinatown in New Zealand has meant that many of the Chinese customs inherited from the first settlers are observed in private within the family home. This condition coupled with emerging research and exposure on the topic offers a chance to define Chinese spaces and author Chinese stories from within a local community. This research project interrogates the transformation of Cantonese settlers into Chinese New Zealanders through illustration design. By claiming the book as a space, unsung moments of settlement are made visible to challenge stereotypes and forge a new space for Chinese New Zealand stories. The process of collage is used to illustrate the complexities of constructing identity. Home Made is an alternative cultural history told through visual metaphor. Gold was responsible for first transforming the sojourner into the settler, the bowl is used to mediate tradition between home and enterprise in settlement, while the lantern illuminates and celebrates local Chinese spaces. Brought out from home kitchens and backrooms of family businesses, these artefacts represent a longstanding Chinese presence. Home Made activates these metaphors to structure an argument for the longevity and contemporary significance of Chinese settlement in New Zealand.

In memory of cats: The camera and the ordinary moment looks at the way in which families use photographs to remember the past. Photography’s offer of memory is limited to a visual trace, so strategies of oral telling are examined to interrogate the way in which memories can be recovered from photographs. Martha Langford’s study of the similarities between structures in oral culture and the photograph album and Annette Kuhn’s strategies for reading family photographs in a broader historical context, are used to examine and recover memories from my own photographic archive. Using moving image to record those memories and then tell how that photographic evidence has shaped my present, is a process suggested by Linda Williams in her writing about how postmodern documentary can use the past to intervene in the present. Other documentary styles, performative documentary and the essay film, offer a structure for personal memories to be revisited and re-presented to public viewers. Offering a space for personal or specific memories to be understood or related to by a viewer is discussed by Lisa Saltzman, who looks at indexical forms other than the photograph, like casting and tracing. These ideas culminated in my video work, A Clowder of Cats, which explores the losses that have been a part of my history, through photographs of the cats my family has owned. The camera gives us a strategy to remember moments that may otherwise have been forgotten, and moving image provides a space for those ordinary moments to be bought back to the present.

Taking my own personal history as a starting point this paper will look at how we inherit culture and in turn shape it through the stories and objects that drive its formation. This extends into how these objects proliferate within our culture and the way in which the passing of History impacts on the way we view them and as a consequence ourselves as individuals and as a group. Identity is then passed on through generations through the act of storytelling, and this process is integral to this research paper. This is also a personal journey, taking place in varying sites, from a rusting car hulk in a back yard in North Canterbury, to a University in Wellington and another rusted car, which has gone through a strange restoration. The Morris Minor has been embraced as a narcissistic object that I have chosen to double in order to explore my individual and wider national cultural history and identity. One of the key themes of this inherited identity is largely based around Nostalgia for an ideal past. This ideal is a fiction, a layering of intended futures as well as a selective past. This works in the same way as the modern artistic preoccupation with gothic histories, but instead of a positive ideal we have the creation of a basement of horrors that lurks beneath the surface. Be it positivist idealism or Gothic inversion, one way of focusing on the way these fictions differ markedly from the reality of the objects existence, is to show the artifice of the stories told by enhancing the components of the story that are already exaggerated, for the Morris Minor this means getting as far away from its existence as a rusting hulk in the backyard as possible. The longing for a past that may or may not exist, is less important as existing in reality but instead for what these fictions supply in their retelling. The concept of the Uncanny is integral to this retelling of memory, in that through a memories reanimation it can only approximate the original event leaving gaps for circumspection and invention. This retelling necessitates a reorientation in the relationship between the teller of the tale and the listener and between the viewer and the object viewed. The research culminates in the alteration of a Morris Minor to appear as one continuous surface. The intention of which is to engage with the differing versions of the objects past through taking an active part in its reconstruction as artwork with the aim of reassessment not only of my individual approach to the object but also the viewers.

Taking my own personal history as a starting point this paper will look at how we inherit culture and in turn shape it through the stories and objects that drive its formation. This extends into how these objects proliferate within our culture and the way in which the passing of History impacts on the way we view them and as a consequence ourselves as individuals and as a group. Identity is then passed on through generations through the act of storytelling, and this process is integral to this research paper. This is also a personal journey, taking place in varying sites, from a rusting car hulk in a back yard in North Canterbury, to a University in Wellington and another rusted car, which has gone through a strange restoration. The Morris Minor has been embraced as a narcissistic object that I have chosen to double in order to explore my individual and wider national cultural history and identity. One of the key themes of this inherited identity is largely based around Nostalgia for an ideal past. This ideal is a fiction, a layering of intended futures as well as a selective past. This works in the same way as the modern artistic preoccupation with gothic histories, but instead of a positive ideal we have the creation of a basement of horrors that lurks beneath the surface. Be it positivist idealism or Gothic inversion, one way of focusing on the way these fictions differ markedly from the reality of the objects existence, is to show the artifice of the stories told by enhancing the components of the story that are already exaggerated, for the Morris Minor this means getting as far away from its existence as a rusting hulk in the backyard as possible. The longing for a past that may or may not exist, is less important as existing in reality but instead for what these fictions supply in their retelling. The concept of the Uncanny is integral to this retelling of memory, in that through a memories reanimation it can only approximate the original event leaving gaps for circumspection and invention. This retelling necessitates a reorientation in the relationship between the teller of the tale and the listener and between the viewer and the object viewed. The research culminates in the alteration of a Morris Minor to appear as one continuous surface. The intention of which is to engage with the differing versions of the objects past through taking an active part in its reconstruction as artwork with the aim of reassessment not only of my individual approach to the object but also the viewers.

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om och hur gymnasieelever ges möjlighet att reflektera över sitt eget skapande i Bild. Studien har utförts inom ramen för Estetisk verksamhet då dess kursplan anger reflektion som ett av målen för Godkänt betyg. Då det ingår i lärarens arbete att</p><p>ytterst ansvara för planering av kursen utifrån aktuell kursplan, utgår studien från ett lärarperspektiv. För att se hur bildundervisningen ger möjlighet till reflektion har observationer utförts på tre gymnasieskolor med påföljande intervjuer med respektive lärare. Studien granskar nuvarande, dåvarande samt en föreslagen kursplan, för att se vilken betydelse som ges begreppet reflektion. Resultatet pekar på att det förekommer reflektion, främst i muntlig form, men att reflektion verkar vara svårt att konkretisera i praktiken.</p>

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om och hur gymnasieelever ges möjlighet att reflektera över sitt eget skapande i Bild. Studien har utförts inom ramen för Estetisk verksamhet då dess kursplan anger reflektion som ett av målen för Godkänt betyg. Då det ingår i lärarens arbete att ytterst ansvara för planering av kursen utifrån aktuell kursplan, utgår studien från ett lärarperspektiv. För att se hur bildundervisningen ger möjlighet till reflektion har observationer utförts på tre gymnasieskolor med påföljande intervjuer med respektive lärare. Studien granskar nuvarande, dåvarande samt en föreslagen kursplan, för att se vilken betydelse som ges begreppet reflektion. Resultatet pekar på att det förekommer reflektion, främst i muntlig form, men att reflektion verkar vara svårt att konkretisera i praktiken.

This study examines the ways in which the concept of &#039 / national design&#039 / informs evaluation of products and their designers, through the example of the field of industrial design in Turkey and the recently influential design magazine Art+Decor. For this purpose, first of all, &#039 / evaluation&#039 / is analyzed as a means in which meanings are imposed on products, and as a tool in struggles for positions and status within the field of industrial design. Then, the role of &#039 / nationality&#039 / in such a function of evaluation is investigated. Finally, a case study is provided, in which the employment of the concept of &#039 / Turkish design&#039 / in evaluation of products and designers is analyzed within the texts published in Art+Decor magazine between 2003 and 2005.

This study investigates the petrographical and chemical characteristics of a group of Zeuxippus Ware Related Ceramics dating to the late 12th-13th centuries from Kusadasi Kadikalesi/Anaia. Kadikalesi was a Byzantine fortress at the coast of Aegean Sea. It was also a significant commercial port and an episcopacy center during the 13th century. In this study, visual classifications of the ceramics were carried out based on their stylistic properties. Then, ceramic samples were investigated by several methods including mineralogical, micromorphological, chemical (SEM-EDX, ICP-OES, ICP-MS) and Raman Spectrometry techniques and further evaluated by statistical analyses. Bodies are found to be rich in SiO2 and Al2O3 while relatively high amounts of Fe2O3 measured, agree well with their reddish bodies. These bodies mostly display micaceous matrix with a relatively low degree of vitrification. Cluster analysis performed among thirty selected samples, points out the presence of two main groups. Observed slip layers are also found to be rich in SiO2 and Al2O3 contents and exhibit various types of crystalline and/or vitreous matrix. Glazes are found to be high lead glazes processed at or below. The glazes are found to be high lead glazes processed at or below 700&deg / C as confirmed by SEM-EDX and Raman spectrometry investigations. Iron compounds are the major coloring agents for most of the glazes analyzed regardless of their observed colors. Presence of Raman peaks in some yellow glazes which may be assigned to a solid solution of Naples yellow type of pigment is significant since its use in the Byzantine period as a glaze pigment has been scarcely reported before.