As the world becomes increasingly aware of the need to better care for the environment, innovative business models are helping to counter the damage of the fast fashion system - a phenomenon in the fashion industry whereby production processes are expedited in order to get new trends to the market as quickly and cheaply as possible. Designing products with a focus on their renewability can shift the product-consumer relationship. The closed loop concept of a “circular economy” is emerging as a viable and promising solution to the current linear business model. This study explores the possibilities of a more mindful approach to systems of production and consumption through material explorations using plastic from water bottles, paper from old newspaper and magazines, and fabric leftovers from pattern making within a circular economy. It considers the generative and renewable approaches in redefining how fashion engages with the components and raw materials of the industry. The research demonstrates a circular approach to the production of hospitality accessories in an effort to develop new intersections between products, materials, and consumers. The accessories are designed using discarded, reformulated denim–an abundant and underutilized byproduct of the fashion industry­–to reduce waste that currently occurs every time hotel chains and airlines produce disposable giveaway products from new materials.

Categorization is a process that simplifies thoughts into manageable pieces by grouping related entities. This reductive analysis can lead to internal harm in individuals’ overarching identities, or Ganzheiten, which is the focus of this thesis. Given that categorization is necessary to our conceptual management of the world, is there a way to counteract the internal harms it can cause? Because acts of self-affirmation can have healing effects, I argue that one manifestation of permanent self-affirmation—custom tattooing—can be an effective repudiation of the divisiveness and reduction categories cause. Custom tattooing’s permanence, individualization, and personal significance make it a great choice as a method of healing internal damage caused by external categorization. Though tattoos might not be the answer for every person experiencing internalized categorization, I have shown that it should be considered as a valid source for the self-affirmation needed to heal from or counteract such internalized harms.

“Between Floors: The Ups and Downs of Mediated Narrative” and the accompanying creative remediation project, “Between Floors: Love and Other Blood Related Diseases,” meld theory and practice of print with electronic literature and installation art. I argue that as the medium changes, the narrative is transformed. The narrative can be reconstructed and pieced together as the reader or viewer becomes increasingly involved, even embodied within the work. This embodiment is what Nathaniel Stern calls “Moving and thinking and feeling” (1) and can result in a more direct emotional experience. The form, structure, and medium (sjužet) rely on authorial intention, yet as a narrative becomes more interactive and experiential the feedback loop shifts, placing meaning, message, and construction of narrative (fabula) between media and reader/viewer. This necessarily complicates the notion of authorship, yet within an embodied space, such as the installations included in this analysis, there is a potential for greater emotional understanding between author/artist and reader/viewer. In the print story “Between Floors: Love and Other Blood Related Diseases,” the protagonist, June, visits her father in a hospital after a tragedy and ends up spending the rest of her life there. The metaphor of an elevator throughout the print, electronic, and installation versions furthers the trapped, claustrophobic feeling of the narrative as well as the ups and downs of relationships and grief. Pieces of the narrative remain recognizable through the electronic literature and installation, yet as the reader/viewer is increasingly immersed in the narrative, it becomes his or her own—a more subjective and overwhelming emotional experience. The elevator metaphor extends through the analysis—an emblem of traditional linear narratives and the narrative arc and technological immersion. The analysis explores theories of language, medium, authorship, nonlinearity, interactivity, and embodiment through existing narrative, new media, and installation theorists such as Peter Brooks, Marshall McLuhan, and Nathaniel Stern. This dissertation and to an extent, experiment, uses theory and practice to illuminate narrative using a recombination of existing theory and an original remediation in three distinct forms, to further the understanding of the nature of narratives, media, authors, and readers, while blurring boundaries between disciplines.

This dissertation examines intersections of the development of maps from the Native American-European encounter to the establishment of the New Republic and transatlantic British and American narratives of women’s travel of the long eighteenth century. Early European and American maps that depict the Americas analyzed as parallel “texts” to canonical and lesser-known women’s narratives ranging from 1688 to 1801 reveal further insights into both maps and these narratives otherwise not apparent. I argue that as mapping of the New World developed, this mapping influenced representations of women’s geographic and social mobility and emergent “American” identity in transatlantic narratives. These narratives, like maps of the New World, reveal disjunctures in representation that disseminate deceptive portrayals of the New World. Such discrepancies open a rhetorical gap, or a thirdspace, of inquiry to analyze the gaze at work within these cartographic and women’s narratives. The representations of women’s geographic and social mobility remain constricted within the selected narratives of women’s travel. While the heroines do travel, in most cases they travel as captives or in some form of escape. These narratives include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), Unca Eliza Winkfield’s The Female American (1767), Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (1794), and Tabitha Tenney’s Female Quixotism (1801), among others. However, these narratives do highlight similarities of an emergent “American” identity as Native American, hybrid, and fluid as represented in contemporaneous maps. Literary Landscapes also addresses the narrativity of maps as auto/biographical and even satirical expressions as related to the women’s narratives analyzed in this study. For, J. B. Harley discusses how a map conveys his own life and contains his memories in his essay “The Map as Biography,” while Roland Barthes argues that mapping is a sensorial experience in his brief essay “No Address.” Furthermore, allegorical maps like Jean de Gourmont’s The Fool’s Cap Map of the World (ca. 1590) and Madeleine de Scudéry’s Carte de tendre (1678) reflect aspects of the human condition such as folly and friendship.

In Sudan, 110 babies are abandoned in the streets of Khartoum every month. The majority of abandoned children are born out of wedlock. Young women with illegitimate pregnancies are often ostracized by their families and society, and the lack of emotional, financial and legal support has led many to take desperate measures, including the abandonment of their children. Relinquishing mothers exist like ghosts in Sudanese society. The only evidence of the mother’s experience is her anonymous, abandoned child. In order to understand and examine this phenomenon, I used ethnographic performance art informed by design research practice (Performative Research Design). I performed various acts of abandonment to examine the mechanism and psychology of the act of abandonment. I endeavored through concrete, lived experiences to better empathize with the relinquishing mother and create awareness of the wider psychological and social complexities of child abandonment.

Containing portraiture and biography as well as protest text and affirmative text, African- American Illustrated biographical dictionaries made from 1876 to 1917 present Social Gospel ideology and are examples of Afro-Protestantism. They are similar to the first American illustrated biographical dictionaries of the 1810s in that they formed social identity after national conflict while contesting concepts of social inferiority. The production of these books occurred during the early years of Jim Crow, a period of momentous change to the legal and social fabric of the United States, and because of momentous changes in modern American print industries. While portraits within the books simultaneously form, blur, and stabilize identity, biographies convey themes of perseverance, social equity, and social struggle. More specifically, text formed an imagined community in the African-American middle class imaginary. It worked together with image to help create a proto-Civil Rights social movement identity during the beginning of racial apartheid.

This dissertation, G.A.M.E., refashions James McNeill Whistler’s book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, into a hypermediated facsimile text and archive. By remediating the text, the socio-historical context of the Victorian time period in which Whistler lived is reestablished, making his book more accessible to twenty-first century audiences. The era studied in this dissertation includes the expansion of the idea of celebrity, the power of the press, and the concept of art for art’s sake from 1863 through 1892. In order to showcase these concepts, archival materials, such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and published pamphlets, from this period were collected, digitized, and organized into a digital archive and edition. In 1890, Whistler, an American-born, British-based artist known for his arguments with the critics of his day, published The Gentle Art, a collection of previously printed letters and pamphlets. Throughout the book, Whistler refers to people, publications, and events relevant to himself and his work. Persons unfamiliar with those references may find themselves frustrated while reading due to the lost social and historical context referred to on the pages, because those references remain difficult to access. G.A.M.E., makes Whistler’s The Gentle Art more accessible by realizing the proto- hypertextual nature of his book. Like many modern-day websites, The Gentle Art contains numerous references to references – a virtual daisy chain of associations Whistler made to and with his work encircling his artistic philosophy, art for art’s sake. From 1890, when the book was published, until now, Whistler’s “links” have remained dormant on the page. G.A.M.E. activates those links and reanimates The Gentle Art via a hypermediated facsimile text for twenty-first century readers. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies is a window into the late Victorian art world. G.A.M.E. houses and archives this contextual material in order to resurrect The Gentle Art and reconcile it with the man who created it.

Artist Statement The organic patterns all around me are what intrigues and inspires my textile, glass, and painting compositions. I find beauty within the natural growth patterns of things both large and small. My work references the reverberated growth processes in living things from the macroscopic observation of a plant to the microscopic viewpoint of its cells. Like the beauty found within these organic configurations, my process begins with creating serendipitous marks with a reference to natural patterns. Then, I intuitively respond to what I see in front of me. As I work, I use repetitious lines and shapes and a vibrant, non-naturalistic color palette. My choices of colors are personally motivated, and the combinations and manipulations are intuitive. Pattern and color are both visual languages that affect individuals differently. While my use of both is in response to my own experiences, my works allow the viewer to respond and connect in their own way.

My art is a means for investigating the passage of time, the decay of physical things, and the truth of mortality. I explore these concepts through process-oriented sculptures that emphasize ritual and material. The process is communicated with the creation of relics, often existing as drawings or the remains of degenerated sculptures. These relics bear witness to the process. I focus on themes of temporal change and death because they remain central to our metaphysical and physical existence. I see a diminished reverence for the power of death in our culture, and through my work I aim to pay homage to death while offering viewers an experience of “being present,” a deeper awareness of our existence in time. The mindfulness I speak of is an awareness of life’s temporal nature. My intention is to evoke an awareness of mortality giving rise to feelings of gratitude and humility.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:10:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cesar Augusto Baio Santos.pdf: 2736898 bytes, checksum: 06ae90a48c2064c02ad0d62ffdd329b3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-05-16 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This work investigates the transformations in processes of intermediation of sense in digital image and its aesthetic unfoldings. In order to achieve that, an update of theories on dispositif is suggested (BAUDRY, FOUCAULT, DELEUZE), mainly based on the systemic phenomenology of Vilém Flusser, to develop thinking on a non-immersive condition of image. This hypothesis is taken forward with the problematization of neoplatonic conceptions regarding virtual environments (HEIM, FRIEDBERG, GRAU) which establish sense regimes based on the abduction of the individual in the parallel worlds of immersive environments. The main issues raised are related to the validity of these theories towards the dispositifs created in a context of Augmented Reality, ubiquitous computing (WEISER), cybrid condition of space (ANDERS) and networks (BEIGUELMAN); and, above all, of interfaces based on physical computing and algorithms of computer vision. Interpreted as a projection of conceptual abstraction towards concreteness of experience, image stops being understood for dualities between what's "real" and "virtual" or "physical" and "informational", to present itself as a phenomenon that is projected from the dispositif to establish new relations with phenomenons of other natures which constitute reality. Considering this project's condition, image starts to give itself to experience through processes of objectification and otherization, installing new aesthetic experiences of image. Being integrated to the coded world (FLUSSER), image becomes an object of a specific genesis among many others which surround us. However, the processes of otherization approximate the condition of image and of the individual to that one assigned to the body in performance aesthetics (COHEN, LEHMANN, FISCHER-LICHTE), demanding from both a performative posture based on the significant value of presence (GUMBRECHT, ZUMTHOR) and gesture (FLUSSER). Those transformations in the intermediation processes between piece and individual launch new aesthetic vectors to the understanding of media art. This scenery is outlined in this research considering the analysis of audiovisual pieces produced in the last two decades, which present themselves as technical dispositifs that are open to someone's interaction. The immersive environments in Virtual Reality, CAVEʼs and digital panoramas are analyzed against cybernetic dispositifs, pieces that use techniques of augmented reality and others that put image and public in performative conditions. The analysis goes through theories of media art (BELLOUR, DUBOIS, MACHADO) and of new media (MURAY, MANOVICH, COUCHOT, WEIBEL, HANSEN) identifying displacements in the condition of image and of subjectivity's figures, this way demanding other postures and sensibilities, both from creators and from those who place themselves before the image / Este trabalho investiga as transformações nos processos de agenciamento de sentido da imagem digital e seus desdobramentos estéticos. Para tanto é proposta uma atualização das teorias do dispositivo (BAUDRY, FOUCAULT, DELEUZE), principalmente a partir da fenomenologia sistêmica de Vilém Flusser, para pensar uma condição não imersiva da imagem. Esta hipótese é levada adiante com a problematização das concepções neoplatônicas dos ambientes virtuais (HEIM, FRIEDBERG, GRAU), que estabelecem regimes de sentido fundados na abdução do sujeito nos mundos paralelos dos ambientes imersivos. As principais questões levantadas se referem à validade de tais teorias frente aos dispositivos criados no contexto da Realidade Aumentada, da ubiquidade computacional (WEISER), da condição cíbrida do espaço (ANDERS) e das redes (BEIGUELMAN); e, sobretudo, das interfaces baseadas na computação física e nos algoritmos de computer vision. Entendida como uma projeção da abstração conceitual rumo à concretude da experiência, a imagem deixa de ser compreendida por dualidades entre real e virtual ou físico e informacional para se apresentar com um fenômeno que se projeta do dispositivo para estabelecer relações com fenômenos de outras naturezas que constituem a realidade. Nessa condição de projeto, a imagem passa a se dar à experiência por meio de processos de objetivação e outrificação, instalando novas experiências estéticas da imagem. Integrada ao mundo codificado (FLUSSER), a imagem torna-se um objeto de gênese específica dentre tantos outros que nos cercam. No entanto, os processos de outrificação aproximam a condição da imagem e do sujeito àquela conferida ao corpo na estética da performance (COHEN, LEHMANN, FISCHERLICHTE), demandando de ambos uma postura performativa pautada no valor significante da presença (GUMBRECHT, ZUMTHOR) e do gesto (FLUSSER). Tais transformações nos processos de agenciamento entre obra e sujeito lançam assim novos vetores estéticos para a compreensão da media art. Esse cenário é delineado nesta pesquisa a partir da análise de obras audiovisuais produzidas nas últimas duas décadas que se apresentam elas mesmas como dispositivos técnicos abertos à interação do sujeito. Os ambientes imersivos em Realidade Virtual, CAVEʼs e panoramas digitais são analisados em contraposição aos dispositivos da cibernética, aos trabalhos que utilizam técnicas de realidade aumentada e outros que colocam imagem e público em condições performativas. As análises atravessam as teorias da media art (BELLOUR, DUBOIS, MACHADO) e da nova mídia (MURRAY, MANOVICH, COUCHOT, WEIBEL, HANSEN) identificando deslocamentos na condição da imagem e das figuras de subjetividade, demandando assim outras posturas e sensibilidades, tanto dos criadores quanto daquele que se posiciona diante da imagem