I have used practice as method to investigate the creative potential of portable projectors, and theoretical approaches to reflect on: 1. the perception of the environment and its textures, 2. the sense of place-making and being while in motion, 3. the portability and collective mediation of the environment, and 4. the collaborative process of participation. These four themes emerged from the four video walks I developed during the research: The Surface Inside (2011), I-Walk (2012), Walk-itch (2013), and (wh)ere land (2014). To delve into the philosophical nuances and practical outcomes, I have paired the four video walks with the four themes. This research approach resembles the design process, where practice develops in the action of reflection (Schon, 1983). The thesis and portfolio are the result of an iterative practice-reflection process which is based on the thread metaphor. The experience of being and walking in the environment is proprioceptive (J. J. Gibson, 1986) and can only be partially conveyed through audiovisual records. People experience the complex texture of the environment in motion (i.e. accretion of surfaces). While moving, they thread their own paths into the environment (Ingold, 2007) and establish links with the environment, technology and others. As they move, people experience the texturality of the surfaces they encounter. Video records captured with visual apparatuses (Flusser, 2000) are a fraction of the points of observation a person may have adopted while walking in and experiencing the environment. These records are likely to be created with PEDs, shared in digital environments and accessed on digital screens. When these records are experienced on digital screens, the texture of the environment is reduced to a flat surface. PEDs, with their digital screens, are carried around everyday and enable people to communicate with others, to collect and share audiovisual material, and to experience hybrid environments where tangible and digital realms converge (Coyne, 2010). Audiovisuals can be accessed anywhere and are no longer dependent on the architectures that hosted them in the past. Yet, PEDs may also isolate people from their immediate surroundings and favour introspective engagement with audiovisual content, digital others and digital environments (Turkle, 2011). The size of PEDs limits the number of people that can engage with the content at only one time. Pocketsize devices tend to be used individually, and their audiovisual content played through digital screens and headphones which foster cocoon-like engagement. Through the four video walks, I investigate how portable projectors may be used to challenge this inward looking mode of experiencing audiovisuals on flat digital screens, and to devise participatory events where people thread their paths in the environment, and project and engage with audiovisuals together. In the video walks, I invite people to move with projections and explore mediated public environments. Instead of sitting in front of fixed projections or looking at digital screens, people experience and share visuals while walking and projecting them in the environment. Portable projectors are starting to be embedded in mobile phones and other portable electronic devices (PEDs), and this presents new challenges and opportunities to creative practitioners. Thus, I study the affordances of portable projectors and develop artworks where participants walk, project visuals and explore textures in the environment collectively.

No abstract available / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Visual Arts / unrestricted

No description available.

This thesis explores how the aura of the artworks changes in the age of digital reproduction through the empirical experiments conducted in Uppsala Konstmuseum. By employing the definition of the aura given by Benjamin in The work of art in the age of the mechanical reproduction and The arcade project, this thesis conceptualizes the “aura” into eight dimensions and then operationalizes the eight dimensions in order to find whether audience’s evaluation of the artwork changes when they are given different stimulus in the control experiment. From the control experiment, the quantitative data will be obtained from a questionnaire and non-participant observation. The qualitative data will be obtained from the interviews. By also applying the simulacra theory of Baudrillard to the analysis part, this thesis finds that there exists a small difference in the perception of the aura between the people who see a digital copy and who see a real painting. The aura still has its power. However, such power is really weak, as many dimensions of the aura have been weakened by the digital simulacra. Through this study, I suggest the museums to take cautious steps to digitalize their artworks though there is no evidence that virtual museums can replace real museums.

La collection demeure un puissant moteur de curiosité en perpétuelle effervescence. Elle relève de la sphère artistique et participe de l’indicible. Elle échappe à la logique et à la rationalité. Elle nous dépasse et ne relève que de l’ordre du sensible. C’est pourquoi en parlant des relations entre l’art et la société, la collection occupe une place singulière. Pourtant, si les études juridiques consacrées aux œuvres d’art sont nombreuses, il en irait autrement pour les collections, alors même qu'elles sont heurtées depuis plusieurs décennies par de nombreux bouleversements économiques et artistiques peu étudiés par le droit. Un tel constat conduit à ramener les collections dans le champ d’une analyse juridique. Celui-ci n’est pas seulement académique et il implique de réelles conséquences pratiques. Comment la collection est-elle appréhendée par le droit ? Quel est son avenir juridique ? Telles sont les interrogations qui vont permettre de remonter aux sources de ce corpus pour mieux envisager son devenir. Pour ce faire, il convient d’appréhender la consistance même de la collection par le prisme de la propriété et ses régimes de protection. Puis, il sera permis d'envisager la gestion et la transmission juridique de ces patrimoines artistiques qui s’enracinent dans le cadre d’une activité culturelle des collectionneurs publics et privés. Dans une approche pluridisciplinaire, l’étude présente de façon à la fois globale et cohérente l’appréhension de la collection par le droit. Il s’agit de contribuer à une compréhension accrue des instruments permettant le fonctionnement de cet ensemble dans la relation qu’il entretient avec le droit, son marché et ses divers protagonistes. En mettant en évidence la contradiction entre la volonté du législateur d’encourager le développement des collections et les restrictions qu’il impose, l’étude participe, à sa mesure, à la connaissance juridique de cet objet, à sa valorisation et à sa conservation sur le territoire afin de déployer une nouvelle « culture de la collection ». C’est ainsi que l’on peut vérifier une nouvelle fois que le droit est un outil d’intelligence de réalité sociale pour la collection et un matériau directement expérimentable par le collectionneur pour aller au-delà du droit. / The collection remains a powerful engine of curiosity in perpetual effervescence. It concerns the artistic sphere and takes part of the inexpressible one. She escapes from logic and rationality. She’s beyond us and raises only about the sensitive one. Therefore, speaking of the relationship between art and society, the collection occupies a singular place. However, if the legal studies devoted to artworks are numerous, it would be different for collections, while at the same time they have been run up against for several decades by many economic and artistic upheavals, little studied by the law. Such a report led to bring back the collections in the field of a legal analysis. It’s not only academic and involves real practical consequences. How is the collection apprehended by the law? Which is its legal future? These are the questions that will help to go back to the sources of these corpus to better consider their destiny. With this intention, it’s advisable to appreciate the consistency of the through the prism of the property and its protection schemes. Then it’ll be possible to consider the management and the legal transmission of such artistic heritage which roots in the context of a cultural activity of public and private art collectors. In a multidisciplinary approach, the study presents so both comprehensive and coherent apprehension of the collection by the law. This is to contribute to an increased understanding of the instruments allowing the operation of this set in its relationship with law, its market and its various protagonists. By highlighting the contradiction between legislator’s desire to encourage the development of collections and the restrictions it imposes, the study involved in its extent, the legal knowledge of this subject, its valorization, and its conservation on the territory in order to deploy a new "collection’s culture". Thus one can verify once again that the law is a tool of intelligence of social reality for the collection and a material directly usable by the art collector to go beyond the law.

This thesis named "Analysis of natural organic dyes and pigments by mass spectrometry" investigates the identification of selected natural organic dyes and pigments by qualitative Laser Desorption/Ionisation - Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry analysis (LDI-TOF MS). The advantage of LDI-TOF MS method is its quick and reliable identification of low molecular weight material without preparatory chemical or time-consuming modification of samples. This method can be used for the analysis of works of art or for verifying their authenticity thanks to requiring only a little amount of sample. The LDI-TOF MS was tested on 19 organic dyes and pigments (e.g. alizarin, apigenin, baicalein, flavone, xanthone, tannic acid), four exemplarily prepared lakes (alizarin, purpurin, chrysin a quercetin lakes) and lakes mixed with organic binding media. The method was also successfully applied to two samples of blue color that were taken from Josef Čapek's painting called 'Procházka' (The Walk), that was dating back to 1936.

Digital media technologies are becoming increasingly and extensively integrated into our way of living. We communicate, inform and entertain ourselves through media technologies in disparate spaces. When digital technology is integrated into our everyday environment, the border between media interfaces and physical environments is blurred. Traditional divisions of spaces dissolve and are rearranged, complicating the linkages between private and public spheres.   The key phenomenon shaping these experiences with digital media technologies is interactivity. Interactivity intersects these spaces allowing users of mediated content to be affected by the actual, and vice versa. This study has emerged through the need for further research focusing on the term interactivity in today’s media practices, contributing with more targeted research and theoretical work concerning the interconnection between space and digital technologies. The study pursues interactivity by taking on a different perspective than earlier research, staging a qualitative study from a grounded theory perspective complemented by phenomenological theory. In this way interactivity is approached from diverse angles, moving away from earlier fixations on technology and placing it within social and spatial contexts.   The study uses three contemporary Scandinavian interactive art installations, ‘Colour by Numbers’, ‘Emotional Cities’ and ‘Climate on the Wall’, to explore how interactivity plays into the relation between humans, technology and social space. The integration of interactive art installations in public space raises issues regarding humans’ sense of space and human relations vis-à-vis interactions with such artworks. The study finds evidence that interactive art installations can shift humans’ perceptions of space, allowing them to have social experiences and feel locally connected or anchored. Humans do not necessarily become placeless due to interactive technology. It may as well enhance space by converging with existing spatial references. The mediated and the actual may re-enforce each other expanding and transcending diverse spaces.

The main goal of Ocean & Rusty photography shop is to bring the fine art photography to people’s daily life. It mainly aims at the entry-level and mid market for photography lovers and the people who would like to decorate their living space with photography works. It means Ocean & Rusty photography shop provides a platform for most of the photographers, art enthusiasts, and collectors. The main services for Ocean & Rusty photography shop includes art broker, photography works selling, photography teaching, photo books selling, and photography event organization. Ocean & Rusty photography shop expects to reach 10% market share in fifth year. It means the total sales will over 30 millions, the highest IRR will reach 737%, and the net profit ratio will be around 27%.

The thesis sets out to examine a digitization project of an obsolete art database that was issued by the Finnish joint municipal authority Finlands Svenska Förbund för Utbildning och Kultur (SÖFUK) and KulturÖsterbotten through questions on obsolescence, the reasoning behind using an obsolete database for so long, elements that characterize digitization work in municipal settings and the challenges such a project brings forth. The SÖFUK art database functions as a case study that is being examined through action research supported by previous research on obsolescence and the different approaches to digitization within the humanities; mass, critical, and slow digitization. The goal of the digitization project is to transfer the data from the old MS Access 97 art database to the modern solution Katalogen, and to take new photographs of the artworks because of their unfavourable quality. The goal is hence to digitize the art database anew. The steps taken to digitize the art database are described throughout the digitization process. With the help of a constructed analytical tool supported by previous research on obsolescence, the old art database is analyzed and discussed to answer the question on which types of obsolescence that could be found regarding the database. The thesis is also supported by previous research on the digitization approaches mass, critical and slow digitization, with slow digitization being the favoured approach for the nature of this digitization project. The results show that various findings of obsolescence could be noted in the old art database. Elements of digitization in municipalities can be linked to communication, time management and cooperation. The challenges vary from light being reflected in plexiglass while photographing to difficulties localizing artworks in the municipalities. Why the obsolete art database was used for so long by SÖFUK and KulturÖsterbotten was that an external resource was needed to do the tedious work of localizing the artworks and travel to the fourteen municipalities to photograph each artwork.

No / Collaboration in art, design and media has traditionally taken place in the studio. Recent experiments in collaboration and interaction have sought to identify the factors that promote productive and creative collaboration and those that do not. It is clear that virtual collaboration mediated by computer networks can include many of the elements that characterise face to face collaboration. This also facilitates international collaboration just as easily as national and local ones. At the same time, digital convergence is producing environments and artefacts that blur the traditional distinctions between art and technology, and which give rise to new creative opportunities and new kinds of creative works. These are described in this paper and their significance is explored. These also cause further reflections on the contributions that science can make to art and vice-versa.