This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated

This thesis investigates the factors that influence whether visitors to art exhibitions experience accessible introductory art labels or not. From the need of making art exhibitions and their communication available to more people of society the aim with this study is to increase awareness about the factors that influence accessibility and generate ideas about useful theory concerning accessible labels. By connecting theory concerning the purpose of art exhibitions, the social context of art exhibitions, orientation and disorientation and different views related to exhibition labels the author, by influence from the swedish Special pedagogy educational authority (Specialpedagogiska skolmyndigheten) accessibility model ”tillgänglighetsmodellen”, creates a accessibility model concerning the context of introductory art labels. The study gathered material from visitor interviews and observations from two different art exhibition institutions in Stockholm: Bonniers Konsthall and Spritmuseum, one art gallery and one cultural museum with an art exhibition feature. The analysis from the field work then formed the content of the accessibility model concerning the context of introductory art labels. As a background to the ideas behind the labels interviews where also performed with personnel in command of the communication concerning the labels. The results show that the visitors experience of accessible introductory art labels can be related to physical, social and pedagogical factors. Where the physical factors included reading situation, placing, lighting and soundscape. The social factors included other visitors, the willingness to ”do things right” and disorientation, confusion and uncertainty. The pedagogical factors included legibility, readability and well worth reading. The study also shows that the visitors pre-knowledge of art and habit of visiting art exhibitions could influence the visitors experience of accessibility. Where visitors without pre-knowledge about art history in the art gallery Bonniers Konsthall all found the texts non-accessible depending on a mix of physical, social and pedagogical factors. At the cultural museum Spritmuseum however visitors without pre-knowledge of art could find the text accessible. There a positive experience of the reading situation, including lightning and few other visitors, made visitors feel that the text where more accessible even when they experienced some difficulty with the accessibility related to pedagogical factors like text length. The study shows that the different factors of accessibility related to introductory art labels interacted and influenced the overall experience of text accessibility. This is a two years master's thesis in Museum and cultural heritage studies.

This thesis is a profoundly personal one. It examines the role of context in creation (authorship) and perception (reading an image) of representation. Born in Sri Lanka during the emergence of one the world's longest lasting civil wars, I never recognized my love and concern for the Island and its ancient history and culture until I traveled to America to pursue a higher education. Ever since, I have constantly found myself in situations where I am regarded as the 'other' or the 'outsider' ; I seem to not fit in completely in this country as well as in my own. In the US I am considered 'eastern' or 'exotic', whereas in my own country, I am considered 'westernized', no longer looked at as a typical Sri Lankan woman. This thesis examines and explores marginalization, orientalism, deconstruction theories, semiotic studies, dialect as well as attire, in the specific context of Graphic Design. / by Fathima Asma Nazim. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Unmasking the heroes: sources of power in Afrikaner mythologising is a personal, visual and theoretical exploration of the underlying sources of power which governed the development of Afrikaner nationalism, particularly the years spanning the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The practical work, a series of drawings and relief cut-outs, sets out to unmask the beliefs, customs, traditions and attitudes particular to Afrikaner culture. It does so through the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of selected mass mediated images whereby different symbolic paradigms are juxtaposed through the devices of collage and allegory to uncover layers of meaning. This art-making approach was informed by theoretical and visual research into the tradition of Western mythology, including related topics such as linguistics, psychology and sociology, Afrikaner history and historiography, and the mechanisms of contemporary cultural reproduction, particularly the South African mass media and fine arts. / History of Art and Fine Arts / M.A. (History of Art and Fine Arts)

Unmasking the heroes: sources of power in Afrikaner mythologising is a personal, visual and theoretical exploration of the underlying sources of power which governed the development of Afrikaner nationalism, particularly the years spanning the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The practical work, a series of drawings and relief cut-outs, sets out to unmask the beliefs, customs, traditions and attitudes particular to Afrikaner culture. It does so through the processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of selected mass mediated images whereby different symbolic paradigms are juxtaposed through the devices of collage and allegory to uncover layers of meaning. This art-making approach was informed by theoretical and visual research into the tradition of Western mythology, including related topics such as linguistics, psychology and sociology, Afrikaner history and historiography, and the mechanisms of contemporary cultural reproduction, particularly the South African mass media and fine arts. / History of Art and Fine Arts / M.A. (History of Art and Fine Arts)

La condensation :un outil conceptuel pour la théorie de l’art / Résumé.<p><p>Notre étude sur la condensation tente de montrer l’intérêt d’une voie peu explorée dans le débat sur la nature de l’art, à savoir l’économie sensible des représentations symboliques. Nous donnons tout d’abord consistance au concept de condensation en suivant les écrits de Freud. Freud, un des rares auteurs à avoir thématisé cette notion, fournit dans L’interprétation des rêves les linéaments principaux du concept. Dans l’analyse de cet ouvrage, notre effort se porte sur la distinction entre une approche plastique et une approche symbolique de la condensation, c’est-à-dire l’obtention d’une condensation par composition de différentes figures ou par répétition d’une même représentation. En relation marginale avec la condensation, la méthode d’analyse des rêves nous montre l’importance des thèmes de l’idiosyncrasie et de la totalisation, lesquelles se révéleront en affinité étroite avec celui de la condensation. Nous procédons ensuite à l’analyse du second ouvrage d’importance rapporté à la condensation chez Freud, Le mot d’esprit et sa relation à l’inconscient. L’accent est porté, d’une part, sur la relation entre condensation et économie, et, d’autre part, sur la distinction entre deux états ou attitudes d’esprit révélée par le Witz. <p>Sur base de la thématisation freudienne, nous poursuivons la construction du concept de condensation à partir de l’expérience esthétique ordinaire. Cela comprend, tout d’abord, la simple considération du fonctionnement collégial et simultané de nos différents sens. Nous procédons ensuite à l’analyse de deux modes de représentation, tous deux fondés sur un rapport sensible au réel :la photographie et le cinéma. Par ces analyses, nous tentons de mettre en lumière les caractères élémentaires de la représentation sensible. Avec la photographie nous abordons l’économie sensible de la représentation, c’est-à-dire les transformations quantitatives et qualitatives qui sont au fondement du concept de condensation. Avec l’analyse du cinéma comme mode de représentation, l’effort est porté sur l’explicitation de la tension paradoxale entre présence et représentation dans le droit fil des développements sur le jeu des dimensions sensibles et l’hétérogénéité impliqués dans la représentation photographique. Cette deuxième partie assoit la validité objective du concept de condensation.<p>Dans un troisième temps, nous étayons cette validité objective du concept en la rapportant aux différents intervenants impliqués dans la réalité artistique (principalement, œuvre, créateur, récepteur). Enfin nous confrontons le concept de condensation à deux aspects de la théorie de l’art :un versant spéculatif, l’antinomie du jugement de goût avec les questions de la subjectivité et de l’objectivité, mais aussi et surtout celle de la communicabilité ;un versant plastique, les œuvres atypiques de Marcel Duchamp. Préalablement à l’analyse de ces deux aspects, nous consacrons un chapitre important à une définition du signe tenant compte de la responsabilité du sujet dans la constitution sémiotique. C’est sous le paramètre de la liberté dans notre rapport au symbolique que se rejoignent les deux aspects de la théorie de l’art abordés. <p><p><p><p><p><p>Condensation: A Conceptual Tool for the Theory of Art / Summary.<p><p><p>\ / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished