The Seven Valleys is an interactive 3D installation based artwork inspired by mystical writings of the Bahá'í Faith. Created as a modification of the firstperson shooter Unreal Tournament 2003 (Epic, 2003) it subverts the original paradigm of the game to create an experience of the numinous, which in spirit, is diametrically opposed to the original intent of the gameplay design. This artwork presents an exploration of, and allusion to, the often subtle and illusive concepts found in the sacred treatise The Seven Valleys (Bahá'u'lláh, 1991) in which the user engages in an experiential journey through the work. The user is faced with conditions and situations that provide motivation to question, explore and attempt to fathom the abstract sense of the numinous. Each of The Seven Valleys contains its own individual mysteries while at the same time contributing its part to the telling of a collective story. / Master of Arts

Contemporary digital imaging practice has largely adopted the visual characteristics of its closest mediatic relative, the analogue photograph, In this regard, new media theorist Lev Manovich observes that "Computer software does not produce such images by default. The paradox of digital visual culture is that although all imaging is becoming computer-based, the dominance of photographic and cinematic imagery is becoming even stronger. But rather than being a direct, "natural" result of photo and film technology, these images are constructed on computers" (Manovich 2001: 179), Manovich articulates the disjuncture between the technical processes involved in the digital image creation process and the visual characteristics of the final digital image with its replication of the visual qualities of the analogue photograph. This research addresses this notion further by exploring the following. What are the defining technical features of these computer-based imaging processes? Could these technical features be used as a basis in developing an alternative aesthetic for the digital image? Why is there a reticence to visually acknowledge these technical features in contemporary digital imaging practice? Are there historic mediated precedents where the inherent technical features of the medium are visually acknowledged in the production of imagery? If these defining technical features of the digital imaging process were visually acknowledged in this image creation process, what would be the outcome? The studio practice component of the research served as a foundation for the author's artistic and aesthetic development where the intent was to investigate and highlight four technical qualities of the digital image identified through the case studies of three digital artists, and other secondary sources, These technical qualities include: the composite RGB colour system of the digital image as it appears on screen; the pixellated microstructure of the digital image; the luminosity of the digital image as it appears on a computer monitor, and the underlying numeric and (ASCII based) alphanumeric codes of the image file which enables that most defining feature of the image file, that of programmability, Based on research in the visualization of these numeric and alphanumeric codes, digital images of bacteria produced through the use of the scanning electron microscope, were chosen as image content for an experimental body of work to draw the conceptual link between these numeric and alphanumeric codes of the image file and the coded genetic sequence of an individual bacterial entity.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2003. / "Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Communication, Design and Media, University of Western Sydney, 31 August 2003" Includes bibliography.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur relationen mellan interaktiv och generativ konst ser ut samt att försöka utreda om de kan förstås samexistera och definieras som ett utpräglat konstnärligt uttryck eller koncept. Detta i och med deras historiska och estetiska sammankoppling trots sina tillsynes paradoxala egenskaper. Generativ konst definieras ofta som konst skapad av ett autonomt system, till exempel ett datorprogram eller en maskin, vilket utifrån vissa givna regler självständigt utformar delar av eller ett fullständigt konstverk. Frånvaron av mänskligt inflytande, vare sig det rör sig om konstnären själv eller åskådare, blir alltså en tongivande avgränsning. Interaktiv konst är å andra sidan, som namnet indikerar, helt beroende av mänskligt handlande och deltagande och åskådaren eller användaren blir avgörande för verkets design och utförande. Undersökningen består i en analys av Peter Beyls konstverk Petri och Ernest verk-serie Shaping Form (and Space) ur vilken en diskussion kring gemensamma och definierande beröringspunkter görs. Undersökningen bekräftar tidigare studier som visar på att hybridformer mellan interaktiv och generativ konst existerar. Dessa innehar klart identifierbara aspekter av båda koncepten. Möjligt definierande och särskiljande element i form av bland annat ett fokus på ömsesidig påverkan eller influens mellan åskådare och generativa system eller människa och maskin identifieras också.

No description available.

Globalisation is one of the most important cultural phenomena of our times and yet, one of the least understood. In popular and critical discourse there has been a struggle to articulate its human affects. The tendency to focus upon macro accounts can leave gaps in our understanding of its micro experiences.1 1 As Jonathon Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo argue there is a strong pattern of thinking about globalisation 'principally in terms of very large-scale economic, political, or cultural processes'. (See: Jonathon Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (Eds.), The Anthropology of Globalisation: A Reader, Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 2002, p. 5.) In this thesis, I will describe globalisation as a dynamic matrix of flows. I will argue that globalisation's spatial, temporal, and kinetic re-arrangements have particular impacts upon bodies and consciousnesses, creating contingent and often unquantifiable flows. I will introduce digital art as a unique platform of articulation: a style borne of globalisation's oeuvre, and technically well-equipped to converse with and emulate its affects. By exploring digital art through an historical lens I aim to show how it continues dialogues established by earlier art forms. I will claim that digital art has the capacity to re-centre globalisation around the individual, through sensory and experiential forms that encourage subjective and affective encounters. By approaching it in this way, I will move away from universal theorems in favour of particular accounts. Through exploring a wide array of digital artworks, I will discuss how digital art can capture fleeting experiences and individual expressions. I will closely examine its unique tools of articulation to include: immersive, interactive, haptic, and responsive technologies, and analyse the theories and ideas that they converse with. Through this iterative process, I aim to explore how digital art can both facilitate and generate new articulations of globalisation, as an experiential phenomenon.

The paper maps the use of the principle of randomness in artistic activity with a focus on visual art and the placement of Czech art into the world context. It examines the hypothesis whether randomness in the hands of the artist becomes an instrument to objectify his or her work and to approach the general principles of the natural world, which, according to the assumption, add novelty and consequently increases its artistic value. The text begins with an etymological interpretation of the concept of randomness, further observes the randomness as phenomenon in various social spheres, and eventually presents the artistic movements and artworks that systematically use randomness. An overview of avant-garde art and abstraction of the first half of the 20th century will allow the author to interpret the principles of randomness used in computer art. The work concludes with a detailed analysis of Zdeněk Sýkora's work, in which, according to the author, the development line of precomputational art is mirrored, along with a breakthrough to digital tools. The conclusion of the work reveals the diversity of the application of the principle of randomness in the art world and finds a common divisor in the objectivizing function, respectively the rising aesthetic value. Through this interpretation, Zdeněk...

The study is practice-led in visual art and it explores the impact of intermediality to validate that new knowledge emerges via processes that lead to possibilities of transformative hybridity. Intermediality was established and generated through a productive reciprocity between practice and theory as well as between analogue and digital art. The research created a community of enquiry through an exhibition entitled TRANSCODE: dialogues around intermedia practice (2011) in order to model innovative approaches towards improvement of transmedial artistic practice. The diversity of work by artists involved in this exhibition allowed exploration of a range of creative processes to investigate and understand characteristics of productive intermediality. The concept of transcoding in this study was derived from Deleuze and Guattari, which describes how one milieu functions as a foundation for another, implying an intermedial tension. TRANSCODE alludes to the mediation that transcribes meanings across boundaries and within complexity. Selected characteristics of narratives, space, embodiment and visual systems were researched through the lens of mediamatic thinking, which refers to thinking via media. The study proposes that intermediality is best seen as a construct of the tensional differences that become enriched within the grey areas. In applying Deleuze and Guattari‘s metaphor of the rhizome and Tim Ingold‘s concept of the mycelial mesh, the research project not only prompted structured collective thinking through practice, but also captured various case studies relevant to practice-led methodology. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Art History)

Wassily Kandinsky wrote Über das Geistige in der Kunst, in 1912, and was translated from German into English by Michael Sadler. Naming it at first, “The Art of Spiritual Harmony” in 1914 it is known as, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. He wrote color and music theories based on angles, synesthetic experiences, subjective instincts, chromotherapy, and shapes. Kandinsky’s theories are worth continuing to research and bring forth into the new generation of technology where we can see music as numerical expressions. The goal of this iPhone Application is to teach users the relationship between color and music based on Kandinsky’s theories. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Videogame tinkerers, players, and activists of the 21st century are continuing, yet redefining, the avant-garde art and literary movements of the 20th century. Videogames are diverging as a social, cultural, and digital medium. They are used as political instruments, artistic experiments, social catalysts, and personal means of expression. A diverse field of games and technocultural play, such as alternate reality games, griefer attacks, arcade sculptures, and so on, can be compared and contrasted to the avant-garde, such as contemporary tactical media, net art, video art, Fluxus, the Situationists, the work of Pollock or Brecht, Dada, or the Russian Formalists. For example, historical avant-garde painters played with perspectival space (and its traditions), rather than only within those grid-like spaces. This is similar in some ways to how game artists play with flow (and player expectations of it), rather than advancing flow as the popular and academic ideal. Videogames are not only an advanced product of technoculture, but are the space in which technoculture conventionalizes play. This makes them a fascinating site to unwork and rethink the protocols and rituals that rule technoculture. It is the audacity of imagining certain videogames as avant-garde (from the perspective of mainstream consumers and art academics alike) that makes them a good candidate for this critical experiment.