This thesis is divided into two parts. Part One, entitle “Working Through Condensation” describes a type of practice, Part Two, entitled “The Tourist and the Tourist Tout”, unravels and explores what was discovered through that practice. The intersection of two personal discoveries have been formative in my art practice. The first relates to the Indian Hindu and Buddhist concept of formlessness found in certain Tantric cosmogonies. This began, for me, an interest in the phenomenon of emptiness as an ontological awareness of how “art” or “creativity” happens. The second event was the hearing of a phrase, which I call a found phrase. The phrase, “working through condensation”, suggested a metaphoric tool for conceptualising my practice, through an analogous use of the process of condensation. I was struck by a similarity between my conception of the above found phrase and Tantric cosmogeny. In Part One of this thesis, I develop a link between elements in Tanta cosmogony, the found phrase and the Situationist Internationalist practice of derive as a basis for practice. This thesis has been largely constituted by three research journeys to India, where the conception and results of this practice unfolded. / Doctor of Creative Arts (DCA)

Inaug.-diss.--Basel. / Vita. "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 234-244.

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This article examines female asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, in Hesiod’s Theogony and argues that it is a symptom of the unprecedented and unparalleled female presence Hesiod inserts into his cosmos. This presence in turn reflects Hesiod’s incorporation of gender difference and conflict as indispensable both to the creation and, paradoxically, to the stability of the universe. Five of Hesiod’s deities reproduce parthenogenetically: Chaos, Gaea, Night, Strife, and Hera, of whom all but the sexually indeterminate Chaos are female. Hesiod’s male gods have no analogous reproductive ability. The parthenogenetic phases of the early goddesses form much of the fundamental shape and character of the universe, while in the case of Hera, parthenogenesis serves initially as an act of defiance against Zeus but ultimately enforces his reign. Parthenogenesis does not have these functions in either the Near Eastern or other Greek cosmogonic traditions, a difference that reflects Hesiod’s greater emphasis on female participation in his succession myth. Yet Hesiod’s cosmogonic narrative, like others, culminates in the lasting reign of a male god, Zeus. In this context parthenogenesis is a manifestation of female creation, which ultimately reinforces the stability of a male sovereign. The relative prominence of parthenogenesis in the Theogony reflects Hesiod’s emphasis on gender difference and conflict as indispensable to a cosmos in which conflict and concord coexist as equal partners in creation and stability.

This thesis is a study of the influence of cosmology on Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, an epic hexameter poem written in Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. I examine ancient Greek ideas of cosmogony and cosmology, which range from the earliest extant Greek texts (Homer and Hesiod) to contemporaries of Apollonius (Aratus). My argument is that cosmology is deeply embedded in the text, and that Apollonius creates a nexus of cosmic intertexts which provides a scientific and intellectual backdrop against which the events of the narrative take place. The narrative’s events all occur within a cosmos, which is alluded to throughout the epic; the reader sees snap-shots of the development of this cosmos alongside the development of the Argo’s journey, which creates an analogous progression between the two. Particularly salient for this thesis is the connection to Empedoclean ideas of love and strife as cosmic forces, as these comprise two of the major themes of the narrative. Accordingly, a key point of contact between narrative and cosmology lies in these forces, as the narrator consciously recalls them and the cosmos they control in the process of weaving his narrative. The three passages I examine all focus on this cosmic system, as the cosmic backdrop evolves and changes alongside the narrative itself. The cosmic analogy, therefore, is not static but changes in line with the narrative. This study will form the only extended analysis of cosmology in the Argonautica. The influence of cosmological material on the text (within the wider issue of philosophical influence) has attracted marginal attention, scholars often noting some of the more overt connections without a great deal of analysis. Works that acknowledge the presence of cosmological material at sporadic points include: Fränkel (1968); Hunter (1989 and 1993), Clauss (1993 and 2000); Levin (1970 and 1971). More detailed studies of aspects of cosmological material in the Argonautica include: Bogue (1979); Nelis (1992); Kyriakou (1994); Pendergraft (1995); Murray (2014); Santamaría Álvarez (2014). These studies all confirm the importance of cosmological ideas on the text, but focus on a particular manifestation of these ideas. This thesis will build on these ideas in an attempt to create a cohesive study of cosmology throughout the narrative and consider how this material affects our reading of the narrative itself and its poetic agenda, along with how this use feeds into Apollonius’ poetic values and contemporary poetic trends in general. The thesis is divided into three main chapters, in which I examine three key passages of the Argonautica to make my argument. In Chapter One I examine Orpheus’ song (1.496-511), in which the cultic bard Orpheus calms a fight between two Argonauts by singing a cosmogony. The song establishes cosmic forces that run analogous to the forces at work in the narrative and demonstrates how the growing influence of love in the cosmos parallels the increased reliance on love for the success of the Argonauts’ mission. In Chapter Two I examine Jason’s cloak (1.721-767), a passage that comprises the only extended ecphrasis in the Argonautica. The images woven into his cloak continue the cosmic theme begun in the song of Orpheus, since they demonstrate the world in a later stage of development, as human and divine events unfold and time progresses towards the Argonauts’ contemporary world. In Chapter Three I examine Eros’ sphere (3.129-141), an intricate toy offered to him by Aphrodite in exchange for his shooting Medea with an arrow to make her fall in love with Jason. The ball’s shape and its details both suggest that what Eros holds in his hand is some sort of divine three-dimensional model of the universe. I have chosen these three passages because a cosmological mode of reading is particularly strong in them; they bring to the forefront the cosmological undertone which underlies the wider narrative. My conclusion is that the three passages are all connected throughout the narrative by their cosmic material, material which underscores the Argonauts’ narrative and facilitates them anchoring their time to the grand timeframe of the cosmos. Both cosmic and narrative events run concurrently, as the evolution of the cosmos from its origins to the Argonauts’ present day runs alongside the evolution of the narrative. This duality shows how the Argonautic poet employs cosmology and in doing so creates a continuous parallel narrative that runs throughout the text. Since he uses three connected parallel narratives (song, garment, and toy), the reflective capacity of the passages is not merely a one-off, but consecutive, as all three comprise different moments in the same cosmic scheme. The boundaries between parallel narrative and main narrative are thus broken down in the passages as the narrator establishes the idea that cosmology does not only run parallel to the events of the narrative, but prefigures them and enriches the reader’s understanding of the narrative world. In sum, the cosmic readings of the passages demonstrate that what the narrator is drawing the reader towards is a cosmic subtext that is unfixed and undergoes change.

As the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe, galaxy clusters can be used to probe a variety of topics in astrophysics and cosmology. This thesis describes the development of an algorithm to find galaxy clusters using non-parameteric methods applied to catalogs of galaxies generated from multi-colour CCD observations. It is motivated by the emergence of increasingly large, photometric galaxy surveys and the measurement of key cosmological parameters through the evolution of the cluster mass function. The algorithm presented herein is a reconstruction of the successful, spectroscopic cluster finding algorithm, C4 (Miller et al., 2005), and adapting it to large photometric surveys with the goal of applying it to data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). AperC4 uses statistical techniques to identify collections of galaxies that are unusually clustered in a multi-dimensional space. To characterize the new algorithm, it is tested with simulations produced by the DES Collaboration and I evaluate its application to photometric datasets. In doing so, I show how AperC4 functions as a cosmology independent cluster finder and formulate metrics for a \successful" cluster finder. Finally, I produce a galaxy catalog appropriate for statistical analysis. C4 is applied to the SDSS galaxy catalog and the resulting cluster catalog is presented with some initial analyses.

In this thesis, we present three projects that describe the use of the XMM-Newton Cluster Survey (XCS) to investigate exotic astrophysical phenomena. Each project widens the scope of XCS beyond the study of cluster cosmology. In the first project, we derive correlations between X-ray properties of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and mass of its Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH). These properties are the X-ray luminosity (LX) and a measure of the variability of the AGN - the normalised excess variance (σ2NXS). We confirm previous results indicating an anti-correlation between black hole mass (MBH) and σ2NXS, as well as anti-correlation between LX and σ2NXS, and a positive correlation between LX and MBH. We investigate whether there is a redshift evolution in these relations. We then develop methods to estimate MBH from short exposure X-ray observations specific to the eROSITA observatory, to allow us to measure LX of millions of AGN. The second project describes a new method to detect the rarest of X-ray transient sources, X-ray ashes (XRFs), through a serendipitous search of the XCS catalogue. We categorize the detected XRF candidates and look in more detail at one that is most likely to be an XRF. Based on its properties, we estimate an upper limit to their occurrence. A third project describes our method to search for an unknown emission line in the stacked spectra of galaxy clusters from the XCS extended source catalogue. This line, if found, may be evidence of a hypothetical particle - the sterile neutrino - which has been postulated as a candidate for dark matter. We review other research that has led to published work, as well as laying the foundation for future collaborations. This includes work on improving the XCS temperature pipeline in order to estimate the temperatures of galaxy clusters.

Thesis (doctoral)--Philosophorum Ordine Lipsiensi, 1869. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Philosophorum Ordine Lipsiensi, 1869. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Indiana University. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.