This thesis argues that a unique design ideology manifested in Soviet Estonia during the Late Socialist period. It was a combination of broader Soviet design ideologies concerned with material practices and the control of production, and Western design influences that were more apparent in Estonia than elsewhere in the Soviet Union and provided aesthetic guidance in a vacuum of Soviet style. This research allows for the first time a determination of the characterising qualities of Estonia’s Late Socialist industrial design, as well as provision of a new contextual framework for considering Soviet design ideas more broadly. To date, studies of Soviet design have focused on object aesthetics, leaving authors who are then faced with the absence of a consistent Soviet style to assume an equally absent Soviet design ideology. However, while it is not necessarily visible in the appearance of products, a tangible Soviet design ideology existed in bureaucratic apparatuses, material practices and accompanying textual materials. This thesis uses oral history and archival research to provide a detailed analysis of the Soviet ideology operating within one cultural monad of the wider USSR. In doing so it breaks away from the emphasis on Russia as the totality of 20th century Soviet socialism to make a first important step toward a more substantial history of Soviet production. Estonia can be understood as a meeting point between two major world design cultures, and from its example we can better understand the characteristics, functioning, and impact of different design ideologies.

A series of derivatives of Brilliant Green containing substituents in the ortho-position of the phenyl ring has been synthesised, together with some derivatives in which the phenyl ring has been replaced by a heterocyclic ring. The visible absorption spectra of the dyes have been correlated with the electronic and steric effects of the substituents. The effect on the x-band of ortho-substitution is consistent with the relief of steric hindrance by rotation of the phenyl ring. The perchiorates of a range of ortho-substituted and heterocyclic derivatives of Brilliant Green have been prepared from the corresponding leuco-base or carbinol. A study of the alkaline hydrolysis of each dye has been made under conditions such that pseudo first order kinetics obtained. The effects on the observed rate constant of changing the hydroxide ion concentration, the concentration of the inert salt and the temperature have been observed. The same basic rate law has been determined for most of the dyes. Multiple Linear Regression Analysis has been applied to the series of ortho-substituted dyes and the rate of hydrolysis has been demonstrated to be dependent mainly on the steric factor, U, derived by Charton. The thermodynamic parameters and have been obtained for the ortho-substituted dyes and the reaction has been shown to be under enthalpy control. An isokinetic relationship has been established providing evidence that most of the orthosubstituted dyes undergo hydrolysis by the same mechanism. A value for the steric factor, U, for the ortho-nitro-group has been determined, which shows that this group lies between its coplanar and orthogonal extremes in the dye. Anomalous behaviour, for which reasoned arguments are presented, has been observed for 2-hydroxy-Brilliant Green, 2,6-dichloro-Brilli-ant Green and 2-Furyl Green.

This practice-based project articulates the notion of an autoethnographic transect using Walking Home, a particular journey that I made in 2009, as its foundation. Borrowing key terms from the fields of ethnography and ecology, the project articulates a new contribution to knowledge by expanding the notion of a transect and using methods appropriated from autoethnography to generate visual arts practice in the wake of a long distance walk. Walking from London, England to St. Gallen, Switzerland the journey was undertaken in the wake of my father’s death. The key principle this project takes from autoethnography is that the position of the emotive self, as researcher and researched, can offer unique insights into a given field. Methods borrowed from autoethnography and ecology are re-employed throughout a transdisciplinary practice and body of research that, through the development of an ecological from of subjectivity, articulates an autoethnographic transect. The project expands the scale of a transect, from a line drawn across a field, to a journey taken across Europe; one that is drawn, walked and talked into being. Walking Home is presented in a holistic form whereby contextual and critical work is interwoven with and within practice: writing, image making, performance and installation. This interwoven process, whereby the practice and research become an inherent part of each other, is exemplified through a body of work called Fondue, a performance, taking place as a dinner party, which has evolved out of my engagement with autoethnography. An exhibition took place in Spring 2015, the outcomes of which are folded into this thesis. Articulating the notion of an autoethnographic transect as a new method within the field of visual arts practice this thesis will be of interest to performance practitioners, artists and writers engaged with the field of walking as a form of practice or process.

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This thesis is a response to the increasingly widespread belief in the potential for technology and modern science to enable finite subjects to overcome the essential limitations constitutive of finitude and, hence, subjectivity. It investigates the truth and extent of such claims, taking as its focus quasi-miraculous technological developments in neuroscience, in particular Brain-Computer Interfacing systems and cognitive imaging technologies. The work poses the question of whether such emergent neurotechnologies signal a profound shift beyond receptivity and finitude by effectively bridging the gap between interiority and exteriority. Organised around a quadripartite division, the thesis pursues this idea firstly with regard to the act of artistic creation; secondly through an exegesis of Kant’s account of the original or infinite creativity of the Supreme Being; thirdly through readings of Freud and Jung and their respective models of the psyche; and finally through an interrogation into the possibility of telepathy and the various ways in which it can be conceived. Each chapter thus takes place as an extended thought experiment, exploring the consequences of a seemingly unprecedented proposition that promises to eradicate the finite gap between internal and external. This is followed to the limits of conceivability before asking in each case whether we may in fact need to rethink the very premises around which each proposition has framed the problem.

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<p>This novel began as a short story collection exploring aspects of blackness that dealt with homosexuality, family dynamics, violence, Christianity and societal constructs. The first draft was titled <i>Innerworkings</i>. My goal was to show how the actions or inactions of others can easily affect someone else’s life by focusing on each character individually before their story intertwined without another’s. This current thesis manuscript steams from my experience of talking to family members and peers, each with a different option about how the topics stated should be handled. Most of the conversations left me with more questions and feelings of guilt or questioning what my life looks like vs what it should look like. With the current thesis manuscript, I strive to find a way to bring up a new way to handle discussions where spiritually and unspiritual topics can be handled respectfully. </p> <p> </p> <p>Reading Jesmyn Ward’s <i>Sing, Unburied Sing</i> and <i>Salvage the Bones</i> allowed me to see how a story could play out when each character is given their individual spotlight while also giving the reader insight to how they view the other characters. The work here is also influenced by Tomi Adeyemi’s novel <i>Children of Blood and Bone </i>and Marlon James’s <i>Black Leopard, Red Wolf</i> that showcased how important maps and character charts were in helping the readers understand the world and plot by giving them insight before they cracked open the first chapter. With time, I hope to be able to integrate maps and family tree dynamics into the novel so that The Community can be properly showcased as a character and its changes over time. </p>

Going against phalloculocentrism’s situation in a hom(m)o-sexual paradigm and structuration of the male gaze and moving towards a gyneacentric perspective, the thesis explores how a feminised process of reception and interaction with artworks might arise. My installation and moving-image practice-led research is driven by a central question: How might a feminised form of spatiality, based on a gyneacentric model, deform an audience’s phalloculocentric reading of an artwork? The purpose of this thesis is to find a practice-led feminist method of producing an artwork that actively represents the feminine and de-centres an audience’s (male) gaze. By dislocating the eye from the lens of a camera, I propose to alter an audience’s usual cinematic experience of an image of the feminine through my artwork. This is developed through my proposition for composing an experience of her image through inter-relational exchanges in order to shift the register of reception from gazing to “touching”. I claim this could provide a potential for an embodied feminised process of spatiality and perception. A method of cartographically mapping the feminine through diagrams, photographs, drawings and video is developed in the preparation and installation of the central artwork that structures the thesis, (f)low visibility, in a nightclub. Feminist (installation and video) practitioners’, Martha Rosler, Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum and Pipilotti Rist, approaches to representing the feminine are also investigated. The preparatory designs attempt to subvert the potential for a voyeuristic reception and/or exhibitionistic composition of the installation. This forms an investigation into how the reception and interaction with a feminised image might arise through a tactile process of exploration. I propose that although (f)low visibility produced ungraspable feminised on-screen images it afforded embodied partially locatable inter-relational exchanges in its reception of her. Luce Irigaray’s and Donna Haraway’s theories of embodiment are developed and intertwined in my conclusion. I claim that interaction with and reception of monstrous cyborg images on-screen occurred through the navigation of a fantasy of intrauterine “touching” in (f)low visibility’s installation as a feminised process of spatiality.

This thesis explores the impact of meditation on art practice. Its basic hypothesis is that Buddhist meditation can expand creative capacity by enabling the practitioner to transcend the limits of everyday sense experience and consciousness. Artists engaging in meditation develop a closer, more aware relationship with their emptiness mind (kongxin), freeing them from preconceptions and contexts that limit their artistic creation. Because this practice-led research focuses on how to expand one‘s freedom as an artist, I use two models to explore studio practice, then compare and contrast them with my own prior approach. A year-by-year methodology is followed, as artistic practice develops over time. The first model is studio practice in the UK, the second is Buddhist meditation before artistic activity. The research took place over three years, each representing a distinct area. Accordingly, in area 1 (the first year), I compared studio art practice in the UK with post-meditation art practice; in area 2 (the second year), I compared studio art practice in the UK with prostration practice at Bodh-gaya, India plus meditation before act activity; in area 3 (the third year), I compared studio art practice in the UK with entering a month-long meditation retreat in Taiwan before practicing art. By Buddhist meditation I refer more specifically to insight meditation, which K. Sri Dhammananda has described as follows: Buddha offers four objects of meditation for consideration: body, feeling, thoughts, and mental states. The basis of the Satipatthana (Pāli, refers to a "foundation" for a "presence" of mindfulness) practice is to use these four objects for the development of concentration, mindfulness, and insight or understanding of our-self and the world around you. Satipatthana offers the most simple, direct, and effective method for training the mind to meet daily tasks and problems and to achieve the highest aim: liberation. (K. Sri II Dhammananda 1987:59) In my own current meditation practice before art practice, I sit in a lotus position and focus on breathing in and breathing out, so that my mind achieves a state of emptiness and calm and my body becomes relaxed yet fully energized and free. When embarking on artistic activity after meditation, the practice of art then emerges automatically from this enhanced body/mind awareness. For an artist from an Eastern culture, this post-meditation art seems to differ from the practices of Western art, even those that seek to eliminate intention (e.g. Pollock), in that the artist‘s action seem to genuinely escape cogito: that is, break free of the rational dimensions of creating art. In my training and development as a studio artist, I applied cogito all the time, but this frequently generated body/mind conflict, which became most apparent after leaving the studio at the end of the day: I always felt exhausted, and what was worse, the art that I created was somehow limited. However, my experience was that Buddhist meditation, when applied before undertaking art practice, establishes body/mind harmony and empties the mind. For this artist at least, this discovery seemed to free my art as it emerged from emptiness through the agency of my energized hand. It was this, admittedly highly personal, experience that led me to undertake the research that informs this thesis.