The study will investigate a design intervention that attempts to respond to the condition of spatial indeterminacy in the Sammy Marks precinct of Pretoria, where this condition is heavily pronounced in the form of disused public squares, inactive edges and inner-block voids. The study suggests that developing these spaces as cultural interfaces can provide a foothold for emergent city life and cultural activities. The specific project intervention will take the form of a theatrical interface that will serve as a platform for public interactive theatre events and a theatre school. The client is the State Theatre, in collaboration with the Department of Public Works. The site of the intervention is located in close proximity to the State Theatre. An investigation of the site and its surrounding context will generate opportunities for specific intervention. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted

Submitted by Maicon Juliano Schmidt (maicons) on 2015-06-08T12:14:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Laura Lucas Arrué.pdf: 2120713 bytes, checksum: 926a48a7372b52c5677d7c600e5cba6e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-08T12:14:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Laura Lucas Arrué.pdf: 2120713 bytes, checksum: 926a48a7372b52c5677d7c600e5cba6e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-30 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Este estudo tem como intuito problematizar os ambientes de (visualização, coleção e compartilhamento) arte online, mais especificamente websites, como interfaces culturais constituídas a partir de certas zonas de embate/conflito. Espaços estes como o Artsy, pensados como o resultado de diferentes camadas, espacializadas e temporalizadas e em convivência, promovem (da forma como estamos a tensionar) estas zonas de conflito. A nossa interface cultural é a partir daí construída. A reflexão de base trazida por Lev Manovich, acerca deste mesmo conceito, é o ponto de partida desta pesquisa, que busca alargar um pouco mais tal horizonte. A abertura do conceito é feita a medida que exploramos um website de conteúdo artístico e o dissecamos no tempo e no espaço. Tomando estes dois momentos como duas camadas constituintes do objeto empírico, chegamos a uma terceira camada, esta como sendo o próprio choque das duas anteriores, aquilo que está entre elas. Desta forma, sempre a partir de uma fundamentação bergsoniana de trabalho, buscamos dissecar para cartografar. Este procedimento metodológico, que é arqueo-genealógico, dá a ver a conexão das camadas que estamos propondo, esta interface cultural que se realiza assim, na sua constituição. / This study aims to propose online domains of art visualization, collection and sharing as cultural composed of certain collision zones. Spaces such as Artsy website, thought as the result of different stratums, both in space and time coexisting, promoting (in the way we are tensioning) these conflict zones. Our cultural interface is built therefrom. The basis reflection brought by Lev Manovich about the same concept is the starting point of this research that looks for extending such horizon. The concept expansion is made as we explore an artistic content website and dissect it in space and time. Taking these two moments as layers of the empirical object, we arrive at a third one, that one as the shock of the two previous itself, what is between them. This way, always from a Henri Bergson’s foundation of work, we seek to dissect for mapping. This methodological procedure that is arche-genealogical shows the layers connection that we propose, this cultural interface that finds its nature in its constitution.

The thesis VISUAL LANGUAGE OF COMICS AND GUI DESIGN is based on an assumption that comics and GUI both use similar features and techniques to communicate with readers/users. GUI as an influential cultural interface is based on languages of other media and as it is shown in this thesis, comics is one of its sources. I discussed similar features of both media - GUI and comics - on the level of their characteristics, semantics and on the visual level. On a general level the main features discussed are convergence and hybridity or the requirements for skills of the reader/user. Very similar for comics and GUI are also the limits emerging from the characteristics of the media they are using. The principal part of this thesis searches for common visual features and finds them in simplifications, sequentiality and multilayer framing and also with features like icons or text. The case study focuses on Adobe Photoshop CS5 GUI from the comics point of view proving connections in practice and showing GUI in new a context.

Submitted by Fabricia Fialho Reginato (fabriciar) on 2015-07-07T23:48:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 BarbaraGrebin.pdf: 11075317 bytes, checksum: aa9ac1bdc918f36be1c51d80e2ac071a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-07T23:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 BarbaraGrebin.pdf: 11075317 bytes, checksum: aa9ac1bdc918f36be1c51d80e2ac071a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-03-28 / Nenhuma / Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo, a partir de um olhar comunicacional e tecnocultural, compreender de que forma o site Pinterest, tendo como base o exame das suas principais lógicas operativas, atualiza o conceito de interfaces culturais cunhado por Manovich (2001). Para o desenvolvimento deste problema de pesquisa, inicialmente, realiza-se uma explicação das abordagens e dos procedimentos metodológicos, inspirados em um agir arqueológico, seguida de um apanhado sobre o conceito de interface por meio de algumas concepções em torno do termo, até se chegar ao conceito-chave desta dissertação, interface cultural. Com isto, avança-se sobre a instrumentalização da pesquisa, por meio da escavação de imagens e da identificação de molduras (KILPP, 2010), sucedido de análise de material empírico coletado e agrupado em três constelações nomeadas como HCI, plasticidade e atravessamentos entre produtos culturais on-line. A pesquisa é finalizada com dois principais movimentos, o primeiro respondendo à pergunta inicial de pesquisa, em que se percebe um deslocamento do conceito inicial de interface cultural devido a conjunturas advindas da web 2.0, e o segundo trazendo, por meio de um quadro, uma proposta de estrutura de análise de artefatos culturais on-line. / The study aims, from a communicative and technocultural approach, to understand how the website Pinterest, based on the examination of its main operating logics, updates the concept of cultural interface coined by Manovich (2001). To develop this research problem, initially, it is carried out an explanation of the methodological approaches and procedures, inspired by an archaeological behave, followed by an overview of the interface concept through some conceptions around the term, until reaching the key concept of this dissertation, cultural interface. With this, it advances on the instrumentalization of the research, digging through images and identifying frames (Kilpp, 2010), followed by analysis of empirical material collected and grouped into three constellations named as HCI, plasticity and crossings between online cultural devices. The research concludes with two main movements, the first answering to the initial research question, it is realized a shift from the initial concept of cultural interface due to contexts arising from web 2.0, and the second bringing through a frame, a proposal of an analysis structure of online cultural devices.

This project responds to an ongoing discussion in scholarship that identifies and analyzes the ideological functions of computer interfaces. In 1994, Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe claimed that interfaces are maps of cultural information and are therefore ideological (485). For Selfe and Selfe and other scholars, these interfaces carried a colonial ideology that resulted in Western dominance over other cultures. Since this early scholarship, our perspectives on interface have shifted with changing technology; interfaces can no longer be treated as having persistent and predictable characteristics like texts. I argue that interfaces are interactions among dynamic information that is constantly being updated online. One of the most prominent ways users interact with information online is through the use of search engines such as Google. Interfaces like Google assist users in navigating dynamic cultural information. How this information is arranged in a Google search event has a profound impact on what meaning we make surrounding the search term. In this project, I argue that colonial ideologies are upheld in several Google search events for the term "Benghazi, Libya." I claim that networked connection during Google search events leads to the creation and sustainment of a colonial ideology through patterns of arrangement. Finally, I offer a methodology for understanding how ideologies are created when search events occur. This methodology searches for patterns in connected information in order to understand how they create an ideological lens.