This research arises from my practice as a professional artist and my concern with issues of language and communication, particularly, the investigation of ways that arouse emotion and rational thought at once through language. Visual Poetry is a form of expression, which provokes both, and I saw the potential to expand its underlining principles further with the emergence of new technologies. With the digital medium, the main elements of visual and sound poetry: image, sound and text, can now be incorporated into the same piece of work. The aim of this study is to explore new digital communicative systems that interweave visual, oral and semantic elements of language, to produce new media languages where the pre-linguistic and linguistic maintain their symbiotic identities. This study examines theoretical and artistic concerns emerging from the area in-between, which is created by interlacing image, sound and text in the same artwork. It addresses the following series of questions: How to transfer the main concepts from Visual Poetry to Digital Art? How does computer technology transform image, sound and text to create new media languages? What is the role of the author, reader, writer, producer in these new interactive textualities of image, sound and text? How has this affected the new conventions of reading, looking, producing, using and thinking? What does the digital add to the interactivelexts of Visual Poetry? What new meanings and processes of thinking, understanding and interpretation are appearing? In which way do new technologies enhance the collaborative nature of practice? This investigation brings knowledge from other disciplines into the art field and it explores different serniotic models such as the linguistic the visual and the aural. It blurs the barriers between the visual and the linguistic: between different art forms such as fine art, visual poetry and sound art/poetry in a new digital and technological arena. It questions the conventions applied to these critical areas with the aid of the new tools and critical concepts available through digital technology. This study challenges the viewer/listener/user with an interface of signs from different languages and serniotic systems: the visual (still and moving images), the audible and the linguistic, to participate and explore the multiple possibilities within a work. This investigation seeks to contribute to a new body of knowledge in the development of the areas of Visual Poetry, Digital Art and the new genre of Electronic Poetry, by creating new, innovative, digital artworks for which, as a new form of expression, critical and analytical conventions are still in the process of development.

In this thesis, I define 'Playculture' as a primary portal through which 'everyday life' is experienced in the US and the UK. I then argue that online 'cultural structures' have begun, more and more frequently and for a variety of reasons, to take the form of games - games that are destabilised by female participants. 'Feminist' methods of various kinds, 'intervention disruption', and iterative game design are all modes and methodologies I have chosen to apply to the creation of the practical parts of the research. Examples discussed at length in these pages illustrate the tensions between everyday popular culture and interventionist working practices, highlighting a process informed by feminist scholarship of marginalised groups. I argue that specific and identifiable historical play patterns and larger technological developments have been linked to gaming practices. If play has become an integral part of everyday life, then the history of 'banal' play - especially domestic play -- takes on new importance. Paper playhouses of the 19th Century reinforced the notion that the house was implicitly known as a gendered space, and I interrogate gender and play and girls' subversive resistance in this space. I argue that it is both possible and useful to identify three main types of subversion in operation by women players: reskinning, un-playing, and re-writing. I use these types of subversion to design artist's computer games as practical work in [rootings] and [domestic], and in the design of a larger collaborative work RAPUNSEL. I conclude the thesis by utilising my selected methodologies for a final feminist intervention and subversion, through a case study of the design and creation of the practical work [six. circles], which demonstrates how one might rework game goals and creating artists' games as a form of social activism. I end with a summary of the significance of this body of research as well as a summary arguement outlining the potential contributions of this study to future researchers, scholars and practitioners.

This study concerns itself with the relationship between game design and emergent social behaviour in massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds. This thesis argues for a legitimisation of the study of ‘communities of play’, alongside communities perceived as more ‘serious’, such as communities of interest or practice. It also identifies six factors that contribute to emergent social behaviour and investigates the relationship between group and individual identity, and the emergent ways in which these arise from and intersect with the features and mechanics of the game worlds themselves. Methodology: Under the rubric of ‘design research’, this study was conducted as an ethnographic intervention, an anthropological investigation that deliberately privileged the online experience whilst acknowledging the performative nature of both game play and the research process itself. The research was informed by years of professional practical experience in game design and playtesting, as well as by qualitative methods derived from the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, Computermediated Communications and the emerging field of Game Studies. The process of conducting the eighteen-month ethnographic study followed the progress of a sub-set of members of the ‘Uru Diaspora,’ a group of 10,000 players who were made refugees when the massively multiplayer game ‘Uru: Ages Beyond Myst’ was closed in February of 2004. Uru refugees immigrated into other virtual worlds, using their features and capabilities to create ethnic communities that emulated the culture, artefacts and environments of the original Uru world. Over time, players developed ‘hybrid’ cultures, integrating the Uru culture with that of their new homes, and eventually creating entirely new Uru and Myst-inspired content. The outcome is the identification of six factors that serve as ‘engines for emergence’ and discusses their relationship to each other, to game design, and to emergent behaviour. These include: • Play Ecosystems: Fixed-Synthetic vs. Co-Created Worlds: Online games and virtual worlds exist along a spectrum, with environments entirely authored by the designer at one end, and those comprised primarily of player-created content and assets on the other, with a range of variations between. The type of world will impact the sort of emergent behaviour that occurs, and worlds that include player-created content will be more inclined to promote emergent behaviour. • Communities of Play: Distributed groups formed around play demonstrate distinct characteristics based on shared values and play styles. The study describes in detail one such play community, and analyses the ways in which its characteristic play styles drove its emergent behaviours. • The Social Construction of Avatar Identity: Individual avatar identity is constructed through an emergent process engaging social feedback. • Intersubjective Flow: A social reading of the psychological notion of ‘flow’ that describes the way in which flow dynamics occur in a social context through play. • Productive Play: Countering the traditional contention that play is inherently ‘unproductive’ as some scholars suggest, the thesis argues that play can be seen as a form of cultural production, as well as fulcrum for creative activity. • Porous Magic Circles and the ‘Ludisphere’: The magic circle, which bounds play activities, is more porous than game scholars had previously believed. The term ‘ludisphere' is used to describe the larger context of aggregated play space via the Internet. Also identified are leakages between ‘virtual worlds’ and ‘real life’. By identifying these factors and attempting to trace their roots in game design, the study aims to contribute a new approach to the making and analysis of user experience and creativity ‘in game’. The thesis posits that by achieving a deeper cultural understanding of the relationship between design and emergent behaviour, it is possible to make steps forward in the study of ‘emergence’ itself as a design material.

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal.

Posthumanism is a contested term, seen by some as leading towards a merging of human bodies and technology and by others, more critically, as a renewal of the ethical debate regarding human exceptionalism. Through a study of this critical approach and its potential relation to expanded cinema, a set of propositions is formulated. New knowledge emerges through the application of these propositions towards the expression of critical posthumanism. By looking at formal, conceptual and methodological underpinnings, existing tendencies in expanded cinema are analysed and reviewed. Firstly, aided by Timothy Morton's 'ambient poetics', environmental orientations in artist film and expanded cinema are investigated. Secondly, conceptual ideas 'beyond the human' in this field are discussed. Finally, the environmental footprint of moving image production is considered. Central to this investigation is the desire to change prevailing narratives regarding nature and environment. Instead of regarding environment as a subject outside the cultural domain, environmental immanence and shared consciousness are regarded as central cultural values within a productive posthuman debate. This theoretical approach is set in motion through a practice-based project in which organic processes are applied to generate images on discarded and outdated 35mm film. By using plants, mud and salt in conjunction with alternative photochemistry, images are 'grown' on motion picture film. Moreover, digital images are gathered using a camera extension that allows a point of view beyond the human. Background and foreground are reversed in order to reveal the prominence of natural elements in an urban setting. These images are used in a performative or spatial context that places the viewer within the work. By bringing together theory and practice a conclusion emerges, opening up further possibilities to develop and apply the newly found knowledge, not only in expanded cinema but also to other fields.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the formation of identity through dress in virtual environments, and to establish connections between identity, fashion, and virtual reality by means of language and semiology. The notion of identity through fashion in virtual environments is examined, with fashion as a factor in identity formation through dress as analysed in structuralist terms. The virtual aspect is used both as a literal field, i.e. the medium of video games and social networks that involve virtual avatars, and as theoretical testing ground from which to derive new results on the nature of dress and many of the aspects of clothing and fashion. The practical outcome of this research, a video game based on dress and narrative, serves as an applied experiment of the three main themes in this thesis and the relations and interactions between them, as well as a testing tool with which to challenge in a practical way the theories and speculations formed in the thesis. My methodology is based on structuralism and post-structuralism in the fields of linguistics, psychology and anthropology, with particular application to the visual media and virtual reality. I am using a post-structuralist approach as it has been the most dominant discourse of replacing economic and social (power) relations with codes and the interplay between signifiers and signifieds. This, I find, is the most appropriate method for analysing both virtual systems and fashion, because, on an atomic level, they both depend on variables such as words and numbers. The code is therefore the common denominator of both disciplines. Furthermore, both disciplines use narrative for their proper function, video games for their back story and motivation of the player, and fashion for its advertising and promotion, as well as through archetypes and symbols. Fashion in this context works as a catalytic agent between post-structuralist codes in modern media as texts, and video games.

This research analyses the impact of transformation and hybridization processes at the intersection of art, science and technology. These forms of transformation and hybridization are the result of contemporary interactions between classic and digital media. It discusses the concept of 'remediation' presented by Bolter and proposes the concept of 'digital ekphrasis,' which is based on Manovich' s analyses of the interactions between classic and digital media. This is a model which, borrowed from semiotic structures, encompasses the technical as well as aesthetic and philosophical transformations of contemporary media. The thesis rejects Baudrillard's and Virilio's proposed concepts of 'digital black hole' as the only possible form of evolution of contemporary digital media. It proposes a different concept for the evolutionary model of contemporary hybridization processes based on contemporary forms of hybridizations that are rooted in aesthetic, philosophical and technological developments. This concept is argued as emancipated from the 'religious' idea of a 'divine originated' perfect image that Baudrillard and Virilio consider to be deteriorated from contemporary hybridization experimentation. The thesis proposes, through historical examples in the fine arts, the importance of transmedia migrations and experimentations as the framework for a philosophical, aesthetic and technological evolutionary concept of humanity freed from the restrictions of religious imperatives.

During the last 30 years computer and videogames have grown into a large entertainment industry of economic as well as cultural and social importance. As a distinctive field of academic inquiry begins to evolve in the form of Game Studies, the majority of approaches can be identified as emerging either from a background of literary theory which motivates a concentration on narrative structures or from a dedicated focus on the rules of video and computer games. However, one of the most evident properties of those games is their shared participation in a variety of spatial illusions. Although most researchers share the view that issues related to mediated space are among the most significant factors characterising the new medium, as of yet, no coherent conceptual exploration of space and spatial representation in video and computer games has been undertaken. This thesis focuses on the novel spatial paradigms emerging from computer and video games. It aims to develop an original theoretical framework that takes the hybrid nature of the medium into account. The goal of this work is to extend the present range of methodologies directed towards the analysis of digital games. In order to reveal the roots of the spatial apparatus at work an overview of the most significant conceptions of space in western thought is given. Henri Lefebvre's reading of space as a triad of perceived, conceived and lived space is adopted. This serves to account for the multifaceted nature of the subject, enables the integration of divergent spatial conceptions as part of a coherent framework, and highlights the importance of experiential notions of spatiality. Starting from Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia, game-space is posited as the dynamic interplay between different spatial modalities. As constitutive elements of the dynamic spatial system mobilized by digital games the following modalities are advanced: the physical space of the player, the space emerging from the narrative, the rules, the audiovisual representation and the kinaesthetic link between player and game. These different modalities are examined in detail in the light of a selected range of exemplary games. Based on a discussion of film theory in this context an original model that serves to distinguish between different visual representational strategies is presented. A chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the crucial and often overlooked role of sound for the generation of spatial illusions. It is argued that sound has to be regarded as the privileged element that enables the active use of representational space in three dimensions. Finally the proposed model is mobilised to explore how the work of contemporary artists relates to the spatial paradigms set forth by digital games. The critical dimension of artistic work in this context is outlined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the impact of the prevalent modes of spatial practice in computer and video games on wider areas of everyday life.

The incidence of autism is increasing in the U.K., with as many as 1% of children now thought to be affected by an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). This research explores the potential of emerging interactive digital media to engage children affected by an ASD, and the development of design strategies for future professional work in this field. This is accomplished through a literature and state of the art review, and by working alongside families and professionals involved in the provision of care for children with an ASD. As a a result of this process new artefacts have been created, alongside a design methodology for future work. The research reveals the need for tailorable low arousal sensory environments within mainstream schools to meet the needs of certain members of the pupil population and demonstrates how interactive digital media can be incorporated into such spaces as part of an holistic approach to a child’s school experience. Using digital media modules trained professionals can work with the child, using the media as a point of engagement.