University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences. / Department of Communication

This thesis focuses on the contextualization of my artistic practice, which explores digital glitch as a disruptive force and an aesthetic treatment in the contemporary technological world. While the body of work draws on the methodology of glitch art, this paper attempts to relate the idea of glitch to a wider range of philosophical and artistic frameworks stemming from Lettrism, Situationist International, Punk, and Nihilism. The aim of this investigation of a digital disturbance through its categorization into natural, stimulated and assimilated glitch, is to facilitate an understanding of the glitch event as both something threatening and attractive, while it transitions from a spontaneous to a controlled process in a photoreal image. The passing of the destructive glitch from life to art is placed against the backdrop of the apocalypse, which one may imagine as a literal and metaphorical disaster in the physical world and value systems of western society. / vii, 113 leaves ; col. ill. ; 29 cm

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American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth are disproportionally burdened by high rates of sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy, heightening their need for sexual health interventions that are aligned to their unique culture and social context. Media technologies, including the Internet, cell phones, and video games, offer new avenues for reaching adolescents on a wide range of sensitive health topics. While several studies have informed the development of technology-based interventions targeting mainstream youth, no such data have been reported for AI/AN youth. To fill this gap, I: a) quantified media technology use in a select group of AI/AN teens and young adults living in Pacific Northwest tribes and urban communities; b) identified patterns in their health information-seeking and media preferences; and c) worked with local tribes and partners to develop recommendations for designing culturally-appropriate technology-based interventions targeting Native adolescents. This research included: a) an anonymous, paper-based survey of over 400 AI/AN youths age 13-21 years; b) a systematic review of technology-based sexual health interventions; and c) a variety of community-based participatory research strategies to analyze findings, prioritize options, and generate recommendations for designing interventions that align with the culture, needs, and organizational capacities of the tribes in the Pacific Northwest. Technology use was exceptionally common and diverse among survey respondents, mirroring patterns reported by teens in the general population. Seventy-five percent of AI/AN youth reported using the Internet, 78% reported using cell phones, and 36% reported playing video games on a daily or weekly basis. Thirty-five percent reported that they would feel most comfortable getting sexual health information from the Internet, and 44% reported having done so in the past. Youth expressed interest in a wide array of interactive media features, and culturally-specific content that holistically encompassed their wide-ranging health interests and concerns. Tribal health educators expressed particular interest in adapting Internet-based skill-building modules and informational websites, and teens expressed interest in websites and videos. These findings are now being used by the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board to inform the development and adaptation of culturally-appropriate interventions targeting AI/AN youth in the Pacific Northwest.

In this thesis I explore the relationship between the mobile phone and its user and argue that this relationship is crucial in merging the contexts of public and private, the physical and virtual, imagined and real, past and present, author and audience. I view this relationship as crucial to understanding the shift in the role of the audience from passive receivers of content to active producers ('Mobile Produsers'). Further, I argue that the diverse contexts of mobile content production and the definition of the content itself have become the central means by which mobile phone practices are emerging. I draw on anthropology, social science and media studies in order to explore the impact of mobile contexts, content, and use on identity. I propose that this approach allows for a new understanding of mobile practices as a form of spectacle, especially what I refer to as the spectacle of the self. Produsership theory informs an understanding of mobile practices, content production and performance, and the Bahktinian concept of carnival becomes a useful term in analysing the mobile as both performance and spectacle. Through an analysis of mobile content within cinematic culture, social interaction, and mixed media environments I consider the ways in which the mobile functions not only as a tool for positioning the individual, but also as performing an integral part in a multi-user process of mobile content production. In this sense, mobile content can be understood as a map, and the mobile as a compass used by the produser to navigate the mobile?s diverse contexts. Furthermore, I demonstrate that mobile content is collectively constructed while being individually absorbed. It is reflective of both the context and its user and open to constant questioning and interpretation, which is then shared with others. Finally, this thesis explores the notion of being t/here as mode of participating with the mobile in time and space, where one's identity is distributed across virtual and physical spaces, simultaneously locating the user as both here and there (t/here).

In this thesis I explore the relationship between the mobile phone and its user and argue that this relationship is crucial in merging the contexts of public and private, the physical and virtual, imagined and real, past and present, author and audience. I view this relationship as crucial to understanding the shift in the role of the audience from passive receivers of content to active producers ('Mobile Produsers'). Further, I argue that the diverse contexts of mobile content production and the definition of the content itself have become the central means by which mobile phone practices are emerging. I draw on anthropology, social science and media studies in order to explore the impact of mobile contexts, content, and use on identity. I propose that this approach allows for a new understanding of mobile practices as a form of spectacle, especially what I refer to as the spectacle of the self. Produsership theory informs an understanding of mobile practices, content production and performance, and the Bahktinian concept of carnival becomes a useful term in analysing the mobile as both performance and spectacle. Through an analysis of mobile content within cinematic culture, social interaction, and mixed media environments I consider the ways in which the mobile functions not only as a tool for positioning the individual, but also as performing an integral part in a multi-user process of mobile content production. In this sense, mobile content can be understood as a map, and the mobile as a compass used by the produser to navigate the mobile?s diverse contexts. Furthermore, I demonstrate that mobile content is collectively constructed while being individually absorbed. It is reflective of both the context and its user and open to constant questioning and interpretation, which is then shared with others. Finally, this thesis explores the notion of being t/here as mode of participating with the mobile in time and space, where one's identity is distributed across virtual and physical spaces, simultaneously locating the user as both here and there (t/here).

This dissertation makes the connection between the human drive, as described by psychoanalysis, to construct God and the construction of the technological entity, Google. Google constitutes the extension of the early Christian period God to the twenty-first century. From the examination of significant religious and theological texts by significant theologians (Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, etc.) that explain the nature of God, the analogous relationship of God to Google will open a psychoanalytic discourse that answers questions on the current state of human mediation with the world. Freud and, more significantly, Lacan’s work connects the human creation of God, ex nihilio, to Google’s godly qualities and behaviors (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence). This illustrates the powerful motivation behind the creation of an all-encompassing physical / earthly entity that includes the immaterial properties of God. Essentially, Google operates as the extension or replacement of the long reigning God in Western culture. Furthermore, the advent of science and technology through rationalism (as outlined by Nietzsche) results in the death of the metaphysical God and the ascension of the technological God. Google offers an appropriate example for study. Moreover, the work of Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan will further comment on Google as the technological manifestation of God, particularly in its media formulations. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a review that highlights future research with an exploration that foresees the death of Google from the same rational method of inquiry by which the death of God occurred at the end of the nineteenth century. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Belongings hybridizes photography, sculpture, and printmaking through new laser technology. The exhibited work communicates a lingering sense of homesickness and maps a path through the objects discovered in my father’s wallet shortly after his passing. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

My intention for this show is to explore the effect of alienation that ironically is being produced by social media. The principal concept is developed around shame, sharing, and notoriety on three different social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram. This show explores the social media perception of myself in the realms of human interaction, identity, and memory in social media through the critical appropriation of the languages of design and photography. The installation with four Facebook profile pictures in large scale and framed looks at the way a personal image can convey the impression of widely different personalities. The selections of personal exchanges over Facebook and Instagram show the degree to which social media creates its own visual language and mode of communication, which sometimes becomes separated from reality and intention. The show extends its reach to performance and direct interaction with the viewer through the availability of stickers for comments by the profile pictures and a third area, where viewers can write or draw their own messages through the simple medium of chalk, which can then be rendered in virtual form through posts on a specially created webpage. The viewer should thus be challenged to ask, to what degrees do words and images communicate the essence of our selves and our own will. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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.