This thesis presents kinematic templates, end-user drawing tools that influence the mouse cursor's movement within specific areas of a digital canvas. Two types of kinematic templates influence the cursor's movement: passive and active templates. Passive templates modify existing movement received from a pointing device to change the cursor's speed or direction of one's stroke. Active templates add movement to the cursor without movement from the pointing device. Since templates are provided as user-specified regions, these regions can be associated with areas of detail and they can be overlapped as a means of function composition. [¶] A kinematic template can be configured to improve upon one's freehand output without producing perfect output. Since templates do not necessarily prescribe geometric output, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and drawing aids such as snapping constraints and perfect geometric primitives. [¶] Since kinematic templates can improve upon the consistency of one's strokes, it is beneficial for drawing visual styles such as hatching (an artistic effect that adds depth to a drawing with uniform strokes drawn in close proximity) and repetitive patterns. Since kinematic templates do not prescribe a type of output, one can "fight against" a template's preferred path of movement and discover unexpected, serendipitous outcomes.

This thesis presents kinematic templates, end-user drawing tools that influence the mouse cursor's movement within specific areas of a digital canvas. Two types of kinematic templates influence the cursor's movement: passive and active templates. Passive templates modify existing movement received from a pointing device to change the cursor's speed or direction of one's stroke. Active templates add movement to the cursor without movement from the pointing device. Since templates are provided as user-specified regions, these regions can be associated with areas of detail and they can be overlapped as a means of function composition. [¶] A kinematic template can be configured to improve upon one's freehand output without producing perfect output. Since templates do not necessarily prescribe geometric output, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and drawing aids such as snapping constraints and perfect geometric primitives. [¶] Since kinematic templates can improve upon the consistency of one's strokes, it is beneficial for drawing visual styles such as hatching (an artistic effect that adds depth to a drawing with uniform strokes drawn in close proximity) and repetitive patterns. Since kinematic templates do not prescribe a type of output, one can "fight against" a template's preferred path of movement and discover unexpected, serendipitous outcomes.

L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è la ricostruzione di un oggetto mediale di cui ormai in Rete si sono perse le tracce: il webcinema, il cinema creato, realizzato e distribuito attraverso la Rete. Esso nasce e si sviluppa in una fase pionieristica del web tra la seconda metà degli anni novanta e i primi anni del XXI secolo, in un periodo segnato dalla sviluppo della tecnologia dello streaming che consentirà la trasmissione di contenuti sonori e audiovisivi attraverso la Rete, ridefinendo il concetto del web stesso da collezione di testi a flusso di informazioni audiovisive, l’euforia della net economy e lo scoppio della bolla delle dot-com. Per analizzare questo fenomeno ibrido, di cui la teorizzazione coeva è scarsa e di cui la Rete sembra essersi dimenticata, adottiamo l’approccio metodologico della Actor-network Theory che ci permetterà di investigare i veloci cambiamenti, l’instabilità e l’eterogeneità propria dei media digitali. Con l’analisi del case history verrà evidenziata la complessa relazione esistente tra dimensione tecnologica e dimensione sociale che nel caso dei media digitali è improntata a momenti di apertura nei confronti della innovazione e di stabilizzazione e definizione di determinati modelli d’uso. / Aim of this work is the reconstruction of a forgotten media by the Net: webcinema, cinema created specifically for viewing on the Internet. It is born and it develops in a pioneering phase of the web between the second half of the Nineties and first years of XXI century, in a period marked from the development of the streaming technology allowing the transmission of sound and audiovisual contents through the Net, redefining quite the concept of the web from collection of texts to audiovisual informational flux, net economy hype and the collapse of the dot-com bubble. In order to analyze this hybrid media object, barely studied by the contemporaneous scholarship and forgotten by the Net, we use the Actor-network theory approach that will allow to investigate the rapid changes, the instability and the heterogeneity of digital media. The case history will underline the complex relation between technological dimension and social dimension that digital media modellize in an opening approach versus innovation and a stabilization one versus some certain user models.

A software application called Public News Network (PNN) is created in this thesis, which functions to produce an aesthetic experience in the viewer. The application engenders this experience by presenting a three-dimensional virtual world that the viewer can navigate using the computer mouse and keyboard. As the viewer navigates the environment she sees irregularly shaped objects resting on an infinite ground plane, and hears an ethereal wind. As the viewer nears the objects, the sound transforms into the sound of television static and text is displayed which identifies this object as representative of an episode of the evening news. The viewer "touches" the episode and a "disembodied" transcript of the broadcast begins to scroll across the screen. With further interaction, video of the broadcast streams across the surfaces of the environment, distorted by the shapes upon which it flows. The viewer can further manipulate and repurpose the broadcast by searching for words contained within the transcript. The results of this search are reassembled into a new, re-contextualized display of video containing the search terms stripped from their original, pre-packaged context. It is this willful manipulation that completes the opportunity for true meaning to appear.

Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka visualiserade föreställningar om bildläraryrket vid Lärarutbildningen genom att analysera hur bildlärarstudenter i digital bild gestaltar sig som lärare, samt betydelser av kön i dessa bilder. Bilderna har analyserats diskursivt för att söka svar på frågorna: Vad är det i lärarrollen som kommer till uttryck i dessa bilder? Vilka betydelser av kön visualiseras? Vilka visuella grepp har bildmakarna använt? Hur kan man förstå de val studenterna gjort? Det empiriska materialet består av femtionio bilder, gjorda av fyrtiofem kvinnor och fjorton män. Bilderna producerades av bildlärarstudenter vid Institutionen för estetiska ämnen, Lärarutbildningen, Umeå universitet under en kurs i digital bildbehandling under åren 2000–2002. Samtliga har gett sitt godkännande att delta i studien. Avhandlingen består av två metodologiska linjer som båda bygger på bilder, dels bildskapande som pedagogisk metod, dels bildanalys som vetenskaplig metod. Bildskapande som pedagogisk metod baserar sig till stor del på den engelska fotografen Jo Spence arbeten. Bilderna antas då utgöra en arena för reflektioner kring och problematisering av yrkesrollen samt att de gestaltar föreställningar, förgivettaganden och förväntade erfarenheter inför läraryrket. I bildanalyserna har de individuella gestaltningarna betraktats som en repertoar av möjliga positioner vid lärarutbildningen som studenterna kan representera sig i. Bilderna har därför analyserats som utsagor inom den kontexten. I tolkningar har sedan en kombination av genusteorier, semiotiska och sociokulturella teorier använts. Collaget och montaget har övervägande utgjort bildernas tekniska grund och i de skapade bildrummen förekommer flertalet gestaltande grepp som intertextuella referenser till genrer inom konstvärlden och populärkulturen, allt från kanoniserade konstverk till filmer, fantasy och reklam, multipla jag, värdeperspektiv, primär- och sekundärbilder och att man satt samman olika bildkvaliteter och därmed skapat olika fiktionsgrader i bildrummen. Bilderna har delats upp i två kategorier. ”Professionen i centrum för uppdraget” gestaltar en lärare tillsammans med andra människor i en social situation vilken refererar till en yrkestradition. ”Personligheten i centrum för uppdraget” lyfter fram den gestaltades personlighet eller att andra aspekter kan rymmas i lärarrollen. Här visualiseras ideala figurer, motstånd och en intimisering av skolans praktik. För samtliga bilder finns ett genomgående tema, att skriva in lärargestalten i ämnet bild eller konst- och populärkulturen. Ämnestillhörigheten framstår som en central föreställning om legitimitet och auktoritet. När personligheten är i centrum för läraruppdraget, brukas i högre grad stereotypa gestaltningar. När läraruppdraget är i centrum gestaltas det som en social gruppaktivitet för männen medan kvinnorna gestaltar uppdraget som en individuell uppgift vilket framstår som olika föreställningar om hur femininitet respektive maskulinitet konstrueras i lärarpraktiker. Även reflexivitet eller ett prövande förhållningssätt till praktiken förekommer i högre grad i kvinnornas bilder vilket även tolkas som en förväntad feminin hållning. Kvinnors kroppar representeras inte i lika hög grad som mäns kroppar när uppdraget är i centrum. Här kan en samhällelig diskurs kring sexualiserade bilder vara verksam, men även representationer av makt- eller legitimitet. / The aim of the thesis is to examine visualized conceptions about the profession of art teachers in the Art Teacher Education Programme. This is accomplished through analysing how art teacher students represent themselves as teachers in digital images and recognize the impact of gender. The pictures are analysed discursively in order to search for the answers to the following questions: What in the teacher’s role is expressed in these pictures? What kinds of figures or representations are chosen? How can these choices be understood? What visual devices are used? The empirical material of the thesis is based on a selection of pictures made by art teacher students during a course in Computer graphics/Digital Image Processing at the Department of Creative Studies in Teacher Education, Umeå University, between the years 2000-2002. There are fifty-nine pictures made by forty-five women and fourteen men. Each student has accepted the conditions of participation in the study. The images may be assumed to give shape to ideas, things taken for granted and expected experiences; and subsequently constitute an arena for problemizing of and reflection on the professional role. The thesis contains two methodological lines that include images, art making as a pedagogical method and analysis as a scientific method. Art making as a pedagogical method is based to a large extent on the work of Jo Spence, an English photographer. Rhetoric, the referentiality of the pictures and their intertextuality in combination with gender theoretical tools formed the basis of image analysis as a scientific method. A combination of gender theories and semiotic and sociocultural theories was then used in the interpretations. Collage and montage largely made up the technical basis of the images, and in the created pictorial spaces most rhetorical devices occurred as intertextual references to genres in the world of art and popular culture, from canonized works of art to films, fantasy and commercial advertising, multiple egos, value perspectives, primary and secondary images, and combinations of different image qualities resulting in the creation of different degrees of fiction in the pictorial spaces. The pictures were divided into two categories. “The profession at the centre of the assignment” depicts a teacher together with other people in a social situation, which refers to a professional tradition. “The personality at the centre of the assignment” emphasizes the depicted individual’s personality or that other cultures can be included in the teacher’s role. What are visualized here are ideal figures, resistance and intimization of the practice of schools. In all the images there is an all-pervading theme, namely to engrave the teacher’s persona in the subject of art or the art and popular culture. The attachment to the subject appears as a central conception of legitimacy and authority. When the personality is at the centre of the teaching assignment, stereotypical representations are used to a higher degree. When the teaching assignment is at the centre, it is depicted as a social group activity for the men, while the women depict the assignment as an individual task, which appears as if different conceptions of femininity and masculinity are constructed in teaching practices. Reflexivity or a searching attitude to the practice also occurs to a higher degree in the women’s images, which in turn is also interpreted as an expected feminine attitude. Women’s bodies are not represented to the same high extent as men’s bodies when the assignment is at the centre. A general discourse on sexualized images may be at work here, but also representations of power or legitimacy.

Digital art installation is the result of informatic materials entering gallery spaces and challenging the establishment of media forms. This thesis contends that the open, recursive and recombinatory process of looking at digital installation is in fact the result of noisy relations between information and the spatial temporal contexts of the art gallery. In order to focus on the processes of informatic materials within gallery spaces, this thesis identifies four key modulations of noise and materiality ? emergence, feedback, entropy and delay. I demonstrate how these impact on a range of recent digital installations by Australian and New Zealand artists. The lens of digital materiality shifts from an informational context into that of art history where it is found to highlight the systemic relationality of the installation. The thesis opens with a consideration of histories of media-specificity, and argues for a necessary separation of our concepts of media and materiality. This context provides a set of tools by which the remainder of the thesis investigates a range of digital material flows that are not tied to fixed media definitions. I draw on a range of theorists including Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Claude Shannon and Jack Burnham to further locate these material flows within two strands: experimental sound and information theory. This discussion forms the basis of the thesis? re-appraisal of media distinctions and highlights the complex relationship of informational materials to both sonic and visual histories. The second half of the thesis undertakes an appraisal of emergence, feedback, entropy and delay in specific works and suggests dimensionality, movement and duration as key determinants of the digital installation. These chapters demonstrate that what is at stake in digital installation is the viewer?s implicit role in the shifting relationships of digital materiality. Overall, this thesis presents a framework for emergent materiality in digital installation. I develop a theory of emergent materiality as a process specific to digital installation, and argue that digital installation is in fact a subject-forming assemblage of information-noise in which relations of dimensionality, movement and duration coalesce without cohering. And, within which gallery spaces begin to get noisy.

Digital art installation is the result of informatic materials entering gallery spaces and challenging the establishment of media forms. This thesis contends that the open, recursive and recombinatory process of looking at digital installation is in fact the result of noisy relations between information and the spatial temporal contexts of the art gallery. In order to focus on the processes of informatic materials within gallery spaces, this thesis identifies four key modulations of noise and materiality ? emergence, feedback, entropy and delay. I demonstrate how these impact on a range of recent digital installations by Australian and New Zealand artists. The lens of digital materiality shifts from an informational context into that of art history where it is found to highlight the systemic relationality of the installation. The thesis opens with a consideration of histories of media-specificity, and argues for a necessary separation of our concepts of media and materiality. This context provides a set of tools by which the remainder of the thesis investigates a range of digital material flows that are not tied to fixed media definitions. I draw on a range of theorists including Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Claude Shannon and Jack Burnham to further locate these material flows within two strands: experimental sound and information theory. This discussion forms the basis of the thesis? re-appraisal of media distinctions and highlights the complex relationship of informational materials to both sonic and visual histories. The second half of the thesis undertakes an appraisal of emergence, feedback, entropy and delay in specific works and suggests dimensionality, movement and duration as key determinants of the digital installation. These chapters demonstrate that what is at stake in digital installation is the viewer?s implicit role in the shifting relationships of digital materiality. Overall, this thesis presents a framework for emergent materiality in digital installation. I develop a theory of emergent materiality as a process specific to digital installation, and argue that digital installation is in fact a subject-forming assemblage of information-noise in which relations of dimensionality, movement and duration coalesce without cohering. And, within which gallery spaces begin to get noisy.

Digital art installation is the result of informatic materials entering gallery spaces and challenging the establishment of media forms. This thesis contends that the open, recursive and recombinatory process of looking at digital installation is in fact the result of noisy relations between information and the spatial temporal contexts of the art gallery. In order to focus on the processes of informatic materials within gallery spaces, this thesis identifies four key modulations of noise and materiality ? emergence, feedback, entropy and delay. I demonstrate how these impact on a range of recent digital installations by Australian and New Zealand artists. The lens of digital materiality shifts from an informational context into that of art history where it is found to highlight the systemic relationality of the installation. The thesis opens with a consideration of histories of media-specificity, and argues for a necessary separation of our concepts of media and materiality. This context provides a set of tools by which the remainder of the thesis investigates a range of digital material flows that are not tied to fixed media definitions. I draw on a range of theorists including Umberto Eco, Gilles Deleuze, Claude Shannon and Jack Burnham to further locate these material flows within two strands: experimental sound and information theory. This discussion forms the basis of the thesis? re-appraisal of media distinctions and highlights the complex relationship of informational materials to both sonic and visual histories. The second half of the thesis undertakes an appraisal of emergence, feedback, entropy and delay in specific works and suggests dimensionality, movement and duration as key determinants of the digital installation. These chapters demonstrate that what is at stake in digital installation is the viewer?s implicit role in the shifting relationships of digital materiality. Overall, this thesis presents a framework for emergent materiality in digital installation. I develop a theory of emergent materiality as a process specific to digital installation, and argue that digital installation is in fact a subject-forming assemblage of information-noise in which relations of dimensionality, movement and duration coalesce without cohering. And, within which gallery spaces begin to get noisy.

Οι ψηφιακές μορφές τέχνης είναι ένα είδος που περιλαμβάνει έργα τέχνης που δημιουργήθηκαν με τα νέα μέσα τεχνολογίας, συμπεριλαμβανομένης της ψηφιακής τέχνης, των γραφικών απεικονίσεων, της εικονικής τέχνης, της τέχνης του διαδικτύου, των διαδραστικών τεχνολογιών και άλλων μέσων που διαφοροποιούνται διαρκώς. Για το λόγο αυτό, είναι αναγκαίο, η Τέχνη, ως διδακτικό αντικείμενο να συντονιστεί με τις επιταγές της σύγχρονης τέχνης και να προσφέρει στους μαθητές απαραίτητες γνώσεις και δεξιότητες ώστε να δημιουργήσουν σύγχρονα έργα τέχνης. Είναι όμως το ελληνικό εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα και πιο συγκεκριμένα οι εκπαιδευτικοί της Τέχνης για ένα τέτοιο εγχειρημα... Τι φοβούνται και τι προσδοκούν από τους αρμόδιους φορείς... Μπορούν ατομικές πρωτοβουλίες και πιλοτικά προγράμματα να βρουν ευρύτερη εφαρμογή στη διδασκαλία της εικαστικής αγωγής.. / The digital forms of art are a type that includes work of art that was created with the new means of technology, including the digital art, the graphic depictions, the virual art, the art of internet, the interactive technologies and other means that are differentiated permanently. For this reason, it is necessary, that Art, as instructive object to be coordinated with the demands of modern art and offer to the students the necessary knowledge and dexterities in order that they create modern work of art. Is however the Greek educational system and more concretely the teachers of Art ready for such an undertaking. What they are afraid also what are theyexpecting from the responsible institutions... Can individual initiatives and pilot programms find wider application in the teaching of figurative education...

Cette thèse, traitant la problématique du tissage et de son propre univers, cherche à élargir l’espace commun et restreint de la pratique du tissage et ses manifestations. Nous étudions, d’emblée, la technique de tissage traditionnelle, sa structure et sa composition. Les tapis berbères tunisiens sont pour tout chercheur des instruments de déchiffrage d’espaces plastiques porteurs de tant de significations. Ils sont un élément de mémoire culturelle, explicitant notamment le sens et les signes des motifs et des couleurs. Item pour les vêtements, leurs tissus sont un moyen d’identification et un support de communication. Le vêtement devient aussi «langage» à l’instar de la calligraphie. Le point, la ligne et la surface s’expriment en s’entrelaçant autrement. Ces éléments se structurent et se composent par le biais «d’autres chaines» et «d’autres trames», afin de nous proposer une autre facette de «tissu». Celui-ci devient tantôt numérique tantôt métaphorique. L’image numérique est donc le produit de cette nouvelle facette générée par l’usage de l’informatique. La science et la technologie ont procuré à l’art (participatif/hybride) de nouveaux outils plus complexes et plus variés afin de perpétuer l’interprétation des mondes et susciter les interrogations. Elles nous permettent d’accueillir et d’intégrer de nouvelles approches et médiums dans l’univers artistique tels que le mouvement, le son, la vidéo, etc., en créant un nouveau rapport du public à l’œuvre. L’espace public et urbain devient alors une matrice propice pour s’exprimer artistiquement. / This thesis, treating the problematic of weaving and its proper universe looks for widening the common restricted space of the practice of weaving and its manifestations. At first, we studied the traditional weaving technique, its structure and composition. The Tunisian berber carpets are for all researchers an instrument of decoding plastic spaces, which carry many significations. They are an element of cultural memory, notably highlighting the sense and the signs of motifs and colors. Item for the clothes, their tissues are a medium of identification and a mean of communication. The piece of cloth also becomes a “language” just likecalligraphy. The point, the line and the surface entwine to bring out different expressions. These elements are structured and composed through “other channels” and “other wefts” in order to suggest another facet of “tissue”. This latter becomes digital sometimes and metaphorical for other times.Thus, the digital picture is the product of this new facet generated by the use of computer science. Science and Technology have provided to Art (whether participative of hybrid) new tools that are more complex and various aiming at perpetuating the interpretation of worlds and popping up interrogations. They allow us to receive and integrate new approaches and media within the artistic universe such as ; the motion, the sound, the video etc. while creating a new relationship between the audience and the artwork itself. Therefore, the public and urban space becomes a prosperous matrix to thrive artistically.