Vernacular Posthumanism: Visual Culture and Material Imagination uses a theory of image vernaculars in order to explore the ways in which contemporary visual culture both reflects on and constructs 21st century cultural attitudes toward the human and the nonhuman. This project argues that visual culture manifests a vernacular posthumanism that expresses a fundamental contradiction: the desire to transcend the human while at the same time reasserting the importance of the flesh and the materiality of lived experience. This contradiction is based in a biodeterminist desire, one that fantasizes about reducing all actants, both human and nonhuman, to functions of code. Within this framework, actants become fundamentally exchangeable, able to be combined, manipulated, and understood as variations of digital code. Visual culture – and its expression of vernacular posthumanism – thus functions as a reflection on contemporary conceptualizations of the human, a rehearsal of the posthuman, and a staging ground for encounters between the human and the nonhuman. Each chapter of this project begins in the field of film studies and then moves out toward a broader analysis of visual culture and nonhumanist theory. This project relies on the theories and methodologies of phenomenology, materialism, posthumanism, object-oriented ontology, actor-network theory, film and media studies, and visual culture studies. Visual objects analyzed include: the films of Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, and Krzysztof Kieślowski; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997); the film 300 (2006); the TV series Planet Earth (2006); DNA portraits, the art of Damien Hirst; Body Worlds; human migration maps; and remote surgical machinery.

Submitted by Felipe de Oliveira Mateus null (felipe.omateus@hotmail.com) on 2016-09-04T00:17:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 A cultura digital em pauta análise do site youpix.pdf: 2652394 bytes, checksum: f22f976bd823431315f74a21d752b8c1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Juliano Benedito Ferreira (julianoferreira@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-09-06T18:54:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 mateus_fo_me_bauru.pdf: 2652394 bytes, checksum: f22f976bd823431315f74a21d752b8c1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-06T18:54:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mateus_fo_me_bauru.pdf: 2652394 bytes, checksum: f22f976bd823431315f74a21d752b8c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-19 / O desenvolvimento da Internet e das tecnologias digitais de comunicação favoreceu não apenas a consolidação de novos hábitos e valores culturais, como também o surgimento de novos espaços de divulgação e de acesso a informações. Esta pesquisa propõe um estudo da análise da cultura digital feita pelo site youPIX. Criado em 2006, o youPIX surgiu a partir de uma proposta de acompanhar e dar visibilidade midiática aos conteúdos e comportamentos surgidos a partir dos usos culturais da internet e suas tecnologias digitais. Em 2015, o site mudou sua linha editorial, propondo ser um analista desse universo cultural, compreendendo a ocorrência de seus fenômenos e implicações econômicas, sociais e culturais. Partindo dessa mudança editorial e da proposta do site de analisar a cultura digital, propõe-se realizar um estudo de como essas análises se enquadram no universo dos estudos aplicados em cibercultura, de forma a identificar quais os conceitos e valores trabalhados pelo site. Para tanto, servirão como bases teóricas autores que analisam o desenvolvimento das tecnologias digitais e seus fenômenos e sua expansão no cotidiano, além de um trabalho metodológico baseado em Análise de Conteúdo, que auxiliará na elucidação dos valores trabalhados pelo site em seus artigos publicados. / The development of the internet and of the digital technologies of communication favored not only the consolidation of new cultural habits and values, but also the appearance of new places of diffusion and access of information. This research proposes a study of the analysis of digital culture made by the site youPIX. Brought up in 2006, youPIX appeared based on a proposal of coverage and to give visibility in media to the contents and behaviors emerged by the cultural usage of the internet and its digital technologies. In 2015, the site has changed its editorial line, aiming to be an analyst of this cultural universe, understanding the occurrence of its phenomena and economic, social and cultural consequences. Based on this editorial change and on the new proposal of analyzing digital culture, we intend to do a study of how this analysis take place in the field of the studies in cyberculture, in a way that is possible to identify what are the concepts and values used by the site. For this purpose, it will be structured on authors that analyze the development of digital technologies, its phenomena and its expansion on quotidian, besides a methodological work based on Content Analysis that will help on the comprehension of the values used by the site on its published articles.

The Digital Logic of Death analyzes recent reconfigurations in our relationship to death which have emerged in response to the rupture of the digital, as glimpsed through the films, television shows, and digital games which so often inform and influence our understanding of mortality. Considered as both a series of technological advancements and a new set of cultural assumptions, this project argues that the digital cannot but shift our understanding of death in general, and our recognition of our own finiteness in particular. As such, it presents four observations about the appearance, function, and conception of death in contemporary moving images. First, that our dissatisfaction with inaccurate representations of death and increased interest in autonomous simulations reveals an attempt to reinstate the knowledge and painful pleasure once found only through witnessing the death of others. Second, that the seemingly inconsequential nature of death in digital games – where the traumatic is easily rewound and re-animated – serves not to deny death but rather to make it more present, providing an opportunity for gameplayers to contemplate and craft their own unique ‘path to death.’ Third, that contemporary society, engulfed in the binary logic of the digital, has come to fetishize the frightening possibility of death at the expense of recognizing its potential impact on our lives and culture, leading to experiential relays through which we attempt to reencounter that potential, namely a narrative Being-towards-death and a splitting of subjectivity into actual and virtual components with their own relationship to mortality. And fourth, that contemporary narratives of seemingly ‘immortal,’ artificially-intelligent machines are concerned less with the fantasy of immortality than they are with what it means to be mortal, thereby positioning death as the most essential and fundamental component of the human experience. Together, these observations look to renew an existential undercurrent of critical theory, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and metaphysics, which has the potential to greatly inform key conversations in film and media studies, cultural studies, and posthumanism, as well as the capacity to reveal the essential argument of the digital logic of death: that to be human is to know that you will die.

Based on Donna Haraway's concept of dogs as companion species, this study aims to critically examine the phenomenon of companion species as it manifests on social media by exploring the notion of humans being-with and becoming with dogs as their nonhuman others. Working through Haraway’s companion species and the nonhuman turn, I consider the relation between Haraway’s (2008) becoming with and German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s (1927) idea of being (Dasein) and being-with (Mitsein) others. By reading Haraway with Heidegger, I argue that nonhumanism is not a rupture from the human condition, but rather an expansion of what it means to be human with others in contemporary society. I show that although nonhumanism typically rejects Heidegger’s perceived anthropocentric approach to animals, Haraway’s nonhumanist becoming with shares and shows similarity to Heidegger’s being-with-others. Throughout my exploration of the phenomena of companion species, I maintain the position that in the midst of the nonhuman turn, we remain all too human by being-with nonhuman others, specifically in terms of human-dog companionship. In contemporary society the pivotal relationship of companion species notably manifests on social media when humans capture and share their relations with their dogs on various platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. In an added layer to the study, I argue that online images of the human-dog relation reflect and mediate the nature of being-with and becoming with nonhuman others. Through a digital and theoretical exploration of online companion species, I show how these images reflect the significance of human qualities within nonhuman relations, as well as what it means to be human with our nonhuman others in the Digital Age. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / NRF Grant-Holder-Linked Bursary 2016-2018 / Visual Arts / PhD / Unrestricted

Different Ways to Record Light is a series of photographs, videos and objects that explore the affect that popular culture has on how I perceive, and make sense of the world around me. By using light as a thematic and metaphoric subject this work opens up a discourse about the role that images and technology play in our perceptual lives. This thesis paper will give a theoretical, contextual and historical framework for the concepts explored in my studio practice.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This thesis, carried out at the Graduate Program in Education in the research line Formation, Knowledge and Professional Development, addresses educators' self (trans)formation in the culture of digital convergence from the perspective of a dialogical-affective epistemology. The overall objective is to investigate experiences of integration with digital technologies and the WEB in the Education major courses at the Federal University of Santa Maria. The specific objectives are to: a) characterize the new generation of pre-service teachers in the culture of convergence; b) examine official documents that support the Education major course in terms of its approximation to the concept of a culture of digital and technological convergence; c) map experiences of integration with digital technologies in Education majors; d) identify facilitating elements for integrating the culture of convergence and the dialogical-affective epistemology in Education majors. The methodological process involved the triangulation of information from the literature review, document analysis, an exploratory study using a Google Drive form and narrative reconstruction designed from the educational spiral approach. The theoretical conceptual definition was based on the concepts of teacher education, culture of digital convergence and the Education major program. The political-pedagogical project (PPP) of the undergraduate Education programs are aligned with official documents. However, the PPP offers few considerations regarding the digital culture as a curricular reference for the education of pre-service teachers. We infer that this shows a detachment from the culture of the new generation, which is an important aspect that is also highlighted in the Education major national curricular guidelines. In the Education major at UFSM, few teachers integrate technology into their teaching practices. Therefore, we believe that teachers need to overcome the fear of integrating digital technologies and the WEB to protagonize this paradigmatic rupture through their own conduct. Keywords: Teacher education. Culture of digital convergence. Education in the digital culture. Pedagogy in the digital culture / Esta dissertação, desenvolvida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação (PPGE), Linha de pesquisa 1 - Formação, Saberes e Desenvolvimento Profissional, tem como temática central a auto(trans)formação do pedagogo na cultura da convergência digital, sob a perspectiva da epistemologia dialógico-afetiva. O objetivo geral é investigar experiências de integração das tecnologias digitais e da WEB desenvolvidas nos cursos presenciais de licenciatura em Pedagogia da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM). Decorrente, os objetivos específicos são: a) Caracterizar as novas gerações de ensinantes-aprendentes na cultura de convergência; b) Analisar os documentos legais que subsidiam os cursos presenciais de licenciatura em pedagogia quanto à aproximação do conceito de cultura de convergência digital e tecnológica; c) Mapear experiências de integração das tecnologias digitais nos cursos de pedagogia; d) Identificar elementos facilitadores para a integração da cultura de convergência e da epistemologia dialógico-afetiva nos cursos de pedagogia. O processo metodológico envolveu a triangulação das informações, a partir da pesquisa bibliográfica, da análise documental, do estudo exploratório com formulário Google Drive e das reconstruções narrativas docentes, concebidas a partir da espiral investigativo-formativa. A definição teórico-conceitual foi construída a partir dos conceitos: formação de professores, cultura de convergência digital e Curso de Pedagogia. Os Projetos Político-Pedagógicos dos cursos encontram-se em consonância com os documentos legais analisados, contudo, inferimos que pelo fato dos referidos PPP considerarem minimamente a cultura da convergência digital como referência curricular na formação do futuro pedagogo, demonstra distanciamento da referência cultural das novas gerações, sendo este um aspecto importante destacado nas DCN para os Cursos de Pedagogia. No âmbito das Pedagogias/UFSM, poucos docentes integram as tecnologias em suas práticas pedagógicas. Portanto, consideramos que os professores necessitam superar o receio em integrar as tecnologias digitais e a WEB para protagonizarem essa ruptura paradigmática a partir do próprio comportamento.

This study examines how the discourse of wenming (civilisation/civility) has been visualised throughout twentieth century Chinese art, with a particular emphasis on contemporary practice. Originally linked to concepts of modernity and change in the early twentieth century I argue that wenming continues to be of crucial importance in understanding how contemporary China wishes to be seen by the rest of the world. Through a series of close visual readings and case studies I explore how wenming attained considerable saliency as it was invoked to address a range of artistic and political reforms which resulted from China's socioeconomic transformations. Individual chapters focus on the work of Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Liu Gang, Wang Jin and Ai Weiwei amongst others. Taken together they provide an emic account of artistic praxis that seeks to understand contemporary art from China on its own terms. The study begins by examining how wenming was visualised in the early twentieth century. It then charts what happened to the term after the founding of the PRC in 1949 and how its appearance in locations such as Taiwan and Hong Kong provide sites of contention and alterity to mainland wenming discourse. It analyses how the bifurcation between material civilisation and spiritual civilisation that gained prominence following the economic reforms of the 1980s reconfigured the visual art of this period. Then, turning to a single art work, it theorises the relationship of wenming to an emerging corporeal politics. Finally, it explores how the discourse of wenming is being visually articulated in contemporary China as a result of these developments and traces its interaction with consumer culture, urbanisation and the politics of the internet.

O modo de ser e existir na contemporaneidade é marcado pelo aumento de necessidades, como o desejo de ampliar a própria visibilidade, caracterizando a dissolução das fronteiras entre público e privado. Diante da conjuntura em que imperam as novas tecnologias de comunicação no ambiente digital, novos comportamentos são fomentados, quando fenômenos como o nudes passam a merecer atenção. Nesse contexto, esta pesquisa abordou a temática da divulgação de relatos íntimos em plataformas de redes sociais, precisamente o Facebook, considerando a fragmentação da identidade do sujeito pós-moderno que se baseia na lógica da identificação. O objetivo geral da pesquisa foi investigar as interações comunicacionais no grupo Ousadia permitida que tem como prática a postagem de imagens e relatos íntimos. Quanto aos procedimentos metodológicos, trata-se de uma pesquisa de natureza qualitativa e caráter descritivo-exploratório apoiada em revisão de literatura e pesquisa documental. Com relação ao trabalho de campo, a técnica da etnografia virtual foi adotada para a observação das interações no interior do grupo por um período de três meses. Por fim, foi aplicada uma enquete junto aos participantes e conduzidas entrevistas de tipo semiestruturada com administradores da comunidade Ousadia permitida. Como resultados da pesquisa, a comunidade estudada age como mecanismo para a construção de si pela postagem de selfies e nudes, as formas principais de interação. A intenção é alcançar visibilidade e aprovação do outro quando aglutinados em tribos no ciberespaço. A fundadora da comunidade, por sua vez, figura como a personificação desse sujeito contemporâneo em busca de um eu visível amado por seus pares, ao galgar seu espaço como celebridade / The way of being and existing in contemporaneity is marked by the increase of needs, such as the desire to expand ones visibility, characterizing the dissolution of the boundaries between public and private. Given the current situation of new communication technologies in the digital environment, new behaviors are encouraged, when phenomena such as nudes become worthy of attention. In this context, this research addressed the theme of the dissemination of confidential reports on social networking platforms, namely Facebook, considering the fragmentation of the identity of the postmodern subject that is based on the logic of identification. The general objective of the research was to investigate the communication interactions in the Ousadia permitida group that has as practice the posting of images and intimate reports. As for the methodological procedures, it is a research of qualitative nature and descriptive-exploratory character supported in the literature review and documentary research. About the field work, the technique of virtual ethnography was adopted to observe the interactions within the group for three months. Finally, a poll was applied to the participants and conducted semi-structured interviews with administrators of the Ousadia permitida community. As results of this research, the studied community acts as a mechanism for the construction of self by the posting of selfies and nudes, the chief forms of interaction. The intention is to achieve visibility and approval of the other when agglutinated in tribes in cyberspace. The founder of the community, in turn, figures as the personification of this contemporary subject in search of a visible self-loved by his peers, as he gains his space as a celebrity

Partindo da hipótese de que as tecnologias digitais são simultaneamente meios e ambientes capazes de influenciar e viabilizar a emergência de um pensamento arquitetônico pronto a incorporar a complexidade, o objetivo do presente trabalho é ampliar a compreensão acerca das interfaces entre complexidade e processos de design em arquitetura. No percurso de construção dessa abordagem, buscamos entender a abrangência da mudança colocada pela complexidade, seu histórico, e seus princípios fundamentais, obtendo subsídios para definir critérios de seleção e análise de exemplos da emergência da complexidade em arquitetura, focalizando os processos de design. Utilizamos um recorte temporal em dois períodos – décadas de 1960 e 1970, e décadas de 1990 e 2000 –, distinguindo dois momentos específicos intrinsecamente conectados. A intenção é contribuir para uma compreensão efetiva da arquitetura não apenas, ou principalmente, como objeto, mas como um sistema complexo–organizado e, sobretudo, organizante. / Assuming digital technologies simultaneously as media and environment that influence and make feasible the emergence of an architectural thought ready to incorporate the complexity, the goal of this work is to increase the understanding circa interfaces between complexity and architectural design processes. This approach draws on understanding the scope of the change brought by complexity, its historical, and its fundamental principia, aiming to achieve subsides for defining criteria to analyze and select examples of complexity emergence in architecture, focusing on design process. Two periods of time were selected – from 1960s to 1970s and, from 1990s to 2000s –, distinguishing two specific moments closed related. The intention is to contribute for an effective understanding of architecture not merely or specifically as object, but as a complex system, simultaneously organized and organizer.

Partindo da hipótese de que o uso da arte da memória pode ser compreendido como um sistema-processo de design para a concepção de espaços no contexto da cultura digital, o objetivo do presente trabalho é construir uma compreensão ampliada do design de espaços que dão suporte ao armazenamento estruturado de informações, relacionando imagens e lugares. A investigação contempla o uso da arte da memória na concepção de espaços e seus princípios fundamentais desde a antiguidade clássica até os dias atuais, através de exemplos, construindo um entendimento do desenvolvimento e das conexões estabelecidas por essa arte em três momentos: das origens como parte da retórica na antiguidade clássica à sua apropriação pela escolástica medieval, passando à sua apropriação pela tradição Hermético-Cabalística no Renascimento, com os modelos de teatros da memória, à sua incorporação no processo de concepção de espacialidades por arquitetos e mídia artistas contemporâneos. A intenção é contribuir para o entendimento da arte da memória como auxiliar à criação de espaços como sistemas da memória. / Assuming that the use of the art of memory can be understood as a system-design process for the conception of spaces in the context of digital culture, the present work goal is to construct a base understanding of design of spaces that give support to structured information storage by connecting images and places. The research contemplates the use of the art of memory, concerning the conception of spaces, from its fundament, of the classical antiquity to the present days, by examples, building an understanding of the development and connections concerning three moments of this art: from its origins as a part of rhetoric in the classical antiquity to its assimilation by the middle ages scholastics, to its appropriation by Hermetic-Cabalistic tradition in the renaissance and its memory theatres models, and finally to its contemporary incorporation in the space design processes by architects and media artists. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of the art of memory as an aid to the conception of spaces as memory systems.