Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to explore how different means are used to create indeterminate meaning in Henry James’s novella<em> The Turn of the Screw</em>. It suggests that the indeterminacy creates gaps in the text which the reader is required to fill in during the reading process, and that this indeterminacy is achieved chiefly through the use of an unreliable narrator and of ambiguity in the way the narrator relates the events that take place. The reliability of the narrator is called into question by her personal qualities as well as by narrative factors. Personal qualities that undermine the narrator’s reliability are youth, inexperience, nervousness, excitability and vanity. Narrative factors that damage the narrator’s reliability concern the story as manuscript, the narrator’s role in the story she narrates, and her line of argumentation. The ambiguity in the way events are reported is produced by ambiguous words, dismissed propositions and omissions. The essay demonstrates how the unreliable narrator and the ambiguity combine to make the reader question the narrator’s account and supply his or her own interpretation of key elements in the story, that is, how they invite the reader to “co-author” the text.</p>

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 are two events that scarred America and its people. In the aftermath of the assassination and the terrorist attacks, the American public was forced to sift through competing messages existing in the public sphere in order to make meaning out of the events. Although the American government, within a few days of both events, released who was ultimately responsible (Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for 9/11), the people were still left with coming to terms for why such violence occurred. In order to provide a frame from which the American people could view and understand the assassination and the terrorist attacks, two blue ribbon commissions were formed: the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy and the 9/11 Commission, which investigated the terrorist attacks. Despite the reports’ purposes, significant segments of the population questioned both Commissions’ conclusions. In both instances, conspiratorial understandings of the events grew after the publication of the reports so that, in the case of the Warren Commission, most of the American public believe Oswald did not act alone and, in the case of the 9/11 Commission, there is growing belief that the government’s failure to predict and prevent the terrorist attacks was the result of a governmental conspiracy. This dissertation seeks to understand why, in our current times, official discourses are unable to prevail over conspiracy theories. This study proposes to illustrate the power of conspiracy discourse by examining it through the lens of official discourses that were designed, in part, to head-off conspiracy beliefs before they gained momentum within the American public. Such an inquiry will provide three main benefits: it will contribute to a more exacting understanding of the rhetorical power of conspiracy arguments in our times; it will provide insight into the relationship between official and conspiracy discourses (especially as they now exist); and, such a study has implications for determining the current direction of political life.

Situated between music and architecture, this thesis explores the notation, design, and performance of sound space. In the middle of the twentieth century, composers began to include spatial directives in their musical scores. They introduced a lineage of conservation, communication, and conception of spatial meaning in sound. This strategy of notation, as used by Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, demonstrates a working relationship with space that is rooted in the discipline of architecture. As a synthesis of the research, installation projects build the experiential component of this thesis. The design and performance of these sound based installations amplify depth, movement, and change. These unique qualities of sound complete what other media fail to represent, and can significantly inform the ocular-centric design process in architecture. Ultimately, this investigation brings temporality into current architectural discourse by considering sound as an essential component of space. Through the act of listening, this thesis seeks to engage the sonorous layer of architecture and to enrich our experience of the world.

Situated between music and architecture, this thesis explores the notation, design, and performance of sound space. In the middle of the twentieth century, composers began to include spatial directives in their musical scores. They introduced a lineage of conservation, communication, and conception of spatial meaning in sound. This strategy of notation, as used by Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, demonstrates a working relationship with space that is rooted in the discipline of architecture. As a synthesis of the research, installation projects build the experiential component of this thesis. The design and performance of these sound based installations amplify depth, movement, and change. These unique qualities of sound complete what other media fail to represent, and can significantly inform the ocular-centric design process in architecture. Ultimately, this investigation brings temporality into current architectural discourse by considering sound as an essential component of space. Through the act of listening, this thesis seeks to engage the sonorous layer of architecture and to enrich our experience of the world.

Kinematical indeterminate linkages are ones whose complete set of instant centers cannot be obtained graphically by the Kennedy¡¦s theorem. This article aims to graphically obtained the solutions for some of such linkages, using a concept of introducing a imaginary link, while not altering the degree of freedom, called imaginary link method. It is also possible to combine this scheme with Pennock¡¦s method to achieve greater applicability.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how different means are used to create indeterminate meaning in Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw. It suggests that the indeterminacy creates gaps in the text which the reader is required to fill in during the reading process, and that this indeterminacy is achieved chiefly through the use of an unreliable narrator and of ambiguity in the way the narrator relates the events that take place. The reliability of the narrator is called into question by her personal qualities as well as by narrative factors. Personal qualities that undermine the narrator’s reliability are youth, inexperience, nervousness, excitability and vanity. Narrative factors that damage the narrator’s reliability concern the story as manuscript, the narrator’s role in the story she narrates, and her line of argumentation. The ambiguity in the way events are reported is produced by ambiguous words, dismissed propositions and omissions. The essay demonstrates how the unreliable narrator and the ambiguity combine to make the reader question the narrator’s account and supply his or her own interpretation of key elements in the story, that is, how they invite the reader to “co-author” the text.

This performance-based project scrutinizes indeterminacy as a mediating force impinging upon our behaviour and its subsequent impact on the nature and constituency of engagements and dialogue between people in urban spaces. Concepts centering on the dynamics of departure are being investigated with focus upon the Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE), Second Life as a facet of real life (the term 'real life' will henceforth be referred to in this document within the context of Second Life, as First Life). Experienced through the vehicle of the Roaming Body, our meetings and encounters with people and places frequently manifest as disjunct communiqués and mis-engagements. I am asserting that this is due to the inevitability in our existence of indeterminacy acting as a significant factor in the articulation of our relations with others, reinforcing our description as time-based entities traversing the passage of the everyday. I maintain that this is frequently evidenced in our behaviours through the occurrence (notwithstanding arrivals) of a continual, pre-emptive state of departure. Indeterminacy implies motion and emerges, as Massumi asserts, through ‘… an unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary …’. We, as humans, are constantly being drawn away – always either approaching or embracing involuntarily, a 'state-of-Leaving’ which co-mingles with and unerringly erodes our efforts to stay engaged with another in the here and now. In my dance and video practice, interventionist dance strategies are being used to prompt and interrogate the constituents of departure within encounters in designated public places. Experimental movement frameworks employed are informed by the discipline of Contact Improvisation Dance and Authentic Movement. The working process is being documented using a range of video narrative.

Many scholars exclude New York painter Philip Guston (1913-80) from the artistic tradition of Abstract Expressionism due to his absence from New York City during the group's early formative years. This thesis asserts, however, that Guston's role in Abstract Expressionism can be firmly established through his unique interpretation of the formative influence of surrealist automatism. Though never engaging with the surrealists directly, Guston explored automatist ideas upon meeting New York School experimental music composers John Cage and Morton Feldman. This trio's engagement with the Zen Buddhist concepts of unimpededness and interpenetration influenced Guston to create compositions through chance operations, a process Cage would call "indeterminacy." My aim is to enrich an understanding of Guston's idiosyncratic relationship to Abstract Expressionism and, ultimately, to offer a more expansive definition of Abstract Expressionism in general, allowing for a broader understanding of the formation of American modernism.

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