This thesis attempts to elaborate on my artwork during my graduate studies, while contextualizing it within the framework of the art world and the works of other artists. A main project during this time was to minimize the singular interpretation and framing of a fine art photographic print, while expanding its possibilities of meaning through the addition of important ephemera and objects such as plants, drawings, moving imagery, conversation and the unknown.

I am the one my friends call the creepy one. My art is not pretty or happy. It is an expression of my inner feelings and thoughts. I don't make pretty pictures because I find them void of true emotional substance. I developed my point of view when I photographed my eyes, which have become a consistent theme in my work. Eyes are the window to the soul and the key to my inner emotions. I have since expanded my work to include other images. I continue to seek ways to help my viewers experience my work both emotionally and visually. I want them to see the world through my eyes.

Over the years I have created many different images and explored a variety of media along my artistic journey. Similar images continue to occur in my work - images from my life as a child and as an adult in rural settings. I lived on a poultry farm and was involved in working with my parents there. When I married, my husband was a cattle farmer so I continued to live on a farm and use rural images in my work. Living in the country makes me constantly aware of the relationship between God, nature and man. I believe that we can find beauty in the most ordinary objects or places. My artwork is intended to help others find this beauty.

I create to emphasize the aesthetic or beauty of an object. When I begin a work, I feel the influence of the many photos I am constantly looking at and analyzing. I look at how light affects color, how light defines form, and how patterns are created by repeated shapes. I try to reproduce the things I see, but with dramatic impact by enlarging shapes and emphasizing colors. While my paintings are about pure aesthetics, my books are social commentary.

My personal life experiences are reflected in my art. I use symbolic and expressive marks in developing my abstract imagery, which acts as a visual language. The combining of my past and current art work, fused together, has become what I call a creative matrix. I see my images as choreographed compositions using a mixed media approach. The open-ended interpretation of my art have expanded the never ending possibilities of creation.

My art has become rooted in a process of layering. I layer materials to explore technique and to express the concept of inside versus outside. The evidence of multiple layers of materials is symbolically connected to what is happening within my own life. I want the viewer to see an indication of deeper layers of process and materials rather than just the polished surface of an artwork. This layering process can also be seen as a metaphor for human nature, what we see on the outside is not always what is on the inside.

My work concerns the divergent narratives created by fusing varied, often conflicting, textures, colors and fabrics, into a tenuous order. I intend for these otherwise clashing materials to create drama that is simultaneously enthusiastic, epic and ambiguous. While this media's formal properties re an important component of my work, the material's cultural and art-historical associations are also are critical ingredient. In this thesis, I will explore the use of the varied collage material, hierarchical compositions and contemporary influence of 19th Century Romantic themes as they relate to forming a variety of distinctly contemporary narratives in my compositions. I will investigate how my artistic point-of-view is informed by art-history, irony and the work of contemporary painters. Finally, I will discuss how my work engages a contemporary version of the Sublime.

For this project I want to cheer my subconscious passion for animals and use them as inspiration and as a starting point. Animals are mostly interesting in the project when it comes to their surface and their structure. The work has been a development of structures and techniques in an experimental way of working with textiles and mixed media on garments. The aim is to explore how structures can form garments.Comparing to a traditional design process this work is explored by a reversed design method where the material are formed into shapes or modules and then put together as a garment. So the form has been secondary to the surface structure of the garments. It is also important that the collection urge viewers to touch and feel the structure and hopefully also encourage people to understand and get involved with the fabric and what it´s maid of. The work shows that structure in textile is a lot about levels and layers in the surface area. The investigation in the work is about creating a three-dimensional feeling that is almost like a landscape to explore. During the process it has been found that it´s a thin line between when the garment has a specific surface structure and when it is a garment decorated with modules of a certain material.For me this could be a neverending life project. A project that can continue into several outfits in various techniques and materials but the idea could be developed by putting up rules like using only waste material or material that has been given to you. / Program: Modedesignutbildningen

The thesis explores the relationships between sound and mobility through an examination of sound art. The research engages with the intersection of sound, mobility and art through original empirical work and theoretically through a critical engagement with sound studies. In dialogue with the work of De Certeau, Lefebvre, Huhtamo and Habermas in terms of the poetics of walking, rhythms, media archeology and questions of publicness, I understand sound art as an experimental mobile and public space. The thesis establishes and situates the emerging field of mobile sound art by mapping three key traditions of mobile sound art - locative art, sound art and public art - and creates a taxonomy of mobile sound art by defining four categories: 'placing sounds', 'sound platforms', 'sonifying mobility' and 'musical instruments' (each represented by one case study). In doing so it develops a methodology that is attentive to the specifics of the sonic and mobile of media experience. I demonstrate how sonic interactions and embodied mobility are designed and experienced in specific ways in each of the four case studies - 'Aura' by Symons (UK), 'Pophorns' by Torstensson and Sandelin (Sweden), 'SmSage' by Redfern and Borland (US) and 'Core Sample' by Rueb (US) (all 2007). In tracing the topos of the musical telephone, discussing the making and breaking of relevant micro publics, accounting for the polyphonies of footsteps and unwrapping bundles of rhythms, this thesis contributes to understanding complex media experiences in hybrid spaces. In doing so it critically sheds light on the quality of sonic artistic experiences, the audience engagement with urban, public and networked spaces and the relationship between sound art and everyday media experience. My thesis provides valuable insight into auditory ways of mobilising and making public spaces, non-verbal and embodied media practices, and rhythms and scales of mobile media experiences.

This portfolio consists of eight works (five choral, one multi-media, one string quartet and one symphonic orchestra) written during my doctoral candidacy from 2011-2015. They are arranged according to genre - from choral works to instrumental, sorted according to the ensemble size and chronologically thereafter. In these works, there are some common traits – the application of interval of second is found in all pieces with distinctive purposes; the emphasis of poetic image in the aesthetic of Chinese music is observed in some pieces. Furthermore, characteristics of choral music such as homophonic progression among parts and cantabile melodic writing can be traced in the instrumental pieces, particularly in the slow section of the String Quartet. / A substantial part of this portfolio is allocated to choral music. Before admitting to the DMus program, I had been establishing myself as a choral composer and conductor in the local choral communities. The last five years I spent at CUHK inspired me not only on the possibility of new sound and harmonic approaches to this genre, but also, and most importantly, the structure and form of music. The diverse manners to develop a musical piece based on simple motives certainly contribute to consistency and coherence. This is inevitably a major breakthrough in my composition career. / The diverse inspirations are channeled into music compositions through different operations of the interval of a second, which contribute to the formation of individual character of each piece: In Wo Jiang, the permeating taste of primordiality is brought by the continuous repetition of the second interval as a driving agent in the bass part, giving origin to the music developed; where vertically there is overtone singing in the upper part, which combines to create a sense of remoteness. The highest notes in the tone cluster passages are sometimes dissonance of second interval that enables a more ringing sound in the high register, whereas in Huan Hun Cao the vertically aligned second interval appears in the inner voices, specially in soprano two and alto, giving way to the emphasis of the highest note sung by soprano one. On the other hand, the horizontal employment of second interval typifies the opening and ending sections of this piece when the moving line shows some descending half step against the long drones sung by the lower parts. This effectively depicts an eerie but yet spacious sensation with regard to the select texts. The usages of second interval are two-folded in Yi Nian – vertical and ornamental – the pitched water glasses are tuned to A, G and F; the humming passages of the chorus feature a descending step in the first tenor to function as an appoggiatura. These altogether enrich the harmonic progression of the chordal harmonies. Encircled begins with irregular subdivisions of beat on C# within the common time by both first and second sopranos though the first soprano repeatedly drives to a semitone higher on the last note of each phrase. Such metallic sound yet sometimes dissonant connects to the imaginary sword fight. The interval of second in the style of ornaments fits well the flute part in the third movement of Chun Hen – The Reunion to orientalize it into Dizi. Wintry sketches also includes interval of second, especially over long notes in the woodwind section, to make depiction of a uncomfortable and piercing scenery atop of a bare mountain. / 此作品集由八首作品組成，包括五首合唱，一項多媒體創作，一首弦樂四重奏及一首管弦。它們都是於二零一一至二零一五年間，本人為博士研究生時創作。作品集裡的作品都有以下共通點：有目的地運用二度音程及展現中國音樂藝術美學的氛圍與詩意。此外，作品集中的器樂作品，都會帶有一點合唱音樂的特徵。 / 本人入讀香港中文大學音樂博士課程前，已致力發展合唱指揮及創作事業，所以合唱音樂佔整個作品集不少篇幅。於在學五年間，本人於聲音及和聲處理上得到很大的啟發；及於樂曲發展、結構與曲式上，更獲資深的指導，創作中更能強調藝術作品的連貫與統一性，乃本人一大突破。 / 於創作上，透過靈活運用二度音程，此作品集中每首作品皆展現獨特性。《我將》的低音聲部，由橫向重複二度音程句組成，豐富了樂曲的推進性。縱向角度，男高音一使用的泛音唱法，則為音樂營造出遙遠感。於多高音和弦（四個音以上的和弦），最高的兩個音也會出現二度音程。透過產生此類不協調和聲，高音聲部較亮麗的音色會更為突出。而於《還魂草》，縱向二度音程則發生於內聲部，見於女高二音及女低音，並停留於中音區，讓女高音一的旋律性能明顯地呈現。另外，樂曲首尾兩段均應用了橫向二度音程。此手法與其他聲部的持續長音同時發生，使兩個聲部產生渺小卻奇異的音程變化，有效地塑造歌詞表達的空間感。《一念》中，二度音程運用大致見於兩段落：已定音的盛水玻璃杯及合唱部份的哼唱段落。後者的二度音程出現於男高音一的倚音，為和聲發展加添色彩。此種把二度音程應用於裝飾音的技巧，亦出現於《春痕》第三樂章《再遇》。為強調東方感，長笛演奏一系列上、下行的倚音，模仿笛子的加花演奏。《圍》除了強調開首女高音一、二於升C音的重複對唱、不規則的四・四拍分拍外，首段樂句均以二度音程作結，產生一種金屬性的聲音，模仿古代的刀光劍影。《冬之素描》亦包括了二度音程與和聲的運用，尤其於木管組的長音上，描繪於空曠高山上不安及寒風刺骨的感覺。 / Chan, Ka Hei. / Thesis D.Mus. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Abstracts also in Chinese; includes Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 06, October, 2016). / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.