Since the 1960s contemporary art has seen a paradigm shift occur that has rejected the individual perspectives of modernity and begun to consider the value of connective and participatory aesthetics. New process-led and technologically-based practices have shifted the emphasis away from the art object and onto the art process, rendering the approach to making art a much more connected and relational one. In parallel, the curatorial role has radically shifted since it was first popularised in the 1970s. With less emphasis on the archival and more on the mediation and dissemination of practices, the role has risen to the forefront of the contemporary art arena, yet the actual methods of curation have not evolved in relation to the practices they curate, revealing an acute lack of curatorial convention for exhibiting and disseminating process-led practices. Employing the term Social Practice to actively define this ever-evolving body of process-led works, this research is situated at the juncture between the social outputs of reciprocal artworks and the curator’s role in exhibiting them. In establishing curation as a practice and situating it at a well-founded and clear point of perspective, this thesis argues that a clearer understanding of curatorial practice will in turn formulate an active and more integrated way of working. Focussed on the curation of media and performative practices specifically, and through four practical case studies: Becoming Electric, Fast and Slow Networks, Scatter Projects and Turnstile, in curatorial and exhibition practice, a dynamic form of curatorial practice is made manifest. This Social Curation seeks to contextualise fully the potential of exhibitions as structures of communication and exchange, maximising social interaction and engagement across curatorial approach, process and outcome. This thesis engages performative and participative approaches in its development of a research bricolage, revealing through practice how curation can function in an open and relational way. It contributes to methodical innovation through its use of a real-life initiative to test and ground the research strategies, and to the fields of artistic and curatorial research through original and responsive strategies towards evolving exhibition formats. Overall it has sought and revealed the means to both situate and question new ways of thinking and methods of working within the dynamic of the everyday.

This thesis examines the notions of self and no-self, specifically in light of the actor’s experience and manner of engagement in actor training. Arguing that the actor’s assumptions and beliefs regarding self affect embodiment and engagement in training, the thesis highlights the importance of considering these notions, and proposes some practical explorations. Training experiences in theatrical biomechanics and the work of Nicolás Núñez are reflected upon as practical references for the investigation. The lack of a fixed ongoing self in experience is identified as a key stance in considerations within philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and the consequences, for the actor, of conceiving an independent, on-going self as existing in experience are suggested to lead to a perceived dualism that is at times considered to interfere in the actor’s work. The thesis suggests an understanding of self as a ‘myth’ created through ‘storytelling,’ conceptualisation and embodied metaphor, and as a process of neurological mapping as argued by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Antonio Damasio, Louis Hoffman and others. For considering the notion of no-self and the actor’s potential for operating without a sense of personal identity, the thesis draws on the no-self theory of Buddhism and ‘attunement’ and the ‘self-cultivation’ model proposed by Nagatomo Shigenori and Yuasa Yasuo. Drawing on no-self theory, the questions regarding dualism in the actor’s experience, a transformation of habitual patterns of movement and action, everyday consciousness and the actor’s manner of engagement in training are examined. Identifying actor-training as a process of self-exploration and self-definition in the work of Phillip Zarrilli, Eugenio Barba and others, the thesis argues for the importance of considering the notions of self and no-self and introduces alternative models for this examination.

This thesis examines the urban topography of Berlin’s working-class districts, as seen in the art, architecture and other images produced in the city between 1924 and 1930. During the 1920s, Berlin flourished as centre of modern culture. Yet this flourishing did not exist exclusively amongst the intellectual elites that occupied the city centre and affluent western suburbs. It also extended into the proletarian districts to the north and east of the city. Within these areas existed a complex urban landscape that was rich with cultural tradition and artistic expression. This thesis seeks to redress the bias towards the centre of Berlin and its recognised cultural currents, by exploring the art and architecture found in the city’s working-class districts. The thesis adopts Henri Lefebvre’s premise that each society creates its own space in which it lives, works, and sustains its cultural identity. On this basis, working-class culture and the spaces in which it was practiced, are treated with equal weight. The thesis begins by examining how the laissez-faire economics of the German Empire (1871–1914), combined with a massive influx of rural migrants into Berlin, creating a complex industrial landscape, whose working-class inhabitants retained many pastoral traditions. The thesis moves on to study the works of a number of artists active in Berlin between 1924 and 1930, using examples of their work to examine the unique nature of the working-class districts, and the culture and traditions that took place within them. The second half of the thesis explores the working-class districts from an explicitly political perspective. The extensive house building programme that took place across Berlin throughout the twenties is explored in all its varied and conflicting political perspectives. What emerges is a picture of a growing schism between Berlin’s Social Democratic government, and Communist supporters in the working-class districts. 1929 emerges as a critical year in which political contestations of space between the two parties and their supporters reached new levels of hostility, as working-class culture clashed against Social Democratic urban policy.

Although the history of Virtual Reality (VR) is only about half a century old, all kinds of technologies in the VR field are developing rapidly. VR is a computer generated simulation that replaces or augments the real world by various media. In a VR environment, participants have a perception of “presence”, which can be described by the sense of immersion and intuitive interaction. One of the major VR applications is in the field of sports, in which a life-like sports environment is simulated, and the body actions of players can be tracked and represented by using VR tracking and visualisation technology. In the entertainment field, exergaming that merges video game with physical exercise activities by employing tracking or even 3D display technology can be considered as a small scale VR. For the research presented in this thesis, a novel realistic real-time table tennis game combining immersive, interactive and competitive features is developed. The implemented system integrates the InterSense tracking system, SwissRanger 3D camera and a three-wall rear projection stereoscopic screen. The Intersense tracking system is based on ultrasonic and inertia sensing techniques which provide fast and accurate 6-DOF (i.e. six degrees of freedom) tracking information of four trackers. Two trackers are placed on the two players’ heads to provide the players’ viewing positions. The other two trackers are held by players as the racquets. The SwissRanger 3D camera is mounted on top of the screen to capture the player’s

Since the 1980s, Taiwan has been subjected to heavy foreign and global influences, leading to a marked erosion of its traditional cultural forms. Indigenous traditions have had to struggle to hold their own and to strike out into new territory, adopt or adapt to Western models. For most theatres in Taiwan, Shakespeare has inevitably served as a model to be imitated and a touchstone of quality. Such Taiwanese Shakespeare performances prove to be much more than merely a combination of Shakespeare and Taiwan, constituting a new fusion which shows Taiwan as hospitable to foreign influences and unafraid to modify them for its own purposes. Nonetheless, Shakespeare performances in contemporary Taiwan are not only a demonstration of hybridity of Westernisation but also Sinification influences. Since the 1945 Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT) takeover of Taiwan, the KMT’s one-party state has established Chinese identity over a Taiwan identity by imposing cultural assimilation through such practices as the Mandarin-only policy during the Chinese Cultural Renaissance in Taiwan. Both Taiwan and Mainland China are on the margin of a “metropolitan bank of Shakespeare knowledge” (Orkin, 2005, p. 1), but it is this negotiation of identity that makes the Taiwanese interpretation of Shakespeare much different from that of a Mainlanders’ approach, while they share certain commonalities that inextricably link them. This study thus examines the interrelation between Taiwan and Mainland China operatic cultural forms and how negotiation of their different identities constitutes a singular different Taiwanese Shakespeare from Chinese Shakespeare. In recognising this, the core of this thesis rests on how Shakespeare plays speak insightfully to Taiwan society across historical, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Many Shakespeare plays powerfully echo the political turmoil of contemporary Taiwan society, but it is the negotiation of the political and cultural dependency that constitutes a distinct Taiwanese Shakespeare identity that is different from Chinese Shakespeare. This study therefore focuses on Shakespeare performances in contemporary Taiwan between 1986 and 2003, emphasising political context as key factor in adaptation, as Taiwan society transited from a military age to post-millennium democracy after martial law was lifted in 1987.

The thesis contends that there is a dominant strand of thinking driving the prevailing metanarrative of American global hegemony. This strand, constructed here as Ameritocracy, taps into three interconnected and fundamental principles concerning the nature of America: that American values are universal, terminal and providential. However, this notion of American universality is contradicted by a troubling parochialism, one that reveals religious, racial and cultural particularities generated from American identity, and from the mythic, providential origin story of America. The thesis expands on the theory of Ameritocracy, its historical derivation and theoretical antecedents, and its application within the soft power realm of Hollywood film. Ameritocracy finds its apotheosis in the popular blockbuster films of the unipolar era. The global aspirations of the blockbuster conflate with the universality of the medium, and thereby function as the perfect conduit for expounding the presumed universality of the American nation, promoting and proselytising on behalf of American primacy, using Ameritocratic arguments to legitimise and normalise U.S. hegemony. Analysis of blockbuster texts reveals that the notions of universality they embed are often partial and particular, featuring an obfuscation of definitions, between ideals and interests, between ends and means, and between the universal and the American.

Representations of the Holy Trinity have increasingly come under scrutiny, exposing two competing paradigms at opposite ends of the theological spectrum: the legitimacy and the illegitimacy of imaging the Triune God with focus on the invisible Father who was imaged as an individual from Late Antiquity and beyond. An overview of these two conflicting views has unveiled a number of inconsistencies in how the Early Christian iconography of God the Father and the Trinity has been interpreted. This thesis provides a unique re-evaluation of the surviving Trinitarian visual material between c.300 to c.730. Primarily, this study collates pictorial evidence preserved in the mediums of sarcophagi, catacomb frescoes, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts and an icon that depicts Divinity. It proceeds to critique modern misconceptions of the identity, form, meaning, function and reception of the depictions. The thesis traces the visual shift amid overt and covert images of Divinity by decoding important artworks such as the Ashburnham Pentateuch and the Codex Amiatinus; Christians visualised explicitly the ' invisibility' of God but created an unprecedented invention, the depiction of the Father through Christ's image. The innovative depiction heralded future visual formulas of Divinity echoing the complexities of Trinitarian material culture of the Mediterranean world.

The greater visibility of Chinese films brought by the wider global access and circulation has not satisfied the culturally specific understanding of Chinese cinema. The subject/object power relations stemming from the legacy of colonial and postcolonial discourse hinders the arrival of a better-balanced cross-cultural reading. The visibility of cinema provides a visual spectacle, it also challenges the audience with a communication of the epistemic side of visibility which feeds the images meaning and imagination and facilitates a more balanced culturally specific understanding. However, the epistemic side of visibility remains invisible under power-engaged cross-cultural reading. This study suggests that the sentimental provides a possibility for a better-balanced cross-cultural understanding through its provision of empathic connection with the culture, history and the psyche. Home-longing/homecoming is claimed to the basis that the Chinese culture is built upon. Defined as the sentimental, this affective mode has been manifested across Chinese cinema abundantly through visual representation. The various articulations of the sentimental in face of the global and transnational homogeneous force further prove the deep-rootedness of the sentimental. The sentimental fashions as an affective link that establishes an empathic engagement in cross-cultural analysis. Through reading eight Chinese films made since the 1990, this study illustrates the relationship between the visual spectacle and the sentimental in Chinese cinema. Although the eight films are all from mainland Chinese directors, this study is carried out with the awareness of the sharing of Chinese culture within the Chinese language cinema where this study locates.

The thesis aims to observe the industrial design profession and to study the role of industrial designer in Turkish industry. Through an electronic questionnaire investigating the manufacturers&rsquo / and designers&rsquo / opinions about how industrial design practice is perceived and how industrial designers are utilized in Turkey it was possible to examine the current roles of industrial designers and to evaluate the status of industrial design profession. The survey also investigated how the industrial designer or the design team is situated in new product development process, and in the corporate hierarchy, what kind of investments have been made in the last decades by manufacturers in Turkey on industrial design.

This thesis presents an empirical investigation of the problems of including pictorial digital art in the context of Digital Libraries (DLs). The rational for this work is that digital art material is a significant source of learning and research, provided that it is systematically collected and maintained in structured electronic repositories. The thesis addresses a fundamental question: How to provide description and retrieval services, which are based on the needs of digital art user communities? This raises three research issues. One is the need to combine DL collections into meaningful and functional content. The second is the importance of a user-oriented approach to designing and developing Digital Libraries. The third is the requirement for continuing access to digital art as a record of modern culture. These questions are explored through a needs assessment targeted to Arts & Humanities scholars, digital artists and representatives of the DL community. A data collection methodology is developed, based on the principles of Social Informatics and a case study of evaluation efforts in extant projects. The results from this process demonstrate that the scholarly value of digital art can be established by aggregating material from various repositories into a unified dataset. The results also identify specific documentation and retrieval issues deriving from inclusion of digital art in a DL environment that necessitate further investigation. To this end, a review of sixteen digital art online resources is conducted which reveals ad-hoc collection strategies and metadata deficiencies. The work presents a prototype Digital Library for enhancing the educational outcome of digital art. The application is used as an implementation platform for material aggregation and augmented documentation through the Media Art Notation System (MANS). The summative evaluation findings confirm that the suggested solutions are highly rated by the targeted audiences. The thesis makes a contribution to academic knowledge in situating the representation of digital art within modern society. By critically examining the unique requirements of this material using the resources of social theory, the thesis represents a contemporary and pragmatic perspective on digital media art. In a well-structured Digital Library, the scholarly potential of digital art is much greater than the currently employed ad-hoc context. This work offers a sustained reflection and a roadmap for selecting and consistently applying a strategy that aims to continually improve the quality of digital art provision.