Diagrams and schemas included in medieval medical manuscripts are understudied within art historical scholarship. This thesis discusses the multivalence of meanings — medical, social and theological — generated within schemas included in sixteen different medical codices, produced in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through text-image analysis, by considering the diagrams in relationship to the texts that immediately surround them and the other texts included within the same codex, the following chapters show that diagrams, through different means, emphasised or legitimized the surrounding texts and medical practices. Additional analysis is interpictorial: the visual motifs are considered in relationship to similar and related pictorial subjects, familiar from other manuscripts and artistic contexts. Through consideration of the intervisual references to devotional art and other scientific schemas, the multiple meanings of the medical diagrams are further elucidated. Another feature of the codices that is studied is their status as physical objects, how they were held, used, leafed through and transported. Lastly, by situating the codices and their diagrams within a late medieval English social, ideological and religious milieu, a deeper understanding of their function is achieved. This thesis shows that rather than being simple tools used in medical practice or representations of medical theories, diagrams included in medical manuscripts functioned in multiple, prescriptive and descriptive, ways to define theological, civic and gendered ideas around social order.

This thesis imagines an ecological future for the post-industrial landscape of Govan Graving Docks, situated on the banks of the River Clyde in inner city Glasgow. The research is framed by a context of urban renewal and at times violent change in early 21st century Glasgow which has seen the city’s riverside transformed, with centres for culture, tourism and entertainment built on its infilled docks and sites of dereliction. Prompted by the development priorities of this change, and the nostalgia for an industrial past that has become a ‘way of seeing’ the river, this research seeks to better know the material life of this landscape. On Govan Graving Docks - an abandoned ship repair and fitting facility that remains as yet ‘unresolved’ - this thesis unearths the agencies, temporalities, ecologies and material legacies of a less familiar elemental landscape, and considers how these expressions could be tended and extended in a vision for a different future, focused on fostering new kinds of environmental engagement. The research themes draw insight from emerging theories in new materialism and the environmental humanities, particularly those that are responding to the matter of the Anthropocenic landscape, and they are explored through a repertoire of creative and collaborative field methods crafted with the site of study; variations on ecological performance, landscape and ecological survey work, public consultation, material imagining and sitewriting. These methods are founded on openness and attentiveness, they are opportunist and affirmative in nature, they are practiced on site and taken into the wider estuarine landscape, and they enrol many others beyond the researcher. These methods are first used to explore the expressions of life and vitality that can be found in the Graving Docks’ new ecologies, material memory and more-than-human publics, and then to imagine the creative capacities of these agencies in new configurations of shared possibility. The researcher is another site of investigation: a distributive understanding of agency informs the emergence of an ecological sensibility through material engagement, which has implications both for the design process and the imagined landscape. These resources are used to imagine an alternative future for Govan Graving Docks: it is a vision that works with ruination, re-wilding, and the liquid dynamics of the city; a vision that honours both natural and industrial histories; a vision that is both challenging and necessary, where new experiences of ‘worlding’ in the city are made possible. Through this process of investigation and conjecture, the Clyde imaginary emerges as a space for critical and creative thought; a discursive space where the challenges facing this ecological landscape and its future are explored. This thesis is both a product of, and contribution towards, cultural geographical enquiry, but it also has an interdisciplinary reach both theoretically and methodologically speaking, which enables the research to contribute to a wider debate about environmental futures that is currently taking place across the sciences and humanities. It can be defined as ‘interdisciplinary in practice’ for the way that it brings a wider range or perspectives to bear on a precarious urban wilderness and its associated communities, and seeks to develop a broader repertoire of research methods capable of exploring it’s diverse material world, and the multiple expressions of value that exist therein. Written in a style that has been highly affected by this kind of open and inclusive style of research engagement, the emotive environmental story that is contained within this thesis is open to a wider audience. This thesis identifies the productive role that cultural geography can play in larger environmental debates concerned with the current state and play of ‘life on earth’, and by enacting and engaging ideas related to the cultural landscape, place-based identities/communities/values, and landscape practices, it also identifies the particular conceptual and methodological resources that make cultural geography’s contribution both unique and necessary to these debates.

This thesis develops an ecological performance practice using a practice-as-research methodology. It explores how performance can engage the ecological, where performance (in process and product) is understood as an ecology of diverse humans and nonhumans, which participates within the wider ecology of Earth. Whilst recent publications have given sustained attention to the ways performance can respond to ecological imperatives (Allen and Preece, 2015; Heddon and Mackey, 2012; Bottoms, Franks and Kramer, 2012; Arons and May, 2011; Kershaw, 2007; Bottoms and Goulish, 2007), there has been scarce attention paid to how performance practices and creative process can be and do ecology. In attending to that gap, this research develops a critically-engaged practice of performance (in) ecology, exploring how performance – in its very methods, modes and live moments of practice – can enact the ecological. The project developed an ecological practice through intergenerational and professional-nonprofessional collaboration. It was led by two performance works – Age-Old (2013) and Wild Life (2014). Age-Old involved collaborating with a seven-year-old girl to co-devise a new performance and it formed a developmental period of the research inquiry from which key methods were taken into the more ambitious work, Wild Life. This performance explored ‘wildness’ and was a collaboration with eight professional and nonprofessional performers, aged between nine and 60 years old. It presents the main body of the research. The written component of the thesis frames and elucidates the practice-based research findings. The thesis proposes that involving collaborators of diverse ages and skills presents a dynamic performance ecology through which an inclusive ecological practice can be developed. Its claim is that collaborative practice offers a potentially radical enactment of ecological qualities and dynamics, where this enactment is the ‘wilding’ of performance. Conducted through a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project was supported by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company. It offers new approaches for practice and scholarship in the fields of performance and ecology, devised performance, movement and ecology, and intergenerational practice. It also contributes to wider meanings of ‘ecology’ as advanced by scientific views, including posthumanist and rewilding perspectives.

This thesis asks: how have recent changes in body politics impacted on the themes and ideas explored in contemporary body-based performance? What aesthetic and formal strategies do artists use to attempt to challenge sedimented norms, hegemonies, and power structures related to gender and the body? Contributing to an emerging field of contemporary research which takes a queer, transfeminist methodological approach to disrupting conventional ways of seeing and thinking sex, gender, and other constructions of the body, this study centers on contemporary practices which utilise the performing body as a ground for negotiating social prescriptions, and nurturing new, alternative forms of embodiment. This thesis undertakes the first detailed academic study of the performance practice of three under-researched artists: Mouse, Cassils, and boychild. Via close analysis of these case study examples it theorises specific deployments of the transgressive body in performance and argues that these bodies challenge assumptions of normative subjectivity through different strategies of queer intervention and subversion. Mouse exploits the disruptive potentiality in abject, grotesque, and parodic strategies; Cassils manipulates the binary structure of the heterosexual hegemony by queering the material form of her/his own body; and boychild’s queer, black embodiment extends beyond sci-fi inspired, cyborgian aesthetics, toward a plotting of posthuman, afrofuturist politics. Whilst each case study artist poses a challenge to bodily (hetero)normativity, each works in a different style or form to the next, using different aesthetics and appropriating from a range of ‘low’ or popular (sub)cultures. Consequently, the analyses in this study are formulated using a methodology which interweaves transdisciplinary ‘high’ theory approaches with non-academic literature on popular and/or subcultural forms. This thesis therefore makes contributions to knowledge primarily within the fields of body art and performance studies, but also within (trans)gender and (trans)feminist studies, queer theory, critical race theory and cultural studies.

The dyed cotton textiles called Turkey red are a significant part of Scotland’s cultural heritage and the legacy of its textile manufacturing industry, and were known for their exceptional colour and fastness to light and wash fading. This thesis is a multi-disciplinary investigation of the chemistry of these unique textiles in the context of 19th c. Scotland using historical material re-creations and modern analytical chemistry, situating the dyeing process in a historical context. This research is a significant contribution toward the continued preservation of historical Turkey red textiles. Through a detailed, chemistry-focused examination of Turkey red methods published in English and French between 1785-1911, the key ingredients and steps for the process from a chemical perspective are identified (Chapter 1). The significance, chemistry, and previous research on the role of the oil (Chapter 2) and dye sources used (Chapter 3) are discussed to form the basis of the material re-creations and analysis. The oil is fundamental to and characteristic of the process, which is also noteworthy for being the first to replace a natural dye source (madder or garancine) with a coal-tar derived analogue (synthetic alizarin). Re-creations of dyed Turkey red, Turkey red oil, oiled calico, and synthetic alizarin provide experiential data and reference materials to test analyses prior to application on historical objects (Chapter 4). The analysis of Turkey red oils by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and high-performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) (Chapter 5) provides information used to characterise, for the first time, how the oil and cotton fibres bond to form the basis of the Turkey red complex. This is studied using conservation-based diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and solid-state NMR (ssNMR) on replica and 19th c. pieces of Turkey red (Chapter 6). Dyes analysis of these samples by ultra high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array (UHPLC-PDA) identifies chromatographic profiles of textiles dyed with natural or synthetic dye based on synthetic chemical markers. The presence of pigments on printed Turkey red is confirmed by infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope with energy-dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDX) (Chapter 7).

The mid-twentieth century avant-garde activity known as “psychogeography” experienced a significant, if largely unexamined revival during the 1990s. This thesis investigates the instances of extra-institutional cultural practice that drove this revival, primarily in a UK context. The exploration of psychogeography thus becomes a kind of Archimedean point: developing new angles on both the avant-garde practices of Surrealism and the Situationist International, but also a detailed initial exploration of these 1990s activities. Psychogeography is used to discern congruencies and shifts between the two moments, ultimately seeking to resituate them in relation to the present, opening new perspectives on continuing practices. Conventional narratives concerning psychogeography’s development present the purported political radicality of its Situationist form being displaced and “recuperated” by later aestheticised iterations. I contest this on three levels. Firstly, I suggest psychogeography can lay no such claim to a founding radicality. Destabilising its origins, I offer an expanded understanding of the practice, uncovering roots and routes in overlooked locales. Secondly, developing Asger Jorn’s under-examined method of “triolectics”, emergent, in my reading, in complementary relation to the Surrealist concept of “objective chance”, I use this to map psychogeography’s post-Situationist iterations, examining flourishing and in many ways more radical instances of material visual culture, in relation to which, accusations of “recuperation” appear misplaced. Thirdly, Jorn’s “triolectical” approach informs a complementary historiography: rather than define psychogeography as either some fixed essence, or series of equivalent variations, I present a development more in keeping with what Jorn called a “transformative morphology of the unique”. Psychogeography, I argue, has no fixed ontology, radical, recuperated or otherwise. Rather it functions as a constellation of social relations, itself a “situation”, variously connecting continually emergent fields of both resistant but also more overtly valorising material cultural practices.

Lewis Carroll’s story Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published as an illustrated book in 1865 and has been represented in film since 1903. Existing literary studies regard the Alice story as a work of children’s literature and ignore the materiality of its form. My thesis addresses the question of how the Alice story has been mediated as different images in various forms such as book illustrations, magic lantern presentations, films and stop-motion animations. I argue that these mediations were influenced by contemporaneous material practices and media technologies, and that these mediations, in their various forms, reflected and influenced the public’s imagination regarding the Alice story. My research adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the Alice story, regarding the Alice book as one of many forms through which the story has been presented, and associating literature with other media forms. Chapter One focuses on the illustrations and their relationship to both the literary text and their historical context. Chapter Two brings some magic lantern presentations of the Alice story into discussion with new archival materials, and considers the relationship between the lantern slides, illustration, and cinema. Chapters Three, Four and Five address the images of Alice and Wonderland in cinema, covering photographic images, animation and stop-motion animation. I argue that films provide various images of Alice and Wonderland, and construct new representational relationships between the Alice story, the imagined and reality. By investigating the material history of the Alice story through the case studies covered in my thesis, I conclude that the transformation of the Alice story, from the 1860s to the present day, is closely related to the development of material practices and media technologies, and is a reflection of common themes in modernity.

The diploma thesis is focused on computer modeling of the mechanics of the release gate used in agricultural practice. The theoretical part describes several computer programs that can be used for this purpose. Specifically, these programs are: SolidWorks, CA-TIA, Solid Edge, Pro/ENGINEER, NX, and Autodesk Inventor. For each program, their basic descrip-tion, user interface and basic features are provided. In the practical part of the diploma thesis a new design of the release goal was proposed. Using Autodesk Inventor Professional 2016, a mechanical simulation of this goal was performed step by step.

This thesis presents a conceptual knot, namely of how to sustain the intentionally temporary. Part of the original contribution of this thesis lies in exploring what it means for an artwork to be temporary, tracing the historical context from the twentieth century onwards, thereby establishing the category of temporary artworks, and providing thoughts on how to care for temporary artworks so that they might be known and experienced by future audiences. On the basis of this research, a practical proposal is developed for what a retrospective of temporary artworks might look like. Temporary artworks should be considered as a category unto their own because of the specific set of constraints which set them apart: they are physical works of art which exist for an intentionally limited amount of time, and are created only once. These specific constraints problematize the engagement of future audiences due to the works’ very limited and singular existence as a physical work. In order to address the issue of how to (re)visit impermanence, I develop the claim that what is passed on from a temporary artwork is contingent on the stakeholders, including the primary audience, who are posited as a group of unintentional archivists holding stock in a type of living archive. After their material unmaking, temporary artworks can be experienced through the notion that ‘the artwork is not present’, a riff on artist Marina Abramović’s retrospective work The Artist is Present (2010). A retrospective of temporary artworks would consist of memories and documents contextualizing their fragmentary nature, highlighting what Severin Fowles discusses as ‘the carnality of absence’. A clarification of what is missing assists in sustaining what I develop and describe as ‘the performance of loss’, a critical part of temporary artworks. Stewarding a temporary artwork into the future thus depends on letting the material object go, and contextualizing its presence, loss, and absence for future audiences.

Immerse yourself in a world of sound and approximations. This practice-­led research is concerned with critically examining the roots and contemporary significance of immersion within sonic art and everyday life. This body of work has resulted from research into key issues repositioning the term immersion outside the normal parameters of art investigating the intertwining relationship between immersion, listening and anthrophony. The research has been informed by the working methods of selected contemporary artists using field recordings within various interior environments. Rigorous listening to works has also influenced and driven this research forward to search for definitions of immersion. The author analyses the sonic works produced by reflecting on his own practice, with the thesis focused on the works produced rather than any alternative historical notion of sonic arts. The thesis critically examines a collection of works perceived as immersive in nature and secondly explores the interaction with personal sonorous environments. This thesis presents a series of informative and illuminating original interviews that have reinforced expanded elements of immersion presented in the examination of the practice-­led aspects of the work. These primary source interviews give a wide spectrum of opinions and experiences enabling the term and practices of immersion to be viewed outside the commonly viewed perceptions and practices that immersion evokes with artists’, audiences and individuals. Thirteen interviews with international artists’, curators and contemporary writers reflect on their personal experiences of immersion in art and critical methodological influences and practices. The interviews also discuss the contested adjectives that the term immersion evokes and the wider reaching impacts of the term beyond popular usages of the term. These essential interviewees include: Alan Dunn (multidisciplinary artist), BJ Nilsen (field recordist and sound artist), Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (researcher and sound artist), Chris Watson (field recordist and artist), Christine Sun Kim (sound artist), Daniela Cascella (curator, researcher and contemporary writer), David Hendy (researcher and contemporary writer), Francisco Lopez (sound artist), Hildegard Westerkamp (composer and sound ecologist), Markus Soukup (film and sound artist) Matthew Herbert (electronic musician), Ross Dalziel (Local Curator) and Sebastiane Hegarty (visual and sound artist). This primary research brings together, for the first time, a broad spectrum of experiences, opinions and views on immersion in sonic art and everyday life and re-­considers the challenges presented when examining this theme. An accompanying collection of artistic recordings using three distinct methods is also presented as an integrated part of the thesis. First, using mobile phones to record the author’s everyday travels, conversations and movements. Secondly, it utilises the habituated environments and the in/significance of each reverberation by presenting recordings using delicate contact microphones. The third method utilises the phenomenological and abstract memories from the author’s autobiographical past, reconstructing the distant but real recollections. These methods illuminate the author’s immersive resonating capsule of isolated existence including and portraying the fragmented and often distorted everyday sonorous experience. Sound Received: Immersion, Listening and Anthrophony generates alternative and renewed thinking on immersion, re-­definitions illuminating historical moments that have shaped much of the research. The unique collection of interviews and sonic recordings contributes to the expanding area of sonic discourse and offers a unique contribution to the field.