The space occupied by New Media is elusive. Its inherent omnipresence is yet another example of the loss of physicality of the information age. The contemporary gallery⎯- the white cube -⎯functions as a pseudo-religious tomb; suspending art-objects in limbo, without reference of time and space. Exhibition spaces for art have functioned to house the object for hundreds of years. But suddenly, the object has dissolved, slipping through the art museum’s desperate grasp. The following is a study of the tridactic exchange of art, the participant, and three-dimensional space. At the site of the city’s birth, new structure and cherished relic converge: erasing and re-writing, veiling and un-veiling, concealing and revealing, spaces evolve and dissolve, growing a continuously fluid environment. The result is an Interior Design driven solution for displaying New Media: a hybrid model that synthesizes the ubiquitous museum and the stable institution, forming what will become The New Gallery.

The space occupied by New Media is elusive. Its inherent omnipresence is yet another example of the loss of physicality of the information age. The contemporary gallery⎯- the white cube -⎯functions as a pseudo-religious tomb; suspending art-objects in limbo, without reference of time and space. Exhibition spaces for art have functioned to house the object for hundreds of years. But suddenly, the object has dissolved, slipping through the art museum’s desperate grasp. The following is a study of the tridactic exchange of art, the participant, and three-dimensional space. At the site of the city’s birth, new structure and cherished relic converge: erasing and re-writing, veiling and un-veiling, concealing and revealing, spaces evolve and dissolve, growing a continuously fluid environment. The result is an Interior Design driven solution for displaying New Media: a hybrid model that synthesizes the ubiquitous museum and the stable institution, forming what will become The New Gallery.

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Includes bibliographies.

Immersive media provides new avenues for preserving and sharing traditional folktales. To keep up with modern generations and continue to cultivate an interest in the arts as well as different cultures, this researcher argues that storytellers need to keep on adapting by conveying stories in new ways. Virtual Reality (VR) offers an interesting medium to present and preserve folktales. The goal of this study is to evaluate the user and learner experience of an immersive digital media application design using a think aloud protocol, surveys, and tests to document what worked and what did not in the design, including if any informal learning was achieved. To study the design, the investigator re-created a scene of a folktale using immersive technology. For the study, one scene from the new narrative was selected to investigate. The narrative is based on the story type, ATU 480: The Kind and the Unkind Girls, a wonder tale type in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) Index, which is a catalog of folktale types used in folklore studies. For this pilot study, 26 participants, primarily Games and Interactive Media (GaIM) students at the University of Central Florida, were gathered. The prototype entitled "The Daughter," was mainly influenced by a Romanian version of the tale and made for the Oculus Quest VR headset. The surveys and tests showed that learning was perceived as well as achieved and that users did feel a sense of immersion, presence, etc., but low audio issues plagued some users. The practical implications of VR storytelling include the potential for discourse about new service strategies and design guidelines, inspired by an iterative design, as embodiment and an increased sense of immersion may aid in digital storytelling. This study also continues the conversation on preserving digital folktales and the role that authenticity plays.

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My thesis pursues the exploration, invention, and redefinition of the role of Aesthetics through artistic practices of 3d digital graphics, 2d print, video, and sculpture. Aesthetic research altruistically generates visual installations informed by utopian idealism, science and technology centric culture, pop culture iconography, art history, international contemporary art and design.

A rapidly emerging need within virtual environments is the ability to accommodate a large, distributed user-base. In particular, Internet-based distributed virtual environments represent a challenge in providing a heterogeneous environment accessible by many thousands of users. Interest Management represents the process of filtering network data based on relevance to users, in order to make the most efficient use possible of available network capacity. In this thesis, the potential for a visual-attention based refinement to interest management is explored, which utilises a spotlight-based model of human attention. By considering the relationship between attention and interest management, this thesis illustrates a tendency within existing systems to use a simplistic or object-based approach to measure relevance, typically based on proximity to the user or visibility. By considering the current state of the art alongside common theories of visual attention, it is hypothesised that a refinement aiming to accommodate a spotlight model may offer an approach capable of more efficient use of bandwidth when compared to existing techniques. In particular, it is suggested a spotlight model would be capable of accommodating key aspects of human visual attention in a processor-efficient and composable manner. Bandwidth conserved by the use of such an approach may be subsequently re-utilised to provide a higher degree of interactivity within a distributed virtual environment, or to support greater numbers of simultaneous users. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of a spotlight-based approach, a test environment is created which allows users to participate in a number of activities alongside a large volume of simulated clients. Throughout these activities, interest management is changed seamlessly between variations of a spotlight approach, extremes, and an approximation of the current state of the art. Results obtained from a total of 15 users indicate a preference for such an approach when compared to the current state of the art in 80% of subjects, and suggest the capacity to reduce available bandwidth by up to 60%, dependent on task, without perceivable impact.

This research examines specific instances in the development of New Media in South African art from 1980 to the present. I focus on the apparent discrepancy between de facto practices in South African art today and the 'official' representation of this art in local art museums. Preliminary research indicated that despite the manifest increase of New Media works in local artistic production, as well as exhibitions devoted to New Media work the last decade, this tendency is not adequately reflected in the public collections (and display) of local art museums. In my research I investigate the status of New Media in public art collections and the reasons for this apparent discrepancy. Significant parallels exist between the development of New Media and that of Photography in relation to their position in the field of artistic practice. I track the development of New Media with regard to international artistic practice and local developments, and pinpoint financial, logistical and infrastructural issues mentioned in curatorial circles. Additionally, I investigate the problems of New Media with regard to the definition of art as a unique material object, and curatorial attitudes within the public institutions. Three case studies, concerning the work of William Kentridge, Nathaniel Stern, and the Trinity Session span a historical, progressive and currently successful scenario regarding artistic production and display. The practical component of this research comprised two projects: an art performance event and an exhibition of three video works (one in installation form), a series of digital prints on etching paper and a sculptural installation. I have applied principles in international production and display of New Media works to the presentation of my own installations, especially regarding the editioning and valuation of digital prints and Video DVD works.

As individuals the ideal learning scenario would be a learning environment tailored just for how we like to learn, personalised to our requirements. This has previously been almost inconceivable given the complexities of learning, the constraints within the environments in which we teach, and the need for global repositories of knowledge to facilitate this process. Whilst it is still not necessarily achievable in its full sense this research project represents a path towards this ideal. In this thesis, findings from research into the development of a model (the Adaptive Intelligent Personalised Learning (AIPL)), the creation of a prototype implementation of a system designed around this model (the AIPL environment) and the construction of a suite of intelligent algorithms (Personalised Adaptive Filtering System (PAFS)) for personalised learning are presented and evaluated. A mixed methods approach is used in the evaluation of the AIPL environment. The AIPL model is built on the premise of an ideal system being one which does not just consider the individual but also considers groupings of likeminded individuals and their power to influence learner choice. The results show that: (1) There is a positive correlation for using group-learning-paradigms. (2) Using personalisation as a learning aid can help to facilitate individual learning and encourage learning on-line. (3) Using learning styles as a way of identifying and categorising the individuals can improve their on-line learning experience. (4) Using Adaptive Information Retrieval techniques linked to group-learning-paradigms can reduce and improve the problem of mis-matching. A number of approaches for further work to extend and expand upon the work presented are highlighted at the end of the Thesis.