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What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us? Situated in the field of drawing research, the thesis begins to articulate the term dialogic drawing through the development of the Drawing Encounter. Building on David Bohm and Martin Buber’s work on dialogue and encounter, the Drawing Encounter (using drawing rather than speech) is a new method to elicit tacit elements of one-to-one social interaction. The research is largely situated in the public arena where the author met strangers using collaborative drawing as a means of interaction. The drawings themselves prompted conversations about meeting in this way. Locations for the meetings included several train journeys, an arts therapy centre, an international conference, a drawing exhibition and an art college. Throughout the inquiry drawing was employed to collate, analyse and synthesise the data generated by all the research activities. The thesis presents significant encounters and drawings with participants’ commentaries and references to Bohm’s model of dialogue and Buber’s notion of the between. The drawing strategies that emerged during the inquiry are discussed in methodological terms in the context of naturalistic inquiry. The findings propose that by providing a novel means to facilitate and interrogate one-to-one interaction the Drawing Encounter method can enhance existing personal and professional relationships. Findings from researcher facilitated encounters indicate that the method has potential for applications in educational and professional situations where intra- and inter-personal issues are relevant. The thesis expands our understanding of visual arts processes as methods of creative inquiry by articulating the role of drawing as a research strategy and a materialising practice. It suggests that visual analogy can address pressing questions of human co-existence, by showing how what we do in the spaces between us can help us remain individuals yet still feel connected.

There is a trend in manufacturing towards fully automated production facilities in which all operations are integrated by computer based information systems. The current generation of industrial inspection systems lack the necessary flexibility to operate in these environments. AI based Image Understanding systems have the necessary level of generality, achieved through the use of domain specific object models. These models are used to guide early visual processing, and must be supplied to the system. Current theories in cognitive psychology call for a reevaluation of the role of such 'auxiliary' knowledge in early visual processing. Recent work suggests that very general cognitive processes may build up a hierarchical representation of the world. The emphasis is currently on such generic cognitive processes rather than on the use of world knowledge. A novel approach to image processing, in which emphasis is placed on generic low and intermediate level techniques, is proposed in this thesis. This approach, termed the descriptor approach, delays the use of domain specific models until a full description of the image has been produced. A prototype industrial inspection system has been implemented, based on the descriptor approach: the Hierarchical Scene Description (HISD) system. General image features are extracted from images of populated PCBs, and subsequently transformed into a database of prolog facts by an interface subsystem. Finally the intermediate level vision subsystem uses rules to reason about these features, building up a semantic net based description of the scene. HISD successfully builds up hierarchical descriptions of real industrial PCB images in terms of geometric shapes, their coordinates, and spatial relationships between shapes. The results are displayed graphically and are achieved without the use of any object models, thus avoiding the problems of inflexibility and lack of generality associated with more complex model based systems.

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This thesis seeks to explore the way in which invisibility as a concept becomes explicitly housed within digital compositing, visual effects (VFX) and certain attendant techniques. The chapters will establish how compositing and effects techniques can be seen as pushing modern filmmaking into concealing, and therefore visually releasing, certain physical structures within films’ images and their production. This shall be achieved by drawing upon a combination of texts that disseminate the technical nature and make-up of VFX, alongside discussion and theorisation of their use within cinema, together with other established film theory. I will examine cases of VFX techniques within cinema that can be used to investigate how their construction and utilisation create invisibility to accommodate and nullify the profilmic elements captured through the camera and aspects of technology. The chapters begin by examining how the work of Georges Méliès, whose films use the concept of invisibility to promote a breakdown of temporal and spatial qualities, become redeployed in certain modern digital effects-based films. Expanding on this, the second chapter explores how theories surrounding realism as espoused through mise-en-scène and the so-called physical “truth” of the captured world can be rearticulated through VFX both optical and digital. Chapter three looks at how breaking down the physical structure of a performer through VFX and motion-capture result in characterisations that produce a sense of ghostliness, where the Bazinian mummification of photographic capture has new existence breathed into it. Finally, chapter four explores how recent developments in effects techniques in creating the Invisible Man act as a reflection of the physical body unbound in a digital world. Here, the digital infrastructure of modern culture, such as the Internet, is used to highlight how a more free-flowing and vivacious body can exist and make use of unseen and non-physical practices to commit nefarious acts, such as hacking. It is these aspects that become reflected in the most recent film iteration of the Invisible Man, Hollow Man (2000).

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