Physis presents eight digitally constructed photographic images and one video installation that were created through mixing and sampling a variety of representations of built environments, visual languages and processes. What results from this image compositing are ambiguous, dreamlike, in-between spaces that mine the relationship between nature and contemporary culture. Through the creation of poetic, ambiguous images viewers are able to form their own response to the individual images and the exhibition as whole. My approach of creating an experience that is more poetic than didactic was born out of a response to contemporary and historical photographs and writings, and to the directness found in images belonging to contemporary media culture. While Physis does allow for multiple interpretations, for me, this body of work references ideas of interconnectedness, transmission and the redefinition of space through connections between studio processes, the body, the digital and the visual.

<p>Realism, Race and Citizenship: Four Moments in the Making of the Black Body, Colombia and Brazil, 1853 - 1907 investigates the visual and literary mechanisms used to refurbish racial and social hierarchies in Brazil and Colombia in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery. Chorographic paintings, scientific photographs, identification documents, and naturalist literature are taken to together to argue that: on the one hand, the slave is the fleshy object that defines freedom and, in the postcolonial moment, citizenship. In "Realism, Race and Citizenship: Four Moments in the Making of the Black Body, Colombia and Brazil, 1853 - 1907," I propose that in geo-political spaces where the abolition of slavery and the re-branding of work were intensely debated and violently fought over, realist programs of representation facilitated the propagation of modern racializing schemas. Chapters 1 and 2 study the watercolors created for the Comisión Corográfica (the pre-eminent mapping project of nineteenth century Colombia) and scientific photographs produced in Brazil. These chapters uncover the stylistic conventions that make possible the staging of blackness as visible and immutable biological inferiority and as cumulative category that encompasses a variety of physical and social characteristics including but not limited to skin color, occupation, costume, and physical environment. Chapters 3 and 4 argue that the disavowal of slavery structures Brazilian naturalist novels such as O Cortiço (Aluísio Azevedo, 1890) as well as legislative debates about the nation and the citizen. By focusing on the visual and narrative orchestration blackness, my dissertation provides a critical framework for understanding how realist aesthetic conventions configured (and continue to animate) discourses of race and citizenship in Brazil and Colombia.</p> / Dissertation

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My thesis is composed of three parts. First of all, based on the three essays of early Roland Barthes, Le message photographique, Rhetoric de l¡¦image, and Le troisieme sens, in which Barthes applies photography with semiology, I outline Barthes¡¦s early thought and delineate why Barthes turns from semiology to phenomenology. In the second part, I focus on Barthes¡¦ last work La chambre claire, and explore the notions such as ¡¥studium¡¦ and ¡¥punctum.¡¦ Thirdly, I use Sartre¡¦s early work l¡¦imagination to interpret the notion of ¡¥punctum,¡¦ in order to outline the phenomenology in La chambre claire more clearly. In sum, my thesis concerns itself with the interplay between early Barthes, Barthes in La chambre claire, and Sartre in l¡¦imagination.

By 2006, the U.S. government has spent $15 billion to address the degradation of urban streams, including erosion of stream banks, disconnection of rivers from the floodplain, and disturbance of surface runoff pathways. Bank stabilization is one of the most prevalent restoration activities in urban stream restoration. Unfortunately, most stream restoration projects have been undertaken without a pre- or post-evaluation of the impact of stream restoration on real value in the area. All restoration projects beg the question: Did the money spent on the project result in greater benefits to stream stability as well as to adjacent properties? The Walnut Creek watershed, located in Austin, Texas, has experienced varying stages of urbanization since the 1990s. One of the streams, the Walnut Creek tributary, was restored in 2003. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of stream restoration on housing values. We applied the hedonic pricing method to evaluate the changes in housing value associated with housing and environmental characteristics. Repeat ground photography was utilized to assess stream restoration activities at spatial and temporal scales. Our results suggest that the stream restoration project resulted in significant positive impacts on housing values in the periods of restoration (8.3%) and restoration adjustment (10.7%). However, the project did not enhance the values of houses on the floodplain. In addition, results show that erosion had continuous negative impacts on housing values. Overall, the restoration project contributed to the greater benefits during the restoration adjustment period right after restoration by an increase of 1% of the average housing value for each property on the restoration site. In this study, the benefits of stream restoration project were minimal since bank stabilization was the main activity considered in this stream restoration project. Nevertheless, restoration enhances the stability of the stream banks, minimizes erosion problems, and presents an enhanced aesthetic beauty of the stream in Austin, Texas.

Many construction companies today utilize webcams on their jobsites to monitor and record construction operations. Jobsite monitoring is often limited to outdoor construction operations due to lack of mobility of wired webcams. A wireless webcam may help monitor indoor construction operations with enhanced mobility. The transfer time of sending a photograph from the wireless webcam, however, is slower than that of a wired webcam. It is expected that professionals may have to analyze indoor construction operations with longer interval time-lapse photographs if they want to use a wireless webcam. This research aimed to determine the maximum time interval for time-lapse photos that enables professionals to interpret construction operations and productivity. In order to accomplish the research goal, brickwork of five different construction sites was videotaped. Various interval time-lapse photographs were generated from each video. Worker?s activity in these photographs was examined and graded. The grades in one-second interval photographs were compared with the grades of the same in longer time interval photographs. Error rates in observing longer time-lapse photographs were then obtained and analyzed to find the maximum time interval of time-lapse photography for monitoring construction operations. Research has discovered that the observation error rate increased rapidly until the 60-second interval and its increasing ratio remained constant. This finding can be used to predict a reasonable amount of error rate when observing time-lapse photographs less than 60-second interval. The observation error rate with longer than 60-second interval did not show a constant trend. Thus, the 60-second interval could be considered as the maximum time interval for professionals to interpret construction operations and productivity.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Nov. 19, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 148-154).

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references (vol. 1, leaves 408-421).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-134).

Thesis (doctoral)--Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2001. / Appendix includes reprints of five papers and manuscripts, four co-authored with others. Includes bibliographical references. Also partially issued electronically via World Wide Web in PDF format; online version lacks appendix