Practising Shadow Theatre in the West today means to subvert the predominantly negative view of shadow in the Western psyche, to transcend the faintly racist notion of shadow theatre as the quaint practice of traditional people of the East and to contend with the dominant influences of the electronic media on this once powerful and popular art form. This research is through creative practice in the form of the production, Cactus. This performance investigates the use of the screen in contemporary Shadow Theatre and the optimisation of the live theatrical experience. The performance also seeks to integrate mediatized and non-mediatized performance through the combination of live performance and projected images. My research is a social constructivist process to creative practice as research using a pluralistic approach including elements of action research and autobiography. The literature included for review in this study includes work by Brook, Grotowski, Auslander, Sontag, and Schechner. The literature analysis and previous training with Italian company, Teatro Gioco Vita, served to inform the application of my theories as praxis. The central question of this research project is: How can I break the fifth wall (which is the screen) in shadow theatre performance? Subsidiary questions are: How can we harness the advantages of both mediatized and non-mediatized performance to produce a contemporary shadow theatre form catering to the needs of a twenty-first century audience? How can I optimize the live theatrical experience? What is contemporary Shadow Theatre?

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-08T16:52:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 emerson.pdf: 14836315 bytes, checksum: 79412546c77261d1e9cce7b1fc8d0482 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study describes and analyzes the activities developed with Shadow Theatre in two workshops carried with educators in the city of Imbituba - SC, in the period between May and July, 2010. Ideas on (re)discovery of shadow and experience are debated throughout three phases of the research. In the first phase, the bibliographical survey subsidizes studies on historical and technical elements about the art of the Shadow Theater, emphasizing the work of the puppeteer, the screens, the luminous fountains and the silhouettes. The second and third phases are dedicated to the description and analysis of the workshops, in which the profile of the participants, the developed activities and theatrical games are presented, in addition to the materials used for the scenes. Part of the pedagogical procedures carried out in the workshops was based on the methodology proposed by Viola Spolin. Texts by scholars such as John Dewey, Walter Benjamin and Jorge Larrosa Bondía provided the theoretical support for the analyses of the experience. The study still stresses the procedures of scene creation and the final work presented to the public. It also highlights the presentation of the participants impressions and the workshop photos / O estudo descreve e analisa as atividades desenvolvidas com Teatro de Sombras em duas oficinas realizadas com educadores na cidade de Imbituba SC, no período de 04 de maio a 28 de julho de 2010. Ideias sobre (re)descoberta da sombra e experiência são debatidas ao longo das três etapas da pesquisa. Na primeira etapa, o levantamento bibliográfico subsidia estudos sobre elementos históricos e técnicos sobre a arte do Teatro de Sombras, enfatizando o trabalho do ator-animador, as telas, as fontes luminosas e as silhuetas. A segunda e a terceira etapa são dedicadas à descrição e análise das oficinas, nas quais são apresentados o perfil dos participantes, as atividades e os jogos teatrais desenvolvidos, além dos materiais utilizados na realização das cenas. Parte dos procedimentos pedagógicos realizados nas oficinas se apoiou na metodologia proposta por Viola Spolin. Textos de autores, como John Dewey, Walter Benjamin e Jorge Larrosa Bondía, subsidiaram teoricamente a realização das análises da experiência. O estudo destaca ainda os procedimentos de criação das cenas e o trabalho final apresentado ao público. O texto privilegia a apresentação das impressões dos participantes e fotos das oficinas

Portrait silhouettes, which are the subject of the present work, are a peculiar and now forgotten type of portraits. They represent a specific part of the visual culture of the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries and a number of contemporary social, cultural, artistic and scientific phenomena intertwine in them. Technically, these seemingly simple monochrome profile portraits are very diverse. The range of silhouetted persons and persons creating them is equally diverse. The aim of this work is a comprehensive mapping of the phenomenon of portrait silhouettes in the Czech lands with an overlap to more general levels concerning the philosophical aspects of this type of portraiture. The text is based on knowledge gained from detailed research of domestic collections of silhouettes, which are part of museum, gallery and castle collections. A large amount of pictorial material has been preserved in the Czech Republic, which made it possible to formulate the necessary more general conclusions. The complex approach mixes from a methodological point of view the approaches of art history with its formal analysis and cultural history, some topics overlap with the content of Bild- Anthropology studies. The oldest Czech specimens of silhouettes come from the turn of the 70s and 80s of the 19th century, which is...

The subject of the thesis Live images of VJing is an aesthetic activity, based on visual projections and on work with new media in real-time, known as VJing, or more generally "live audiovisual performance". As these performances usually complement auditory events or are supplemented by music. The first part follows the origins of VJing out of three angles: First the historical development of projected image, electronic music and the discourse of synaesthesia principle as an principle joining different sensory perceptions into one. Second part of this thesis is introducing an philosophical perspective and it's defining terms, through which can be glimpsed the tendencies in the development of contemporary art of new media, particularly following the example of the German new-media philosophy with terms like homöotechnik, performativity, mediality and gesture. The outcome of this thesis is the finding, that it's not the media-philosophy bringing the textures and shapes to VJing, but the opposite - VJing as an art form is a valuable contribution to defining of the media-philosophy, which seem to be forming along with the new media itself and with the experimental arts exploring it's radical possibilities.