I'm arguing for an approach to generating graphic form based on slapstick. Slapstick is a genre of physical comedy involving humorous portrayals of clumsiness, mistakes, and nonsense. I investigate it as an approach to form, content, process, and communication. These methods were used to construct an immersive installation loosely based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Graphic design is expected to function. It does this by conditioning users to its particular patterns or by skillfully implementing familiar patterns. A slapstick approach to graphic design is valuable as a critical tool for disrupting conditioned experiences for promoting empathy by relating to people through imperfection and failure.

Recent advances in multimedia technologies have helped create extensive digital video repositories. Users need to be able to search these large video repositories in order to find videos that have preferred content. In order to meet the needs of users, videos in these repositories need to be indexed. Manual indexing is not an appropriate method due to the time and effort involved. Instead, videos need to be accurately indexed by utilizing computer-based methods. Automatic video indexing techniques use computer technology to analyze low-level video features to identify the content that exists in videos. The type of indexing used in this study is automatic affective video indexing, which is an attempt to index videos by automatically detecting content that elicits an emotional response from individuals. The specific affect-related content of interest in this proposed study is slapstick comedy, a technique that is used in videos with humor. The methodology of this study analyzed the audio stream as well as the motion of targeted objects in videos. The relationship between the changes in the two low-level features was used to identify if slapstick comedy was present in the video and where the instance of slapstick could be found. There were three research questions presented in the study which were associated with the two goals. Research Question 1 determined whether or not the targeted content could be identified using low-level features. Research Question 2 measured the relationship between the experimental results and the ground truth in terms of identifying the location of the targeted content in video. Research Question 3 determined whether one type of low-level feature was more strongly associated with the target content than the other. Goal 1 was to utilize sound and motion to predict the existence of slapstick comedy in videos. Goal 2 was to utilize sound and motion to predict the location of slapstick comedy in videos. The results of the study showed that Goals 1 and 2 were partially met, prompting an investigation into methodology improvements as part of this research. The results also showed that motion was more strongly related to the target content than sound.

Esta tesis estudia el gag visual en tanto que imagen en movimiento, analizando sus formas, modelos y funciones esenciales. Se parte de una serie de ejemplos clave del cine mudo y el slapstick para rastrear su evolución a lo largo de la historia del cine y sus prolongaciones en medios audiovisuales como la televisión y el videojuego. El estudio se centra en las tres grandes dimensiones de construcción formal del gag, tiempo, espacio y movimiento; ligando esos tres registros formales a tres funciones límite: narración, juego y sentido. La investigación confirma el papel del gag como una de las formas de resistencia visual más poderosas de la cultura contemporánea, que cuestiona valores narrativos y simbólicos a través de la posibilidad cómica. / This thesis studies the visual gag as moving image, analyzing its essential patterns, forms and functions. A series of key silent film and slapstick examples are located in order to examine their evolution throughout film history and their extensions in other media like television and video games. The research focuses on three main dimensions of the gag’s formal construction, time, space and movement; three formal scopes that lead to three functional limits: narration, gameplay and sense. The thesis confirms the essential role of the gag as one of the most powerful forms of visual resistance in contemporary culture, that questions narrative and symbolic values through comic possibilities.

In this thesis I dealt with commonly accepted theory, that Czech author Emil Arthur Longen wrote his plays in style similar to film slapstick comedy. The work starts with biography of Emil Arthur Longen. He was born in 1885 and died in 1936, his life was filled with many rises and falls because of his short temper, alcoholism and turbulent relation with his first wife, Polyxena (commonly called Xena), also an actress. Longen started as a student of Arts in Prague, but never ended his studies and left to pursue his interest, first in painting, later in another fields like filmmaking and acting, but he is most known as a playwright. He wrote more than seventy dramatic pieces and adapted another hundred more for his own theatre and also for other houses he worked with. His first efforts were cabaret shorts, he also wrote more serious things, but his most succesfull plays are farces one to four acts long. He was a principal playwright who wrote plays for the theater of Vlasta Burian, nicknamed The King of Comedians in interwar Czechoslovakia, who excelled in many of them. Critics during his lifetime but also later ones noted that his plays are inspired by American film slapstick comedy. Theory of comedy says that there are many types of comedy, number of the types varies greatly among notable authors, I...

This thesis addresses a research study predicated on practice in order to explore aspects of participation in Performance Art. The study makes a contribution to knowledge in participative performance practice and the positive deployment of using interruptive processes; this is in order to provoke participation within the context of Performance Art as well as gain a better understanding of the operations of power relations at play. Within the discourse of impoliteness study (Bousfield, 2008; Culpeper, 2011 et al.), there is a term that deserves much greater attention: interruption . Examining interruption and exploiting its virtues using practice brings out some productive insights that go beyond abstract theorisation. Working in response to Nicolas Bourriaud s conception (1998) of participation in Relational Aesthetics as a means of attacking power relations, I use my practice as an artist/performance provocateur and amplify consideration of my previous usage of interruption in order to provoke participation and then interrogation of power relations. Slapstick and heckling as extreme versions of interruptive processes that are physical in nature are put forward as tactics of interruption that extend comedy tactics within my practice. Circumventing commentary of interruption that often posits the term and its affiliation with impoliteness and capacity to be disruptive as negative (Bilmes, 1997), interruption is used for the purposes of my study as the key strategy that underpins the performance Lost for Words (2011) and the collaborative project Contract with a Heckler (2013), and are presented as prime examples of the operations of interruption in practice. Lost for Words supports the difficulties of participation when interruptive processes connected to physical and bodily slapstick are structurally engineered into a live performance and Contract with a Heckler supports power relations when live performance is predicated upon physical and linguistic interruptive processes relating to heckling. Both Lost for Words and Contract with a Heckler demonstrate a complex knitting of theory and practice whereby argument is supported by the undertaking of action (by the necessity of experiencing interruption in practice). The written dimension of the thesis operates in conjunction with the accompanying photographs and video recordings included here as documentation serving to deconstruct the examples of practice presented. Writing adds detail in the form of critical analysis, reflective commentary and personal experience to the supplied documentation and is used as a tool to communicate that working with interruption on a theoretical, practical and emotional level can be exciting, provocative and dangerous.

En produktiv ambivalens som lar absurd slapstick forenes med dypt gravalvor i et spill mellom abstrakt og konkret. Gjennom mine arbeider forsøker jeg blande sammen eller sette ulike referanser opp mot hverandre og med dette frammane en følelse av tvetydighet som jeg ofte opplever/A productive ambivalence that allows absurd slapstick to come together with the gravely serious in a play between the abstract and the concrete. Through my works I try to blend or contrast different references and thereby evoke a feeling of ambiguity that I often experience.

This thesis aimed to analyse slapstick comedy found in Untitled Goose Game by comparing it to early twentieth century slapstick comedy to answer the question of how Untitled Goose Game designed its slapstick comedy gags. Moments resembling classic slapstick were evaluated and tested by a formula synthesized from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, a cornerstone of classicslapstick comedy, and slapstick theory. The formula contained four crucial points: (a) the reliance on surprise; (b) easily understood scenarios that offered instant audience responses; (c) a build up of tension; and (d) a climactic moment to the gag. The moments were found to behave very much in accordance with the classic slapstick formula created, with small discrepancies in surprise. Through analysis and discussion, it was found that these discrepancies could be explained by the scripted nature of the humor found within the game. The answer to the research question was that Untitled Goose Game designed its humor very similar to the classic slapstick gags found in the early twentieth century using this formula, and that there was potential for more within the videogame medium. Therefore, this thesis concludes that by following this formula, video games can easily integrate slapstick humor. This insight can allow video game designers to implement the formula and therefore humor more effectively by either fulfilling or subverting the audience's expectations. / Syftet med den här studien är att analysera slapstickkomedin i Untitled Goose Game för att jämföra den med klassisk slapstickkomedi från början av 1900-talet i syfte att svara på hur spelet använde och designade sina slapstick rutiner. Spelmoment med inslag av klassiskt slapstick värdesattes och testades med hjälp av en formel syntetiserad från Charlie Chaplins Modern Times, en grundpelare i både klassisk slapstickkomedi samt slapstickteori. Formeln innehöll fyra viktiga punkter: (a) beroendet av överraskning; (b) lättförstådda scenarion vilka gav direkt respons från publiken; (c) en uppbyggnad av spänning; och (d) skämtets klimax. De analyserade momenten sågs uppföras mycket snarlikt den klassiska uppbyggnaden för en slapstick-rutin, med somliga avvikelser i (a) överraskning. Analys och diskussion visade att dessa avvikelser kan förklaras av den iscensatta naturen av humorn funnen i spelet. Svaret på studiens frågeställning var att Untitled Goose Game designade sin humor på ett sätt liknande det som återfinns i slapstick-komedi från tidigt 1900-tal genom att använda den tidigare nämnda formeln, samt att det finns vidare möjligheter att utveckla slapstick i spel-mediet. Således resulterar studien att spel kan följa denna formel för att integrera slapstick-komedi på ett enkelt sätt. Denna insikt kan tillåta speldesigners att implementera formeln, och således även humorn, på ett effektivare sätt genom att antingen fullfölja eller undergräva publikens förväntningar.

This thesis targets the British sound film especially comedies from 1930{\crq}s till mid 1970{\crq}s because after this period there is greater TV production which took over feature film production. There is described the production of the main studios such as Gainsborough Pictures and Gaumont-British, Ealing Studios and Rank Organisation. I aim then to classify some film styles such as farce, slapstick, burlesque, screwball and romantic comedy, satire and parody. The last target is to find some famous Czech film makers or actors, who worked or are still involed within the British film production. There are name such as Herbert Lom and Anny Ondráková.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to employ a theatrological approach to the work of one of the most original and influential Czech pantomime troupes of all time, entitled Pantomima Alfreda Jarryho (the Alfred Jarry Pantomime, AJP). The company was established in 1966 in Prague by two young mime artists Boris Hybner and Ctibor Turba and existed as late as the political liquidation of the troupe in 1972 that came due to the process of the so-called normalization period in the former Czechoslovakia. The thesis consists of four major parts that are divided into several subsections. The first part deals with the historical contexts of the art of mime, both international and domestic. The AJP troupe represents the second generation of Czech pantomime that refused the style of the so-called modern pantomime expressed in the international context by Marcel Marceau and in the Czech context by Ladislav Fialka at the Theatre Na zábradlí (Theatre on the Balustrade). Since there is no monograph strictly based on this theatre, although it played a major role among the newly established small theatres in the sixties (and had an important influence on the poetics of the AJP troupe), we briefly introduce the poetics of both the pantomime company led by Fialka and the drama company led by the director Jan Grossman,...