This dissertation describes the effects of a somatic mindfulness project on the way participants interact with and respond to works of art in a gallery setting. The study begins with a critique of Descartes' philosophy, Cartesianism, which emphasizes the role of the mind over that of the body and senses and argues that this thought continues to affect education even today. By contrast, phenomenology and mindfulness practices attempt to overcome Descartes' legacy by focusing on the importance of the body in lived experience. In particular, this study uses a phenomenological framework to conduct mindfulness on the relationship between the body and the perception of art. To do so, I utilized several phenomenological techniques for gathering data, including observations, video, and interviews, and I also created a unique method to analyze the data using a phenomenological verbal (written) description and visual (through photographic paintings) description. These techniques worked together to express the moment of reversibility between the meditative body and the artworks in the gallery setting. In sum, the findings of this study show that meditation changes the perceptual experience for different people in different ways. Another finding is that different forms of meditation may work better for some people than others. The findings of this study suggest that if art teachers are interested in using meditation, they need to be familiar with multiple forms of meditation. Also, they need to consider the role of the environment, as well as that of the artworks, in creating a wholistic meditative mood.

Syftet med denna studie är att med hjälp av en kvalitativ intervjustudie ta reda påvilka kunskaper som undervisning i bildämnet ger eleverna, vilken betydelseämnet har i skolan och för elevernas framtid. Studiens frågeställningar som blirbesvarade är varför man undervisar i bild och vilka praktiska respektive kognitivafärdigheter eleverna får möjlighet att utveckla inom bildämnet. Den tidigareforskningen fokuseras på synen av bildämnet, dess roll i barns och ungasutbildning, samt de färdigheter bildämnet kan bidra till att utvecklas hos eleven. Imetodavsnittet redogörs för studiens kvalitativa studie som baseras på tresemistrukturerade intervjuer, urvalet och studiens genomförande samt att studiensbearbetning av empiriskt material och analysmetod presenteras. Det empiriskamaterialet analyserades genom en fenomenografisk analysmetod, vilken fokuserarpå de betydelser en företeelse eller objekt ges, samt hur olika perspektiv avhändelser eller av objektet förknippas med varandra. I resultat och analyspresenteras och analyseras studiens empiriska material. Analysen är indelad i dekategorier som användes i den fenomenografiska metoden, som är relevanta tillstudiens syfte och frågeställningar. Resultatet av studien visar att de deltagandelärarna lär ut olika kognitiva förmågor. Studien visar också att lärarna har olikauppfattningar om bildämnets syfte i skolan och ämnets relevans för eleverskommunikativa förmåga. En slutsats jag drar av studien är att alla lärare bör hakunskaper om bildämnets roll för elevers utbildning, identitet och medborgerligarättigheter.

This dissertation stands at the intersection between human rights, contemporary postcolonial literature, and medieval folkloric texts, specifically the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Nights, by an unknown author. The Nights was first translated to French by Antoine Galland, when it appeared as a series from 1704 to 1715. This was followed by subsequent English translations and other translations into many other languages. Today, the Nights continues to captivate the world’s literary imagination. The dissertation focuses on selected popular textual and visual human rights narratives published from 1994 to 2014. These narratives are by celebrated human rights artists and authors from different parts of the globe: they are both non-Western and Western, but all have spent a significant portion of their personal lives and careers preoccupied by rights and social justice issues, both locally and universally. I focus on the following texts: Dreams of Trespass: Tales of A Harem Girlhood (1994) by Moroccan author and feminist Fatima Mernissi; Women Without Men (2009) by the exiled Iranian artist and director Shirin Neshat; Women Without Men by exiled and celebrated Iranian novelist called Shahrnush Parispur; Habibi (2011) by novelist Craig Thompson; and The Dream of Shahrazad (2014) by Emmy-Award-winning South African documentary film maker/director François Verster. The varied texts tackle human rights issues such as colonization, wars, human trafficking, rape, violence, torture, women’s subjection, environmental justice; freedom of speech and movement; forms of classism; and racism. I attempt to explore how and why these works are employing the Nights’ narrative model, as well as its formal and aesthetic aspects, to enable modern human rights narratives. While the direct connection to the Nights is obvious, I also trace obscure references to the Nights’ stories, genres, and themes. I focus on how “The Story of King Shahryar and Shahrazad” and its plot about storytelling to heal and save lives interplays with a modern sense of rights issues such as violence, genocide, trauma, healing, and legal appeals for justice. I offer a reading of the Nights’ stories referenced in each work to theorize why human rights artists and authors include them directly or obscurely within their narratives. I conclude that these stories from the Nights were chosen for their themes of social justice, discrimination, trauma, torture, judicial discourse, and feminist empowerment. I also conclude that contemporary human rights artists and authors incorporate elements from the Nights in intertextual ways that enable them to construct currently applicable allegories of human rights advocacy.

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No description available.

Computational creativity is a new and developing field of artificial intelligence concerned with computational systems that either autonomously produce original and functional products, or that augment the ability of humans to do so. As the role of computers in our daily lives is continuing to expand, the need for such systems is becoming increasingly important. We introduce and document the development of a new “creative” system, called DARCI (Digital ARtist Communicating Intention), that is designed to autonomously create novel artistic images that convey linguistic concepts to the viewer. Within the scope of this work, the system becomes capable of creating non-photorealistic renderings of existing image compositions so that they convey the semantics of given adjectives. Ultimately, we show that DARCI is capable of producing surprising artifacts that are competitive, in some ways, with those produced by human artists. As with the development of any “creative” system, we are faced with the challenges of incorporating the philosophies of creativity into the design of the system, assessing the system's creativity, overcoming technical shortcomings of extant modern algorithms, and justifying the system within its creative domain (in this case, visual art). In meeting these challenges with DARCI, we demonstrate three broad contributions of the system: 1) the contribution to the field of computational creativity in the form of an original system, new approaches to achieving autonomy in creative systems, and new practical assessment methods; 2) the contribution to the field of computer vision in the form of new image features for affective image annotation and a new dataset; and 3) the contribution to the domain of visual art in the form of mutually beneficial collaborations and participation in several art galleries and exhibits.

The thesis investigates OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace on whether it promotes the decentralization of the visual art market and lowers the entry barriers of the market for artists to connect with potential collectors and thus promoting diversity and equality to the market.  The success of an artistic career requires connections with art dealers and high cultural institutions, because art professionals act as the gatekeepers of the art market by evaluating the value of artworks and artists (Prinz, 2022). It has long been criticized that the gatekeepers highly favour white men and are inclined to promote west- ern culture instead of other culture, causing the lack of diversity and equality in the art market (Glauser et al., 2020). Even with the promotion of digital democracy due to the advancement of Internet, the high cultural institutions were still unenthusiastic in changing the current unspoken rules of networking (Habelsberger and Bhansing, 2021), until the emergence of NFT. Because of its high accessibility and digital ownership, NFT is likely to lower the barrier of participating in the art market. Therefore, this study investigates the case of the biggest NFT marketplace OpenSea to analyse whether it enables a more diverse and equal art world by Platform Analysis introduced by van Dijck (2013). Moreover, artists were interviewed to further investigate their user experiences and their views on whether NFT brought advantages to their career. The results reveal that OpenSea still upholds the value of winner-take-all and hierarchy with its ranking and verification system. It tends to favour experienced artists or artists who have influences on social media. Therefore, OpenSea is a business-oriented platform with great improvements on diversity and equality. Further research concerning different actors such as art curators, collectors and the role of NFT in the high-end art market is suggested to be conducted.

This action research study investigates classroom visual art assessments and their potential to improve teacher instruction and student learning. In order to examine this topic more thoroughly, a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-related classroom assessment was designed and administered to the researcher’s Drawing and AP Art History classes. Students were also asked to fill out a questionnaire that asked about their past art experiences and motivation to participate in art activities such as creating artwork outside of the school setting or attending an art museum. Students observed, described, and analyzed contemporary artwork, and they created and wrote about their own original works of art. The use of contemporary art exemplars led to some of the most interesting findings; namely, that students felt free to create their artwork in a contemporary style that was less about technical elements and more about the meaning they wished to convey. In general, the AP Art History students’ written contemporary art criticism scores were significantly higher than the scores of both of the studio drawing classes. Artwork scores of AP Art History, Drawing I, and Drawing II students showed no significant difference. Interestingly, all three groups indicated they were highly motivated to look at works of art, create art in school, and make artwork outside of the school setting. Also noteworthy was the relatively high number of students who indicated that the contemporary artwork they analyzed influenced the mother and child artwork they created. It could be surmised by this study that a NAEP-related iv assessment is a beneficial method for improving teacher instruction and student learning in visual arts education

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine educator perceptions of teaching art and implementing literacy and interdisciplinary strategies in rural northeast Tennessee school districts. This study explored interdisciplinary connections and opportunities to expand access to literacy acquisition in the art room. Participants included twelve educators who served as art instructors, literacy specialists, and district supervisors in rural public-school systems in Tennessee's First Congressional District. Data were collected through virtual interviews using a semi-structured format. To qualify for the study participants held positions as elementary or secondary art teachers, literacy specialists, or district supervisors in rural northeast Tennessee school districts. The analysis of the data was based on the frameworks of the Art of Education University’s K-12 Art Educator Framework (2023) and Balanced Literacy (1990). The results revealed the following as emergent themes: (a) interdisciplinary instruction and literacy acquisition, (b) art advocacy, (c) creativity and art in rural settings, and (d) leveraging teacher expertise.

From African rock paintings created 50-70,000 years ago during African migrations to the art of the Nile Valley and the Benin bronzes, much of African art has been claimed and controlled by European institutions governing the capitalization and exploitation of African art and artists. The Western art world has had a vested interest in African art since the European conquest of Africa when much of it was stolen. Incorporating evidence from books, essays, magazines, reports, interviews, and documentaries, this study shows that an operational Afrocentric approach to African art administration dismantles the exploitative agency of the Western art industry to initiate a liberation process from its artistic confines. It enhances how African artists, the community, and cultural representatives on the continent and throughout the diaspora view African artistry from a cultural perspective and free themselves from the control of an industry profiting from their works by defining them from a Eurocentric racist perspective. Cultivating a creative ecosystem that functions as an organizing method by executing Afrocentric infrastructure to demonstrate creative, economic, and social values establishes a culturally sensitive platform to develop the administration, accumulation, and pedagogies of African art. It will have an educational purpose that requires becoming conscious of African cultural history and the function of art. From this perspective, it is possible to develop a cultural identity and grounded analysis of the creativity of the African world and its value from the past to the future. / Africology and African American Studies