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CHASM: the spaces between is a live performance that exposes physical, visual, and aural intersections of liminality. My solo dance, alongside the work of acoustic collaborators Shawn Pinchbeck and Ian Crutchley, projectionist Patrick Arès-Pilon, and scenographer Guido Tondino, delves within the spaces between sight and sound, silence and stillness, performance and life, and embodiment and technology. In the process, I improvise within a scored structure, attempting to unravel, through practice, current theories of reception, including somaesthetics, meditative states, kinaesthesia, and Japanese theories of mind-body and ma. The piece was presented at Timms‘ Second Playing Space at the University of Alberta on April 27th and 28th, 2012. The purpose of this thesis is to reveal the process, intentions, and discoveries that I made as a dance practitioner, while demonstrating how CHASM: the spaces between relates to the larger art world and to cross-disciplinary literature that addresses the problem of the boundaries of knowledge. Chasm is the term I use for these edges, boundaries, and intersections, and I wish to show how important chasms are not only for creativity in contemporary performance, but also for thought in a non-linear, globalized world.

My dissertation is concerned with two central issues: analysis of theory-practice gaps in aesthetic theories applied to avant-garde musics, and problems of visibility and respect in theorizing across cultures. In the first chapter, I examine a case study, John Coltrane's successive improvisations on "My Favorite Things," under two different theories in order to show how theories shape our view of the practices we are trying to explain. In the second chapter, I take up Coltrane's practices and their relations to theories once again but, in a reversal of the previous chapter's focus, I show how examining theories through practices can reveal these theory-practice gaps and problematic assumptions. I move, from there, to an analysis, informed by feminist standpoint epistemology, of the extent to which political values influence our theory choices and thus help construct our metaphysical views. Out of this discussion, my third chapter argues that attempts to universalize a culturally-situated notion of 'the musical work' (one drawn from Western classical music) do violence to works and artists situated in other cultural traditions. Thus I construct an alternative view of the musical work that I call 'contextualized nominalism' which has the merit of being sensitive to these issues of cultural situation. The fourth chapter explores connections between avant-garde jazz practices and oppositional politics which can be made visible when performances of works are accorded priority over composition. Here I construct a performative notion of community which, in addition to making the most sense of improvisational musical practices, can also be the ground of an 'ethos of improvisation' extendable into other social contexts. Finally I turn to the need for a pluralistic framework in aesthetic evaluation of polycultural artistic processes and products, through a critical examination of universal notions of aesthetic value. I argue, from this and all of the preceding chapters, that where we cross cultures, or mix them, in aesthetic evaluations, we must do so as respectful pluralists and within a pluralist framework.

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The purpose of this study was to apply the Post-Modern aesthetic model proposed by Wetzl-Fairchild (1990) and a data collection method (verbal protocol) in order to establish a useful methodology for studying the aesthetic experience of a viewer in an art exhibition. I studied the interaction between a contemporary exhibition and professionals variously familiar with the artworld. I find that Fairchild's model is useful as a theoretical framework in coding the protocols and confirm that the think-aloud protocol can provide accurate data with respect to the cognitive activity of an art viewer. I suggest that the viewers' context became the pivotal issue determining the quality of their experience and propose that this context become the focus of further study in the exhibition design process. I conclude that personal context is pivotal in all aspects of art education, whether in a classroom or an art exhibition.

<p> An examination of the famous and celebrities within a country can offer a view to the values of its people. The Romans had Caesar, the Egyptians Cleopatra and in the early twentieth century Americans admired Charles Lindbergh. From each of them, scholars have learned something about the age in which they lived and the people of their time. Standards of beauty, behavior, and success have been gleaned by examining women and men held in the public spotlight. The historian Daniel Boorstin worried that that was changing in the United States by the twentieth century due to the growing influence of mass media. His 1961 book <i>The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America </i> warned that the country was straying from values that he believed made it great. Image and appearance, he warned, were replacing experience and achievement as most important in persons gaining public recognition. A proliferation of mass media manufactured "pseudo-events" was the cause he said, impacting not only who was recognized but the country's ideals. Boorstin labeled it a "cultural decline" that had started with the Graphic Revolution. Although changes in western society did take place and that change was revolutionary, this dissertation suggests a slow but steady "evolution" of the self was also underway and may be more descriptive of what was and is still occurring today. This study links industrialization, dramatic technological advances, and the conversion of American society from rural to urban dwellers to a transformation of the "self" that started as far back as the Reformation, as causes for the changes. That transformation sparked a slowly budding struggle over control of self-identity that continues to this day. A half century after Daniel Boorstin issued his warning, this dissertation explores not just the accuracy of his predictions but why and how many business and political interests and social elites still struggle to maintain some influence over how Americans perceive themselves through images, how concepts of fame and celebrity continue to evolve and why the scholarly conversation about mass media, culture and society generated by his original hypothesis may be more important to explore today than ever.</p>

<p> The central research questions of this study are: What is it to play a fully authentic round of golf? And how can a depth psychology that includes an imaginal perspective perceive the game of golf in such a way that allows for a fully embodied experience? Flowing out of these questions is a multi-layered approach that aims to unfold golf's soul by exploring its primordial place, the Old Course at St Andrews, Scotland, which is officially called The Links. From a phenomenological hermeneutic exploration of The Links, its features, place names, and layout, a map of Jung's individuation process emerged. Here, place and person are given the opportunity to individuate. How does a place individuate? The challenge for this dissertation is to show that the individuation process of person, psyche, and place are seamlessly woven into the enfleshed fabric of Being.</p><p> Phenomenology describes the surfaces of golf and its play-scape, depth psychology guides us below and underneath those surfaces, and hermeneutics invites a mythic interpretation of how enfleshed embodiment experiences this place. This study takes rich metaphors from depth psychology and integrates them with phenomenology's lived body and then implaces their confluence into an actual place. The Links is a living place that both invites and exudes imaginal embodiment.</p><p> This dissertation links golf's physical surface with its soul, players with targets, motion with stillness, and mind with body. Indeed, golf on The Links is a play of duality and wholeness. Hence, this study will observe, describe, and inquire into the dyadic relationships that form the whole of golf, and then release these relationships from their fixity in the literal, in order to allow golf's authentic layout to reveal itself. This is done by interpreting the mythic stories that are embedded in and throughout this ancient play-ground. These stories guide each individuating golfer who ventures on The Links to discover his or her authentic Swing. The authentic lived experience is that while playing on The Links, this golfer is, at the same time, being played by The Links.</p>

The purpose of this creative project was to explore the need of the artist to represent a spiritual consciousness in a material-dominated society. It was felt that a return to the mythical origins of art and a resurrected faith in the supernatural would help stimulate creativity, promote inward growth and enhance the evolution of consciousness. The artist examined mystical and philosophical literature which lead to the use of the concept of the sublime by nineteenth century landscape painters as well as the "Abstract Sublime" painters of the mid-twentieth century. Also important was the effect of the Theosophic Society's geometric iconography and color theories on two of the pioneers of abstract art, Kandinsky and Mondrian. These inquiries were incorporated into a large,; three-dimensional, mixed-media installation. / Department of Art

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.