This dissertation examines the process of domestication of American Indian children in government-controlled schools through art education. At the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1889-1893), and Estelle Reel, Superintendent of Indian schools (1898-1910), brought changes to the curriculum of Indian schools by introducing the teaching of elementary art and instruction in "Native industries" such as pottery, weaving, and basketry. I claim that art education was as an instrument for the `colonization of consciousness,' that is, for the redefinition of Indigenous peoples' minds through the instilment of values and ideals of mainstream society and thus for the maintenance of a political, economic, social, and racial hierarchy. Art education served the needs of the late-nineteenth century assimilationist agenda. I consider Morgan's and Reel's national mandates at the turn of the twentieth century and examine their rationales for including drawing and Native crafts in the Indian schools' curriculum. This knowledge of educational programs crafted at the bureaucratic level is applied to an analysis of art instruction in two selected institutions, the Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico and the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California, from 1889 to 1917. I examine local responses to government policies and daily practices of Indian education at the micro level in order to provide specific information as to the organization, structure, and pedagogy of art instruction within a school day in these particular localities. Finally, I discuss how students' artworks were displayed in the context of exhibitions and national conventions as exemplary evidence of the progress toward civilization, but also of the instrumentality of an Anglo education in reaching this goal. As Indian policy changed, so did the art curriculum of Indian schools; while drawing continued until the mid-1910s Native arts and crafts began to disappear and were eventually discontinued. As activities that promoted independence and individual creativity, they began to undermine the government's agenda. From the early 1890s when it was first introduced into Indian schools to the mid-1910s when it lost its significance, art education was a tool for the assertion of America's hegemonic power.

Taxidermy specimens and displays have become increasingly liminal features in contemporary society. Viewed variously as historical curios, obsolete relics or more malignantly as ‘monstrosities’, they can be a source of discomfort for many. Taxidermy objects have become uncomfortable reminders of past scientific and colonial practices which have sought to capture, order and control animated life and as such have become increasingly problematic items for their owners. As a result many taxidermy displays have been dismantled and mounts relegated to ‘backstores’ to gather dust. The paradox is that taxidermy as a practice is a quest for ‘liveness’, to impute life back into the dead. Much like the taxidermist, my goal in this thesis is to revive and restore: to renew interest in and reassert the value of taxidermy collections by recovering what I shall term as the ‘biogeographies’ of their making and continued maintenance. Considerable academic attention has been paid to the ‘finished’ form and display of taxidermy specimens inside cabinets, behind glass – in other words, to their representation. By way of contrast, this thesis recovers the relationships, practices and geographies that brought specimens to their state of enclosure, inertness and seeming fixity. These efforts are aligned with work in cultural geography seeking to counteract ‘deadening effects’ in an active world through a prioritisation of practice (Dewsbury and Thrift 2000), and elsewhere draw on research arguments and approaches originating in historical geography, and the history of science. The thesis firstly investigates historical developments in the scientific and craft practice of taxidermy through the close study of period manuals, combined with ethnographic observations of a practicing taxidermist. Critical attention to practice then facilitates the recovery of the lifeworlds of past taxidermy workshops and the globally sited biogeographies behind the making of individual specimens and collections. The thesis required the purposeful assemblage and rehabilitation of diffuse zoological and historical remains to form unconventional archives, enabling a series of critical reflections on the scientific, creative and political potentials of taxidermy.

No description available.

Data on the handweaving program at the Quicksand Craft Center in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky were compiled and analyzed. Four areas--history of the craft program, business organization and financial structure, weave patterns of goods woven and sold by the craft center, and weavers employed in the program --were examined to assess the success of the program in the local community. Factors in the four areas examined contributed to the success of the program. The benevolence, perseverance, and co-operation of the founders, directors and community members involved with the craft center have been largely responsible for the continued success of the program. The non-profit organizational structure of the craft program was financially stable and met federal guidelines for tax exemption. Weave patterns in goods produced at the craft center were basically traditional with modern adaptations in fibers and end products. Influence of the handweaving program in the lives of weavers and their families was primarily positive.

A presente investigação teve como ponto de partida o estudo da palavra kôgei 工芸, derivada de geijutsu 芸術, que corresponde à ideia de arte no Japão. A pesquisa inicia-se com uma análise preliminar das principais diferenças entre geijutsu e a arte europeia, no sentido de belas artes predominante até meados do século XIX. Segue-se um esclarecimento acerca da origem da palavra kôgei, criada para traduzir o termo inglês industry no contexto da modernização do país, mas que sofreria um processo de reelaboração desse significado, tornando-o mais próximo de arte e artesanato, e símbolo da cultura material japonesa. Em nossa delimitação cronológica, que tem início com a reabertura dos portos japoneses para as potências marítimas estrangeiras durante os anos 1850, investigamos alguns elementos que contribuíram para a transformação semântica de kôgei, tais como a função social da arte no Japão pré-moderno, a participação nas exposições internacionais de arte e indústria, o aponismo e a inserção da arte japonesa no debate ocidental sobre a arte aplicada por volta da década de 1870. / The starting point of the investigation here presented was the study of the word kōgei工芸, derived from geijutsu 芸術, which corresponds to the idea of art in Japan. The research begins with a preliminary analysis of the main differences between geijutsu and European art, in the sense of fine arts prevalent until the mid-nineteenth century. It is followed by a clarification about the origin of the word kōgei, created to translate the English term industry in the context of the country modernization. That meaning would be the subject of re-elaboration, making it closer to art and crafts, and symbol of the Japanese material culture. In our chronological delimitation, which begins with the reopening of Japanese ports to the international maritime powers during the 1850s, we investigate some elements that contributed to the semantic transformation of kōgei, such as the social function of art in premodern Japan, the participation in international exhibitions of art and industry, Japonisme and the insertion of the Japanese art in the Western debate on applied arts around the 1870s.

This thesis explores the epistemological shift in my photographic practice from an ethnographic position to that of surrealist documentary. In charting this shift I have consider the use of documentary photography by the historical Surrealist movement ,and, the synthesis of surrealism and ethnography found in the English group Mass- Observation. The photograph’s oscillation between indexical record and mystical emanation forms a key position in understanding these two groups belief in the found images ability to describe a repressed reality located in the mass unconscious. Drawing on the Lacanian model of the Real used by Slavoj Zizek as a tool of cultural critique I suggest a new framework for a surrealist documentary practice. In bringing the methodology of the early Surrealists into a contemporary context I consider the position of suburbia as a new terrain vague in relationship to the fantasy of the Real.

Temporal Landscapes is a research project concerned with culture-nature relations in the context of contemporary industrial land use in New Zealand; explored visually through the photographic representation and presentation of gold mining sites – former, current and prospective – in the Hauraki region. In the current period of industrial capitalism, featuring the mass exploitation of natural resources, nature is commonly thought of as subservient to humankind. This stance, with its origin in scientific ideology of the 17th Century, is interesting to consider in relation to contemporary notions of landscape, and the ‘ideal’ in nature. In New Zealand, a balance is being sought between interests of sustainability and conservation, and of industry and economy. This is not to say that industry opposes environmental safeguards; in contrast, sustainable management including the rehabilitation of land post-industrialisation is integral to modern mining practice in New Zealand. With this emphasis on controlled industrial progress, two key factors emerge. Firstly, this level of control implicates itself as a utopian vision, and secondly, industrialisation is advocated as a temporary situation, with industrial land as transitory, on the path to rehabilitation. The research question of Temporal Landscapes asks; in considering contemporary industrial land use in New Zealand within a utopian framework – focussing specifically on gold mining in the Hauraki Region – has our ideal in nature become that of a controlled, even post-industrial, landscape? The photographic representation of these sites offers a means to explore and express their visual temporality. With the expectation of industrial sites as fleeting and rehabilitated sites as static utopias, it would seem that this industrial process is a kind of contemporary ideal. Presented as a flickering projection piece, 23 Views. (Prospective gold mining site, Golden Valley, Hauraki, 2008 / Martha gold mine and Favona gold mine, Waihi, Hauraki, 2008), and a set of selectively lit prints, Untitled I. (Garden, pit rim walkway, Martha gold mine, Waihi, Hauraki, 2008), Untitled II. (View of pit, former Golden Cross gold mine, Waitekauri Valley, Hauraki, 2008), and Untitled III. (View of water treatment pond, former Golden Cross gold mine, Waitekauri Valley, Hauraki, 2008), they act as landscapes of partial comprehension.

In memory of cats: The camera and the ordinary moment looks at the way in which families use photographs to remember the past. Photography’s offer of memory is limited to a visual trace, so strategies of oral telling are examined to interrogate the way in which memories can be recovered from photographs. Martha Langford’s study of the similarities between structures in oral culture and the photograph album and Annette Kuhn’s strategies for reading family photographs in a broader historical context, are used to examine and recover memories from my own photographic archive. Using moving image to record those memories and then tell how that photographic evidence has shaped my present, is a process suggested by Linda Williams in her writing about how postmodern documentary can use the past to intervene in the present. Other documentary styles, performative documentary and the essay film, offer a structure for personal memories to be revisited and re-presented to public viewers. Offering a space for personal or specific memories to be understood or related to by a viewer is discussed by Lisa Saltzman, who looks at indexical forms other than the photograph, like casting and tracing. These ideas culminated in my video work, A Clowder of Cats, which explores the losses that have been a part of my history, through photographs of the cats my family has owned. The camera gives us a strategy to remember moments that may otherwise have been forgotten, and moving image provides a space for those ordinary moments to be bought back to the present.

This study sets out to explore and test the application of narrative and personification to the interface design and user experience of a search engine. The motivational and collaborative aspects of a search agent narrative will be examined and tested as a technique for increasing the volume and quality of data submitted to an open-content search engine by its users.

Researching through design, this thesis explores the implementation of an online kit as a means through which the postmodern individual can participate in the creative processes of home sewing. Through the development of a knowledge network that is built on co-creation, a new approach to the traditional producer/consumer relationship is investigated. This network is used to encourage the fulfilment of self through the process of re-creation, while targeting the contemporary consumer by combining electronic resources and social networking with the hands-on nature of creative process.