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In the past, researchers in the field of art and architecture have searched for a definition of Islamic architecture, its history and its social meaning. This study focuses on the Islamic culture of the Arab world and its influences on the architecture of the region, giving an overview of contemporary architecture in the Arab world, its situation, cultural crisis and hope for the future.This research aims to identify the principal characteristics of Islamic architecture, which embody the needs and demands of Muslims according to their Islamic teachings. Muslims form one of the biggest communities in the world, which is suggested to be more than one fifth of the world's population, about one and half billion.This community has special architectural needs related to their religious teachings, traditions and culture, because Islam is not only a religion, it is a complete way of life, which covers all social, political, economic, educational, cultural, hygienic, and behavioural aspects.For a great number of people, the concept of Islamic architecture denotes tangible characteristics of some architectural features like Mashrabiah, arch, dome, or any other architectural pattern that distinguishes this typical style of architecture. But, Islamic architecture is more than just a spectacle of domes and minarets; it is a deep expression of a rich culture that has unified countries across the globe.In the last fifty years, contemporary architecture of the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world in particular, has been exposed to several outside influences that have eventually caused it to be alienated from its particular sense of identity and, thus, to lose its character. It is believed that such matter requires immediate attention towards attempting a "revival process" by uncovering the bases and principles of Islamic architecture, as manifested throughout Islamic history. ++ / These principles could be integrated and molded into the contemporary architecture of the Arab world, which reflects a rather complicated and, sometimes, contradicting set of values.The aim of this study is to develop an appropriate definition for Islamic architecture of the Arab world in terms of Islamic teachings and doctrine.Associated with this aim, this research will include within its scope:Understanding Arabian Islamic culture, traditions and environment and how they have affected architectural design.Translating some principles from Islamic doctrine, which can be applied to architectural practice, and to recognize Muslims' architectural needs and demands, according to Islamic teachings.Developing architectural standards that satisfy Muslims architectural needs and a definition of what, in an Islamic context, could be considered as successful Arabian Islamic architecture.Analyzing to what extent contemporary architecture meets Muslims' needs, according to their Islamic teachings by undertaking a Case Study of pre-Modern and contemporary architecture in Egypt.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-168). CD-ROMs comprise: Appendix A. Family values: fictocritical sentences -- appendix C. Reforming the boy: fictocritical sentences Primarily enacts a fictocritical mapping of local cultural events essentially concerned with crime and trauma in Adelaide. The fictocritical treatment of these events simulates their unresolved or traumatised condition. A secondary concern is the relationship between electronic writing (hypertext) and fictocriticism.

This explorative research examines a contemporary representation for suicide. Utilizing a dualistic framework of biology and technology, I codify diverse theoretical discourses into why people commit suicide. My practical research then merges opposing binaries of 'fact' (the need to understand) within 'fiction' (the need to tell narratives). In context of this study a person who has taken their own life is the 'author' and the researcher is the 'reader' of this event ‐ I investigate how the reader imposes their own narrative upon the author.

As members of extended families and genealogical lines we collect and view photographs to remember. By situating the present investigation within the context of archival family photographic collections, this research seeks to understand the assumptions surrounding the interplay between the practice of viewing photographs and notions of remembering. Historically, photography has been connected to concepts of stability and truth with photographic images acting as a metaphor for ‘real lived experiences’. When a photograph is viewed, whatever was present before the camera is verified. In his seminal text Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), French theorist Roland Barthes describes this as ‘a truth to presence’ (Barthes 1980: 84). Barthes links this position to Poststructuralist theory, by determining that photographic signifiers, denotative data, are stable where as the signified, the idea or meaning, is contingent on what a viewer brings to that particular ‘text’. Therefore the viewer relies on denotative data to process meaning. This research explores the ways photographers play with photographic processes to disrupt ideas of stability of meaning surrounding this medium. The visual component of this research explores the expectations that socio-cultural groups, specifically extended families, have when viewing photographs. The subsequent work will endeavour to lay bare the interplay between such expectations and the supposed reliability of the photograph in respect to both meaning and perception. Using an archive of my own extended family’s collection of photographs, this thesis seeks to disrupt the story-telling qualities of photographs. This interruption strategy points to poststructuralist discourses surrounding the stability of the photographic image and the context in which photography is grounded. The work will challenge viewers to re-assess what the photograph can or cannot do. The final work will be comprised of 80% practice and 20% exegesis.

Master of Visual Arts / Digital/video games1 have entertained for 40 years and are a medium with the ability to reach a vast audience. In an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Charles Purcell reports that; “Globally, Halo 2 has sold more than 7 million copies. Both in the US and Australia it broke the film box-office record for the most earnings in the first 24 hours of release. The worldwide Halo 2 community on X-box Live has about 400,000 players… at the World Cyber Games in Seoul. Last year, gold medallist Matthew Leto won $US20,000 ($AUS27,0000) after his second consecutive Halo title.” 2. Game consoles have become a part of many lounge rooms just as the television did before them. Games are even commonplace in many coat pockets and carrying bags. This dissertation is concerned with the medium of digital/video games in relation to its effect on Game Art. It is also concerned with the concept of my studio work that deals with “evil” and the “uncanny” which are discussed in chapter four. My research looks at games and how they have developed and the relationship to contemporary art. A history of this development is explored in chapter two. My research will help me in developing an interactive piece. Throughout my current research the thoughts of author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit Sherry Turkle resonate: “…not what will the computer be like in the future, but instead, what will we be like? What kind of people are we becoming?” 3 It is interesting to consider the video/digital games as experiments of who we are or who we would like to be, little fantasies of empowerment. In a game we are able to live out our frustrations or fantasies in a closed and predictable experience.

The dating of ancient jewellery is given by the archaeological context. Technology applied by the ancient goldsmith is traceable through archaeometallurgy. The aim of this research is to analyse historical jewellery and to construct copies based on the known technology of the era. Resultant laboratory constructions with their historical correctness and the new knowledge of jewellery structures will then be available for reworking to convey a contemporary visual relevance and a statement of history. The results of these analyses and reconstructions will form the basis of metalwork objects in which contemporary aesthetics are informed by historical practice. Jewellery offers a view into history, of cultural descriptions of stylistic, chemical and methodological correctness. For diagnostic purposes there is the expectation of an archaeological correctness within the fabric and manufacture of the jewellery object. From the vantage point of a contemporary goldsmith, t his has provided me with an arena for artistic interpretation-for 'play'. Historical jewellery becomes contemporary jewellery forms and the 'play' functions as a stumbling block and an upheaval within orthodox classification of authenticity. There is in this disturbance an intervention with coontemporary ephemeral materials into the jewellery artefact in which I manufacture a semblance of an identified 'correctness'. Jewellery remains in a better state of preservation when hidden or concealed-not exposed. The jewellery object once surfaced, discovered, excavated or plundered or even worn becomes part of our time for reworking. Knowledge and applications of technology become the vehicle for scrutinizing these objects. We live in an era where the ancient and the recent, the authentic and the bogus, have begun to mingle and interbreed in the corridors of hyperspace. Television stages Xena the Warrior Princess encountering the young Buddha in the entourage of King Arthur. Fakes with historical associations can s ometimes be considered authentic as a shroud of 'history' can encompass the object to the satisfaction of the naive connoisseur who wants to believe, wants to believe, wants to believe, wants to believe ... . Jewellery as document is available for interpretation-for'play'. There is potential to return to an imaginary history where ffictional detail has been confused with historic fact and this can be both intentional and unintentional. Jewellery of the past therefore exists in the present and the jewellery artefact becomes available for evaluation and for 'play'. In the analysing and categorizing of type, jewellery as vehicle conveying the past can become a mixture of one's own inventions and cultural inheritance. From the vantage point of a goldsmith, I am considering how formulated heritage is available for reference, questioning and modification. The option to copy, to replicate, or to modify the historic document jewellery is a possibility and new input can verify authenticity or engender falsehood throu gh the artistic reinterpretation.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-168). / 168 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. + 2 sound discs (CD) / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Primarily enacts a fictocritical mapping of local cultural events essentially concerned with crime and trauma in Adelaide. The fictocritical treatment of these events simulates their unresolved or traumatised condition. A secondary concern is the relationship between electronic writing (hypertext) and fictocriticism. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2001

The goal of the paper is to develop a framework in which to ground the analysis of the aesthetics of Western concert dance, particularly contemporary concert dance, in order to help dancers, choreographers, critics, and the general dance audience understand and discuss dance from the perspective of a common intellectual ground. Examined are the relationship between epochs in concert dance and the corresponding aesthetic theories and the elements that differentiate and unify contemporary concert dance from other Western concert dance, including the unique spatiotemporal nature of dance and the simultaneous presentation of universal human-ness and individual truth via the kinesthetic empathy of viewer and dancer. A brief explanation of phenomenology and of its parallels to the consciousness required of dancer, choreographer and viewer supports a phenomenological approach to a theory of Western contemporary concert dance as most relevant at this time.

Although many critics, and Eavan Boland herself, have written about how her poetry functions to reclaim the Irish feminine image from its static position as lyric representation of the nation, much remains to be said about how Boland represents and reimagines Ireland in her poetry. Using the metaphor of cartography, which Boland frequently refers to in her writing, I argue that she lyrically "maps" the nation across space, time, and language. Her palimpsestic poetic maps of Ireland include what a mere pictorial representation could never, and what prior male-written poetry never did, show: the space of a Dublin suburb, the history of her marriage, the mental scarring of an imposed English language represented as physical fractures on skin or land. Her own subjectivity is the most important component of this map, and so she liberally inserts fragments of her own life into pre-existing national narratives. Through close readings of poems published between 1990 and 2007, I explore how Boland mixes national history, geography, family stories, and memories of her own life to arrive at a poetic "structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers / the inner secret of it" (ITV 47). This is not a truth about history, nor merely a declaration that women, particularly Irish women, have been silenced in poetry and history. Instead, the inner secret is her own recognition of the connection between herself and the women of whom she writes, as well as her readers; that the framework she builds from pieces of the past provides a way to understand our current selves. Boland remains conscious of the constructed nature of this framework in each poem where she challenges official narratives and maps of the nation, replacing their truth with her own. She loads specific places, histories, and uses of language, as well as the ideas of these things themselves, with complex and even contradictory meanings. Her poems represent not the truth but a truth, and one which has been carefully crafted at that. Put together, these explorations of "Ireland" and all its various truths constitute an imaginative map of the nation as she perceives it.