This work consists of a Creative Work, Exegesis and a Bibliography.

This dissertation, entitled The Cosmic Tantrum, is presented in two parts: the body of creative work, in the form of a series of art works created over the course of two years of study, and the theoretical work discussed in this document. The creative work is subdivided into two sections: 1) a series of ten figurative mixed-media paintings, organised chronologically; and 2) the lightworks, a suite of fourteen back-lit canvas tapestries entitled The Eternal Carnival. The Eternal Carnival is the centrepiece of my postgraduate work. A set of drawings is also presented as supporting documentation of the artistic process. The theoretical component is the result of two years of research in Postcolonial Theory, Cultural Studies, and scholarship on the artistic and philosophical systems of what is known as the Black Atlantic. I provide an explanation of the theoretical underpinnings of the creative work in the form of a possible theory of culture, which I have called an "insurgent ancestral aesthetic", elaborated in Part One. This theory of culture provides an analytical framework and leads into Part Two, in which I offer an exposition of the artwork. As a theory, an insurgent ancestral aesthetic begins with the assertion that the presence of the artistic philosophies of the African Diaspora can be understood as essential to both Postmodern Theory and contemporary global culture. A comparative study of the relationship between Black Atlantic aesthetic philosophy and Postmodernism develops this theory of culture and leads into a discussion of possible applications of an insurgent ancestral aesthetic. The themes and concepts of the theoretical research are played out in the creative work in various ways; I employ aspects of my work in theory to illuminate the art in Part Two. Generally, in the artwork, an improvisational approach to the human form reveals an image of the body as an expression of emotional, psychological, and spiritual content. The paintings generate a sense of the body as a story written over time, a record of all that has befallen it. The Eternal Carnival is the culmination of my work in shadow and silhouette and employs a narrative approach in signifying upon various spiritual characters and artistic principles active in the aesthetic and philosophic systems of the Black Atlantic.

This thesis is a creative novel depicting the adventures of Tim Collier, a small-town broadcaster in his new job in the big city.

Much of what we know about workplace inequality, we know from studies on work in industrial and information-based economies. There has been less interrogation into how processes of inequality are formed and sustained in creative work and cultural industries. Given the growing trend away from traditional work rooted in formal organizations and toward cultural industries, how can we understand the relationship between work and inequality in non-standard, creative labour? To answer this question I explore the world of stand-up comedy by drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with stand-up comedians and over one hundred hours of observational data. My analysis reveals that comedy work is organized around the image of an ‘ideal worker,’ an ideal maintained by intersubjective mechanisms of rule: diversity logics, compulsory networking, and creative license. The existence of the ‘ideal worker’ influences how, when, and under what conditions work happens in stand-up comedy for those who fall outside of that ideal. Specifically, workers’ social locations shape how they self-manage, marginalized workers must self-regulate in relation to the work (like everyone else) and the ‘ideal worker.’ Finally, the analysis reveals that workers in stand-up comedy use various strategies to negotiate consent and resistance in their work arrangements in terms of where and under what circumstances they work. Overall, this research highlights how the micro politics of capital are informed by larger power relations that sustain inequality in cultural work settings. Specifically, this work demonstrates the need to address how ‘ideal workers’ are maintained in cultural work, as well as how social location shapes processes of self-management and strategic engagement within unequal work environments. / Dissertation / Doctor of Social Science

Practitioners in creative domains such as web design, data visualization, and software development face many challenges while trying to create novel solutions that satisfy the guidelines around practical constraints and quality considerations. My dissertation work addresses two of these challenges. First, guidelines may conflict with each other, creating a need for slow and time-consuming expert intervention. Second, guidelines may be hard to check programmatically, requiring experts to manually use multipage style guides that suffer from drawbacks related to searchability, navigation, conflict, and obsolescence. In my dissertation, I focus on exploring mixed-initiative methods as a solution to these challenges in two complex tasks: biological network visualization where guidelines may conflict, and web design where task requirements are hard to check programmatically. For biological network visualization, I explore the use of crowdsourcing to scale up time-consuming manual layout tasks. To support the network-based collaboration required for crowdsourcing, I first implemented a system called GraphSpace. It fosters online collaboration by allowing users to store, organize, explore, lay out, and share networks on a web platform. I then used GraphSpace as the infrastructure to support a novel mixed-initiative crowd-algorithm approach for creating high-quality, biological meaningful network visualizations. I also designed and implemented Flud, a system that gamifies the graph visualization task and uses flow theory concepts to make algorithmically generated suggestions more readily accessible to non-expert crowds. Then, I proposed DeepLayout, a novel learning-based approach as an alternative to the non-machine learning-based method used in Flud. It has the ability to learn how to balance complex conflicting guidelines from a layout process. Finally, in the domain of web design, I present a real-world iterative deployment of a system called Critter. Critter augments traditional quality assurance techniques used in structured domains, such as checklists and expert feedback, using mixed-initiative interactions. I hope this dissertation can serve to accelerate research on leveraging the complementary strengths of humans and computers in the context of creative processes that are generally considered out of bounds for automated methods. / Doctor of Philosophy / Practitioners in creative domains such as web design, data visualization, and software development face many challenges while trying to create novel solutions that satisfy the guidelines around practical constraints and quality considerations. My dissertation work addresses two of these challenges. First, sometimes the guidelines may conflict with each other under a certain scenario. In this situation, tasks require expert opinion to prioritize one guideline over the other. This dependence on expertise makes the design process slow and time-consuming. Second, sometimes it is difficult to determine which guidelines have been fulfilled. In this scenario, experts have to manually go through a list of guidelines and make sure applicable guidelines have been successfully applied to the final product. However, using a list of guidelines has its own drawbacks. Not all guidelines are applicable to a project, and finding a relevant guideline can be strenuous for experts. Moreover, a design process is not as simple as following a list of guidelines. Design processes are dynamic, non-linear, and iterative. Due to these reasons, a simple list of guidelines does not align with the designers' workflow. My dissertation focuses on exploring mixed-initiative methods where computers and humans collaborate in a tight feedback loop to help follow guidelines. To this end, I present solutions for two complex creative tasks: biological network visualization where we can compute how well a design adheres to the guidelines but guidelines may conflict and web design where task requirements are hard to check programmatically. I hope this dissertation can serve to accelerate research on leveraging the complementary strengths of humans and computers in the context of creative processes that are generally considered out of bounds for automated methods.

Ao tecerem a relação entre as ideias pedagógicas e a prática educativa os atores da educação podem materializar o ato educativo por meio de um trabalho criativo emancipador, objeto investigado nessa pesquisa. Na análise desse objeto consideramos o conceito de trabalho em sua dimensão humanizadora; o conceito criativo no diálogo entre as dimensões da práxis e o conceito emancipador relacionado à intencionalidade do trabalho. A presente pesquisa-ação tem por base a psicologia histórico-cultural e a pedagogia histórico-crítica e por objetivos demonstrar que esse objeto de pesquisa se relaciona à constituição dos próprios sujeitos, professor e estudantes, que de forma consciente se envolvem no processo de formação, além de investigar a linguagem fílmica como instrumento de trabalho no processo de formação de professores para atuarem, entre outras, na modalidade EJA. Nesse processo problematizamos a contribuição de um trabalho criativo emancipador na internalização dos saberes sobre a EJA, tendo como instrumento a linguagem fílmica em seu fruir e fazer. Como resultados da pesquisa-ação observou-se a contribuição da linguagem fílmica no processo de formação dos dois atores envolvidos no processo. A professora aproximou-se das singularidades dos estudantes, em especial dos adultos da turma e suas experiências com a modalidade EJA e identificou a prática social como ponto de partida e de chegada do processo de ensino e de aprendizagem. Os estudantes tiveram a oportunidade de criar canais de comunicação e de refletir sobre suas histórias de vida. Constituíram também um maior pertencimento com o espaço do Instituto de ensino superior (IES) onde foi realizada a pesquisa, além de desconstruírem pré-conceitos relacionados ao adulto estudante, em especial a mulher, internalizando mais significativamente os saberes envolvendo a modalidade EJA. / By linking pedagogical ideas with educational practice, education actors can materialize the educational act through a \"creative emancipatory work\", an object investigated in this research. In the analysis of this object we consider the concept of work in its humanizing dimension; the creative concept in the dialogue between the dimensions of praxis and the emancipatory concept related to the intentionality of work. The present action research is based on historical-cultural psychology and historical-critical pedagogy and aims to demonstrate that this research object is related to the constitution of the subjects themselves, teacher and students, who consciously get involved in the formation process , in addition to investigating film language as a working tool in the teacher training process to act, among others, in the EJA modality. In this process, we discuss the contribution of an emancipatory creative work in the internalization of the knowledge about the EJA, having as an instrument the filmic language in its enjoyment and doing. As a result of the action research, the contribution of the film language was observed in the process of formation of the two actors involved in the process. The teacher approached the singularities of the students, especially the adults of the class and their experiences with the EJA modality, and identified the social practice as the starting point and the arrival of the teaching and learning process. Students had the opportunity to create communication channels and reflect on their life stories. They also constituted a greater belonging with the space of the institution of higher education (IES) where the research was carried out, besides deconstructing preconceptions related to the adult student, especially the woman, internalizing more significantly the knowledge involving the EJA modality.

In December 1945, four months after the end of the Second World War, two soldiers meet on an aeroplane flying towards Port Hedland, located in north-west Western Australia, the Pilbara district. Frank Grey found the war a horrific experience and is deeply traumatised. He is returning home, after an absence of five years, hoping to reunite with his wife, get his old job back, and continue on with his life as it was before the war. Patrick Gray is an Aboriginal. He also found the war horrific. However, for him, serving in the A.I.F. was also a liberating experience. For the first time in his life he received equal pay and conditions of white men. He found equality. He is hoping that because he, and other Aborigines, served in the armed forces, the social conditions for Aborigines will have improved in the 6 years he's been away. They are both disappointed.

<p>The main purpose of this essay is to investigate professional artists experience of the need and use of information in their creative work. I have collected the material through qualitative interviews with four professional artist working with different materials and techniques. One of the results of the study is that the artists first of all used information as a source of inspiration in their creative work. They gathered their information from various scources, for example; pictures, exhibitions, visual arts, books and novells, depending on what project they are working with. Other important information scources were colleges, especially for the technical information need. The artists also searched for information in a wide range of subjects and showed interest in areas that are not considerable art-related.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>This essay has as its main purpose to examine how teachers handle teaching in art, after the governments steeredocuments and goals to reach.</p><p>To find out about it I have done interviews with four teachers. I have made a study of litterature to introduce some different teaching methods that is more or less meaningful and useable. The result of the examination was different from what I expected. The interviews showed that the four teachers work in varios ways after their own conditions. They have different experiences and also have different opinions about what is most important in the art teaching. They give reasons for why they work the way they do, and have good arguments. They also seems aware of their own work and also about the chortage it might have.</p><p>Kayeords: art teaching, teaching method, creative work</p> / <p>Sammanfattning</p><p>Det här arbetet har som ditt huvudsakliga syfte att undersöka hur lärare hanterar bildämnet i skolan utifrån de riktlinjer och mål som finns uppsatta i grundskolans läroplan och kursplan för bild.</p><p>För att ta reda på det har jag gjort fyra intervjuer med lärare. Jag har också studerat olika metoder i litteraturen, som är mer eller mindre användbara och meningsfulla. Resultatet av undersökningen är ett annat än vad jag hade förväntat mig. Intervjuerna har visat att de fyra lärarna arbetar olika efter sina egna förutsättningar. De har olika erfarenhet och tycker olika saker är viktiga. Lärarna motiverar varför de arbetar som de gör och har bra argument. De är medvetna om sitt eget arbete och de brister det kan ha.</p><p>Nyckelord: bildundervisning, bildämnet, undervisningsmetod, skapande verksamhet</p>

ABSTRACT This essay has as its main purpose to examine how teachers handle teaching in art, after the governments steeredocuments and goals to reach. To find out about it I have done interviews with four teachers. I have made a study of litterature to introduce some different teaching methods that is more or less meaningful and useable. The result of the examination was different from what I expected. The interviews showed that the four teachers work in varios ways after their own conditions. They have different experiences and also have different opinions about what is most important in the art teaching. They give reasons for why they work the way they do, and have good arguments. They also seems aware of their own work and also about the chortage it might have. Kayeords: art teaching, teaching method, creative work / Sammanfattning Det här arbetet har som ditt huvudsakliga syfte att undersöka hur lärare hanterar bildämnet i skolan utifrån de riktlinjer och mål som finns uppsatta i grundskolans läroplan och kursplan för bild. För att ta reda på det har jag gjort fyra intervjuer med lärare. Jag har också studerat olika metoder i litteraturen, som är mer eller mindre användbara och meningsfulla. Resultatet av undersökningen är ett annat än vad jag hade förväntat mig. Intervjuerna har visat att de fyra lärarna arbetar olika efter sina egna förutsättningar. De har olika erfarenhet och tycker olika saker är viktiga. Lärarna motiverar varför de arbetar som de gör och har bra argument. De är medvetna om sitt eget arbete och de brister det kan ha. Nyckelord: bildundervisning, bildämnet, undervisningsmetod, skapande verksamhet