<p> Interaction design is the definition of digital behavior, from desktop software and mobile applications to components of appliances, automobiles, and even biomedical devices. Where architects plan buildings, graphic designers make visual compositions, and industrial designers give form to three-dimensional objects, interaction designers define the digital components of products and services. These include websites, mobile applications, desktop software, automobiles, consumer electronics, and more. Interaction design is a relatively new but fast-growing discipline, emerging with the explosive growth of the World Wide Web. In a software-saturated world, every day, multiple times a day, billions of people encounter the work products of interaction design. </p><p> Given the reach of their profession, how interaction designers work is of paramount concern. In considering interaction design, this dissertation turns away from a longstanding question of design studies: <i>How does interaction design demonstrate a special form of human thought?</i> And towards a set of questions drawn from practice-oriented studies of science and technology: <i>What kinds of objects and subjects do interaction design practices make, and how do those practices produce them? </i> </p><p> Based on participant observation at three San Francisco interaction design consultancies and interviews with designers in California's Bay Area, this dissertation argues that performance practices organize interaction design work. By &ldquo;performance practices,&rdquo; I mean episodes of storytelling and narrative that take place before an audience of witnesses. These performances instantiate &mdash; make visible and tangibly felt &mdash; the human and machine behaviors that the static deliverables seem unable on their own to materialize. In doing so, performances of the project help produce and sustain alignment within teams and among designers, clients, and developers. </p><p> In this way, a focus on episodes of performance turns our concerns from cognition, in which artifacts assist design thinking, to one of enactment, in which documents, spaces, tools, and bodies actively participating in producing the identities, responsibilities, and capacities of project constituents. It turns our attention to questions of political representation, materiality and politics. From this perspective, it is not necessarily how designers <i> think</i> but how they stage and orchestrate performances of the project that makes accountable, authoritative decision-making on behalf of clients and prospective users possible.</p>

<p> My thesis work, which consists of a series of small scaled, mixed media constructions, is inspired by the beauty and complexity of the natural world in which we live. There is beauty in the harmony and balance found in the intricate arrangements and order of a variety of living systems such as the rising and falling tides, human DNA structures, life cycles of plants, and the orbits and rotations found in our galaxy. Each work is intended to reveal the density and sophistication of these networks through layers of information and intricate detail. Found wooden cases, drawers, wire, reclaimed metals and recycled plastic, found glass objects, thread, monofilament, and mylar are just a few of the materials I work with to create my sculptures or assemblages. </p><p> The beauty and sophistication of the diverse elements in the natural world have inspired me to create these small scale assemblages or microcosms. Using science and nature as a foundation, I allow my interest in the reuse and transformation of found objects to direct the construction of these intimate environments. I hope the size of the work and layers of visual information entice viewers to explore the spaces and consider the numerous associations evident from my unique orchestration of elements.</p>

<p> The rapid development of consumer culture during the two decades after World War II, coupled with the rise of the teenager, resulted in a powerful cultural and socioeconomic shift that marketers exploited to sell goods and ideas. In this dissertation, I analyze particular spaces and objects marketed to teenagers, particularly teenage girls, for use in the postwar home, both real and imagined. I highlight the ways in which age, gender, privacy, personal identity, parental concerns, and familial relationships intersected with the design and use of specific spaces, interior decoration, and selected objects. I examine the recreation room and family room, the teenage bedroom, the dressing table, the telephone, and what I call the "teenage trousseau" as examples of interiors and objects marketed to reflect heteronormative and gendered expectations. I also consider the ways in which teenage girls derived pleasure from and expressed agency through consuming, creating, and envisioning domestic space. The increased prominence of teenage girls embodied this tension, which was at once bound to the social pleasures found in feminine culture and to the influence of marketers responding to postwar affluence.</p><p> At this time, magazines such as <i>Seventeen</i>, a publication marketed expressly to teenage girls, forged a symbiotic relationship with commercial interests. Consequently, household furnishings and objects figured prominently in editorial and advertising discourse, providing a rich source of information concerning the cultural attitudes and expectations relating to middle-class teenage girls at that time. A paradoxical space, the postwar home was at once a place of containment as well as one of autonomy and power, where teenage girls could socialize, experiment, and assume different identities and roles. The consistent emphasis on consumption and its relation to domesticity makes the study of representations of teenage girls particularly integral to the analysis of the interpretation, decoration, and design of the postwar home.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1941. / Thesis note on label mounted on t.p. Vita on label mounted on p. [136]. Bibliography: p. 131-[136].

The core themes in Thai art have traditionally been didactic Buddhist ethical works and popular folkloric beliefs. Both are permeated with a cosmology and worldview that is supernatural but which is pervaded with ethical implications for people’s daily lives. Buddhist art aims to encourage selfless acts for the good of others, including other individuals, society, the country and the natural world. Such abstract themes have been rendered accessible to ordinary people by means of fantastical creatures and supernatural myths that insinuate moral values and demonstrate a coherent Theravada worldview that is uniquely Thai. This thesis explores the popular manifestations of such phenomena at the intersection of traditional folk beliefs and practices, popular entertainment, Thai official/ royal high culture and confessional Buddhist ethical instruction by analysing the art forms associated with temple fairgrounds at major festivals. Based on a review of related literature and analysis of Thai artists, it concludes that the renaissance of traditional Thai culture is reciprocal with authentic grassroots activities such as temple fairs fostered and supported by traditional patronage and cultural resources from the royal court culture and Buddhist ethics. Based on this analysis, my own work offers a modern rendering in the spirit of traditional forms utilising modern multimedia methods to create an immersive and interactive artistic experience.

This dissertation tracks the exhibition design practices developed in and around the Independent Group (IG) from the late 1940s through the 1950s. A loose affiliation of artists, architects, and critics, the IG gathered at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in the early to mid-1950s to debate the aesthetic, socio-political, and techno-scientific forces of their present (key figures included Lawrence Alloway, Reyner Banham, Richard Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Alison and Peter Smithson). Synthesizing science-fiction, Dada, theoretical biology, and cybernetics (among many other topics) within a single mode of research, IG members formulated a non-hierarchical model of the cultural “continuum” in discussions, presentations, and most importantly, collaborative exhibition designs. The dissertation contends that exhibition design provided the IG with a timely strategy for navigating the contradictory traditions of aesthetic and technical production that came together in Britain during postwar reconstruction, from interwar avant-gardes to emergent American technocracy. IG members realized that exhibition design was the one technique that could move fluidly between the phenomenological conditions of architecture and display and the technological networks of communication, image distribution, and scientific production structuring the “continuum.” The goal was to bring these circuits and spaces—gallery, factory, laboratory, office, home, cinema, television, street—to bear on bodily experience so they might first be lived, then studied and redesigned. Chapter 1 examines Hamilton’s Growth and Form (1951), arguing that the exhibition’s apparatuses for displaying images and models of organic processes materialized a looming shift in global power structures. Chapter 2 unpacks a “Brutalist” empiricism from Parallel of Life and Art (1953), a web of photographs of cultural and technical materials. Chapter 3 investigates Hamilton’s Man, Machine and Motion (1955), which was less exhibition armature than metallic machine of production. Chapter 4 considers IG participation in This is Tomorrow (1956), a collection of propositions for artistic integration. Here, the IG met spectators, not in the realm of bodily experience, but on the plane of fantasy. Chapter 5 examines Hamilton’s an Exhibit and Exhibit 2 (1957/59), proto-Conceptual projects testing whether forms of affect, play, and chance might be fabricated within production systems no longer requiring human operators. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation is a historical study of the life and work of French-Canadian architect and engineer, Ernest Cormier (1885-1980), who is considered to be among the most important Canadian architects of his generation, yet about whom relatively few scholarly studies exist. In light of the range of issues raised by Cormier’s work and their degree of importance to an understanding of Canadian culture at large during the first half of the twentieth century, this dissertation argues that no other architect operating in Canada during the interwar period made a contribution that touched on so many salient issues as Cormier did. A cosmopolitan figure who tapped into everything available to him, Cormier’s multidisciplinary practice spanned over five decades in his native city of Montréal, and reflects his synthesis of diverse influences, his role as an agent of cultural transfer, and his remarkable degree of savoir-faire in everything he undertook. Entrusted with important commissions at local, national and international levels, Cormier’s contribution merits further study both as a milestone in the development of architecture in Canada, and for what it reveals about the charged sociocultural dynamics of Montréal at that time, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the country. Cormier was particularly active during the interwar period, which was an important time in the advent of cultural modernity in the province of Québec, and in the development of a national consciousness among French Canadians. Focused primarily on the close study of two very different yet interrelated projects by Cormier that date from this period, this dissertation contends that the house he designed for himself (1930-31) and the main pavilion of the Université de Montréal (1924-43) are his most important works, both for what they reveal about his sustained commitments as well as for the innovative ways in which they address the conditions of modernity, and thus, critically illuminate the opportunities and constraints of their time and place. Heavily reliant on the study of archival materials alongside empirical analyses of the buildings, and readings from a range of interdisciplinary sources in order to take account of the work’s meaning and significance within and beyond architecture culture, a central leitmotif of this study is the theme of ‘construction’ construed both as a preoccupation internal to Cormier’s oeuvre and as a theoretical orientation driving my analysis of his work. In the first instance, the figure of the constructeur [constructor] is incorporated into Cormier’s professional title to better align himself with French architecture and engineering culture, particularly with the work of Auguste Perret, whom he greatly admired. As well, for Cormier, construction in the sense of building things, is inseparable from design, and finds sustained expression in his deep curiosity for how things are made, his investment in making at all scales across diverse métiers and media, and his exacting standards for all of his work to be well executed. Finally, keenly attendant to architecture’s communicative function, this dissertation examines the profound representational role played by the Cormier residence and the Université de Montréal in the construction of identity at the respective scales of the individual and that of a collective. / Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the applicability of aspects of Schön’s (1983) theories of reflection-in-action in relation to visual art practice. Schön’s (1983) theories demonstrate that whilst they are written with design disciplines in mind, they do not extend to consider the appropriateness of its use in visual art practice. Scrivener (2000: 10) draws the distinction that whilst Schön’s (1983) use of scientific language in reflection-in-action is considered applicable for problem-solving projects in design, aspects of it are problematic for creative production research projects and recommends focusing reflection on the underlying experience of creative production. This thesis proposes that this and other issues, such as the emphasis on problem solving, and particularly, a reliance on a conversational metaphor, is likewise problematic for visual art practice. This thesis therefore moves to examine what is distinct about the application of reflective methods in visual art practice, in relation to design and research in the arts, through a series of text-based and documentary case studies. Analysis of the case studies suggest that there is an emphasis on embodiment essential to visual art processes, which is experiential in nature rather than problem-solving. A thorough examination of recent theories of embodied mind, which provide empirical evidence from a broad range of knowledge fields for the pervasive role of embodiment in shaping human experience, is presented. The primary research method is a review of two existing sets of theories and a synthesis of aspects of them in an original context, a process offered as an original contribution to knowledge. The context in question is the assessment of the applicability of the resulting synthesis to visual art practice, a domain for which neither theory was written. Knowing-in-action (Schön, 1983) describes the tacit knowing implicit in skillful performance when practice is going well, reflection-inaction (Schön, 1983) takes over, and describes the processes cycled through, only when problems are encountered in practice. Through an analysis of theories of embodied mind, and the documentary cases studies, the conclusion is drawn that in addition to these descriptions there is a rich layer of non-verbal embodied experience shaping action, conceptual meaning and verbal articulations of practice. This thesis therefore suggests modifications to theories of reflective practice in the visual arts, by incorporating theories of embodied mind in the development of additional reflective methods to supplement Schön’s theories (1983). Two methods are proposed as worthy of further study. The first researches Mark Johnson’s (1987) theory of metaphorical projection, which is presented as a means of mapping aspects of visual arts practitioners' verbal articulations of practice, back onto source domains in their embodied experiences of practice. The second explores a recommendation from within theories of embodied mind (Varela, Thompson and Rosch, 1993: 27) that mindfulness training could help develop a mindful, open-ended reflection. Taken together, this thesis proposes that an Embodied Reflective Practice could be developed to the benefit of visual art practitioners.

Everyone interested in visiting Mexico should familiarize himself with its arts and crafts, for it has been truly said that "art is the expression of life,"1 and the whole Mexican civilization is inextricably interwoven with its arts. It is the purpose of this thesis, not to exhaust the subject treated, but rather to present the art of Mexico in such a way that students o f the subject, or prospective tourists, may feel the tremendous interest which Mexican arts warrant; that they may have a clearer view of the background, the civilization, both past and present, of our "next door neighbors," the development of which has produced these varied arts and crafts; and finally, to provide some guide, some criteria for the judgment and the selection of the best that Mexican art offers at the present time. I have drawn freely upon my own experience in traveling in Mexico in the hope that the reader may become aware of some of the highlights of the situation as it appears to the art student; that more people may become aware of the fascinating possibilities of travel in this nearby country which is not only easy and inexpensive to reach, but which holds forth a definite promise of delight to any visitor; and finally, that the reader may realize that civilization is playing a jig-tune in Mexico, and that, before many years have passed, much of the romantic appeal of the country as it is now will undoubtedly be dispelled in the web of industrialism.

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