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This written thesis unpacks the thoughts and motivations behind the decisions I have made in my artistic practice that have ultimately culminated in my M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition: Sub for More. By merging images of my own work as well as internet sourced images of the culture that drives my work, I have created a platform to begin to understand my experience during graduate school. This text examines and explores my belief in the inherent power in pop culture, my obsession with fame, celebrity, and my self-identity as a participant in current pop-culture.

With the rise of Internet, Web and new media technologies come increased opportunities for audience to recreate media content and influence its flow across different media platforms. The fan as a demanding yet enthusiastic consumer has become a centrepiece of media industries' marketing strategies. On the one hand, this qualitative change often described as participatory culture means a giant leap forward for fans, who can now serve new roles within the media industry. On the other, it represents a potential exploitation of media users, as unpaid volunteers do the labour professionals are paid for. This study investigates this tension in a case of videogame fans. On their official websites, videogame developers encourage fans to contribute with their fan art harnessing fan creativity for their advertising purposes. Convergence culture raises conflicts and compromises between creators of fan art (fan artists), and the owners of the copyrighted works they appropriate (game companies). This study addresses three main issues: (1) the way and circumstances under which game companies are displaying fan art on their official websites, (2) how fans understand the tensions between empowerment and exploitation, how do they address the issue of free labour, (3) how fans view issues concerning intellectual property...

This master's thesis will explore the ways in which the fictional and real world blends with detective stories readers. In the methodological part, the author will focus on theoretical problems associated with perception of cult literary works, readers' activity and further expansion of fictional worlds. The phenomena the author will explore are, for example, fan clubs, fan fiction, fan art, naming real entities according to fictional characters and places, and searching for fictional entities in the real world. The practical part of this thesis will be devoted to three detective stories authors - A. C. Doyle, A. Christie and M. Jennings, and their functioning as cultural phenomena both in the Czech and world context.

This study investigates the individual experience of viewing fan art and creative works within fandom, as well as the community’s potential to be a place for learning or to develop creative skills. I approach the fandom of Final Fantasy XIV, a massive multiplayer online game, on the online platform Tumblr, asking for fans’ experience with creative content and community connections. Through inspiration by Henry Jenkins, Olga Goriunova, Kristina Busse, and others, we learn the intricacies of what criteria defines communities, their adaptation to the expansion of the internet and how art has previously been used through online connections. What it is like to be an artist in a space so full of the influx of viewer opinions, other artists and their works, and the invisible ideals created by the communities. Fandom and online community studies are currently an expanding area of interest within the humanities with much still to learn. This study provides a picture of what fandom looks like from the perspective of the fans who actively participate in the culture. Fans find fan art and creative works within fandom to be more personal, inspiring, and a way to find likeminded individuals to connect with. At the same time fans are very aware of the issues fan art and the fandom has, both in terms of ethical and political questions. I believe this study sets up the potential to consider a multitude of future studies that can provide to a better understanding of the fandom culture and visual arts that occur online.