There has been an increasing demand for commercial organisations to foster real-time interaction with customers, because harnessing customer competencies has been shown to be a major contributor towards various benefits, such as growth, innovation and competition. This may drive organisations to embrace the development of multimodal interaction and complement Electronic Customer Knowledge Management Systems (E-CKMS) with metaphors of audio-visual nature. Although the implementation of E-CKMS encounters several challenges, such as lack of trust and information overload, few empirical studies were devoted to assess the role of audio-visual metaphors, and investigate whether these technologies can be put into practice. Therefore, this thesis describes a comparative evaluation study carried out to examine the implication of incorporating multimodal metaphors into E-CKMS interfaces on not only usability of E-CKMS, but also the user¿s trust, knowledge and acceptance. An experimental E-CKMS platform was implemented with three different modes of interaction: Visual-only E-CKMS (VCKMS) with text and graphics, Multimodal E-CKMS (MCKMS) with speech, earcons and auditory icons and Avatar-enhanced multimodal E-CKMS (ACKMS). The three platforms were evaluated by three independent groups of twenty participants each (total=60) who carried out eight common tasks of increasing complexity and design based on three different styles. Another dependent group of forty-eight participants (n=48) was instructed to interact with the systems under similar usability conditions by performing six common tasks of two styles, and fill a questionnaire devised to measure the aspects of user acceptance. The results therein revealed that ACKMS was more usable and acceptable than both MCKMS and VCKMS, whereas MCKMS was more usable than VCKMS, but less acceptable. Inferential Statistics indicated that these results were statistically significant.

The focus of this study was analytical investigations of Egyptian paintings, mainly Coptic icons and Islamic wooden ceilings, dating from 1300-1900 using multiinstrumental techniques. Twenty three Coptic icons and three wooden ceilings dated from different periods and painted by different painters in case of icons were examined. The materials used including pigments, media, varnishes, ground layers and gold layers. The surface stratigraphy of paint samples, their layered structured and the composition of materials used in each layer were analysed. Variations in painting techniques, pigments palettes, paint media and varnishes applied in Egyptian paintings according to painters, time and type of paintings were revealed. A total of twenty-eight organic and inorganic pigments were identified in this study, of which nine have never been previously included as a part of the Egyptian pigment palettes, namely; smalt, lapis lazuli, indigo, pararealgar, Prussian blue, chrome yellow, barium yellow, barium white and hydromagnesite. The identification of hydromagnesite, which has never been to date considered as a pigment either in Egypt or elsewhere and the identification of smalt from the mid-14th century, whose reported earliest large scale use was in the 16th century. Two types of resins were identified as a constituent of the oil/resin varnish applied on Coptic icons of which Venice turpentine has been identified for the first time as an ingredient of Egyptian varnishes. The identification of mosaic gold in an 18th C. icon, a novel usage of dammar resin and the multilayered structure of the white ground layers were revealed. / Egyptian Ministry of Higher Educations

Den snabba tillväxten av uppkopplade enheter som samlar in och delar data leder till att användare kommer behöva läsa och godkänna alltmer sekretessmeddelanden för att kunna använda enheter och tjänster. Sekretessmeddelanden är de avtal som definierar villkoren för användning av en produkt eller tjänst och är avsedda att informera användare om insamlingen och användningen av deras data och personuppgifter innan valet att acceptera eller neka fattas. Sekretessmeddelanden tenderar vara långa samt innehålla mycket text med ett komplicerat språk. Texten i sekretessmeddelanden är ofta statisk utan användarinteraktion, vilket leder till att användare möts av en lång text att läsa utan någon form av stöd i form av designelement, exempelvis färg, ikoner, överblick eller interaktioner. Avsaknaden av designelement är en av orsakerna till att användare idag antingen förbiser eller accepterar sekretessmeddelanden utan att förstå innebörden, vilket får konsekvenser för användarens integritet. På grund av detta är det av stor vikt att användarna har en klar förståelse för hur deras integritet påverkas vid godkännande av ett sekretessmeddelande. Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen inom området, och erbjuda och stötta designers i deras tillvägagångssätt kring hur sekretessmeddelanden kan designas för att främja användarens förståelse. Studien genomfördes genom en kvalitativ designstudie där ett befintligt ramverk skapat för design av sekretessmeddelanden kombinerades med identifierade designelement från litteraturstudien. Designelementen och ramverket användes vid framtagningen av fyra designförslag, vilka implementerades i en prototyp för att undersöka hur förståelse kan främjas i sekretessmeddelanden. Resultatet av studien är fyra designförslag som stöttar användaren att uppnå förståelse. / The rapid growth of connected devices that collect and share data leads to users needing to read and approve an increasing number of privacy notices to use devices and services. Privacy notices are agreements that define the terms of use for a product or service and are intended to inform users about the collection and use of their data and personal information before deciding to accept or decline. Privacy notices tend to be lengthy and contain a lot of text with complicated language. The text in privacy notices is often static without user interaction, which leads to users being faced with a long text to read without any form of support in terms of design elements, such as color, icons, overview, or interactions. The lack of design elements is one of the reasons why users today either overlook or accept privacy notices without understanding the implications, which has consequences for the user's privacy. Because of this, it is of great importance that users have a clear understanding of how their privacy is affected by accepting a privacy notice. The purpose of the study is to increase knowledge in the field and offer and support designers in their approach to how privacy notices can be designed to promote user understanding. The study was conducted through a qualitative design study where an existing framework created for the design of privacy notices was combined with identified design elements from the literature study. The design elements and framework were used in the development of four design proposals, which were implemented in a prototype to investigate how understanding can be promoted in privacy notices. The result of the study is four design proposals that support users in achieving understanding.

Le présent mémoire étudie les relations ambivalentes qu’entretient l’œuvre de Pierre Michon avec les positions d’autorité filiale, linguistique, littéraire et historique. Le rapport double – entre destitution et idéalisation de l’autorité – agit comme une matrice symbolique à partir de laquelle l’auteur déploie une série d’oppositions qui régissent ses récits et sa propre fonction auctoriale : le père et le fils, l’illettré et le beau parleur, la gloire et la chute, l’image et l’icône, le corps et la lettre. De ces positions, trois thèmes principaux font saillie : le transfuge culturel, le « grand écrivain » et le tyran révolutionnaire. Ces thématiques fonctionnent sur trois échelles – sociofamiliale, littéraire, politico- historique – qui régissent la structure tripartite du mémoire. Dans le premier chapitre, j’analyse l’émergence des Vies minuscules (1984), livre de huit hagiographies où le rapport entre l’exiguïté culturelle du milieu d’origine et l’imposture linguistique se pose comme principale tension énonciative. Le deuxième chapitre porte sur la destitution et la glorification de trois figures d’auteurs (Rimbaud, Beckett, Faulkner), par le biais de l’ambivalence structurale du corps faillible, du mythe et de l’iconographie. Le troisième chapitre, sur Les Onze (2009), traite de la fabrique de l’autorité politique dans sa relation avec les structures pulsionnelles et la représentation du pouvoir. Par le passage d’un chapitre à l’autre est ainsi tracé le fil d’Ariane des fictions michoniennes : toute autorité est réversible parce que basée sur une négativité fondamentale qui rend impossible l’appropriation absolue du symbolique. / This thesis examines the ambivalent relationship that Pierre Michon's work maintains with positions of filial, linguistic, literary and historical authority. This twofold relationship - between destitution and idealization of authority - acts as a symbolic matrix from which the author deploys a series of oppositions that govern his narratives and his own auctorial function: father and son, the illiterate and the smooth talker, glory and decline, image and icon, body and letter. From these positions, three main themes protrude: the cultural transfuge, the "great writer" and the revolutionary tyrant. These themes operate on three scales - socio-familial, literary, politico-historical - which govern the tripartite structure of the thesis. In the first chapter, I analyze the emergence of Vies minuscules (1984), a book of eight hagiographies in which the relationship between the cultural exiguity of the native milieu and linguistic imposture is posited as the main enunciative tension. The second chapter focuses on the destitution and glorification of three authorial figures (Rimbaud, Beckett, Faulkner), through the structural ambivalence of the fallible body, myth, and iconography. The third chapter, on Les Onze (2009), deals with the manufacture of political authority in its relation to drive structures and the representation of power. The passage from one chapter to the next thus traces the Ariadne's thread of Michonian fictions: all authority is reversible because it is based on a fundamental negativity that makes absolute appropriation of the symbolic impossible.

No / A comprehensive study has been undertaken into a 13th century Coptic-Byzantine icon from the St. Mercurius Church, St. Mercurius monastery, Old Cairo, Egypt. The layered structure, pigment composition and varnish identification were revealed by means of optical and Raman microscopy and gas chromatography¿mass spectrometry (GC¿MS). The structure of the icon comprised six layers; wooden panel, canvas, white ground, two bole layers and a single paint layer. Azurite (2CuCO3·Cu(OH)2), cinnabar (mercuric (II) sulfide ¿-HgS), yellow ochre (Fe2O3·H2O), hydromagnesite Mg5(CO3)4(OH)2·4H2O and lamp black (carbon, C) are the pigments identified in the icon. The green paint area is of interest as it is applied neither with a green pigment nor with a mixture of a blue and yellow pigment. Instead, a yellow layer of dammar resin was applied on top of blue azurite to obtain the green colour. Pinaceae sp. resin mixed with drying oil was used as a protective varnish.

During the premodern era, images corresponded to the doctrines of ”The Word”, but in contemporary society this relationship is open and does not correspond to the divine Word. Because of our perceived, postmodern inability to respond to ancient Christian symbols, there is a need to revision these symbols and Christian spirituality. The result of such a revisioning would include an ”opening up” of ”The Word” and of traditional, worn symbols which have lost vitality in this milieu. Art produced with this in mind needs to make ”The Word” more currently accessible and relevant. Further, this revisioning would add significance and enhance the possibility of resurrecting language dealing with ”The Word”. In the process of revitalising old Christian imagery and language, I aim to show that the primary role of contemporary Christian art is to function metaphorically. Finally, I argue that Christian images can take on significance as contemporary images. / Art History Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

Le prêtre Youssef Al-Musawwer est un peintre melkite alépin du XVIIe siècle qui aurait été initié à la peinture postbyzantine à l’étranger dans une région grecque qui demeure difficile à identifier. Il est le chef d’une descendance de peintres qui s’est poursuivie sans discontinuité jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Son œuvre s’inscrit dans le cadre de la renaissance littéraire du patriarcat melkite d’Antioche. Il était à la fois traducteur, copiste, miniaturiste et peintre d’icônes. Nous comptons dix-sept icônes et cinq manuscrits enluminés de Youssef Al-Musawwer. Notre étude a démontré l’attachement de Youssef Al-Musawwer aux œuvres crétoises conservatrices qui remontent aux XVe-XVIe siècles et qui s’éloignent des influences de la Renaissance italienne. Il s'est également inspiré des modèles iconographiques du Nord de la Grèce, de la peinture arménienne et ottomane ainsi que des ouvrages imprimés occidentaux. Youssef Al-Musawwer eut recours à l’hagiographie et à la liturgie pour créer de nouvelles compositions iconographiques. Il n’était pas par conséquent un peintre imitateur et passif. Ses compositions iconographiques, ses connaissances linguistiques ainsi que ses vastes compétences théologiques et liturgiques font de lui un éminent humaniste du XVIIe siècle qui a marqué l’Église melkite. / Yusuf Al-Musawwer is a Melkite painter and priest from the 17th century. He might have been initiated to Postbyzantine painting abroad in a Greek region that remains difficult to identify. He is the first of a family of painters who continued his path without discontinuity until the end of the 18th century. His work is part of the literary revival of the Melkite patriarchate of Antioch. He was a translator, a copyist, a miniaturist and a painter of icons. Seventeen icons and five illuminated manuscripts realized by Yusuf Al-Musawwer have survived. Our study has demonstrated Yusuf Al-Musawwer's attachment to Cretan conservative works dating back to the 15th-16th centuries and which moved away from the influences of the Italian Renaissance. He was also inspired by the iconographic models of Northern Greece, Armenian and Ottoman painting, as well as Western printed books. Yusuf Al-Musawwer was inspired by hagiography and liturgy to create new iconographic compositions. Therefore, he was not an imitative, passive painter. His iconographic compositions, his linguistic knowledge, and his vast theological and liturgical skills made him an eminent 17th century humanist who marked the Melkite Church.

During the premodern era, images corresponded to the doctrines of ”The Word”, but in contemporary society this relationship is open and does not correspond to the divine Word. Because of our perceived, postmodern inability to respond to ancient Christian symbols, there is a need to revision these symbols and Christian spirituality. The result of such a revisioning would include an ”opening up” of ”The Word” and of traditional, worn symbols which have lost vitality in this milieu. Art produced with this in mind needs to make ”The Word” more currently accessible and relevant. Further, this revisioning would add significance and enhance the possibility of resurrecting language dealing with ”The Word”. In the process of revitalising old Christian imagery and language, I aim to show that the primary role of contemporary Christian art is to function metaphorically. Finally, I argue that Christian images can take on significance as contemporary images. / Art History Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

A Igreja Nossa Senhora Consolata é o espaço sagrado constituído pela comunidade do bairro São Vicente em Boa Vista, estado de Roraima. Este templo, construído no ano de 1983, pelos Missionários da Consolata, com a ajuda e colaboração dos fiéis da comunidade, é consequência dos múltiplos processos socioculturais e religioso pelos quais passou essa comunidade. Este templo, tido como o lugar sagrado, passou recentemente por um processo de reforma e adequação do seu espaço. Tal processo, além de modificar a antiga arquitetura do templo, inseriu novos elementos e símbolos e redimensionou seu espaço dando-lhe uma nova arquitetura. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar esse processo de reforma, mas principalmente refletir sobre o significado dos símbolos e ícones que aí foram introduzidos com a reforma. Nesta análise parte-se do princípio de que o templo é o espaço sagrado por excelência na experiência católica cristã e por isso, nele deve conter elementos simbólicos que ajudem a comunicação entre o fiel orante e o seu adorado o ser divino. Portanto, esta reflexão dar-se-á na tentativa de compreender o significado das formas geométricas do templo, bem como dos ícones ai expostos, a saber: o Cristo Pantokrator, a Cruz, os mosaicos do altar e o ícone da Virgem Consolata. Para a realização da mesma, nos utilizamos da metodologia da pesquisa qualitativa, nos apoiando em instrumentos como: pesquisas em arquivos e levantamentos bibliográficos, rodas de conversas e entrevistas. Todo esse trabalho de pesquisa nos fez constatar que o processo de construção do grupo social do bairro de São Vicente de Paulo e da comunidade Nossa Senhora Consolata foi fruto dos diversos encontros e desencontros que dos processos de êxodos ao qual o povo se submeteu (ou foi submetido), imprimindo, assim, um caráter particular naquele grupo religioso. Denota-se, portanto, que criar um espaço de culto, era a motivação para que também, se lutasse por um espaço de vida. E nessas experiências é que o povo foi se descobrindo, foi de sedentarizando e foi se estabelecendo como grupo cultural, social e religioso, garantindo assim, seu território, sua identidade e sua sobrevivência. Seguido nesta perspectiva, podemos dizer que nesse caso o espaço de culto torna-se um fator vital, tanto como expressão das conquistas, como instrumento importante nesse processo histórico, fruto de sua criatividade e ressignificação constante que a vida exige, principalmente, para um povo que soube reinventar a sua própria cultura e seus símbolos. / Our Lady Consolata Church is the holly place made by Saint Vincents community in Boa Vista city, State of Roraima. This temple, built in 1983, by Consolatas missionaries helped by catholic folk who lives in the district where the church is situated, is the result of the many social cultural and religious processes for what this catholic community has passed by. This temple, considered the holly place, suffered actually a reform and reorganizational process of its space. Such process, besides modifying the ancient architecture of the temple, added new elements and symbols and redimensioned its space by giving to it a new architecture. This work has as objective to analyse this process of reform but mainly to reflect about the meaning of the symbols and icons which were added by the reform process. In this analyses we start from the principle which the temple is the most holly place into the Christian catholic experience and because this such place must have symbol elements for helping the communication between prayer believer and theirs worshipped the divine be. Therefore this reflection will be done by trying to understand the meaning of the geometrycal shapes of the temple and all icons in its interior side such as: Cristo Pantokrator, the cross, the mosaics of the altar and Virgin Consolata icon. To come true the analyses we used the qualitative search methodology by taking as investigative tools such elements: searches in archives and bibliographies, talking groups and interviews. All this search work made us to realize that the composition process of the social group of Saint Vincent Pauls district and of Our Lady Consolata Community were the result from several rights and wrongs that is also the result from exodus process which the people was submited (or submited themselves), printind this way, a particular character in that religious group. Understand itself, therefore, that to create a worship space, was the motivation for fighting for a life space too. And in these experiences the folk was descovering itself , it was raising roots and it was growing up as cultural social and religious group by conquering its territory, identity and suverving. Followed in this perspective, we can say that , in this case, the worship space become itself an essential factor, such as conquests expression as important tool in this historic process, result from their creativity and frequent re-meaning required by the life, maily, for a people which knew re-invent own culture and their symbols.

À la fois procédé artistico-littéraire et réflexion intellectuelle, la mise en abyme est une des stratégies de création favorites du romancier Umberto Eco. Certains auteurs ont utilisé cette technique uniquement pour de créer de « simples » jeux de miroirs (comme c’est le cas des Nouveaux Romanciers). Chez Umberto Eco, la mise en abyme est destinée à faire saillir aussi bien l’intelligibilité que la structuration de l’oeuvre. Elle est un principe récursif de la génération de figures et de formes narratives fractales : elle est pour ainsi dire le raisonnement servant comme base dans la création d’un univers romanesque par excellence autoréflexif. Selon une représentation très succincte (mais essentielle), la mise en abyme est ce dispositif narratif consistant à insérer un (ou plusieurs) récit(s) dans le Récit, qui, en reproduisant les caractéristiques de ce dernier va (vont) l’illustrer, l’expliquer et mettre en évidence le/les thème(s) de l’oeuvre. / An artistic and literary procedure and, at the same time, an intellectual reflexion, mise en abyme is one of the favorite strategies of creation of the novelist U. Eco. Certain authors have used this technique just to create "simple" games of mirrors (such as the French writers called "Nouveaux Romanciers"). In the case of Umberto Eco, mise en abyme is destined to emphasize both the intelligibility of his work, as well as its being structured in multiple layers of narrativity. We reckon that this is the recursive principle, serving at the generating of fractal shapes and characters: this is therefore the reasoning laying at the foundation of creating a fictional universe self-reflective par excellence. If we want a very concise (but essential) representation, we will say that the mise en abyme is that device consisting of the insertion of one or many more stories into The Story, which, by reproducing the characteristics of the latter, provides us with an explanation and will shed light on the theme / themes of the work.