This thesis is an A/R/Tographically-based investigation of my appropriative studio approach, resulting in a series of multi-media collage works entitled Tonight’s Programming, dealing with issues of militarism and commercialism in our everyday lives. Through research regarding appropriation in art history, examination of personal artistic influences, and regarding the work through the lenses of Artist, Researcher, and Teacher, I gained a deeper insight into not only my appropriative practices, but how these practices could be applied in the high school art classroom.

This research investigates the ‘performativity’ of the ‘author function’ through collaging the audio recordings of American poet Sylvia Plath. The ‘author function’ is a term by Michel Foucault to describe how readers attribute certain characteristics that they believe belong to the author and ascribe them to the writing. ‘Performativity’ is a term used by Judith Butler to describe a set of actions that ascribe and predetermine a set of attributes to a subject through his or her gender, age, timeframe, nationality and race. The ‘performativity’ of the ‘author function’ appropriates these characteristics and attributes them to the author. How the determination of an authorial identity translates to the interaction of the practice component of the project, which includes several components of digital collage, is through attributions that readers make in the creation of an author. The practice component of the project consists of the collage of audio and video recordings, the programming of video with Max/MSP/Jitter, ‘performative’ elements and collage poetry on Twitter. The audio component was collaged from two poems entitled ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘The Applicant’ that Plath read to the British Council in 1962 to form a new poem entitled Lady/Applicant: The Lazarus. The video component consists of collaging recorded video clips of storefront and street signs in Camden, London, where she is associated with living and committing suicide at. A second video collage entitled Shadows/Shadows/Tomb takes place at a cemetery close to my residence in 2011 and documents symbols of death that reference my own authorial identity. The second set of videos run on a Max/MSP/Jitter patch that display four screens of filmed texts inscribed on tombstones that play four streaming poems through a systematic structure of boxes. The screens are displayed in each box and sourced from separate folders to display and play the film clips. The practice of collage and constraint-based poetry complicates the constitution of being the author when the collagist of Plath’s poetry is a different gender than hers. This research then expands on how identity radically shifts in the text when the subject and the collagist have very different identities. The radical shift in a collage takes place within a predefined and generalized concept of the reader as determined by Stanley Fish, a prominent writer on the subject of ‘reader-response criticism’, who believes that one way a reader could be approached is through his or her relationship with the writing.

My work has always been about subjects I am very passionate about and I use them in a way to relate to others by creating a message. For my thesis, I delve deeper into my own life experience to create a piece more personal to me yet relatable to all. I am using creative storytelling and symbolism to create a narrative using not only the lens of a camera but also 3-D animation. “Dreaming Reality” is a statement of female empowerment and independence. Through this story, I hope to bring to light that young women can overcome their insecurities and become independent, driven, successful, and confident. Through the use of the dream process to overview life experiences, all audience members, not only women, can enjoy and connect with the story, as well as feel empowered to create their own life story through their creative lens.

The problem of this thesis in creative production is concerned with the use of multi-media in an oral interpretation program so as not to obscure the author's message. The production attempted to utilize literature chosen to represent a basic theme and present it with selected media so that a positive response is evoked from the audience. The study also attempts to show, through example, that a program of oral interpretation using multi-media can sustain audience interest for a full evening of entertainment. An attempt is also made to show that multi-media need not be in constant use, that some literature can best utilize the "subtractive theory" which intensifies the message by deleting a majority of media.

Deserted and disintegrating barns, houses, and silos have always perplexed me when driving through the country. I am fascinated by how this leisurely decay reveals their structural integrity in a slow, reverse process of construction. It is as if humanity and nature consciously collaborated to create these gigantic memento mori for a steady stream of highway viewers. These monumental tributes to inevitable decline, along with my own adventures in gardening, childrearing, eldercare, and travels, have led me to explore the universal cycles of life. The dilapidated buildings in my work are rendered in a tight, sharp, close-up viewpoint so that the viewer is forced to engage them. I will often layer images of seeds, leaves, and rocks on top of images of houses to symbolize the different stages of the life cycle. I see seeds and buildings as containers and incubators of potential. Any foliage represents a fulfillment of that potential, while rocks stand for the fossilized remains, or the achievements of one’s life accomplishments.

"Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning" is a multi-media concert dance work that addresses empathy as a physical and cognitive reactionary state, and utilizes dancing bodies as agents to facilitate this empathic experience. This work developed out of "The Flint Project," which investigates Flint, Michigan, "the most violent city in America," and a community characterized by racial tension and severe distinctions in class and social standing. This post-industrial, urban community serves as a microcosm through which we can examine how racial, social, and cultural politics intersect to establish systematic practices that challenge the possibility of the "American Dream." "The Flint Project" is a vehicle for creative research that investigates these systems and develops the material into a live performed event, "Spark and Ruin: a Story of Re-beginning". This performance includes installations featuring live performers and also various forms of media (including photography, film, and interactive "stations"). All of this material is constructed to contextualize the material for the viewer in a proscenium-style full-length dance performance. The objective of this piece is to establish a space for viewers to empathize with the material--to create an experience that will evolve into inquiry of systematic inequality as well as self-reflection of perception and bias. In facilitating this level of questioning, I aim to move viewers with compassion and heightened awareness of social inequity, as well as opportunities to chge the systems that enforce it.

Ensenada is a multi-media installation containing video,natural materials, and sound. This installation was located in the Bustillo Cigar Factory, in historic West Tampa. The exhibition explored issues of history, mapping, and cultural myth-making while also presenting a world in which life and death are connected. The artist utilized sugar sculptures, twine, spanish moss, video and sound to explore these themes. The written project for this installation contained stories and memories of the artist that reflected the ideas presented in the exhibition.

This Field Study centered on the preparation, presentation and evaluation of an introductory course in educational media for first year teacher education students. The introduction provides the rationale (theoretical and practical) for such a course and outlines the nature and purpose of the project. The approach used is clarified and justified. Basically the approach is on formal, traditional lines with regard to curriculum development; but the intention is to provide the first detailed written account of such proceedings in the educational media field. Necessary terms (educational media, multi-media, older and newer media) are defined and general aims and objectives are developed taking into account the usual constraints as well as the results of classroom surveys, consultations and case studies. Appropriate reviews of literature and previous research which are relevant to the topic are dealt with under the following headings: the need for the course; the operation of equipment; selection and production of materials; application to the classroom; the place of media in the curriculum; theory, background and attitudes. The plan follows systematic lines along the model provided in Teaching and Media. A Systematic Approach, (Gerlach and Ely: 1971:7). This involves providing the detailed objectives, specifying content, assessing time and space, selecting resources, evaluating performance and finally analysing feedback. Experiments conducted fall into three categories. Firstly, students were evaluated by means of a multi-media kit of materials, ability to operate equipment and a multi-choice test. Secondly, the course itself was evaluated by means of a questionnaire given to the students. This questionnaire was subsequently rewritten to eliminate the predictability of some of the responses. The third experiment involved two classroom surveys on media use (details included in the introduction). These provided useful evidence in connection with the project. Findings and recommendations for better practice are provided under the following headings: General Objectives of Course and Content of the Course Strategy Time for Course Resources Evaluation Location of Course Staff Education.

No description available.

No description available.