The intent of this thesis is to clarify my artistic working process as well as the resulting thesis exhibition, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I will provide explanations and descriptions of my exhibition (comprising a select placement of objects) as well as offer antecedents, informants, and the evolution of my art practice as a whole during my graduate studies. Specifically the work is discussed through the lenses of situational aesthetics, conceptual relationships, and perceptual absence to argue for the complicated semantics of the viewer within an ontology of object-hood and pre-established conditions.

In the last few years, it is increasing the development and use of ontologies in creating more intelligent and effective applications that aim to solve problems commonly found on the Web. This popularity is due to the fact that ontologies attempt to provide semantics to the data consumed by machines, so that they can reason about these data. However, the large adoption of the Semantic Web can be further accelerated by providing sophisticated tools that lower the barrier to the development of applications based on RDF and OWL. Developers of applications with relational databases are already familiar with tools like Hibernate, which provide an object-relational mapping and the management of the objects states. Actually, the main object state that Hibernate provides is the detached. Nevertheless, the great majority of the object-ontology mapping systems (OOMS) only provide persistent objects. The big difference between these two types of objects is that the former one has its life cycle independent of the underlying triple store connection, but the latter one is bounded to the connection. In this context, this paper proposes the creation of an object-ontology mapping systems that supports detached objects, called Joint-DE. With this system, developers of ontology-based applications can: i) use the objects coming from the triple store as objects of the business model; ii) use such objects as data transfer objects ( DTOs) between subsystems and; iii) develop small transactions with detached objects that represent a long transaction unit for the application user. To illustrate the benets of the proposed system, a case study of a real application is presented, outlining the architectural limitations of the application using an existing OOMS in the literature, as well as showing positive results to the use of JOINT-DE. Finally, an experiment was planned and executed aiming to compare the JOINT-DE with another OOMS widely used by the community: Alibaba. The statistical analyzes performed in this experiment showed satisfactory results with regard to JOINT-DE. / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Nos últimos anos, é crescente o desenvolvimento e o uso de ontologias na criação de aplicações mais inteligentes e eficazes que têm como objetivo solucionar problemas encontrados comumente na Web. Toda essa popularidade se deve ao fato de que ontologias tentam oferecer semântica aos dados consumidos pelas máquinas de forma que ela possa raciocinar sobre estes dados. Todavia, a larga adoção da Web Semântica pode ser ainda acelerada ao prover ferramentas sosticadas que diminuam a barreira de desenvolvimento de aplicações baseadas em RDF e OWL. Desenvolvedores de aplicações com bancos de dados relacionais já estão acostumados com ferramentas como o Hibernate, que oferecem um mapeamento objeto-relacional e o gerenciamento de estados dos objetos. Na verdade, o principal estado de objeto que o Hibernate disponibiliza é o desconectado. Entretanto, a grande maioria dos sistemas de mapeamento objeto-ontologia (OOMS) apenas disponibiliza objetos persistentes. A grande diferença entre os dois tipos de objetos é que o primeiro tem seu ciclo de vida independente da conexão com o banco de dados RDF, já o último é limitado à conexão. Neste contexto, este trabalho propõe a criação de um sistema de mapeamento objeto-ontologia que suporta objetos desconectados, chamado JOINT-DE. Com este sistema, desenvolvedores de aplicações baseados em ontologias podem: i) utilizar os objetos oriundos do banco de dados RDF como objetos do modelo de negócio, transitando nas diversas camadas da aplicação; ii) utilizar esses objetos como objetos de transferência de dados (DTOs) entre subsistemas e iii) desenvolver pequenas transações com objetos desconectados que representam uma unidade longa de transação para o usuário da aplicação. Para exemplificar os benefícios do sistema proposto, um estudo de caso de uma aplicação real é apresentado, expondo as limitações arquiteturais dessa aplicação ao utilizar um OOMS existente na literatura, além de mostrar resultados favoráveis à implantação do JOINT-DE. Por fim, um experimento foi planejado e executado com o objetivo de comparar o JOINT-DE com outro OOMS bastante utilizado pela comunidade: Alibaba. As análises estatísticas realizadas nesse experimento apontaram resultados satisfatórios com relação ao JOINT-DE.

<p>Building on concepts of the pastoral, the picturesque, the “vernacular ruin,” and frontierism in an American context, this thesis explores the interest in ruin and commodity-oriented refuse within rural, wilderness, and what Leo Marx in <em>The Machine in the Garden</em> calls “middle ground” environments. Chapter one analyzes how “nature” has been conceptualized as a place where human-made objects become repurposed through the gaze of the spectator. Theories surrounding gallery and exhibition space, as well as archaeological practices related to garbage excavation, are assessed to determine how waste objects, when wrested out of context, become artifacts of cultural significance. Chapter two turns to focus on the settler experience of the frontier in order to locate a uniquely American evolution of the interest in everyday waste objects. Chapters three and four return to the rural and the pastoral to focus on Marx’s concept of the “middle ground.” In dialogue with Marx’s theories, I propose a definition of the “neopastoral” as that which evolves from the interjection of domestic waste into these middle spaces to the aesthetic appropriation of everyday, common objects in modernist American poetry. The final chapter focuses on selected poems by modernist writers such as Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and W.C. Williams to analyze their explicit references to everyday waste in conjunction with the mythologized American pastoral. These poets provide evidence for how the drive to poeticize an abandoned, human-made object’s proximity to a natural environment plays a significant role in the perception of the fragmented object-subject relationship in modernity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)