Rete Mirabile is my new installation piece combining scientific principles with live computer generated music. The title is a Latin term meaning "Wonderful Net," which I use to refer to the highly convoluted network of biological data that drives my installation. The sonification of data, computer modeling of biological processes, kinetic sculptures, and user interactivity are central parts of the installation. The paper is organized as follows: First, brief history of the forerunners that inspired my work is given. This includes a short discussion on how John Cage and David Tudor influenced current artists works, and how those works have influenced my own work. Then I review current installation works that share similarities with my own. Finally, a detailed discussion and analysis of the construction and function concludes the paper.

Esta tesis doctoral se propone establecer un estudio de conjunto sobre los cambios y permanencias que se producen en la provincia de Alicante durante la dictadura de Primo de Rivera. En este sentido, la tesis se estructura en seis capítulos que siguen una secuenciación temática y cronológica. El primer título de la tesis aborda el marco historiográfico de la Dictadura, prestando especial atención a la evolución conceptual e interpretativa que ha conocido el estudio del régimen primorriverista. El segundo apartado se reserva al análisis de las causas conducentes al pronunciamiento militar. En él se abordan las condiciones previas al pronunciamiento militar desde una doble perspectiva: Una nacional, donde se describe el funcionamiento del sistema de Restauración y los elementos que determinaron su crisis. Y otra regional, que explica los antecedentes al golpe de Estado desde una óptica provincial, repasando los particularismos económicos, demográficos, políticos y sociales de la Alicante previa a la Dictadura. El tercer capítulo estudia el desarrollo del pronunciamiento militar y sus inmediatas repercusiones en Alicante. Mediante una contextualización comparada abordamos la connivencia de la oficialidad alicantina con la sublevación y las reacciones de los diversos grupos sociales al golpe de Estado. El segundo apartado de este capítulo analiza los fundamentos del ideario regeneracionista del Dictador y explica que parte del respaldo social que recibió inicialmente se debió a la estrategia de incorporar ese argumentario al mensaje oficial. El cuarto capítulo comprende todo el periodo de la Dictadura, pero profundiza concretamente en dos aspectos temáticos: El primero, en el periodo de fiscalización inicial, que afecta a la fase de desmantelamiento de las estructuras político-administrativas del régimen canovista (octubre de 1923-abril de 1924). En estos subapartados se estudia la repercusión de la política anticaciquil y fiscalizadora en las comarcas alicantinas: las medidas de moralización de las costumbres, la destitución de los antiguos representantes públicos, la auditoria de las administraciones, la censura de la opinión pública y la represión político-sindical. El segundo aspecto compete al estudio del Gobierno Civil de Alicante. Dado que la gestión política durante la Dictadura estuvo fuertemente centralizada y militarizada, en esta sección se analizan los órganos de la autoridad central del Estado en la provincia de Alicante. Se describe la concentración de funciones en los gobernadores cívico-militares, su papel como interlocutores del Dictador y se hace un repaso a su perfil ideológico y profesional. A continuación, se detalla el cometido de una institución original de la Dictadura, la Junta Ciudadana de Autoridades. En cuanto a los delegados gubernativos, una autoridad militarizada y creada ex novo, examinamos su evolución para averiguar por qué se convirtieron en una institución tan cuestionada. El capítulo quinto se refiere a la administración local y provincial. Este título es esencial para entender cómo funciona el poder local durante la dictadura primorriverista. En sus diversos apartados se estudia la renovación política y administrativa que se produce en estas instituciones, el personal que las compone, la repercusión que tuvo en el funcionamiento de estos organismos la aprobación del Estatuto Municipal y Provincial y, en su última sección, la política económica, fiscal y presupuestaría que aplican. El capítulo final se ocupa de dos de las organizaciones más genuinas de la Dictadura: el Somatén y la Unión Patriótica. La primera se concibió como una milicia cívica garante del orden público y la paz burguesa, y el segundo como un partido gubernamental encargado de crear una base social de apoyo al régimen y de preparar a los hombres destinados a ocupar los cargos públicos de la Dictadura.

The literature written and being spoken by writers of Mexican origin in the United States continues to reformulate the notion of borders as well as subjects and forms within and beyond the house leitmotif. Writings by Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora, and Tomás Rivera construct public and private spaces that merit validation in historical, literary, and cultural contexts. As architects, Chicana and Chicano writers challenge the nationalist canon and house. / text

Existeix una acusada tendència en el món historiogràfic a presentar la dictadura de Primo de Rivera com un règim polític monolític i uniforme, amb un únic discurs, sense a penes escletxes. La hipòtesi central de la nostra investigació es fonamenta en la idea que la realitat fou molt distinta, ja que dins el mateix Directori cohabitaren plantejaments substancialment diferents, que provocaren discrepàncies serioses en el si del règim. L'esmentada hipòtesi la intentem demostrar partint de l'anàlisi d'un aspecte concret, però molt important, de la Dictadura que és el que fa referència al propòsit de Primo de Rivera, al nostre entendre fracassat, de fonamentar gran part del seu projecte polític en el fet de desenvolupar una intensa tasca propagandística quehavia de servir per transmetre una bona imatge del règim i per inculcar ideologia. El marc territorial investigat és el format per les comarques gironines, on convergeixen tres factors decisius que aporten elements que ajuden a explicar el fracàs del projecte de Primo de Rivera. El primer de caràcter més general, però igualment constatable en l'àmbit gironí, és el relatiu a la mateixa política de premsa del dictador, que es caracteritza per la seva poca definició i per la seva pèssima aplicació. Els dos següents, més específics, incideixen en l'existència de diferents maneres d'entendre la reforma de l'Estat dins el primoriverisme, i en les lluites intestines i localistes entre bàndols ambiciosos de poder. / There is a marked trend in the historical world to present the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera as a monolithic and uniform political system, with a single speech, barely cracks. The central hypothesis of our research is based on the idea that the reality was very different because in the same directory substantially different approach coexisted, which caused serious disagreements within the regime. We attempt to demonstrate the above hypothesis on the basis of the analysis of a very important specific aspect of the dictatorship that makes reference to the purpose of Primo de Rivera, failed in our opinion, to substantiate much of its political project in developping an intense propaganda, that was supposed to transmit a good image of the regime and to instill ideology. The geographical area investigated is Girona region, where three crucial converging factors help to explain the failure of the project Primo de Rivera. The first one, more general, but also verifiable in the Girona area, is the dictator's press polici, which is characterized by its short definition and its terrible application. The two following, more specific, impact on the existence of different ways of understanding the State reform within primoriverism, and the localist infighting between ambitious factions eager for power.

Installé à Paris en 1911, Diego Rivera se rallie au cubisme pour retourner au réalisme en 1918. A cette époque, il tisse une amitié riche en échanges avec Élie Faure, socialiste comme lui. Faure voit chez l'artiste "une source inépuisable de surprises et d'enseignements»; Rivera considère l'historien de l'art comme l'un de ses« maîtres". Élie Faure a une compréhension de la société et de l'art basée sur la contribution de personnalités qui ont bouleversé la pensée et les arts depuis la Révolution française: Saint-Simon, Nietzsche, Dostoïevski, Tolstoï, Cézanne, entre autres. Déclarant l'échéance de l'esprit individualiste de la Renaissance, il annonce l'avènement d'un rythme collectif d'expression artistique sociale et monumentale, notamment architecturale, dont l'intention de «construire» en peinture est un symptôme. Le Moyen-âge français lui fournit un paradigme de l'ordre collectif et de I' «Art social», la cathédrale comme étant la plus parfaite expression, manifestation de la collaboration humaine et symbole même d'une civilisation. En 1921, décidé à militer pour l'établissement d'un nouvel ordre social, Rivera rentre dans son pays. Il est passionné par la socialisation de l'art et par l'architecture. Son discours et ses démarches révèlent ses affinités intellectuelles avec l'historien de l'art français et exprime une volonté de mener à son accomplissement l'"Art social". Cependant, les idées du peintre évoluent avec les évènements politiques, sociaux et culturels du Mexique, tenant compte du contexte mondial. Cet échange franco-mexicain illustre la complexité des transferts qui conduisent aux discours actuels de la mondialisation artistique. / Moving to Paris in 1911, Diego Riverais won over to Cubism only to return to Realism in 1918. During that period, he builds a rich friendship with Elie Faure, a socialist like him. Faure sees in the artist ''an endless source of surprises and lessons." Rivera considers the art historian Faure as one of his "masters. "Elie Faure has an understanding of society based on the contribution of individuals who have changed thinking and the art since the French Revolution : Saint-Simon, Nietzsche, Dostoïevski, Tolstoï, Cézanne, and others. Declaring the end of the individualistic spirit of the Renaissance, he announces the beginning of a collective rhythm of social and monumental artistic expressions, especially in architecture, with the intention to "construct" by painting as an indication. The French Middle Ages provides Elie Faure with a paradigm of collective order and "Social Art," of which the cathedral is the most perfect expression - a manifestation of perfect human collaboration and a symbol of a civilization. In 1921, having decided ta campaign for the establishment of a new social order, Rivera returns ta his country. He is passionate about the socialization of art and architecture. His speech and his actions reveal his intellectual affinity with the French art historian and show a willingness to carry to completion "Social Art. "However, the painter 's ideas evolve with the political, social, and cultural events of Mexico, taking into account the global context. This Franco-Mexican exchange illustrates the complexity of the transfers that lead to the current globalization of artistic discourse.

This dissertation thesis is dedicated to the phenomenon of spontaneity in the Hispanic-American rainforest novel. The concept of spontaneity is based on the mechanism of synthesis of components in the structure of an artistic text. These components are a part of the variability of the analyzed novels. Heterogeneous structures are created on the basis of spontaneity and their result is interpretation variability of a literary work. This multiple meaning enables the reader not to lose interest in this kind of work over time. The theoretical explanation of the spontaneity in the literature is based on the concept of transculturation created by the Uruguayan essayist Ángel Rama and the terms of intentionality and unintentionality defined by Jan Mukařovský. The dissertation thesis is divided in two parts: the first one is dedicated to the formal aspect of the phenomenon of spontaneity and the second one to the thematic point of view. The whole process of synthesis finishes in the final chapter with a decomposition of a storm, when the element of water separates from the element of fire to be able to rejoin each other and create a new storm. This characteristic movement for the phenomenon of spontaneity follows the cyclic process of synthesis and separation of the components in the literary work....

This dissertation explores the social relations of indebtedness. In this project I read Latinx and Latin American texts not often placed in conversation—Tomás Rivera’s …y no se lo tragó la tierra, Carlos Fuentes’ La Frontera de Cristal, Rosario Ferré’s Maldito Amor, and Angie Cruz’s Let It Rain Coffee—and explore their thematic and formal engagements with debt. I consider the problem of the visibility, representation, and understanding of indebtedness and argue that, to engage with the invisible logic of debt requires engaging the formal logic—the temporal, narratological, and rhetorical features—of the text. Each chapter treats each of these texts as a case study, and analyzes a different historical context and a different form and scale of debt—from the individual and informal in Rivera’s text to the sovereign and neocolonial in Ferré’s. Unlike other scholars who read for representations of high finance, the stock market, and debt relations, I read texts where questions of credit, finance, and the market are represented in subtle ways, attending to how the ideologies that precede debt are negotiated in the intimate spaces of the home and the family. I ask questions like what kind of ideas about the American Dream, family sacrifice, and national progress prop up debt regimes or what ideas about national progress justify sovereign debt to understand the generation and maintenance of an indebted subjectivity, not merely on an institutional and abstract level, but from below. Reading for debt’s logic is not an attempt to expose the latent ideology of the text or how it mimetically reflects reality but rather to show how the text’s critical engagement of related ideologies—those of progress, development, and liberalism—also encode questions related to credit, debt, risk, and loss. The texts I bring together offer a certain comparative, theoretical, and historical value in foregrounding narrative’s ability to generate relationships of debt and expose the literary techniques deployed to conceal debt’s logic. I show how attending to debt in these texts reframe struggles that tend to be thought of in spatial terms—displacement, migration, expropriation, extraction—and help us see them in temporal ones. Unlike engagements of finance and indebtedness that focus on its asocial and alienating qualities, I show how these texts render visible the deeply intimate nature of indebtedness and how debt mechanisms both produce and are produced by social relationships. Throughout the project, I argue that the relations of intimacy—the stories told that produce closeness, the care from which value is extracted for the production of profit, and the relations created between the debtor and the creditor—are the necessary conditions for contemporary debt and finance across the Americas.

My dissertation, Feminine Subjectivity and Discourses of Modernity in Puerto Rico and Brazil (19th and 20th century), explores the construction of modern feminine subjectivities during the social, cultural and industrial modernization of Puerto Rico and Brazil throughout the 19th century. With this investigation I analyze, from the perspective of gender studies and recent analyses of modernity, the construction of the idea of "woman" that derived from marginal discourses focused on notions of progress. For this purpose, I will analyze the works of the following writers from Puerto Rico: Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826-1882) and Ana Roqué de Duprey (1853-1933), and from Brazil: Joaquim M. Machado de Assis (1839-1908) and Julia Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934). Studying these writers and their literary production, I will be able to contribute to current debates on how modernization generates new forms of feminine subjectivity. Moreover, these new forms rearrange and transform the process of modernization from a feminine perspective. This approach is essential to the understanding of the cultural production of the modern woman within one of the more complex periods of Latin America's history. In the first part of the dissertation, I explore the novels of Tapia y Rivera and Machado de Assis. These writers present different aspects of spiritualism regarding women. With the work of these two male intellectuals, I will focus on how spiritualism influences femininity while simultaneously participating in new economic forms. In the second part, with the novels of Roqué de Duprey and Lopes de Almeida, I study the dynamics between rural and urban zones and how this impacts the configuration of gender. As a result of these processes of modernization, a modern feminine subjectivity emerged, yet it was one that did not necessarily share the new social and cultural ideals of progress. On the contrary, this subjectivity combined traditional cultural patterns with new ones. This contradiction generates different visions of modernity than that proposed by intellectuals and politicians. This shows how, in Puerto Rico and Brazil, the role of women in modernity allows for new interpretations in this period of crisis and national changes. / text

The present study investigated the construct of characterising societies as being either individualistic or collectivist as topics of research in the field of cross cultural tolerance. Using scenarios to describe behaviours typically encountered in New Zealand society, participants from individualist and collectivist cultures were asked to rate behaviours as to how much they understood and accepted the actions described. The participants’ responses were also analysed using attitude measures to seek if similarity in attitudes was a more informative approach to determine why one individual does or does not accept certain behaviours. The study found that although there were general cultural differences between the two groups, individual attitudes went further in explaining possible reasons why acceptance and tolerance of other's behaviours may occur. The findings were then discussed in terms of how they were relevant to both biculturalism and multiculturalism in New Zealand.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.