Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates physical and philosophical measurement within the context of a Masters Degree in Visual Arts. By unpacking concepts within science through a philosophical approach to material, this study underscores and investigates questions of certainty and the unknown. This entails the examination of associated terms like ‘accuracy’ and ‘result,’ where such results are expressed and arrived at through chance and temperament rather than mathematical equations or formulas. Using the example of a Universal Conditional Statement, specifically (x)(Px⊃Qx), this physical / philosophical methodology will be applied to a practice-led artistic research. The given Statement simply denotes that what is on both the left and right of the symbol “⊃” are interchangeable, subject to the condition of “if… then”. This symbol is one that encapsulates and encompasses this document, which seeks to explore the relation between ‘if’ and ‘then’, as well as the known and unknown. Towards this end, and to understand, connect and manipulate through the measuring of material, aspects such as ‘Facts’, ‘Laws’ and ‘Quasiserial Arrangements’ are investigated. In addition, through the study of a physical measuring tool, the metre, and the history of the metric system, this thesis also tracks and discloses information regarding the quest for accuracy, demonstrating how this ever-evolving objective goes hand in hand with inaccuracy, something especially apparent in the calculation of the immeasurable and the unknown. Part of this focus looks at Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which reveals the hybrid and extravagant behaviour of material and also affirms that the result of an experiment is only as accurate as the domain in which it is set. Concepts such as fact, uncertainty and material exploration are used by the artist in the creative process to test, measure and influence material. In this creative process, the body is sited as subject, as one that not only measures, but is measured against. When the body is added to a set of conditions, aimed to question material behaviour, the results prove unpredictable. Though material exploration and the appropriation of measuring through metaphor, the haptic and the tactile provides access and act as placeholders for the moments where material behaves in ways we cannot predict. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Vir die studie tot ’n Meestersgraad in Visuele kunste, ondersoek hierdie tesis die fisiese en filosofiese aspekte van meetbaarheid as konsep. Die studie is geposisioneer binne ‘n wetenskaplike filosofiese benadering tot materiaal. Binne hierdie raamwerk word oomblikke van ‘sekerheid’ beproef en die onbekende word geopenbaar. Dus, terme soos ‘akkuraatheid’ en ‘resultate’ word bevraagteken en getoets, asook hoe hierdie inligting geproduseer word deur oomblikke van ‘kans’ en ‘temperament’, eerder as wiskundige vergelykings of formules. As ‘n methode vir artististiese navorsing word daar gebruik gemaak van ’n voorbeeld van ‘n universele voorwaardelike verklaring soos; (x)(Px⊃Qx), wat dan dien as ‘n metafoor vir fisiese asook filosofiese kwessies vir meetbaarheid. Die gegewe stelling dui aan dat wat aan beide links en regs van die symbool ⊃ is, kan as verwissellende gegewes beskou word - onderhewig aan ‘n voorwaarde soos; ‘as … dan’. Hierdie simbool som hierdie navorsing op en mik om die verhouding tussen die ‘as’ en ‘dan’ te verken, asook die verhouding tussen dit wat bekend en wat onbekend is. Om materiaal te verken, deur die proses van meet en manipulasie, word aspekte soos ‘feite’, ‘wette’ en “quasiserial arrangements” ondersoek. Deur die bestudering van ‘n fisiese meetinstrument, naamlik die metre, asook die geskiedenis van die metrieke stelsel, wys hierdie tesis op die voortdurende soeke na meetbare akkuraatheid. Wat dit demonstreer, is hoe hierdie fisiese instrument ‘n ewig-veranderende aspek saamdra, en is daarvolgens gekoppel aan onakkuraatheid. Dus, hierdie inligting word slegs weerpeel deur middel van - en is akkurraat volgens en is die instumente wat beskikbaar is. Die instrument bepaal die resultaat. Deel van hierdie ondersoek verwys ook terug na Werner Heisenberg se ‘onsekerheidsbeginsel’ wat die onbekende en buitensporige gedrag van materiaal tentoonstel, asook hoe dit bevestig dat die uitslag van ‘n eksperiment sleg akkuraat is binne die konteks van die domein waarin dit afspeel. Konsepte soos ‘feite’, ‘onsekerheid’ en ‘materiaal verkenning’ word voortdurend deur die kunstenaar in sy kreatiewe proses getoets. Dit is juis in hierdie proses waar die meet en invloed van material ‘n groot rol speel. Die kunstenaar benader die liggaam as ’n onderwerp wat meet en waarteen gemeet word. Wanneer die liggaam saam met ‘n stel voorwaardes gevoeg word, word die gedrag van dit wat ondersoek word onbepaalbaar en word die onvoorspelbaarheid van material beklemtoon. Deur die aanwending van meet deur metafoor, vir die doeleinde vir ‘materiaal verkenning’, word die haptiese en die tasbare toegang tot material plekhouers vir die oomblikke waar materiaal onvoorspelbaar kan optree.

This report outlines the conceptual, procedural and material evolution of my artistic practice over the course of the past three years. Throughout all of the changes my artwork has undergone during this time, my work has always dealt with the combination of (and sometimes conflict between) a scientific, logical, utilitarian truth, and a more poetic, emotive and oblique conception of knowledge. This preoccupation reflects my own impulse to both understand my environment in the most conventionally factual way, while simultaneously acknowledging its hopeless (but profound and poetic) complexity, subjectivity and obscurity. As a manifestation of these concerns, my artistic output includes diagrammatic compositions, philosophical illustrations, drawings of scientific imagery, portfolios of cartographic documents and methodical replications of scientific experiments. In this report I outline the various, complimentary ways in which I consider the notion of epistemological collapse. / text

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-45).

Louis Figuier (1819-1894) est un scientifique français qui s’est orienté vers la publication d’ouvrages de vulgarisation destinés au grand public du XIXe siècle. Parmi les inventions scientifiques qu’il a traitées dans ses publications depuis la fin des années 1840, figure à plusieurs reprises la photographie. Le corpus principal de notre réflexion porte sur des ouvrages de Figuier publiés entre les années 1840 et 1880, et à des publications d’autres auteurs de cette époque, abordant chacune la photographie. Notre recherche vise d’abord à analyser comment Figuier a envisagé la relation entre l’art et la photographie. Elle examine ensuite l’influence des idées de Figuier sur le regard porté sur la photographie par la société de son époque. Puis elle étudie l’impact de son analyse concernant la valeur artistique de la photographie, sur une nouvelle façon d’aborder la vulgarisation de la science. La première partie porte sur l’étude approfondie des ouvrages de Figuier et d’articles de revues, à partir de l’invention de la photographie jusqu’au début des années 1850. Elle a pour but de décrire les impacts sociaux de cette invention et d’étudier les remarques de Figuier sur ce procédé, dans ses premières publications. La deuxième partie examine la controverse sur la valeur artistique de la photographie dans les années 1850 et la contribution des ouvrages de Figuier à cette discussion. La troisième partie aborde des ouvrages de Figuier publiés à partir des années 1870 et analyse la manière dont Figuier a cherché à dépasser le cadre traditionnel de la science et à lui donner une nouvelle définition / Louis Figuier (1819-1894) is a French scientist and scientific popularizer who published many works for the general public in nineteenth-century France. Since the late 1840s, one invention in particular with which Figuier involved himself was photography. The main corpus of our research covers Figuier’s works printed between the 1840s and 1880s, along with publications on photography by contemporary writers. First, our research aims to analyze how Figuier envisioned the relationship between art and photography. Second, it examines Figuier’s opinions and their influence on society’s views of photography, and how his analyses concerning the artistic value of photography influenced him in his own efforts to revitalize the notion of science.The first section examines Figuier’s works and journal articles written by his contemporaries, starting from the invention of photography and leading up to the 1850s. It also considers the social impact of photography at the time, and Figuier’s early works in which he remarks about the process.The second section explains the controversy surrounding the artistic value of photography during the 1850s, and the works Figuier contributes to this discussion. The third section explores Figuier’s works published since the 1870s, and explains how Figuier aimed to exceed the traditional definition of science and offer a new interpretation

The cornerstone is a general view of the future as a world that is markedly different from ours. This vision of the future cannot be done due to the influence of presence. Inner inspiration is objects with unclear functions occurring in science fiction (stories Space Odyssey and AC Clark and iconic roadside picnic). Formally, the objects are inspired by different things from the world of science fiction (kryptonite, traffic alien machines from a newer version of War of the Worlds, Star Trek series and their transporters, etc.). Against this background, I am creating minimal objects with small signs of function as a testimony of traveler to the future. The basic material is a transparent silicone and LEDs.

In this study evidence is presented that suggests transdisciplinary art practices and participatory biology programs may successfully increase public understanding of ecological phenomenon. As today’s environmental issues are often complex and large-scale, finding effective strategies that encourage public awareness and stewardship are paramount for long-term conservation of species and ecosystems. Although artists and biologists tend to stay confined to their professional boundaries, and their discourses largely remain inaccessible to larger audiences, arguments here are presented for a combined approach, which may disseminate knowledge about ecology to non-specialists through novel art-science participatory research and exhibitions. Moreover, historically several scientists utilized varied creative art forms to disseminate scientific insights to a larger populace of non-specialists, such strategies as engaging writings and visually provocative artworks may still be effective to captivate contemporary audiences. In addition such historic hybrid science-art practitioners may have laid a conceptual terrain for some of today’s transdisciplinary art and citizen science practices. Furthermore, seminal ecological artworks from the 20th Century by Joseph Beuys, Patricia Johanson and Hans Haacke utilized novel strategies to reach audiences with a message of wetland conservation, blurring boundaries between art, ecology and activism. More recently artists like Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Helen and Newton Harrison and others have integrated biological research into their art practices, which resulted in new scientific discoveries. Through my own transdisciplinary artwork about frogs, data suggests that the visual strategies I employ were effective to increase non-specialist understanding of the ecological phenomenon of amphibian declines and deformations. In addition through my participatory biology programs, Public Bio-Art Laboratories and Eco-Actions, evidence suggests that non-specialists achieved an increased awareness of the challenges amphibians and ecosystems currently face. Likewise, that through such participatory citizen science research new scientific insights about the proximate causes for deformities in anuran amphibians at select localities in middle England and Quebec were achieved. Here laboratory and field evidence, generated with the aid of public volunteers, found that non-lethal predatory injury to tadpoles from odonate nymphs and some fishes resulted in permanent limb deformities in post-metamorphic anurans. From an environmental-education and larger conservation standpoint, these findings are very relevant as they offer novel strategies for experientially engaging non-specialist audiences while generating important insights into biological communities and wetland ecosystems.

This thesis adopts a primarily process-based methodology to put a museum in its place as a site of knowledge-making. It examines the practices of space which were productive of a government-funded (‘national’) museum in Edinburgh. Taking a spatial perspective, and recognising that place is both material and metaphorical, the thesis explores how the Museum’s material and intellectual architectures were produced over the period 1854-1939. The thesis is concerned to bring into focus the dynamic processes by which the Museum was in a continual state of becoming; a constellation of tangible and intangible objects constantly being produced and reproduced through mobility of objects, people and ideas. Its concern is to chart the flows through space which produced the Museum. The thesis comprises nine chapters. An introduction and a literature review are followed by chapters concerned, respectively, with the built space of the museum and with the people who worked there. A further three chapters consider the nature of that work and the practices of space which constituted the processes of collecting, displaying, and educating, whilst another focuses on visiting. The final chapter discusses how the analysis has constructed the museum as constituted through a complex diversity of material and metaphorical settings on a variety of geographical scales. This critical scrutiny of the museum has, in turn, brought to the fore the place of the Museum in contributing to civic and national identity. Through a case-study of a particular museum, the concern has been to explore how critical geographies of science may be applied to the examination of a museum. In particular the thesis examines how contextual concepts developed largely in conscribed sites such as laboratories apply to a public site such as a museum. The thesis suggests that the ordering terms ‘space’ and ‘place’, combined with a focus on practice and performance, may have more general application in constructing an historical geography of museums as sites of production and consumption of scientific knowledge.

Texte remanié de: Mémoire de recherche approfondie--Archéologie militaire--Paris--École du Louvre, 2004. / ISSN exact : 1155-5475. Bibliogr. p. 430-436. Index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Art History." Includes bibliographical references (p. 304-331).

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research) Naval Postgraduate School, March 1995. / Thesis advisor(s): J. N. Eagle. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.