This project applies critical media and gender theories to the relatively unexplored social space where technology and subjectivity meet. Taking popular film as a form of public pedagogy, the project implicates unquestioned structures of patriarchal control in shaping the development and depiction of robotic bodies. The project was spurred from a decline in critical discourse surrounding technology’s potential to upset binaried gender constructions, and the increasingly simplified depictions of female-shaped robots (gynoids) as proxies for actual women. By critically engaging assumptions of gender when applied to technology, the project recontextualizes fundamental theories in contemporary popular film. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Since the end of 20th century, Korean churches have awakened to the importance of culture, cultural products, and culture-making in discipling Christians and evangelizing non-Christians. In particular, popular culture has become very important for practicing evangelism in the context of Korean Christianity because pop culture is enjoyed by a large segment of the population and thus provides a natural bridge between Christians and non-Christians. This dissertation examines Korean churches’ pervasive mimetic use of popular cultural elements that Christians and non-Christians relish, such as movies, plays, and popular music styles. While Korean churches introduced these slightly modified materials from popular culture as “parodies,” I argue that they are instead pastiches, and I explore the extent to which these pastiches are able to play a role as significant, though problematic, evangelistic media in the context of Korean Christianity. Since this practice encompasses Christian evangelism, popular culture, and the relationship of those two by a particular artistic technique, I approach the study of evangelistic pastiches both theologically and aesthetically studying their practical, theological role within the church setting. The dissertation argues that pastiches are combinations of imitated images that do not contain any substantive messages. When it comes to utilizing pastiches in evangelistic practices, the interesting and entertaining, but ultimately hollow, messages distort faithful witness to the gospel by emptying it. I suggest that evangelistic pastiches are simulacra that only communicate a hyper-gospel. Parody, by contrast, is a creative production that makes of Christianity and popular culture a new, culturally hybrid form with the capacity for building a robust relationship between Christianity and popular culture. Parody can play a positive role in enriching Christian evangelism by providing a substantive means to witness to the kingdom of God by providing a Christian perspective on and critique of culture and its concerns. Parody creates a point of contact between Christians and non-Christians from which Christian evangelism can be initiated.

The artist discusses her Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Nowhere, held at the Tipton Gallery located in downtown Johnson City from March 30 through April 9, 2015. The works included in the exhibition consist of a collection of oil paintings on both canvas and panel, and a series of mixed media collage paintings that explore how time and memory affect her personal connection to spaces she has inhabited. Ideas discussed include painting, process, cropping, memory, selective memory, forged memory, false memory, fragmenting, dreams, childhood, mnemic image, time, simulacra, simulation, home, beds, bedrooms, bathrooms, abstracting imagery, landscape, Freud, Lacan, Gaston Bachelard, and the influences of illuminated manuscripts, Alexander Kanevsky and Adrian Ghenie.

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Diverse sociology theoretical constructs serve as the lens to examine the evolution of two popular symbols of US culture in the last 20 years: yellow ribbons displayed as decoration and awareness ribbons worn as personal accoutrement. This research was motivated by society's weakened state of "collective consciousness," whereby shared beliefs and values have declined and some have completely disappeared, and sought to determine whether symbols will survive in a culture without commitment to the social. Invoking Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, David Riesman's theory of other-directedness from The Lonely Crowd, and Stjepan Mestrovic's Postemotional Society, this work examined the significance of public displays of ribbons (whether on animate or inanimate objects), theorized why certain diseases and social causes "earned" their awareness ribbons and others did not, and demonstrated that these ribbons have served as multivalent symbols to accommodate our culture in a postmodern world. These symbols have not maintained their unifying function and now serve at the whim of the individual participant or observer. Ultimately, the act of wearing or displaying awareness ribbons and yellow ribbons, like so many other symbols, has been severed from the idea and is a freefloating, simulacrum to be used in whatever mode our postmodern, postemotional society requires.

Populärmusik som vi känner den har de senaste 60 åren starkt fokuserat på mer än bara musiken. Ikoner som Elvis var bland de första som slog igenom stort där inte bara musiken utan ett ideal följde med i paketet. Denna trend har fortsatt genom åren med band som the Monkees som beskyllts för att inte ens spela musiken själva, David Bowie som starkt jobbade med image och presentation för att locka publik, Kiss som fortsatte på den trenden med mycket smink och explosiva scenframträdanden fram till idag då band som Kraftwerk och Daft Punk gått i en något liknande riktning. Fortfarande är det den yttre framställningen som är viktig men istället för att använda sig själva fokuserar man på virtuella och/eller mekaniska representationer. Men framställningen av sig själv behöver inte bara presenteras i ett enskilt medie utan kan avspeglas och föras fram i flera olika. På så sätt ges publiken utrymme att själva leta upp mer information genom att söka i flera olika medier. Detta kallas transmedialt berättande och kombineras i den här uppsatsen med visuell kultur som beskriver hur dagens samhälle präglas utav bilder. Bland annat ger visuell kultur breda ramar för hur en person införskaffar sig kunskap. Det talas om hur vår kulturella bakgrund påverkar hur vi tolkar en bild och att ingen tolkning behöver vara den andra lik. Men på samma sätt som t.ex. en viss kulturell bakgrund påverkar vårt sätt att se och tolka en bild kan den som producerar bilden lägga in tecken eller ikoner för att styra tolkningen i en viss riktning. Det går naturligtvis inte att styra det fullt ut då tolkningar är högst personliga men med hjälp av ett ramverk kan försök göras för att läsa dessa medvetet och omedvetet inlagda tecken eller ikoner. I genomförandet för den visuella analysen i denna uppsats fokuserar vi på det postmoderna och science fiction för att läsa in vad ett par robotliknande artister vill berätta med två av av dem influerade samt producerade filmer. I den här uppsatsen tittar vi närmare på Daft Punk och deras sätt att framställa sitt artisteri genom virtuella historier i filmerna Interstellar 5555 och Electroma. Här spelar vår tolkning in för att försöka se tecken/ikoner i filmerna och vilka paralleller vi kan dra utifrån visuell kultur och hur tanken om transmedialt berättande påverkat dessa produktioner.

Diverse sociology theoretical constructs serve as the lens to examine the evolution of two popular symbols of US culture in the last 20 years: yellow ribbons displayed as decoration and awareness ribbons worn as personal accoutrement. This research was motivated by society's weakened state of "collective consciousness," whereby shared beliefs and values have declined and some have completely disappeared, and sought to determine whether symbols will survive in a culture without commitment to the social. Invoking Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, David Riesman's theory of other-directedness from The Lonely Crowd, and Stjepan Mestrovic's Postemotional Society, this work examined the significance of public displays of ribbons (whether on animate or inanimate objects), theorized why certain diseases and social causes "earned" their awareness ribbons and others did not, and demonstrated that these ribbons have served as multivalent symbols to accommodate our culture in a postmodern world. These symbols have not maintained their unifying function and now serve at the whim of the individual participant or observer. Ultimately, the act of wearing or displaying awareness ribbons and yellow ribbons, like so many other symbols, has been severed from the idea and is a freefloating, simulacrum to be used in whatever mode our postmodern, postemotional society requires.

Research on the phenomena pareidolia and its relation to simulacra.

How can one create an aura from a digital reproduction? According to researchers like Walter Benjamin (1936) this is not possible. However with todays technology and digitalmedia it is worth looking into how it would be possible.Museums are looking for ways to expand the experiences of their exhibitions with thehelp of digital media, but research into authenticity and aura in digital reproductions islimited. This research aims to answer if it is possible to create an aura from a digitalreproduction and in what way that would be done.