This Capstone Project encompasses two videos, each representing different ways to visually structure the experience of “the city”. The first video, "My Way or the Highway", is a 5 minute piece examining Los Angeles Transportation systems. Through observational footage and a poetic editing style, I compare and contrast the experience of traveling via public and private transportation. Through this video I aim to encourage the viewer to consider their own transportation options whether it is in Los Angeles or anywhere else around the world. The second is a 12 minute video, titled "A Correspondence" structured as a correspondence between Seattle and Los Angeles as if they were personified discussing what it means to be a developing/growing city and the responsibilities it entails. Visually I present a combination of footage from L.A. and Seattle to create an "impossible city" making the viewer second guess from where the footage originates, emphasizing the difference between learning about a city from others and learning about a city through experience. In "A Correspondence" I aim to provide an experience that forces the viewer to realize their own interactions with cities and how their view is shaped by their specific experiences, making everybody's view of a city subjective.

As livestreaming has become more ubiquitous in recent years with its expansion over social media platforms, and as mainstream media outlets begin to take advantage of the medium, it is important to recognize that the technology has important roots in the hands of marginalized communities. Specifically, livestreaming has historically been an outlet used by activists in protest settings in order to counter the narratives of mainstream media. This paper seeks to evaluate the counternarrative potential of livestreaming by looking into footage from both the 2012 student protests in Montreal and the 2014 protests in Ferguson in direct comparison to traditional broadcast coverage from these events. Ultimately, I argue that while there are dangers that inherently accompany the use of livestreaming, it nonetheless has the potential to be a powerful and practical tool in the hands of protesters.

This thesis is a critique on the ease in which humans tend to anthropomorphize chatbots, assigning human characteristics to entities that fundamentally will never understand the human experience. It will be further exploring these consequences on our society's socio-cultural fabric, representations of the self and identity formation in terms of communication and the essence of humanity.

Au regard de son historiographie, la photographie apparait souvent comme un objet théorique pour organiser les données d’autres champs comme l’histoire de l’art ou la culture moderniste par exemple. En décalant l’objet théorique de la photographie à la diapositive, au départ d’un abondant matériau image inédit, cette recherche fait de la diapositive un objet théorique pour étudier la photographie comme medium, comme média et comme image. Entre les années 1880 et 1914, pôles qui constituent les balises chronologiques de la recherche, les protocoles de la projection lumineuse appliquée à la photographie se mettent en place, jusqu'à en faire un élément incontournable de son histoire mais qui apparaît aujourd'hui comme un tâche aveugle. Pour tenter de comprendre cet état de fait, des diapositives, des textes et des images imprimées sont à la base de l'analyse. La possibilité de retracer un lien entre ces trois paramètres a guidé la construction du corpus, condition qui est apparue nécessaire pour étudier la projection photographique amateur dans le récit de l’histoire de la photographie. Cette approche permet de restituer au premier plan le matériau image en connectant deux phénomènes (images projetées et images imprimées) souvent dissociés dans les études sur la projection. / Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this paper I will describe the creative process throughout the making of my short film thesis GRAND. I will describe this in three parts: pre-production, wherein I will detail developing the concept, writing the script, and funding/preparing for production; production, wherein I will detail the set construction, visual planning, and the day-to-day operations on set; and post-production, wherein I will detail the editing of the film and the composition of the score. All of this will be framed in reference to the proposed theme of the film, and I will conclude by evaluating whether or not the finished short film achieves what I initially set out to achieve.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the interaction between art and contested notions of Hong Kong identity by examining recent installations that employ the red, white and blue-striped plastic fabric, locally known in Hong Kong as red-white-blue (紅白藍). The red-white-blue fabric has, in recent years, become a signifier of the collective identity of Hong Kong people and of the ‘Hong Kong spirit’, with specific reference to the traits of the working class in the 1960s. The repeated articulations of this material in artworks show that there are certain qualities in this material with which local people identify. This study examines how installation works that employ this material question and revise notions of Hong Kong identity, and suggest its plurality and mutability. Works of local artists including Stanley Wong (a.k.a. Anothermountainman), Kith Tsang, Doris Wong, Siu King Chung and Tim Li are discussed in detail. Accounts of installations that employ red-white-blue often offer a limited interpretation of such works, paying insufficient attention to formal qualities and assuming a fixed and unitary notion of Hong Kong identity. The thesis argues that this paradigmatic cliché about Hong Kong identity is also expressed in the red-white-blue works of Stanley Wong to the extent that they evoke nostalgia and neglect contemporary social reality. The prevalence of such readings of red-white-blue-inspired works of art has veiled the complexity of works that interrogate Hong Kong identity from a diversity of perspectives. The contribution of this thesis is to remedy that situation, and provide a comprehensive account of key red-white-blue installation works.

This thesis was made with the goal of creating a 2D short film in the end, with mainly using a program that is not normally used for character animation: Adobe After Effects. With the usage of an originally French plugin called DuIK Bassel (v16.0.9), I was able to create a model in Adobe Photoshop and then put it into After Effects. When the files were imported, the plugin would then assist in the rigging process, wherein I would be able to create the character’s rig and make the 2D model within the program. This document discusses the entire creation of the short film that I progressed through, from the storyboarding, character creation, rigging process, and putting the elements together.

I denna studie används visual studies för att undersöka hur elever i grundskolans årskurs 9 använder sig av kunskaperna de skaffat sig under bildundervisningen när de skapar bilder utanför skolan. Fem ungdomar har deltagit i enskilda semistrukturerade intervjuer, genomförda och tolkade utifrån en hermeneutisk ansats för att få en helhetsbild av deras attityder mot bildvärldarna de rör sig i. Studien visar att eleverna uppfattar bildskapandet som de ägnar sig åt i skolan som särskilt från bildskapandet de ägnar sig åt på fritiden, och att bildundervisningen reproducerar denna uppdelning. Fotografier och bilder gjorda med digitala tekniker uppfattas som mindre värt bildskapande, medans teckning och måleri räknas som “riktigt” bildarbete. Jag föreslår i min studie att vi bildlärare bryter med detta utdaterade sätt att skilja på bilder och bilder, och försöker lära ut en bredare bildskaparrepertoar där även ny teknik finns med. Att undervisa om alla typer av bilder och bildskapande är både inskrivet i skolans styrdokument, samt gynnsamt för utvecklandet av elevernas visuella litteracitet.

La recherche interroge, par la création de projets de design et par une thèse écrite, le rôle et le pouvoir de la visualisation de données dans l’approche des problématiques économiques. Dans cette étude critique et théorique, je me demande d’abord en quoi les visualisations de données qui construisent des accès aux informations et aux questionnements économiques façonnent des représentations et des comportements singuliers. Je fais l’hypothèse que les « technologies intellectuelles » (Goody) qui rendent visibles ces données – les diagrammes, les réseaux, les cartes – ont construit depuis le début du XIXe siècle, une vision particulièrement étroite, désincarnée et dépolitisante de l’économie. Cependant, le design dispose de moyens favorisant, dans certaines conditions, la réappropriation des sujets économiques par les non-expert·e·s. Il s’agit alors de comprendre, en étudiant l’évolution de ses méthodes, la nature du régime contemporain de visualisation des phénomènes économiques, que je qualifie de néolibéral, et d’explorer ensuite les espaces d’intervention du design où des alternatives peuvent se déployer.Dans un second temps, au-delà de décrire, de comprendre ou de faire comprendre des phénomènes économiques, il m’a semblé que le rôle du design dans la visualisation de données était d’opérer des actes de « saisie » : saisir les données et les phénomènes, sur le plan cognitif, pour les comprendre ; mais aussi saisir les phénomènes économiques, dans leur sens, leur signification et leur raison d’être, le sens de l’économie et les objectifs qu’elle poursuit ; enfin, saisir par les sens, sur le plan sensoriel et sensible, en nous rappelant qu’au-delà de l’œil et de la vue, c’est le corps tout entier qui peut opérer la saisie. Ne parvenant pas à saisir l’économie, en me concentrant sur la performance cognitive ou communicationnelle des visualisations de données, l’hypothèse d’une « emprise sorcière » (Stengers et Pignarre), s’est alors imposée comme un terrain d’expérimentation fécond et comme une clé de lecture précieuse pour positionner, dans mon travail, l’imagination, les corps, les sens, les représentations mentales en tant qu’éléments essentiels pour penser l’économie. La magie qui habite nos rapports à l’économie m’oriente d’abord vers le pouvoir de rendre visible l’invisible, que détiennent les visualisations de données, et m’amène à questionner leur puissance liée à leur nature d’image. J’esquisse ensuite, avec la magie des liens (Bruno), une théorie de la visualisation comme pouvoir de relier et introduit la méthode des microcosmogrammes. Enfin, avec la sorcellerie, c’est la capacité à rendre tangible l’impalpable qui est examinée et confrontée au concept de désorcèlement (Favret-Saada), d’où j’extrais des principes méthodologiques et un questionnement sur la figure de la ou du designer-désorceleur. / Through the creation of design projects and a written thesis, the research questions the role and power of data visualisation in the approach to economic issues. In this critical and theoretical study, I first wonder how data visualisations that construct access to economic information and issues, shape specific representations and behaviours. I hypothesise that the 'intellectual technologies' (Goody) that make these data visible – charts, diagrams, networks, maps – have built a particularly narrow, disembodied and depoliticising view of the economy since the early nineteenth century. However, under certain conditions, design has the means to encourage the reappropriation of economic subjects by non-experts. I try to understand, by studying the evolution of its methods, the nature of the contemporary regime of visualisation of economic phenomena, which I describe as neoliberal. I then explore the design spaces where alternatives can be deployed.Secondly, beyond describing, understanding or making economic phenomena understood, it seemed to me that the role of design in data visualisation was to allow to grasp: to grasp data and phenomena, on a cognitive level, in order to understand them; but also to grasp economic phenomena, in their meaning, their significance and their raison d'être, the meaning of the economy and the objectives it pursues; finally, to grasp through the senses, on a sensory and sensitive level, reminding us that beyond the eye and the sight, it is the whole body that can carry out the grasping. As I was unable to grasp the economy by focusing on the cognitive or communicative performance of data visualisations, the hypothesis of a 'sorcerer's capture' (Stengers and Pignarre), became a fertile field of experimentation and as a precious key to understanding. It has allowed to position, in my work, imagination, bodies, senses and mental representations as essential elements for thinking about the economy. Firstly, with the magic that inhabits our relationship to the economy, I focus on the power of data visualisations to make the invisible visible, and then I question their power linked to their nature as images. Then, with the magical bondings (Bruno), I sketch a theory of visualisation as a power to bind and introduce the method of microcosmograms. Finally, with witchcraft, it is the capacity to touch the impalpable that is examined and confronted with the concept of unbewitching (Favret-Saada), from which I extract methodological principles and a questioning of the figure of the designer-unbewitcher. / Doctorat en Art et Sciences de l'Art / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

As movies, television shows, and other forms of media have progressed over the last century, the use of destruction sequences as a form of entertainment have seemingly grown exponentially. From ginormous explosions to cities collapsing, more destruction sequences have drawn people’s attention in ways that are quite captivating. However, as content producers continue to push the limit of what is possible, the reliance on practical effects starts to dwindle in comparison to the usage of computer generated scenes. This thesis acknowledges the trend and dissects the entire process of how a general destruction sequence is made, from the research and planning process to the actual simulation of the effects. Various methods are discussed in how to attempt the creation of destruction with a singular project in mind. The goal is to not only to complete the sequence, but to do so in an efficient manner that can rival a professional workflow.