Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Photomedia'

This thesis considers anxieties and concepts of agency related to femininity as represented through the beautiful and the grotesque, and the tensions that manifest when these two states coalesce. Reviewing dominant anti-fashion/beauty rhetoric that rose to prominence with second-wave feminism establishes a framework for understanding the persistence of Western culture’s fraught relationship with women’s cultivation of image and sexual appeal. Conversely, examining third and fourth-wave feminism’s more holistic embrace of fashion presents an alternate viewpoint that justifies the agential power of knowing engagement with contemporary systems of dress and beautification. This is supported by theories of performativity of gender. Similarly, highlighting Western culture’s historic belief that women’s bodies exist as innately abject provides insight into enduring anxieties towards the corporeal female form constituted as grotesque. In contrast, referencing scholarly theories that frame the carnivalesque female grotesque, including the active display of erotic will, as a mode of liberating female bodily expression, helps support arguments for the grotesque’s self-affirming potential. Consideration of philosophical arguments that demonstrate the value of the erotic and its connection with the abject assists in reasoning the link between personal sovereignty, erotic pleasure and transgression. Examination of select artistic examples helps draw even greater attention to the tensions that reside in dominant attitudes towards representations of femininity today. The studio practice consists of two short films buttressed by a selection of photographic works. These artworks use the subject of the self to explore concerns of fantastical, performative self-transformation to reflect on the polymorphic nature of femininity. Like the work critiqued in the thesis, the studio research similarly evokes aesthetics of the sumptuous, alluring and repellent relating to style, location, materiality and the female body. Together, the written thesis and creative studio outcomes aid appreciation of the semiotic value of this ambiguous yet powerful mode of representation.

This project begins by researching how art can change individual and collective behaviour regarding life support systems, using water conservation as a lens through which to examine wider environmental concerns. Examining the role and nature of art as an effective communicative tool has involved a journey from art activism to pure aesthetics and back again to explore the performativity of images. My hybridised practice first investigates how photography and video through performative actions, installation and social media can be activated to engage onlookers during environmental protests and beyond to support the movement for water sustainability. Art strategies were developed to raise public awareness of water by producing eye-catching visual aids such as water themed activist clothing and situating meaningful art interventions both during public campaigns and elsewhere. As well as engaging with socio-political art forms presented outside of gallery contexts my practice approaches New Materialist concerns with the primacy of matter in the age of the Anthropocene. Counteracting a dominant anthropocentric view of the universe my art practice explores the viscerality of matter to emphasise non-human agency. While photographing aquatic environments I used an extreme macro lens to closely observe the way light interacts within different states of water such as condensation and flowing water. This contributed to my growing interest in the optical effects of light refractions then a rupture caused a new awareness of my studio window pane prompting further study of the science behind light interacting with translucent materials. These discoveries on my art journey have augmented an appreciation of the complexity of the non-human world and generated more visually compelling ways to create and present activist art for environmental sustainability.

This thesis is an examination into contemporary art photography and how digital isolation and digital entanglements interact and impact the creative process. It contains interviews with contemporary photographers from Australia and from the international community, and includes new bodies of works of my own creative photography. This research helps to understand the way photographic artists critique and use digital technology, and how they actively mitigate disruptive entanglements.

Multidimensional aesthetics in photomedia practice shift the emphasis away from the culturally dominating singularity of the camera's eye-piece towards a supple interplay of semi-transparent image planes and shifting positions. Using various image-capture devices that can produce digital, film, still or moving pictures, I create bodies of work that invite the viewer to see many perspectives simultaneously. The challenge is to implement the effectiveness of the technologies and simultaneously dislodge those principles and values fundamental to their imperialist cultural backgrounds. My practice investigates a diplomatic negotiability of aesthetic language to accommodate conceptual and cultural difference/s. Located on the print surface or in animated sequences are symbolic representations that disclose histories, cultures, times and places in subtle and ambiguous ways. The interplay of allure and resistance, repetition and change, are strategies that reveal the delicate and paradoxical nature of the multidimensional psyche.

Multidimensional aesthetics in photomedia practice shift the emphasis away from the culturally dominating singularity of the camera's eye-piece towards a supple interplay of semi-transparent image planes and shifting positions. Using various image-capture devices that can produce digital, film, still or moving pictures, I create bodies of work that invite the viewer to see many perspectives simultaneously. The challenge is to implement the effectiveness of the technologies and simultaneously dislodge those principles and values fundamental to their imperialist cultural backgrounds. My practice investigates a diplomatic negotiability of aesthetic language to accommodate conceptual and cultural difference/s. Located on the print surface or in animated sequences are symbolic representations that disclose histories, cultures, times and places in subtle and ambiguous ways. The interplay of allure and resistance, repetition and change, are strategies that reveal the delicate and paradoxical nature of the multidimensional psyche.

Technical images such as photography, film and video, are dependent on apparatuses for their production and dissemination, yet the apparatus itself is often hidden or obscured in the experience of the work and the discourse that surrounds it. This practice-led research identifies key practice strategies to foreground the apparatus both in the production of work and in its presentation. It therefore develops critical and generative strategies to explore and interrogate the workings of the 'apparatus-audience complex,' and the particular modes of spectatorship that this entails.

This practice-led research explores family history and the on-going influence of cultural legacy on the individual and the artist. Homi Bhabha theorises that identity vacillates through society, shifting and changing form to create disjunctive historical spaces – spaces of slippage that allow for new narratives and understandings to occur. Using the notion of disjuncture that became apparent in this research, the practice outcomes seek to visualise my families' sometimes-occulted history at the intersection of euro-centric and Indigenous ideologies. Researched archival materials, government documents, interviews, collected objects and family photo-albums became primary source data for studio-based explorations. Scanners, glitch apps and photo-hacking were used to navigate through these materials, providing opportunities for photographic punctum and creating metaphors for the connections and disconnections that shape our sense of self.

The Screen Test (Americana/Australiana) project is a collection of works that re-makes selected fragments of film spanning cinema history. Through a process of selectively slowing and stilling this form, of what Laura Mulvey calls Delayed Cinema, opens up new possibilities for interpreting and understanding cinema and the photographic. The aesthetic qualities and repetition of the scene or shot are re-created and re-performed, allowing an alternate form of cinema to take place. This alternate cinema takes on the characteristic of the Hollywood screen test and thus we can see each piece as the artist performing the screen test for each film. However, over time the screen test becomes the site for shifting the aesthetic elements within the film and shaping the narrative as a form of aesthetic building block. The viewing of each fragment allows for a new reading of film that suspends or subverts the temporal narrative and allows the contained segment to exist outside of the film opening up the possibility of constructing and emphasizing new iconic images and meanings. Each video piece is supplemented with a photographic still in tableaux form that further explores the aesthetic material of the film or shot raising the aesthetic components of the film ( props, locations etc) to the level of fetishism that may have been missed in the original version. This photographic rendering of the film fragment rethinks the possibilities of photographic tableaux and its relation to the iconic and indexical of photomedia art practice. Similarly, each photographic work is informed by theories of film analysis and psychology that has examined the primacy of the film still with Freudian notions of the primal scene and the uncanny. We are after all bringing to life the graveyard of cinema history. These photographic qualities of the mis en scene and the indexical of metonymy allow a heightened aesthetic experience, which transforms itself into an aberration of the director’s intended meaning, thereby reconstructing this meaning within the context of camp humour and irony. The work also acts as a playful and absurd interpretation of the cult of celebrity within cinema and the art world, which frees up of the interpretation of the film’s meaning and becomes the site for contemporary re-readings of film culture. The juxtaposition of the American Hollywood film and its emphasis on studio lighting, props, character and dialogue against the outdoor location of the Australian films conflates the two cultural imperatives, allowing for the examination of cultural myth through cinema. American cinema is revealed as the dominant culture whose imperialism dogs Australian film and fosters a culture of low self-esteem. Further, the Americana works become the site for cultural examinations of gender, narcissism and war - both real and imagined – and Hollywood is explored in terms of its social imaginings and how they play into real life events. The Australiana component explores the mythology of the Australian landscape with an emphasis on the culture of masculinity and self-destructive violence. However, each work is the result of a conflation of both cultures and other films, or parts of the same film, shifted within the fragment. The production of each photographic and video piece requires the taking on of the role of director, cinematographer, actor and producer. Through the use of interactive technologies such as DVD and the Internet not only am I able to experience a new subjective relationship with the intricacies of cinema but also by recreating these cinematic fragments I am able to bring into being and transform the spectre of cinema into the realm of contemporary art practice.

Abstract In this Research paper and through my Studio practice, I search for what binds me and separates me from my children. I investigate abjection theories through Julia Kristeva and Georges Bataille and focus on a particular form I call the maternal abject. This occurs at the time an infant separates from its mother, acquires language and maps its own body. I am proposing that the mapping of the body is the point at which an individual perceives social structures and learns about prohibitions and taboos, hence the abject. I also investigate the relationship between the maternal abject and the artistic process through the writings of Kristeva. Abjection is illustrated through the works of Mona Hatoum, Fiona Hall, Hieronymus Bosch, and Paul Quinn. The maternal abject is illustrated through the works of Mary Kelly, Cindy Sherman, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois. A possible reading of the maternal abject is given through the works of Gregory Crewdson, Joel-Peter Witkin and Francis Bacon. The studio work is in two parts. The first part is a series of layered photomedia images. The layers consist of a naked female body, which has been merged with Renaissance like Madonna and Child images. Texture, such as stones and spikes, is embedded to signify the fragility and strength of the body. Children are also present and are merged with the adult female body. All images are cradled in a darkened atmosphere in order to draw the viewer inside the images. The second part is a bassinet, which has been drilled and pierced by thousands of pearl-headed steel pins. This piece signifies the dichotomy of the motherhood experience, which on the one hand is rewarding and fulfilling and on the other an abject and isolating experience of no apparent economic value. The two parts interact so that the bassinet piece with its threatening exterior acts as an aggressor towards the photomedia images.

Aquesta tesi doctoral està centrada en la mesura del desplaçament al vermell (redshift) fotomètric en cartografiats de galàxies fotogràfiques i en les seves aplicacions per a extreure informació cosmològica. En la primera part d'aquesta tesi fem un pronòstic amb la tècnica de matrius de Fisher per a un cartografiat de galàxies que tingui mesures molt precises del redshift fotomètric - que poden venir tant d'espectroscòpia com de múltiples fotografies amb filtre estret. Fem servir correlacions angulars de galàxies, és a dir, com es distribueixen espacialment les galàxies, dividint una mostra en dues submostres fent servir altres paràmetres observables. Fer servir dues mostres que es superposen redueix la variancia mostral en els observables, cosa que millora la precisió amb la qual es poden mesurar la història d'expansió i de creixement d'estructures en l'univers. En la segona part d'aquesta tesi mesurem redshifts fotomètrics de manera molt precisa fent servir dades d'un cartografiat de galàxies innovador anomenat PAUS que conté un conjunt únic de 40 filtres estrets. Desenvolupem dos algoritmes que fan servir estadística de màxima versemblança o d'integral Bayesiana per a deduir la probabilitat en redshift de cada galàxia, cosa que requereix modelar tant el flux del continu com el flux de les línies d'emissió de la galàxia. L'algoritme conté diverses correccions que tenen en compte els efectes sistemàtics que es troben en la calibració de les dades. Aquestes correccions s'examinen en simulacions que s'han desenvolupat per aquest motiu. Les mesures de redshifts fotomètrics a PAUS fan possible la ciència que es vol dur a terme i també es poden fer servir per a calibrar la distribució de redshifts de cartografiats de galàxies que mesuren l'efecte de lent dèbil. La darrera part d'aquesta tesi implementa per primer cop un model bayesià jeràrquic en una simulació de N cossos per a mesurar la distribució en redshift fotomètric d'un mapa de galàxies de lent dèbil fent servir tant informació de fotometria com de densitat. L'efecte de lent dèbil és un mètode molt poderós per extreure informació cosmològica, però és molt sensible a qualsevol esbiaix en la mitjana del redshift fotomètric d'una mostra de galàxies. Aquest mètode combina de manera consistent totes les fonts d'informació i fusiona les tècniques més típiques que es fan servir a la literatura per a estimar les distribucions en redshift.
This PhD thesis is focused on the measurement of photometric redshifts in imaging galaxy surveys and its applications to extract cosmological information. In the first part of this thesis we forecast a galaxy survey with very precise redshift information, which can come either from spectroscopy or many narrow band images, using the Fisher matrix formalism. We use galaxy clustering, how galaxies group together in space, dividing a sample into two subsamples using other observable parameters. Using two overlapping subsamples reduces the sample variance in the observables, which improves the precision with which one can measure the expansion and growth history of the universe. In the second part of this thesis we measure highly precise photometric redshifts using the data from a novel imaging galaxy survey PAUS that contains a unique set of 40 narrow band filters. We develop two algorithms which use maximum likelihood or Bayesian evidence statistics to infer the redshift probability of each galaxy, which requires modeling both the continuum and emission line galaxy flux. The algorithm contains several corrections to account for systematic effects present in the data calibration which are tested in simulations developed for this purpose. The measurement of PAUS redshifts enables the science of the galaxy survey and can also be used to calibrate the redshift distribution of lensing surveys. The last part of this thesis implements for the first time a hierarchical Bayesian model in an N-body simulation to measure the redshift distribution of a lensing survey using both photometric and density information. Weak lensing is a very powerful tool to extract cosmological information, but it is very sensitive to any bias in the mean redshift of a sample of source galaxies. This method consistently combines all sources of information and merges the main techniques used in the literature to estimate redshift distributions.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
As photographers give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure. (Susan Sontag 1990:34) This thesis is the outcome of original inquiry that focuses on substantiating ‘Practice as Research or ‘Practice-led Research’ as a means of generating and identifying ‘authentic experience.’ The ‘space,’ as Sontag names it, is ‘the hospital;’ in particular, the hospital as a vulnerable, threatened and, ultimately, destroyed space. The theme of interacting with such an insecure space in order to record and articulate an ‘authentic experience,’ namely the experience of the staff who have worked in one hospital in particular, the Royal Newcastle Hospital (NSW), forms the foundation of this exegesis. The research is situated within the area of Arts Health and is a theoretical and, at times, personal reflection on my time as artist-in-residence at the Royal and my relationship with the staff as they prepared to leave a much loved place of work. As a photographic artist, the research was realised by using the photographic image as a primary visualising agent and, principally, the window as the prevailing encoded form. The resulting images and the process of creating them are recorded herein and have left the people of the Royal with a series of ‘imaginary possession[s] of a past’ that is now intangible in a material sense, and thus ‘unreal.’ Nevertheless, the images, some of which are now permanently housed in the new precinct, The Royal Newcastle Centre at Rankin Park, and memorialised in the first of the three portfolio books, Pathologies of Time I - Royal Newcastle Hospital, were created with the intention of working with the staff in order to contribute to their journey towards taking ‘possession’ ‘of space in which they felt ‘insecure.’