Masters Degrees (Fine Arts)
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Browsing Masters Degrees (Fine Arts) by Subject "Dissertation (M.A. (Fine Arts))--University of the Free State, 2015"
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Item Open Access Die visioenêre verbeelding en die animering van die inheemse landskap(University of the Free State, 2016-02) Kruger, Louis Lodewyk; Allen-Spies, J.; Human, E. S.English: This study deals with the incomprehensible visionary experience and the possible relationships it may have with the indigenous landscape. It was motivated by artistic research (in the form of video art and digital photomontages) into the visionary potential that may be imbedded in the outstretched Northern Cape landscape. The problem regarding the representation of the visionary experience is firstly explored through the analyses of relevant image traditions in the history of art. These image traditions include: the mystical, the sublime, the apocalyptical, and the mythological. The diverse visual strategies, which are at work in these image traditions, reveal the various ways that the image of the landscape can suggestively act as a medium of visionary insights. Some of these revelations include: the use of the circle and saturated colours to suggest mystical power in the image and to sometimes facilitate a visionary revelation; the use of paradox, negation (like sombre light and obscurity) and synaesthetic combinations in images as a means to overcome the complexity and incomprehensibility of the visionary phenomenon; and the use of figures in the landscape to suggest the presence or expectancy of an active, chaotic eruption of visionary power in the landscape. The ability of the image of the outstretched landscape (specifically the desert that evokes allusions to eternity) to awaken a visionary eruption in the imagination is suggested through the implementation of the abovementioned visual strategies. In such cases it seems as if the image of the landscape jumps foreword, as though animated. Aby Warburg‟s notion of image animation is analysed to examine the image‟s ability to awaken a cultural memory of the landscape through the imagination. The ways in which the use of some visual motifs in images of the landscape is capable of promoting the animation process, is explored. These visual motifs include: the form of the vortex as visual and landscape motif, in the appearance of whirlwinds and whirlpools. The capacity of the vortex‟s features of constant movement, transformation, and instability to animate images of the landscape, is evaluated in association with the fascination with the vortex form in the history of the visionary phenomenon. For example it is a well-known motif that is experienced during hallucinations and near-death experiences. The use of other landscape motifs such as rocks, earth, lightning, clouds and astral constellations is evaluated in both mythological and Christian contexts, for example in the visions of Saint Jerome in the desert and in the practice of shamanism implied in the rock art of the Khoisan of Bushman people. Through this research of the vortex and other landscape motifs various manifestations are revealed: artificial marks in the landscape, which can suggest possible thresholds, and movements of upward and downward directionality, which are suggested over the landscape. The artist‟s discerning choice and use of the medium through which he/she aims to visualise the abovementioned motifs and underlying visual strategies, is also researched. Two factors that influence the medium‟s contribution to the animation of the image come to the fore – light and multi-layering. Light in the medium animates the image in the following ways: the discriminating use of light/lighting in installations can create immersive, deceptive places that stimulate the participant‟s imaginative flight to another reality or can refer to something absent or remote; and in the digital, video and film image light refers to the ignored mechanical aspects at work to create and exhibit images. Multi-layering in installations, digital photomontages and collages awaken visionary associations of imaginary flight through multi-layered spheres in the cultural memory of the landscape, while the discovery of hidden layers of meaning in the image also enables animation. Lastly, the capacity of relevant locations involved in the creation and exhibition of artworks to facilitate the visionary imagination is examined. For example, the studio of the artist can function in the same manner as the remote landscape in which the prophet finds refuge – it encourages a person to cast a visionary gaze over the world. Furthermore it seems as if the sensitive placement and lighting of the artwork in the gallery is capable of evoking a visionary experience in the spirit of the participant as a result of image animation and the productive imagination‟s ability to create a new reality.