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Li, Chen. "Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) stone carved tombs in Central and Eastern China." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bca2d725-eca3-4d10-bc5f-f77fb0228ece.
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This thesis studies Han Dynasty stone carved tombs in Central and Eastern China. These multi-chambered tombs were constructed from carved stone slabs, and were very popular among the Han people. However, such horizontal stone structures were entirely new, and were a result of outside stimuli rather than an independent development within China. The stone carved tombs were a result of imitating royal rock-cut tombs, while the rock-cut tombs were stimulated by foreign examples. Moreover, many details of stone carved tombs also had Western features. These exotic elements were incorporated to satisfy specific requirements of the Han people, and reflected the desire to assimilate exotica within Chinese traditions. Some details within stone carved tombs showed high level of stone working technologies with Western influences. But in general the level of stone construction of the Han period was relatively low. The methods of construction showed how unfamiliar the Western system was to the Han artisans. Han Dynasty stone carved tombs were hybrids of different techniques, including timber, brick and stone works. From these variations, Han people could choose certain types of tombs to satisfy their specific ritual and economic needs. Not only structures, but also pictorial decorations of stone carved tombs were innovations. The range of image motifs is quite limited. Similar motifs can be found in almost every tomb. Such similarities were partly due to the artisans, who worked in workshops and used repertoires for the carving of images. But these also suggest that the tombs were decorated for certain purposes with a given functional template. Together with different patterns of burial objects and their settings, such images formed a way through which the Han people gave meaning to the afterworld. After their heyday, stone carved tombs ceased being constructed in the Central Plains as the Han Empire collapsed. However, they set a model for later tombs. The idea of building horizontal stone chamber tombs spread to Han borderlands, and gradually went further east to the Korean Peninsula. The legacy and spread of the Chinese masonry tradition was closely related to the political circumstances of late Han and post-Han period. The spread of stone chamber tombs in Northeast Asia is presented as a part of a long history of interactions between different parts of Eurasia.
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Chen, Xuan. "Eastern Han (AD 25-220) tombs in Sichuan." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:be49570b-b40c-45ac-a2e3-d17e9f3516ce.
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This thesis concerns the factors underlying the popularity of the cliff tomb, a local burial form in the Sichuan Basin in China in the Eastern Han dynasty (AD 25-220). The development of the cliff tomb was held in a complex set of connections to the development of the burial forms, and existed through links to many other contemporary burial forms, the brick chamber tomb, the stone chamber tomb, and the princely rock-cut tomb. These connections and links formed to a large extent through the incorporation of the Sichuan area into the empire which began in the fourth century BC. It was in this context, a series of factors contributed to the formation and popularity of the cliff tombs in Sichuan. The hilly topography and the soft sandstone, easy to cut, provided the natural condition for the development of the cliff tombs. The decision to make use of this natural condition was affected by many factors rooted in the social background. The inherent nature of the cliff tomb structure was fully explored, which was then followed by a series of corresponding innovations on the pictorial carvings and the burial objects. The meaning of a continuous family embedded in the cliff tomb structure was explored, as the construction of the tomb was the result of the continuous endeavours from many generations of the family, and the physical form of the cliff tomb was a metaphor for a prosperous family. Following this intention of the tomb occupants underlying the design of the cliff tomb structure, the pictorial carvings and the burial objects in the cliff tomb made adaptations to make the cliff tomb an embodiment of relations between different family members and different generations.
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Lin, Yuexin Rachel. "Among ghosts and tigers : the Chinese in the Russian Far East, 1917-1920." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6b8153ea-0f39-43cd-9c76-416f86c85d02.
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This thesis examines the experiences of the overseas Chinese in the Russian Far East during the revolutionary and Civil War period from 1917 to 1920, as well as their responses to the upheaval. Bucking the current trend towards transcultural history, the thesis argues that Chinese identity and nationalist language were of prime importance to this community. By concentrating on Chinese-language sources, the thesis re-privileges the community's internal discourses and highlights the prevalence of nationalist rhetoric across the Sino-Russian border. It also sites the Chinese community's use of nationalist language within the context of the global diaspora, for which questions of national weakness and revival were also pressing. Going further, the thesis postulates the presence of "Chinese nationalism with Russian characteristics", in which the issues surrounding Chinese nationalism as a whole were heightened. It shows that the rhetoric of 'national humiliation' and victimhood were particularly immediate to the community in the Russian Far East, since it was located at one of the epicentres of imperial contestation. In practice, this led to a modus vivendi with the Reds and a decisive turn against the Whites. Furthermore, the chaos of the revolutions and Civil War imbued this nationalism with an opportunistic quality. The collapse of Russian state power became the 'opportunity of a thousand years' for China to redress past wrongs. This allowed the overseas community to work closely with local authorities and the Beijing government to achieve shared goals. New civil society organisations with community-wide aims were formed. Beijing extended its diplomatic reach in the form of new Far Eastern consulates. Finally, common nationalist rhetoric underpinned China's successful attempt to re-establish its civilian and military presence on the Amur River. "Chinese nationalism with Russian characteristics" could be effectively harnessed to secure multi-level and cross-border cooperation.
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Lookman, Mariah. "Looking to draw : picturing the molecular body in art and science." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:58d026b1-457c-412a-a339-ca25eaa9ab19.
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As a practice-led thesis comprised of drawing, sculpture, video, notebooks, and a written dissertation, this study by way of art making argues against the provocation that life sciences aided by the advances in visualizing techniques will hegemonise much of what there is to see and know about biological life. Historian James Elkins argued that non-art informational images were historically relevant considering the strategies scientists use for visualizing phenomena and W. J. T. Mitchell noted the impact of proliferation in image production together with computer technology as the epistemological shift from word to image and coined the phrase pictorial turn. Concurrently philosopher Gottfried Boehm deployed the term iconic turn to discuss the problematics associated with the power of images. I incorporate these insights to examine the affects of biomedical imaging as seen in artworks formed out of biologically sourced organic materials and techniques. Especially once grouped as Bio Art (Kac 1997) or organic media art (Hauser 2006) these artworks further accentuate the problem of representation and its relationship to knowledge and power underscored by the phenomena that biotechnology is changing perceptions of what the body is and can become. The written component of the thesis addresses these problems. It does this by critiquing visualization through the example fluorescent tagging as this technique exemplifies the most innovative and transgressive procedure for imaging biology in-vivo. I argue the following: the visualization of biology, like the mathematization of the surface of reflection pioneered by Ibn al-Haytham is not a problem because it shows Man’s technological prowess but rather because mathematization brings with it the legacy of ontological uneasiness with images in Western philosophical tradition. This tension persists and gets exacerbated especially in contexts where molecular scale visualizing aids the invention of novel life forms as art or laboratory creatures. To reconcile the paradoxes that emerge from critical analysis of the effects of biotechnology that have been discussed in binary terms such as natural or artificial, mimetic or real, I introduce to the lexicon of new media art and theory the concept of non-duality from Arabic philosophy formalized by Ibn ‘Arabi through the analogy of barzakh. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s scheme images are a part of the imaginal sphere and are not perceived as mimetic. Neither is the image given primacy in the formation of knowledge nor is the image given an absolute position of certainty. Instead, images are the intermediary and dynamic part of cognitive process that brings with reason knowledge and with knowledge, responsibility. Thus theorized, imaginal are able to facilitate the possibility to actualise the fullest comprehension of wujud that in translation is also the pursuit for knowledge that guides action. In this way informed by practice, this thesis dissolves the distrust of vision and proposes that scientific images are like art that can embolden the intellectual capacity for creativity and abstract thought.
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Caswell, Fuad Matthew. "The Qiyan in the early Abbasid period." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:07aceede-1eff-429b-83e6-2c2d5c60f9d0.
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The thesis deals with the legal status of the qiȳan as slaves in Islam; describes their nationalities, education and training as singers, instrumentalists and versifiers. It considers their place in the cultural life of the host society. A substantial part of their poetry with particular attention to some of the leading figures is reproduced in translation. A review of that poetry is included, showing the bulk of it to consist of clever epigrams exchanged in public or semi-public maj̄alis, bearing the hallmark of virtuosity and social jousting or party games. Another theme is that the introduction of the qiȳan into the Abbasid cultural life led to the development of elegiac-erotic poetry. A parallel review of the musical scene, with special reference to some leading exponents, shows the influence of the qiȳan in the development of new “popular”, unconventional styles of singing. The institution of the qiȳan in all its artistic manifestations is viewed as essentially a business catering for men in pursuit of pleasure: caliphs, aristocrats and, most commonly, the class of cultured well-to-do chancery scribes. The bulk of the poetry which the established men poets composed in praise of the qiȳan is seen as publicity material, and substantially produced to commission. The effect of the qiȳan on the free-born women of their age, as well as historically, is considered; and some comparison is drawn between them as poets and singers. By way of further comparison the geisha and the hetaira of Ancient Greece are alluded to. A chapter is devoted to the decline and fall of the qiȳan institution in the East and its partial transfer to Arab Spain.
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Miller, Elizabeth M. "Nationalism and the birth of modern art in Egypt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:84002959-dc3e-40ad-90b3-f9efcc8846f6.
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This dissertation covers the emergence of a tradition of the fine arts in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to discourses of nationalism. Taking as a starting point the canon of the ‘pioneer’ generation as it is defined in the historiography, I follow the careers of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar and the painters Ragheb ‘Ayyad, Muhammad Nagi, and Mahmud Sa‘id, each of whom is treated in a full chapter. Narratives surrounding the life and work of these artists have tended to emphasize the ways in which the images they created participated in the definition of a single cohesive nation – through the use of Pharaonic imagery, which anchors the nation in a distant past, through rural symbolism, which ties the nation to the land and the Nile, and through a female iconography that links the nation to ideas of virtue and purity – what I term here, following Timothy Mitchell and Homi Bhabha, a pedagogical narrative of the nation. However, I suggest that the process of imagining the nation as a unified whole necessarily involves a negotiation of difference, sometimes that of the peasant or the woman who pose a challenge to the assumption of an unproblematic national collectivity, sometimes that of the artists themselves, who, for reasons of foreign education, religion, or social identity, are unable to fully identify with definitions of the nation that were themselves constantly contested. This negotiation of difference – what Mitchell has termed the performative - and how it appears within works of visual art, constitutes the main subject of this dissertation.
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Montagno-Leahy, Lisa. "Private tomb reliefs of the late period from Lower Egypt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1988. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3b3699de-8498-4021-bf5f-b35fcf1cf33c.
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This study considers the relief decoration of private tombs in Lower Egypt in the period 664-332 BC. The basis for analysis is a chronologically arranged descriptive catalogue, which includes both isolated blocks in museum collections and tombs whose location is known. The present condition of the relief and its content are described in detail there. Texts are considered where they provide infotmation on provenance and dating, and hand-copies are provided. Each piece is illustrated in the plate volume. Enough of the material can be dated by textual evidence to provide a solid framework for stylistic ordering of the remainder. The resulting chronology has important implications, dividing the period into two major phases, covering the seventh and sixth centuries, and the fourth century, separated by a hiatus in production of tomb reliefs. The chronology proposed eliminates the possibility that either Greeks or Persians exercised any significant influence on Egyptian art before the very end of the period. Instead, native tradition emerges as the primary inspiration for Late Period artists. Two sources stand out. The first is the Old-Middle Kingdom tomb repertory (archaism), the second is the New Kingdom tradition carried on in the minor arts, a source largely-ignored hitherto. These were not slavishly copied, but adapted and "modernized" to suit the taste of the time. The independence and creativity of Late Period artists is emphasized. A discussion of stylistic development in light of the dating system is given, and several themes are analyzed in detail as illustrations of the larger issues raised.
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Wood, Rachel K. L. "After the Achaemenids : exchange, transmission and transformation in the visual culture of Babylonia, Iran and Bactria c.330-c.100 BC." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0fc15b6c-0436-4d17-81d3-31f69b77313e.
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This thesis examines the art of Babylonia, Iran and Bactria after the Macedonian conquest, from c.330 to c.100 BC, in light of current developments in archaeological theory of cultural interaction. In order to illustrate the character and scale of these interactions, the thesis presents a discussion of iconographic material ranging from architectural ornament and sculpture to minor arts. Chapters II-IV discuss the material from each site, highlighting regional characteristics and differences between media. Chapters V-VII use three cross-sections to examine cultural interaction visible in material used for different social functions (‘spheres’). The ‘sphere of gods’ discusses religious architectural ornament and iconography, and the implications for our interpretation of cult in Babylonia, Iran and Bactria in this period. The ‘sphere of kings’ considers ruler representation and the physical appearance of ‘royal space’ while the ‘sphere of citizens and subjects’ discusses material made and used by the wider populace. Macedonian rule and the influx of settlers to Babylonia, Iran and Bactria developed networks of exchange, transmission and transformation creating ‘visually multi-lingual’ societies. The adoption of new artistic influences did not replace all existing traditions or necessarily infringe ethnic identities. There was selective adoption and adaptation of iconography, styles and forms to suit the new patrons and contexts. This cultural co-existence included some combinations of features from different artistic traditions into individual compositions, emphasising how visual languages were not closed-off, rigidly defined or static. Patrons were not confined to using the visual language associated with their ethnicity or current location. There was flexibility of use and meaning, which may present a useful model in the study of other areas of cultural interaction in the Hellenistic period.
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Liu, Yu-jen. "Publishing Chinese art : issues of cultural reproduction in China, 1905-1918." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:284f18b9-a0ce-4a4a-bdb4-6a1c1ece44ce.
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This thesis is an enquiry into the conditions in which various understandings of the newly introduced but vaguely grasped Western notion of ‘art’ emerged and sustained themselves in the name of cultural reproduction in early twentieth-century China. This Western concept of art was translated into Chinese as ‘meishu’, a neologism originally coined in Japanese kanji, and regarded as the embodiment of the ‘national essence’. Through a close examination of five art-related publishing events—the publication of the nationalistic journal Guocui xuebao; the launch of the art periodical Shenzhou guoguangji; the endeavours to compile a book collection on art, Meishu congshu; the making of the text Zhonguo yishujia zhenglüe which claimed to be a history book of Chinese ‘meishu’; and an example of image appropriation from Stephen Bushell’s Chinese Art—this thesis explores the ways in which different ‘neologistic imaginations’ of the term ‘meishu’ were constructed through publishing practices attempting to preserve and reproduce the ‘national essence’, by creating from the existent tradition a category of ‘art’ equivalent to that in the European West. Unlike previous scholarship, which deems any understanding of ‘meishu’ that deviated from the ‘authentic’ European model a ‘misconception’, this thesis sees these disparate understandings of ‘meishu’ as equally valid statements competing for dominance in the discursive field of art. This thesis thus argues that there existed at least three modes of utterances regarding the notion of ‘meishu’ in early twentieth-century China, and that the success of any such given utterance depended upon the acceptance of the authentic quality argued in its strategy of cultural reproduction. This thesis hence not only offers a detailed analysis of each publishing event, but also provides an interpretative framework within which the recognition of these utterances can be analysed by their strategic approaches to claiming cultural authenticity.
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Silberstein, Rachel. "Embroidered figures : commerce and culture in the late Qing fashion system." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3f170232-4836-47ee-a535-901834528b21.
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Contrary to Westerners' long-maintained denial of fashion in Chinese dress, recent scholarship has provided convincing textual evidence of fashion in early modern China. Research into this fashion commentary has complicated our understanding of Chinese consumption history, yet we still know little about fashion design, production, or dissemination. By prioritising the textual over the visual or material, this history remains confined to the written source, rather than asking what objects might tell us of Qing fashions. Though many fashionable styles of dress survive in Western museums, these are rarely considered evidence of the Chinese fashion system. Instead museum scholarship remains influenced by twentieth-century interpretations of Chinese dress as art; dominated by dragon robes and auspicious symbols, oriented around the trope of the genteel Chinese seamstress. Within this art historical account, nineteenth-century women's dress has been characterized by decay and viewed with disdain. This thesis questions these assumptions through the study of a group of late Qing women's jackets featuring embroidered narrative scenes, arguing that in this style - regulated by market desires rather than imperial edict - fashion formed at the intersection of commerce and culture. Contrary to the prevailing production model in which the secluded gentlewoman embroidered her entire wardrobe, I position the jackets within the mid-Qing commercialization of handicrafts that created networks of urban guilds, commercial workshops and sub-contracted female workers. By drawing the contours of Suzhou's commercial networks - a region renowned for its embroidery - I demonstrate how popular culture permeated the late Qing fashion system, and explicate the appearance and conceptualization of the embroidered scenes through contemporary prints and performance. My exploration of how dramatic narrative was represented in female dress culture highlights embroidery's significance as a tool to reflect upon contemporary culture, a finding I support by recourse to representations of embroidery as act and object in Suzhou's vernacular ballads and dramas. Thus, these little-studied jackets not only evidence how fashionable dress articulated women's relationship with popular culture, but also how embroidery expressed contemporary concerns, allowing a re-appraisal of women's role as cultural consumers and producers.
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Wang, Vincent Cho-Chien. "New insights into enzymatic CO₂ reduction using protein film electrochemistry." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f1061854-f6b8-4562-81e0-968c80e1da3a.
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Carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) is known to catalyze CO oxidation and CO₂ reduction reversibly with the minimal overpotential. A great advantage of protein film electrochemistry (PFE) is its ability to probe catalysis over a wide range of potentials, especially in the low potential region required for CO₂ reduction. CODH I and CODH II from Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans(Ch) and the composite enzyme acetyl-CoA synthase/carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (ACS/CODH) from Moorella thermoacetica(Mt) are intensively studied throughout this thesis. The different catalytic redox-states in CODH, Cox (inactive state), Cred1 (for CO oxidation) and Cred2 (for CO₂ reduction) as characterized by spectroscopy, are studied by PFE in the presence of substrate-mimic inhibitors. Cyanide, isoelectronic with CO, mainly inhibits CO oxidation, whereas cyanate, isoelectronic with CO₂, mainly targets CO₂ reduction. Sulfide inhibits CODH rapidly when the potential is more positive than −50 mV, which suggests that sulfide reacts to form a state at the oxidation level of Cox in CODH and is not an activator for CODH catalysis as suggested before. Thiocyanate only partially inhibits CO oxidation. No inhibition of CODH by azide is detected, which is in contrast with previous studies with ACS/CODHMt. The main differences between CODH ICh and CODH IICh are the stronger CO product inhibition and inhibition of CODH IICh by cyanide. These discoveries might shed light on the possible role of CODH IICh,/sub> in biological systems. In comparison with bidirectional (reversible) electrocatalysis by CODH ICh and CODH IICh, only unidirectional electrocatalysis for CO oxidation by ACS/CODHMt is observed with an overpotential of 0.1 V and the electrocatalytic current is much smaller. In order to identify whether ACS influences the performance of CODH, several chemical reagents, such as sodium dodecyl sulfate (which separates CODH and ACS partially), 1, 10-phenanthroline, (which inhibits the active site in ACS) and acetyl-CoA (the product of the reaction carried out by ACS/CODHMt) are added. However, we have yet to observe any electrocatalytic current from CO₂ reduction. Inhibition of ACS/CODHMt by cyanide, cyanate and azide is consistent with previous studies by spectroscopy. Oxygen attack toward the active site in CODH is proved by cyanide protection. The inactive state, Cox can prevent oxygen attack and reductive reactivation restores CODH activity. In contrast, oxygen damages the active site irreversibly when CODH is in the Cred1 state. The new substrate, nitrous oxide (N₂O), isoelectronic with CO₂, is reduced by CODH and acts as the suicide substrate. Finally, hydrogen formation in the direction of CO oxidation and formate formation in the direction of CO₂ reduction by CODH are detected. The small solvent kinetic isotope effect is observed in CO oxidation. These findings suggest metal-hydride should play a role in CODH catalysis, which might provide a new direction to design better catalysts for CO₂ reduction.
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Luk, Yu Ping. "Empresses, religious practice and the imperial image in Ming China : the Ordination Scroll of Empress Zhang (1493)." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:797fc7ce-34c7-4af3-a96d-928cec15098a.
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The Ordination Scroll of Empress Zhang (1493) in the San Diego Museum of Art, a highlight at the Taoism and the Arts of China exhibition in 2000, is an unusual object among surviving visual material from Ming dynasty China (1368 – 1644). At over twenty-seven metres long, the scroll contains meticulously painted images and a detailed inscription that records the Daoist ordination of Empress Zhang (1470 – 1541), consort of the Hongzhi emperor (r. 1488 – 1505) by the Orthodox Unity institution. The event it documents, which elevates the empress into the celestial realm, would be unknown to history if not for the survival of this scroll. This dissertation is an in-depth study of the Ordination Scroll that also considers its implications for understanding the activities of empresses and their representations during the Ming dynasty. The first three chapters of this dissertation closely examine the material, visual and textual aspects of the Ordination Scroll. The remaining two chapters situate the scroll within the broader activities of Ming empresses. A complete translation of the main inscription in the scroll is provided in the appendix.
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Wain, Alexander David Robert. "Chinese Muslims and the conversion of the Nusantara to Islam." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:53a48196-ac0e-4510-b74d-794c48e976ed.
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This thesis is a comprehensive re-examination of Maritime Southeast Asia's (or the Nusantara's) Islamic conversion history between the late thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Traditionally, academia has attributed this event to Muslim traders and/or Sufis from either India and/or the Middle East. During the late twentieth century, however, a number of scholars began to consider the possibility of Chinese Muslim involvement. The resulting discussions focused on a re-evaluation of Javanese history in the context of attempts to re-conceptualise pre-modern Nusantara trade (considered the catalyst for Islamisation) as fundamentally orientated towards Southern China, where Muslims played a significant commercial role from the seventh through to the early fifteenth centuries. Despite the intrinsic merits of these efforts, however, they have all been limited by an overwhelming focus on Java and a tendency to examine the relevant issues over only a very narrow time span. This thesis seeks to rectify these problems. First, it will evaluate the validity of the new commercial framework over a much longer period – from the rise of Śrīvijaya in the seventh century CE to the establishment of the early seventeenth-century European trade monopolies. This longue dureé view will provide a much stronger basis for both conclusively re-orientating pre-modern Nusantaran trade towards China and also positing it as the catalyst for conversion, with Chinese Muslims at its heart. Second, the thesis will look beyond Java to examine the conversion histories of several other important Nusantara locations (Samudera-Pasai, Melaka and Brunei), as accessed through early written texts (indigenous, European and Chinese) and archaeology. The thesis then, and thirdly, couples this examination with a consideration of the Islamic influences which came to bear on the Nusantara’s early intellectual and architectural expressions of Islam. Ultimately, by taking this broad chronological, geographical and cultural approach, the thesis aims to more reliably assess the possibility that Chinese Muslims influenced the Nusantara’s initial Islamisation process.
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Wisetsuwannaphum, Sirikarn. "Electrochemical studies of carbon-based materials." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b18b808e-c517-4b18-9cf7-6f2a6714f8d4.
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Graphene, as a recently discovered carbon allotrope, possesses with it many outstanding properties ranging from high electrical conductivity to great mechanical strength. Single layer graphene can be prepared by mechanical cleavage of graphite or by a more sophisticated method, CVD. However, the scale-up process for these preparation techniques is still unconvincing. Solution-processed graphene from exfoliation of graphite oxide on the other hand provides an alternative prospect resulting in the formation of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), which can be readily manipulated to tailor-suit various application demands. The main aim of the thesis is to explore the possibility and availability of this versatile method to produce graphene nanoplatelet and its composites with good all-round performance in energy and bioanalytical applications. A range of physical and chemical characterisation techniques were utilised including SEM, TEM, AFM, XPS, XRD, DLS, FTIR, Raman and UV-Vis spectroscopy in order to investigate the structural and chemical information of the graphene-based materials prepared. Functionalisation of graphene oxide with polyelectrolyte polymer could facilitate deposition of platinum nanoparticles in the formation of Pt-GNPs composites. The resultant composite was employed for bioanalytical application in the detection of an important neurotransmitter, glutamate, based on glutamate oxidase enzyme. The performance of Pt-GNPs based glutamate sensor exhibited enhanced sensitivity and prolonged stability compared to the sensors based on Pt decorated diamond or glassy carbon electrodes. The significant interfering effect from concomitant electrochemically active biological compounds associated with Pt-GNPs electrode however could be alleviated via opting for Prussian blue deposited GNPs electrode instead. The oppositely charged Pt-GNPs due to different functionalising polymers were also subject to self-assembly, which was enabled by the electrostatic interaction of the opposite charges of Pt-GNPs. The self-assembled film showed enhanced mechanical stability than the conventional drop-casted film and provided reasonably good activity towards oxidation of hydrogen peroxide. Three-component composite of graphene, nanodiamond and polyaniline was prepared via in-situ polymerisation for usage as an electrode material in electrochemical capacitors ("supercapacitors"). The addition of graphene was shown to significantly enhance specific capacitance while nanodiamond could improve the stability of the electrode by strengthening the polymer core. Another approach to produce a supercapacitor was via electrodeposition of nickel and cobalt hydroxides on graphene oxide film corporated with bicarbonate salt. The film was then subject to thermal reduction of GO and expansion of graphene layers within the film was observed. This leavening process enhanced the surface area of graphene film and thus the higher specific capacitance was obtained. The decoration of nickel and cobalt hydroxides onto the film also boosted the specific capacitance further however the poor cycling stability of the heated film still remained an issue. Graphene nanoplatelets were also used as a support for electrodeposition of Pt nanoparticles for methanol oxidation in acidic media. The preferential phase of the Pt deposited and large surface area of graphene in comparison to other carbon supports studied led to good catalytic activity being observed.
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Arns, Inke. "Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Philosophische Fakultät II, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/15154.
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Die Dissertation untersucht einen Paradigmenwechsel in der Rezeption der historischen Avantgarde in (medien-)künstlerischen Projekten der 1980er und 1990er Jahre in Ex-Jugoslawien und Russland. Dieser Paradigmenwechsel liegt im veränderten Verhältnis zum Begriff der (politischen wie künstlerischen) Utopie begründet. In den 1980er Jahren zeichnet sich die Rezeption sowohl im sogenannten sowjetischen Postutopismus (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) als auch in der jugoslawischen Retroavantgarde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič aus Belgrad etc.) durch ein ‚diskursarchäologisches’ Interesse an potentiell totalitären Elementen der Avantgarde aus. Seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre lässt sich eine signifikant veränderte Rezeption der historischen künstlerischen Avantgarde in Projekten junger KünstlerInnen aus dem östlichen Europa festellen (Neoutopismus, Retroutopismus). Die Utopien der Avantgarde werden im sogenannten Retroutopismus (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) nicht mehr primär mit totalitären Tendenzen gleichgesetzt, sondern sie werden jetzt vor allem auf ihre medientechnologischen Projektionen und Entwürfe durchgesehen. Diese wurden nicht nur von einzelnen Avantgarde-Künstlern und –Theoretikern (Velimir Chlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht), sondern auch von Wissenschaftlern und Ingenieuren (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung) am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelt. In den 1990er Jahren wird in künstlerischen Projekten somit ein verstärktes medienarchäologisches Interesse für frühe utopische Technologiephantasien der Avantgarde wahrnehmbar, das symptomatisch für ein signifikant verändertes Verhältnis zur Utopie bzw. zum Utopischen ist: Das Utopische löst sich von seinem eindeutig negativen, da politisch-totalitären Beigeschmack (verstanden als ‚Utopismus’) und wird wieder verstärkt positiv politisch konnotiert, d.h. als emanzipatives oder auch visionär-gespinsthaftes Potenzial verstanden (‚Utopizität’).The dissertation researches a paradigmatic shift in the way artists reflect the historical avant-garde in visual and media art projects of the 1980s and 1990s in (ex-)Yugoslavia and Russia. The reasons for this paradigm shift can be found in the changing relationship to the notion of utopia, both in its political and its artistic connotation. In the 1980s, the reception both in so-called Soviet postutopianism (Il’ja Kabakov, Ėrik Bulatov, Oleg Vasil’ev, Komar & Melamid, Kollektive Aktionen) and in the Yugoslav retro-avant-garde (NSK, Mladen Stilinović, Malevič from Belgrads etc.) is characterized by a ‘discourse archeological’ interest in the potentially totalitarian elements of the avant-garde. Yet this point of view changes fundamentally during the 1990s in a younger generation of artists (neoutopianism and retroutopianism). Retroutopianism (Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fishkin) no longer primarily equates the utopianism of the avant-garde with totalitarian tendencies, but is reexamined with regard to its media-technological projections and designs, which were not only developed by individual avant-garde artists and theoreticians (Velimir Khlebnikov, Bertolt Brecht) but also by scientists and engineers during the early 20th century (Nikola Tesla, Herman Potočnik Noordung). Artistic projects of the time reveal an increasing ‘media-archeological’ fascination for the avant-garde's early utopian fantasies of technology. This fascination, in turn, is symptomatic for a significant change in the relationship to utopia and utopian thinking on the whole: utopian thinking per se separates from its unambiguously negative, political-totalitarian aftertaste (understood as 'utopianism') and takes on a new positive political connotation. It is now understood as an emancipatory or visionary-spectral potentiality ('utopicity').
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Chen, Xin. "Miniature buildings in the Liao (907-1125) and the Northern Song (960-1127) periods." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:3b8fc1ba-dbfc-47cc-9584-03ff1b3d51e7.
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This thesis is concerned with the construction and uses of miniature buildings in the Liao (907-1125) and the Northern Song (960-1127) periods in China. These miniature buildings exploited the components of Chinese traditional architecture on a small or greatly reduced scale. To date no work has taken the position of this thesis to examine this corpus of miniature buildings that were used widely in tombs and temples as containers to provide coverings for coffins, and to hold images of deities, Buddhist relics and sutras, as seen in both archaeological discoveries and textual resources. The purpose of the thesis is to define this corpus and to consider its significance in the light of the functions that these tiny buildings fulfilled. This thesis proposes that these miniature buildings contributed a unique and indispensable part in presenting the positions of their owners in society. Made as containers, miniature buildings particularly emphasize decoration, which enabled viewers to make a connection with life-size buildings, in the ways of which they were fitted into an existing architectural hierarchied system in the deeply rooted tradition of the Liao and the Northern Song. The thesis makes considerable use of the concepts of reception, for the reaction of viewers to these miniature buildings defined also their reactions to the contents. Several types of analogies were achieved between full-scale buildings and miniature representations, as well as between their contents, which allowed specific types of interpretation of the miniature buildings as taking the roles of actual buildings and fictional structures. The thesis considers the use of miniature buildings as one of the ways in which complex ideas can be reinforced by material forms. A wider discussion on miniature models presents that the significance of miniaturization lies in the power of control that can be achieved by creating and using the miniature.
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Merlin, Monica. "The late Ming courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548-1604) : visual culture, gender and self-fashioning in the Nanjing pleasure quarter." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0da584bf-16fc-4372-8a1b-b97afd3bcf8a.
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Ma Shouzhen (1548-1604) was a cultured courtesan who lived in the famous pleasure quarter along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, the southern capital of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). She was talented in dance and music, painting and poetry, and surprisingly for her time, she was also a playwright. Although she was a celebrity of the prolific Nanjing cultural milieu and there is a good corpus of extant material by and about her, the particular contribution of Ma Shouzhen - her character and her work - have been marginalised, or even neglected, by the previous scholarship. This thesis is a cross-disciplinary study of Ma Shouzhen and is the first in-depth scholarly investigation into the entirety of her activities. It employs material and methods traditionally pertaining to the disciplines of sinology, history, art history, literary and drama studies. The thesis has a dual aim: first, to provide a nuanced understanding of the courtesan, her cultural production and social practice; second, to reclaim the agency and legacy of her character within the cultural milieu of late Ming Nanjing and beyond. These aims will be achieved through two main research objectives: (1) recovering and re-evaluating visual and written sources by and about the courtesan; (2) investigating those sources in order to comprehend her modes of self-representation and strategies of self-fashioning, analysed especially through the lens of gender. The main body of the thesis is composed of an introduction, five core chapters, and an epilogue; the chapters are structured so as to provide as complete a picture of Ma Shouzhen as possible. Chapter Two explores the space of the pleasure quarter, Ma’s biography and its entwinement within the complexities of the historical moment. Chapter Three focuses on her painting, Chapter Four considers her poetry, and Chapter Five explores her theatre practice; Chapter Six extends the investigation to focus on the construction of Ma’s historical character in later decades. In its content and aims, this thesis contributes to women’s and gender history, as well as to studies in visual culture and literature.
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Dai, Lianbin. "Books, reading, and knowledge in Ming China." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5800e2b8-024b-415f-ae6a-3793efd3b955.
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The art of reading and its application to knowledge acquisition and innovation by elites have been largely neglected by historians of print culture and reading in late imperial China (1368-1911). Unlike most studies, which are concerned more with the implied reader and individual reading experience, the present study assumes that the actual reader and the social, cultural and epistemic dimensions of reading practices are the central issues of a history of reading in China. That is, while the art of reading was internalized by the individual, his learning and application of it had social, cultural and epistemic features. At a time when secular reading practices in Renaissance England were informed by Erasmian principles, Ming literati, regardless of their different philosophical stances, were being trained in an art of reading proposed by Zhu Xi (1130-1200), whose Neo-Confucian philosophy had been esteemed as orthodox since the fourteenth century. Transformations and challenges in interpreting and applying his art did not hinder its general reception among elite readers. Its common employment determined the practitioner’s epistemic frame and manner of knowledge innovation. My dissertation consists of five chapters bracketed with an introduction and conclusion. Chapter One discusses Zhu’s theory of reading and the implied pattern of acquiring and innovating knowledge, based on a careful reading of his writings and conversations. Chapter Two describes the transmission of Zhu’s theory from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. During its transmission, Zhu’s art was reedited, rephrased, and even readapted by both government agencies and individual authors with different intentions and agendas. Chapter Three focuses on the reception of Zhu’s theory of reading by 1500 and argues that the moral end of reading eventually triumphed over the intellectual one in early Ming Confucian philosophy. Chapter Four explores the affinity of Ming philosophers of mind with Zhu’s theory in their reading concepts and practices from 1500 to the mid-seventeenth century. Despite their attempts to separate themselves intellectually from the Song tradition, Ming philosophers of mind followed Zhu’s rules for reading in their intellectual practices. Chapter Five outlines the reading habits and knowledge landscape based on a statistical survey of extant Ming imprints. Despite some deviations, the Ming reading habits and knowledge framework largely accorded with Zhu’s theory and its Ming adaptations. The continuity of reading habits from Zhu’s time to the seventeenth century, I conclude, inspires us to rethink the Ming apostasy from the Song tradition. The particularity of scholarly knowledge acquisition and innovation in Ming-Qing China by the eighteenth century was not invented by Ming-Qing scholars but anticipated by Zhu through his theory of reading. With respect to late imperial China, the history of reading, together with the history of knowledge, is yet to be fruitfully explored. With this dissertation, I hope to be able to make a contribution to the understanding of the East Asian orthodox habit of reading as represented by Zhu’s admirers. By placing my investigation in the context of the history of knowledge, I also hope to contribute to the understanding of the relationship of reading to the way that knowledge evolved in traditional China. Intellectual historians tended to consider the Ming Confucian tradition as having broken off from the Cheng-Zhu tradition, but at least in reading habits and practices Ming elite readers perpetuated Zhu’s theory of reading and the knowledge framework it implied.
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Kulykivska, Mariia. "President of Crimea. Constitution : Author(s) Autonomous Republic of Xena-Maria." Thesis, Konstfack, Institutionen för Konst (K), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:konstfack:diva-7252.
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In this essay, two voices are heared, from two women: a certain artist Xena, who talks about her life and its dramas, interwoven with her own experiences from her diaries; and the voice of Maria, who analyzes Xena's life story and her art, diffracted through the prim of the history of 21stC art. Art the outset, "President of Crimea. Constitution", announces its author as Xena-Maria; but it is not yet clear whether the author is one person or two, nor who they are. Is it Maria who writes here, or Xena, or both? Or are they one and the same person? But at the end of the story, which is told rather in a form of certain legends and fairy tales, Maria and Xena turn into one whole, and meaningfully put an ellipsis after the words "to be continued". This reception was specially intended by the artist Maria Kulikovska, author of this essay, in order to protect both herself and the reader from possible persecutions by migration services and goverment officials of various countries, especially Russia. Also, for her it is an opportunity to step aside and analyze her own life and art form a third person, about which, perhaps, a fictional character from her childhood talks - a sensible step for Maria Kulikovska. The step that her creative language conceptually continues is to replicate casts of her own body and establish them in different spaces and contexts. So she fairly confuses the viewer as to where is the truth, and where is fiction; where is herself, and where is her clone - only now, here, she has applied the same trick in her text. This essay tells a very personal story of the life of a human body, a migrant woman in forced relocation, displacements, alienation and persecutions for her views on life and the conduct of society, and for her moral values expressed throught architecture, sculpture, drawings, performances, actions and public statements. Through the prism of geopolitical upheavals, it tells the artist's own story: How her analysis of own body position and boundaries helped her overcome stigma regarding the body of a woman from Eastern Europe, and how art can save and redeem in an unending inner drama.
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Gelburd, Gail. "Far Eastern philosophical influences on environmental art, 1967- 1987." 1988. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/30866862.html.
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