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    The nation imagined : a critical study of nationhood and identity through the cover art of Indian speculative literature : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-11-26) Krishnamurthy, Nikite
    Over the past decade (2013–2023), India, the largest democracy in the world, has experienced a pronounced rise in religious nationalism, marked by its entrenchment in mainstream media, visual culture, and political rhetoric. This thesis examines the role of popular visual culture in shaping ideas of nationhood by focusing on the book cover art of Indian Speculative and Fantasy Fiction (ISFF). It argues that ISFF genre art functions as a visual discourse that not only mirrors but actively constructs and contests dominant narratives of Indian identity. Drawing upon Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics of politics and Roland Barthes’ semiotics, this study demonstrates how ISFF book covers encode visual themes—such as hyper-masculine portrayals of Hindu warrior-heroes, mythological iconography, and saffronised aesthetics—that reinforce nationalist myths of a unified, Hindu-centric “imagined community”. Through detailed visual analysis, the thesis reveals the ideological significance of these representations, exposing how they contribute to exclusionary conceptions of Indianness while simultaneously providing a platform to challenge hegemonic narratives. Specifically, it identifies tensions between religious nationalism, caste hierarchies, and the commodification of mythology in India’s contemporary political landscape. By situating these visual motifs within India’s broader visual and political history, the research highlights their capacity to naturalise historical revisionism and propagate militant masculinities tied to Hindu nationalist ideologies. This thesis makes an original contribution to the interdisciplinary study of visual culture and politics by elucidating how genre-specific visual discourse in ISFF reflects, mediates, and complicates contemporary identity politics in India. It offers a critical lens through which to understand how popular culture operates as an ideological apparatus that negotiates complex socio-political narratives within a globalising and increasingly polarised society.
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    Telling the market story through organic information interaction design and broadcast media : submitted to the College of Creative Arts as requirement for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, 2007
    (Massey University, 2007) Harvey, James Alex
    Interaction Design, which is essentially story-creating and telling, is at once both and ancient art and a new technology. Media have always effected the telling of stories and the creation of experiences. (Shedroff, N., 1994, p. 2) Advances with visual representations within broadcast design have been applied to areas such as weather simulations, sporting events, and historical reconstruction's. However, financial market information presentation is fairly uniform in television news broadcasting, showing little progression in pace with other news information catego­ries. While stock market news segments make limited use of supporting graphics, addi­ tional information that may assist the viewer is filtered out, effecting viewers interest, understanding and decision making process often associated with market related stories. Research to date has been limited to single visualisations. There has been little re­search into the use of multiple information views that are composed to support news presentations. People use many different information sources on a daily basis. News sources are used to stay informed about events, to some sources, viewer evaluation of informa­tion is a part of that process. News information and other data commodity sources are now more accessible, allowing designers to look at ways of transforming them into new or improved information services. This research explores the display of stock market information by looking at ap­propriate media delivery methods combined with Organic Information Interaction Design to enhance information relationships. Organic Design and Information Inter­action Design 1 principles are combined. This denotes a 'living' relationship between elements, incorporating hierarchy principles with enhanced information delivery and user experiences. Four themes are tied together through the use of a conceptual prototype. [FROM INTRO]
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    The decoding of the editorial cartoon: a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, Education Department, Massey University
    (Massey University, 1992) Winter, Mark
    The cartoon is increasingly becoming an educational tool. It is used extensively at School Certificate and University Entrance level in New Zealand secondary schools to not only communicate ideas, but also to analyse how those ideas are translated to the reader. For this study I have concentrated on the use of the editorial cartoon for the fifth form English syllabus and, in particular, the interpretation of the static image in the School Certificate examination. My research design is based on a similar study by Dr LeRoy Carl which he completed at Syracuse University's School of Journalism, and entitled Meanings Evoked in Population Groups by Editorial Cartoons. 1) CARL, LeRoy M. (1968) Editorial Cartoons Fail to Reach Many Readers, Journalism Quarterly 45, pp 533-535 Dr Carl's research concluded that very few readers of the cartoon actually understood the intended message. His study best sums up the problem of people misinterpreting the cartoon and its importance to this area of educational research. Dr Carl's 600 page thesis concludes that many forces are at work within individuals' scrambling of the messages, which may not always be clearly sent by the cartoonists in the first place. The assumption has been made by many that editorial cartoons are easy to understand - easier than the written word. Some of the cartoonists quoted in Carl's study have indicated complete unawareness of the communication barriers between them and their public. The interpretation of the cartoons used in the School Certificate examination and the resulting mark allocation are based on the Chief Examiner's decoding, (he also sets the questions). He and his panel do not contact the cartoonist for his or her intended meaning. Therefore the basis for assessment may be found on false grounds. Considering Dr Carl's study, it seems that misinterpretation of the cartoonist's intentions is a high possibility. It would appear to me to be more appropriate to use the cartoonists' intended message as a basis for assessing the School Certificate paper, rather than the interpretation of non-related people. With this in mind, I have selected four editorial cartoons-each with a different style and context. Four fifth form classes at James Hargest High School in Invercargill were also selected as my sample group, which comprised of two high band groups and two low band groups (based on academic achievement). One high band and one low band group were given a general lesson in cartoon cognition including ways of dissecting the cartoon in order to decode it. I used the bombing of the "Rainbow Warrior" in Auckland Harbour as a focus and then visually demonstrated how a number of New Zealand cartoonists interpreted that 1985 event. A questionnaire was then completed by all four classes on each of the four cartoons and the answers were compared with those supplied by the cartoonists themselves. My initial tentative theory was partly based on Dr Carl's conclusions to his study and partly on my own personal experience as a cartoonist. A number of variables occur when a reader decodes a cartoon and, therefore, is subject to misinterpretation depending upon those variables. Apart from one student scoring a possible five on one of the cartoons, noone was in complete agreement with any of the cartoonists' intended messages. As expected, students in the higher academic groups were able to interpret the cartoonists' intended messages better than those students from the lower academic groups. A large percentage of the high band students were in partial agreement with the intended message. By comparison, the greater percentage of low band students were in complete disagreement with the cartoonists' intentions. These generalisations are applicable to three out of the four cartoons, with only Trace Hodgson's (Cartoon #3) image being the exception. In all four sample groups, very few students achieved a high score, and the larger percentage of all scores was two or below
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    Utopian ingredients : an exegesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University College of Creative Arts, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Stowers, Kieran
    A Utopia is a symbolic better world, an imagined future society (Portolano, 2012, p119). Visual Communication Design is able to bring food and people to the table of discussion about themselves, New Zealand’s history, its future and what values or principles should guide New Zealand society in the 21st Century. Food is a great conduit for any community engagement and plays a central role in New Zealand society as a catalyst for communion – anywhere from the family to fale, from the marae to Parliament and beyond. Utopian Ingredients is a designed potluck dinner party toolkit. By adapting tikanga Maori engagement principles, Western dinner customs and incorporating Pasifika design elements, the unique functional quality of the toolkit is to augment national identity and investigate what values should shape the future of New Zealand and explore what place it holds in the world. Currently, a governmental review of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements examines the possibility of drafting a single codified constitution, with a preamble that outlines the core tenets and characteristics that guide our society. Using food as a conduit for community engagement, the designed dinner set questions, provokes, engages and guides participants to establish their own preamble concepts by sharing memories, feelings, thoughts, beliefs and desires they hold. As New Zealand’s increasingly diverse population grows, Utopian Ingredients facilitates robust discussion about how and what New Zealand’s constitutional preamble could express both visually and experientially. The transaction of values can be a messy business – however, civic ompetencies are enhanced when participants are encouraged to ‘play with their food’ and engage with difficult and often emotionally undeclared values, while collaborating to establish multiple enduring constitutional preambles that imaginatively depict participant’s aspirations for New Zealand’s future and identity.
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    Drawing from experience : visual modality in historic narrative illustration : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Institute of Communication Design, College of Creative Arts, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Hunkin, Mathew
    This research investigates critical methods for approaching aesthetic design decisions in illustration. As a method of communication illustration qualifies its subjects through aesthetic choices, or modalities. The qualifying nature of these modalities can affect communication in an image and this research seeks an explicit understanding of how this communication occurs. This practice-based research project employs two aesthetic extremes, line and tone, in the creation of four historic visual narratives designed to fill visual gaps in the history of 1 Commando Fiji Guerillas. Line and tone are tendered as a means of visually negotiating the informing records of the Fiji Commando experience, records characterised by both conflict and absence. Can these disparate, conflicting, yet necessary records of experience be visually acknowledged in an illustrated expansion of the Fiji Commando's visual history? This position serves as the point of departure for research. An understanding of the communicative properties of line and tone is followed by investigation into their relationship to the propositions they represent, with initial research suggesting that modalities reflect the social contexts from which they encode. This relationship implied a means to negotiate the historic records necessary in a contemporary visual articulation of the Fiji Commando experience through the strategic use of aesthetic modalities to acknowledge the nature of informing source material. This practice-based approach to research allowed the consolidation of both the possible and the probable in the creation of a new visual, historic text, while revealing analytical approaches to aesthetic choice.
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    Public prototyping : a participatory design process exploring the application of co-creative sketching : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Institute of Communication Design, College of Creative Arts, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Pittar, Luke
    The objective of this research is to demonstrate that co-creative sketching as a part of the participatory process has the potential to support the developmental nature of a visual communication tool used to promote the exchange of experience. The tool is intended to create an informative hub that influences a travellers experience of a location. Ethnographic research as reflective sketching was conducted in the Tongariro National Park. Within this setting reflective sketching located the kitchen and common area of traveller specific accommodation as an ideal collaborative environment to conduct participatory design research. In this collaborative environment snowboarders and skiers who are aged between 20-30 years are identified as the target audience. This specific audience participated in co-creative sessions throughout the design process, resulting in the participatory design of the tool. The design aim of the visual communication tool was to promote the exchange of experience between snowboarders and skiers about a specific location. This was achieved by adapting generative tools made up of a visual language which supported the word of mouth exchange and individual expression. The exchange of experiences was facilitated by co-creative sketching with the visual language during a state of play. Playful co-creative sketching supported word of mouth dialogue between the snowboarders and skiers in a way that co-created an informative visual representation of the dialogue or contextmap. The resulting contextmap represented an image for experience which was beyond an individuals conception and made individuals tacit-knowledge accessible to audiences within and outside the moment of exchange, creating an informative hub which influenced the specific audiences view of experience for a location. An action research methodology is used during the course of this research, informed by the approaches of co-creation, context-mapping and generative tools. These approaches constructed a theoretical framework for the participatory development and co-creative sketching of the communication tool. This supportive thesis discusses the context, the theoretical concepts and provides an in depth account on the research through design process; the week-by-week participatory process undertaken to develop the visual communication tool.