First and foremost, I want to thank Professor Roy Ascott for his visions of technoetic art, which affects and reflects my life in more ways than I can express. Despite my quirky and unconventional ways, his ability to transcend the visible world allowed him to embrace me in the Planetary Collegium, support me in the process of growing into academia, and developing this research. I am also thankful for the faculty and staff at the University of Plymouth and my colleagues at the Planetary Collegium who challenged and supported me in this pursue. I am especially thankful for Professors Jane Grant (second supervisor) and Mike Philips and for their insightful critiques in the composite sessions. I am grateful to DTC Administrators Mandy Macdonald,Tim Batchelor, and Sarah Carney for their kind guidance through the bureaucratic territories of academia; and for my colleagues at the Planetary Collegium, especially Cristina Miranda de Almeida, Pier Luigi Capucci, Kathrine Elizabeth Lorena Johansson, Katerina Karoussos, Linus Lancaster, Haytham Nawar, Jennifer Kanary Nikolava, Clarissa Ribeiro, Pam Payne, Luiza Paraguai and Julieta Cristina Aguilera-Rodríguez, for their caring and ongoing feedback and support, which made me feel connected to the Planetary Collegium despite the distance of space and time.

I am eternally grateful for Professor Søren Brier and his Cybersemiotics framework, and for his guidance, advisement, knowledge, many insightful suggestions, patient exchanges and discussions lighting the path of this research; his trust in appointing me as art and web editor for Cybernetics and Human Knowing journal; and for the friendship developed between us and our families.

I am extremely grateful for Victoria Vesna, UCLA ArtSci Center Director, for her amazing contributions and efforts in closing the gap between art and science, her many inspiring artsci projects, and for investing in me as a collaborator in different projects. I am also very thankful for her caring friendship.

I am very thankful for the National Endowment for the Humanities and Roosevelt University for funding a two-year interdisciplinary collaborative research project with Professors Christopher Reed and Richard Courage, who trusted me with the task of developing the meta-environment, which also fed my research.

I also want to thank SUNY Westchester Community College Federation of Teachers (WCCFT) for their yearly faculty development support, which helped me attend some of the conferences.

I am grateful to The Arts Westchester and Patricia Miranda for giving me a space to share Mixing Realities (2014), which allowed me to develop most of the case study observation for this project.

I am thankful for Elham Khattab, founder of Di-Egy Fest, and for the generous grant award to attend the first Digital arts festival in Egypt in 2013.

I am also very grateful for Jeanette Bopry for going beyond the duty of editing this dissertation and mentoring me on APA format guidelines and for reading my dissertation so closely and pushing my thinking.

I also want to thank my close friends and colleagues, and the late Thomas Kool for their friendship, motivation, and support.

To my students who continually inspire me to be open to new ideas and ways of seeing the world.

Lastly but not least I want to thank my family:

My husband, Richard Courage, for challenging me, supporting me, teaching me to write, editing my texts, providing me with nourishing love and financial support, and enduring the many tasks involved in developing this dissertation.

My children and step-children, daughters-in law, sisters and brothers-in-law, my nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, cousins and close friends for supporting me and withstanding my craziness and absence from their lives during this long journey.