Digital Commons Network^™

Notes In Improvisation : Spatializing Black Identity Through Music, Esther Akintoye

Masters Theses

The self-creation of Black spaces in America has been a form of resistance and reclamation, as well as a way to forge an identity and make room for community. This thesis argues for a use of improvisational African American music as a tool to create space. Additionally, through research and a design intervention, this thesis seeks to demonstrate how spatial creation within the framework of music and musical improvisation work as ways to expand, solidify and celebrate identity within Black and African- identifying people in America.

Fluid and improvisational techniques found in Black musical styles and genres such as jazz …

A Wavering Line, Ginger Gordon

Masters Theses

Someone once told me it only takes a difference of ten degrees in temperature to change the entire course of the day.

I work with objects in collaboration with space, focusing on the intangible meeting point between visibility and invisibility.

Propelled by coincidence and temporal shifts, the transitory, the fragmented, and the found are all welcome, as are the methodologies of the Surrealists and Cubists. Born from a combination of fortuity and planning, curated fragment collages coalesce to represent acts of chance in three dimensions. Balanced forms weave and sway as small portholes direct a view. Form follows chance.

Regenerative Residences: Shrinking Stress Levels In The Sky, Peter De Lande Long

Masters Theses

Issues of overcrowding and overstimulation plague urban environments, which exacerbate social isolation and, in turn, heighten city dwellers’ levels of stress and anxiety. How can architecture mediate stimuli to be positively conducive to mood, behavior, and overall health? Given that social isolation is an intrinsically spatial issue that design can address, this thesis proposes a small-scale community living model with the intent of improving mental health and clarity for a user group of young, mentally vulnerable professionals in New York City.

16 E 16th Street becomes the architectural framework for addressing these issues. Moving away from the capitalistic endeavor of …

Revolution Of Steam Education: The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Art Education (Steam) In Elementary Education, Suyu Chen

Masters Theses

This thesis discusses how interdisciplinary art education benefits young children from different aspects, including gender bias in disciplines, developing creativity and imagination, motivating children to engage the class and improving their efficiency of studying. Through an interview with a STEAM educator and my own curriculum development, I show some examples of what STEAM can look like in the elementary class. I demonstrate that there is evidence showing that STEAM education can create an engaging learning environment for young children. When STEAM projects are introduced, children are more focused and interested in classroom activities when compared to STEM projects alone.

Practice Makes Perfect : Finding Inspiration In Art Education, Mercedes Rose Crespo

Masters Theses

Divergences in art are symbolic of the complexities of life. When the trajectory of our lives change so does our work. This thesis project is a reflection of the art making process and how it is affected by the influence the arts has on our lives. Seeking artistic inspirations led me to Rhode Island where there is creativity in everything from the coffee shop atmosphere to the museums. This is a showcasing of my experience during my course of study at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Master of Arts in Art + Design Education program. Through photographic inquiry and …

Artful Healing: Exploring Creative Expression And Play In Children's Hospitals, Phoebe Strobino

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the role and accessibility of creative expression and play in children’s hospitals, and the impact these ideas have on patients. I explored these ideas through teaching four lessons at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Two of these lessons were taught in group sessions, and two were taught in one-on-one sessions, with participants ranging in age. Following an introduction to each lesson, I provide the plan itself along with general observations and reflections on teaching. Due to the nature of the setting, information is kept purposefully broad throughout my observations in order to respect the anonymity …

Contemporary Eco Theory In Art Education: Field Notes And Desire Paths, Margaret K. Mccullough

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation into patterns and overlaps of three critical elements in our world, art, nature, and education. Integral to this investigation and the contributions to humanity of these three are the accurate depiction of specific realities, upon which Science and the majority of global citizens agree, aesthetic sensibility, as well as beneficent solutions (i.e. those which do no harm.) Together we will examine the intersection of subjects, what they combine to achieve. We will consider how, taught and learned in unison, they may take on a position of greater prominence in efforts to solve real world problems. …

Making Space : Creative Learners, Digital Spaces, And The Relationships Between Them, Natalia Spritzer

Masters Theses

This thesis is an inquiry into the growing prevalence of digital learning environments or digital spaces in order to assess the impact of leveraging these spaces on learners' creative identities. What is being examined in particular are web-folios or personal websites (digital spaces), the interactions that learners have with these environments, and how it infers to the potential of digital space as a medium for a variety of advancements. Through qualitative analysis in the form of observations, interviews, and surveys done throughout a collaborative research workshop, this thesis speculates that digital space can be utilized as a means for providing …

Deconstruct The Center: Making Space For The Voices In The Margins, Taylor Varnado

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the implementation of culturally relevant/responsive teaching within the art classroom. The question that guided the research was: How can art teachers incorporate culturally relevant teaching into their curriculum to support equity and inclusion within the educational setting? In order to answer this question, I examined the current state of implementation through interviews, surveys, a literature review, work-based experiences, and classroom observations. The researcher determined a need for additional resources and a pathway for implementation through this examination.

A Collision Of Technology And Art Learning, Feifei Shen

Masters Theses

This research thesis investigates the integration of technological tools into the curriculum and pedagogy of art education. By focusing explicitly on art education outside of school, it examines how technological tools expand the art learning possibilities for children and youth, enrich their art learning experiences in balance and connection with traditional arts media as well as strengthen engagement for those digital natives. Meanwhile, this research aims to contribute to a current understanding of technology integration into art curriculum and pedagogy for children and youth through literature reviews and research projects using a variety of methodologies, and then to determine what …

Creative Changemaking : Designing Is Teaching, Kaitlyn Cirielli

Masters Theses

What this is is a candid and current interpretation of thoughts and findings from the collection of resources I was fortunate enough to have encountered throughout my time here. Some of these writings are written specifically for artists, some for arts educators, some for designers and activists, and even some on psychotherapy.

All these topics bouncing off each other, as I read them with the same questions, generated their own unique sentiment. I feel like I’m just beginning to understand what this is, and will share as best I can what I do understand so far.

There is still so …

The Subconscious As Politics: An Inquiry Of Collaborative Design Education Through Radical Speculation, Nina Jun Yuchi

Masters Theses

For two years, I’ve been keeping a dream journal in which I record anything I can remember as soon as I wake up. The pages have slowly filled up with scrawls and doodles and fragmented memoirs of a life that doesn’t even seem like mine and yet, every dream I can vividly remember feels like a portal into an alternate dimension in which my subconscious reality is as tangible as my conscious one.

Eventually, dreaming became a key method in my research to seek out and materialize alternative worlds. It became the object of my obsessive interest in visualizing speculative …

The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Art Teaching: Reflections On Chinese K-12 Art Education, Shixin Zhou

Masters Theses

Central to this thesis investigation is the premise that interdisciplinary art is important for children and youth, especially in the context of Chinese art education. Designed to investigate a movement in art education beyond traditional boundaries, this investigation manifests in four stages of research and concludes with a teaching philosophy for the Chinese school system.

First, the author explores the current state of traditional art classes in China, along with the issues and challenges faced by current art educators. Second, with the objective of creating a positive model built on clear conceptual and practical tools, art integration and interdisciplinary art …

Care, Inclusivity, And Accessibility In Glass Art Education, Bridget Provan

Masters Theses

In glass art education care, inclusivity, and accessibility have been recurring themes that have kept arising in my journey. Specifically, why are they absent? As an art educator, I feel it is important to support and educate all students and their entire being. As an art student when I received any care I felt it was extraordinary but, in reflection, I feel it should be the minimum an educator provides. In my thesis I explore the importance of care, inclusivity, and accessibility in glass education and how to incorporate all three into multiple educational settings. This thesis is a culmination …

That Mirror Again, Kyros Barton

Masters Theses

That Mirror Again is a summary of experiences, used to pose questions about self-hood through technological metaphor and theory. Its memories are disjointed, separate, and removed from time, and are an honest attempt to recenter an identity before the end of formal education. The themes of each section, Aground, Tilt, and Threshold, are presented as isolated definitions that set the mood for the writing before it is introduced. Referencing information age technology, invoking ancient deities in prose, and brushing against the fur of monster-hood, the text holds the memory it carries softly and offers it to the reader.

Slow Puzzle, Tzyy Yi Young

Masters Theses

One may argue that we all observe. It is this finely tuned capacity that allows designers to read context and to identify patterns. Since I was a child, I’ve been a carefully tuned explorer of the world, observing the world around me. Yet as a designer, I take this observational impulse to another level by recording my observations and then translating these impressions into form. What is seen, felt, and gathered is then edited, nuanced, and reformed. This act of translation becomes a slow puzzle as I look for cues, acknowledge every facet, and conceive of forms in such a …

In This Form, Together, Elana Shvalbe

Masters Theses

Most of my memories consist of lively dinner parties. Hands moving in every direction when the food is brought out. The piano bench for the kids to sit on, the fold out table necessary to fit everyone around the meal, and always endless stacks of plates. These experiences and traditions were curated by my heritage and have a strong presence in the work I design. I intend to understand and create interlocking relationships of care, where ritual and romance lead the way to form a community; designing and making furniture and objects that reassert hospitality within the home.

Hospitality is …

I Don't Quite Remember It That Way, Margaret Lindon

Masters Theses

In the fall of 2020, during the first week of graduate school, I crashed on my road bike and suffered a big-time concussion. Like, lost-consciousness-and-forgot-the-whole-day kinda big. I became obsessed with this permanent memory deletion. Trying to remember the event was like trying to remember the first time I saw the color blue. Impossible without supplementary data or second-person observation.

Memory recall can operate like a game of telephone. When we remember something, we’re really just remembering the last time we remembered it. We accrue subtle adjustments to our memories that result in gradual omissions and distillations.

This process lost …

Toona Sinensis 桃花心木, Li Yang

Masters Theses

This thesis is my journey as an artist and art educator in search of creativity through the lens of sustainability, which may reveal the existence of questions one wonders about but does not provide a specific answer or solution to this within a limited time frame. Through this inquiry, questions are repeatedly asked: What is the definition of art? If art and education have a tremendous impact on human thought and perception, do they point people in the right direction when confronted with global issues such as cultural and natural sustainability? If so, what is the essential difference between art …

What The Water Says As It Runs, Jeanette Cosentini

Masters Theses

During the last two years, I have been examining the importance of vulnerability, memory and empowerment within my work as it relates to archival silence. The archive is presumed to be an objective record but what is chosen and discarded is an inherently political act. When there is archival silence, what then becomes missing from our collective histories? My exploration has spread across many forms of media, including sound, video, textiles, sculpture and writing . I have sought to understand the ways that these different mediums embody sentiment and concept, while establishing an open-ended record within which others can explore …

Wanderer, Yuhan Ma

Masters Theses

My thesis writings include four chapters. It begins by my self-reflection, an introduction to my liminal space and how it has become a spiritual endeavor. Building on that, the second chapter Encounters elaborates on my childhood memory; and the following two, the Non-resident alien, A Sanctuary, respectively expresses my recent concerns or situations that have greatly affected my perceptions, and a mythological idea of sanctuary that can keep me away from the chaos. These chapters have been influenced by the eastern ideology icons, such as Buddhism and the culture of reclusion. They have examined a process of me dissecting …

Treeing: What Remains Of A Pilgrim, Sichen Liu

Masters Theses

Myths and legends have existed since the start of human civilization, but now we can only imagine a world full of wonders from our ancestor’s scripts. What if we could go back to the age of myths and magic? Would we see things differently?

In Treeing: What Remains of a Pilgrim, I propose a fictional book with 15 short myths of humans transformed into trees. The stories combine my own imagination with inspiration from real mythologies. In the annotations of each story, an unnamed person is following the myths as guidance and manuals, one by one, trying to bring them …

Wall, Jazzmynn Chang Hong

Masters Theses

The WALL is a mosaic-style book with a collection of personal anecdotes and reflections. Traceback from the earliest memory of mine, the instinctive exploration of a sheltered structure, to my recent art practices exploring the spatial perception when the boundary breaks. Each chapter, as I grow older, unfolds my progressive encounter and interpretation of the spatial boundaries.

As the book titled the WALL, its form references a traditional Chinese partition structure - the folding screen. It is not only an aesthetic manifestation, the screens are usually decorated with calligraphies or paintings, it also has a practical purpose as a spatial …

Everything Comes Full Circle, Lilan Yang

Masters Theses

Following Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984) filming locations from Houston, Texas to Los Angeles, California, I use a 16mm Bolex camera to capture the vastness of the American West. The footage draws me to reminisce about snippets of my everyday life. I contemplate how we perceive the world through analog optical apparatuses and how memories are multidimensional yet fragile. Our recollections of people and places can be distorted, unrecognizable, and fictitious. These memories would eventually diminish with the passing of time. By converting the filmmaking back and forth between analog and digital filmmaking, with the loss of information during the …

Generative Image Systems And Emergent Play, Travess Smalley

Masters Theses

Generative Image Systems and Emergent Play is a collection of writings around generative creative processes and the emergent outcomes that can develop from simple systems. The generative systems I utilize in my practice are explored in this writing through the lenses of Instructional Art, Generative Art, Chance and Randomness, the Xerox, Computer Programming, and Emergent Play in games. These texts are a statement about my computational art practice and research, and they explore what it means to create with generative systems inside of other designer’s programs.

Abyss Without Vertigo, Jack Madden

Masters Theses

Science has difficulty changing the way we think because it takes us beyond our natural perception. To scales and phenomena that we are unaccustomed to, that are instinctively inhuman.

To fundamentally change the philosophy of our species there needs to be a bridge or, more presciently, an emergency ladder for the human mind to science.

As we are inclined to logic yet inherently emotional, the importance of the scientific cannot be understood using science alone.

Significance must be felt, feelings are the foundation of art, and validation the consequence of the artifact.

Embedded Are The Embers Of Echoes, Sarah Jane Cribbs

Masters Theses

What is a haunted house? What makes it haunted? What makes it a house?

I grew up in northern Appalachia. I sat in the back seat of my father’s car for trips from the Eastern foothills to the Western foothills of Pennsylvania mountains to visit my grandmother.

When my perception of the world grew larger as I did too, I began to hide my Appalachian identity. This ended as I began my practice, beginning with a realtime performance on artificial intelligence and queerness. Art practice opened up the possibility of critical play, a method of criticism that focuses on a …

Designing Ecotones : Implementing Regenerative Patches In Urban Environments For Transdisciplinary And Transcultural Creativity-Based Education, Cristiane Marie Caro

Masters Theses

This thesis has been written to emphasize the educational, social, political and environmental potentials of collectively designed regenerative ecosystems. It aims to encourage students and educators to transform disturbed null patches in urban environments to amplify the scope of the students’ education by simultaneously developing a social ecosystem and cultivating environmental sensibility. I outline the formation of the Regenerative Earth Collective, a student-run group aiming to address topics of sustainability at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and their work to design, implement and maintain groundwork for hands-on, experiential learning. I illustrate the Plot (manifested as a student-run community …

Rebuilding Collective Effervescence : A "Ballroom" For Post-Pandemic Revelry, Di Ma

Masters Theses

Collective Effervescence is an event that can make a community or a society come together and simultaneously communicate regarding the same thought, or participate in the same action. Such desire happened during the post- World War I period, when people were freed from the depression of war and sought pure and positive happiness, which was also what society needed. Nowadays in the post-pandemic recovery, the public, after suffering from and getting used to isolation and social distancing, has an unexpected desire for physical communications, but still fear to gather psychologically. This reaction can be seen as a “post-traumatic stress disorder” …

Re:Connection: Exercises In Unplugging And Mindfully Reconnecting, E. J. Roseman

Masters Theses

How can architecture encourage focused attention and mindfulness in an increasingly distracted and distractible world? As a primary means of connectivity in the 21st century, smartphones and social media have provided unparalleled efficiencies, connectivity and entertainment. However, constant engagement with richly-pixelated virtual worlds has also brought about mass addiction to devices as college students log more compulsive “screen time” than ever before. Mental health issues such as crippling anxiety, diminished attention spans, and unhappiness, are on the rise as students disconnect from the physical world and are consumed by their virtual one.

This thesis is comprised of a series of …