Digital Commons Network^™

The Foundlings, Nadia Adams

Theses

The Foundlings is an exploration of memory and absence through the use of found objects and photographs. In this thesis, memory is understood through the use of the domestic space and the objects found within. The relationship of photography to memory is an integral part of this work. Specifically in the use of found and constructed imagery as related to the family album. The Foundlings uses sculpture, painting, photography, and projection to understand the place of the individual in both a contemporary and historical context.

Reconstructed Memories, Sarah Vaughn

Theses

The Beginning is the End of the Piece You Started With:

I want to explore the use of visual narrative to convey the breadth of emotion within a moment. The scenes I create are snapshots of stories whose roots are based in my own memories. These pieces from my mind are usually partial and fleeting, recalled as if viewing my own life from a third person perspective. Primarily through the use of advanced methods in kiln forming glass, the work will create a three dimensional illustration of these experiences.

The Art of Reconstruction:

I think about life, what I am …

Warp & Weft, Maggie Pinke

Theses

There are two distinct directional strands used in weaving, the warp and the weft. Weaving functions as a rich metaphor for language and story telling, stretching across time and cultures. Like both photography and spoken language, it contains an assumption of memory and the ephemeral. Cloth wears thin with use, while images on paper, though temporarily captured, fade with time, and voices disappear once spoken. Building a body of work that examines created and recovered experience through text and image has allowed me to take the necessary steps backward and discover links between events and places previously unexplored.

I Could Go With You., Michelle Bablitz

Theses

I could go with you. is a first-person account of the emotional aftermath following a specific traumatic event in one individual's life, examined through image and word. The narrator's internal struggle is delineated through retrospective sentiments and a fractured chronology. Text and image act as partners in I could go with you., challenging the nature of story telling, as well as the credibility of memory. This disjointed narrative mirrors how memory and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder function in the human psyche following an overwhelmingly shocking or painful experience.

At A Rate Of Speed, Justin Fondrie

Theses

I am investigating events linked to car crashes through site-specific locations and pre-existing materials. In 2007, I was involved in a car crash that left me with temporary memory loss. Between the years of 2008 and 2012, several people I knew from my hometown of East Troy, Wisconsin, lost their lives in car accidents. The youngest victim was seventeen and the oldest was twenty-six. In this thesis publication, two bodies of work based on the autobiographical and the biographical are interwoven into an interpretation about memory and loss.

Portraits that appear to be distorted by bright light and lens blur …

An Examination Of Memory In Children With Inattention, Hyperactivity, And Depressive Symptoms, Jordan Marie Constance

Theses

The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationships between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, depression, and memory impairment in children. It was hypothesized that level of inattention would negatively correlated with performance on measures of visual-spatial short-term memory and verbal memory. Children with greater levels of depressive symptoms were predicted to perform more poorly than less depressed peers on effortful measures of verbal and visual short-term memory, measures of verbal working memory, and measures of verbal long-term memory recall. Results indicated that impaired performance on one measure of visual-spatial short-term memory was related to increased levels of inattention and depression. …

Designing The Tangible Experience Of Interactive Memories, Miguel Angel Cardona Jr

Theses

The process for memory keeping in the digital age has become easier, immediate, and more efficient thanks to the advent of sophisticated pocket-sized toolsets that can capture everyday experiences.

Consumer-level photo and video recording products are introduced regularly and boast more fidelity, faster speeds, and greater control than their predecessors. More often than not, these expanding feature sets do not properly serve all of their users' needs.

While the technology exists to allow for a near-complete record of one's life to be made through the use of sensors and storage media, problems involve how best to meaningfully learn from and …

The Effect Of Interruptions On Prospective Memory In The Emergency Department, Kate Walders

Theses

Using the activation goal memory framework, this study categorized 256 separate emergency department interruptions in a large research hospital setting. Prior to and following their shift, twelve physicians completed a semi-structured qualitative survey about their experiences with, and perceptions of, interruptions at work. During their shift, these physicians were shadowed and the interruptions they experienced were documented. Frequencies of four types of interruptions were tallied: Direct reminders, indirect reminders, memory lapses and no reported memory change. Memory events were a significant proportion of interruptions (47%). Direct reminders comprised the largest majority, followed by memory lapses, indirect reminders and combination memory …

Presence Within Absence, Jennifer Halvorson

Theses

Your grandparents' and parents' values do mark you and continue to mark you as you grow older, cause I think of a lot of things that, oh, I wouldn't do that because grandpa wouldn't do that. He was the neatest thing since sliced bread, as far as I was concerned. Marion Kesner This remark was made by my grandmother in the summer of 2009. It was a closing statement to one of our many discussions revolving around her history. The conversation led me to realize that the connection to the past contributes deeply to our current identity. Through time and …

Project: Love Yours, Wei Hsiao

Theses

Project: Love Yours is a graduate thesis project that examined the importance of emotional attachments to product longevity in the context of problems where our material culture is distant and disposable. Through research memory was identified as an influential factor in attachment formation. By incorporating the philosophical concept of imperfection as a design strategy to stimulate the process of memory building, three concept solutions were developed. The design implementation in four product prototypes proves to be successful in encouraging memories to grow within each product. As ownership continues over the years, we can anticipate memories to accumulate and build up …

The Imagined Collection, A Story, Nancy Knapik

Theses

Music was the creative inspiration that provided the underlying rhythm to this body of work. It was guided by the concept of ethereal sound materializing into tangible found objects whose attributes included the ability to visually invoke the fleeting emotional memories of the listening experience. This written thesis serves to discuss the philosophies and aesthetic choices these conceptual themes prompted while making the work. It includes an artistic exploration of the fascinating nature of collection and the association between art and memory. The oral defense of the work brought to light the need to address the distinction between the maker …

Does Increasing Metacognitive Awareness Alleviate Retrieval-Induced Forgetting Effects, Lauren W. Jones

Theses

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Trauma, Amber Johnston

Theses

This thesis delves into the psyche of a survivor of sexual molestation, exploring defense mechanisms, PTSD, and elusive memory in an audio and visual context. Three photographic gazes appear in this work, the dissociative gaze, the experiential gaze and the metaphoric gaze. These gazes are shown in the series In Memory of Trauma which consists of ten large Photographic prints on the gallery wall. Disarticulation is a book of images that discuss the dissociation between mind and body happening after a traumatic experience. There is also a confrontational sound installation, Confessional, that speaks to denial and self-hatred. Work by artists …

Private Viewing, Ryan Barone

Theses

This thesis explores my birthplace and hometown of Gloversville, New York, using loss as a primary theme. Issues related to memory and the photographic medium such as the trace and latent image are investigated through a range of interdisciplinary projects. The thesis also addresses the language of early Conceptualism, often utilizing systematic methodologies and employing common materials as a means of addressing amateur uses of the photographic image. Photographic production and circulation are interrogated on a consumer level, emphasizing vernacular optimism for the medium while illustrating their ultimate shortcomings

Chiasm, Christine Heusner

Theses

This thesis explores the convergence and divergence between the mind and multimedia environment as perceptions are formed. The digitally constructed representation of the space investigated in the thesis work illustrates an abstract impression of the modern environment, somewhere between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the representational. The installation of the thesis images, off the gallery walls and at varying levels throughout the space, encourages the viewers to question realities and perception. I discuss the creation of the thesis work through a variety of different processes and media, both digital and traditional, and how this mimics environmental reality. …

Novel Low Power Cam Architecture, Ka Fai Ng

Theses

One special type of memory use for high speed address lookup in router or cache address lookup in a processor is Content Addressable Memory (CAM). CAM can also be used in pattern recognition applications where a unique pattern needs to be determined if a match is found. CAM has an additional comparison circuit in each memory bit compared to Static Random Access Memory. This comparison circuit provides CAM with an additional capability for searching the entire memory in one clock cycle. With its hardware parallel comparison architecture, it makes CAM an ideal candidate for any high speed data lookup or …

A Natural History, Jessica Marquez

Theses

A Natural History is an installation that creates the atmosphere of a miniature museum and has as its focus familial, autobiographical content. This “museum” appropriates its format from the ethnographic museum and cabinets of curiosities, which provide an institutional gaze and appeal to a sensibility of imagination and wonder. Major themes addressed include the public and private collection, art and science, and systems of ordering. Exploring these themes offers a means to visualize concepts of identity and memory. To make tangible that which is ephemeral, such as the past, identity and memory, I use objects, images and words as mimetic …

Collector, Larissa Cleveland

Theses

This thesis compliments my photographic investigation into an individual and societal preoccupation with collecting and the narrative or symbolic power of objects. My experiences as a child surrounded by my father’s mass collection of civil war artifacts prompted my continued interest in the pursuit of collecting and also to question the nature of hobby versus obsession. In this paper, I consider the personal and social conditions present in Western society that inform an inherent need to possess, create order, gain status, knowledge and to preserve. I discuss the creation of a persona through possession, but also question to what extent …

Angle Of Repose, Toni Pepe

Theses

This thesis explores the notion of loss as an overarching theme for the examination of memory and the feminine as constructed tools for identity. Certain paradigms related to gendered roles, domesticity, femininity and the female psyche are investigated. The thesis also addresses ideas within Lacanian theory; concentrating on the male gaze, female representation and the artist as both photographer and subject. Absence and presence are also significant themes, as both narrative tools and as inherent photographic characteristics. The idea of loss is further emphasized by absence/presence within the photograph, calling to mind the relationship of the photograph to memory.

The Impact Of Variable Data Print On Usability In Design, William Wells

Theses

In a world where people see, process and remember information differently, the question arises: Is technology being used in a manner that acknowledges and addresses user differences to the fullest extent? Currently, new print technologies like Variable Data Printing (VDP) are only being used to create customized direct mailing pieces and personalized products for the purpose of marketing, sales and promotion. However, VDP introduces the ability to change data and design elements in printed documents on an individual basis, making it possible to address differences in visual and cognitive abilities, language and culture, and situational considerations. Applying this concept of …

Ivee: Interesting Video Event Extraction, Jeremy Paskali

Theses

The Video Exploitation and Novelty Understanding in Streams (VENUS) system is a complete software solution for video surveillance, which consists of motion detection, motion tracking, novel event detection, missed expected event detection, object recognition, scene description, and database mining. This research focuses on the assignment of degrees of interest for events in motion and at rest for the VENUS system. The Interesting Video Event Extraction (IVEE) system is the second module in the processing pipeline of the VENUS system. The novel features of the IVEE sysem include the ability to assign a degree of interest to an event, to develop …

Searching For Orthogonal States Of Neural Networks, Heng Wang

Theses

Two approaches to find orthogonal states of neural network are presented in the paper. The first approach is a recursive one, it builds N orthogonal vectors based on N /2 orthogonal vectors. The second approach is a formula approach, in which orthogonal vectors can be obtained using a formula. Using these approaches, orthogonal states of neural network are found. Some properties of the neural network built on these orthogonal vectors are presented in Appendix A and some examples are given in Appendix B.

Diva, A Data Flow Language, Edith Lawson

Theses

The underlying principles of concurrency and data flow are summarized along with a survey of the current data flow languages. A high level data flow language, DIVA, is developed that provides the basic data types and language constructs of traditional languages as well as some unique features of data flow. The organization and data structures of the compiler and assembler are also discussed.

Aurora Borealis, Carol Luzon

Theses

None provided.

Tumbling Through Time: An Inquiry Into Vision, Charles Fisher

Theses

None provided.