Arts and Humanities Commons^™

William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes: "Why The Hell . . . Should Anyone Listen To This?!", R. Douglas Reed

Music & Musical Performance

William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes: "Why the hell...should anyone listen to this?!"

By Douglas Reed--2022

The article explores William Albright's Whistler (1834-1903): Three Nocturnes (1989) through historical context, musical analysis, performance practice, and the composer's essay on the relationship between his composition and Whistler's paintings. Commentary by composer Sydney Hodkinson gives information about the 1960s new music scene in Ann Arbor (the ONCE Group, The Grate Society) composition study with Ross Lee Finney.

Apple “Porn” 2.0: Apple’S Vision (Pro), Suzanne E. Ferriss

Class, Race and Corporate Power

This article extends the argument made in “Apple ‘Porn’: Design Videos as Seduction and Exploitation” (Ferriss 2018) to consider the corporation’s filmed representation of its newest device: an augmented reality headset dubbed Vision Pro. It argues that Apple’s latest narratives further relegate human work and community to the margins by presenting human experience as thoroughly mediated by computer-enhanced simulation, its pinnacle achieved through its Apple Vision Pro headset that turns the home and workspace into one immersive audiovisual world. Rather than its devices and software becoming an inseparable part of our personal and shared spaces, they become the spaces. We …

Joy As Contestation: Frida Kahlo, "The Dream", Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This essay analyzes the pictorial representation of Frida Khalo’s “The Dream,” to unfold the nature and reflect upon the notions of joy and innocence as forms of a subtle contestation. How are they represented? By examining the visible and the non-visible as conditions of critical possibility for joy, innocence and contestation, we can reevaluate the interrelation between the notions of life and death in the Mexican culture, and Frida’s personal history. I argue that innocent joy is a quality that articulates a subtle contestation or clandestine activity of freedom

Hema Upadhyay: Disrupting The Hegemony Of The Slums, A Negative Social Spiral., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This essay presents the theoretical framework that informs my reflections on the hegemony of the slums’ poverty and human conditions, and whether art can disrupt the hegemony and also become a conduit to question our Being, hence Dasein, as per Martin Heidegger. The following pages investigate the work of Hema Upadhyay, in India, and specially, her inspiring protest work offering insights on India’s overpopulation in urban areas such as, Dharavi. She depicts slums becoming a continuum circle of human misery and wealth, politically called a negative social spiral. I argue that the slums, not only destroy the harmony and promise …

The Unpresentable And The Aesthetics Of The Sublime In The Art Of Alfredo Jaar, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

I argue that in Postmodernism, as per Lyotard’s writings, art “…caters to the impossibility for an attainable wholeness or sense of presence” (1131). And yet, this state of ‘unattainable wholeness’, does not deny to postmodern art the role of the experience that can carry emancipatory power. Yet, it may not be a ‘unity of experience’ as per Habermas, but still constitute a space of experience and presentations of the unpresentable that is predicated by difference. I propose that Lyotard’s theory of the presentation of the unpresentable, which sees presentation of artworks oriented towards formless art language games and communication, are …

The Subject And Object Of Art: Lacan, Rose, And Levinas., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

This article introduces the different approaches between the western metaphysical thought and the scholars Jacques Lacan, Jacqueline Rose, and Emmanuel Levinas – particularly the contributions to the notion of the ‘becoming’. Lacan expands on Freud’s discovery of the primacy of the unconscious (the id) and concentrates on how the unconscious is structured as a language. He argues that human subjectivity is formed by three realms: The mirror stage which initiates the child into the imaginary, the language which initiates the child into the symbolic and the realm of the real which is always veiled and out of reach.

Lastesis: Mass-Collaboration + Mass-Contaminated Language = Changing The Story, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

LasTesis, a Chilean performance group that choreographed a feminist dance and chant titled Un violador en tu camino (2019) (A rapist in your path) gathers women of all ages and backgropunds. Their bodies dance and chant in unison echoing the tethered notions of collaboration and contamination as thinking, as a massive contamination. This article explores how contamination affects identity and how it also enables the trace of a traumatic past while imagining different futures that are imminent and important. I argue that this knowledge and assertive action exemplified in the performance Un violador en tu camino involves a physical reclaiming …

The Beautiful Is Unveiled, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

The beautiful is unveiled and resides in the goodness that is within human beings. Beings emanate the goodness within; thus, whoever possesses goodness is able to unveil beauty.

Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics And The Absence Of Emergency By Santiago Zabala., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Throughout history, we find ourselves searching for ways to nurture empathy and justice to cope with the political world crisis and improve our lives. The book, Why Only Art Can Save Us, written by a contemporary philosopher and author, Santiago Zabala, questions how the creation of art can shift the reasoning and existential being of humanity; and how art could be the only salvation to the political world crisis. Thus, Why Only Art Can Saves Us, is a philosophical, political, and existential reflection on the appeal and aesthetic qualities of art in the 21st century.

Evita, Rapsodia Inconclusa By Nicola Constantino, Sixty-Eight Years Later, Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

The exhibit of contemporary Argentinean artist Nicola Costantino, “Rapsodia Inconclusa,”[i] at the 55th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia in 2013 depicts glory and tragedy. More than sixty-eight years after the death of Evita, informed by generations of Argentine women, Nicola Costantino portrays the beloved national icon of Evita. Indeed, as the artist explains, the installations highlight both Evita’s glory and her tragedy, in an unusual way that must not go unexamined. “Rapsodia Inconclusa’s” video installations and kinetic sculpture tell the story of a woman, Eva Duarte de Perón, in a series of aesthetic encounters that frame the …

A Dialogue On Marta Minujin's Happening: Leyendo Las Noticias (Reading The News), Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias is a happening that combines feminine subjectivity with the socio-political, creating a dialogue around notions of trace, the feminine, text, meaning, and impermanence. Specifically, how these notions affect the women living in an unstable and pluralistic world. It depicts a woman as a ‘participatory woman’ talking about women, in a conflicted patriarchal society. I would argue that the popular Marta Minujín’s Leyendo las noticias, represents a ‘slippage,’ for women (Cixoux 1976) amid a repressive culture, and a historical context of a Dirty War, violence, and fear. Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Jane Bennett, and …

Imagining Costumbrismo: Connecting Image And Text In Nineteenth-Century Colombian Cuadros De Costumbres, María Sol Echarren

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by nineteenth-century scientific trends, Costumbrismo was a literary and artistic genre combining aspects of Romanticism and Realism and presenting traditional customs of autochthonous daily life. Nineteenth-century cuadros de costumbres, or “sketches of manners,” often used local color to depict national scenes, regional types, and cultural traditions. The cuadros, comprised of short but illustrative writings published as periodical pamphlets, contained visually charged descriptive language infused with a didactic objective in order to shape readers’ perspectives about the nation and present specific sociopolitical philosophies.

This dissertation analyzes the connections between literature and art through the written cuadros de costumbres …

Belkis Ayón: Fear, Confusion, Trance, Dignity, And The Sublime., Silvia Márquez Pease

Department of Art and Art History

Belkis Ayón, a cuban artist, takes it upon herself to reveal a secret, to be a transgressor. She believes to be the alter ego of the legendary Sikán, a princess who was punished because she shared the secrets of the Abakuá knowledge that were reserved only for men. I argue that the work of Belkis Ayón caters to the possibility of attainable sublimity through paradoxes of confusion and fear; a state of unsettling discomfort and a sensing of something greater than oneself. And yet, this state of paradoxical affects, predicated by confusion, fear, and trance, result in obsolete boundaries and …

Atlantic Legacies: Free Women Of Color And The Changing Notions Of Womanhood In The Long Nineteenth Century, Marie Stephanie Chancy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on three free-born African-descended women who defied expectations and prejudices to live previously unthinkable lives in the nineteenth century. The project uses their biographies to illustrate how, as black and mixed-ancestry émigrés from the Americas living in Europe, they adopted and adapted the evolving notions of ideal womanhood. As a result they expanded who could be identified as a true, redemptive or new woman. The project shows how they used the tenets of these ideals to live life on their terms. The dissertation is set in an era dominated by white males, and defined by the enslavement …

Intermedialidad En El Documental Cubano Contemporáneo, Esteban Alfonso Lopez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cuban documentaries, which have experienced dramatic changes in the last two decades, are now more in tune with the most recent global trends in cinema. However, the scarce implementation within the documentary genre of other perspectives and modes of analysis, outside those that are purely cinematographic, has stalled investigations in the field, thus creating a disengagement with the structural and thematic renovation that has been taking place within the discourse of contemporary Cuban documentaries.

My dissertation “Intermedialidad en el documental cubano contemporáneo” examines a select sample of representative texts and Cuban documentaries, with a view to adapting and/or developing an …

A Comprehensive Analysis Of Balance, Symmetry, And Center Of Mass In The Gait Cycle Of Transfemoral Amputees, Kayla T. Etienne

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to create a framework that assists in the transfemoral prosthesis fitting process by calculating balance and symmetry to quantify patient comfort with an understanding of bipedal locomotion and human anatomy. Three different software applications were used to compare (1) the body position during gait cycle, (2) the natural and amputee anatomies, (3) the natural and prosthetic legs, and (4) the equilibrium and torque movements of the hip, knee, and ankle joints. Models were created in Maya for analysis in Solidworks and MEL code evaluation with MatLab. The MatLab code tested combinations of joint degrees …

Trash To Treasure, Kim Rizio, Brooke Fatima Yubero, Defne Timurkan, Corey Gildersleeve

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

Based on research of the “Children Are Citizens” initiative from Project Zero at Harvard University, the Trash to Treasure project will engage and capacitate our preschoolers and lower elementary students to be agents of change in our local community. This interdisciplinary project will bring attention to an important environmental issue within our community. Plastic pollution will be transformed into an interactive exhibit and lead our students from bystanders to advocates. Community-wide beach clean-ups will provide students with the trash to create an original multi-media piece that incorporates movement to engage and communicate our message. The installation of the piece in …

Exhibition Of "Art That People Step On" Photos, Thirunarayanan M. Osuri

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

This exhibition will be on display through the whole conference. The creator will be available during set times. See schedule for details.

The author of the proposal has developed a collection of photographs of what he calls "Art That People Step On."

The collection consists of photographs of art that sees in splatter, spatter, smudges, leaks, and spills on paved surfaces that he walks on.

Like most people the author of the proposal did not notice these "works of art" until the end of the year 2016, and has probably stepped on and walked over several pieces of art before …

Monstrous Maternity: Folkloric Expressions Of The Feminine In Images Of The Ubume, Michaela Leah Prostak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The ubume is a ghost of Japanese folklore, once a living woman, who died during either pregnancy or childbirth. This thesis explores how the religious and secular developments of the ubume and related figures create a dichotomy of ideologies that both condemn and liberate women in their roles as mothers. Examples of literary and visual narratives of the ubume as well as the religious practices that were employed for maternity-related concerns are explored within their historical contexts in order to best understand what meaning they held for people at a given time and if that meaning has changed. These meanings …

Creative Technologies And The Arts Of Resilience In Miami: An Interactive Dialogue, Danni Washington, Kevin Arrow, Barron Sherer, Willie Avendano

Fragile Habitat: Conversations for Miami’s future

Discuss art and technology in Miami with creative technologists Kevin Arrow and Barron Sherer, co-founders of the picture and film archive Obsolete Media Miami, and Willie Avendano, co-founder of Wynwood education lab 01. Arrow, Sherer, and Avendano will present new ways to think about how technology such as virtual reality, 3D design, and retro media can be wielded to foster collaboration and education. Danni Washington, co-founder of the arts and media-based ocean conservation initiative The Big Blue & You will moderate this interactive small-group dialogue on community resilience. Converse with other Miami residents and embrace a space to test new …

Sonic Activation: A Multimedia Performance-Installation, Alex Joseph Lough

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sonic Activation is a multimedia performance-installation featuring sound sculptures, video projections, and performance with live electronics for solo and mixed ensembles. The work aims to unpack the nature in which we hear and interact with sound, space, and gesture. It is a project that recontextualizes the typical practice of performance and installation modes of music and art. The event uses 12 loudspeakers spaced around a gallery to create a densely layered sonic atmosphere that gently fluctuates and slowly evolves. Throughout the event, the audience is encouraged to freely navigate the gallery and experience the subtle changes in sound as they …

We Are Standing In The Nick Of Time: Translative Relevance In Anne Carson's "Antigonick", Michelle Alonso

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The complicated issues surrounding translation studies have seen growing attention in recent years from scholars and academics that want to make it a discipline and not a minor branch of another field, such as linguistics or comparative literature. Writ large with Antigonick, Carson showcases the recent Western push towards translation studies in the American academy. By offering up a text that is chaotic in its presentation, she bypasses the rigid idea of univocality. By giving the text discordant images, she betrays the failed efficacy of sign and signification, and by choosing a text to be performed and mutually participated …

Iván Navarro: Fluorescent Light Sculptures, The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum Frost Art Museum

Frost Art Museum Catalogs

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Frost Art Museum, Florida International University. Curator and editor, Julia P. Herzberg .

Embracing Modernity: Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction, The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum Frost Art Museum

Frost Art Museum Catalogs

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Frost Art Museum, Florida International University. Essays by Francine Birbagher-Rozencwaig and Maria Carlot Perez.

Mock-Ups In Design : The Implications Of Utlizing [Sic] A Mock-Up Review Process In Professional Practice, Charles M. Boggs

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to examine the use of a mock-up review process in interior design projects to better understand the implications of using such a process within the standard professional practice model. The research consisted of interviewing design professionals who utilize mock-ups as part of their standard of practice. These interviews were centered around two groups - those working in shipbuilding, where mock-ups have a long history, and those working in land-based projects, where mock-up use is rare. Analysis of the interviews indicated a positive relationship between mock-up use and collaboration, innovation, and problem solving. The interviews …

Transdisciplinary Teams And Aging In Place Design : The Interior Designer's Role, Liliana Alicia Custy

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined factors influencing participatory research team effectiveness in aging in place (AIP) design (Stokols, et al„, 2008). Although research on AIP design characterizes AIP as collaborative process, there are few studies on the factors that affect collaboration in participatory research applied to AIP. This study used a qualitative narrative strategy in a multiple case-study analysis conducted from a transdisciplinary research (TR) perspective. The case-study focused on the factors that enhanced and constrained Open n Prototype Initiative (OPI) team effectiveness.

TR is a precise type of teamwork of integrative endeavors, focused on the science and society interface, and aimed …

New Acquisition: The Metropolitan Collection, The Art Museum At Florida International University Frost Art Museum

Frost Art Museum Catalogs

Catalog of an exhibition of selections aquired from the Metroploitan Museum and Art Center. Essay by Regina C. Bailey. Curated by Dahlia Morgan and Regina C. Bailey.