Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Interface: Technology & Portraiture, Mullins Sydney

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2023

In Interface, five Kentucky-area artists explore a new language of representation with the aid of digital tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automatic Facial Recognition Software (AFR). Some artists use algorithms to alter celebrity faces beyond recognition, others feed data sets of existing art to AI models in an attempt to generate portraits of no one in particular. Others still create tools for understanding the very act of facial recognition or obfuscation. All have one thing in common: they wish to stretch the limits of and critique the genre of portraiture, as well as to cause viewers to question …

Mascs: Masculinity Reimagined, Josh Porter

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2023

MASCS: Masculinity Reimagined explores how performances of contemporary masculinities can counteract traditional binary understandings of gender. Justin Korver, John Paul Morabito, Betsy Odom, Moises Salazar, and Darryl DeAngelo Terrell expose, question, and subvert the ways that we culturally define masculinity by focusing on gender as performance. These artists not only critique cisgender, heteronormative binary understandings of masculinity, but also embrace the performative nature of gender and celebrate non-normative, alternative, and queer masculinities. By encompassing a range of gender and sexual identifications, these artists share their own personal experiences, interpretations, performances, rejections, and embodiments of masculinity. Breaking down the barrier created …

The Market For Classic French Modern Art Prior To 1940, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

Using a quantitative methodology based on auction and sales prices, the paper describes the high-end market for paintings between 1895 and 1839 (paintings selling for $10,000 or more), especially in reference to what the author describes as "classic French modern art." The paper compares prices between Old Master art, classic French modern art, and contemporary art during this period, and asks why classic French modern art sold for prices nearly as high as Old Master art did during this period, especially when compared to contemporary painting.

Countercode: Bodies Un-Becoming, Aaron Reynolds

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2022

In COUNTERCODE: BODIES UN-BECOMING, my intent is not to present a cohesive map or identify a single, primary mode of resistance. Rather, the five artists I have selected —Shana Moulton, Cooper Gibson, Amy Yeager, Jazmine Morris, and Clara Wouters—explore the socio-cultural implications of identity expression and persona play, particularly as it relates to the encoding of subjectivity in contemporary forms of digital media and pop culture. Their works glitch codes, find slippages, and create opacities in the fabric of capitalist realism, a term used by theorist Mark Fisher to describe the widespread acceptance of capitalism as the only viable economic …

Tangled Roots: Exploring Appalachian Feminisms, Magenta Palo

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2022

Women have long been overlooked as key figures in the cultural history of Appalachia. The exhibition Tangled Roots: Exploring Appalachian Feminisms seeks to examine the ways in which women artists across the region have kept traditions alive while redefining creative practices that were once seen strictly as “women’s work.” In particular, the exhibition aims to explore how women have reimagined “craft” through skillful attention to materials, manual dexterity, and application of critical and conceptual rigor. The concept of craft is defined in this context to include all hand-made work that requires developed skills, whether they belong to traditional craft-based practices …

The Measurement Of Product Typicality In Design Research. A Basic And Applied Approach, Travis Kent

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

The objective of this study was to examine the use of the cognitive construct of “typicality” to guide design decisions in the development of consumer products. Increasing products that will appeal to consumers, designers strive to balance novelty and familiarity. A potential way to thread this needle is to understand how “typical” a design is of its particular product category. The construct of typicality has been used by psychologists to understand how people create and represent categories. Objects that are more typical of a category are often associated with positive responses from observes (e.g., greater visual appeal, faster recognition). In …

Artists' Genres: A Brief Introduction To Post-Medieval Western Art, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Faculty Book Gallery

Artists' Genres is a brief introduction to the history of post-medieval Western art organized by the major genres. The book is designed as a basic textbook for high school- or introductory college-level courses or for individuals simply looking for an interesting guidebook into the art of this period and geographical region.

This is the revised edition of Artists' Genres: A Brief Introduction to Post-Medieval Western Art, which was released in 2018.

Critical Spatial Practices: A Trans-Scalar Study Of Chinese Hutongs And American Alleyways, Gregory Marinic, Rebekah Radtke, Gregory Luhan

Interiors Faculty Publications

Across time and cultures, the built environment has been fundamentally shaped by forces of occupancy, obsolescence, and change. In an era of increasing political uncertainty and ecological decline, contemporary design practices must respond with critical actions that envision more collaborative and sustainable futures. The concept of critical spatial practice, introduced by architectural historian Jane Rendell, builds on Walter Benjamin and the late 20th century theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to propose multi-disciplinary design practices that more effectively address contemporary spatial complexities. These theoretical frameworks operate through trans-scalar means to resituate the built environment as a nexus of …

Queen Mother / Mitochondrial Eve, Jayda Johnson

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Artist Statement

This project is a recontextualization of a historical painting of the Christian iconography symbol of Charity with children. In the painting, I am taking Guido Reni’s original painting of a young maiden breast-feeding orphan children and turning it into the idea of the Mitochondrial Eve taking care of her racially diverse children. The Mitochondrial Eve is the common matrilineal ancestor of all humans and passed down mitochondrial DNA through every female descendent, making her the mother of all humanity in a way. By appropriating this image with black imagery like a full afro, Kente cloth patterns, and African …

Evaluating The Performance Of Reusable Level 2 Isolation Gowns, Susan I. Dabbain

Theses and Dissertations--Retailing and Tourism Management

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the performance of commercially available reusable Level 2 isolation gowns over the product’s lifecycle by assessing the ability to protect at an AAMI Level 2. The performance of the gowns was evaluated to determine if they met the required specifications of the AAMI and ASTM standards. Seventy-two commercially available Level 2 reusable gowns from six sample groups were evaluated. The results of testing the barrier and durability performance were compared to the specification of ANSI/AAMI PB70:2012 and ASTM F3352 – 19. Gowns were evaluated initially, and after 5, 10, 25, 50, and …

Facing Others: Ray Johnson’S Portrait Of A Curator As A Network, Miriam Kienle

Art and Visual Studies Faculty Publications

Deploying various forms of art world communication (commercial, bureaucratic, and interpersonal), Ray Johnson made a portrait of the curator Samuel J. Wagstaff during the mid-1960s that unworked the singular and unified image of his subject and emphasized identity as contingent upon a person’s position in their social network. Although many have noted the networked character of Johnson’s mail art practice—wherein participants were connected to each other with and through continually circulated collaged correspondence—few have explored it in relation to contemporary network theory and none have examined how it relates to portraiture of the period. By analyzing the remains of Johnson’s …

The Pinnacle, Allyson Mcnulty

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Family is more than a wife, a husband, and their children. Family is support and reliance. It is unconditional love. It's a concept many of us understand and feel a deep connection. This contemplative playscape is dedicated to Sarah West and her family, a former faculty member of the College of Design. This design is unified from three individual components, representative of each family member. The center piece acts as Sarah and her memory as a mother, wife, and artist. Alone, this piece could not stand. Two additional pieces brace and interlock into this center form, allowing the design to …

A Man In The Middle: Giuseppe De Nittis In Paris In The 1870s, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Faculty Publications

This essay charts de Nittis’ meteoric rise to commercial success via the commercial gallery of Adolphe Goupil as well as his public successes at the Paris Salon. De Nittis carefully negotiated his position between the Salon work and what best sold through Goupil while retaining close contacts with some of the key Impressionist artists. A fascinating connection, in particular, exists between Edgar Degas’ famous Place de la Concorde: Count Lepic and his daughters and de Nittis’ own Place de la Concorde, which was painted at nearly the same moment and was directly engaged with Degas’s picture. The central claim of …

Measuring Up: A Case For Redrawing The System Boundaries Of Sustainability At The University Of Kentucky, Brent Sturlaugson, Rebekah Radtke, Anita Lee-Post

Architecture Faculty Publications

The primary goal of this paper is to examine the role that sustainability assessment and reporting plays in creating a sustainable campus for academic excellence. A prototype sustainability assessment and reporting system is developed for triple bottom line impact analysis of the built environment of the newly expanded and renovated Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. The prototype system utilizes a toolkit to collect environmental, social, and economic data of the building's built environment for sustainable design performance analyses. The system also employs a comprehensive set of sustainability metrics to measure and report the building's …

Material Atmospheres: Theorising Recent Shifts In Interior Visualisation, Gregory Marinic

Interiors Faculty Publications

Much like Walter Benjamin's analysis of the Parisian arcades during the interwar years of the early 20th century, emerging methods of seeing interior spaces reveal a deeper gaze into the contextual, material, and phenomenological conditions that produce more nuanced visions of interiority. A collective consciousness surrounding these constructed narratives is reflected in charged associations with the most salient imperatives of our time—globalisation, resource depletion, ecological degradation, and political instability—as well as their corresponding effects on the built environment. These visual provocations have incrementally percolated up to embody an expanding field of design activism for educators, theorists, practitioners, and students. How …

Yet Another Fight For Remembrance: Titus Kaphar’S Representation Of Race In The Past And The Present, Emily Hedges

Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship

With compelling portraits that challenge the representation of minorities within the art historical canon, American artist Titus Kaphar has emerged as an important voice in contemporary art. His paintings are best-known for engaging the history of art and visual culture founded on the construction of whiteness and restoring narratives of people of color through modern-day representations of once hidden historical actors. Kaphar questions how repressed histories have shaped preconceived notions of famous historic figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, and more importantly, of United States history. Throughout his career, his innovative practice has aimed to disrupt the visual field and reveal …

Remembering Wonder, Emily Andreasson, Lindsey L. Fay

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This is a booklet about research on alternative play and memorial structures.

To Un-Become: Between Historic Reminder And Hallucination, Geographical Document And Childhood Memory, Collective Tragedy And Personal Healing, Saša Rajšić

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

To Un-Become: Between Historic Reminder and Hallucination, Geographical Document and Childhood Memory, Collective Tragedy and Personal Healing is an multimedia art project, which explores the concept of un-becoming through revisiting Operation Storm in Yugoslavia and its consequences over two decades later. My interest in the concept of un-becoming was sparked by a court case in which General Ante Gotovina, a former Croatian military officer, was found guilty of organizing and implementing a permanent and forcible removal of the Serbian people in a 1995 military action entitled Operation Storm. Not long after, Gotovina’s convictions for crimes against humanity were reversed by …

Exploring The Knoedler Gallery's Premium Picture Market, 1872-1934, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This paper was first delivered at the conference Art Dealers, America and the International Art Market, 1880-1930 sponsored by the Getty Research Institute, The Getty, Los Angeles, CA, January 2018. The essay is based on research conducted at the GRI Special Collections’s archival holdings of materials belonging to the New York art gallery M. Knoedler & Co. The paper outlines a quantitative methodology for approaching the Getty’s data set, which was created through the transcription of Knoedler’s 11 painting stock books covering the gallery’s operations from 1872 to its closing in 1970. The paper explores the advantages of concentrating on …

Learning To Generate Natural Language Rationales For Game Playing Agents, Upol Ehsan, Pradyumna Tambwekar, Larry Chan, Brent Harrison, Mark O. Riedl

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Many computer games feature non-player charactert (NPC) teammates and companions; however, playing with or against NPCs can be frustrating when they perform unexpectedly. These frustrations can be avoided if the NPC has the ability to explain its actions and motivations. When NPC behavior is controlled by a black box AI system it can be hard to generate the necessary explanations. In this paper, we present a system that generates human-like, natural language explanations—called rationales—of an agent's actions in a game environment regardless of how the decisions are made by a black box AI. We outline a robust data collection …

Exploring Illusions Of Height In Suit Design, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to explore how the design of clothing, specifically the design of the suit, can create height illusions.

Background: Taller people enjoy many advantages, such as increased income and perceived attractiveness. These advantages motivate people to try to appear taller than they actually are, and clothing experts provide advice on how to accomplish this. However, there is little empirical evidence to validate the illusory effects clothing might have on overall height perception. The few studies that have explored illusions of body size created by clothing design have been limited in two important ways – …

Why Munch?, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

Why Munch? was a keynote lecture for the conference "Marketing the North," sponsored by the society Munch, Markets and Modernism, in November 2017. In asking the question, the paper explores Munch's canonical status, especially vis-a-vis other Scandinavian artists of his time. In particular, the essay addresses the evolving nature of artistic professionalism at the end of the 19th century, and how Munch's personal and artistic behavior evoked a new definition of bohemianism that resonated deeply with the rise of European modernism and the post-1900 avant-gardes.

[Review Of The Book] Contemporary Art Colombia, Karyn Hinkle

Library Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Parallel Design Of A Product And Internet Of Things (Iot) Architecture To Minimize The Cost Of Utilizing Big Data (Bd) For Sustainable Value Creation, Ryan Bradley, Ibrahim S. Jawahir, Niko Murrell, Julie Whitney

Institute for Sustainable Manufacturing Faculty Publications

Information has become today's addictive currency; hence, companies are investing billions in the creation of Internet of Things (IoT) frameworks that gamble on finding trends that reveal sustainability and/or efficiency improvements. This approach to “Big Data” can lead to blind, astronomical costs. Therefore, this paper presents a counter approach aimed at minimizing the cost of utilizing “Big Data” for sustainable value creation. The proposed approach leverages domain/expert knowledge of the system in combination with a machine learning algorithm in order to limit the needed infrastructure and cost. A case study of the approach implemented in a consumer electronics company is …

Points Of View: Herbert Bayer's Exhibition Catalogue For The 1930 Section Allemande, Wallis Miller

Architecture Faculty Publications

Sigfried Giedion called Herbert Bayer’s exhibition catalogue for the 1930 Section Allemande a “minor typographical masterpiece.” Like similar catalogues, it is inexpensive, provides an inventory list, has an introduction, functions as a guide, and is illustrated. However, the majority of its images are of installations, not their contents. Bayer accommodates the catalogue type for applied arts exhibitions by listing installations as objects, but he confronts the type by showing installations as display contexts that establish points of view, emulating, idealizing and interpreting the experience of the exhibition. By independently constructing ways of seeing and understanding the exhibition, the catalogue resists …

Hayashi Yasuo And Yagi Kazuo In Postwar Japanese Ceramics: The Effects Of Intramural Politics And Rivalry For Rank On A Ceramic Artist’S Career, Marilyn Rose Swan

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

The use and firing of clay to make art instead of vessels was a revolutionary concept in Japan when it first was introduced by Hayashi Yasuo in 1948 with Cloud, and expanded upon by Yagi Kazuo in 1954 with Mr. Samsa’s Walk. Although both avant-garde artists were major forces in the advancement of abstract, nonfunctional ceramics, Yagi is usually given sole credit and occupies a prominent place in the literature, while Hayashi’s name can scarcely be found, despite his numerous international awards, large body of work and career spanning seven decades. This thesis seeks to identify the factors …

A Single Particle Among Billions: Yayoi Kusama And The Power Of The Minute, Isabelle Martin

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama has developed her career through the continued use of the infinitely repeated polka-dot motif, an element that has not only persisted throughout the entirety of her work, but has also become a fundamental aspect of her self-presentation. Kusama has long suffered from a mental affliction called cenesthopathy, which results in intense hallucinations and anxiety attacks. Her use of the polka dot is not only a way for her to visualize her hallucinations, but also an example of the physical commitment (identified by Kusama as self-obliteration) she has to her work—her repeated application of small motifs …

An Evaluation Of The Quality Of Mens 100% Cotton Jersey Knit T-Shirts Representing Three Retail Categories, Jeanne Oakes Badgett

Theses and Dissertations--Retailing and Tourism Management

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the quality of design, materials, construction, appearance, and performance of mens 100% cotton jersey knit t-shirts from three retail categories: mass merchant, fast fashion, and better. These retail categories were represented by brands Fruit of the Loom, H&M, and Brooks Brothers, respectively. A convenience sample was comprised of 78 t-shirts. 13 white and 13 navy t-shirts from each brand were used for testing according to ASTM and AATCC standards and specifications. Evaluations and measurements were conducted before washing, and after one, five, ten, and twenty laundry cycles. The t-shirts were evaluated for …

Ichigo, Ichie, Meredith Matia

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

This body of work explores how the mundane can provoke a sense of gratefulness for what is already around us. In researching the Japanese Tea Ceremony, as well as contemporary artists such as Jen Mann, David Hockey, Wayne Thiebaud, and artists from the Dutch Golden Age, this series of paintings is seeking to anchor these works in relation to these on going dialogs.

In this series of paintings titled ‘Ichigo, Ichie’ translates to “one time, one meeting” which represents one of the philosophies of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. ‘Chanoyu’ is the art of everyday life and …

Quality Evaluation Of Jeans At Three Price Categories, Behnoosh Ghaani Farashahi

Theses and Dissertations--Retailing and Tourism Management

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the specifications, appearance and performance characteristics of jeans at three price categories and to evaluate the relationship between price and product quality. Three brands; Lucky, Gap, and Faded Glory represented men’s jeans in the price categories of better, moderate, and mass merchant (budget). Jeans were inspected and the design, material, and construction specifications were identified and compared. The appearance and performance characteristics of jeans were evaluated initially and compared to the initial characteristics after one and five launderings. ASTM and AATCC test methods were used to evaluate color difference, colorfastness to dry …