Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Common Ground, Cody Christopher-Park Ray

Masters Theses

Common Ground is a work that explores ideals of unity through the shared awareness of human mortality. I wrote the majority of this work during the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020. Throughout this period, including the summer leading up to it, political and social tension was felt throughout the country. This sentiment stemmed from the unjust killings of unarmed people of color at the hands of law enforcement, to blatant errors in the way political figures handled the spread of this newfound disease, leading to more than 400k civilians prematurely dead. In experiencing these external pressures, I found …

Tiny Sounds, Valeria Ch. Jonard Perez

Masters Theses

Our auditory system perceives sounds within a specific range of frequencies and amplitudes. It is the way we define our aural world and the sounds we are able or willing to hear. Just above the border of the threshold of human audition hearing, we find unique sounds with particular characteristics. These sometimes forgotten or ignored sounds interest me as compositional elements.

Listening attentively requires extra effort from our ears and concentration; listening to sounds that vacillate from imperceptible to audible changes how humans typically listen to sounds in their environment. Although amplifying these discreet sounds would rob them of their …