Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Addressing Health Disparities Among Musicians In Southern Nevada, Kimberly James, Jay J. Shen

Creative Collaborations

Although the benefits of arts & cultural activities on the general public have been identified in prior research, musicians, as well as other artists, often find themselves distanced from tangible benefits (e.g. stress reduction, increased socialization, increased coping skills, increased happiness & well-being). Artists as both producers and consumers of art have been under-researched and under-served regarding their healthcare needs and access. Therefore, we hypothesize that musical artists suffer from health issues, due to barriers to accessing needed care. This project takes a mixed method approach, with its quantitative component being survey research and its qualitative component based on the …

Visualizing The Operative And Managing Complexity: Communicating The Design-Fabrication Feedback Loop With The International Tile Industry, Josh Vermillion

Creative Collaborations

School of Architecture faculty members Joshua Vermillion and Paul Morrison led a multi-disciplinary group of students from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Theater in a design-build elective, sponsored entirely by companies in the tile and coverings industry. The key to these sorts of collaborations between industry and academe is to see the production, fabrication, and assembly process as something that can inform design, and as a result, the design can augment production by strategic design decision-making. This feedback loop, connecting both ends of the design-production continuum, can yield interesting design research questions. One such question arose repeatedly throughout this semester of …

Robotics In Architecture <> Robotic Architecture: Why Can’T A Building Be As Smart As A Car?, Josh Vermillion

Creative Collaborations

The built environment is rich with opportunities for embedding and integrating digital technologies and sensors to create responsive and adaptable systems—to become smarter. This poster outlines selected moments from a thirteen-year body of work in research, design, and prototyping of responsive systems that act spatially with the environment at installation scale.

Robotics, sensing, physical computing, and digital fabrication are all topics that have been prioritized by U.S. funding programs such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Education. This poster presents the start of a framework--based around the concept of tinkering--for introducing these systems …

Iterating The Design Process Using Ai Diffusion Models, Josh Vermillion

Creative Collaborations

These studies span research and creative work to interrogate the generative capacity of text-to-image diffusion models that leverage artificial intelligence to produce architectural concepts, ideas, and imagery. These systems can generate an enormous amount of imagery in a very short amount of time based entirely from the written word, and we are still just beginning to understand how these digital tools might augment and/or disrupt, both, the design process, and design pedagogy within the discipline of architecture.

These AI models occupy a quickly evolving technology space with tremendous implications for how we design, as well as how we visualize—and verbalize—our …

Texts, Drugs, And Rock 'N' Roll: Easy Rider And The Compilation Soundtrack, Jonathan R. Lee

Creative Collaborations

Of all the New Hollywood films, Easy Rider (1969) perhaps most effectively demonstrates the potential complexity of the rock compilation soundtrack. Drawing on concepts from film studies, film musicology, and literary theory, this article discusses how Easy Rider demonstrates the compilation soundtrack’s potential to generate meanings both inter- and intratextually. The intertextual method of interpreting pop compilation soundtracks looks deeply into the intersection of image, sound, and narrative on a vertical axis, considering the relationship between dialogue/image/plot point and song lyrics/musical style, the ways that the songs on these soundtracks communicate to audiences the thematic or diegetic significance of a …

Oneira: New Music & Animation, Jennifer Bellor, Christine A. Banna

Creative Collaborations

UNLV Composer Dr. Jennifer Bellor collaborated with Christine Banna, animator from the Rochester Institute of Animation to create ONEIRA, a sci-fi animation music video Christine Banna created to pair with Jennifer Bellor’s composition, Oneira. Written for the electronic MalletKAT, vibraphone, and two marimbas, and recorded by the percussion quartet, Clocks in Motion, this 11-minute work is inspired by virtual worlds and dreaming. This track is also featured on Bellor’s most recent album, also titled ONEIRA, which was released by Aerocade Music August 19, 2022.

Bellor first created the music, imagining that this composition will be paired with …

A Stillness In The Desert? Engaging The Public Through An Immersive Exploration Of Southwest Soundscapes, Julian Kilker, Thomas Bjelic

Creative Collaborations

The pandemic highlighted the anthropocentric nature of soundscapes, while the recent popularity of electric cars, quadcopters, and “noise cancellation” earbuds demonstrated how consumer products can rapidly change our awareness of sound. While light pollution is already extensively addressed in scholarly research, popular works such as The End of Night, and public engagement such as The International Dark Sky Association, the complex interplay of sound, natural resources, and public engagement is still emerging, particularly in creative fields.

Two UNLV scholars and artists are collaborating on this project: Julian Kilker, who specializes in visual and emerging technology research, and Tom Bjelic, who …

Trauma-Informed Performance Art Education, Yvonne Houy, Kymberly Mellen, Alethea Inns, Morgan Iommi

Creative Collaborations

Trauma is the emotional response to a disturbing event or series of events, and can cause symptoms such as unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, headaches, and nausea, according to the American Psychological Association (2022). Learning activities in the performing arts - such as adjusting the body through touch, or the emotional content of scenes - can retraumatize students unintentionally. In contrast, creating the conditions for emotional states that enhance learning is a science, and an art, that can support conditions for optimal performance including Flow states

Performing arts educators can proactively support students and performances by becoming trauma-informed and actively using intimacy …

Architone•Ics: The Music Of Architecture — Music As An Entry Point For Understanding Architectural Design, Deborah J. Oakley, Diego Vega

Creative Collaborations

Architecture and Music share many fundamental concepts in common. German polymath Goethe famously described architecture as “frozen music.” Numerous renowned architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn among others, were also accomplished musicians and wrote of the connections between the two disciplines. A particularly noteworthy example of overlapping and crossing boundaries is the Greco-French composer Iannas Xenakis. Regarded as an influential figure in late 20th century avant-garde music, his first education and occupation, was actually as a structural engineer for famed architect LeCorbusier. He later practiced architecture himself before focusing on music composition, for which he is better known. …

Transdisciplinarity In Experience Design: A Global Survey Of Higher Ed Programs In Exd/Xd, Yvonne Houy

Creative Collaborations

In our age of ubiquitous devices and digital media it is the perceived value of the end-to-end experience that brings people to a place. Designing inspiring and emotionally engaging end-to-end experiences requires experts in a wide range of disciplines committed to an interdisciplinary collaboration that can arrive at transdisciplinary design - the sum becomes greater than its parts.

Civil engineering, hospitality, business, psychology, digital User Experience (UX) design, and experience data analysis need to be seamless integrated with the fine and performing arts and design fields:

• Architecture, interior, landscape and sound design actively engage the senses.

• Graphic and fine arts …

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Tradition-Innovation [In Arts, Design, Media Higher Education]: A New Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal, Yvonne Houy, Maryrose Flanigan

Creative Collaborations

How can we build a future for teaching/mentoring creative work and research that honors and enhances core disciplinary traditions? This new peer reviewed open access eJournal—collaboratively brought to life by the international Alliance for the Arts Research Universities network (a2ru), and a2ru member UNLV—provides a forum to address this question by exploring the intersection of teaching, creative work and emerging research practices.

In the challenging crucible of the pandemic, educators forged new techniques and innovative practices. Faculty in disciplines underserved by typical digital learning tools—such as in the Arts, Design and Media disciplines—explored and developed creative solutions as they shifted …

Sun Tunnels (1973-76) By Nancy Holt: One Earthwork's Interdisciplinary Approach, Hikmet Loe

Creative Collaborations

In 1973, American artist Nancy Holt (1938-2014) extended her studio practice into the land, employing light, vision, and perception through photography, film, installations, and poetics. By creating her monumental earthwork Sun Tunnels (1973-76), Holt became a leader within Land art, one of the few female artists working in a male-dominated discipline.

Sun Tunnels—located near the border of Western Utah and Eastern Nevada—is comprised of four concrete tunnels placed in an “X” pattern on the Great Salt Lake Desert’s alkaline floor. Each tunnel measures 18’ (L) x 9’ 2 1⁄2” (D); the overall work measures 9’ 2 1⁄2” x 68’ …

Windsor Park: The Sinking Streets, Brett Levner, Frank Fritz

Creative Collaborations

At the encouragement of Nevada State Senator Dina Neal and law professors Ngai Pindell and Frank Fritz, undergraduate and graduate UNLV film students under the tutelage of film professor Brett Levner donned their masks and returned to the field to interview documentary subjects and bring awareness to a local community in the shadows searching for hope.

Drawings That Tell Stories, Iandry Randriamandroso

Creative Collaborations

In the spring of 2021, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I designed a project that engaged students to use Oral History as their research tool to generate their own stories from real experiences of real people impacted by the Covid 19 pandemic. The project has three parts: Research & Planning, Implementation, and Presentation.

For Research & Planning part, students conducted Oral History interviews and collected stories from real people. For the Implementation part, students created full-color drawings based on the collected stories. The project was their final project for the semester and students used color pastels and 18”x24” …

Food Desert To Food Oasis: An Engagement With The Community Through Evidence-Based Methods, Phillip W. Zawarus, Lisa Ortega

Creative Collaborations

The state of Nevada has the 12th highest percentage (12.8%) of households living with food insecurity compared to the US average of 11.1% according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1). Economic and environmental benefits of urban forests have been well documented to address issues of climate change, urban heat islands, and fragmented ecologies, however, in a period of social inequities, urban forests can serve a vital role in providing environmental justice through agroforestry for communities identified within a food desert.

According to Kyle H. Clark & Kimberly A. Nicholas, “urban food forestry can be an efficient way to consistently …

Augmented Decision-Making Through The P[Ar]K: Hybridizing Performance Metrics For User Evaluation, Phillip W. Zawarus

Creative Collaborations

Nature-based solutions are being further appreciated beyond their aesthetics and are being recognized for their ability to sustain, mitigate, and service the sensible ecological preservation and enhancement of the natural and built environments (Beck, 2015). For the profession of landscape architecture to properly evaluate these necessary design tactics, our process must shift to a divergent method of asking questions to direct solutions through evidence-based decision-making (Lahaie, 2016).

Through the emergence of landscape performance and the integration of quantitative metrics into outdoor spaces, technology and innovate methods can begin to communicate nature-based benefits as tangible outcomes to comprehend the complex ecological, …