Arts and Humanities Commons^™

New Craft: Craft Practices In The Digital Era, Paulina Bereza

Masters Theses

Advancements in technology point to a thriving future through the allure of new tools and the promise of enhanced performance. With the current environmental crisis, military invasions and broader global conflicts, how can we utilize new digital media in a way that dismantles oppressive positions of power? Looking towards the future, I explore the potential of materiality and new methods of making, to reshape our relationship with the environment and each other. I collaborate with newly adopted forms of intelligence, artificial and automated, to express and reconcile the accelerated cultural shift. From ancient fibres to digital circuits, what will the …

One Of One Of A Kind, Dominic Rishe

Masters Theses

This thesis probes the discourse around the increasing use of advanced digital tools in art and design, and articulates a paradoxical stance that these tools are re-illuminating a set of old ideas - ideas that have been preserved in a lineage of craft movements, historically perceived as anti-technological, nostalgic, or backwards-looking.

Over the last two decades, the use of generative and computational tools in art and design has evolved from a niche, experimental activity to a fully-fledged epochal movement, rising across all disciplines from architecture and graphic design to film and illustration.

Craft, which has always found its definition unstable …

Entre Manos Y Barro: Innovando Con Tradición, Jose Mata

Masters Theses

"Entre Manos y Barro: Innovando con Tradicion'' (Between Hands and Clay: Traditional Innovation) dives into sustainable and ethical innovations of traditional Zapotec ceramics. It discusses how introducing thoughtfully designed tools, like a specialized caja humeda (wet box), can enhance artisans' workspaces while preserving the cultural essence of their craft. This initiative emphasizes innovations that honor traditional methods and focus on community involvement.

The thesis is grounded in the principles of ethical innovation, which emphasize respect for traditional techniques, community participation in the innovation process, and the sustainability of both the craft and the environment. These principles shape the development of …

On The Impulse To Notate, Lydia Chodosh

Masters Theses

On the Impulse to Notate assembles an array of dialogic encounters. Composed in fragments — written and collected, designed and curated — this catalog resists linear narrative formulas to favor an open poetic syntax.

Here, the designer relies on her propensity to notate, aggregate, and persistently recompose.

She materializes language that promotes movement toward knowledge and craft in conversation.

She reads and translates stories spatially, frequently shifting their frames.

Elusive Geometry, Lauren Richards

Masters Theses

All I have is a collection of parts. Fragments and pieces, segmented and turned over in my mind and in my hands as I try to understand them, stack them together and try to find a system. It seemed so simple at first - I just want to know how it works, of course I can put it back together again. Sometimes it’s a constant dissection, and the tide of incoming information is impossible to keep track of. But it’s alright to sit down and think about where they go and what they’re made of. What structures do I know? …

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive, Alia Varawalla

Masters Theses

Globalization and mass migration has propelled a hybrid existence, as individuals that occupy multiple geographies we live in a constant state of translation. Our museums and cultural institutions are in opposition to this; static, preserved and de-contextualized. At the intersection of printmaking and architecture, this thesis proposes a living archive to document the collective migratory journey across sites, materials, and hybrid identities. A network of centers for knowledge sharing and production centered on India and its diaspora. As art practices and people migrate, cultural production evolves with its context, gaining new meaning as it changes hands generationally and globally.

Iteration One, Julian Suver

Masters Theses

In the fashion world, companies put a lot of effort towards classifying their products as luxury to the consumer. The age of social media has aggrandized collaborations with famous artists, endorsements by celebrities and even the appointment of pop stars as directors of the biggest fashion houses in the world, as if this makes the clothing better. I can't help but question what luxury actually means when you strip away marketing and if this status can be given or taken away. If a silk dress gets irreparably stained or ripped is it still luxury? Is an old band T-shirt found …

Urgency Reader, Paul Soulellis, Special Collections, Fleet Library

Graphic Design

252 pages : illustrations ; 28 cm. Edition of 110 numbered copies. Read more and download complete Urgency Reader 2019 here."Urgency Reader is a quick assembling of texts, risograph printed in Pawtucket, RI, and bound as a book at the last minute to launch at the Odds and Ends Art Book Fair at Yale University Art Gallery on December 6, 2019. Suggested topics from the open call included: urgency, craft, queerness, gender, transformation, kinship, race, survival ..."--cover wrapper. "Inspired by Omnibus News #1 (1969), Assembling (1970-87), and other assembling publications, Urgency Reader is an experiment in publishing as a …

Artification, Fine Art, And The Myth Of "The Artist", Larry Shiner

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

I begin by examining three concepts of “artification:” the decoration, transformation, and modification. I argue that the typical business argument for artification claims that since businesses must be constantly innovating and since art and artists are the principal locus of creativity in our society, businesses must be “artified.” I argue that these claims about artists and creativity are based on widely accepted conventional views about art and artists that are false. I illustrate my general argument by examining one of the best statements of the case for business artification, Austin’s and Devin’s book, Artful Making, showing that artful making is …

A Third System Of The Arts? An Exploration Of Some Ideas From Larry Shiner's The Invention Of Art: A Cultural History, David Clowney

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

I explore some implications of Larry Shiner’s view that fine art is a modern invention. In part I, I briefly summarize Shiner’s main thesis and defend it against some misunderstandings and objections that have appeared in the literature. In part II, I discuss Shiner’s remarks about the possible emergence of what he calls a “third system of the arts.” I ask what such a system might look like, consider some signs that it may indeed be emerging, and venture a suggestion about what would be required for it actually to come about.