Arts and Humanities Commons^™

I Remembered I Am Happy, Emily Pan

Masters Theses

This journal is a collection of thoughts on small actions and repetition and getting through getting places.

I / You / They, Yolanda Lam

Masters Theses

This thesis is a journal of conversations.

Similarity In A Distance, Ran Zhuo

Masters Theses

I grew up in an interesting yet contradictory environment. As both of my parents were busy with their jobs, I was raised by my grandparents and I believe that’s where the contradiction aspect of my personality came. My grandfather was a professor of physics in a university and my grandmother was a professor of violin. Unconsciously, I was influenced by them and developed a keen interest in cross-disciplinary and cross-media subjects. The two subjects of music and physics represented art and science, emotion and reason, abstraction and concreteness, and invisible and visible to me.

My work is primarily engaged with …

Habitually, Sunha Joo

Masters Theses

This book is a journal of the conscious looking into my most unconscious behaviors. I documented and observed my unconscious habits, and tracked where they originally came from. Observing myself was both the process and the result of the work. I played a triple role throughout the process. I was an object, an observer, and a conduit. I wrote and became a subject of the writing. I used various forms, styles and voices in this book to align the work experience of these constantly changing roles with the writing experience and to embody different perspectives.

As a result, this book …

A Normal Novel Collection, Xiaopeng Qi

Masters Theses

This thesis is a game novel collection.

Which is an experimental attempt that I use the playable texts as a way to document daily clues. While reading the thesis, the readers will have an experience of the game-like sense of substitution and view switching. Through the narrative of texts, I try to express that in the future, making games which under structural wraps is a living strategy way to self-expression and communicate to outside in this hyper-normal spectacular society.

The Body Carrying Its Otherness, Rae Yuping Hsu

Masters Theses

Prosthesis points to an addition, a replacement, and also an extension, enhancement, transcendence.

Prosthesis points to subtraction, the creation of a void, a need, disability, deficiency.

This thesis explores the ways in which the body and technology come into contact with one another and are incorporated, integrated, fused and reciprocal. It seeks to negotiate the slippage space within these contrasting stand points and propose that the body and its otherness was always already one.

Floop : Improving Eating Habits, Namrata Phirke

Masters Theses

All of us strive to eat breakfast daily, and a lot of us fail. 10% of all Americans skip breakfast daily, and the number increases sharply to 23% for the people in 18-34 age group. Something changes distinctly when people turn 18. This age group includes students who transitioned from their home to college. This shift severely affects eating habits. At home, our parents look after us and make sure that we get the optimum nutrition as we grow. But life isn’t so smooth in college. We realize the importance of our parents who used to worry about our health …

Lamination Of Reality : Ever-Thickening And Thinning Space, Leekyung Kang

Masters Theses

Since 2014, my work has navigated question of surface and through this search in order to redefined conventional understandings of space. Often times, my imagery draws on architectural infrastructure (such as construction sites and scaffolding), exposing the underlying structural framework within these landscapes. Through the recent installation, I establish a correlation between the bone/skeleton of the location to expose a more raw and unseen space, which is present but never fully revealed.

In Google Earth, the camera eye traverses different surfaces from the urban streetscape to the underground to the cosmos. Within this virtual landscape, glitches exist that are virtual …

Content-Aware : Investigating Tools, Character & User Behavior, Llewellyn Hensley

Masters Theses

Content—Aware serves as a platform for investigating structure, corruption, and visual interference in the context of present-day technologies. I use fragmentation, movement, repetition, and abstraction to interrogate current methods and tools for engaging with the built environment, here broadly conceived as the material, spatial, and cultural products of human labor.

Physical and graphic spaces become grounds for testing visual hypotheses. By testing images and usurping image-making technologies, I challenge the fidelity of vision and representation. Rooted in active curiosity and a willingness to fully engage, I collaborate with digital tools, play with their edges, and build perceptual portholes. Through documentation …

Otra Vez : Hierarchy As Designer, Jordyn Alvidrez

Masters Theses

Methods of hierarchy are often represented in graphic forms. They shape our world into subjective places/spaces of belonging or oppression. The need for order is a human condition. There is constant tension between the utility of ordered systems against the manipulative and ultimately subjective manner in which they are created. Where there is a system, there is a story. The narrative the hierarchy tells is just as crucial to me as the mechanics.

I position myself within various hierarchal systems as a way to understand the logistics of their becoming, but also, to manipulate (or justify) my cultural and ethnic …

I Trace The Fold : Fluidity And Flux In The Terrain Vague, Alicia Oas

Masters Theses

The terrain vague is the interstitial fabric of city life. It is the space between and around the inhabited city – abandoned urban space that constantly shifts in form and function. The terrain vague is found in empty buildings, former factories, parking lots, along the train tracks, and in unclaimed alleyways. In these still and quiet places, a fragmented narrative emerges from the pattern of urban color, texture, and light.

I record these patterns in the structure of the textile. Warp and weft interweave in layers of experience. The curtain captures both the substance of our collective memory and the …

Dermis, Julia Betts

Masters Theses

I create situations that hold onto spaces or things. That psychic energy can be transferred to a viewer. I’m curious about this transference and The Aesthetics of Disengagement and the empathetic nature of making work.

I often engage the viewer through overwhelm (such as: texturally, amount of objects, length of performance, mark making…) to create anxiety/tension around a body or around how a body relates to space. To create this overwhelm, I use ritual, repetitive labor that is between obsessive and meditative. In this boundary, I wonder about whether art is healing or can be. I’m interested in creating spaces …

Perceptual Alchemy, Evan Voelbel

Masters Theses

The farther we peer into the depths of human consciousness, the subatomic realm of quantum physics or the vast expanse of the observable universe, the more our notion of an objective physical reality or a predetermined, public, external world is challenged. With each new door we open, an entirely new set of questions is revealed. The world we perceive is never a direct representation, but even knowing how constructed our perception of an external reality is, are we capable of letting go of it? Through perceptual alchemy, my work probes the threshold between our constructed reality and the ‘external world’, …

Every Change, Ruhan Feng

Masters Theses

After being away from home for six years, distance and time make me reconsider: “Who am I?”

This thesis is an honest memoir, which records my reflections about life through my struggles, confusion with cultural identities, and conflicts with my mother in a one-child family. In a two-year graduate program, I continue to explore my identities as Chinese, an international student, an expatriate, and a daughter.

The text, accompanied by illustrations, interprets personal artistic changes. Printmaking in my work is not just a tool to make multiples. The ideas of layering and repeating are also applied to my three-dimensional installations …

Good Times, Tim Stoelting

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I set out to show an exaggerated display of the manipulation consumers face everyday Attaching stories to objects drastically increases their value. In benign settings, this might elevate a simple trinket into a family heirloom or drive a bidding war for a piece of gum chewed by a celebrity. On the adverse side, a story can play with our emotions to turn a desire into a need.

In this way, fear-based stories are a particularly powerful motivator; they can drive people to the most extreme actions. When used as a tool, fear can persuade even …

Balance Speaker : Efficient Work And Break, Jin Cao

Masters Theses

The name of this product is "Balance Speaker”. It is aimed to help designers to concentrate better while working and breaking, using sound and light in particular.

In this book, I will show you the design/testing process of the product, show how the working timeline and energy levels influence designers' concentration, and how to design the interaction of the product and test its usability. A

I Am Come Back To You, Eleanor Tomlinson

Masters Theses

Through various forays into psychological science and affect theory, this work attempts to understand how quick and simple commodities might coalesce into a complex portrait of individual and collective memory.

From Florine To Flocking : Observations Of A Painter - Printmaker - Embellisher, Elizabeth King

Masters Theses

I am a painter-printmaker-embellisher. The hierarchy of these labels shift to best suit the needs of each piece. Making an image that encourages looking takes precedent over how it is labeled. A quickly read painting is the enemy. I weave together complex passages on the surface to function as a speed bump, to slow down the viewer’s navigation of my paintings. I value color, pattern, and texture above a narrative. Borrowing the palette of Florine Stettheimer and the repetitive touch of Edouard Vuillard, my paintings teeter dangerously between being about the idea of decoration and being decorative. Domesticity, femininity, and …

Our Measured World : A Poetic Translation, Minryung Son

Masters Theses

Twenty-seven years alive. Sixty-one inches tall. One hundred forty-nine days abroad. How many more units would it take to describe me? What value is derived from this quantification? What quality of understanding does it offer? As human beings, we are constantly measuring our lives and implementing systems of standardization. Throughout history, measuring systems have served as frameworks for our comprehension and navigation of an increasingly complex world. This thesis approaches measurement as a means of revealing and processing this complexity of human experience rather than one that merely simplifies and distills. Through the lens of graphic design, my translation of …

Playgrounds, Cem Eskinazi

Masters Theses

Playgrounds defies the idea of singularity and control through a practice of design aiming to offer generous universes3 for one to explore freely. Building blocks of cognition such as modular thinking, hyper-linking, recursion, repetition, self-referencing and self-representation are utilized for designing honest and slightly uncomfortable experiences in order to keep the reader awake and aware.

I Was There : Irreversible View, Asma Belhamar

Masters Theses

Living in a “time lapse” is what I could say about my experience of belonging to a place like the United Arab Emirates. The compression of time and expansion of space is intensely surreal. This idea leads my process to a series of investigations about the geological and cultural tectonics of the space, where I explore the conflicts between natural landscape and architecture. The urban surroundings are precarious: even monumental and unrelenting structures can change in a matter of days. This urban phenomena is commonly known as “mega structures” where nothing is impossible to build; buildings can be finished in …

Talistones : A Handful Of Help For Homecoming Soldiers, Atulya Changanty

Masters Theses

We are creatures of habit influenced by our environments. We function on a 24-hour clock known as our circadian rhythm that is dictated by the solar cycle, seasonal shifts, and our daily schedules to determine our understanding of time to que our behaviors. The circadian rhythm can be disrupted by trauma to the brain, shift in lifestyle and habits, or inability to determine the passage of time and can lead to profound effects on mental health. Soldiers who are transitioning out of military service into civilian life, particularly those who have experienced combat, are an archetypal population who encounter damage …

Body (Less) Fitness, Dan Gioia

Masters Theses

It’s too cold outside. You stubbed your toe. You had too much Chipotle. You didn’t have enough Chipotle. There’s no shortage of reasons to abstain from exercise on any given day.

Designing a product or system to get someone to exercise is almost anti-design. So much of design is making things seamless and easy for whomever your user may be. You want to make it easy for people to accomplish things they want to do. But designing to get someone to exercise? You’re trying to get someone to do something unpleasant. You’re asking your user to sweat, strain, exert, and …

Transforme : A Look At Sports Beyond The Gender Binary, Courtney Skabelund

Masters Theses

This work explores the next wave of athletes. Using speculative design, it questions institutionalized social constructs that many take for granted but that are a daily struggle for others. It looks to broaden the expressiveness and individuality of sport. Through careful consideration, research, and testing this thesis represents my views and ideas of how sport might evolve to represent the next revolution of athletics. Because without a gender revolution, the true ideals of sport will suffer.

Humor And Allegory, Christopher Goodale

Masters Theses

This series of works proposes the merging of aesthetic interests that undermine the self-seriousness of the artist and the idea of labor in painting. Painting’s slowing of time can hopefully extinguish the peripheral noise of the outside world and provide space for thought. These paintings propose different ways to help the viewer understand visual depth, narrative, and formal decision-making. The optical depth of red, the spatial depth of glazed paint, and the spiritual depth of the figure can provide multiple meanings and possibilities. Another metaphor for the development of this series of paintings would be one comedian telling a joke …

Anthro/Post/Cene, Sofia Ortiz

Masters Theses

My project proposes a ‘deep-time’ lens, both in geological as well as cellular terms, as a strategy for dealing with an anxious contemporary world. By practicing the contextualizing of self within a multiplicity of worlds, one is able to be humbled, empathetic and (hopefully) conscientious. My work develops across multiple mediums, and seeks out different paths for creating immersive experiences that both highlight and promote interconnectivity. I endeavor to find dynamic systems that can accommodate multiple subjectivities, ideally fostering consensual indeterminacy between the work and its participants. With this in mind, my work unfolds as series of reconfigurable fragments, where …

The Little Girl (Kinda), Hanna Kim

Masters Theses

My work has always been about the personal relationships I've had in the past. It is driven by the

nostalgia of what was, and how it came to be within the present. It is not the act of languishing in a better time or the need to replay a scenario from when life was thought to have been easier. It is replaying the past that makes me chuckle, even if at the time the said event was not so hilarious or amusing. While I am heavily influenced by the psychological workings of the human mind and sociology, I ultimately decided …

Naturally Occurring Form, Margaret Kristensen

Masters Theses

I am trying to find art in my body, attempting to create images that personalize and desexualize the nude. Between the body of images that we have access to via social media and the images we have seen of female nudes, emphasis is put on finding the form to be within western society’s acceptable range of beautiful; so rarely do we find organic figures existing in the photographic environment.

Having been taught how to photograph the body by looking at images of women taken by men, I don’t see myself. The photographs by Edward Weston and Irving Penn look, gaze, …

A Theatrical Life : Negotiating Biracial Identity, Timothy Lai

Masters Theses

My paintings and drawings use autobiography, fiction, and theatricality to examine biracial-identity formation and the negotiation of different cultural ideologies. The personification of these ideologies in narrative accounts pose questions to which the characters must answer and respond. This leads to humorous, sad, problematic, empowering, and chaotic compositions that become an intimate chronicle of my own endeavor to find those “perfect” answers.

In my practice, painting and drawing are ways to explore a broad range of topics that stem from personal and familial stories. Using allegorical personifications, symbols, and metaphors derived from my family, I see the home as a …

Tendrescopic Endeavors And Other Dynamics, Jared Akerstrom

Masters Theses

Tendrescopic Endeavors and other Dynamics is an attempt to coalesce the ideas and skills that have been flying around my studio over the course of the last year into a single project. A trip to Storm King Art Center and ideas of modular making began a cycle of exploration into the way custom fittings could create light-weight and transportable sculptures. Developing a greater ability to digital model and create my own unique parts has been the charge that I have built this work upon. Science and the devices that facilitate scientific discovery act as the embodiment of the desire to …