Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Immaculate Condemnation, Corey Robertson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work is a continuously evolving self portrait formulated by a combination of past experiences and influences. The Immaculate Condemnation body of work is a cathartic reaction that confronts Catholic Sin and rebels against gender conformity. As both a confirmed Catholic and transgender woman, I speak from an authentic voice that seeks open conversation regarding these topics. I also hope to demystify the transsexual body for the non-transgendered viewer. Additionally, I use allegoric imagery to communicate my interpretation of beauty, power, horror, and sex. I combine performance, photography, sculpture, video, audio, and graphic design to execute my installations. I intentionally …

From Celluloid Realities To Binary Dreamscapes: Cinema And Perceptual Experience In The Age Of Digital Immersion, Edwin Lloyd Mcguy Lohmeyer

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

Technologies in digital cinema are quickly changing the way contemporary filmmakers create films and how audiences currently perceive them. As we move onward into the digital turn, it becomes ever more apparent that the medium of film has been emancipated from its dependence on the photograph. Directors are no longer required to capture the objectively real as it sits before the photographic lens, but can essentially construct it via groundbreaking advancements in computer-generated imagery, motion capture technology, and digital 3D camera systems and display technologies. Since the origins of film, spectators and filmmakers have assumed an existing relationship between reality …

Taxidermy Of Thought, Jason Walker

Art Theses

Sculpture is how I bring to life the dark corners of my mind. There have always been images of creatures, geology, and botanical life swirling around my head. Images that often include spires of exoskeleton, creeping tendrils searching for sustenance, or something that moves in an unnatural way. After years of envisioning and automatically sketching out these "things" it is beginning to get a bit crowded in there. It was time to excise this world in my mind and bring it into existence through my hands.
Using many different materials, including plaster, wire, paper mache, epoxy, urethane resins, many different …

Through Process, Mitchell Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

At the core of any designer’s activity is the process they engage with to create design. Process is not only a way to get from an idea to a completed work, it is also what determines our attitude towards design. This is the place where both the design and the designer are created. The gray area between nothing and something is where we go to discover design, and in turn to discover who we are and what matters to us. In this thesis I am investigating the nebulous place between ideas and things, thoughts and artifacts, and being just a …

Identification Of Perceived 21st Century Graphic Design Skills, Content Knowledge, And Tools Needed In An Effective University-Level Graphic Design Program, Amanda W. Bridges

Education Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to identify 21st century skills, content knowledge, and tools needed in an effective university-level graphic design program. Inconsistencies in the graphic design curriculum, fueled by the increasingly large number of programs and concentrations and the inability to track graduates, were some of the issues that led to a need for this study.

This study was an expansion of a previous 2006 study conducted by Shyang-Yuh Wang, which took place in Kansas and Missouri. This current study used a modified Delphi Technique in which perceptions from university-level graphic design educators and industry professionals from North …

Perceptions Of Life And Death Through The Metaphor Of Paint: Construction And Deconstruction Of Form, Nannette Cherry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper will explore classical and contemporary methods of painting applied to the portrait. It will emphasize the metaphor of paint as flesh and the connotations of the breakdown of the painted form that stands in for flesh as it relates to our preoccupations with our own mortality. Borrowing from influences like Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, and Francis Bacon, the artwork explores the creation of a form that is physical and confrontational, and is intended to provoke a psychological response in the viewer. This series of figuration bases its processes on traditional methods, while borrowing from modern art devices to …

Design And Development Of An Optically Accessible High Pressure Combustor, Jesus Nunez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Currently in the US there is a push to reduce the nation's energy dependence from foreign fuel sources. One of the most abundant fuels in the US is coal with the nation's coal reserve accounting for 25% of the coal in the world. Due to coal being an abundant resource in the US and the need to reduce the dependency on foreign fuel sources coal derived synthetic fuels have been studied for use in gas turbines. Modern gas turbine combustors must operate over a range of different fuel compositions which includes fuels with high hydrogen fuel content (HHC). To ensure …

Terrain, Rebecca Newhouse

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis explores the complexity of human involvement with the gigantism of nature. I studied this experience by creating my own natural panoramas, to intensify the human interaction by enabling the viewer to see a vast space in a small, concentrated form. Reversing the scale from massive to miniscule is the center of my thesis; what is it about the all-encompassing scenery of towering mountains, or long green fields that makes them so visually and conceptually powerful? Using plaster and plywood, I explored this reaction by recreating familiar geological features, such as cave dwellings, cliffs, mountains and fields. Soon the …

Adenine Uracil Guanine: An Exploration Of Certainty In Science, Alicia M. Hendrix

Scripps Senior Theses

Collaboration and communication between conventionally diverse fields can allow for deeper understanding and clearer analysis of the concepts within each. Two fields traditionally seen as dichotomous are those of art and science. Historically they approach problems in opposite ways. However, I would argue that they in fact investigate very similar questions, hoping to discover the ways that the world works. It makes sense, then, that historically these fields have sometimes been able to interact. Artists have engaged with science by creating work through scientific processes including crossbreeding flowers, genetically modifying organisms, and sequencing nucleotides. Others have referenced scientific ideas, like …

Design And Production Aspects Of An Electroluminescent Segment Display, Veronica Kopp, Chris Nixon

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding of the different ways printed circuits could be constructed and then implemented into creative, visual designs for printed electroluminescent displays. A variety of circuit design variables, such as area and length, were tested that will help create solutions for printed electronics.

This study tested different variables of circuit design, such as length of silver traces and the size of the image area, to help optimize ways to build a printed circuit. Then, findings were implemented into a segmented graphic display in order to analyze innovative ways to utilize multiple …

Development Of The Control And Ignition Systems On A High Pressure Gas Turbine Combustor, Carlos Alejandro Valdez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The ignition and control systems of a laboratory scale high-pressure gas turbine combustor were developed in the present work. This work provides a detailed description of the design, development and testing of the remote control system developed for a High Pressure Gas Turbine Combustor (HPTC).

The combustor has the capability to operate at pressures up to 1.5 MPa and temperatures up to 2400 K. It is also designed for a maximum air and fuel flow rates of 81.93 g/s and 35.77 g/s respectively. The fuel used will be CH4 for the early experiments but it is designed to operate using …

Plains Fascination: Artifacts Of Rural Decay, Bryan Gilligan

Master's Theses

I believe that my creative process has always been a means of retreat and refuge, or a method for coping with anxiety and frustration in a structured manner, or some sort of amalgam. As it evolved into something more complex, my creative process still retained its connection with my past and my ability to formulate complex ideas and therapeutic responses to situations I could not control

Teaching Children How To Like Balanced Meals, Harumi Norasakkunkit

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Growing up in Japan, balanced meals were always provided at home, at schools and even at restaurants. Unfortunately, children are not going to choose balanced meals from the start, so this habit has to be instilled by parents and by the educational system until it eventually becomes a personal preference for children. If children are simply given the choice to eat whatever they want from the beginning, it is unlikely that this preference will ever be developed. The emphasis of nurturing the habit of eating balanced meals, rather than just eating preferred foods, is what is particular about Japanese parenting. …

Accurate Player Modeling And Cheat-Proof Gameplay In Peer-To-Peer Based Multiplayer Online Games, Daniel Everett Pittman Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We present the first detailed measurement study and models of the virtual populations in popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Our results show that, amongst several MMORPGs with very different play styles, the patterns of behaviors are consistent and can be described using a common set of models.

In addition, we break down actions common to Trading Card Games (TCGs) and explain how they can be executed between players without the need for a third party referee. In each action, the player is either prevented from cheating, or if they do cheat, the opponent will be able to prove …

Close Encounters, Martin Anthony Arnold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: The expressiveness of the human figure is the syntax and vocabulary that I use to explore the things that make us human. In coming to really know an individual, we not only gain insights into our own psychological make-up, but we may extrapolate our findings to the broader human condition. Although intimately concerned with highlighting the characteristics that make my subjects distinctive, I am equally determined to examine those traits underscoring our commonality, that bind us all into a human family. I look for fresh ways to pull back the curtain of privacy and allow viewers to intrude on …

Explore, Educate, Expand: The Exploratorium’S Education Abroad Youth Program, Nina Rubin

Capstone Collection

This capstone describes the design of an outbound, education abroad program that will take place in Dharamsala, India over a five-week period. It will bring together young adults from the U.S. and Tibet for an intercultural learning experience. The program will provide hands-on opportunities for participants to be engaged in academic, philosophical and personal growth. The educational workshops and activities will be centered on neuroscience, meditation, and Buddhist conceptions of science and the natural world. At the same time, themes of intercultural communication and competence will be explored in-depth.

As a foundation, the program will build from an existing partnership …

Come To The Table, A. Greer Morgan

Senior Independent Study Theses

Why can our favorite practical objects not also be individually created, and for that matter, even designed as works of art? I believe there is value in creating items for daily life, paying them as much attention as any artwork. This begs several questions: Where is the intersection between art and life? When does life become art, and when is art life? I have addressed these questions with my Senior I.S. project, using interdependent sculptures made from ceramics and bread to urge contemplation about the mediums themselves, as well as by offering hospitality and encouraging community through the physical act …

An Examination Of Creative Performative Labour As A Tactics Of Resistance To Controlled Pedestrian Passage Through Public Urban Space, Dani Andree

Theses : Honours

This research within this exegesis has developed out of the idea that pedestrian passage through public urban space is characterised by slippages in the perception of time and the senses. This concept is theoretically framed by Marc Augé’s notion of “non-place” (1995) and Michel de Certeau’s (1984) unconscious phenomenology of walking the city street. This exegesis examines the development of a reflexive unconscious language within a visual arts practice, as a tactics of resistance to controlled pedestrian passage. This theoretical framework, along with Alex Villar’s “Temporary Occupations”, forms part of a reflexive praxis that examines the progression of my creative …

Material Meaning, Anne Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

The synthesis of old and new, analog and digital, and hand- and computer-based methods provides designers with an opportunity to work beyond the constraints of the computer and take advantage of the aesthetic effects that actual materials bring to visual communication. Designers who choose to actively participate in their process – bringing the aesthetic effects of working materially into the realm of the digital – will likely learn to reject an approach that relies too heavily on passive digital tools. Active participation in the design process can extend our creative vocabulary and humanize visual communication.

Medical Illustration, Dusty Barnette

Honors Theses

"When people ask me what I do for a living I tell them, 'I am a medical illustrator'. This response often elicits a look of confusion, along with the question, 'You're a what?"" This is the response often received by medical illustrator Monique Guilderson, after being asked the standard "What do you do for a living?" question. I think this one statement does an excellent job of summarizing the general public perception of the field. In fact, I myself would have responded the same way just a few years ago, but since I first came to realize that this is …

The Power Of Design In Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Propaganda, 1937-1943, Grace Janzen

Honors Theses

The Nazi regime has gone down in infamy as one of the most self-consciously coercive regimes in history. When studying the National Socialists, men of power and influence are found in abundance. Individuals such as Hitler, Himmler and Hess receive credit for the influence they held over German society during that era. Organizations of individuals, such as the SA and SS, are also well recognized for their ability to control the masses. But in analysis of power during Nazi rule, one group is almost universally overlooked: the designers and graphic artist of the Ministry of Propaganda. The Minister of Propaganda, …

The Monongalia County Court House Mural: Blanche Lazzell And The Public Works Of Art Project In Morgantown, West Virginia, Kendall Joy Martin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956), a native of West Virginia and graduate of West Virginia University, was an early practitioner of Modern art in America. Lazzell was employed by the government-sponsored Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) in 1934 in Morgantown, West Virginia. During her time with the program, Lazzell completed three wood-block prints and painted Justice, a mural for the Monongalia County Courthouse. This thesis examines Lazzell’s courthouse mural and discusses Lazzell’s selection of three themes, education, religion, and industry, and why they are significant to the Morgantown area. This thesis demonstrates that although the PWAP stipulated that there was to …

Visual Exploration Of Cultural Intersections, Sarah Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Personal exposure to, and in-depth investigations of cultural artifacts can be used to inform visual explorations that represent the universal experience of existing in a world where cultural boundaries are blurred and constantly evolving. Cross-cultural understanding and visual language are expanded throughout the research and making processes, resulting in work that has increased resonance with diverse audiences. Artifacts are not only expressions of a specific group of people, but also reflections of societal influences on one’s thinking, creating, and experiencing the world. In an increasingly global society, there is more interaction between cultures, resulting in a greater exchange of beliefs …

Elevating The Everyday: Designed Objects As Companions, Cassie Hester

Theses and Dissertations

From fleeting interactions to long affairs, our relationships with things are diverse and complex. Like people, designed objects and environments are close companions in our lives. The way we understand and engage with artifacts is parallel to the way we interpret and interact with each other. A constant source of comfort and delight, frustration and anxiety, their personalities inform our everyday dialogues and experiences. Designed artifacts assume engaging and pleasurable personalities when they transcend materials, challenge perceptions, and garner active, reflective interactions. Through the investigation of familiar materials such as concrete, crayons, paper, sequins, and thread in unfamiliar formats and …