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Articles 1 - 30 of 135
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
(Untitled), Christine Navin
(Untitled), Christine Navin
Theses and Dissertations
For millennia humanity’s preoccupation with time and its own mortality has proven to be elemental in what makes a civilization tick. This concern has been a focal point of philosophy, science, and religion. The measuring system of time asserts itself daily through the Danse Macabre, daily motions and memento mori — the things at every corner of civilization.
Four Seasons, Morgan Pearse
Four Seasons, Morgan Pearse
Theses and Dissertations
FOUR SEASONS By Morgan Pearse, MFA. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Art in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Matt King, Assistant professor, Sculpture + Extended Media. Fantasy functions in a mental space. Cyberspace is a fantasy world. Cyberspace is a mental space mediated by the individual, but also through/into itself. What does an internal thought mean when it is directed towards strangers via online avatar? The Internet exists. Your body exists. There is something in between. There is no singular …
Reynolds Bath House, Amy Turnage
Reynolds Bath House, Amy Turnage
Theses and Dissertations
Abstract: This project explores the ritual of leisure, social interaction, and reflection in a democratic* space. Water is the universal experience. The program for this site examines the ritual of bathing and the role of intimacy within a public domain. *democratic: absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges
Panoramic Sham, Andrea Vail
Panoramic Sham, Andrea Vail
Theses and Dissertations
Panoramic Sham is sunset and sunrise, a walk through a field of wildflowers or a day in the forest. It is that moment when a light breeze tousles your hair and chirping birds reaffirm vitality. Panoramic Sham is also a heap of outdated home goods that once transformed our living rooms into artificial habitats. I reimagine decommissioned domestic goods as a way to confront trends of mass-production, habits of consumption and to explore systems of artifice, authenticity, and the consumer haze perpetuated by contemporary American society. Comprised of synthetic materials and manufactured to impersonate nature, these 20th century cast-offs provide …
Standoff, Omri Zin
Standoff, Omri Zin
Theses and Dissertations
This Paper is about the intertwining and swiveling narratives that made up the conceptual building blocks of my work process during the production of the piece: Standoff. This is not a description of the physical tasks that were undertaken in the production process, nor is it a recipe for extracting the ingredients that form the intricate relationships within the sculpture, but rather it is a collection of stories that are told through a zigzagged structure in an attempt to mirror the distorted hierarchies between fantasy and fact, history and imagination, truth and speculation.
Painting As In A Journey, Kristin Thomas
Painting As In A Journey, Kristin Thomas
Theses and Dissertations
PAINTING AS IN A JOURNEY The experiences, processes, and artistic influences are described in this paper supporting the student’s MFA painting exhibit. A variety of influences from Max Beckmann to Alice Neel, as well as the oil medium itself, helped build the collective knowledge that was used in the development of this student’s work.
Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers
Insert Title, R. Abram Deslauriers
Theses and Dissertations
It is a gestural sensibility forever suspended in the material as it cools. With each movement to and fro, I become fully immersed and given over to the activity of glassworking, where the simplest impressions whisper of fantastic melodies. I remain open to it: conducting a collision: a symphony of riffs, vamps and arpeggios. Constructing the chorus in disjunctive phases as if it forms out of its own directive. The polyphonic rhythm of decisions converge into a new composition, now completely obscured from the intro—existing in reference only to itself and you
Psychic Fax On Vibrate, Received On Phantom Limbo, Jake Borndal
Psychic Fax On Vibrate, Received On Phantom Limbo, Jake Borndal
Theses and Dissertations
I offer a cloud of observations about language and art. I will prioritize my questions about how language operates in art, the way it functions within my own studio practice, and locate aesthetic interstices throughout. There will be insights gleaned from the various orderers of order (Lacan, Saussure) and orderers of disorder (Derrida, Agamben), walks in terra-incognita, and even some poetry on my part. I will take this chance to orient myself among different structures and deconstructions that have piledup around language, aesthetics and art.
Potential Energy And The Three Odalisques, Yamins Roxanne
Potential Energy And The Three Odalisques, Yamins Roxanne
Theses and Dissertations
The goal of this paper is to examine some ways in which BEHAVIOR, POTENTIAL ENERGY, and EMPATHY are critical components in my thinking and work. The impetus for my work is an investigation of how these three components can be manifested in visually expressive and powerful states. My masters thesis, The Three Odalisques, is an attempt at making a space and world which privileges these components and the potential for art to express these ideas. This paper is divided into two parts. The first section is a formal analysis of the pieces in my work from my MFA thesis show. …
Thinking Bodies And Sensational Minds: Affect And Embodiment In Contemporary Art, Sandra Burke
Thinking Bodies And Sensational Minds: Affect And Embodiment In Contemporary Art, Sandra Burke
Theses and Dissertations
The human subject is profoundly interdependent, in relation to other people and to the surrounding environment, both “natural” and technological. Western dualistic thinking creates bounded and oppositional categories and generates a conception of human subjects as autonomous, self-sufficient beings that are transparent to themselves and in control of self, other, and world. This contributes to the ongoing inequalities in society and supports normative hegemony. This dissertation argues that it is imperative to insist on the intersubjective, permeable, and contingent qualities of existence. While this project is preceded by a great deal of theoretical criticism of Western metaphysical dualism, we must …
Inhale. Exhale., Jared Cru Smith
Inhale. Exhale., Jared Cru Smith
Theses and Dissertations
I did not become a farmer or railroader like generations of my family before me–but I continue to rely on my hands and physical labor. The use of my hands as tools to construct through woodworking and metal fabrication techniques becomes a musing action. Using wood and metal as materials, I develop structures in an exploratory way to frame the endless process of making. When I lose myself in this progression of forms, I allow myself to breathe.
Erratic Boulders, Julie Malen
Erratic Boulders, Julie Malen
Theses and Dissertations
Exploring how the material environment affects human knowledge of the world is an ongoing investigation in my studio. With this tactile exploration I am also looking to discover how histories and cultures overlap constantly and in close proximity within my daily experience. By collaging natural fragments and cultural debris in my installations, I seek to exaggerate this overlap and create the dizzying feeling of moving through many places at once. Cultural and historical overlapping also occurs in the phenomena of erratic boulders, which refers to the depositing of boulders, rocks, sediments and other materials that receding glaciers leave behind. This …
Threshold, Marisa Finos
Threshold, Marisa Finos
Theses and Dissertations
Are the threshold experiences encountered between waking and sleeping similar to the liminal space between life and death? The sights, sounds, and bodily sensations experienced in the unconscious void blur the lines between the unknown and our conscious existence. Using the figure, I portray how the body might exist in these transitional moments. Through my investigations into sleep paralysis, dream states, and notions of an afterlife and the soul, I explore how we perceive the self in these altered states of consciousness.
Artificial Dissemination, Brian Fleetwood
Artificial Dissemination, Brian Fleetwood
Theses and Dissertations
This writing is an experiment in combining the two most important frameworks through which I understand the world, the storytelling traditions of my people, the Mvskoke(Creek), and the rational tradition that began with European Enlightenment era thinking. By weaving allegorical narrative (much of it personal) into theoretical speculation, I draw connections between recollection, truth, and the act of making. This examination of the gaps and connections between seemingly disparate worldviews, runs in parallel to the purpose of my work, wherein I construct fictive symbiotic and parasitic relationships between jewelry and wearer. This work takes advantage of the wearer as environment, …
Held, Erika Diamond
Held, Erika Diamond
Theses and Dissertations
My work is a symptom of my ongoing quest to achieve immortality. I perpetually attempt to make permanent the traces we leave behind and the impressions we make upon each other. I use the body to portray boundaries – between the skin and the heart, comfort and disquiet, holding and letting go. The objects I make serve both as an agent for physical contact and as the commemoration of an ephemeral interaction. I create personal fossils, revealing the interstices formed when two bodies come into contact with one another. I use materials that reference endurance and longevity to record transient …
Reality Vs. Perceptions: The Treatment Of Early Modern French Jews In Politics And Literary Culture, Michael Woods
Reality Vs. Perceptions: The Treatment Of Early Modern French Jews In Politics And Literary Culture, Michael Woods
Theses and Dissertations
Although historians have written extensively on both the early modern era and the development of an absolute monarchy, the history of Jewish communities in France and the role they played has been largely ignored. Beginning with the French Wars of Religion, this study analyzes to what extent France’s religious situation affected the growth of absolutism and how this in turn affected the Jews. Taking advantage of the fractured nature of the early French monarchy, Jews began settling in provinces along the border of both Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Affected by economic jealousies and cultural perceptions of Jews, the …
Personified - Objects With Personalities That Illustrate Applied Empathy As A Mechanism To Document Qatar’S Changing Phenomena., Maryam Al-Homaid
Personified - Objects With Personalities That Illustrate Applied Empathy As A Mechanism To Document Qatar’S Changing Phenomena., Maryam Al-Homaid
Theses and Dissertations
In the past, a user’s interaction with objects was usually limited to a core function. Whereas today, there is a trend toward objects that can offer multi-layered experiences with the potential to not only serve a core function, but to communicate information and emotion. These interactions offer a give-and-take relationship between the user and the object, with the potential for characteristics, individualistic features, and even personalities to appear. Interactions with such objects provide the potential for empathic relationships to form between human and object. Empathy becomes the bond that gives a user the opportunity to view the world from the …
Unification, Agency, Systemization, Intuition: My Art Making Process And Ideas, Zachary Duer
Unification, Agency, Systemization, Intuition: My Art Making Process And Ideas, Zachary Duer
Theses and Dissertations
This essay is an attempt to describe my ideas about my work, my process, and my philosophy of art by examining five of the major pieces I created during the pursuit of a Master of Fine Arts degree at Virginia Commonwealth University. I will discuss the pieces in chronological order, first providing a description of the works’ salient characteristics, then delving into both my specific thoughts about the work as well as the background ideas that were pertinent to me during my process of creation.
Green Relationship, Fadel Imad
Green Relationship, Fadel Imad
Theses and Dissertations
Green Relationship is a design solution attempting to raise awareness toward the environment and reduce consumerism. Waste generation and pollution have become major concerns of many governments, municipalities, organizations and individuals around the world since they are affecting human wellbeing and the environment. As an MFA student with VCUQatar, I chose to use design to contribute in protecting the environment hoping to make a difference in life. The thesis includes a research and a design component. The research explores the recycling programs and facilities in Qatar, the governmental and private sector actions toward waste generation and collection, as well as …
Mob2030 – A Place Between Solitude And Collaboration, Xuan Liu
Mob2030 – A Place Between Solitude And Collaboration, Xuan Liu
Theses and Dissertations
The design of an experimental interdisciplinary design lab–MOB 2030–within a waterfront building in Richmond, Virginia, provides an opportunity for designers to find infinite inspirations. The tools of interior design are used to manipulate a wide range of functional and formal elements to define designers’ relationship to space, work and nature. The final project provides three studios, three galleries, rooftop and waterfront landscapes, and collaboration steps connect other spaces together.
Student Education & Character Building Center Adaptive Reuse Project, Latonia M. Ricks-Chavis
Student Education & Character Building Center Adaptive Reuse Project, Latonia M. Ricks-Chavis
Theses and Dissertations
There are many programs throughout the world and in the state of Virginia that have been developed to change the outlook of youth on a broader spectrum. Youth in at risk communities face a different set of parameters and are often mislabeled as "bad kids". Many of these youth simply need an environment filled with positive energy. This redesign will create an environment that guides through intuition and the understanding of angles and markers that are considered universal in all languages. The space will open up a world that is non-institutional and without the normal boundaries and pressures of typical …
Hybrid Gulf — Excavating Future Identities, Robert Canak
Hybrid Gulf — Excavating Future Identities, Robert Canak
Theses and Dissertations
This Project examines the coexistence of two cultures?–?in this case the host Gulf, and the imported Western?–?and addresses certain problems that still need attention. This Project celebrates the creation of the third, hybrid, culture as a result of their intermingling. In this Research, Postcolonial Theory? and Transitional Object Theory? are used as conceptual frameworks, and are combined with Archaeology and Design as a practice. On a personal level, the Project evolved out of my cross-cultural origin and experiences. On an academic level, the Project serves as an experiment, trying to fill the gaps in the Gulf region’s search for identity. …
Mass Customization! An Approach Through Generative Design, Aamina Karim Malik
Mass Customization! An Approach Through Generative Design, Aamina Karim Malik
Theses and Dissertations
Abstract Historically, design has been associated with unique, handmade products and utilities; however, the advent of the Industrial Revolution introduced the system of mass-production, which generated a recurrent and ambivalent problem: the lack of customized products. Generative Design redresses this issue. This new design method is based on a system of rules, which produce a design that maintains individuality and character. Generative Design takes one away from natural elements and the distinct personalities of designs and products. Forming a design out of certain algorithms and sets of rules constricts it to artificiality and separates it from the natural. Hence, Generative …
Hospital: A Creature Of Duality, Gordon Mccormick
Hospital: A Creature Of Duality, Gordon Mccormick
Theses and Dissertations
Hospitals can no longer be thought of as simply healing machines--they are healing organisms. It is Nature that permits every miracle of medicine, and it is Science that permits our understanding of medicine. By combining the two into a single idea, we aim to strike a balance between the duality of Nature and Technology, in order to design a space that relies more on the healing powers of Nature and less on the intrusiveness of Technology.
Threading Art: The Dynamics Of Costume Design And Costume Studies., Tavares De Melo Isabela Marchi
Threading Art: The Dynamics Of Costume Design And Costume Studies., Tavares De Melo Isabela Marchi
Theses and Dissertations
The main objective of this research is to demonstrate the strong relationship between design and history in the process of studying and creating costumes for theatre. Costumes are considered an important area in the study of material culture, which has been given more visibility within academia. Over the past few decades, the number of museums and universities with collections dedicated exclusively to costumes and textiles has noticeably increased, recognizing them as works of art worthy of being preserved. Considering costumes’ ability to document time and space, and to visually tell stories, many theatre departments have implemented methods to organize their …
Lynn Riggs: Forgotten Genius, Jason Michael
Lynn Riggs: Forgotten Genius, Jason Michael
Theses and Dissertations
Lynn Riggs was an early to mid-20th century Native American playwright who wrote twenty-four full length plays, his sole enduring success being Green Grow the Lilacs, the play upon which the musical Oklahoma! is based. For much of the early part of Riggs’s career, he was considered a uniquely pioneering and promising playwright, cited in competition with Eugene O’Neill as vying for the position of best playwright of their age. But while O’Neill has gone on to be considered America’s Greatest Playwright, the life and works of Lynn Riggs, save for his contribution to Rodgers and Hammerstein, have gone largely …
Bakhtin’S Carnivalesque: A Gauge Of Dialogism In Soviet And Post-Soviet Cinema, Randy Davis
Bakhtin’S Carnivalesque: A Gauge Of Dialogism In Soviet And Post-Soviet Cinema, Randy Davis
Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation examines fifteen films produced in seven political eras from 1926 thru 2008 in Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia. Its aim is to determine if the cinematic presence of Bakhtin’s ten signifiers of the carnivalesque (parody, death, grotesque display, satirical humor, billingsgate, metaphor, fearlessness, madness, the mask, and the interior infinite) increase in their significance with the historical progression from a totalitarian State (e.g., USSR under Stalin) to a federal semi-residential constitutional republic (e.g., The Russian Federation under Yeltsin - Putin). In this study, the carnivalesque signifiers act as a gauge of dialogism, the presence of which is indicative of …
Transformative Design: A Tale Of Arabian Nights, Victoria Sanders
Transformative Design: A Tale Of Arabian Nights, Victoria Sanders
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is a description of the process of creating the scene design for the Theatre VCU production of Arabian Nights. It was directed by Gabriel Barre and the production ran April 11th – 27th, 2014. It follows the preproduction, build and a final evaluation of the design and the process used in creating it.
Queeranimal Imaginary: An Intra-Active Investigation Of Ecology, Performance, And Sound, Caryn Brissey
Queeranimal Imaginary: An Intra-Active Investigation Of Ecology, Performance, And Sound, Caryn Brissey
Theses and Dissertations
Through interrelated experiments in writing, video, sound, and movement, this research investigates the intersections of intimacy, ecology, and performance. Integrating an autoethnographic approach to gender and sexuality with creative practice and theoretical inquiry, this layered investigation offers implications that are both deeply personal and widely accessible. I am using my own experiences growing up as a queer child to generative corporeal and experience-based material, while also incorporating the ideas of current queer and gender theorists to frame my own research within the larger context of feminist studies. This research culminated into an evening length performance at Dogtown Dance Theatre on …
Necessary Movements, Janelle Proulx
Necessary Movements, Janelle Proulx
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis follows the trajectory of my artistic practice over the past two years which has led me to the creation of the installation REVERB. While incorporating performance, installation, and video into my modes of creation, I’ve likewise expanded my conceptual research regarding the influential capabilities of touch, gesture, and environment. By focusing on the relationship of REVERB to a broader discussion regarding these themes, I hope to situate the work among its art, cultural, and scientific referents.