Art and Design Commons^™

Unmasking The Mouse: Cultural Appropriation In Disney Films, Rebecca Domas

Honors Student Research

The artworld has largely revolved around traditional institutions like museums for centuries, however with the age of technology quickly evolving new artforms have risen to challenge these traditional spaces. Large corporations like The Walt Disney Company, have revolutionized the world of art and have become a prominent voice in representing cultures to a large population of the public. The two forces may be comparably different on the surface; however both are going through a progressive change as they enter the discussion of inclusive representation and accusations of cultural appropriation. The act of cultural appropriation concerns the negatively generated adaptations of …

The Mvohc Project, Brooke Day

All Theses

ABSTRACT

A Mvohc is a Morphic Vessel of Human Consciousness. The Mvohc Project traverses' theories of spatial identity in tandem with creative world-building as a method for examining the intricacies of the human condition and reimagining reality. My creations are designed to promote autonomy over the contemporary world's ever-evolving societal complexities to empower individuals, foster imagination and communication, and create space for positive change. This body of work incorporates fleshy biomorphic sculptures inspired by science fiction, deep-sea marine life, and the human body. The abject creatures are partnered with constructed audio-scapes that encompass the frenzy of an overarching internal monologue, …

Towards A Decolonial Feminist Aesthetics: Gender, Race, And Empire In Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’S Dictee, Juwon Jun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Defining revolutionary struggle as a struggle between fictions, Trinh T. Minh-ha asserts that art in revolution is a spiritual presence which widens the conception of freedom. Political struggle is constituted by clashes in differently written and conceived realities—hinged on the creation and realization of multiple liberatory fictions. Liberation then requires us to attend to creating new myths and conceptions of freedom which can free us from the current structures of domination that produce current subjects and realities. If culture is indeed an “essential element in the history of a people,” mapping decoloniality in cultural and aesthetic fields may be essential …

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.

The Cunning Little Vixen: A Folktale Illustrated On Stage, Mikayla Reid

Masters Theses

This thesis paper reflects upon the costume design process taken by Mikayla Reid to explore how color choice and application within designs can help create storybook characters off the page and onto the stage. This concept is explored through the costume designs for the opera The Cunning Little Vixen, a production theoretically staged at the Alice Busch Opera Theater for the Glimmerglass Festival in New York. The paper discusses Reid’s attempt to create designs that still feel like watercolor illustrations, even when realized in physical garments. It follows her process as she tests different dye techniques in search for what …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …

Sartorial Semiotics: Constructs Of Gender And Female Sexuality In Post Wwii American And European Cinema, Patricia Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cinematic costume design functions as a system of visually-perceived, material and indexical signifiers, an effective and compelling language further informed by styling and embodiment. Sartorial semiotics support and inflect role characterization, while equally underpinning or subverting tropes generated by ideological paradigms. The following methodological approaches were adopted in scrutinizing this topic: Roland Barthes’ application of semiotic theories to the domain of fashion in The Language of Fashion, and Laura Marks’ discussion of the dialectics of optical and haptic visualities in apprehending film images in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.

By examining the costume …

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.

Appropriation Of The Highest Order: A Study Of Harry Smith’S Master Work, Film No. 18 Mahagonny In Relation To The Brecht-Weill Opera The Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny And Duchamp’S The Large Glass, Rose V. Marcus

Theses and Dissertations

Harry Smith’s Film No. 18, Mahagonny, 1970 – 1980, is a transmutation of the original Brecht-Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a 1930, into a feature-length experimental film. This paper shows how the original opera and Duchamp's The Large Glass prove inherent to Smith’s double-pronged homage to both original works of art. The failure in the opera narrative and the chance shattering of The Large Glass inform Smith’s complex methodology to approach and spatialize cinema. Harry Smith’s use of the tools of the screening apparatus are traced in order to study Mahagonny in detail. The …

Errantry, Simon A. Benjamin

Theses and Dissertations

Errantry, Simon Benjamin's current body of work, named after Édouard Glissant’s theory, is comprised of a series of multi-channel video installations and related works. Errantry is centered on the polyphonic rhythms of coastal space, the Caribbean sea, and the life sustained by it in a non-linear narrative that raises questions about time, labor, environmental degradation and the ongoingness of colonialism.

Final Master's Portfolio, Jonathan Correa

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

Jonathan G. Correa's Master's Portfolio

Structures Of Time: Expressions Of Subjectivity And Social Politics In Works By Silvia Gruner, 1986–2014, Silvia Sampaio De Alencar

Theses and Dissertations

The works of Silvia Gruner (born 1959) illustrate the use of time registers as strategies to express contemporary subjectivity’s experiences with globalized environments between 1986-2014. Through this approach, the artist connects her production to the social politics of Mexico to critique the effects of globalization on Mexican society and culture.

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Beautiful People: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Fashion Industry's Thin Ideal, Shane White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Negative body image among women has become an extremely relevant topic in the last decade. The “ideal” female body image and what a person should look like according to marketing and advertising has become a highly controversial issue. This project seeks to show how the fashion industry has, over centuries, shaped how people think they need to look and in today’s time and show how it has been a root cause of issues like body image complexes leading to negative self-perception, eating disorders, mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and addiction, and even suicide. Over the last three to four decades, …

Saga Beyond The Gate: Chapter One, The Coming Of The Gate Ghost, Tristan B. Miller

MSU Graduate Theses

“Saga Beyond the Gate: Chapter One, the Coming of the Gate Ghost” explores performance sculpture used as religious ritual. My work emphasizes ritual, creation myths, relics, physical manifestations of lived religion, and the power of narrative belief. One often turns to religion, science, or spirituality, to seek answers to questions about being a conscious entity, and one’s journey to the end. This saga uses scripts from all three of these schools of thought, placing the world of the Gate Ghost into tangible reality, as a play on a stage. Artefacts represent objects of power and mystery. Characters embody morality tales, …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

Reimagining Abandoned Community Space In A Post-Pandemic Environment, Julia Drooff

Scripps Senior Theses

Earlier this year, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demise of the Great American Mall by forcing temporary and permanent closures across the country. The low-end malls that remain are dealing with crippling debt and the closing of key department stores like JC Penney and Neiman Marcus[1]. With only super-luxury malls thriving, many of the standard malls set up in the eighties are just abandoned parts of a community. So, what should happen to these abandoned malls? And what role does that space now play in the post-pandemic community? Since malls began to shut-down pre-Covid-19 did the need for …

Dead Weightless, Isaiah Schwartz

Senior Projects Spring 2021

There is more than convenience embedded into my attraction to the unrefined materials that I work with. Shopping cart (baby size), palette, cheesecloth, bucket, and window. Each is rich with an individual history that expands beyond the use it was intended for. Suspending them in the air is my observance of the sanctity of their mundane uses. To create something new, also out of these unrefined materials, and to refuse to polish it. To have resolution in a thing that is also ambiguous. I can find intrigue in a million different things as soon as I pay attention to them. …

Self && Self, Shuang Cai

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Seldom before the COVID-19 pandemic have so many people simultaneously had their lifestyle drastically changed in the same way. The forced physical isolation is, ironically, a communal experience. The sickening quarantine left everyone nothing but time to confront and reconnect with themselves. Another inevitable result of corporal isolation is the predominant awakening awareness of digital existences and connections. Evoking the shared sensitivity and delicacy, studying the tectonic activity of the digital world, the project documents the endured contemplation in the upcoming resurgence.

In/Visible, Raymond Thompson Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition focus on challenging the United States’ photographic archive that often left out African-American people. The work, through the use of appropriation and alternative photographic processes, disrupts America’s historical visual archive and notions that surround the white gaze. Through the unsettling of this visual space, new speculative narratives can be created to help imagine new futures. This work is the beginning of a process of mourning histories I have never known and reclaiming a place for myself and my family in the American landscape that is free of racial trauma.