Art and Design Commons^™

Exploring The Relationship Between Designing And Composing With An Analog Synthesizer, Felix Morrissey

Honors College

For my electrical engineering capstone, I designed and built a handheld analog synthesizer. This analog synthesizer is a musical instrument which uses electrical analog components to generate sounds with properties based on the user’s input. My goal when creating this device was to maximize its utility while remaining within the scope of the capstone project. After the synthesizer was built, I wrote and recorded several pieces of music which each utilized the synthesizer prominently. The aim of this process was to be able to explore the relationship between an instrument’s design and the quality of the music produced utilizing it. …

Climate Action At The University Of Maine: A Documentary Short Film, Santiago Tijerina

Honors College

Fossil fuel divestment is central to the discourse surrounding climate change, nevertheless, it is a movement driven by student activists and it is a sign of institutional change at a global scale. Climate Action at the University of Maine, written and directed by Santiago Tijerina and created in collaboration with the University of Maine and the Center for Undergraduate Research (CUGR), is a documentary short film driven by the research objective of understanding the rise of student activism at the University of Maine and the recent decision of the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil fuels.

The subject matter …

Inspiration: The Cogs Of Our World, Casey Libuda

Honors College

This creative thesis consists of a 5-minute animation created with digital drawings, in-between animation, traditional, and procedural animation to analyze and visualize the significance of inspiration. Inspiration drives people to discover and create, and strong feelings of hope can cause it. The psychology of inspiration is the foundation for this short film; the final result intends to inspire other people with its visual storytelling and sound design. Additionally, the animation utilizes Muse mythology and animal symbology to universalize and symbolize the connection between an artist and their source of inspiration.

Pinus Longaeva: Exploring The Intersections Of Art And Science Through Ancient Bristlecone Pine Trees, Delaney Burns

Honors College

This creative thesis develops a series of 30” by 20” woodblock prints that explore the intersections of art and science through ancient bristlecone pine trees. These trees can live for over 5,000 years, making them extremely important to dendrochronology, the study of dating and analyzing tree rings. The growth patterns of these tree rings are used to study climate change over long periods of time. This thesis focuses on these trees due to their importance to climate change and personal significance to the author. By studying the history of ecological art movements, these prints are placed in the category of …

Pursuing Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Revitalization Through Song, Sophia Crockett-Current

Honors College

Passamaquoddy-Maliseet is an Algonquin dialect spoken by the Passamaquoddy and Maliseet Indigenous Peoples in Maine and Canada. With an estimated 500 speakers, most of whom are over 60, it is highly endangered. There have been attempts to preserve Passamaquoddy-Maliseet that focused on direct translation through use of recorded interviews with Passamaquoddy People, namely the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language portal pmportal.org and Jesse Walter Fewkes' cylinder recordings of Passamaquoddy people in the 1890s Passamaquoddy People. However, this method is ineffective for revitalization; it did not help to establish new speakers, and due to Passamaquoddy-Maliseet’s more contextbased language structure, direct translation often destroys the …

User Experience Design For Presence-Aware Spaces And Technologies, Samuel Foster

Honors College

User experience design is a diverse field of study that is constantly changing as unique technologies and modes of interaction are developed. Metaphors are a critical aspect of UX design, serving to acclimate users to new technologies by comparing them to existing objects and ideas. As newer technologies become increasingly distant from real-world objects, developers are quick to look to existing technology for metaphors. This results in a lack of experience-unique metaphors that would create a more immersive experience. This thesis focused on identifying potential real-world metaphors through the use of emerging technologies in an interactive art installation. Based on …