Art and Design Commons^™

Lessons In And Out Of School, Mary K. Maloney Johnson

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

What are we saying to children when we leave the creativity to others in a visual environment, infused with “attitude”, snobbery, acquisitiveness and Pollyanna innocence? We’re saying that we approve this message. Visual arts teach media literacy in an atmosphere that implicitly uses vices to secure attention. School experiences cannot compete. Parents and teachers, pleading incompetence, pass undiscerning choices to the next generation. Educational illustration typically amounts to copy-machine ready, poorly drawn, saccharin cartoons. Standards exemplified by the likes of Szyk, Holling and others lie hidden on the shelves. Dismay and consternation over the failure to plumb the depths of …

Designing Social Change: Inquiry-Based Teaching In Graphic Design, Donald Tarallo

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

This paper shares an exploratory and inquiry-based graphic design project and the resultant pedagogic approach that offers arts and design educators ideas on teaching to instigate positive social change. The author summarizes a year-long fellowship project where he worked as a change agent in service to a partnership of six non-profit, after-school arts programs in Providence, Rhode Island who are organized as the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC).

The intention of this project was two-fold. The primary effort was to investigate ways graphic design can be strategically used to seed interest and empower youth to make positive choices with how …

[Threshold]: Understanding Noise Through Play, Cecil Decker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the theoretical underpinnings of my culminating project, the video game [threshold]. It describes the subject of the game--noise --and the method of its discussion--play. The goal of this game is to encourage players to re-contextualize noise, away from interference and error, as the source code of the universe. This new viewpoint forces us to focus on all of the data we filter out. By assessing this data, we can gain a deeper understanding of the world around us.