Art and Design Commons^™

Out In Thin Air, Daiqing Zhang

Masters Theses

My work often takes form in experience-charged installations underscored by phenomenology. The whys and hows behind the work mostly remain unspoken, since I would rather my work speak for itself. This writing project offered me the opportunity to comb through and tell the stories and thoughts that informed the work.

I have built a collection of documentation about the experience of having a sensitivity to moments of wonder in everyday life. These archives recorded sensuous imprints in life composed of mundane phenomena. In the collection there are images/footage of a glimpse of light leaking through cloud crevices; a brush of …

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

Landscape De/Re-Construction Through Art, Manuel Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Contemporary landscape architecture practice and education primarily focus on ecological and technical interventions. The climate crisis we find ourselves in demands scientifically informed decisions and well-engineered execution of projects, but, more importantly, creativity and innovation.

The fine arts, which were once integral and foundational to design, are today largely unappreciated and appropriated. The spiritual power of Art, Aesthetics, and Beauty, explored at length through art history and theory, are often viewed as indulgent or secondary to execution. The gap between Art & Design has widened. As a result, designers face challenges in fostering in individuals the kind of care and …

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Home. Objects. Transitions., Fei Gao

Masters Theses

As migratory life challenges traditional understandings of "home," can domestic objects, materials, or substitutes transformed into portable art forms soothe migratory anxiety, navigate connections to home, and become alternatives to the ideal home?

This thesis is an investigation of the value of domestic objects as transitional markers of "home" and their ability to foster positive emotional connection among those whose lives are in flux migrating people. Based on British psychiatrist Donald W. Winnicott's research on "Transitional Objects" or "Transitional Phenomena" such objects not only represent "comfort objects" for infants but also foreshadow the many roles assigned by individuals throughout their …

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Moretheless, Abdelghani Alnahawi

Masters Theses

material investigations becoming questions with interjections

The Meaning Of A Choice, Julie-Louise Zeitoun

Masters Theses

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy.

Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. …

An Introduction To Positive Sum Design, Ian Gonsher

Articles

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Positive Sum Design And The Economics Of Sharing, Ian Gonsher

Articles

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Double Or Nothing: Reflections On Bridge Design, Hillary Brown

Articles

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Post Critical Again, Charlie Cannon

Articles

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Introduction To Making Futures, Pelle Ehn

Articles

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What Makes A Technology Appropriate?, Barrett Hazeltine

Articles

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A Company Town, Daniel Peltz, Sheridan Coleman

Articles

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Matafunctional/Metafictional Objects, Paolo Cardini

Articles

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Urban Eden, Anne Tate

Articles

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Design For Transitions - From And To What?, Cameron Tonkinwise

Articles

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Critical Design And The Critical Social Sciences, Damian White

Articles

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On Creative Dialectics, Ian Gonsher

Articles

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How To Trace An Erased De Kooning, Ian Gonsher

Scholarly Research

This essay describes a series of paintings made in the early 2000s that investigate art history as a process of sous-rature (under erasure); signified by what is both present and absent in the work.

The Literature Of Political Things And Places: Reading And Writing Design, Susan Yelavich

Articles

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Rediscovering The Wheel, Brooke Hodge, Risd Xyz

RISD XYZ Fall/Winter 2013: Out of Bounds

What does architecture have to do with pottery? For Adam Silverman BArch 88, these two seemingly disparate creative practices are inextricably intertwined.

Brooke Hodge, director of exhibitions and publications at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, writes frequently about architecture and design for major publications. This text is excerpted from a longer essay in the new book Adam Silverman Ceramics, published this fall by Skira/Rizzoli.

Offset Magazine, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Offset magazine had a single issue published on March 1, 1997. It was an art zine with photographs, drawings and literature created by RISD students.

Mixed Media May 20, 1996, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Mixed Media began as the student publication Your Name Here. The May 20, 1996 issue includes articles, poems, drawings, student events, photos, film stills and comics. Also a calendar of events including Commencement and campus activities for RISD students are in this issue.

Mixed Media May 6, 1996, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Mixed Media began as the student publication Your Name Here. The May 6, 1996 issue includes a calendar of events for May 6-May 12, 1996, letters to the editor, comics, poems, photos, drawings. The RISD endowment is described and also RISD faculty evaluations.

Mixed Media April 22, 1996, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Mixed Media began as the student publication Your Name Here. The April 22, 1996 issue includes an article about diversity at RISD. Also included are poems, drawings, photographs, comics and letters to the editor.

Your Name Here April 8, 1996, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Your Name Here was a student publication begun in the spring of 1996. The April 8, 1996 issue includes an article about the location of RISD Commencement. Also included are recipes, poems, photographs and comics and a contest to name the student newspaper.

Your Name Here March 25, 1996, Students Of Risd, Risd Archives

All Student Newspapers

Your Name Here was a student publication begun in the spring of 1996. The March 25, 1996 issue has an article about the RISD faculty contract talks and space issues at RISD. It also includes poems, drawings, photographs and comics.