Art and Design Commons^™

Castles In The Sky, Iva Milovanović

Masters Theses

I was born and raised in the city of Belgrade. From the 1950’s till the beginning of 1990’s it was the capital city of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. From the 1950’s until the 1980’s Yugoslavia experienced a financial and thus architectural boom. The president Josip Broz Tito financed construction of WWII Memorials to demonstrate the strength of the socialist republic throughout the Balkans. These giant memorials, along with most of the architecture of Belgrade from that time, were built in brutalist style. Brutalism signified power, progress and a forward moving country.

However, when I was born a new …

On The Edge Of Being, Zoe Gross

Masters Theses

On the Edge of Being represents a focused exploration of clay, craft, femininity, fragility, and self-care. The title is hopeful. It represents a certain radical gentleness with myself and with my work. It reminds me that as hard as I try, there is always room to grow and improve. It is also a bit of a joke with myself; I am rarely satisfied.

I began this body of work as a way of rejoicing in the tamped down impulses of my early artistic career. I wanted to infuse my work with magic: color, texture, pattern, flowers, frills, lace, kitsch and …

A Natural Circus, Cecilia Plasencia

Masters Theses

I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no interest in controlling and manipulating matter to my own heart’s content. I’m rather bored of rigidly perfect geometries and sentiments. Rather than controlling materials I allow them to do as they please. I capture their moment of revelation, and allow them to speak for themselves. I realize this process of making demotes me from creator to conduit, but I’ve noted that the materials have a far more unique and intelligent message than I could ever imagine.

So, I listen to matter. Matter has one very good friend, the center of the …

Very-Asian Variation, Nicholas Oh

Masters Theses

Nicholas Oh is a Korean American Artist currently working in Providence.

Oh graduated from San Francisco State University and he is currently a graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design.

He focuses on creating clay sculpture and mixed media installation that deals with race and identity as a Korean American in America.

Oh has done residencies at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan and Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Colorado and has shown at Mills College Art Museum in California, Milwaukee Art Institute in Wisconsin, American Museum of Ceramic Art and Pence Gallery in California.

Ouroboros, Christopher Dove Drury

Masters Theses

Art is communication.

Objects are for making and giving.

Life is to be loved with others.

I work directly and swiftly with material to mark time and labor.

This is a pathway to resolve suffering, to be present.

Placefulness, Ellen Christensen

Masters Theses

Graphic design has been referred to as a tool of inquiry — a method of thinking visually. Design can polish, beautify, hierarchize, eliminate, prioritize, propagandize, or disseminate. Using spatial inquiry as a primary mode of investigation, I argue that graphic design is also a process of attention and care. How can graphic design be a tool of expansion and inclusion?

By encouraging spaces of attention and listening within the built environment and virtual worlds, we can think critically about power dynamics, interiority and exteriority, and subjectivity and objectivity. Within this phase of late capitalism, I focus on leftovers, scraps, and …

Anachropomorphism!, Carson Evans

Masters Theses

Folks, the Truth is hard to know—if can be known at all.¹ Conventional Western wisdom tells us: stick to the facts. (I’m looking at you, Enlightenment.) We privilege the written word as an objective and reliable vehicle for communication. Useful, yes, but we over-rely. I counter with this: bodily performativity and purposeful inaccuracy that produces, paradoxically, narrative accuracy. These methods roil in our gut or tug at our heartstrings—instead of recoiling, we should embrace them.

I like to unpack “the stories we tell ourselves,”² our personal and societal mythologies, with a particular eye to how the past plays a role …

Tiny Diasporas, Angela Lorenzo

Masters Theses

I see myself as a literary curator — I collect and sequence texts and images, both digital and analog, to reveal, connect, and construct narratives, resulting in shifting meanings and significances. Inhabiting this curatorial ethos, I investigate hidden subtexts, locating personal and collective relations to the margins and files marked “miscellany.” Working in books and installations, I engage with the inherited meanings of visual languages (form, typography, color, material, format) to open up well-worn narratives and craft new interpretations.

Tiny Diasporas is a primer to a design practice that borrows the form of an abecedarius, an alphabetical wordlist for learning …

This Is Public Work, Nick Adam

Masters Theses

This thesis positions graphic design as an integral form of public works.

T his is public work regards the causal relationship between graphic design and its publics as an opportunity to explore the formal maneuvers to enhance an artifact's visual codes. The idea is an experiential one: rich and meaningful form can lead to rich and meaningful experiences.

The designed artifacts of our world function across informational (effect) and emotional (affect) modes. The complexity of these operations take on an infrastructural role — what we see day-to-day shapes our experiences and understanding. The opportunity of a designer to practice in …

A Place For Plastics : Bioplastics, Bacteria And Our Thoughtless Acts, Megan Valanidas

Masters Theses

One third of all plastics end up in the ecosystem. It is time we start designing for this outcome. 311 million tons of plastics were produced in 2014 and that number is projected to more than double by 2050. Just 5% of plastics are recycled. Recycling alone is not mitigating the problem. The carbon footprint alone is massive. China’s recent announcement to no longer recycle the West’s waste promises even more challenges. We need to design for plastics to end up in the ecosystem and in the waste stream. This is where plastics go and this is where they should …

Curious Things, Allison Davis

Masters Theses

Curiosity fuels progress. It is what pushes us forward individually, as well as collectively. It allows us to make sense of the world and those that are in it. The problem is, we are in the midst of a curiosity crisis whereby our sensitivity to the physical has drastically diminished. Curious Things sheds light on our detachment from our surroundings and explores how ‘embodied curiosity’ can foster our need to know, experience, and explore. Through curious observations and unexpected encounters captured by others, this thesis argues that the use of distinct object forms and visual aesthetics can be viable solutions …

Really Clean No Problems At All, Christina Johnston

Masters Theses

Soap made with a single hair from someone you kind of know.

Porcelain vessels that seem to bubble up with anxiety from the inside.

A blanket made from surveillance footage of an intimate moment on a car.

When we use these objects, it’s hard to say if we’re touching another person or not, or if they’re sensual or synthetic.

This book presents a collection of domestic objects titled Really Clean No Problems At All. This collection focuses on post-digital culture’s increasingly dissociative relationship with bodiliness, intimacy, and hygiene.

This collection alters objects that live in our deep memories — things …

Capes Make The Man, Khalid Mezaina

Masters Theses

‘Capes Make The Man’ is a project that provided me with the opportunity to grow as a designer and an artist. Over the last two years at RISD, I’ve frequently asked myself questions about my place and role as a man in the United Arab Emirates, and what awaits when I move back after graduating. Using personal narratives and cultural symbols from home, I bring to life the archetypes I carry as a mature masculine – my king, warrior, magician, lover and dancer. The end result is a series of bold, wearable capes, resembling stage costumes worn by pop stars …

From Armor To Augmentation : Reclaiming My Everyday Body, Molly Palecek

Masters Theses

My work explores the silhouette of the body and how we can be empowered to augment it. First impressions are formed instantly and inform much of our social interactions, but these impressions are often made with the limited information of a quick glance and the simple outline of a body shape. There is a negative stigma about some body types and this can make social interaction daunting. This is especially true for women in general, for whom physical appearance is closely tied to perceived value by society. It is even more of an issue for women like myself, whose body …

Domestic Disorientation, Marisa Adesman

Masters Theses

At the center of all human life is the idea of ‘home’, and although this notion has persisted across time, the specific ideas and meaning of that word have changed significantly across the millennia. We are now in an unprecedented time of rapid change and social, economic and political upheaval, and from where we stand now, it is important to explore what ‘home’ means to us today, at both the individual and collective level.

The domestic space of the home, and the rooms within, represent a politicized site vis-à-vis gender, and these gender dichotomies are perhaps most prevalent in the …

Sky Well, Molly Kaderka

Masters Theses

Since the era of Romanticism, landscape painting has fallen into three aesthetic forms of representation: the Pastoral, the Picturesque, and the Sublime. This last form celebrates the awe and fear that arises through human encounters with nature. Many contemporary critics dismiss the Natural Sublime, claiming either that technology has replaced nature as a source of the sublime, or that humankind’s present-day destruction of nature prevents our also standing in awe of it. I disagree with both arguments. To me, humanity’s disruption of Earth’s ecosystems does not impede an individual’s experience of exhilaration witnessing, say, a volcanic eruption. And modern technology …

Fungible Commodities, Kelly Taylor Mitchell

Masters Theses

This is an unbound portfolio printed using polymer plates on the vandercook press, in Providence, Rhode Island. The portfolio was created as a supplement for fungible commodities, a series of three multimedia installations.

The Contested Landscapes Of Mnemosyne : Constructing Maps Of Memory, Valeria Rachel Herrera

Masters Theses

This is an unbound portfolio UV printed on plexiglass containing fragments and scenes from my master’s thesis The Contested Landscapes of Mnemosyne - Constructing Maps of Memory.

Harmless Studio, David Thomas Pittman

Masters Theses

This thesis project is oriented around a vegan concept brand called “Harmless Studio.” The project recognizes that industrial design causes and supports the harm of animals through the use of animal materials. This book presents the historical, social, and scientific background of the human-animal relationship as it exists today, and it challenges the common acceptance of that relationship as it is— ultimately suggesting that industrial design need not harm animals to serve human needs. This vegan approach to design is presented through a selection of sustainable, non-animal materials and objects made from those materials. The objects are presented as part …

The Evolution Of Ornament, Charlotte Ngaio Fairless

Masters Theses

The Evolution of Ornament is a visual exploration of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, abstracted into three textile panels representing the allure of textural ornamentation. The fragmented shapes depicted are gathered together into asymmetrical layouts that reference dissection and bird plumage. The parallel themes of glamour in the natural world, and the pulsing vivacity of flora and fauna, emerge as a vehicle for the contemplation of the innate irrationality of desire. The viewer is seduced through neon color palettes, tactile materiality, and considered placement of specifically amorphous shapes. They are intended to simulate in the viewer the reaction of a …

Squishy Play, Lauren Traugott-Campbell

Masters Theses

Work is part of our identity and dictates how workers spend most of their time in the US. This obsession has truncated our imagination and ability to conceive of alternatives. As a tactic to reclaim free time, I offer a practice I refer to as squishy play in which participants momentarily adopt new social norms to collectively discover new ways of engaging with the world and each other.

I use squishy play as a lens to investigate the power structures, social norms, and material output of late capitalism in the US. Squishy play is generous in its frivolity. It is …

Wild Power, Iris Han

Masters Theses

Wild Power is a journey to understand myself by creating wearable pieces representing aspects of my character. A human body is limited physically and it cannot show the whole identity of a person. I have desired to empower myself and also express my complex innermost feelings by ornamenting my body with another layer. This aspiration has motivated me to make wearable objects with diverse and different qualities of beauty. Especially, I have thought for a long time about how fashion can strengthen a women’s power living under societal standards that treats gender differently. From this interest, my artwork naturally reflects …

Pienso En Ti, Gina Gwen Palacios

Masters Theses

Representation signifies social existence, and the lack of Mexican American representation in media, art and the mainstream American narrative is a clear dismissal of a people and their history. I grew up in South Texas and my world was filled with fields of cotton, an open horizon line, and a mismatch of Mexican and American identities and languages. I have listened to my parents’ stories of picking cotton, being punished for speaking Spanish, having their first names changed and later being forced to drop out of school. As I grew up I realized the rows of cotton we passed daily …

Idiosyncratic Uniform, Erica Efstratoudakis

Masters Theses

Clothing mediates between the individual and the social. It creates a dialogue between our inner selves and our environments, a dialogue that becomes especially fraught for women at work. Focusing on women’s workwear in male-dominated fields, this thesis calls attention to the existing cultural norms in work environments that solidify dated gender expectations and biases. It suggests that the fashion industry has not adequately addressed the sartorial and emotional needs of everyday working women, and intervenes by placing wearers at the center of the design process. By applying needs-driven solutions and user research to a psychologically powerful force like fashion, …

Reading Rooms, Jinhwa Oh

Masters Theses

Reading rooms examines a set of three conditions for diverse modes of spatial reading. These conditions originate from three common terms: object, space, and performer, which I have subjectively defined through my thesis work. I hope to clarify my own design methodology by examining these terminologies through the thesis process.

I regard printed media as independent objects which have physical qualities: material, texture, volume, and depth. My practice emphasizes physical forms as architectural structures which can be transformed and evolve through readers’ interpretations of the objects. The true communication with my physical work can be realized by touching, moving, and …

Monument For Feeling : Notes From The Archivist, Melissa Weiss

Masters Theses

I’ve always loved the conjunctions unless, yet, however, although. Grammatical interventions, they subvert all things certain, rational, and indisputable, opening a series of syntactic doorways into new, undetermined possibilities.

The pieces in the Institute fo? Contempo?a?y Inqui?y’s archive function like those conjunctions. They refuse and destabilize easy categorization, pointing, like a rhizome, toward a thousand different possible pasts — and just as many futures.

To be clear, the Institute fo? Contempo?a?y Inqui?y does not have a physical site. It is a network of psychic locations materialized through its archive. It is, in other words, what I have gathered.

I have …

Autonomous Vehicle Futures : Designing Experiences That Enable Trust And Adoption, Jeremy Bass

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation of the user experience design necessary for a fully autonomous vehicle that would enable trust and adoption of autonomous vehicle-based services. Autonomous vehicles are destined to revolutionize mobility, yet few companies are focusing on how people will best use these new autonomous-based services. This thesis used various forms of user testing to understand user’s expectations and hesitations for riding in an autonomous vehicle. These tests included improv workshops, surveys, interviews and a simulated autonomous vehicle service ride-along. Research revealed that user’s primary concerns were travel time, comfort (spatial and privacy) and personal safety. These concerns …

Foodways For Earthlings : Recipes And Tools For Eating In Extreme Environments, Maggie Coblentz

Masters Theses

Studying how food is made, consumed, and appreciated in extreme environments can help shed light on how our experiences of food extend far beyond that of mere nourishment. The social and preparatory food-based rituals found in even the most challenging conditions can lead to a deeper awareness of the role of food on earth today, and can illuminate how humans might eat in the future. This thesis examines the roles of food in war zones, in prisons, and in space to inform speculative recipes and food-based experiences.

For A Better Normal : Fostering The Informal Sector In Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico, As A Pathway For Economic Stabilization, Jonathan W. Melendez Davidson

Masters Theses

For a Better Normal is a proposal to aid informal produce vendors in post-hurricane Puerto Rico. The project takes the shape of a toolkit that facilitates the creation of a cooperative buyer’s club. This cooperative not only provides vendors with the opportunity to create sustainable businesses, but also acts as a pathway to formalization. The outcome of this thesis becomes a case study for how to re-think the potential of the informal economy in relation to the Island’s economic crisis.

Dispatches From Planet Nowhere, Aaron Field Simmons

Masters Theses

Dispatches From Planet Nowhere explores how using the tools of fiction can aid and expand User Research and Product Design in the field of Industrial Design. The thesis asks the fundamental question of how imagining other worlds can teach us about our own. Aaron’s belief is that using the lens of fiction, and especially science fiction and fantasy, can give us novel and unique insights into what people hope, fear, and dream about the future. Drawing on the fields of Speculative Design and Future Studies Aaron proposes a new method for gathering user data, and a participatory model for understanding …