Art and Design Commons^™

Under / Over Looked, Kopal Seth

Masters Theses

Across the stages of migration, I have confronted emotional and social complexities. The farther I am from my roots, the more I want to strengthen my connection to India. Through a process of observation and reflection on every day, grows the desire to house a cultural identity within my work. Here, encounters between past, present and future layer atop history and memories.

To reclaim the kindred character of the craft culture of my country, I rediscover those values that resonate within me through recontextualised forms, clay acts as my drawing tool to outline social structures, psychology, traditions and nostalgia.

He Makes The Figs Our Mouths To Meet And Throws The Melons At Our Feet, Josh Meier

Masters Theses

He Makes the Figs Our Mouths to Meet and Throws the Melons at Our Feet investigates the relationship between the painted image and the cast subject. By compressing the visual contradictions of pictorial and physical space, my work argues for a simultaneity of conditions and emotions. I am interested in how two material realities can hybridize to produce a new, unanticipated, re-imagined self-portraiture. This thesis contextualizes my recent works within historical frameworks and discourses including other artists’ writings and artworks, philosophies of abjection, feminist and queer theories of embodiment, poetry, film, and stream-of-consciousness memoir.

This Feels Familiar, E. Winslow Funaki

Masters Theses

This is a book about in-betweenness. It’s an examination of how we identify people and objects, the categories we use to do so, and those that don’t fit squarely into one or the other. It considers the grey areas of identity--race, gender, species, function, living, inanimate. It slips and slides through the ambiguous and indefinite, forever moving, always simultaneously being “both,” “all,” “neither,” and “none.”

Art Beside A Single Handshake : Can You Believe It?, Tongji Qian

Masters Theses

Although I was familiar with works by both McKinzie and Phil, their prints still caught my attention during the Printmaking Graduate Biennial at Rhode Island School of Design in January 2019. In contrast to the numerous talented artists who employed strategies to affirm the relevancy of printmaking in a contemporary discourse, McKinzie and Phil seemed to desire something different. Their collaboration series of Ten Identical Prints was predictably “printerly” and perilously unexciting, betraying a fraught and commonplace relationship between an expressive artist and a scrupulous master printer. How could these two artists showcase such mundanity? What was the stake of …

Watermarks : The Catalogue For Home Enthusiasts, Susana Oliveros Amaya

Masters Theses

Not just when tricks are revealed as tricks, but also when they become something else and materials still push one direction but then take a different turn. The wardrobe does not quite fit in your Ford Ka, the shelves are not exactly straight, the bed does not fit the mattress and the cabinets do not line up. The tension between ideals and use opens a space for re-appropriation, one that can reveal and turn its socioeconomic codes against themselves. Perhaps these are precisely the moments of friction when these ideological watermarks can be disrupted.

Madrepora, Elizabeth Burmann Littin

Masters Theses

Exploring materiality and how we’re inextricably entangled with it, this thesis dive into bodily, aqueous, and political engagements for dissolving the human project of separating nature from culture and bodies from environments. This dematerialization practice driven by discursive means has served as an excuse for the industrial exploitation and abuse of the less seen.

Infused by the material turn in feminist theory, I propose to think with materiality in all its wet, slimy, and dusty ongoingness as a way to craft from the living and dying processes that we embody as current wanderers among contamination, scarcity, and ruins.

Proposing a …

Glurp, Glurp, Glurp, Zihe Gong

Masters Theses

My thesis is an accumulation of many different things. It contains a body of work that consists of furniture, objects, sketches, illustrations, and spontaneous thoughts, as well as improvised writings and images of a variety of things that have largely influenced my own making. For me, design is a discipline that does not come into being through a linear direction. Similarly, I believe that a thesis does not comprise just one single narrative, culminating from one starting point. The process of designing and making is more like the way one prepares a meal - all of the ideas and research …

Oh Wait, Is This A Loop?, Carl-Gustaf Ewerbring

Masters Theses

When Photography as a medium arrived, it changed our world. It caused us to reinvent many things, one of them being the medium of painting. All of a sudden, a realistically painted picture was no longer the best possible way to document and archive visual qualities. New styles of painting evolved, and the medium grew into something bigger than before.

The web arrived more than three decades ago. What mediums has radically changed since then? Or more important, what mediums should we reinvent because of the web? This book is an systematic attempt to investigate that question.

What I knew …

Binge [Fantasy Reality], Elena Foraker

Masters Theses

[My appreciation for mainstream pop culture is genuine, but I am not a passive consumer.]

[Drawing from embodied experience and contemporary feminist theory, I design as a participant, cultural surveyor, and critic.]

[From these vantage points, I binge-watch to discern the tropes of media such as reality TV romance and dead girl shows.]

[My data bingeing leads to a process of archiving, de/recoding, and making visible the algorithm structuring pop culture.]

[“Fantasy” is derived from the Greek phantazein, meaning “to make visible.”]

[In this thesis, I demonstrate that the reality-fantasy relationship is not an either/or.]

[Reality TV challenges this notion …

Counter Formation, Fabian Fohrer

Masters Theses

Counter-formation establishes a foundation to envision a more accurate shape and field of inter-relations across disciplines and contexts that are not only receptive but appropriative and elaborative.

By approaching the space of the counter-form, my ambition is to generate a responsive structure and an archive of fragments to build upon - a blank canvas with a variable format to recast vision and action.

Counter-formation places emphasis on the transformative, liminal space that allows one to encounter contexts from within, between, and around to organize or break them in a different fashion.

Skew-Morphic Dream, Yoonsu Kim

Masters Theses

Skew-morphic Dream explores design approaches that shift one’s viewpoint, that agitate the familiar with a daydream. The doubling disjunctions presented here frame an ‘unreal real’, a skewed perspective on the function-driven interface design represented in skeuomorphism. To achieve this effect, a kind of perceptual halt, I implement defamiliarization. Within these spaces, there emerges an opportunity to think differently about perception, tools, and interfaces.

This thesis catalogs three methods used to create ‘skew-morphic dreams’: utilizing familiar tools with inverted functions, opening portals to defamiliarized landscapes, and developing platforms that require the audience to behave in unfamiliar ways.

To Protect The Hell Yeah And Every Hell Yeah's Variations, Lukey Walden

Masters Theses

I try to imagine a scrutiny free from transaction and authority, where time and generosity are not scarce. If real generosity divests from the expectation of returns, then what are the full implications of imaging someone in this way, through touch? My sitters gave me permission to stare at them in private. What happens to this momentary consensual gaze over time, prolonged into months of looking? Prolonged into an abundance of labor, abundance of attention, abundance of precious materials?

Rootless, Lilla Szekely

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt to understand the relationship of my art to nature and my sense of rootlessness. I have been imprinted by the places I have lived in yet disconnected from them as well. I am often situated on the 'other side' and as my perspective has learned to shift between the global and the local, between the outsider and insider gaze, I have come to describe this ability as being 'rootless'. I believe this condition is more common in America, the country of immigrants than anywhere else. Our memories are often re-told in the form of stories …

Bug Chaser, Peter Rogers

Masters Theses

The veins of the leaves were bustling roadways, complex interactions that occurred at such a distance from my own anthropocentric understanding, they may as well have inhabited their own universe.

Dwelling within the infinite wonder of these microcosms, I coined myself a nickname that I abode within intimately: Bug Chaser. Perhaps I had heard the term on the news, or caught one of the teachers use it in passing, but as far as I was concerned, the term was entirely of my own creation.

“I’m a bug chaser!” I announced triumphantly to my kindergarten class.

“You mustn’t use that word,” …

Utopian Fantasy, Yue Zhuo

Masters Theses

I design furniture and objects to express my utopian fantasy to people. I hope users can imagine the fantasy through the interaction with my furniture and objects. While people are interacting with my works, they become part of the fantasy. My works are the NPCs (nonplayer characters) of a game created by myself, called Utopian Fantasy.

My works are creature-istic, anthropomorphic, and always interactive. They are inspired by nature and everyday life. This series of works I created during my time at RISD express my appreciation for the underwater world and the Internet. My designs beg for interaction and play. …

Voran Test Lab : An Exploration Of Teaching Collaborative Problem Solving And Critical Thinking Through Emergent Gameplay, Taber Gifford

Masters Theses

This book explores emergent gameplay as a methodology for teaching collaborative problem solving and critical thinking. These are both key 21st Century Skills and are important in educating and building future professionals and leaders. I explored the precedent analysis of game design in this category before conducting my own design research activities and experiments. Ultimately, my work culminated in the design and development of a game called Voran Test Lab. The game is designed to engage early middle school students and ask them to critically evaluate problems and collaboratively solve them.

Cross Your Fingers, Ayumi Kodama

Masters Theses

My work is warm, flavorless and light. Warm in the colors I use and the materials I choose. It is also the feeling of being at home or somewhere familiar. Flavorless because it is honest, humble and respectful of the material and its transformation it goes through into its final form. As a designer, I am the advocate for the material and its possibilities. I listen with my hands and let the material guide me. Light in its weight literally but in hue too. It is open, natural and subtle. My work has many layers, packed with many memories and …

Storytelling In Arts, Lindi Shi

Masters Theses

People and narratives are the core of my art practice. Compared with only exploring the subject matter, I am more excited about the characters and narratives around it. My media gradually shifts from flat drawings or prints to installation, performance, and even explosions. Perhaps as a human myself, I like people a lot. There are always interesting stories where people go. The thesis discusses four stories, including an oral tale from my grandma, my personal experience, stories about bodies, and a story in the imagination. This writing reflects my research on the relationship between types of storytelling and various art …

Slick And Lumpy : Heavy Cream, Emma Fague

Masters Theses

A conversation with myself. A look inside my mind, process, and feelings. Slick and Lumpy. Creamy, oozing, leaking, dripping. Poured, molded, and sewn. Not a body, but my body, big and bursting and spilling out. Two things placed next to each other and observed. Lots of dessert, frosting, squishing, covering. A conversation with a painting, with a building technique. Fetish and healing, leather, vinyl, latex. Private and public space. Identity, imposter syndrome, digital fabrication. Combining and subtracting and stuffing. Is it appealing, sexy, charming, or revolting, ugly and gross?

Frankenstein, Ruins, & Twilight, Braden Bandel

Masters Theses

I am invested in the idea of painting as a container for the psychological. Much of my research is concerned with the role of gothic fiction as a means of processing individual and collective fears and anxieties during times of rapid social, technological, and political change. Drawing a connection between literary fiction and the fiction of the painted image, I attempt to translate some of the ambitions of fiction writing into the realm of painting. I have a proclivity for the fantastical and the melancholic, which have remained as abiding themes in my work at RISD. This thesis will consist …

3, 2, 1, Omar Lalani

Masters Theses

Decreation is a term coined by Simone Weil, described as the program in which we “undo the creature in us” , to submit back to God what God has given us - the self. This project has been a personal duty and life long pursuit presented to me in my early religious upbringing. Direct experience and research have broadened this pursuit to discussions around perception, phenomenology, body awareness, and fear of death. In painting, I reflect on the answers provided in these philosophies and place upon it the important job of examining the construction of the self as well as …

This Side Of The Air, Madeline Peckenpaugh

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I have chosen to present a collection of stories throughout my life that continue to impact my practice, along with journal entries, gathered notes, and small to large conversations I've had with my peers, parents, visiting artists, and professors. These collection of stories take place in Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Nepal, ranging in small moments to a span of seven years. I've been writing down words and clues that could lead me to find the thesis-worthy definition of my work and practice. As if someone or something else other than myself holds the knowledge I'm incapable of locating. …

Recycle Bin (Trashure), Eunhyung Chung

Masters Theses

I am inspired by painful and exhausting situations, fragile or impermanent things that break easily and do not last long, so most of my works are installation or performance which changes as time goes by. I think a lot about the sense of loss and there are two kinds of loss in my work. One is the loss of precious moments and emotions of the past. Since I have so many blissful memories of my childhood related to art, they are the driving force of my artwork and they form the core of my identity. The loss of direction and …

Wrung From Grave Architectures, Megan Solis

Masters Theses

Found or imagined findings... notes, diary entries, texts, prayers and poems

Disasters are avenues to gain intimacy glory is the constant

What is the skeleton made of, if not to be filled with meat to be piled and molded to bring back life.

pain and memory to be grave architectures, the stuctures that fall,

a plea for humanity: “Am I just a phantom waiting to be ripped from shady ground?”

desperate melancholy we realize that she is

I am

you are

tragic.

guilt to perform, to retraumatize is a punishment and is masochistic. to violently reenact, like haunted ghosts, to …

Unbound, Changrui He

Masters Theses

For many years, I have been repeatedly trying to understand what the term “trauma” means to me. While invisible, my trauma is ever-present, and I have not been able to understand how it has trapped me and my inner feelings. At the same time, more recently I don’t feel helpless or abandoned. I have been trying to tap the potential of connecting with the world outside, thereby piecing together the broken bits and pieces and reconciling with my family, past sorrows and myself.

In my thesis collection, I pay homage to a garden I often visited as a child. The …

How To Do Things With Things, Emily Guez

Masters Theses

Humans have always done things with things. It’s at the very origin of who we are as a species: we’ve gone from being bipedal homonins to people who live in complex societies by making rocks into tools. Things can serve a practical function, but they also carry cultural and symbolic meaning: they can tell our personal stories, allow us to connect with each other, and be the outer manifestations of our inner lives. The things we use in our every day lives, by implying a set of actions we can take when interacting with them, participate in shaping our reality: …

Internal Resonance, Xiangyu Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the interaction between my inside and outside worlds. It includes my discussion towards Zen methodology, homeostasis, nature, antiquity, inner order and the concept of Qi. It can also be seen as a process that scrutinizes my daily life and looks deep into those things which slowly echo in my body and push me to make my own response.

Recipes, Camille Chew

Masters Theses

Ingredients and materials can be manipulated and combined to create something new-a transformation akin to alchemy. Vegetables are chopped and brewed into soup; clay is glazed and fired into sculpture; flour. sugar. butter and eggs bake into a cake; ink is pressed into paper to make prints. These processes are acts of magic that are performed in kitchens and studios every day.

After spending all day working in the print shop, I always feel most refreshed and contented once I've cooked a meal and sat down to enjoy it. This past year I began bringing baked goods to class crits …

The Things Of Mind, Yini Luo

Masters Theses

My thesis research shows my thinking and reflection on environmental changes around me in the past and especially the past two years. Through the experience between the city and nature, my research has clarified my different perspectives and explored the expression and reproduction through the print media and glass media.

A Space For Reconciliation, Xiaoran Liu

Masters Theses

The environment where I grew up retains some characteristics from The Chinese Cultural Revolution, and still influences my thinking and behavior close to the mainstream and following the rules unconsciously. Contemporary jewelry has affected me to be more critical in a positive way. I want to share this transformative experience with people who have never had contact with contemporary art, which is an alien concept for most Chinese people.

I use jewelry as the medium to express my ideas. But the typical response to my work is “I appreciate your concepts, but I can’t accept your pieces.” So, how can …