Art and Design Commons^™

What's Growing On? Raising Awareness Of Florida’S Declining Citrus Industry And Its Economic Impact, Emily Gail Snyder

Masters Theses

The adult population of Central Florida fails to understand the consequences of the decline of the citrus industry in the state of Florida resulting in lost jobs and wages, lost tax revenue, and a loss of acreage due to the increase in housing and infrastructure from the influx of people moving to Florida. The decline of the citrus industry in Florida is a large problem that not many people recognize as an issue. With nearly 6.9 billion dollars earned for the state of Florida along with the support of approximately 33,000 jobs, the citrus industry is a major contributor to …

Healing Artists Through Art, Corey Aaron Cundiff

Masters Theses

Men die by suicide nearly four times more than women, with higher rates among artists. There has been an increase in the rate of suicide over the years, primarily linked to depression and mounting societal expectations imposed upon men. The prevalence of social media and the awareness that comes with indicates that the issue of suicide may never disappear unless action is taken. This paper examines the need for art therapy to counter depression among male artists. No longer do we need to rely strictly on medication and talk therapy to treat depression. Many art therapy techniques have proven quite …

Conscious Consumers: Understanding The Roles And Impacts Patrons Can Have To Make Ethically Minded Purchases That Affect Society, Mallory Sallstrom

Masters Theses

This thesis will examine the issue that patrons of large corporations are often unaware of how their patronage funds divisive corporate philanthropy resulting in an ethical dilemma for the patron. To better understand this issue, research was conducted through a series of research questions. After completing this research, a literature review was conducted in addition to case studies and visual analyses. Based upon the research, a visual solution was created to serve as a resource and tool to educate consumers about the philanthropic efforts of large corporations as it relates to their values and missions. The thesis visual deliverables include …

Empowher: Creating Digital Pathways To Funding And Cultivating Community For Women Entrepreneurs, Nicole Riojas

Masters Theses

”EmpowHER: Creating Digital Pathways to Funding and Cultivating Community for Women Entrepreneurs” embarks on a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic world of women entrepreneurship, deciphering the intricate dynamics that influence their journey to success. With a focus on fostering gender diversity and promoting innovation, this thesis delves into the profound impact of accessible funding mechanisms and community engagement on women entrepreneurs’ trajectories while in the growth stage of their business. As women-owned enterprises continue to rise, this project dissects their economic potential and explores how innovative practices can dismantle the barriers that hinder their progress. By employing various research methods …

Biblical Literacy Among Millennial Christians, Benjamin Rivera Necochea

Masters Theses

The modern Christian has more access to scripture today than in any previous generation. The Bible can be accessed through mobile apps, computers, and the internet as well as by printed copies (Wycliffe.net). Yet, biblical literacy is declining at an alarming rate, especially among the millennial generation (Fulks 9). This thesis will examine why biblical disengagement is occurring and what implications it has on the faith of Christian millennials. To better understand the impact on this generation, research was conducted through a series of research questions: 1. What defines a millennial Christian? 2. Why are they actively leaving the church? …

The Return Of A Voice: Implementing Smart Technology To Provide An Outlet That Aids In Communication For Non-Verbal Children With Autism, Timothy Kirk Arquitt

Masters Theses

The Current state of communication based software designed to aid those with non-verbal autism is extremely limited or overly complex. The purpose of this research is to look into the world of communication based software aids that provide accessibility options for those with non-verbal autism. This paper looks to assess what is currently availability draw conclusions regarding gaps within the research and technology in order to derive a solution in the form of a mobile phone application that can serve to fill in the aforementioned gaps. The major focus of this study is to pinpoint exactly what elements of design …

Extending Public Accessibility To The Mind: Designing Airports For People With Aphasia, Savannah Eloise Garzon

Masters Theses

Imagine traveling in an airport in another country. The language is entirely foreign, and all signs are written in text you cannot understand. You have ten minutes to make your connection. How do you find your gate? How do you ask questions? This hypothetical generation of panic is the reality for many travelers every day who suffer from aphasia. Aphasia is a language disorder often caused by stroke or other brain injury that makes it difficult to communicate, read, and process numbers, especially in stressful environments like an airport. More than two million people in America suffer from aphasia and …

Visualizing The Risks: The Significance Of Graphic Design In Educating Women About The Risks Of Prescription Opioids & Pre-Existing Mental Health Conditions, Natascha Foret Truong

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the critical issue of educating women about the increased risks of prescription opioid use and misuse relating to a co-occurring mental health illness. The research-based graphic design solutions proposed in the thesis aim to create awareness and provide knowledge to women on this matter. It is imperative to address this issue as it has severe consequences for women, their families, and society. This thesis utilizes research and best practices from scholarly articles, case studies, visual analysis, personas, and mind mapping to present graphic design solutions based on evidence. These solutions aim to educate women about the gender-specific …

Living In Untranslatability--Performance Art In China And Usa, Ziyun Ma

Masters Theses

This thesis embodies discontinuities in performance art and its non-equivalent Chinese term “行 为艺术” between language and cultural context into a migrating journey. A comparative analysis on the disciplinary history of performance art studies in the US and China laid a foundation in exploring the dynamics of marginality in two contexts. Extracting from the narrative mechanism and body view of Chinese performance art, I demonstrate how the philosophy of living (生) inspired many artistic creation, which also echoes my research journey. And from our mutual living experience, I pose the concept of constructive untranslatability that applies positionality and situated knowledge …

Collaborative Storytelling In The Parable Task: The Dramaturg As Game Designer In Pervasive Performance, Percival Hornak

Masters Theses

Proceeding from a framing of theater as collaborative storytelling, I argue for defining role-playing games as a kind of performance and for their value in structuring experiential and participatory theater. Building on the impulse at the heart of experiential and immersive theater to place the audience within the world of the performance and center their experience, I explore what it means for theater artists to cede control over how audiences make meaning of their work in favor of letting narrative emerge from the participation of the audience during the performance event. I propose a framework called pervasive performance that merges …

Evangelizing In Style: How Gen Z Youth Can Use Apparel As A Means Of Evangelism And Christian Self-Expression, Brittany Winter

Masters Theses

Generation Z, also known as “Gen Z”, has grown up with a negative viewpoint on Christian apparel due to outdated and overused designs. As a result, today’s youth do not express their faith through their clothes, causing a lack of potential evangelism. Generation Z makes up nearly half of the global population, and their unique qualities are vital to furthering the kingdom of God. Self-image is an integral part of this generation, and by giving them the means to express themselves through trendy Christian streetwear, they will not only take pride in representing Jesus but also evangelize to their Generation …

Music As A Tool For Ecstatic Space Design, Pranav Amin

Masters Theses

Music and architecture share a sacred bond across cultures. Their histories intertwine and together, they shape ritualistic, religious, and popular practices. As one of the few remaining avenues of universal transcendental experiences that have been so integral to humans, music’s ability to create ecstatic spaces is ever more necessary for the modern human. This thesis uses spatial, artificial intelligence, visual, and aural tools—while engaging in a dialogue between rationalist architecture and shamanic conceptions of spaces—to create an ecstatic space that seeks to reimagine the union of music and architecture. It reveals new ways in which this union can be experienced …

Fine Arts And Missions: A Pragmatic Application And Implications, Monica L. Parson

Masters Theses

Missionaries must raise finances and general awareness of their mission work within the evangelical community. In their attempt to do this, missionaries rarely collaborate with fine artists in their efforts to inform the pastorate and congregants of their missions’ objectives and needs. In this study, a thematic review of relevant literature is combined with an Intrinsic Case Study of several artists, including the Erin— DVD, made by Daniel E. Greene N.A. during his lifetime. Daniel E. Greene, N.A., was one of the world’s foremost painters. An analysis of Mr. Greene’s applicable methodologies for oil painting was investigated. His methodology was …

Virtual Fantasy, Joey Petrillo

Masters Theses

Virtual Fantasy is a proposition in opposition to virtual reality. Fantasy is essential to queer survival; we daydream to escape the hetero-normative structures we’ve been forced to live in — imagining new futures without binaries, linearity, or traditional notions of success. By exploring immersion, escapism, and agency in our virtual worlds through a queer lens, VF offers a reframing of our relationship to VR — embracing digital spaces and their potential to imagine new futures and possibilities, while remaining present in the world around us, as we are here in our bodies, now.

Input / Output, Zach Scheinfeld

Masters Theses

Input/Output emphasizes the processes and systems that create engagement, narrative, and meaning in graphic design, as opposed to singular inputs and outputs. In a series of experimental frameworks, ranging in form from 3D printed objects to browser-based painting tools, variables are put into the hands of the audience and user, creating conditions that are prime for retooling, repurposing, world-building, and play. Throughout, an open dialogue and feedback loop is formed between interface and user, author and reader, and teacher and student, where power, agency, and structure are in constant circulation, resulting in the emergence of unexpected forms, speculative technologies, and …

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 …

Instances Of The Spirit (Glossary), Kamari A. Smalls

Masters Theses

This thesis offers a performative methodology to engaging with the worlds and ideas that these words have generated in the form of a glossary. The list of words include: Ancestor, Anointing, Attune, Breath, Conjure, Conversion, Dance, Erotic, Ephemera, Ethervism, God, Girlhood, Hallelujah, Imagination, Improvisation, Jazz, Knowledge, Love, Liturgical, Magic, Memory, Performance, Prayer, Remnant, Repetition, Ritual, Root, Sacred/Secular, Silence/Stillness, Sound, Spell, Spirit, Testimony, Water, and Witness. Personal reflections, contemplations and expansions from other writing, and passages that come out of Black feminist thought, Black girlhood studies, and Black performance theory exist here simultaneously. This glossary demonstrates the theory, theology and lineages …

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 …

Vanitas, Sae Jung Oh

Masters Theses

Vanitas is a tribute to the missing pieces within the reconstruction of human memory, places, and data. It is a cartography of words, including home, apartment complex, reconstruction, mourning, archive, memory, memorialization, a god within, collective memory, photogrammetry, cyberspace, omnipresence, meandering, heterotopia, alleyway, construction site, and mirror. I invite readers to meander in the map of relations and be lost in the topography. What can you discover when you meander? What happens when you renounce being a subject and become an object seamlessly blended into the topography?

Cyberflesh: The Me I'Ve Made For You, Jordan Metz

Masters Theses

This thesis deals with the impact of digital life on individuals by examining how real things become virtual bodies of information. Throughout this text, I weave key theoretical and literary references between my own thoughts and experiences which led to the work that appears in this book. I find it useful to attend to the spaces in between entities, theories, and technolo- gies. In these undefined spaces lies the spiritual dimension of media, the everyday magic that makes digital life possible. These ‘in-betweens’ are the site of transcendence granted by technology. In my practice, I’ve learned that things have a …

Curiosity Beyond The Hidden, Yi Young Kim

Masters Theses

What lies beneath the surface of vessels? This captivating thesis explores the hidden world within, drawing inspiration from traditional Korean ceramics and employing coil-built sculptures. By focusing on the hollowness of vessels, this study unveils their profound interconnectedness and inherent uniqueness.

Through spontaneous stacking of claylike glazes and textured elements, the artwork reveals mysterious processes and transformations within these vessels. Exposing the intricacies of hollow spaces, viewers are invited to contemplate the mesmerizing realms concealed within.

Intertwining elements of Korean heritagewith intricate structures, this artistic endeavor

sheds light on the hidden and challenges preconceived notions of everyday existence. The work …

New Mapping, Dowon Yoo

Masters Theses

Tools determine the shape of most of the worlds that are manufactured or measured. Taking the Earth as an example, territory is shaped and transformed by the tools of the earth's plate movement, the sea, and humans. A map, a recognized territory, is represented through numerical instruments, mathematical formulas, and visual devices such as lenses.

The instrumental perspective is one of the powerful lenses that will work effectively into the past, present, and future. So I started to apply an instrumental perspective to digital space. Digital space which is Non-physical has become one of the most important worlds for contemporary …

Green + White = Pink, Dora Chen

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to explore the unknown forces that are constantly shaping our lives. I am intrigued by the intangible connections that link people, objects, and places together, and how they manifest across space and time. As a ceramicist emphasizing both interiority and tactility, my work will dissect layered ideas of closeness and disruption in order to reveal a nuanced understanding of how we exist in perpetuity with what can’t be seen. I wish to explore this topic through carefully directed installations that emphasize intimacy and engagement among audience members. Through inspiration from my past experience, childhood memories, as well …

Distance: A Collection Of Studies Of Human-Computer Interaction To Explore Human Emotions And Relationships, Jinha Kang

Masters Theses

In today's society, technology has become an indispensable part of our lives, permeating our daily routines to the point where it feels as essential as the air we breathe. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the profound impact of technology, revealing its dual nature. While video conferencing bridged distances and connected people, the excessive use of social media drove wedges between them. As a multimedia artist, this thesis focuses on harnessing the positive potential of technology. Specifically, the objective is to employ technology as a medium to create art that fosters meaningful connections among individuals and conveys intricate emotions and complex …

Movement, Mechanization, And Coexistence, Yukyung Chung

Masters Theses

A movement is a tool that expresses the subject I pursue, ‘mechanization of human beings’. There are many technologies that replace humans these days, such as artificial intelligence. This makes me skeptical and afraid of being replaced as an artist in the future. Paradoxically, people, including myself, are enthusiastic about it, indicating that we do embrace the mechanization process as a society.

I will reveal this phenomenon of coexistence by demonstrating the possibility that machines cannot replace us, through motion experiments where rules increase, first starting with the reliance on intuition. I will explore not only the things that machines …

The People's Food Project, Grace Barrett

Masters Theses

The architectural design of spaces offering food assistance has received little to no attention since food pantries emerged in the 1970s. Non-profit food initiatives are often sited quickly with limited resources, producing inadequate spaces unable to fully support a food insecure community, prioritize the experience of users, and create a sense of belonging. The current spaces limit services to merely food distribution. They do not take advantage of the opportunity to expand socioeconomic capital through the power of shared food experiences: growing, cooking, eating, and learning.

This thesis redefines the traditional food pantry model, responding to explorations in psychological comfort …

Overlooked Modi Vivendi, Natalia Silva

Masters Theses

Traditional gender roles, performance of heterosexuality, marriage, parenthood, and a large variety of other societal expectations manifest themselves in the domestic realm, both intangibly and spatially. The design of domestic spaces has historically catered towards heteronormative living stereotypes, marginalizing people whose way of living challenges the norm. Even in the present day, designers with non-user clients — developers, investors, real estate firms, etc. — will design with heteronormative households in mind. The rise in feminist and LGBTQ+ rights movements has allowed for non-heteronormative modi vivendi (ways of living) to be more vocally and visibly present in the sociopolitical and cultural …

To Melt, Huanzhe Hu

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on the need for a reevaluation of the relationship between humans and nature in the face of the current ecological crisis. The author argues that the dominant anthropocentric orientation, which sees nature as a resource to be exploited for human benefit, has led to over extraction and resource abuse, disrupting the balance of ecosystems. Instead, the author suggests adopting an ethical framework based on mutual understanding and appreciation, breaking the "hunter's gaze" and fostering empathy for non-human life forms. This thesis also explores the potential for new forms of communication and engagement with nature, such as through …

The Approach: A Promise Of Warmth Inside, Louis Cohen

Masters Theses

Walking up those stairs is always a treat. The tacit knowledge that you are moving towards a hidden gem: a space most don’t know to find. Salt water, wood smoke, and roasted coffee perfume the air. But the best part of all is the intention. This is not a space to go to out of necessity or convenience. This is a space for slow sips and long reprieves.

This thesis explores many themes, but at the heart is the idea of The Approach: how we come to an object is just as important as the actual moment when we meet …

Destination Unknown, Dongheng Yang

Masters Theses

Since the end of my undergrad years, I’ve been noticing my increasing tendency to not want to talk much about my work. What is it that lingers inside of me behind such silence? What story could one possibly talk about his studio practice, when he has little to say? Well, this thesis documents the thoughts behind this silence, which, I have to admit, have fueled my works in the past two years. I investigate postmodern phenomena and literary analysis on pop culture in East Asia, including hikikomori and decisionism, to better understand myself and the world around me. Constantly faced …