Art and Design Commons^™

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

AQ Hanna [dream journal]; AQ Hanna [diario de sueños]; AQ Hanna [in the car, alone], AQ Hanna [June]; AQ Hannah [July]; Cade Campbell [Young Love]; Cade Campbell [Amor Juvenil]; Hannah Smith [Anesthetic Love Song]; Hannah Smith [Canción de Amor Anestesiada]; Claire Webb [i'm sorry all you bath lovers]; Claire Webb [Moonwalker]; Claire Webb [Serenity]; Claire Webb [I wasn't There the Night He Died]; Elizabeth Carpenter [Constellations]; Elizabeth Carpenter [On This Farm]; Elizabeth Carpenter [In Their Narrative]; Rachel Kincaid [Morning Glories]; Ben Bilderback [Edward Hopper's Nighthawks]; L.C. Francis [Diary of a Trans Girl]; L.R. Tipton [Thank You]; L.R. Tipton [I Miss …

My Kinship With The Trees, C. Daniela Shapiro

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This paper explores facets of patriarchy affecting women and the natural world. The paper suggests a cultivation of allyship and relationality between women and nature due to a shared experience of objectification within patriarchy. The separation of women from nature through origin stories, science, religion, language, and advertisement will be discussed. Examples from the graphic memoir Running without Moving are employed to emphasize this philosophy, including first person accounts.

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

The Mockingbird, Etsu Department Of Art And Design, Etsu Department Of Literature And Language

The Mockingbird

Matthew Powers [Uncle Ed]; Samantha Matney [The Secret Heart: A Memoir of My Grandfather Thurman Cooper’s Life]; Amara Bunten [Ode to Pudding Tane: A Life Well Lived and Poem to Commemorate It]; Amara Bunten [Storyteller]; Tuck Ledbetter [Autumn in Fall Branch, Tennessee]; Madison Stacey [Ultraviolet Thoughts]; Emily Wilson [Lover’s Quarrel]; Zoe Williford [they don’t like you when you’re sad]; AQ Hanna [half-lives]; Claire Webb [Bachata Songs]; Hannah Smith [A Comprehensive Study on Loneliness & the Tide]; Ethan Walker [the divine masculine]; Briana Presley [My Barbies are Disfigured, Not Dismembered]; Claire Webb [The Remnants of Julia Davis]; Kelsey Guy [Build Up, …

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun): Exploring Memory And Language Through Animation, Elaine Yang

Scripps Senior Theses

菠蘿包(Pineapple Bun) explores the themes of reconstruction, evocation, and memory through my childhood in Taiwan. Inspired by other Asian American animators, I aim to tell a simple story of connection through my grandfather and I's daily swimming ritual. The film is a 3-minute animated short film following our language barrier and how we engage with each other's differing backgrounds.

Michael’S Mouth, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Michael’s Mouth” examines the virtuoso performance of small mouth sounds (“um,” “ah,” etc.) in MOS’ 2006 video, Alternate Ending 1: The Glimmering Noise. In this performance, “Michael” deftly uses non-words to advance a non-discursive argument about architecture as a form of attention in the post-critical imaginary.

Identifying Problem Frames In Design Conversation, Senthil Chandrasegaran, Peter Lloyd, Almila Akdag Salah

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design thinking concepts such as framing, storytelling, and co-evolution, have been widely identified as part of design activity though generally have been evidenced from manual coding of design conversations and close reading of transcripts. The increase in easy-to-use computational linguistic methodologies provides an opportunity not only to validate these concepts, but compare them to other kinds of activity in large datasets. However, the process of systematically identifying such concepts in design conversation is not straightforward. In this paper we explore methods of linguistic analysis for revealing problem frames within design process transcripts. We find that frames can be identified through …

Slow Ruptures; Slow Formations, Asta Thrastardottir

Masters Theses

Language shapes our understanding of identity, place, and self. As a graphic designer, I question the existing structures of language, while using it as a material to build new formations. Nudging against certainties, I challenge how the stories we are told can dispossess us, even flatten us.

My method is a constant attempt to peel back the layers and study what lingers below. When questions arise, I look to the ways in which visual artists and writers have seen through this surface. I observe, listen, and hold stories closely, passing them back and forth between my hands. Using annotation and …

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

The Mockingbird, Etsu Department Of Art And Design, Etsu Department Of Literature And Language

The Mockingbird

Emily Price [Editor’s Note]; Micheal Bumgarner [Artist’s Statement]; Emrie Gilbert [“The Sins of the Fathers Visited upon the Children,” or How I Lived More-or-Less Openly Queer in the Southern Baptist Church]; Korbin Rhue [Playing Gods: An Aspiring Author’s Guide to Creating a Fantasy World That Feels Real to Your Readers]; Kylee Phalen [Prodigal Daughter: A Queer Christian’s Open Letter to the Church]; Ethan Walker [Hit]; Wendy Gourley [Seeing in the Dark]; Elias Murphy [Who I Am]; Andy Demczuk [Lesdiguières]; Amara Bunten [Method Acting]; Sappho Stanley [Like a Bosch]; Wendy Gourley [Butterflies]; Courtney Harvey [roolF eht no sI gniR ehThe Ring …

The Meaning Of Movement: Using Motion Design To Enrich Words For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Children, Hannah Elyse Colasurdo

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to address challenging areas of vocabulary for deaf and hard of hearing children by developing an open resource for students, parents, teachers, and content creators that utilizes motion to enhance written words for deaf and hard of hearing children. This research seeks to study the means of nonverbal communication such as body language expression and paralinguistic prosody (i.e., tone, intonation, volume, and pitch) qualities within the framework of graphic design through motion design. Body movement and expression are essential during face-to-face communication, but written language lacks such context clues. Additionally, the hard of hearing may not fully …

Dissonant Forms: Landscape, Nature-Love, And Art, Taylor F. Benoit

Masters Theses

As artists continue the long and storied lineage of Landscape, are there aesthetic responsibilities that come with representing the forces that afford you the capacity to do so? As we delineate spaces into places, endless interconnectivity into knowable “systems”, and living matter into thing based taxonomies, who do these delineations serve and with what intentions do we proceed? My studio art practice explores what it means to give form to our Former—the Former being that from which we came, the here and now, our explicit ecological reality, the stuff of what we call nature. …

Is It Real?, Hana Al-Saadi

Masters Theses

The architecture of Doha, Qatar is defined by skins of glass. When the sun shines upon the layers of glass, it creates a shimmery reflective grid across the surface of the city. These reflections, while visually intriguing, conceal many private realities behind the surface.

As a multidisciplinary artist, I attempt to maneuver in the space between the opacity of the facade and stories that lie behind. Specifically, I use this space to directly expose the contradictions that I encounter here.

Water Gets Lost In The Sea, Sun Gets Lost In The Desert, Rocio Paz Guerrero

Theses and Dissertations

The absence of happiness, the absence of nature, the absence of justice, the absence of absence, which is presence. My desire is to make these voids visible and sensible by connecting to and with others, from our intimate and collective life experiences, with empathy, and by sharing. Through a hybrid of sculpture, installation, and performance, I move within this tense in-between space, asking myself about that void, if it is possible for it to be filled, or if it is perhaps too big, or if it is perhaps too late.

Dog Leading A Dog, Ariel Ld Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the artist's relationship with paint and painting, and maps it out in a semi-chronological way. It includes fragment of memories, a breakdown of her process, and other painters she relates to.

The Mockingbird, Etsu Department Of Art And Design, Etsu Department Of Literature Of Language

The Mockingbird

Chris Walonski [Superstition]; translation by Cindy Castle [Superstición]; Leticia Pizzino [Unlocking Hearts]; Amara Bunten [Deep River, Shallow Water]; Holly Todaro [Salvatore Elboro]; translation by Allen C. López [Salvatore Elboro]; Courtney Harvey [A Letter]; Cassie Selleck [Past Time]; translation by Rachel Reid [Pasa Tiempo]; Rhea Norris [Lying in Plain Sight: Deception through an Eating Disorder Lens]; Michelle Bravender [Life Half Lived]; Diane Mallett-Birkitt [I Am That Mom]; Donna Paulson [Barren Voices]; Zach Hicks [Amnion]; Emily Price [beestings]; Mallory Spisak [Annihilations]; Emily Price [ars protestor]; Jessica Dunker [Short Supply]

≥I++ Wayward Self, Space, And Language, Mystie Do, Thu Tm Do

Theses and Dissertations

Having crossed different geographical and cultural borders, I can’t seem to position myself beyond society’s forced binaries of race, sexuality, and materiality. My personal diasporic experience drives me to bring together various presences, putting them next to one another, engaging them in dialogues. My works often share multiple space–time possibilities: a digital space, a physical site, a virtual alternity. Occupying these parallel worlds are varied ratios of mixtures of natural ecosystems, my own system of abstraction, and existing technological systems that allow us a level of individual engagement not previously available. I want to invite people to fluctuate between these …

Lost In Translation, Amanda Barr

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lost in Translation addresses the issues that trauma can create in communication; whether that be a physical trauma that damages ability to speak, think, or understand language, or mental and emotional trauma that significantly effects abilities to process, connect, and manage interpersonal relationships. My work is my voice, and a way to help others connect, to feel heard, and to even help them begin to communicate.

Final Report: Iconoclast And London Children's Connection Internships, Veronica Botnick

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Publications

In my second year of university, I joined an on-campus magazine, Iconoclast, as an assistant director. In my third year, I continued with Iconoclast as a director and started another internship with the London Children's Connection. Both projects have shown the effects of different language choice. With Iconoclast, I learned the importance of taking a less academic writing approach in theme descriptions and editors' letters. A neutral tone reaches a wider audience and ensures that readers from any background gain a full understanding of our theme. At the London Children's Connection, a simple change in choice of words can improve …

Staves & Stones: The Truth Of Runic Tradition, Josiah John Duff

Masters Theses

The research problem and task for this thesis was in the analysis of the Old Norse Futhark, or written runic language and how it has been represented through history. In order to educate the reader with a greater understanding and put the runes in context, the runes are analyzed thoroughly before being compared and contrasted to other runic systems that have been represented in modern media. The objective being to identify these similarities and differences in each language and maintain a consistent criteria to measure each language, via original use, design and form, and in-mythos development. Using this criteria and …

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,” …

Holler, Ashley Gregg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition Holler, held at Tipton Gallery March 2^ndto March 13^th, 2020. The exhibition features an installation of works on fiber, paper, and found objects tied to her upbringing in Southern Appalachia. A variety of collected materials including bedsheets, chalkboards, and barbwire are taken out of their traditional contexts and brought into a new vantage point through the artist’s alterations.

Gregg re-contextualizes materials, language, and signifiers as a process of decoding formative experiences in domestic and academic spaces. Themes examined in the work include rote learning, tradition, …

Pursuing Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Revitalization Through Song, Sophia Crockett-Current

Honors College

Passamaquoddy-Maliseet is an Algonquin dialect spoken by the Passamaquoddy and Maliseet Indigenous Peoples in Maine and Canada. With an estimated 500 speakers, most of whom are over 60, it is highly endangered. There have been attempts to preserve Passamaquoddy-Maliseet that focused on direct translation through use of recorded interviews with Passamaquoddy People, namely the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language portal pmportal.org and Jesse Walter Fewkes' cylinder recordings of Passamaquoddy people in the 1890s Passamaquoddy People. However, this method is ineffective for revitalization; it did not help to establish new speakers, and due to Passamaquoddy-Maliseet’s more contextbased language structure, direct translation often destroys the …

Arabic Beyond Arabic, Abir Zakzok

Theses and Dissertations

Arabic is the best and the most complicated language of all time!” Even though this statement seems like an exaggeration, it is what I grew up hearing; from my Arab parents as a child, my Arab teachers as a student, and my Arab customers as a salesperson. The Arabic language has a significant role in Arabs’ identity, yet most Arabs only scratch the surface and do not fully grasp the embedded meaning of the language. I have long been fascinated by the relationship between language and community as well as how it translates to design - specifically, the relationship between …

The Mockingbird, Etsu Department Of Art And Design, Etsu Department Of Literature And Language

The Mockingbird

Cheston Axton [Dropping One Hundred and Twenty Feet in Four Seconds]; Matthew Bennett [Meltdown #?]; Jessica Dunker [Border of Success]; Nancy Jane Earnest [Roan Mountain Rain]; Scottie Garber-Roberts [Scenes in the Life of a Modern Woman]; Haley Grindstaff [Ad Astra]; G. Johnson [The Pool]; Abby N. Lewis [4th of July; Someone’s in the Attic]; Alex Mauger [Gollum Sonnet]; Dillon McCroskey [Do You Hear the Creek Talking?; Fever Dream]; Harley Mercadal [A Contemporary Experience of Death; A Trailer’s Secret; Grad School Conversations; Una experiencia contemporaránea de la muerte; Unforgiven]; William Rieppe Moore [Night Watch; The scent of early morning coffee clouds …

Memory Bread, Nisiqi

Art + Design Masters Theses

Memory Bread, constituting a daily performance ritual and the post-action objects, seeks to address the generational decline of mother language use in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, a post-colonized province of China. I chose to eat sliced white bread in the performance and later casted concrete sculptures as the extension of the action for both substances’ capitalistic nature. Being an invasive material that took over the traditional architectural lifestyle, the use of concrete mirrors the pervasive cultural and ethnic assimilation in China. Meanwhile, the materiality of concrete being a mixture of various substances also metaphors the mixed culture that Chinese-Mongolians …

A Child Could Do That: Communicating Fragmented Memories Outside Of Their Context, Rachel Weinstein

Honors Papers

Undergraduate Honors Thesis exploring the relationship between memory and language, and their visual expression.

The Mockingbird, Etsu Department Of Art And Design, Etsu Department Of Literature And Language

The Mockingbird

Sam Campbell [Nightwatchers; Waffle House]; Brynne Carlisle [Better to be Pissed Off, Than to be Pissed On]; Elizabeth Chapman [Communication]; Megan Cruey [Wearing Hajib in London: The Tale of a Bond Formed Abroad]; Jessica Dunker [The Sound of Color]; Nancy Jane Earnest [Conjuring; Measures of Necessity]; Olivia Ellis [Jungle Fever]; Matthew LA Gilbert [A Conversation With Tamara Baxter]; Lia Hall [A Bookish Love]; Amber Howard [Eve’N Adam]; Kayla Ireson [The Rebuff of Discovery]; Abby Lewis [0.6 Inches; Over the Shoulder of the Moon; Sentries of the Cemetery]; Dillon McCroskey [Paralysis Under Popcorn Ceilings]; Micah McCrotty [Cartography; The Grey Hawk]; Rieppe …