Interactive Arts Commons^™

Light Eaters: A Study On The Affect Of Light Depicted Through Different Art Mediums, Samuel Dyck

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Humankind has spent its entire history defining and creating the things that make up our physical world. Everyday, humanity continues to discover and create, furthering society’s knowledge and understanding of existence. However, there are facets of nature that have never been entirely understood by mankind, because they have a unique affect on each individual. It is known how a tree manifests and grows but no one can explain the feeling of relief that comes in the shade of a long limbed oak on a cloudless day. Nature is unique in its simplicity and mystery. Artists often use aspects of nature …

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II. Section …

Acts Of Contrition: An Exploration Of Catholic Guilt And Sensory Pleasure In Kinetic Sculpture, Wade Warman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines the formulation of a research-based practice in kinetic sculpture. The primary goal is to investigate how historical and contemporary kinetic sculpture might provide a means for exploring the notion of guilt as seen through the paradigm of the Catholic Church by way of sensory pleasure using Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth as a framework. The methodological model upon which this research is based is a hybrid model that combines elements of experimental engineering methodologies (i.e. experimentation, data collection, data analysis, etc.) as well as historical research. The primary outcome is Acts of Contrition, a series of five kinetic sculptures …

Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Sarah Louise Ferguson

LSU Master's Theses

Darkness on the Edge of Town focuses on a series of dioramas I created accompanied by audio and video. This thesis exhibition is based on a series of interviews I conducted with a friend who is a recovering opioid addict who has spent the majority of his life incarcerated for drug offenses. The American opioid epidemic currently looms large mostly because of the influx of drug abuse in middle class white communities. My subject is of Puerto Rican descent and represents the much harsher treatment of minority addicts by the criminal justice system. His personal story represents a deep yearning …

Jeffrey Augustine Songco Interview, Yara Cruz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Jeffrey Augustine Songco (b. 1983) is a multi-media artist. Born and raised in New Jersey to devout Catholic Filipino immigrants, his artistic identity developed at a young age with training in classical ballet, voice, and musical theater. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the USA including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. In 2017, he was featured in the publication Queering Contemporary Asian American Art, and he was the Installation …

Laboratoire DéBerlinisation: Art, Finance, And The Legacies Of Colonialism In Contemporary African Art: An Interview With Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the …

The Detriments Of Factory Farming, Carrie Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the detrimental effects that industrialized farming practices have on public health, animal welfare, and ecological systems and includes factual support. It also provides practical application of this information as well as possible solutions and a detailed description of a related art exhibition.

The Us’S Economic Promises Are Over: An Interview With Miguel Luciano, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. The island was left without electricity and clean water for months. However, the natural disaster was not the only cause of this lasting devastation. The financial fall-out from predatory loans, which led to Puerto Rico’s inability to invest funds in its own infrastructure, caused an enduring humanitarian disaster. Artist Miguel Luciano (b. 1972) in this interview discusses his work in relation to the 2017 Puerto Rican debt crisis and the legacy of the over 100-year span of Puerto Rico’s colonial status as a US territory, which gives the US disproportionate control over …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

In Between, Wansoo Kim

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

In my eyes, the world is composed of both revealed things and hidden things. I interpret my surroundings based on this idea, seeking to realize my ignorance and awareness. With this in mind, I create objects in which dichotomous ideas are present, and use their physically revealed and hidden aspects in order to represent the greater human struggle to see and understand what is hidden from us.

The notion of inside and outside is one of my particular subjects. Upon observing an object or a structure, we see only its external reality. I aim to present the unobservable, often presenting …

Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster, Callan F. Fish

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Since February 2018, I’ve been listening and recording around Kingston and the town of Ulster; synthesizing interviews, bird song, passing cars, protests, conflict, unique perspectives and oral histories, meetings, optimisms, water, as part of a project called, Place Accumulation: Kingston/Ulster. Using the Dynamic Listening Instrument, an interactive sound sculpture which uses a venn-diagram of electromagnetic fields to allow sounds to be handled as a tactile entity and bended dynamically, sounds are arranged and dispersed back into different locations and events in Kingston. Using a sounding bucket, people in Kingston can listen in, re-arrange, explore, and play with sounds from their …

Xx Openings, Jackson Siegal

Senior Projects Spring 2018

XX Openings represents my dual sculpture and photography practice. The title comes from a 70’s domestic frame, with 20 openings of varying sizes for family pictures. Half of the slots were filled with stock pictures of smiling family scenes, while the others just had measurements for the openings themselves. The object struck me as alienating, and oppressive. I didn’t see any scene within those openings I felt connected to.

The frame came to symbolize varying perspectives, ways of seeing, and ways of being. As my sculpture practice has weighed more heavily on my work as a photographer, I feel tensions …

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.