Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

That Mirror Again, Kyros Barton

Masters Theses

That Mirror Again is a summary of experiences, used to pose questions about self-hood through technological metaphor and theory. Its memories are disjointed, separate, and removed from time, and are an honest attempt to recenter an identity before the end of formal education. The themes of each section, Aground, Tilt, and Threshold, are presented as isolated definitions that set the mood for the writing before it is introduced. Referencing information age technology, invoking ancient deities in prose, and brushing against the fur of monster-hood, the text holds the memory it carries softly and offers it to the reader.

What The Water Says As It Runs, Jeanette Cosentini

Masters Theses

During the last two years, I have been examining the importance of vulnerability, memory and empowerment within my work as it relates to archival silence. The archive is presumed to be an objective record but what is chosen and discarded is an inherently political act. When there is archival silence, what then becomes missing from our collective histories? My exploration has spread across many forms of media, including sound, video, textiles, sculpture and writing . I have sought to understand the ways that these different mediums embody sentiment and concept, while establishing an open-ended record within which others can explore …

Wall, Jazzmynn Chang Hong

Masters Theses

The WALL is a mosaic-style book with a collection of personal anecdotes and reflections. Traceback from the earliest memory of mine, the instinctive exploration of a sheltered structure, to my recent art practices exploring the spatial perception when the boundary breaks. Each chapter, as I grow older, unfolds my progressive encounter and interpretation of the spatial boundaries.

As the book titled the WALL, its form references a traditional Chinese partition structure - the folding screen. It is not only an aesthetic manifestation, the screens are usually decorated with calligraphies or paintings, it also has a practical purpose as a spatial …

Everything Comes Full Circle, Lilan Yang

Masters Theses

Following Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984) filming locations from Houston, Texas to Los Angeles, California, I use a 16mm Bolex camera to capture the vastness of the American West. The footage draws me to reminisce about snippets of my everyday life. I contemplate how we perceive the world through analog optical apparatuses and how memories are multidimensional yet fragile. Our recollections of people and places can be distorted, unrecognizable, and fictitious. These memories would eventually diminish with the passing of time. By converting the filmmaking back and forth between analog and digital filmmaking, with the loss of information during the …

Embedded Are The Embers Of Echoes, Sarah Jane Cribbs

Masters Theses

What is a haunted house? What makes it haunted? What makes it a house?

I grew up in northern Appalachia. I sat in the back seat of my father’s car for trips from the Eastern foothills to the Western foothills of Pennsylvania mountains to visit my grandmother.

When my perception of the world grew larger as I did too, I began to hide my Appalachian identity. This ended as I began my practice, beginning with a realtime performance on artificial intelligence and queerness. Art practice opened up the possibility of critical play, a method of criticism that focuses on a …

Contemporary Art Warfare, Zongxian Huang

Masters Theses

Being an artist represents a lifelong commitment to nonstop development, despite life circumstances. I fully utilized my two years at graduate school to develop a sustainable way of living an artist’s life by creating a standard operating procedure (SOP), guiding my research and practice. An SOP is a strategic method designed to reach an objective in a systemic manner. Mine shows it is possible for an artist to stay productive, creative, and healthy under high pressure, even during unexpected contingencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. My personal experience completing graduate school during a pandemic presents a possibility to other artists of …

Tracking Traces, Songan Kyung

Masters Theses

My art practice in RISD is to reveal violent narratives embedded beneath the surface of digital traces. By taking the role of investigator — crime 71 scene investigator, conspiracy theorist —, I experiment in ways to dismantle and reconstruct the ongoing social phenomena caused by the circulation of harmful digital traces. My practice comprises careful choices of protecting the ones harmed by the malignant digital traces and disclosing the toxicity.

Knowledge From Below, Meghan Surges

Masters Theses

This thesis elucidates artistic research on the programmed world and its brutal machines. It describes a practice that hones a deviant worldview while confronting ubiquity. Applying web scraping as an investigative tool and a filmmaking methodology, I work with archives of traffic images. The pictures, portraying the smart city through its scattered, self-surveilling eyes, offer a cinematic mirror of reality. I select, annotate, and edit sequences to expose agents of administrative violence. Rejecting a vision of progress that rests on exploitation, I aim to destabilize readings of surveillance and policing as beacons of safety. My work proposes models for seeing …

House Of Reincarnation, Xinyu Li

Masters Theses

In this book, I will introduce my practice as an artist interested in nightmares, monsters, and abandoned places. My works are personal, so I have designed a character as a guide for the book; the creature is another version of me. This book will describe the adventures of the creature as the main storyline; the stories run through Hakka cultures and my personal experience, and gradually explain the source of my inspirations and design process. With the creature as company, readers won't feel lonely while reading the book.