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Full-Text Articles in Art Practice

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca May 2015

Pressing: Where The Objective Meets The Subjective, Mariana Parisca

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

Through this essay I describe the theoretical and anthropological ideas that led to the creation of the Cushing Series. An interest in the obsession with photography in popular culture leads to an understanding of the permeation of structured reasoning beyond scientific research and into everyday life. Taking evidence from photography, and philosophy of science I establish the limitations of structured reasoning, both as a way of perceiving the world and as an understanding of identity, and define surface and frame as its physical representation. Using Sartre’s existential theory and phenomenological anthropology I then describe the infinite subjective existence of …


Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, Ambika Subramaniam May 2014

Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, Ambika Subramaniam

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

The following thesis examines the work of Ambika Subramaniam, in particular her thesis installation Ergonomically Designing Art Objects, for the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis. Based within a discussion of semiotics, the thesis researches furniture signification and tracks its evolution through traditional form, ergonomic function, and consumed product. Major points include the ways in which objects are capable of collapsing and retaining the semiotic divide between a sign and referent, and how that signification relates to contemporary design-oriented products. Using the chair as the exemplifying object, the thesis installation questions how objects have …