Visual Studies Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Evocative And Provocative Image-Making In The Age Of Generative Ai, Julian Kilker

Tradition Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education

Editorial for inaugural AI-focused special issue of Tradition-Innovations in Arts, Design, and Media Higher Education, published under the auspices of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru). Discusses three articles by five authors in this issue: (1) Choreographing Shadows: Interdisciplinary collaboration to orchestrate ethical image-making by Mark Burchick and Diana Pasulka; (2) Giving Up Control: Hybrid AI-augmented workflows for image-making by Joshua Vermillion; and (3) Hands are Hard: Unlearning how we talk about machine learning in the arts by Adam Hyland and Oscar Keyes.

Editing this special issue explored several key questions: What does “innovation” mean when …

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 …

Step 10, Jinhong Cai

Masters Theses

Step 10 is an experiment on provoking empathy through

abstracted elements within my studio practice. I am

proposing to craft an emotional piece without leaning

on my identity. This written thesis consists of two parts:

narrative prose and an explanation of my studio practice.

While the installation is entirely devoid of cultural or

personal references, this text-based thesis is full of them

because it is intended to inform whoever is interested in

learning more about the motive behind this creation.

The questions I bought into the thought and creation

process are: Can a piece of art still successfully bring

out …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

The Migrant Communities Of South Sioux City, Graciela Deanda

Honors Thesis

The Migrant Communities of South Sioux City is a photographic series that showcases the individual stories, intimate spaces, older generation insights and hopes for their future lives. Stories are a great way to connect with, inspire, and influence humans. Personal storytelling—the kind that reveals who we are and what we care about— are the most potent and effective ways to connect with the world around us. This project seeks out the stories of migrant workers living in the same region but from different countries. In this series, I ask questions to hear everyone’s stories and allows others to hear and …

Developing Mexico: History, Architecture, Photography, And Esther Born’S The New Architecture In Mexico, Tyler Considine

Theses and Dissertations

Esther Born’s The New Architecture in Mexico (1937) presents the first survey of Mexican modern architecture and documents early works by Luis Barragán, Juan O’Gorman, among other Mexican modernists. This thesis examines Born’s architectural photography alongside that of Lola Álvarez Bravo, Guillermo Kahlo, and other photographers and within discourses of modernity, history, and representation.

Jogakpo Window (7 Feet X 4 Feet), Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Materials: glass, sunlight, post-it notes. Image description: Photographs show a large window covered with a 조각보 patchwork of colorful post-it notes. Sunlight illuminates the paper.

The Familiarity Of Hapticity Overrides The Rationality Of Sight: 'Hair Aesthetics' And Photographic Seeing, Diana Ferrell Mccready

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Middle Savannah River: An A/R/Tographic Ecopedagogical Ethnography Experimenting With Rhizomatic Perspectives, Lisa Augustine-Chizmar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research is an experiment in perspective. Using the four commonplaces (Schwab, 1978), I practiced letting the Savannah River teach me what there is to know about the water, the land, the people, and the other entities that depend on ki through artistic, ethnographic, and ecopedagogical lenses. The ethnographic findings describe the social actors that depend on ki and give a voice to the River. The a/r/tographic findings display the River on a canvas map through two hundred years using paint, clay, photography, video, abstract acrylics, and fabric. Together, these methods contribute to a unique ecopedagogical journey. This word cloud …

A Photo Documentary: Exploring Queer Identities In Kwazulu-Natal, Nicholas Graves

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Media can be a powerful tool in examining the structures of power that both hinder and advance LGBTQIA+ representation and subsequently, lived experiences. Therefore, being able to understand the varying feelings that everyday South Africans feel towards queer people, will be measured through the media that people consume. For the vast majority of South Africans, this would look like movies, TV soap operas, and discussions that take place on the radio. Understanding the role media plays within the country is vital to understanding the overall progress that has been made.

The media’s ability to reflect lived experiences within gay and …

Enhancing The Advertising Message Through The Conceptual Photography, Rania Ezzat

Journal of Art, Design and Music

Conceptual photography is a term that is used to refer to a specific type of photography which has been created for the specific purpose of conveying some sort of concept, Conceptual photographers are tasked with creating images that convey a specific concept or idea, as opposed to simply trying to capture a realistic representation of their subject. or it can mean trying to create an image that evokes an emotion or encourages the viewer to think about something in a different Images in conceptual photography are often used in advertising or public service announcements, because conceptual photography is a powerful …

Sensing Brownness: On Racialization, Perception, And Method, Amber Jamilla Musser

Publications and Research

Maureen Catbagan’s Dark Matter (2020) photography series invites us into sensing brownness. In these images of museum passages and stairwells, silhouettes of museum guards, and evocative shadows, Catbagan presents the landscape of the museum. However, this may not be immediately recognizable because the photographs draw focus to the parts of museums to which we rarely pay attention. In particular, Catbagan’s attention to the presence of guards allows us to perceive dynamics of racialized and gendered labor and laborers who, in an echo of their architectural focus on minor, peripheral spaces and shadows, hover between the underrecognized and oft-neglected, thereby allowing …

A Stillness In The Desert? Engaging The Public Through An Immersive Exploration Of Southwest Soundscapes, Julian Kilker, Thomas Bjelic

Creative Collaborations

The pandemic highlighted the anthropocentric nature of soundscapes, while the recent popularity of electric cars, quadcopters, and “noise cancellation” earbuds demonstrated how consumer products can rapidly change our awareness of sound. While light pollution is already extensively addressed in scholarly research, popular works such as The End of Night, and public engagement such as The International Dark Sky Association, the complex interplay of sound, natural resources, and public engagement is still emerging, particularly in creative fields.

Two UNLV scholars and artists are collaborating on this project: Julian Kilker, who specializes in visual and emerging technology research, and Tom Bjelic, who …

Breed(Ing) Narratives: Visualizing Values In Industrial Farming, Camille Bellet, Emily Morgan

Animal Studies Journal

In this study, we consider how farmed animals, specifically pigs and chickens, are visualised in literature designed for circulation within animal production industries. The way breeding companies create and circulate images of industrial animals tells us a lot about their visions of what industrial animals are and how they believe animals should be treated. Drawing upon a wide range of material designed for circulation within animal production industries, from the 1880s to the 2010s, this paper examines how representations of pigs and chickens contribute to stories of perfection and advance ideals of power, race, gender, and progress. We demonstrate that …

Representing The Ali'i And Monarchy: Dress, Diplomacy, And Featherwork In Hawai'i, Tess Anderson

Scripps Senior Theses

When Native Hawaiians and haole (foreigners) first met, both participants belonged to fashion systems unknown to the other, composed of different materials, styles, tastes, standards, and construction techniques. As the outside world was introduced to the cultural heritage of Hawaiian hulu manu (featherwork), kūkaulani (chiefly fashion), and European skewed conceptions of Hawaiian indigeneity; the ali‘i (chiefs) and kama‘āina (commoners) received and adapted to incoming materials, technologies, and information. When these encounters transitioned into “prolonged contact” and settlement, dress and adornment proliferated in new ways. Analyzing the case studies of historic pā‘ū, holokū, ‘ahu'ula, and military uniforms shows the significance of …

More Than Meets The Eye: Proximity To Crises Through Presidential Photographs, Laurie J. Bonnici, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

We look at three photographs, each made at a time of profound crisis, in order to tease out notions of proximity. Vision gives us proximity at a distance. Photographs may give us a similar proximity. Human vision depends on experience built up from individual events of seeing. Can a photograph made in a fraction of a second by someone else at some other time and some other place provide anything more than data about some surfaces in front of the lens? Can words and other images from the photographers enhance the viewer’s proximity to the original? Can we make use …

Using Photovoice To Navigate Social-Ecological Change In Coastal Maine: A Case Study On Visibility, Visuality, And Visual Literacy, Kevin P. Duffy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Media representations of the environment support specific cultures of viewing that can create expectations about how to observe social-ecological interactions in everyday life. While public perceptions may appear, in some cases, to reflect these normative representations, more critical and participatory approaches to environmental research and management have begun to complicate these representations as they are negotiated through intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group communication. Working from a visual cultural approach that interrogates issues of visibility, visuality, and visual literacy, this dissertation theorizes how coastal residents represent their own observations and experiences of environmental change through photography and what impact their views have …

Edge Of A Dream, Lauren Schild

Honors Thesis

“Edge of a Dream” is a photographic series using both film and digital mediums to explore the moments right as a dream is ending and before you wake up. I chose this theme for my series after waking up one morning in the middle of a dream. I was awake and aware, but I could not remove myself from the dream. I decided to use this project as an opportunity to explore that state and attempt to understand how our minds create dreams in the first place. Each image uses a different set of surreal methods to recreate photographic representations …

How To Build A World Art: The Strategic Universalism Of Colour Reproductions And The Unesco Prize (1953-1968), Chiara Vitali

Artl@s Bulletin

What role did UNESCO play in the art world of the post-war era? This article makes use of published and archival sources in order to clarify the utopia of a “World Art” that shaped UNESCO and led to the “Archives of Colour Reproductions of Works of Art”, a project of worldwide collect and diffusion of images of “masterworks” inspired by Malraux’s “Museum without walls”. This case study focuses on one particular aspect of the project, the “UNESCO Prize”, conceived by the Brazilian art critic and Marxist intellectual Mario Pedrosa for the 1953 São Paulo Biennial.

The Copy & The Real Thing: Changing Perceptions Between The Rubens Centennials In 1877 And 1977, Griet Bonne

Artl@s Bulletin

In this paper I examine the changing relationship between mechanical reproductions and the original artwork in the context of the Rubens centennials in 1877 and 1977. Drawing on theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Dean MacCannell, Hans Belting and Boris Groys, I argue that the mechanism of copying generates a double logic of image perception: a simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal circulation of images that affects how people perceive art in modern society. I explore this perception dynamic by looking at two photo-exhibitions during the Rubens centennials.

Selections From Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia In Atonement Transcendo, And Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forecaster, Antonie Frankie Aquino

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

It is fated inspiration which penetrates the heart, satisfies the collective soul, and offers its spirit to the vastness of ceremonial vision. Vision becomes sound and sound forms a poetic voice displaced— this displacement radiates a mythologized poetic voice serving as a lyrical object, theogonic lyre, and the genealogical muse. Selected poems from Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia: In Atonement Transcendo and Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forerunner, the collected poems orchestrate a tryptic voice that dismantles the outward magnitude of the self by subverting the antithetical self through spiritual and organic sensualness.This mythopoeic tripartism simultaneously interconnects with religion, theology, and metaphysics which …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …

Reimagining The Black Body Through Portraiture: Interpreting The Functional And Societal Roles Of Photography And The Reconstructive Power Of Camera Technology And Photographic Images For African American Self Image, Robert Cain

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the multiple ways in which the medium of photography, and specifically the portrait photograph, enabled African Americans to visually contest degrading portrayals of blackness and reclaim stolen agency in producing depictions of self throughout the media and popular culture. The societal reverberations of camera technology on the emergence of black photographers like Richard Samuel Roberts, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks are analyzed, and the images taken by these artists are read against a history of racist stereotypes, reconsidered for their aesthetic contributions to the art world, and interpreted within the tradition of African American photography. A brief …

In/Visible, Raymond Thompson Jr

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My MFA thesis and supporting exhibition focus on challenging the United States’ photographic archive that often left out African-American people. The work, through the use of appropriation and alternative photographic processes, disrupts America’s historical visual archive and notions that surround the white gaze. Through the unsettling of this visual space, new speculative narratives can be created to help imagine new futures. This work is the beginning of a process of mourning histories I have never known and reclaiming a place for myself and my family in the American landscape that is free of racial trauma.

Picturing Rights, Judging Wrongs: Photography And The Emergence Of Human Rights, Austin Dilley

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Visual Weimar: The Iconography Of Social And Political Identities, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In the Weimar Republic, images were perceived to be as unreliable as they were powerful. They helped create and codify difference while simultaneously blurring lines within the categories of gender and race. Visual culture provided a wild playground for discourses about gender presentation and sexuality that encompassed veterans, athletes, criminals, the New Woman, and androgynous figures. Despite the growing prominence of images in race science, it was widely held that images could not be trusted to convey accurate information about race. The propagandistic use of images for political purposes had the potential to be equally ambiguous. It was ultimately up …

Still, Unfolding, Ramolen Mencero Laruan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Together with my Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition, still, unfolding, at Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, Ontario), this dossier constitutes the following accompanying components: a comprehensive artist statement, documented artwork, an interview with artist Erika DeFreitas, and a curriculum vitae. These components contextualize my subject-position, and outline theoretical research, motivations, and reflections that drive my work. I expand on the diasporic experience, politics of knowledge, and the autobiographical genre as they are linked methodologies in the retrieval of immigrant histories. The fusion of autobiography and fiction becomes a hopeful approach in challenging forgotten or omitted history and confronts the expectations …

Apocalypse And Eschatology In John Ford's The Grapes Of Wrath (1940), Nancy Wright

Journal of Religion & Film

John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) visualizes conventions of the apocalypse genre to represent not simply a particular historical setting, the Great Depression, but also a vision of history to be interpreted in terms of eschatology. Expressionistic photography transforms the characters’ experiences into enigmatic visions that invite and guide interpretation. A comparison of montage sequences in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and Pare Lorentz’s The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936), a Farm Security Administration documentary, clarifies how Ford’s narrative film aligns spectators within and outside the mise-en-scène.