Interactive Arts Commons^™

Building Coleus Academy, Janessa Unseld

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Coleus Academy, a nonprofit e-learning platform, has been created to address the deficits left by the de-emphasis and, at times, outright omission of practical skill-centric education in American curriculums. There exists a gap between the degree of knowledge necessary to engage with adult life and the extent of that knowledge that is actually possessed by emerging adults. Prominent legislations are among the numerous efforts to address this issue. However, there is a deeply fractured market where resources are proving too expensive, too sparse, or hyper-specific to the point of limited usability. Compounded with disparities in when, where, and to whom …

Introduction: Attitudes Toward The Other, Matthew Isaac Cohen

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

The use of puppets, objects, masks and cantastorias in various societies around the globe, to represent and stage the Other.

The Effects Of School-Based Art Therapy On Depressed Adolescents, Jasmine Nicolas

Nursing | Senior Theses

Depression in adolescents is associated with deficient behavioral and health outcomes (Fletcher, 2019). Art therapy has been shown to be effective in treating mental health condition such as depression. A student’s academic success heavily depends on treating their depression. Community health nurses can play a vital role in advocating for adequate mental health support to improve a student’s overall well-being and academic success. The literature review contains six articles on the prevalence and impact of depression among adolescents, art therapy as an intervention for improving psychological outcomes and resilience among adolescents, and experiences of adolescent clients in art therapy within …

Continuing, Shauna Le Ann Smith

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Taking something whole, breaking it apart, and making it into another form of wholeness is the essence of both papermaking and grief. The papermaking process involves separation, maceration, and forming of new life; the grieving process involves a similar evolution. Creating this body of work has been a pursuit of continuation—a part of me forming new life. Using papermaking processes, I create work that is visually quiet. The details are only noticeable through sustained attention and close proximity. The quiet visual qualities are intended to create a viewing experience that is meditative and slow. The lack of details of the …

Insulin Is My Fuel, Jean Paul Vivas

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The assertion that moments of play empower individuals to find balance amidst the tension of creation and destruction is a central tenet of my artistic philosophy. Through the expressive medium of painting, I have discovered that playfulness can serve as a responsive process that facilitates a flexible approach to coping with the complexities of identity, ideology, and morality. This fertile ground for creativity has become a means of defining a sense of life that is informed by my ongoing struggles with a diabetic medical condition. As my body's dependency on insulin necessitates a constant movement between the frustrations of daily …

New Frontiers In Technology: Can Traditional Intellectual Property Rights Laws Be Adapted And Applied To Nfts?, Mariyah S. Wakhariya

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

A decade ago, ‘NFTs’ were rarely heard of or known to anyone, unless they worked in or kept up with the tech world. However, they are not new - they have been around for almost two decades. Their popularity has grown over the past few years. ‘NFT’ stands for ‘non-fungible token’. An NFT is a digital file with a unique identity that is verified on a blockchain and is therefore not interchangeable - i.e., a kind of crypto asset, like an authentication certificate for digital artifacts. In theory, NFTs can represent almost any real or intangible property. These days, it …

In A Small Sea, Thomas Giebler

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

A pool of water stands before you. It is nebulous and free flowing. As you peer in, you realize how vast and deep something initially so unassuming on the surface has become.

This is my small sea.

Within this sea that rests between my ears, I am a small ‘c’ creator. This body of water is filled with experiences, inspiration, and vision. In this place, I synthesize the world around me into my work, creating microcosms that are full of life, color, and story. The idea of microcosms is the cornerstone of my design.

Within each of my created worlds, …

Rabbit Hole, Olivia Wiebe

Scripps Senior Theses

Rabbit Hole explores an alternate reality which erupts within moments of insomnia, and posits it as a place of self-discovery. Though this Rabbit Hole is a personal one, the work implies that these worlds can be found within any person when they are alone. Digital spaces have become tools of absolute availability and distraction, capitalized on by companies who profit when our eyeballs are stuck to our screens. However, cyberspace was once dreamed of as a place of self-discovery and experimentation. Rabbit Hole is an attempt to reclaim digital space, and turn towards ourselves within technology. These individual “Rabbit Holes” …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

What An Interesting Video To Put On The Internet (An Amusing Economic Indicator), Dahlia S. Bloomstone

Theses and Dissertations

My exhibition reconciles representations of domesticity, labor, and morality through the lens of sex-work (SW). It consists of video work, a video game, and free-to-take objects, where donation, the strip club, and the fish tank converge. My work concludes that SW is a timeless construct that will always exist even after reimagining multiple worlds.

Sam's Story, Anna Michelle Reid, Jennifer Vazquez

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We are exploring presenting mental health topics in video games through the eyes of an axolotl named Sam. Sam goes about his day to day life facing many difficult challenges regarding their mental health. This is an educational game to inform about different mental health symptoms and what they may look like.

Hacia La Preservación De Los Relatos De Las Comunidades Digitales De Los Mmorpg Mediante Etnografías Digitales: Una Mirada Desde Los Estudios Visuales Al Caso Futur0 Server [2005-2012] De Ragnarok Online, Romano Ponce Díaz

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

Resumen: La ponderación planteada en los siguientes párrafos centra su interés en las plataformas digitales de narrativa audiovisual donde los participantes pueden alterar y determinar el relato por medio de la interacción social sucedida en el mismo, concretamente, los videojuegos multijugador masivos de rol en línea en servidores emulados. Además, se abordan las implicaciones de la desaparición potencial y real de la información, datos, testimonios y vestigios de estas comunidades digitales participativas a causa de la naturaleza falible de los dispositivos de almacenaje electrónico. De esa forma, se busca plantear un breve panorama general de los antecedentes históricos de las …

Exhibition Interpretation And The Visitor Experience, Theresa Ryan

Case Studies

This case study explores the techniques used to interpret a commemorative exhibition staged in Dublin city library between the 14th of August and the 31^st of October, 2019. The case discusses the way in which multiple media were employed to communicate the exhibition narrative to visitors, and how this resulted in very emotive, personal and meaningful visitor experiences. Through the use of a range of audio-visuals, original images, text, memorabilia and guided tours, the exhibition provided a multi-sensory experience, that engaged different cohorts of visitors with the collections, information and ideas on display. They provided a powerful means of …

Decameron Row, In Memoriam, Imaginary Places

Schmucker Art Catalogs

In Boccaccio’s 14th-century work Decameron, a group of friends avert the loneliness of a quarantine during the Black Death by squatting together in an abandoned villa outside of Florence and telling each other stories: 10 people x 10 days = 100 tales. Their stories give them solace (and a bit of bawdy fun).

When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, we were inspired by Boccaccio’s belief that sharing stories is a salve for isolation, but we were a group of friends separated from one another by space and time. We could not squat together in a Florentine villa like Boccaccio’s characters, …

The Arts And Changing Rural Places, Bernadette Quinn Dr

Blog Posts

This blog post reflects on how recent changes to rural Ireland is influencing the arts. It recognises that rural places are very vibrant and dynamic, and that this offers many opportunities and challenges from an arts perspective. The blog also reflects on a panel discussion that the FADE project team hosted on ‘The arts and changing rural places’ at the Arts Council & Local Government’s biennial Places Matter conference in March 2022.

The research activities conducted for this publication were funded by the Irish Research Council.

Stop Telling Women To Smile: Stories Of Street Harassment And How We’Re Taking Back Our Power, Mio Yoshizaki

Feminist Pedagogy

This book review addresses the author, Fazlalizadeh's approach to art as social justice, overarching definitions of gender-based street harassment, and intersectionality. This review also offers suggestions for how feminist educators may utilize Stop telling women to smile in classrooms.

“It's So Normal, And … Meaningful.” Playing With Narrative, Artifacts, And Cultural Difference In Florence, Dheepa Sundaram, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article considers how player interactions with religious and ethnic markers, create

a globalized game space in the mobile game Florence (2018). Florence is a multiaward-

winning interactive novella game with story-integrated minigames that weave

play experiences into the narrative. The game, in part, explores love, loss, and

rejuvenation as relatable experiences. Simultaneously, the game produces a unique

experience for each player, as they can refract the game narrative through their own

cultural, identitarian lens. The game assumes the shared cultural space of the player,

the player-character (PC), and the non-player-character (NPC) while blurring the

boundaries between each of these …

Ai Interactivity In Game Design, Morgan Casey

Postgraduate

This exegesis focuses on the design of AI in games. This text aims to explain key concepts important to game design, including the use of affective and emotive components to further immerse players in the game world. The goal is to provide insight into the level of complexity required in an AI units’ design to provide enjoyable interactions attainable by an independent developer.

This research will take the combined efforts of playtesters and myself as sole designer and programmer to create a series of play tests with which to examine the enjoyment of various levels of AI complexity and their …

Internet Art: An Interactive Timeline Resource, Laurel Vaccaro

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Link to Interactive Timeline Resource (ITR): https://sites.google.com/view/itr-internet-art/home

The purpose of this study was to first collect and summarize the history of internet art from its inception to current day and, second, to create an interactive timeline resource (ITR) designed for K-12 art application. Current approaches to internet art include recommendations that students engage with social media in the K-12 setting, yet gaps in the literature have neglected to address the actual history of internet art as a feature of a student’s K-12 art experiences. Initial research started from a preliminary hypothesis that highlighted the irony of students using the internet …

How The Dungeons Of The Legend Of Zelda Challenge Players To Find The Way For Themselves, Jonathan David Hacker

Honors Projects

A dungeon in a "Zelda-like" puzzle adventure game is a tightly interconnected level, where the player's objective is to navigate to the end of the dungeon. This research proposes a level design framework for creating dungeons of this style. This paper identifies common design elements between existing dungeons, using The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a case study. These elements were synthesized into a comprehensive framework that may be used by a game designer to produce similar dungeons. The appendix of this research also addresses the benefits, limitations, and potential risks of such a design framework.