Interactive Arts Commons^™

Menstrual Muses: Art, Storytelling, And The Care-Based Communication Of Menstrual Justice, Burcu Koleli

Masters Theses

Menstrual Muses is an artistic research project comprising a written thesis and a body of work developed across soft sculpture, ceramics, illustration, graphic memoir, digital media, and participatory workshops. The written component operates alongside the studio practice, outlining the project’s theoretical framework, methodology, and context while engaging questions of communication, accessibility, embodiment, and stigma. It situates menstruation within feminist discourse, examining how it has been culturally silenced, regulated, and shaped through systems of power.

The artistic work functions as research materialized through practice, responding to the central question of how my art can facilitate conversations around menstrual justice. It explores …

In The Wake Of Sound: On Field Recording, Materiality, And Reparative Listening, Ivy Fu

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis develops a practice of field recording, spatial audio composition, and soft-circuit installation grounded in what I call reparative listening: a slow, materially attentive form of attention oriented toward what dominant recording apparatuses suppress, discard, or fail to register. Across five major projects—Fable Upon Ununified Grounds (2023), Cocoon (2024), Tether (2025), Hide & Seek (2026), and Frequency Commons (2026)—I treat sound not as an extractable output but as a relational event shaped by site, body, material, and signal loss. The work draws together Jane Bennett's vibrant materialism, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theory of definitional crisis and the open secret, Zhuangzi's …

A Puff's Exploration Of Wayne Hopkins, Ethan G. Mullen, Leon Wiebers

Honors Thesis

This thesis is a synthesis of modalities I have studied during the course of my Theatre Arts degree, applied to the realization of the principal character, Wayne Hopkins in the award-winning play Puffs (Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic) a LMU Theatre Arts Department production. This work is divided into three major sections. First, I reflect on how I applied acting tools I have studied at LMU to the development of my character and performance. These include script analysis, story structure analysis, breath work, and Viewpoints training. Second, I share media displaying my …

Unveiling Embodied White Supremacy: Therapists’ Experiences And Its Imprint On Therapeutic Relationships In Dance/Movement Therapy, Melody E. Gamba

Counseling and Psychology Dissertations

This qualitative, arts-informed research study explored how White-identifying dance/movement therapists experience and articulate their awareness of embodied White supremacy within therapeutic relationships. Grounded in critical race theory, relational-cultural theory, and embodied critical transformation theory, the study addressed a gap in dance/movement therapy literature concerning how White supremacy is not only cognitively understood, but also somatically felt, relationally enacted, and professionally navigated. The purpose of the study was to understand how White-identifying dance/movement therapists perceive, kinesthetically experience, and make meaning of embodied White supremacy in therapeutic practice, and to explore how these embodied experiences influence therapeutic presence, attunement, and the potential …

User-Centered Design For Public Financial Services: A Federal Student Loan Management App Case Study, Carmen River Christopher

Theses

Researchers have studied several facets of federal student loans, such as the impacts it has on borrowers’ finances, mentality, and life goals, plus the history of the federal student system and potential changes. There has been little research conducted on how borrowers make decisions regarding repayment, including choosing plans, navigating the repayment system, and understanding the long term implications of their choices. Since this research largely does not exist, there are few tools and resources to help guide borrowers as they manage the large, complex, and dynamic landscape that is navigating the federal loan system and repaying their debt. I …

In This World: A Scalable Methodology For Scenic Design, Michael W. D. Francis

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

This thesis examines how strong scenic design emerges not from how something looks, but from a clear understanding of how its world works. Rather than starting from aesthetic preference or visual trends, it outlines a process that identifies a central idea within a story and uses that idea to shape a cohesive spatial environment. By focusing on how a world behaves - what drives it, what resists change, and how its internal logic operates - design decisions begin to align, creating work that feels intentional rather than assembled. Through a series of production case studies, it evaluates how that process …

“Who Are We?”: Exploring Adolescent Identity And Community Through Collaborative Mural Art, Rachel E. Stacy

Honors Theses

This thesis explores how participation in a high school mural club influences students’ sense of personal identity and community. By creating and leading a mural club, I guided students in designing and painting murals around their school and extending this work into the local community, all focused on how students defined themselves within the context of the school’s motto: “A Star is Rising”. I used qualitative methods including surveys, observational notes, artist statements, and visual documentation to examine and analyze how students experienced identity and collaboration throughout the process. The findings show that the creation of these murals provided students …

Ephemeral System, Shibo Chan

Theses and Dissertations

Ephemeral System examines systems, feedback, repetition, and material fragility through a kinetic wax sculpture repeatedly dragged across a wooden ramp. Drawing from cybernetics, absurdist waiting, and personal mourning, the work explores how bodies and systems wear themselves down through continuous operation.

Public Art And Military Technology At The Mexico-U.S. Border: Disrupting Boundaries On Battlegrounds, Anna Luise Kaunert

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how contemporary artists Rubén Ortiz Torres, Chico MacMurtrie, rafa esparza, and Cassils transformed military technologies into powerful artworks that interrogate the Mexico-U.S. border as a battlefield. Together, their works illuminate militarization and surveillance technologies at the border and the violent enforcement of U.S. immigration policy.

Nasty, Mya L. Correa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I am exploring artwork about women’s power and sexuality, centering on hair. I’m interested in how hair carries history and how it has been used to control and frighten women. I’ve been reading feminist artists’ books and researching their findings alongside my own work. Drawing on my personal history, my mother’s story, and the experience of raising my daughters, I consider how my children’s lives differ from mine and my mother’s, and what those differences reveal.

Hair has long been wielded as a weapon to enforce expectations on women’s bodies by a society afraid of losing control. As creators of …

Heirlooms Of Virtu, Santos Nunez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Heirlooms of Virtu explores familial history as a mode of self-study. By examining childhood, the more possible it can be to navigate the contemporary. Research into the self becomes the bridge between two states of being, allowing for a better understanding and a more purposeful approach to the future.

As an artist working primarily in photography and video, I am recontextualizing key nostalgic concepts with technology through interactive sculptures and video installations. My research alludes to classic toys and technologies specific to my childhood in an effort to find and understand the self. Nostalgia as an idea not only exists …

Between Chronicle And Legend: A Two-Scene Environment And Visual Effects Examination Of Physical Accuracy And Emotional Exaggeration On The Honey Creek Bridge Collapse, Alison R. Gaddy

All Theses

This thesis explores how truth and dramatization intersect in digital storytelling by comparing realistic and stylized simulations of the Honey Creek bridge collapse within the context of the Kate Shelley animated short. At the core of storytelling lies a tension between factual accuracy and dramatic stylization. We investigate that tension by examining how narrative truth is conveyed, distorted, or enhanced through visual dramatization by focusing on the psychology of audience perception and the motivations behind creative embellishment. The practical contribution of this research is the development of two distinct digital scene setups depicting the same Honey Creek bridge collapse event. …

Echoes Of Becoming - K. Morrell, Kole K. Morrell

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I work sculpturally, exploring presence, transformation, and emotional weight that is not inherently visible. My forms are recognizable yet unsettled, existing between familiarity and distortion. Meaning is not fixed or declared, it reveals itself slowly through texture, material, and time spent in observation.

I approach making as a form of therapeutic ritual. Through touch, I shape and alter the material, imbuing it with the story of emotions I want to convey to the viewer. I am most connected to the work in its “in-between” states, when the form is still shifting and unresolved. In these moments, it mirrors my own …

Home: Transforming A Public Arts Grant Into A Community Project, Scarlett G. Baily

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Home is a 2,535 ft² site-specific mural in San Diego’s Liberty Station that reconnects the site’s military history with Kumeyaay Indigenous heritage and maritime culture. Through depictions of native flora and fauna, the work foregrounds overlooked origin stories and ecological knowledge of Point Loma. Developed through deep community collaboration, including Kumeyaay advisors and over 100 local participants, the mural fosters shared authorship and cultural continuity. It invites viewers to engage with alternative histories while supporting language revitalization and environmental awareness.

Design For Future Discourse: Creating The Speculative Design-Inspired Exhibition Modulation: Rewiring The Self, Ryan Bridgforth

Honors College Theses

Humans have long combined speculation and design. Early examples like General Motors’ Futurama at the 1939 World’s Fair introduced Americans to the idea of expressways and invited them to imagine possible futures. While intriguing, this mix of design and future thinking stood to benefit corporations overall, which is where speculative design comes in. Pioneered by design duo Dunne & Raby, speculative design uses design not as a way to engineer solutions to difficult problems, but “as means to explore the cultural and technological potentials of design, effectively blurring material and conceptual boundaries” (Mitrović et al. 2021, 175). Designing objects or …

Ddx173.2 Ui User Interface Presentation Example 7, Sae University College

Exemplars

The work showcases how the website's user interface (UI) design responds to the findings of the user experience (UX) report and improves its usability.

Ddx173.2 Ui User Interface Presentation Example 6, Sae University College

Exemplars

The work showcases how the website's user interface (UI) design responds to the findings of the user experience (UX) report and improves its usability.

Ddx173.2 Ui User Interface Presentation Example 7, Sae University College

Exemplars

The work showcases how the website's user interface (UI) design responds to the findings of the user experience (UX) report and improves its usability.

Ddx173.2 Ui User Interface Presentation Example 9, Sae University College

Exemplars

The work showcases how the website's user interface (UI) design responds to the findings of the user experience (UX) report and improves its usability.

Resurrection In Gold, Samantha K. Kelley

Undergraduate Theses

The human experience consistently brings about themes of brokenness, oftentimes leading to feelings of loss, confusion, and a desire for repair. Guided by a metaphor found in kintsugi (a Japanese art form), this thesis aims to explore and illustrate both brokenness and repair, through a lens of Christian theology.

The beginning of this project focuses on brokenness, illustrating the brokenness that is found in life by destroying old artworks in various ways. The method of breaking each piece also aimed to connect to a way brokenness is commonly found in life, for example – society tearing us down, artworks being …