Art and Design Commons^™

I Trace The Fold : Fluidity And Flux In The Terrain Vague, Alicia Oas

Masters Theses

The terrain vague is the interstitial fabric of city life. It is the space between and around the inhabited city – abandoned urban space that constantly shifts in form and function. The terrain vague is found in empty buildings, former factories, parking lots, along the train tracks, and in unclaimed alleyways. In these still and quiet places, a fragmented narrative emerges from the pattern of urban color, texture, and light.

I record these patterns in the structure of the textile. Warp and weft interweave in layers of experience. The curtain captures both the substance of our collective memory and the …

I Was There : Irreversible View, Asma Belhamar

Masters Theses

Living in a “time lapse” is what I could say about my experience of belonging to a place like the United Arab Emirates. The compression of time and expansion of space is intensely surreal. This idea leads my process to a series of investigations about the geological and cultural tectonics of the space, where I explore the conflicts between natural landscape and architecture. The urban surroundings are precarious: even monumental and unrelenting structures can change in a matter of days. This urban phenomena is commonly known as “mega structures” where nothing is impossible to build; buildings can be finished in …

Magkasama, Christina Chen

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how Filipinos can navigate their cultural identities through apparel. The Philippines has a history dominated by colonialism, diaspora, and assimilation. These systemic issues have contributed to the erasure of Filipino culture and they continue to impact the culture today. Because of these issues, many Filipinos living in America experience a disconnect from their cultural heritage and struggle to engage with their cultural identities. This thesis uses apparel to help Filipinos understand the source of their confusion towards their heritage and provides them with agency and ownership over their identities.

Connections : A New Model To Customizing Everything, Shao-Hsuan Hou

Masters Theses

Mass customization has long been a dream. However, thanks to evolutions in technologies (e.g. Industry 4.0 and big data analytics), there are more and more enterprises that offer configured customization to consumers. In this business model, the customers have limited choices to customize their own goods, nevertheless, these limited choices may not be enough to satisfy all of the consumers’ physiological and psychological needs.

In order to fulfill this need in the market, I propose a new ecosystem that connects consumers, design firms, and manufacturers. Moreover, based on this business model, I have designed an on-line platform and customization services …

Balance Speaker : Efficient Work And Break, Jin Cao

Masters Theses

The name of this product is "Balance Speaker”. It is aimed to help designers to concentrate better while working and breaking, using sound and light in particular.

In this book, I will show you the design/testing process of the product, show how the working timeline and energy levels influence designers' concentration, and how to design the interaction of the product and test its usability. A

Transforme : A Look At Sports Beyond The Gender Binary, Courtney Skabelund

Masters Theses

This work explores the next wave of athletes. Using speculative design, it questions institutionalized social constructs that many take for granted but that are a daily struggle for others. It looks to broaden the expressiveness and individuality of sport. Through careful consideration, research, and testing this thesis represents my views and ideas of how sport might evolve to represent the next revolution of athletics. Because without a gender revolution, the true ideals of sport will suffer.

Blood In The Water : Tracing An Interspecies Alliance Between At-Risk Humans And Jellyfish In The Mediterranean, Ala Tannir

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the Mediterranean Sea as a space of simultaneous ecological and political resistance to human-induced violence articulated by the concept of the Anthropocene. In one capacity, the Mediterranean Sea is the space that connects the extracting impulses of European States to the raw materials and resources of their ‘former’ colonies in Africa and the Middle East. Despite being divided in relation to national interests, the Sea defies the easy legibility of such bordering practices, and exemplifies a “vast, complex expanse” that contains many of the contradictions of national and regional interests that are pursued in isolation …

Communicatronics, Adi Azulay

Masters Theses

Design in its nature is a future facing practice. But the future is hard to predict or often even imagine. So how are we as designer to approach these types of problems?

In this thesis I attempt a novel design methodology to derive insights and produce new interaction models for long range communication. The methodology, which can be applied to any topic, focuses on a study of the past. More specifically using experimental archeology, the practice of rebuilding historical objects in order to test functionality and viability of a hypothesis. For this project I learned how to send smoke signals …

Transitions : Designing Acceptance In A World Of Change, Hanna Mclaughlin

Masters Theses

As a creative discipline, design works to instigate change. Often, a design’s success hinges on effecting a change in a user’s life, whether that be prompting the user to accept a new way to communicate, provide care, or share resources. A well-designed product can be offered to a user, and even acquired by a user, yet never be integrated into their daily life. This abandonment may be due to a flaw in the product’s function; however, it can also be due to a lacking system of support for the user while they are integrating the product into their life. In …

Empowerment Of People Of All Abilities, Kasia Matlak

Masters Theses

For my thesis, I sought ways to redefine disability, by focusing on people with lower limb amputations. I focused on the most troublesome part of their daily interaction with a prosthesis, which is a socket. My primary concern was to improve the experience with it, as it is where prosthesis attaches to the body. I looked at disability, prosthetics, body image, identity, and loss. After an amputation surgery, people experience a grief that is comparable to the loss of a loved one. Historically, some people deal with grief by creating and performing rituals. Those rituals have proved to be helpful; …

Motivated Motivation : A Consulting Tool To Find New Platforms For Business, Xiaoxio Jin

Masters Theses

Consumption motivation is the drive to satisfy needs and wants. It is also a desire for a product, service, or experience. The continual raising of the consumption desire has brought us where we are today. When old needs are met, new needs emerge, then we can create the infinite desire in our modern society. As brands are in a market full of competition, they are aware that they cannot stay in the same place when others are putting effort on business expansion. Our customers are calling for new service, thus brands need to keep being energetic and innovative.

Understanding consumption …

P-Lax : Toys For Adults, To Play & Relax, Zhizi Liu

Masters Theses

Adults don’t play enough. There is so much emphasis on working and being productive in modern day life, but this can have negative effects—for an adult this can lead to high stress and a sense of guilt when one isn’t being productive. My mission is to help adults de-stress and take a break from work by reintroducing play into their day-to-day interactions. Toys for children are often used for educational purposes and to help enhance their creativity and social abilities; toys for adults can instead used to improve mood, and to help release pressure that is built up from everyday …

Sight Lines, Makia Sharp

Masters Theses

Through investigations of liminal phenomena, this written thesis explores the direct and indirect effects of time, light, architecture , and metaphysical space. Along with the work, it is an attempt to create a framing around these phenomena which are both banal and transcendent, and which exist of the edge of perception.

Tendrescopic Endeavors And Other Dynamics, Jared Akerstrom

Masters Theses

Tendrescopic Endeavors and other Dynamics is an attempt to coalesce the ideas and skills that have been flying around my studio over the course of the last year into a single project. A trip to Storm King Art Center and ideas of modular making began a cycle of exploration into the way custom fittings could create light-weight and transportable sculptures. Developing a greater ability to digital model and create my own unique parts has been the charge that I have built this work upon. Science and the devices that facilitate scientific discovery act as the embodiment of the desire to …

The Past Is Today, Afra Al Dhaheri

Masters Theses

Process is a vital element to construction and deconstruction. Yet, materiality serves as a vehicle to expose the aesthetics developed by the process. However, without memories, the construction of these bodies of work would have never been conceived. Rapid change was the initial experience that formed memories in the first place, it was inevitable. Hence, an adaptation method had to be examined. The trees had proven to be worthy of the investigation. The trees required materials and the materials demanded a process. Process developed the work and the work had to have context. Context evolved from memory and required more …

Humor And Allegory, Christopher Goodale

Masters Theses

This series of works proposes the merging of aesthetic interests that undermine the self-seriousness of the artist and the idea of labor in painting. Painting’s slowing of time can hopefully extinguish the peripheral noise of the outside world and provide space for thought. These paintings propose different ways to help the viewer understand visual depth, narrative, and formal decision-making. The optical depth of red, the spatial depth of glazed paint, and the spiritual depth of the figure can provide multiple meanings and possibilities. Another metaphor for the development of this series of paintings would be one comedian telling a joke …

The Farce Of The Frame, Dominic Musa

Masters Theses

Both argument and joke, this series of works offers a critical inspection of the world. Characters trace their steps through the scene of each painting, questioning their place within the appearance of things. The central character is the artist-as-critic. Through this character, with his looming magnifying lens, we are implicated as readers of the faux world—an absurdist play intoxicated with scribbled lines, decorative patterns, and conflated histories—as we embark on a quest for an understanding of human existence. Emptied of any emotional concerns, the characters investigate the world they live in, searching for any indication of hope or a reason …

Lamination Of Reality : Ever-Thickening And Thinning Space, Leekyung Kang

Masters Theses

Since 2014, my work has navigated question of surface and through this search in order to redefined conventional understandings of space. Often times, my imagery draws on architectural infrastructure (such as construction sites and scaffolding), exposing the underlying structural framework within these landscapes. Through the recent installation, I establish a correlation between the bone/skeleton of the location to expose a more raw and unseen space, which is present but never fully revealed.

In Google Earth, the camera eye traverses different surfaces from the urban streetscape to the underground to the cosmos. Within this virtual landscape, glitches exist that are virtual …

My Fish Hat Kingdom, Mei Fung Elizabeth Chan

Masters Theses

This thesis book documents my personal and artistic research. As a Chinese contemporary printmaker, I consider my artworks embedded in Eastern and Western elements to revitalize my printmaking practice. T shape my art to reveal my Hong Kong identity by creating self-portraits. Instead of trying to capture a single moment and place in one image, I create multi-dimensional images in terms of both space and time. Inspired by Italian Early Renaissance altarpieces, I break up the images to suggest a narrative sequence. All of my prints are printed in large scale so that my viewers will be engaged in each …

2017 Faculty Letter To Students, Rhode Island School Of Design

RISD Faculty Values

An end of the year letter from the RISD faculty sent to RISD students reaffirming their support of the students, acknowledging the challenges of this past academic year in light of the current social and political turmoil and sharing the RISD Faculty Values Statement.