Digital Commons Network^™

U+16e99, Bobby Joe Smith Iii

Masters Theses

The general understanding and professional practice of graphic design have been shaped by the perspectives, needs, and desires of white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men in imperialist, capitalist societies. The tools, substrates, professional networks, institutions, processes, theories, grammars, and values that have come to define the discipline have been formed from this position. Consequently, graphic design primarily serves the needs of the settler in settler colonial regimes like the United States. This reality has prompted many designers like myself who come from colonized communities or whose identity troubles this rubric to question the framework of the discipline and our position within it. …

These Inadvertent Marks, Thomas Wilder

Masters Theses

These Inadvertent Marks is a photographic investigation of scuffs, stains, residue, scratches, holes, and blemishes as a complex set of inadvertent marks which possess an inextricable relationship to the human intention to find and make meaning in the world. Excluding marks that are clearly the result of highly substantial accidents, I look to consider those which are largely deemed trivial and peripheral as a means of renewing perception and surrendering to the unconsidered. The photographs included are the result of a process of discovery and close consideration through wandering in my local surroundings: urban streets, private homes, airports, bathrooms, alleys, …

The Knots On The Underside Of The Carpet, Lily Colman

Masters Theses

A woman enters marriage, guided by a rich lineage of strong, lifelong marriages, yet is also caught in a web of misplaced ideals and expectations deferred by culture. She carries the weight of these histories, as well as her own expectations. Throughout history, women have been minimized and shoved into their own separate, domestic “spheres.” Future generations inherit these traumas, which in turn affects how they experience life. When a woman realizes her marriage is not what it should be, that she has been turned into a flat and unfulfilled version of herself and ultimately files for divorce, the weight …

Make Yourself At Home, Han Seok You

Masters Theses

“Make Yourself at Home” is a personal journey of self-documentation to discover a definition of “home” and family, and to reenact the missing scenes from my youth. As a child who grew up in many different places far away from home, I missed out on many family moments and a sense of belonging. As a South Korean passport holder who has lived mostly in North America, my identity is unresolved. I find myself in the balance between Korean and American. With the progression of this project, I try to reconcile my past in order to gain an understanding of my …

Temporal Collisions, Lizzie Baur

Masters Theses

We live during a time of smoothly effortless design that encourages instant gratification. In this sea of pre-existing content, most of which we experience through layers of mediation, my practice encourages drifting. As a graphic designer, I try to decondition myself from reductive thinking. In response, this thesis operates on the fringe, cycling attention to unexpected associations, harnessing temporal collisions and formal play towards diminishing cultural baggage and preconceived notions. I deliberately attune the reader to the labyrinthine as an experience by which to interrogate common sense and steer the imagination towards moments of uncertainty.

This work engages a kind …

Skew-Morphic Dream, Yoonsu Kim

Masters Theses

Skew-morphic Dream explores design approaches that shift one’s viewpoint, that agitate the familiar with a daydream. The doubling disjunctions presented here frame an ‘unreal real’, a skewed perspective on the function-driven interface design represented in skeuomorphism. To achieve this effect, a kind of perceptual halt, I implement defamiliarization. Within these spaces, there emerges an opportunity to think differently about perception, tools, and interfaces.

This thesis catalogs three methods used to create ‘skew-morphic dreams’: utilizing familiar tools with inverted functions, opening portals to defamiliarized landscapes, and developing platforms that require the audience to behave in unfamiliar ways.

How To Do Things With Things, Emily Guez

Masters Theses

Humans have always done things with things. It’s at the very origin of who we are as a species: we’ve gone from being bipedal homonins to people who live in complex societies by making rocks into tools. Things can serve a practical function, but they also carry cultural and symbolic meaning: they can tell our personal stories, allow us to connect with each other, and be the outer manifestations of our inner lives. The things we use in our every day lives, by implying a set of actions we can take when interacting with them, participate in shaping our reality: …

Living Under Surveillance, Fan Jia

Masters Theses

Our first impression about surveillance will always likely relates to with advanced technology. However, advanced technology is the means that only awakens our consciousness of surveillance but is not the birth of surveillance. It has been embedded in our lives in our lives all the time for generations. Before the age of technology blooming, surveillance was carried out by the human eye, and this mode continues always. My thesis starts from our daily relationships, and analyzes how surveillance happens around us within those relationships and people interactions.

This thesis proposes a surveillance system in a specific city: —Washington D.C., which …

Lacunae In The Urban Landscape, Meriem Aiouna

Masters Theses

I take the idea of lacunae, which are defined as gaps or discontinuities in structures as the focus of this research.

With the growth in density of urban centers, access to buildable space will decrease and lacunae within the urban structure will remain. Through Intentional urban exploration in highly developed urbanscapes reveals numerous underutilized and awkward spaces. While often overlooked for development because of their complexity, the commitment of this thesis is to highlight these unique sites and their distinct spatial potential.

This project exposes the hidden potential latent in these lacunae that are underused in the urban fabric. Every …

Re-Connect, Xin Ren

Masters Theses

We live in an era of contradiction: the order of the external world always stands in an ambiguous relationship to individual autonomy. In this time of high industrialization and fast paced efficiency, the development of technology has not only greatly reduced the distance between space and time, but also causes the over-coupling effect in social division: institutions are formed with a dangerously strong and stable dependence on each other. This excessive reliance on one another weakens their independence and resilience. Meanwhile, in this hyper-connected society, access to instant satisfaction through consumption and fragmented entertainment is the norm. Similar to the …

Living And Alive : Homeless Shelter Design, Zixu Wang

Masters Theses

Homelessness is a major social problem in the United States. The number of people who are living without a decent shelter is rising daily throughout the country. The problem of homelessness affects various groups in society, including the elderly, children, youths, and middle-aged adults. Recent studies have shown that the percentage of teens and youths who are experiencing homelessness has reached an alarming rate. The homeless adolescent group is defined as teens aged between 13 and 19 years. This rise in homelessness in this population group demands immediate attention, particularly older teens from 15 to 18 years of age. This …

Creating A Safe Haven : A Study On Coastal Resilience In A Time Of Climate Change & Sea-Level Rise In The Philippines, Maria Carla Victoria M. Sebastian

Masters Theses

In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan struck the southern part of the Philippines with a five to six meter storm surge; in just three days it took more than 7,360 lives in one city alone, displaced four million citizens, and affected around 16 million Filipinos nationwide. Coastal resiliency in relation to climate change is a particularly urgent issue for city planners and government leaders in an archipelago of 7,641 islands, where 80% of the population dwells in coastal areas. This thesis aims to challenge the existing paradigm of coastal provincial architecture in the Philippines by proposing a more integrated evacuation center that …

Togather: To Gather Together, Kyungah Sohn

Masters Theses

I believe that we can live healthier lives when we address both our mental health and our physical health at the same time, rather than when we focus on only one of them. Currently, however, mental and physical health are treated as separate issues, while actually they are closely connected to each other. In light of this, services and applications that address wellbeing should promote both physical and mental issues in a more integrated way.

As a result, I designed a holistic system where what we do for mental and physical health is intertwined. This is the premise for my …

This Land Is Your Land: Democratizing Landscape Architecture, Adrienne Emmerich

Masters Theses

The main question posed by this thesis is: How can landscape architects give individuals and communities creative agency over their own landscapes?

This question is framed by three key concepts. First, there is the fact that throughout US history, land management and design decisions have been used to marginalize communities of color. The second concept framing this thesis is that communities of color continue to be negatively affected by decisions about their land. For example, new toxic waste sites are disproportionately placed in communities of color (Mohai and Saha 2015). The third concept framing this thesis is that landscape architects …

Urban Palimpsest: Re-Placing Memory In War Torn City Dresden, Xinyi Sun

Masters Theses

Urban landscapes can be envisaged as a palimpsest of historical layers, some of which have disappeared while others remain active in constituting contemporary identities.

Yet memory is tricky and one’s memory can be false, distorted or erased consciously or unconsciously from brain. Like history, some memories can be lost, while others others might be retained and continue to influence the present.

This thesis explores memory as active construction. Construction and reconstruction are ongoing and as layered and nuanced as the history itself. Moreover, memory is both personal and collective. It is shared, appropriated, and reassigned depending on whose personal filter …

Clay Beneath The Tree: An Exploration Of Design Processes In Community Development, Shiya Zeng

Masters Theses

Parents bought their kid a new toy and said: “Here you go, enjoy.” he plays with it for three hours, and then I go back to play with the clay beneath a tree. The “new toy” is an analogy of a traditional Design-Funding-Implement design process. The reason why “clay” is more attractive is that clay is flexible and manipulatable, which allows for continually engaging, reshaping, destructing, and exploring. More importantly, clay unleashes one’s imagination that unlocks thousands of possibilities. Community design process is “heartwork” that enhance well-being, equity, and agency for change. This is why the process matters.

This thesis …

In-Between Through : Bordering Bodies ; A Spatial Containment, Aroly Enamorado

Masters Theses

Due to the continuous struggle for undocumented migration, the U.S. Mexico border has always been on of the most misunderstood. This thesis tries to form awareness of the number of migrants that are seeking asylum in the United States. Most of these people are coming from Central and South America to experience the American dream, a concept that many do not get to achieve. Understanding the physical and cultural aspects from departing their homeland, arrival at the border, possible deportation, the admission into the country, and starting from zero. Nowadays, the southern border wall has turned into a cancerous divider …

The Official Showreel Companion To Framed Familiarity In 4 Acts : A Defamiliarization Of The Tropes Of Architectural Practice, Through An Expanded Frame Of View And Frame Rate, Julie Kress

Masters Theses

In the spirit of Resier and Umemoto’s Atlas of Novel Tectonics, this work does not propose solutions to a stated problem in the field of architecture. Instead it provokes an entry into subjects that are taken for granted, yet are in dire need of re-framing in a postdigital age of architecture.

This proposal for speculative architectures that are only possible through animation, is antithesis to the format of the printed book. The format of this document assumes that it is not viewed alone but is treated as a behind the scenes companion to the 3 minute showreel “Framed Familiarity in …

About Intimacy, Jiamin Lin

Masters Theses

Imagine that there is a person who goes everywhere carrying a chair. From the moment she places her chair down on the ground, this action defines a space around her. The shape of this invisible entity keeps changing. However, I still feel a specific way of “closure”. My thesis started from this moment, about defining intimacy.

Time may be translated into measures of movement and occupancies of space. Film and architecture both mobilize spatial and temporal modes of perception. My exploration of spatial intimacy started from filming the interaction between human being and larger entities. It exploits the filmic capacity …

Wrinkle Architecture : The Public Relaxation Pavilions For Geriatric Community In Cities Of Zhejiang After 1980'S, Yi Lu

Masters Theses

Wrinkles of the city just like the wrinkles of human. They are symbles of aging as well as the carriers of story. They are existing in unexpecting places in the city or in human faces. The wrinkle of the city is the texture of city during its urbanization process. They are small and chopped. They are between temporary and permanent.

This thesis integrates the “wrinkle architectures” of Hangzhou to improve the relaxation space and provide a better environment for in the elderly community of Hangzhou.

The Line, Hannah Oatman

Masters Theses

The Line is a series of exaggerated contemporary jewelry “products” that engage the audience through collecting, marketing, and nostalgia. It grew from a dissatisfaction with the world of “contemporary jewelry,” or “art jewelry,” or “author jewelry,” or whatever people are calling the field now (assuming they’re calling it anything).

The Line pushes against the rarely questioned conventions of contemporary jewelry by playing along with them (sometimes even playing a little rough).

This work intentionally walks on the lines between jewelry and art, and between art and product: lines that exist whether we want them to or not, but which can …

Frankenstein, Ruins, & Twilight, Braden Bandel

Masters Theses

I am invested in the idea of painting as a container for the psychological. Much of my research is concerned with the role of gothic fiction as a means of processing individual and collective fears and anxieties during times of rapid social, technological, and political change. Drawing a connection between literary fiction and the fiction of the painted image, I attempt to translate some of the ambitions of fiction writing into the realm of painting. I have a proclivity for the fantastical and the melancholic, which have remained as abiding themes in my work at RISD. This thesis will consist …

Here And There: A Continuous Narrative, Hye Young Kim

Masters Theses

How can we transcend our literal place by connecting with natural space?

As industrialization and globalization have increasingly shaped our society, we have become more and more disconnected from nature, ourselves, and our memories. Furthermore, living busy lives, we have lost the ability to appreciate and be grateful for our surroundings. Nonetheless, we can reconnect with what has been lost—nature, ourselves, and our memories— with a small shift in our mindset and a habitual practice of walking, which pulls our footsteps not toward a certain place but toward an understanding of the passage of time, the resonance of longing, and …

Art Beside A Single Handshake : Can You Believe It?, Tongji Qian

Masters Theses

Although I was familiar with works by both McKinzie and Phil, their prints still caught my attention during the Printmaking Graduate Biennial at Rhode Island School of Design in January 2019. In contrast to the numerous talented artists who employed strategies to affirm the relevancy of printmaking in a contemporary discourse, McKinzie and Phil seemed to desire something different. Their collaboration series of Ten Identical Prints was predictably “printerly” and perilously unexciting, betraying a fraught and commonplace relationship between an expressive artist and a scrupulous master printer. How could these two artists showcase such mundanity? What was the stake of …

Ethnographemes, Vaishnavi Mahendran

Masters Theses

Spoken and written languages are living processes. As with our own natural systems, they are born, evolve in stages, yet also face the eventuality of death. Current research indicates that there are 7,111 spoken languages in the world. UNESCO lists a total of 577 languages as critically endangered.

This thesis examines the role of graphic design and its potential contribution to the preservation of endangered languages and writing systems of indigenous communities. My interest lies in exploring possibilities of the script serving as a vessel to share and celebrate deeper stories of each of these communities’ heritage.

Through my practice, …

Sol, John Beck

Masters Theses

Sol. Spirituality for the digital age. A move towards a more cosmic future. A hopeful call to arms for a more inclusive, liberated culture where the impermanence of life can wash over us in a wave of ambient sonic splendor. Using solar energy to create shifting ambient soundscape Sol is an immersive, interactive civic space for all lifeforms of all persuasions. A reintrepretation of the Shinto shrine for the digital age. An alliance between codified physical computing, emerging interactive technology and the ancient spiritual traditions of the East. Non denominational, non religious wholly universal. Where all beings can remember their …

Repairer's Recipe : Volume 0, Joyce Chang

Masters Theses

Why?

Technology is accelerating; so is the amount of e-waste. Proliferating new purchases is a shortcut to economic gain, yet proliferation sacrifices social and ecological well being. Activating repair benefits systems— by decelerating the waste stream, and serving as a regenerative module for ethical material collection. Repair literacy encourages an individual’s engagement with materials while challenging corporations to acknowledge repair in the design process. Therefore, electronics users should have the opportunity to learn about repair before the need arises. A sustainable product ecosystem asks for the collaborative effort of public and private sectors and most importantly, the repair practices of …

Designed Body, Jingwei Deng

Masters Theses

Designed Body is a project about gendered design and identities. It is an investigation into the relationship between the persona analyzation process and the social identity categorization. It is a criticism towards capital driven planned obsolescence and binary determinism based design. It is a discussion around the future of our subjective and objective self under the circumstance of technological development. It is a material exploration of body, extended body and transformative body.

Invisible: A Guide To Understanding & Designing For Introverts, Ashesh Gohil

Masters Theses

The Extrovert Ideal has been an unspoken pillar of society: a vocal, go-getting person with a Carpe Diem mindset has become a requirement that most are told to strive for in order to be successful. Fundamental institutions like schools and workspaces are designed for extroverts and their need for stimulation, which becomes a hurdle for introverts since it obstructs them from being their dispositionally quiet and thoughtful selves. Such spaces need to be inclusive to allow introverts to be present in the way they prefer. One way to make space for introverts in settings otherwise designed for extroverts is through …

Voran Test Lab : An Exploration Of Teaching Collaborative Problem Solving And Critical Thinking Through Emergent Gameplay, Taber Gifford

Masters Theses

This book explores emergent gameplay as a methodology for teaching collaborative problem solving and critical thinking. These are both key 21st Century Skills and are important in educating and building future professionals and leaders. I explored the precedent analysis of game design in this category before conducting my own design research activities and experiments. Ultimately, my work culminated in the design and development of a game called Voran Test Lab. The game is designed to engage early middle school students and ask them to critically evaluate problems and collaboratively solve them.