Digital Commons Network^™

Abyss Without Vertigo, Jack Madden

Masters Theses

Science has difficulty changing the way we think because it takes us beyond our natural perception. To scales and phenomena that we are unaccustomed to, that are instinctively inhuman.

To fundamentally change the philosophy of our species there needs to be a bridge or, more presciently, an emergency ladder for the human mind to science.

As we are inclined to logic yet inherently emotional, the importance of the scientific cannot be understood using science alone.

Significance must be felt, feelings are the foundation of art, and validation the consequence of the artifact.

Designing Ecotones : Implementing Regenerative Patches In Urban Environments For Transdisciplinary And Transcultural Creativity-Based Education, Cristiane Marie Caro

Masters Theses

This thesis has been written to emphasize the educational, social, political and environmental potentials of collectively designed regenerative ecosystems. It aims to encourage students and educators to transform disturbed null patches in urban environments to amplify the scope of the students’ education by simultaneously developing a social ecosystem and cultivating environmental sensibility. I outline the formation of the Regenerative Earth Collective, a student-run group aiming to address topics of sustainability at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and their work to design, implement and maintain groundwork for hands-on, experiential learning. I illustrate the Plot (manifested as a student-run community …

Artful Healing: Exploring Creative Expression And Play In Children's Hospitals, Phoebe Strobino

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the role and accessibility of creative expression and play in children’s hospitals, and the impact these ideas have on patients. I explored these ideas through teaching four lessons at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Two of these lessons were taught in group sessions, and two were taught in one-on-one sessions, with participants ranging in age. Following an introduction to each lesson, I provide the plan itself along with general observations and reflections on teaching. Due to the nature of the setting, information is kept purposefully broad throughout my observations in order to respect the anonymity …

The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Art Teaching: Reflections On Chinese K-12 Art Education, Shixin Zhou

Masters Theses

Central to this thesis investigation is the premise that interdisciplinary art is important for children and youth, especially in the context of Chinese art education. Designed to investigate a movement in art education beyond traditional boundaries, this investigation manifests in four stages of research and concludes with a teaching philosophy for the Chinese school system.

First, the author explores the current state of traditional art classes in China, along with the issues and challenges faced by current art educators. Second, with the objective of creating a positive model built on clear conceptual and practical tools, art integration and interdisciplinary art …

Toona Sinensis 桃花心木, Li Yang

Masters Theses

This thesis is my journey as an artist and art educator in search of creativity through the lens of sustainability, which may reveal the existence of questions one wonders about but does not provide a specific answer or solution to this within a limited time frame. Through this inquiry, questions are repeatedly asked: What is the definition of art? If art and education have a tremendous impact on human thought and perception, do they point people in the right direction when confronted with global issues such as cultural and natural sustainability? If so, what is the essential difference between art …

Care, Inclusivity, And Accessibility In Glass Art Education, Bridget Provan

Masters Theses

In glass art education care, inclusivity, and accessibility have been recurring themes that have kept arising in my journey. Specifically, why are they absent? As an art educator, I feel it is important to support and educate all students and their entire being. As an art student when I received any care I felt it was extraordinary but, in reflection, I feel it should be the minimum an educator provides. In my thesis I explore the importance of care, inclusivity, and accessibility in glass education and how to incorporate all three into multiple educational settings. This thesis is a culmination …

Contemporary Eco Theory In Art Education: Field Notes And Desire Paths, Margaret K. Mccullough

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation into patterns and overlaps of three critical elements in our world, art, nature, and education. Integral to this investigation and the contributions to humanity of these three are the accurate depiction of specific realities, upon which Science and the majority of global citizens agree, aesthetic sensibility, as well as beneficent solutions (i.e. those which do no harm.) Together we will examine the intersection of subjects, what they combine to achieve. We will consider how, taught and learned in unison, they may take on a position of greater prominence in efforts to solve real world problems. …

The Subconscious As Politics: An Inquiry Of Collaborative Design Education Through Radical Speculation, Nina Jun Yuchi

Masters Theses

For two years, I’ve been keeping a dream journal in which I record anything I can remember as soon as I wake up. The pages have slowly filled up with scrawls and doodles and fragmented memoirs of a life that doesn’t even seem like mine and yet, every dream I can vividly remember feels like a portal into an alternate dimension in which my subconscious reality is as tangible as my conscious one.

Eventually, dreaming became a key method in my research to seek out and materialize alternative worlds. It became the object of my obsessive interest in visualizing speculative …

Revolution Of Steam Education: The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Art Education (Steam) In Elementary Education, Suyu Chen

Masters Theses

This thesis discusses how interdisciplinary art education benefits young children from different aspects, including gender bias in disciplines, developing creativity and imagination, motivating children to engage the class and improving their efficiency of studying. Through an interview with a STEAM educator and my own curriculum development, I show some examples of what STEAM can look like in the elementary class. I demonstrate that there is evidence showing that STEAM education can create an engaging learning environment for young children. When STEAM projects are introduced, children are more focused and interested in classroom activities when compared to STEM projects alone.

Making Space : Creative Learners, Digital Spaces, And The Relationships Between Them, Natalia Spritzer

Masters Theses

This thesis is an inquiry into the growing prevalence of digital learning environments or digital spaces in order to assess the impact of leveraging these spaces on learners' creative identities. What is being examined in particular are web-folios or personal websites (digital spaces), the interactions that learners have with these environments, and how it infers to the potential of digital space as a medium for a variety of advancements. Through qualitative analysis in the form of observations, interviews, and surveys done throughout a collaborative research workshop, this thesis speculates that digital space can be utilized as a means for providing …

Vulva Gazing: Power And The Gendered Body, Aaliya Jamal Zaidi

Masters Theses

How does a gendered gaze determine what we feel shame about?

In patriarchal society, the male gaze is normal. Within its sights, the vulva, the external female sexual and reproductive organs, is viewed negatively — censored and ignored, or labeled with euphemisms and slurs across cultures. The modern western medical canon upholds and reinforces this view of the vulva, through a combination of disinterest and omission. This cultural aversion leads to a personal aversion. For people with vulvas this manifests in a lack of information about their own bodies which leads to shame, pain and even death.

Vulva Gazing is …

Regenerative Residences: Shrinking Stress Levels In The Sky, Peter De Lande Long

Masters Theses

Issues of overcrowding and overstimulation plague urban environments, which exacerbate social isolation and, in turn, heighten city dwellers’ levels of stress and anxiety. How can architecture mediate stimuli to be positively conducive to mood, behavior, and overall health? Given that social isolation is an intrinsically spatial issue that design can address, this thesis proposes a small-scale community living model with the intent of improving mental health and clarity for a user group of young, mentally vulnerable professionals in New York City.

16 E 16th Street becomes the architectural framework for addressing these issues. Moving away from the capitalistic endeavor of …

Beyond Spectacle : Parametric Design To Life In Space, Ding Xu

Masters Theses

In recent years, with the help of rapid computational developments, Parametric Design has become common in architectural practice. Parametric architecture, due to its unique appearance, has rapidly been associated with certain aesthetic trends. This is mostly because architects initially adopted it to make radical forms, not because parametric techniques demand any specific geometry.

For the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion by Zaha Hadid Architects, the team built a dynamic and fluid structure using parametric techniques. The form evolved from the spiraling shapes found in nature, and the fluid geometry provides a continuum of space and a system of logic. As a …

Re:Connection: Exercises In Unplugging And Mindfully Reconnecting, E. J. Roseman

Masters Theses

How can architecture encourage focused attention and mindfulness in an increasingly distracted and distractible world? As a primary means of connectivity in the 21st century, smartphones and social media have provided unparalleled efficiencies, connectivity and entertainment. However, constant engagement with richly-pixelated virtual worlds has also brought about mass addiction to devices as college students log more compulsive “screen time” than ever before. Mental health issues such as crippling anxiety, diminished attention spans, and unhappiness, are on the rise as students disconnect from the physical world and are consumed by their virtual one.

This thesis is comprised of a series of …

Unfolding Embodied Experience: A Process-Driven Immersive Exhibition Design Model, Mooa Seongah Kang

Masters Theses

The collections of most museums are comprised of two-dimensional artworks—paintings, drawings, prints, and photography—and are generally presented within a white cube gallery platform. Within this restricted static view, displays rarely consider multisensory engagement and immersion that reveals the accumulated time and effort of creation. Yet for many artists, the process is as important as the finished product.

My impetus for this design initiative began by questioning traditional methods of display. Is it possible to reveal the hidden depth embodied in two-dimensional artworks, allowing audiences to participate with all their senses in the journey of an artist’s experience? In other words, …

The Color Of Stress, Jiemin Park

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the physical and emotional process by which stress in glass can be visualized through color by using a polarization effect.

A conceptual account of three different projects using this process of discovering and revealing the colors of stress hidden within clear glass will be addressed. The mainstays that catalyze the visual metaphor of extreme stress and beauty are; the making process, evidence of the making process and the polarization effect. These two contradictory concepts of beauty and stress are central to this thesis.

Re-Order The Order Of Thing, Yingxi Sabrina Ji

Masters Theses

Humanocentrism positions humans as the measure of all things; what we know as the ‘real’ or ‘true’ is perceived through this limited perspective. As a designer, I challenge the hierarchy, actively moving away from the notion that inanimate objects are subjugated matter.

In this body of work, I turn to actions of world-building to create immersive experiences where ‘objects’ become ‘subjects.’ They are rescaled and re-centered — called into prominence to become protagonists on the cultural and environmental stage. Through generating, collaging, and juxtaposing recycled facts, imagery and organic materials using digital filters, I insert absurdity as a breakpoint to …

Slow Ruptures; Slow Formations, Asta Thrastardottir

Masters Theses

Language shapes our understanding of identity, place, and self. As a graphic designer, I question the existing structures of language, while using it as a material to build new formations. Nudging against certainties, I challenge how the stories we are told can dispossess us, even flatten us.

My method is a constant attempt to peel back the layers and study what lingers below. When questions arise, I look to the ways in which visual artists and writers have seen through this surface. I observe, listen, and hold stories closely, passing them back and forth between my hands. Using annotation and …

Capture, Control, Circulate : Can We Queer Regulatory Power In Graphic Design?, Adie Fein

Masters Theses

Capture, Control, Circulate addresses regulatory power, the transmission and enforcement of culturally-sanctioned behaviors and identity. How does regulatory power operate in graphic design and what—if anything—can the graphic designer do to subvert that operation? The methodologies for subversion explored in this book typically draw from queer and trans* experience and thought. Therefore, the work herein takes up issues of identity, normativity, marginalization, and community.

This thesis also considers design education, and its contemporary emphasis on the capture and control of content. It advocates instead for an educational model that centers circulation; that is, graphic design’s capacity to platform, to publish, …

Alien Encyclopedia, Zengqi Guo

Masters Theses

Alien Encyclopedia is a body of work that analyzes, expands, redefines, and leverages the definition of “alien” as both problematic and an avenue of possibility. By mapping the word “alien” as a fragmented play of alternatives, I translate the lessons derived from this exploration into a maker’s lexicon. I use “alien” to frame my identity, as a prompt to ground my projects, a factor to interrupt existing typography and to spark questions, a generative tool to explore the interpolation between the familiar and unfamiliar, and to incite new solutions and actions to solve the problems we are facing now. Alien …

Disinheritance As Critique: The Paintings Of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Sabo Kpade

Masters Theses

Artistic influence can either be overbearing or liberating for the impressionable artist who is determined to arrive at an individualized artistic identity. One key strategy deployed by the artist is disinheritance as a means by which identity and meaning are created. In her paintings and etchings, British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye has demonstrated several modalities of disinheritance by which she has arrived at a distinct approach to portraiture. Broadly, they come under two categories of major and minor disinheritance, each of which is conditioned by a variety of factors that range from aesthetic to philosophical, personal to political. They signify points …

For A Moment, I Was Lost ; A Visual Reflection On The Process Of Grief And Mortality Within The Home, Adam Chiang-Harris

Masters Theses

Grief is typically experienced following a loved one’s unexpected death. It is human nature to experience grief or bereavement as a way of processing the end of a person's life and coping mechanism of the living. In cases where we have pre-knowledge of a person's inevitable departure due to illness, such as with terminal illnesses like Alzheimers, grief happens in a longer period preceding death. In this circumstance, caregivers, friends, and family, must endure a duration of hardship dictated by the progression of the disease while knowing the fated outcome of a person's life. Typically this period caused by the …

Notes On Institutional Architecture ; Towards And Understanding Of Erasure And Conversation, Liam Burke

Masters Theses

Material Conversations /məˈtirēəl/ /ˌkänvərˈsāSH(ə)ns/ noun 1. derived from an early memory of forming relationships to objects, a way to understand the physical environment through a scaling down process that follows, but is not limited to, space, element, material. 2. the way in which material components are tectonically related 3. a process which would inform one to work with materials in a way which is conceptually informed by both aforementioned definitions 4. an integral aspect of architectural design, Material Conversations enable the architect to establish a language with which to relate to the components of their work, to better speak to …

Community Conservation & Engagement Through The Architecture Of Public Transportation, Liam Costello

Masters Theses

A good public transportation system......should be extensive, quick, and efficient, while also being equitable and accessible as well as environmentally friendly and resilient to cope with climate change and rising sea levels. Until the 1980s, Philadelphia had an extensive streetcar network. From 1977 until 1992, however, all lines serving northern Philadelphia were abandoned, leaving the city’s once-expansive public transit system a shell of its former self. The communities formerly served by streetcar have the lowest average household income in the city and are mainly communities of color. Additionally, many of these residents do not own cars. Therefore, the people who …

Moving Through Time, Anca Gherghiceanu

Masters Theses

Post-communism life in Romania is a duality: people fleeting the country in search of a better life and the simultaneous shrinking cities due to this migration. The built fabric of the city holds distorted nostalgia for those who have left and the burning reality that surrounds the ones that remain. It results in popular villages and cities starting to be abandoned at a massive rate. The migrant story in search of a new life cultivates a journey of loneliness, sacrifice, and sorrow.This thesis will shine light on the physiological effects of mass migration in Romania through satirical editing and storytelling, …

Immaterial Realities, Tyler Lovejoy

Masters Theses

Architects primarily work at a digital desktop, alienated from the spatial byproducts of their collaborative work. Therefore, software is the most influential mediator between these immaterial laborers and projects. Despite architectural production methods evolving, much of the same pernicious labor relations have subsisted. Building Information Modeling has become synonymous with architectural work, yet presents a missed opportunity in addressing and re-imagining labor conditions and power relations between workers.

Today, architects are proposing improved labor structures utilizing cooperatives and unions. Alongside these endeavors, might we reimagine our digital tools as allies? Delivered as a visual essay that is both critical and …

System As A Living Organism, Xinyi Liu

Masters Theses

This is cross-disciplinary research in urban systems, architecture, bio-systems, agriculture, energy supplies, circular economy, and sustainability.

Cycle Of Care: A Study Based On Home-Care Elderly Living In Beijing, China, Wenyue Remi Qiu

Masters Theses

In China, the aging society has accelerated the elderly care industry to grow into three major systems: home-based care, community-based care, and institutional care facility. All these systems receive financial and political government support, yet the later two draw more social awareness. My thesis project investigates the structures of these current systems by focusing on the demographics in Beijing.

Although in recent years the research shows an upward trend in seniors’ acceptance of living in institutional care facilities, the elderly are still more willing to be surrounded by activities and people that whom they are familiar. In order to guarantee …

Flexing Boundaries : Tectonic Strategies For The Multi-Generational Home, Elise Young

Masters Theses

In the near future, a large percentage of the human population will have to relocate due to an ever changing climate. This will create both short-term and long-term housing needs. To support this shift, our cities will be forced to modify their current use of spaces so that they may accommodate an increasing population and their ever-changing needs. So, is there a way to design homes specifically to make increased population density not only bearable, but enjoyable? This project seeks to design non-load bearing modules that provide both partitions and furniture. The modules should be easy to manipulate so occupants …

Framing: Embracing Trauma In Your "Surrounding World", Zheng Xu

Masters Theses

Have you ever stayed alone and immersed yourself in memories? Have any fragments made you uncomfortable? It was a nightmare. Guilt, self-accusation, inability, exhaustion, and escape took my body and mind. They grew from my traumatic experience. They taunted me and tried to drag me into the abyss of the infinite past when I was stressed out and lost control of the external environment. The shadow struck me until my defense and control system collapsed. The scenes of loss, neglect and pressure became the violence to my psyche.

Unoptimistically, trauma always exists because of natural disasters, bereavements, cutthroat competitions, economic …