Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

Ocean State Food Stories, Charlotte Clement

Masters Theses

Many Rhode Islanders lack access to local food system education. They struggle to connect with local food outlets as well as understand why supporting a resilient local food community matters. Local food producers face great challenges within the system such as finding stable ways to produce, distribute, and sell their merchandise. In addition, the RI government’s agricultural marketing efforts are not innovative and local food-centric nonprofits are swamped with work resulting in the outsourcing of creative marketing jobs that have yielded questionable results. In order to engage with a wider audience, both the government and the non-profit sector need to …

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 …

Beautiful Dirt : Exploring The American Taboo Of Death Through The Things We Leave Behind, Jake Dangstorp

Masters Theses

‘Beautiful Dirt’ is a project meant to help people think about death as a way to learn and grow, rather than a ‘never happening’ taboo. Contemporary research into western dialogues around death show a consistent anxiety towards being forgotten, as well as a fear of being a burden when passing away. The abject nature of the topic leaves people diminishing the weight of the things they leave behind, and the things they forget to. This perpetuates a cycle of denial in order to avoid stress, emburdening loved ones with an unplanned mass of personal items and piecemeal stories to assemble, …

Acute, Alex D'Haeseleer

Masters Theses

This project digs deep into issues of accessibility, education, and transparency for those who create health data. By using surveys, interviews, user testing, and secondary research, this project aims to both provide a possible solution while also underlining the market resistance to a more equal exchange between consumer and producer. Data collection is a part of everyone’s lives. Privacy is a hot topic. Many people misunderstand data use, and it seems corporations are taking advantage of that. Our bodies and our devices produce and create data, and that information is then used for research, profit, or general consumer benefit. This …

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.

Through The Labyrinth, Rebeca Gonzalez Morales

Masters Theses

After many turns, I made my way through. Making connections between different paths, paths I thought I had forgotten, abandoned, discarded. My goal is to understand how the environment around us affects our emotional state, our behaviour, our mental health. I seek a destigmatized idea of mental health, a way to show that it is a factor of everybody’s health meant to be prioritized as much as physical health, to expose the burden of frivolousness that it carries. I seek ways to burst the bubble that mental health lives in the world of design, to show that mental health should …

Fifty Fifty: Redefining Domesticity, Ziying Qiao

Masters Theses

I want to redefine domesticity and challenge traditional gender roles by rethinking the division of domestic chores.

In this project, I discussed gender roles, especially for how the house design impacts gender inequality and the perfect female figure in traditional context— good mother, good wife. In the experiment part, I explored the possibility of collaborative housework and designed different objects related to daily life to remind people of the importance of collaboration.

For the final design part, I applied surveillance camera and machine learning technology to a private space, designed a radical service about chores, and also discussed how people …

Dynamic Landscape: The Theatre Of Time Unfolding, Mo Kong

Masters Theses

Human’s particular perspective and scale couldn’t allow them to perceive the ever-changing quality of the landscape through their senses. As landscape architects, we lack tools to communicate and work with not only time but typically experiment with the representation of time in physical landscape images. To create a dynamic experience, what tools of representation allow landscape architects to respond to time? This thesis explores many different types of representational techniques in terms of videos and drawings and uses them in a series of experimentation back and forward to make the unfamiliar familiar. The goal of the thesis is to build …

42nd Soundscaping: Sound As Media For Reshaping Urban Ecology, Chao Li

Masters Theses

This proposal aims to draw people’s attention to our surrounding acoustic environment and shift people’s awareness from “hearing” to “listening”. In urban areas, to enrich our living experiences, people choose to get rid of the noisy environments. I believe landscape architecture always has the power to connect human’s different senses with our environment. As the most dynamic and abstract phenomenon, sound has the potential to guide landscape spatial design and modify our ecological system. The investigation focuses on 42nd Street as a primary study area which is historically one of the most iconic streets in the midtown of Manhattan, connecting …

Totem: An Embodiment Of Human Character And Personality In Footwear Design, Sushant Shivaram

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt at drawing parallels between human character traits and footwear design as an evocative means to communicate character. The idea here is to translate qualitative elements of personality traits and communicate expressions through the embodiment of meaning within form in the context of footwear design. I am making an attempt at equating the meaning in form and footwear gestures that serve an emotional or functional purpose in footwear to break down the sculpture into a combination of different attributes so as to create a character taxonomy. This character taxonomy serves the purpose of assisting me in …

A Material Cooperation Over Time, Diana Marcela Gallo

Masters Theses

The use of materials like clay, concrete and biomaterials have given a meaning and identity to the outcomes we produce through time. Materials absorb and release energy that passes through them. Transformation processes in materials can be revealed when they get in touch with a phenomenon like infiltration of water. Changing stages in materials and weathering, should not be considered as a negative condition but as a new opportunity to feel and perceive the same surface differently.

The illusion of permanence should be replaced by a more fluid idea that nothing lasts or keeps the same condition forever. Since all …

Flowing Garments: Textile Waste Reutilization In Landscape Design, Fengjiao Ge

Masters Theses

This thesis has focused on creating a localized response to a global problem related to globalization and fast fashion. Both our amount of post-production waste and the carbon footprint left by the garment industry’s response to a global desire for novelty and affordability, and their dependence on cheap labor, loose environmental regulations, distributed raw materials and production, and markets far from places of manufacturing has created an unethical and unsustainable supply chain model.

The strategy proposed here began with one of the places that receives much of the world’s garment waste. As a country that both produces these garments and …

Mountainous City, Yixuan Hu

Masters Theses

My thesis studies how glaciation and vegetation systems define the landscapes of Mount Gongga, and asks how these and their modes of relation and zonation might provide a model for more sustainable and fully adaptable structures to support urbanism. Using mountain systems as the metaphor, I proposed a mountainous city model focusing on efficient urban ecosystems and spontaneous human activities. By the methods of deconstructing and mimetic modeling, they triggered a series of rethinking about the formation and relation of urban spaces. The mountainous city has four distinctive vertical layered zones, which integrated with hydrological and ecological systems and vertical …

Urban Storytelling: Rebuilding The Understanding Of Place Via Immersive Narrative, Xue Gao

Masters Theses

This thesis explores a hyper reality- in this case, virtual and augmented reality- storytelling system, focused on individual readings and experiences, as a new method of place understanding.

Easily Read, Easily Forgotten: Reassessing The Effects Of Visual Difficulties And Multi-Modality In Educational Text Design, Rebekah Cochell

Masters Theses

The graphic design of a book affects the way the reader receives and processes information. However, design is often focused on aesthetic principles and traditional wisdom, not taking into account how design aspects affect cognitive processes and educational outcomes. This thesis examines the efficacy of page design elements on educational outcomes, specifically disfluent fonts, handwritten fonts and multi-modal design. The traditional wisdom of typography has maintained that the faster the human eye can read a text, the more suited it is for reading materials. However, recent research suggests that disfluent, or difficult-to-read fonts result in significantly improved reading comprehension and …

Follow Me: Following Jesus With Your Head, Heart, Hands, And Feet, Vincent Dodge Frampton

Masters Theses

Following Jesus requires more than merely a mind exercise. It is more than giving money to the right causes or helping to build hospitals. Following Jesus requires the head, heart, hands, and feet--the whole self. The goal of this music and worship ministry project is to help people to follow Jesus with their whole selves.

Secondary School Chorus: Practical Implication Of Praxial Music Education In Sight-Singing And Ear-Training, Euna P. Kim

Masters Theses

High school chorus students are often required to sing and memorize a diverse range of choral repertoire for performances. In the process of performance preparation, students learn many techniques including basic breathing, vocalization, blending of the voice, singing in pitch, keeping the rhythm, and following dynamics. Sight-singing is an essential technique for singers because music requires coordination of sight and singing through recognition of notation and rhythm. When a group of singers have a higher skill level of sight-singing, the learning of the song is easier and more efficient. The competency of sight-singing level of a group of singers allows …

Limits And Possibilities Of The United States Military In Post-Conflict Reconstruction And Stabilization, Alcir Florentino Dos Santos Neto

Masters Theses

This study probes the limits and possibilities of US military efforts to facilitate the transition from warfighting to nation-building. Most comparative studies conceive the complexity of this transition along a spectrum from conflict to humanitarian assistance to post-conflict stabilization. While the last two stages have often been interpreted as a coordinated act of civil-military ‘nation-building’; the spectrum, in fact, represents an ideal type simplification. At one level, outcomes depend on the players involved, including: sovereign nations, national militaries, international and regional institutions, UN peacekeepers, private security contractors, and non-governmental humanitarian providers, among others. On the other hand, because the number, …

Moments Of Music: A Qualitative Case Study In A Metropolitan Community Chorus, Katherine Iooss

Masters Theses

Making music in collaboration with others has impacted the strength, development, and connection amongst people throughout American history. Community music ensembles can strengthen social bonds and improve collaboration between citizens. Developing interest and skill in choral singing can provide an avenue for social connectedness in adulthood, as well as reduce stress throughout adolescence. This qualitative study focused on participants’ professed benefits from voluntary participation in a community chorus and the effect of rehearsal participation on perceived stress and/or energy level. The study was situated in a non-auditioned community choir in a densely populated metropolitan suburb in Northern Virginia. Data was …

Paul’S Use Of Leviticus 19:18: A Comparative Analysis With Select Second Temple Jewish Texts, Corey D. Rugh

Masters Theses

Paul’s use of Leviticus 19:18 in Romans 13:8-10 and Galatians 5:13-15 begs the question of how a command that is not repeated in the Old Testament came to the position of prominence as the summarizing and fulfilling statement of the whole law. This study aims to analyze select Second Temple Jewish texts and Paul’s letters to the Romans and Galatians in order to trace the uses of or allusions to Leviticus 19:18 and determine how Paul’s use of Leviticus 19:18 compares and differs from the selected texts. The Second Temple Jewish texts that are analyzed include the Testaments of the …

Christian Worldview Compared To Deepak Chopra's Worldview, Allison Renee Beardsley

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is a comparative study of the biblical Christian worldview and the worldview of pop-culture guru Deepak Chopra. Both worldviews are compared using a standard four-question worldview rubric. Research was gathered from Chopra’s books and biblical Christian worldview books. Once a worldview rubric question is answered it is tested with the correspondence theory of truth to see how it reflects the reality and experience that humanity collectively perceives in the world. The biblical Christian worldview adequately answered all rubric questions in a coherent manner that corresponds with reality. The Christian worldview has cumulative strength as it …

A Home Of Their Own: Past Policies For Foster Care, William Joseph Norris

Masters Theses

For the past fifty years, the states and the National Congress has been attempting to fix problems associated with the Foster Care system. Some of these measures have been successful, while some have not. This raises the question of what effective policy is and what is not. The hypothesis is that a focus on the effective child placement and adoption as well as family reunification will be beneficial policy for the system. This is the question that this study will attempt to answer in order to provide better policies for the problems ailing the system. Through the course of the …

Arguments From Evil And The Parenting Style(S) Of God, Kyle Dean Gazlay

Masters Theses

In scholarly debates there are two primary positions on whether a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent can coexist with the presence of evil in the world. Atheists claim that God and evil do not coexist, while theists proclaim that God and evil can and do coexist. Atheists have used arguments from evil as a chief weapon against the existence of God and evil. Within arguments from evil, atheists create arguments that take an evidential or probabilistic stance on the matter. These arguments are called evidential arguments from evil. The evidential arguments from evil will use parent analogies to …

Douglas Macarthur's Nation-Building: The Reconstruction Of Japan, Carson Nathaniel Newman

Masters Theses

At the end of World War II, Japan was militarily and economically devastated; Hiroshima and Nagasaki were radiated ruins; and the people were on the brink of starvation. Japan’s situation in 1945 looked very bleak as its people slowly began to rebuild their lives and move past years of bloody war. Transforming Japan meant replacing a military state focused on expansion with a parliamentary democracy focused on economic prosperity through innovation, industry, and peace. The American occupation lasted eight years and by the 1960s the Japanese economy was well on its ways to becoming the third largest in the world. …

Teaching Elementary School Music: A Composition Approach, Lauren Amanda Hammer

Masters Theses

The 2014 National Music Standards emphasizes the importance of the three artistic processes of creating, performing, and responding. The Massachusetts Music Standards follow both the 2014 and the 1999 standards. The 1999 music standards are as follows: singing, reading and notation, playing instruments, improvisation and composition, critical response, purposes and meanings in the arts, roles of artists in the communities, concepts of style, stylistic influence, and stylistic change, inventions, technologies, and the arts, and interdisciplinary connections. Both standards mention either creating, improvisation, or composition, but are music educators emphasizing the importance of these standards? In Massachusetts, following both sets of …

Discipling Instrumentalists For Worship And Evangelism, Nicole Fasco

Masters Theses

The worship ministry has the ability to disciple and evangelize to people within the congregation and to members of the ensembles. This study focused on the instrumental ensembles of two congregations to analyze the impact they had on the members of these ensembles and the congregations in which they serve. Surveys were sent via email to the members of the instrumental ensembles and the members of the congregations. Seventy-six people participated in the survey with twenty-one of those participants being instrumentalists and fifty-five people being members of the congregation. Survey questions contained general questions about the instrumental ensembles and specific …

Passive And Active Battery Balancing Methods Implemented On Second Use Lithium-Ion Batteries, Walter Bartek

Masters Theses

As the number of electric vehicles (EVs) increases, the number of used battery packs that require disposal increases; however, many of these packs still have useful capacity and can be repurposed. When using repurposed large lithium-ion battery packs, deviations between cells within a pack become problematic. These deviations result in a pack that is unbalanced, affecting performance and proving potentially hazardous when charging. Consequently, a battery management system (BMS) is needed. To provide safety, the BMS in this paper monitors and controls the operation of the battery pack. In addition, it controls the redistribution of charge between the cells within …