Digital Commons Network^™

Harness, Nickolas Viele

Theses

The struggles individuals encounter in their lifetime have as many peaks and valleys as a roller coaster at an amusement park. The goal of my thesis work is to unpack the complex feelings of personal breakdowns so that the viewer can empathize with the raw emotions of these chaotic situations and establish a bridge of empathy from person to person. My investigation uses the relationship of life casting and found objects to create a personal, tangible connection for my audience. The struggle and turmoil we encounter in life can create the common ground needed for others to identify with these …

Business Data Analytics Dashboard Development For Performance Improvement Of Uae Government Service Centers, Laith Iyad Alawaysheh

Theses

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, The Vice President of UAE, The Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, once said that “Focusing on the happiness of various customers and enabling them to achieve an outstanding service experience, is a fundamental pillar for government development” and this quote was one of the main triggers for this project, which has a clear purpose to “enhance and improve the customer experience (CX) and service centers performance by implementing data analytics concept along with forecasting future demand of customers and benefit from it in the capacity planning of service centers’ resources”. Through …

Complexion, Jordan Funk

Theses

Polaroids are made up of several microscopic layers that come together to form an image. Complexion investigates the ties between this structure and the way that our skin functions. Being diagnosed with eczema as an infant, I have always been hyper-aware of how my emotional stress aggravates my eczema. Complexion depicts how my emotional state alters my skin and warps my experience of reality. Similarly, my imagery undergoes a metamorphosis and influences the chemical changes I create within the Polaroid’s white border. I scan at a high resolution, crop, and reprint the Polaroids at a larger scale. The high-quality scanning …

Ibid., Dengfeng Yang

Theses

Ibid. is an installation of five images in juxtaposition to each other that explores expectation and interpretation on photographic images. It is a response to my struggle in finding meaning in my creative process of making images. I disrupt the representation of the images using strategies of appropriation, photo manipulation, sequencing, repetition, and performative photo handling. Highlighting the characteristics of both indexicality and ambiguity in photography, Ibid. calls attention to how we develop our phycological desire to address meaning on images. Although Ibid. is rooted in my personal creative experience, it questions image- making under a broader context. When the …

Safeskin: A Blockchain System Of Products’ Lifespan Development To Help The User Find Safer Products, Ru Li

Theses

Due to the escalating demand for cosmetics skincare products and a growing number of beauty products putting people’s health at risk by counterfeits or using chemical ingredients in order to give a better skincare result, people start to have more concerns about the quality of cosmetics and skincare products. Today, many companies strive to make the transparency of the ingredients by labeling on the packaging and knowledge their customers about the benefits of the ingredients they are using. However, the consumers unable to find out how does the product being produced by the original company, and being transferred to the …

Female Pharaohs And Divine Advocacy, Stephanie Jost

Theses

This analysis is addressing a form of divine advocacy by looking at the role of the goddess Hathor in the political/religious context of Egypt. Traditionally, pharaohs have used Hathor in Egyptian canonical imagery to convey messages of power- reiterating their own role as the incarnation of the God Horus. Here, we will focus on the role of traditional role of Hathor juxtaposing Royal Women in power during the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom. The two female pharaohs, Sobekneferu and Hatshepsut, used their traditional roles as incarnations of Hathor to establish a power base before becoming a “female Horus”. An iconographic …

The Life And Times Of The Berlin Secession Podcast, Chris Kitamura

Theses

This project is a podcast series with five of episodes titled “The Life and Times of the Berlin Secession”. By research and design, the podcast can be used as supplemental material to modern art discussions in art history classes, as well as be entertaining to the public audience. This series presents information and education on how the Berlin Secession helped bridge between earlier genres of German art to the modern art of the Expressionists. It discusses the value of specific artists – Max Liebermann, Käthe Kollwitz, and Max Beckmann – within the Berlin Secession and to the greater history of …

The “New Normal”: A Virtual Insight From Industry Professionals On Pivoting Within The Digital Ecosystem During A Global Pandemic., Delina Corcione

Theses

This project is over industry professionals within a relative field of Digital Content Strategy, and their professional experiences as it relates to the global pandemic that hit the United States in 2020. This virus (COVID-19) has boosted us into a predominantly digital world, with little analysis on how society is to handle or adapt. The final deliverable is short documentary offering insight on industry professionals within the field of study. The “New Normal” takes a unique approach on analyzing the state of the field as it relates to the pandemic, focusing on the personal experiences these industry professionals went through …

Satellite Vision And Atomic Trails, Anson Wigner

Theses

Satellite Vision and Atomic Trails is an installation of photographs and a three-channel video crafted from an eclectic combination of government archival material, the theory of panopticism, Cold War propaganda, and satellite photographs of secret or obscured sites. Probing the creation and interpretation of what remains “unseen” within these satellite images, Satellite Vision and Atomic Trails decodes the anxious ambitions and failed promises of totalized surveillance. Satellite surveillance both envisions the surface of events and creates a map of their socio-political significance. But just as clouds obscure the view of earth from a CIA satellite, our pursuit of a totalizing …

Using Advanced Analytics To Predict Vehicle Registrations And Help In Business Continuity Planning, Khalid Ibrahim Alzarouni

Theses

Dramatic changes happen in the world. People and organizations face problems with these changes. The ones who have everything planned in case of emergencies; survive, and the ones who do not plan it right, have a chance of falling. Today, a lot of organizations suffer because of the Covid-19 global pandemic, even the largest organizations in Dubai like Roads and Transport Authority. Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is one of the largest government entities and the sole planner and executer of all transport, road, and traffic projects in Dubai. It has happiness centers which register all the cars that are …

An Empirical Study Of Offensive Language In Online Interactions, Diptanu Sarkar

Theses

In the past decade, usage of social media platforms has increased significantly. People use these platforms to connect with friends and family, share information, news and opinions. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter are often used to propagate offensive and hateful content online. The open nature and anonymity of the internet fuels aggressive and inflamed conversations. The companies and federal institutions are striving to make social media cleaner, welcoming and unbiased. In this study, we first explore the underlying topics in popular offensive language datasets using statistical and neural topic modeling. The current state-of-the-art models for aggression detection only present a …

Controlling Artistic Identity—Artist V. Museum: A Case Study Of Kaws At The Brooklyn Museum, Courtney Barber

Theses

Through contemporary social media applications, non-traditional artists now hold the ability to curate their own artistic identities and associated brands. Accordingly, the constant use of social media platforms and consistent reinforcement of familiar artistic styles and characters, have become linked to the artist’s relationship with their public following. In the case of the street artist KAWS, the artist has strategically built the familiar foundations of his public persona upon the repeated use of the character Companion, frequent social media interactions, and consistent brand collaborations. In bringing an artist utilizing such contemporary methods into the traditional museum space, it can be …

Traces Of Existence, Alec Landon

Theses

The everyday seems, well, everyday, but there is much more than meets the eye. Woven into the banal scene of everyday, are instances of everyday surrealism- uncanny moments of the unexpected. These moments can, be found through the practice of wandering, finding the extraordinary a random way. Meandering through the world allows for the element of chance to take hold, encouraging keen observation around every bend. Finding these moments where the, banal scene contains surreal elements reveals the unexpected and sensation of the everyday. Through this body of work, I hope to encourage the viewer to take this spirit with …

Garden Of The Mind, Jessica Wolinski

Theses

Garden of the Mind documents my investigation of exploring drawing processes in, on, and with clay to recreate the place of my imagination. The artwork translates my perceptions as they are transcribed by drawing and transform into a ceramic object. This thesis looks into how the human spirit finds tranquility, solace, and purpose in the natural world, and ponders what it means to be truly alive. The act of drawing paired with the ceramic art object create an intersection between the places we imagine and the reality we share.

Seeking The Sublime, Gretchen Ettlie

Theses

This thesis examines a search for the sublime. Definitions of the sublime have transformed over the centuries. In the modern era, that has come to encompass an idea of the Technological Sublime. This thesis will examine a more nature-centric idea of the sublime, with a thoughtful examination of the current digital culture and it’s impact. As we continue to become more distant from our natural world, and more immersed in the digital landscape, we miss opportunities to connect with our true nature and gain-first hand knowledge of the sublime understandings that nature can impart to us. This thesis explores our …

Challenge: An App To Help Users To Leave Their Food Comfort Zone., Jieting Qian

Theses

We are living in an environment with diversified culture and too many choices in front of us make us overwhelmed. Trying something new and having new experiences is important, but a lot of people refuse to leave their comfort zone. In the long run, leaving our comfort zone will also help us gain new/refreshed experiences and realize a new self in the future.

People do not want to leave their comfort zone because of various reasons, but when some of us want to there may be mental barriers in front of us. People are hesitant to make the decision at …

The Pursuit Of Virtue In Outdoor Sport And Recreation, Jonathan Schnaufer

Theses

This thesis presents for consideration six virtues that can be used to determine how adventure sports, outdoor recreation and expeditions can maintain their integrity when their methods are challenged by novel influences. Sports must adapt to social change, such as cultural, technological, or monetary influences. When they do so, mountaineering and adventure sports should be guided by ethical and aesthetic values that I argue can be maintained by adhering to the virtues of collaboration, education, athleticism, stewardship, sport empowerment and temperance. Some methods of pursuing these activities have alienated athletes from the natural component of outdoor sports and have moved …

From Darkness To Light: Bringing Collections Out Of Storage At The History Center In Tompkins County, Katie Keegan

Theses

One of the museum's important missions is collecting objects and artifacts to store, preserve, and display. Today, however, museums only have a small portion of their objects out on display. Large institutions have the funds to buy and create new spaces to display more of their collections. With small budgets and small spaces, however, smaller institutions do not have this luxury. I wish to find different ways to bring out collections from storage into the public eye to better serve the community. I apply my investigation to a case study of the History Center in Tompkins County, a local history …

A Type Of Preservation: Modern Recreations Of Typeface At Genesee Country Village & Museum And The Cary Graphics Art Collection, Koda Drake

Theses

Historical objects that serve educational and interpretive purposes face frequent use and can easily be damaged, particularly when those objects are designed to be disposed of following high usage. Conserving these artifacts through both digital and physical reproductions enables museum staff, scholars, and the general public to tell a more complete history of the objects and of material culture. To demonstrate the necessity of preserving functional artifacts, this thesis examined historic wooden typefaces used for document printing to answer the following question: do digital and physical reproductions of wood type fonts allow for preservation of the original fonts while maintaining …

Early Exposure To Marital Conflict And Adolescent Emotion Regulation, Kassidy Colton

Theses

Exposure to both physical and psychological stress has a negative impact on one’s regulatory processing, and stress within the family context may be especially impactful on emotional regulation and development. Early experiences of exposure to parent marital conflict or parent relationship discord, such as divorce, are stressors often associated with poor emotional well-being, including emotion dysregulation, in both children and adults. However, the influence of these experiences on regulatory development is complex as there are many factors that impact the pathways of risk (e.g., parenting behaviors, child perceptions). Furthermore, emotion regulation has not been well-studied in adolescence in the context …

Matter: Creating An Action Loop Of Mindfulness, Mriganka Gupta

Theses

In the past, radical innovation changed the way we live our daily lives without causing a change in fundamental human behaviour. Our “social suite” of behaviours - something that has evolved within us over centuries had mostly remained consistent in the early days of this innovation. Today, modern technology has slipped into our lives without any friction. Products are now designed to blend in with our homes, so well that we almost forget they’re there. And this has caused a concerning change in human behaviour - to the extent that people now think of computer behaviours as analogous to human …

A House With No Walls, Anna Mikuskova

Theses

As a child, I often listened to my father’s stories of his boyhood in 1950s Czechoslovakia; adventures taking place in the narrow cobblestoned streets of his hometown or near the fields and lakes of his grandparents’ village. I never met any of his family. And by the time I was born, the streets and buildings that came alive in his descriptions were gone: they were demolished together with eighty other towns in the area to make way for expanding coal mines. With no way to connect my father’s memories to physical locations or even images, the stories I heard sounded …

Epilogue To Resonance, Robert Arthur Stone Iii

Theses

Epilogue to Resonance is a body of photographic work that focuses on how the resonance of imagery can be used as a tool for communication. This thesis expounds upon that idea, reflecting on photography as a medium to convey emotional affect and thought in a non-verbal form. After situating the photographic project within the historical moment of the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic, this thesis goes on to analyze historical, psychological, and philosophical groundings as they relate to the processing of thoughts in the mind. This is accomplished through research into concepts by Thomas Nagel, and Stephen Kosslyn, and through interviews with, …

Strange Future, Nathan Emerson Rochefort

Theses

According to experts, the planet is now in a geologic period called the Anthropocene in which human action will progressively alter the course of life on Earth and the systems that support it. Every year global temperatures rise, and the frequency and severity of natural disasters increase. All evidence points to these trends continuing. “Climate change” is the name given to this predicament, and it poses a threat of existential proportion. For the past two years, I have been photographing the landscape of the northeastern United States looking for symbols of change. I have explored areas impacted by natural disasters, …

Smuggling Life, Mahmoud Alkurd

Theses

I was mentally prepared to accept the inevitable reality shock before I moved to Rochester from my home country, Palestine. A place like the Gaza Strip, where I grew up, has its own unique reality that mixes the norms of a contemporary life with the abnormalities. As I thought that I overcame the reality shock after spending almost two years in Rochester, I became aware of the fact that I became able to look back at my Gazan identity from a new and fresh angle. Smuggling Life is a multimedia art project that highlights the phenomenon of sperm smuggling by …

Android Malware Detection Using Predictive Analytics., Amira Mohammed Albalooshi

Theses

The growth of android applications is causing a threat and a serious issue towards Android’s security. The number of malware targeting the Android operating system is increasing daily. As a result, in recent days the traditional ways that are being used to detect malware are not able to defend alone against the rapid development of hackers attacking techniques and novel malware. This capstone project focuses on using predictive analytics toward detecting malware from the network traffic. In this capstone project, we aim to train and test our data to find the best machine learning model with the highest accuracy of …

Who Do They Think We Are? Analyzing Misrepresentation Of Races In Netflix Original Films Using Critical Race Theory And Social Identity Theory, Jacob Osseck

Theses

In a society like today’s, racial misrepresentation can be found across a vast number of different forms of media. Racial misrepresentation has been found in television portrayals of characters within series and programs during primetime television. This sort of misrepresentation creates obstacles for certain minorities to overcome prejudice, racism, and bigotry that oppresses their ingroup. A content analysis of 20 Netflix Original films which were chosen through random purposive sampling, to include comedy and drama genres, was conducted for the research. The analysis produced results that helped explain that Netflix’s representation of minorities through inclusion has improved for Blacks, yet …

A Risk Management Framework Using Digital Transformation For The Healthcare Sector During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mohammad Awni Khasawneh, Mohamed Alayat

Theses

Despite the many changes in the orientation of the world economy and the spotlight positioning, the healthcare sector remains one of the most important and critical sectors for its contribution in every aspect of human life. Improvements in the healthcare sector are seen and evident on a daily basis to cope with the technological and digital advancements in the world, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic has put these improvements into a faster pace. Several challenges in the health sector have risen to surface since the beginning of the pandemic; some of these challenges have been properly addressed and tackled, while …

Those Thrice Marked By Time: The Significance Of The Last Known Survivor, Their Death, And Our Remembrance, Michael Tofte

Theses

Following Adam Zarakov, the last known survivor is a significant figure and a representative of a larger type that is under-considered. Last known survivors are ubiquitous in fictional media and how history is told. Some survivors like Frank Buckles are given lavish state funerals with participation of strangers. Yet, this under-analysis is concerning as the 21^st century will likely feature the recognition of last known survivors of many significant 20^th century events. I offer one attempt of addressing this lacuna.

The first aim is to motivate philosophical interest in the phenomenon of the last known survivor. I present …

A Framework For Evaluating Technology-Mediated Collaborative Workflow, Christopher Bondy

Theses

The adoption of new technology into collaborative workflows has permeated every aspect of our personal and professional lives with the promise of performing work processes more efficiently and with greater capability. The continued rise of ubiquitous computing and heightened need for collaborative features suggest that a view of enabling technologies in a workflow should include the physical computing infrastructure, the collaborative interaction between humans and computers, and the informatics (i.e., collection and representation of data within the workflow). The development and integration of technology for collaborative workflows introduces many variables that are of great concern to companies, organization, and individuals. …