Digital Commons Network^™

≥I++ Wayward Self, Space, And Language, Mystie Do, Thu Tm Do

Theses and Dissertations

Having crossed different geographical and cultural borders, I can’t seem to position myself beyond society’s forced binaries of race, sexuality, and materiality. My personal diasporic experience drives me to bring together various presences, putting them next to one another, engaging them in dialogues. My works often share multiple space–time possibilities: a digital space, a physical site, a virtual alternity. Occupying these parallel worlds are varied ratios of mixtures of natural ecosystems, my own system of abstraction, and existing technological systems that allow us a level of individual engagement not previously available. I want to invite people to fluctuate between these …

An Escapist Utopia, Sara Eh Denney

Theses and Dissertations

As an active pursuit of avoiding excellence, my work acts as a space for failure, play, experimentation and imperfection. This document and final installation acts as a pause along a lifelong journey of object-making, creation, and spirituality. My work, specifically my working practice, rather than any one object or moment, is an escapist utopia for myself. My work is the process, the journey, not the ending or the completion of any one thing. The repetition, distortion, and production that I engage throughout my working practice acts as a spiritual exercise of meaning—making through creation. I fall deeply in love with …

Form Follows Culture, Nada Raafat Elkharashi

Theses and Dissertations

We all use everyday objects as part of our daily routines, but the way we use them varies from one culture to another. Using George Herbert Mead’s study of human conduct and Louis H. Sullivan’s credo, “Form follows function,” this thesis examines the cultural meanings and implications surrounding the fundamental act of drinking water. Using a methodology of iterative, exploratory making, a collection of glass vessels explores philosophical and physical manifestations of Islamic cultural principles derived from the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. With the goal of restoring cultural integrity to our daily activities, the work highlights …

Untitled, Lihua Yu

Theses and Dissertations

The library stores up my favorite memories. Sometimes I look for a book by its title, author or publisher, sometimes by its designer; other times I just wander around different sections and enjoy encountering books by chance. As an object, a book is eternal while I am a passer-by. I believe in the connection between people who read the same books and watch same films with me. This untitled book is a thankful catalog, documented in a straightfoward way

Summit Avenue Studios: A Creative Hub In Scott's Addition, Elizabeth Berry

Theses and Dissertations

In this fast-paced life that seems to be moving at an even more rapid speed, we rely upon online retailers and the ability to purchase anything we need with a few taps on the phone or clicks on the computer. It can be wonderful to have this kind of exposure, but it comes at a price. We are trading convenience for craft, and risk overlooking talent in our own community. Most of these purchases are made from big box stores and online retailers selling cheap, international goods. We continue to lose the connection to our neighbors and communities, and local …

Recognizing Art As A Semiotic Mode: Revelations Of An Adolescent Mind, Catherine Elizabeth Deaton

Theses and Dissertations

The following gallery is predicated on the belief that a complete high school curriculum must be responsive to the needs of students as they navigate the stresses of living in isolation during a pandemic and always. High school students with minimal directions or guidance were charged with submitting a photo of a piece of art they had constructed to capture their perceptions of living through the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. The results give a candid view of how these students give purpose to the process of creating art as they construct and convey a sense of “being in the world.” …

The Harlem Book Of The Dead: Pan-Africanism, Funerary Portraiture, And The African-American Way Of Death, Jessica D. Feldman

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the text and images contained in James Van Der Zee and Camille Billops’s seminal photobook The Harlem Book of the Dead (1978). The title, frontispiece, and introduction, combined with Van Der Zee’s funerary portraits, illuminate the connection between African-American rituals of death and Pan-Africanism. While these two concepts appear to be distinct, they are both predicated upon and intrinsically linked to key values in African American culture, including liberation and the meaning of community. Each chapter focuses on a different contextual framework for situating The Harlem Book of the Dead within the historical and political moment …

Controlling Framing Effects For Web-Based Group Decision Support Systems, Badria Sulaiman Alfurhood

Theses and Dissertations

The way the proposal and the available alternatives are presented or framed for a group decision may alter the ultimate group decision. Strategic framing is an attack method used to manipulate people into irrationally preferring a particular alternative. The adverse effects of framing threaten the trustworthiness and results of the group decision support systems (GDSSs). Nonetheless, the avoidance or reduction of framing effects is possible. Negative framing effects arise when users are not consistent with their choices if framing is applied for a collaborative decision using GDSSs. In this interdisciplinary research, human-computer interaction (HCI) informed methods, cognitive science, and political …

Emblems Of Incarnation: The Hypostatic Union Of Word And Image In Francis Quarles' Emblemes, Amber Bird

Theses and Dissertations

Although recent scholars have attempted to recuperate the cultural and literary value of Francis Quarles' Emblemes, traditional emblematic interpretations categorize the images as merely illustrations of the poetic utterance. The investment of this paper shifts critical attention away from the content of Quarles' text as the only source of meaning and argues that meaning is contingent on the interpretation of both word and image. In order for the images of the text to have full consideration, I have stepped away from the traditional emblem metaphor of body and soul in favor of an incarnational metaphor that joins image and word …

Asian American Cultural Identity Portrayal On Instagram, Jesse Lau Kristine King

Theses and Dissertations

Though more recent Asian American representation in media has been lauded, the majority of portrayals have been considered to be stereotypical misrepresentations. Because negative media representations can have a detrimental impact on people's self-concepts and their views of others, it is important to understand how Asian Americans are representing their own identities online. In order to understand how Asian Americans are negotiating their own ethnic, racial, and national identities online, constant comparative analysis was employed to examine patterns and themes in the visual and textual communication of Asian American Instagram posts. Their cultural identities were communicated as a cultural blending, …

Self-Framing Of Women In U.S. Politics On Instagram, Madison Marie Parks

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored how women involved in U.S. politics visually framed themselves on their Instagram pages. While recent research in political communications examined the use of Facebook and Twitter, few studies assessed Instagram's role in the game of politics. Guided by political and visual framing theories, a quantitative content analysis of Instagram posts (N = 1,947) from women involved in U.S. politics was conducted. This examination allowed for an exploration of how these public figures framed themselves on Instagram and the extent to which they shared personal content, despite their varied involvement in U.S. politics. Results showed that: both Democrat …

The Relationship Between Saudi Citizen Perceptions Of Vision 2030 And Saudi Government Social Media Use To Promote Vision 2030, Essa Saleh Alkathiri

Theses and Dissertations

Public relations (PR) tools have enabled more communication between governments and citizens in the whole world. However, a single communication channel could be widespread among many governments. These PR tools help governments to share national goals, projects, and programs with their citizens. Grunig and Hunt (1984) highlighted that the value of two-way communication channels is better suited to develop an understanding between public organizations (i.e. governments) and citizens to establish both internal and external mutual public-organization or citizen-government understanding. However, the practical implementation of two-way communication channels for the government-citizen relationships and dialog remains is unclear. As a result, the …

Orbiting Forward (Thoughts On The Nature Of Conflict - Sighs On The Struggles Of Change), Bushra A. Alsughayer

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s world is a wide open hyper-connected sphere where human societies worldwide exist in a complex crossroads of historical conditions, ideologies, and power structures. A pool of constant confrontations, minor or major, between the traditional and the progressive, the local and the international, the materialistic and the transcendent, the pragmatic and the idealistic, and countless layers of meaning. For an individual who exists in such an intense moment of history, it seems almost inescapable to be exposed to, affected by, or even involved in a major conflict. A situation that makes individuals always in a critical position where every role …

Machine Girl, Yutong Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Machine girl is a character that mimics biology, labor, and humanity.

She relates to machine sympathy and machine learning; She is updating and processing of big data. During the interaction between me and the machine, I found you --- Machine girl.

Machine girl is a brilliant girl. She is an excellent translator and communicator, which is determined by her ability for machine learning. The cyber living space gives her a fundamental learning gift with a mathematical algorithm. She uses this gift to mimic everything from the human brain. She is not reasonable but sensitive. There are many different versions of …

Fool's Rest, Aidan Quinlan

Theses and Dissertations

The text calls itself a guide, but it is no guide. From the genre of guide, it borrows the outlines and silhouettes and lines between things and spaces and ideas. It lingers on the shadows of its subject(s); it is attentive to the periphery of its world; but it cannot take you there. There is no there. It lacks the authority of the guide; it lacks the lucidity, the efficiency, the false totality of the guide; it lacks the confidence.

The guide embodies its own anxieties. This makes sense, as its reason to exist was born on the one-way highway …

An Exploration Of Task Independence For High School Students In A Self-Contained Classroom Using Structured Work Systems, Lorinda Rene Otto

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of a method to support higher levels of independent performance and generalization of skills using a structured work system with a visual schedule when teaching online task completion skills to high school students with ASD and intellectual disabilities. Students with ASD and intellectual disabilities are typically deficient in independent skills. They often struggle to initiate and complete tasks on their own. By learning to complete tasks independently, high school students with ASD and intellectual disabilities gain essential life skills needed for employment. Structured work systems, along with visual schedules, have shown to be useful in …

From Mourning To Monuments: How American Society Memorialized The Dead After 1945, Eugenia M. Wolovich

Theses and Dissertations

The following four memorials — the World War II Memorial in The Fens in Boston, the Brooklyn War Memorial in Cadman Plaza Park, the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial in the 30th Street Station, and the East Coast War Memorial in Battery Park — suggest that mid-twentieth century commemorative architecture possessed defining characteristics that differentiated them from monuments of the previous era and from each other. These unique qualities make it difficult to define this architectural period in a unified way because multiple forms of memorials arose in the wake of World War II.

Emotion Recognition Using Facial Feature Extraction, Demiyan Smirnov

Theses and Dissertations

Computerized emotion recognition systems can be powerful tools to help solve problems in a wide range of fields including education, healthcare, and marketing. Existing systems use digital images or live video to track facial expressions on a person's face and deduce that person's emotional state. The research presented in this thesis explores combinations of several facial feature extraction techniques with different classifier algorithms. Namely, the feature extraction techniques used in this research were Discrete Cosine/Sine Transforms, Fast Walsh-Hadamard Transform, Principle Component Analysis, and a novel method called XPoint. Features were extracted from both global (using the entire facial image) and …

Toward A Theory Of Procedural Rhetorical Systems: Demonstrations Of Player Agency In Uptake Of Rules In Video Games, Sydney A. Klem

Theses and Dissertations

This paper expands Ian Bogost’s (2007) procedural rhetoric by broadening the rhetorical view of games to encompass the arguments that they make not just about the material, but about themselves. The theory of procedural rhetorical systems (PRSes) views game systems as arguing toward how players should be following their rules, and like in any form of rhetoric, players possess agency in how they take up these arguments and how closely they follow rules. To demonstrate this, this paper analyzes a specific game, the 1996 platformer Super Mario 64, alongside various digital artifacts demonstrating how players have taken it up, including …

Investigating The Use Of Technology In Communication Exchanges And Visual Support For Students With Autism, Angela Barone

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of technology in a first-grade resource classroom. The participants used in this study were first grade nonverbal students diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The data collected during this study reflected if Apple iPads(TM) increased the number of communication exchanges between teachers and students in a classroom using a Picture Exchange System on each screen. The study also examined the increase in independent task completion using the iPad(TM) in a first grade classroom. The students used a checklist of six items to complete, and had to complete this checklist independently using …

Visual Artifacts As A Mediating Factor In Collaborative Museum Design, Jacquelyn Claire Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

The process of museum exhibit design includes a variety of activities, including collaboration on teams, consulting learning theories, following process models, brainstorming, performing evaluations, and using visuals. Although some articles mention these topics, very few provide specific details about these practices. This dissertation, which includes three articles, explores how design and visual communication occur in exhibit design. The first article examines how exhibit design teams function. The second article describes how they use visual representations to engage team members in ideation and concept development as they planned for new exhibits. This is based on the assumption that designers need to …

Textual And Visual Representation Of Hijab In Internet Memes And Gifs, Omneya M. Nagib Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

This study provides a preliminary report of veil/hijab representation in the modern social media tools of communication; internet memes and GIFs. It bridges a gap in visual communication research by conducting an integrative -textual and visual- framing analysis of 400 memes and GIFs that used the hashtag #Hijab, to unravel the frames and stereotypes of veiled women in such online visuals. Hijabi Muslim women have been visually represented in media in overgeneralized stereotyped ways, being shown as either oppressed and subservient to others with no individual opinions, or as liberated progressives who resist western hegemony (Khan & Zahra, 2015). The …

Contagious Yawning In The Domestic Cat (Felis Catus), Ariel M. Lombardo Aghishian

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates contagious yawning in domestic cats towards their owners, looking at potential links with empathy. Results showed no significant difference in yawning between conditions. The solitary nature of wildcats and their shared ancestor, and the unique social behavior in domesticated cats may explain these findings.

Developing An Assessment Framework: Measuring Digital Literacy Of Interior Design Students In A Digital Drawing Course, Somang Yang

Theses and Dissertations

This exploratory study provides a foundation to measure students’ level of learning based on education theory for digital technology and meaningful technology theory for digital literacy. There has yet to exist an effective assessment tool that can evaluate students’ digital literacy. To provide initial insight into the digital technology integrated course development, Wacom pen-tablet and Autodesk Sketchbook were utilized to create an interior design curriculum for undergraduate college students. The findings of this study shed light on the necessity of assessing new technology for integration into coursework in higher education. There are five themes that an instructor must examine when …

Cross-Mediterranean Egyptian Migrants: A Discursive Analysis, Sara Hussein

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how the Egyptian migrant subject who chooses to cross the Mediterranean through irregular means to reach Europe is discursively constructed in Egyptian media, particularly in the wake of the 2016 Rashid boat sinking. In both official and public discourse, this highly visible and well-documented accident raised questions on accountability and the role of the state in this situation. By identifying and analyzing the themes represented throughout a diverse collected fieldwork corpus of various Egyptian media, statements by public officials and organizations, newspaper articles and editorials, television talk show programming, and popular cultural production, this thesis offers a …

Presenting A Product Design From Computer-Generated Imagery (Cgi), Mirjeta Mustafa

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to determine a solution to overcome photography problems to present product design by using Computer Generated Imagery. CGI and virtual design now play a key role in the development of many materials, processes and products. Through this study has been explored, the impact of 3D render to exhibit the product design, as well as a brief history of photography and how it is used to present the product, the problems that have emerged during the use of photographs to present the product design have been discussed, and how new technologies have enabled us to …

Touched With All The Radiance That A Sudden Sun Discloses, Marie Fornaro

Theses and Dissertations

The thread running through my work is a constant impulse to rend and repair; to make, unmake, and remake. This repetitive and circular approach allows me to confront the cyclical nature of gendered oppression. What does it mean to make something beautiful and then to dismantle it? How do we reckon with the pieces that remain? By deconstructing the beautiful and lovingly crafted objects that I spend hours making, I recenter “craft” as a verb rather than a noun, forcing myself and my audience to resist the comforting illusion of certainty.

I contextualize my piecework and quilting in a long …

Spaces In, Outside Of, And Between, Michelle Peterein

Theses and Dissertations

My practice involves leveraging analog and digital techniques from many disciplines, but especially graphic design, craft/material studies, and sculpture. I embrace reproduction and repetition as both tools and means to visualize what is often unseen, and to recognize not only what is made, but what supports making— from the straightforward and immediate to the complex and conceptual.

This Must Be The Place, Eve White

Theses and Dissertations

This publication is the companion piece to “This Must Be the Place,” a 3D realization of my conceptual photography work exhibited in the Anderson Courtyard at VCU's 2019 School of the Arts MFA Show. I photograph scenes from nature and reproduce these images onto flattened plexiglass planes, arranging them in new, natural environments and photographing them again. The outcome is a scenic collage in which two unfamiliar locations become superimposed. It is my hope that as people experience the work they become a part of the texture of it.

Untitled Unknown, Taylor Simone Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

This article is the first of a series exploring domination culture through the ways narrative has been indoctrinated as reality and weaponized as a holding cell for captives. Within this exploration, the narrative of domination is placed in relation to higher dimensional realms of the unknown; this being the before and after of domination culture. This positioning will allow for the reality of a simultaneous existence within the labyrinth of domination and a higher dimensional unknown to be framed. Within this series of articles, I question the roll of the rogue characters shamanistic agents of resisting domination, the fear of …