Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Enhancing Information Architecture With Machine Learning For Digital Media Platforms, Taylor N. Mietzner

Honors College Theses

Modern advancements in machine learning are transforming the technological landscape, including information architecture within user experience design. With the unparalleled amount of user data generated on online media platforms and applications, an adjustment in the design process to incorporate machine learning for categorizing the influx of semantic data while maintaining a user-centric structure is essential. Machine learning tools, such as the classification and recommendation system, need to be incorporated into the design for user experience and marketing success. There is a current gap between incorporating the backend modeling algorithms and the frontend information architecture system design together. The aim of …

To What Extent Does Lighting Affect Students’ Preference For Seating In The Georgia Southern University Henderson Library?, Hailey M. Hawkins

Honors College Theses

This study highlights the importance of lighting in academic library spaces, specifically in relation to students' seating choices and overall experience. The research is significant as it emphasizes the role that environmental factors can play in creating a conducive learning environment for students. The study utilized a mixed-methods approach, which combines quantitative and qualitative data collection methods to provide a comprehensive understanding of students' lighting preferences. The quantitative data collected through open observations and the use of a light meter provided insights into the relationship between lighting and seating choices. The qualitative data collected through questionnaires helped to understand the …

Gathered Vessels, Marguerite E. Mccoy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My journey with ceramics is a path paved with the memories of my mother's kitchen, travels across Europe, and a deep love for creating spaces where people can come together. From the warmth of a mug that fits just right in your hands, to the gentle sounds of water playing in a fountain I've crafted, my work is about making those little moments of connection feel extra special. I create ceramics that are meant to be picked up, used, and loved - pieces that carry a bit of my story to join in with yours. Whether it's joining in your …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope (1984-2024)

Volume 42

Encapsulating Scars, Ashley Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work explores scars through encapsulation, a desire to enclose and express the emotional scars of memories or physical scars of the body. Life’s experiences impact the living, leaving behind scars that we feel the need to understand. Through the mediums of metal and mixed-media photography, I utilize found and created imagery, as well as a triality of text in order to preserve and remember these scars.

Joy In The Focus, Focus On The Joy, Alicia Cully

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This body of work, Joy in the Focus, Focus on the Joy is an engendered unspoken symbolic language generated from the handwritten words of the English language that are defined or viewed with positive connotations. These symbols are meant to spread the feelings each word embodies with what resonates with the priori or memory of the audience. The symbolic language is a key for an individual to make their own connections with how the symbol’s meaning makes them feel,, resulting in an openly welcome invitation to reach a focused joy in connecting with the displayed feeling(s). My drive to create …

Best Practices For Social Media Branding, Allison Myers

Honors College Theses

Social media is a fast growing marketplace for businesses to advertise themselves to established and potential consumers. Each platform has different algorithms, demographics, and ways for users to interact and connect. Even with a constantly growing research field and course options around the subject, understanding the behaviors of viewers on each app can still be a tough guessing game. Therefore, I have used both research studies and online courses, to present a strategy with which to efficiently and effectively market one’s business for Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I then present ways to understand the success of this and personal marketing …

Physical And Emotional Impact Of Lighting Conditions In Higher Education Classrooms, Robert P. Mcdonald, Gallayanee Yaoyuneyong

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2023

The literature review shows that researchers in different fields have long explored the impact of the physical classroom environments (e.g., lighting, temperature, classroom layout, and furniture) to identify the ideal classroom environments. When the lighting condition is poor (i.e., light levels below standards), it can cause drowsiness, leading to lower concentration and motivation, and elevated student stress. However, most studies focused on K-12 learning environments. Therefore, this study aims to specifically focus on the lighting conditions in educational facilities around a university campus in the Southeastern United States and to explore whether these lighting conditions impact students’ mental well-being, their …

Artistic Representation And Self Esteem, Brianna Davis

Honors College Theses

Dependent upon the constructs of the perception of self and the viewpoint of others, humans base the value of their self esteem on outer perspectives rather than internal ones. For this thesis in particular, the outer perspective to be examined is representation in the field of the arts. This thesis project explores the process of self esteem, artistic representation in the arts, how one affects the other, a history of the correlation between the two, and ways to inform and educate the masses with the tools necessary to advance representation in the arts thus raising the self esteem of its …

Conceal Reveal, Jacquelyn A. Bolton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work is rooted in the human condition expressed through the materiality of textile and fiber arts and its connection to spirituality. The human condition, as I understand it, is the state of being a person complete with a mind, body, and spirit. This includes all the experiences a person encounters in life—birth, growth, aging, conflict, love, loss, grief, injury, relationships, trauma, rejection, joy, acceptance, and so on. The human condition answers the question: What does it mean to be a person? We are in flux. This ever-changing aspect of “being” is captured in the inherent qualities that are found …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope (1984-2024)

Volume 41

Expanses, Austin J. Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This document will explain the nature of Austin Buchanan. This will go over the ideas, process, the executions, and the theories of my artwork. Explaining the ideas of space within, on, and around (outside), the picture plane.

The work included focuses on how a manipulated 2D surface evokes an experiential reaction. This manipulation enhances the actual experiences of real space that happens once someone becomes an observer of a 2D artwork and the conceptual idea of window space. This work challenges the ideas of the traditional picture plane illusion and the Flatbed surface or “Flatness” by expanding the picture plane …

The Metanarratives Of The Fourth Industrial Revolution And The Collective Cognitive Dissonance Of Metamodernist Discursive Formation, John R. Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My artworks explore the impacts of the technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which began in the early 21^st Century, upon global society and the human psyche. My works are instantiated by multi-year research in the areas of social psychology, cognitive dissonance, computer evolution and artificial intelligence. My body of work portrays a cautionary sensibility regards new technologies such as robotics, quantum supercomputing, Artificial Intelligence, commercial space travel and nanotechnology. In addition, my artwork attempts to increase awareness of the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

The perceptions and cognitions of artistic viewers relate directly to the psychological phenomenon of cognitive …

"‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‎", Stephen Harmon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work tries to perplex the viewer to acknowledge themselves in the act of seeing. In order to perplex them, I use ambiguous reference to figure and space using multiple perspectives, vantage points, gaze, marks, mediums, and, more recently, light and site specificity to establish liminal relationships and experiences. Liminality is a kind of in-betweenness, being on the threshold of places or states of being. My experiences in and studies of the Jewish Diaspora have been my path towards understanding liminality, but liminality is not unique to diaspora or to the Jewish experience and my work does not attempt to …

An Exploration Of The Black Female Cosplay Experience, Geneisa B. Ragin, Geneisa Ragin

Honors College Theses

Cosplay is the practice of dressing up as a fictional character whether it's from a television show, video games, or even a book series. Many people participate in cosplay to show their dedication or admiration for their favorite character and sometimes cosplay a character that helps reflect their own character or personality. This thesis will mainly focus on the experience of being a Black female cosplayer in pop culture, social media, conventions, and other places where people can share and communicate. In this thesis’s research, participants' answers about their experiences were centered around their inspiration to start cosplaying, their ways …

Addressing The Lack Of Availability In Diverse Skin Tone Options For Performance Wear, Jessica Batey

GS4 Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium

The following research addresses the lack of availability in diverse skin tone options for performance fabric. The project will discuss the struggles people of color face when finding fabrics that accurately match their skin tone and the difficulties in sourcing the materials needed to successfully design a garment. The research gathered will be used to produce a collection of 4 looks using nude mesh fabrics that are readily available to the average consumer. The garments within the collection will be designed to match the skin color of 4 models. The collection’s theme will be based around the 4 cardinal witches …

Expanding Our Understanding Of Biophilic Design And Implications For Wellbeing In The Built Environment, Emma Franceschina

GS4 Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium

The Biophilic Interior Design Matrix (BID-M) was created to assist designers with identifying biophilic interior design features for optimizing nature integration for evidence-based design. The BID-M was developed and tested with interior design practitioners in the United States. There was a need to further develop the BID-M for other cultures along with understanding the designers’ perceptions of biophilia. This was translated into Mandarin and tested in China with designers. This resulted in the above publication and now we are working on a new analysis of the US and comparing it to the China results

Biophilic Design In Higher Education: Exploring Nature-Based Design Inclusion In Classrooms, Danielle Burton

Honors College Theses

This study investigated how biophilic design (nature-based design) optimizes one's well-being within a classroom learning environment. It is necessary to understand how a student’s performance in higher education depends on the environment. Research supports that when students have access to daylight, feel a sense of belonging and well-being in their classrooms they are able to perform at higher levels. Using a semi-experimental method, a classroom was assessed. Classes using this classroom were surveyed at the beginning of class and at the end of the same class time. The concurrent mixed method sequential design included both quantitative and qualitative data and …

Culture For Sale, Jessica L. Cartwright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In a post-colonial world, one would expect much of the servitude of the past to have ended, but this is not the case. In places such as the Bahamas new forms of or neo- colonialism has come to exist specifically under the guise of tourism. Writing amidst the end of colonialism in the twentieth century, Franz Fanon argues that sblack person exists in a liminal state. They must assimilate to the white society in order to be accepted, but not so much so thatbecause that it threatens whiteness. It is through Fanon’s writing on race that I have developed a …

Instinct, Eric Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a convergence point of my interests that I explore in this body of work. As a service member and wildlife enthusiast, I pursue not only an outlet for my own creative expression and illustrative ambitions, but a platform to support creative advocacy for military service members and their families. With the principles of relational aesthetics and art as social practice supporting illustrative and design-centric work, I have found that convergence. This dream continues to manifest in Noble Instinct Artworks, a creative-based company I founded that incorporates the fine art methodology, business practices, and artistic collaboration with outreach potential …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope (1984-2024)

Volume 40 2021-2022

Perplexions: Perceptions, Plexi And Prose, Amy B. Nelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An understanding of our world is unique to each individual and their experiences. While experiences are often shared, we all process them according to our own schema. Through exploration into the multiple facets of plexiglass, my work examines trauma, loss and its lasting effect on a person's memory of the past, present and perception of the future. These experiences can cause an abrupt shift in personal schema and reshape one’s perception of the world. Through the combination of visual and linguistic stimuli, my trauma-informed work can be a catalyst for my viewers to discuss what they are experiencing and why. …

Neosublime, Reframing The Philosophical, Kathy Varadi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Why have the sunsets and sunrises become so amazingly colorful and awe inspiring recently? Eighteenth century philosophers said such events were examples of the sublime. They defined the sublime as that which is the most absolutely great combined with an underlying element of fear usually caused by the actions of God. This infers that the sublime is something that you can’t fully understand or wrap your head around and leaves you speechless and spell bound. Contemporary art critics say that the sublime is no longer applicable to art because it has been overused. I disagree, and in my art, I …

An Exploration Of Home Office Design And Its Effect On Stress Reduction, Happiness, And Productivity For Working Mothers’ Well-Being During Covid-19, Janay Brown

Honors College Theses

This study explores how the home working environment can help reduce stress, increase productivity, and support happiness for remote working mothers within a home office environment aiding in their overall well-being. In response to COVID-19, many workers have transitioned to working from home to maintain safety. This study aims to help examine the impacts of home office design on working mothers with respect to stress reduction, happiness, and productivity. The researcher conducted face-to-face virtual interviews and the results were analyzed by creating categories and themes out of the rich descriptions to understand working mothers’ experiences in their home office environment …

Addressing The Lack Of Availability In Diverse Skin Tone Options For Performance Fabric, Jessica Batey

Honors College Theses

The following research addresses the lack of availability in diverse skin tone options for performance fabric. The project will discuss the struggles people of color face when finding fabrics that accurately match their skin tone and the difficulties in sourcing the materials needed to successfully design a garment. The research gathered will be used to produce a collection of 4 looks using nude mesh fabrics that are readily available to the average consumer. The garments within the collection will be designed to match the skin color of 4 models. The collection’s theme will be based around the 4 cardinal witches …

Drink Up: A Study Of The Food-Safe Quality Of Ceramics Glazes With The Addition Of Rutile, Morgan A. Baldinelli

Honors College Theses

Food-safe ceramic glazes can be altered with additives and become harmful to the user of the ceramic ware. Rutile is a frequently used material added to glazes to create variegation in glazes, but it is commonly known to cause defects in the glaze that can be unsafe for food. This experiment is conducted to determine if rutile can be added to food-safe glazes and still retain their food-safe status. A food-safe glaze is a shiny, thin coating that does not leach chemicals or has an excess of colorants; common food-safe glazes are white liners and clear glazes as they have …

Synesthetic Perception: Exploring The Senses Of A Synesthete Through Theatrical Art-Wear, Makenna Trujillo

Honors College Theses

The neurological condition known as Synesthesia is a condition that changes the way that the world is perceived for the affected individual. Altering the brain’s interpretations of sensory input means that when one sense is triggered, it can create a neuro-domino effect and trigger an otherwise completely unrelated sense. It comes in many forms, and no two are exactly alike. While there is a possibility of two Synesthetes having the same trigger and response senses, Synesthesia is so unpredictable that it is nearly impossible for two synesthetes to have the exact same experience. In this work, the researcher possesses a …

Waves: An Exploration Of Emotions, Aminatta Mbow

Honors College Theses

Emotions are at the core of every human being. They can dictate the decisions we make whether we are aware of it or not, and can be shown in many ways. For my honors thesis, I created a magazine that explores emotions. I utilized my skills and knowledge in portrait photography to showcase the complexities of happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety. I also employed my skills in design to not only present these feelings but evoke that specific emotion in my audience with ideas such as color theory and photographic psychology. Color theory encompasses a multitude of practices on how …

“We Already Look Amazing, We Just Need Designers To Jump On Board”: Designing For Female Consumers That Use Mobility Aids Based On Satisfaction With Retail Selection And Garment Design Characteristics, Mackenzie L. Miller

Honors College Theses

One in 4 people (85 million) in the United States has been diagnosed with a form of a disability, with 13.7 percent (44 million) having a mobility-related disability (CDC, 2020). Despite being the largest disability minority group in the US (CDC, 2020), the availability of clothes for pets is larger than the selection for people with disabilities (Ryan, 2018). The purpose of this qualitative study is to evaluate satisfaction of ready-to-wear and adaptive clothing among female consumers who use mobility aids. Fit issues, lack of availability, and lack of consideration for disability needs were found as overarching problems in both …

Calliope, Georgia Southern University

Calliope (1984-2024)

Volume 38