Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Rupture, Dionis Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

I am an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video and installation. I employ these mediums to create a coming of age story as a Dominican New Yorker, exploring masculinity, vulnerability, the supernatural, family, and religion, as well as how culture plays a role in my community and in my life.

Music From The Harpsichord House, Julie Zhu

Theses and Dissertations

Music from the Harpsichord House is an installation and series of concerts that exists in the binary of in and out of performance. During a concert, the harpsichordist is hidden inside the house and his face is live-projected outside. Fifteen new musical compositions were commissioned for the harpsichord house.

The Posers: Instinctual Simulation Across Time, Kathryn Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations

The Posers is a video about the occlusion of the self in history and in love. This paper explores methods of laminating historical moments with contemporary experience to explore the passage of time and the ongoing marginalization of women.

For(Years<28), Ricardo A. Contreras Jr

Theses and Dissertations

A life written in code, and code written in prose.

"Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens:" Situating The Cockettes Within An Art Historical Context, Scott Dow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history.

The Possibilities Of The Video Game Exhibition, Elizabeth Legere 2762328

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an examination of video games as an artistic medium, and of their current presentation in art museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as an attempt to come up with better modes of presentation for them within a museum space. Using a general understanding of video game theory and aesthetics, it might be possible to begin to look at solutions to the issues posed by current methods of presentation and interpretation, and to examine whether video games’ complicated aesthetic and artistic importance can be better highlighted by a new mode of display …

The Untitled Black Burlesque History Project, Sekiya Dorsett

Theses and Dissertations

The Untitled Black Burlesque History Project is a character driven short documentary featuring Chicava Honeychild, a neo-burlesque1 dancer who is unearthing a hidden Black burlesque history. As Chicava searches for her “stripper grandmas,” she mentors a new generation of burlesque performers who are of women of color. Chicava Honeychild first meeting with Black burlesque Jean Idelle is interwoven with the burlesque journey of Henrietta, Chicava Honeychild’s burlesque student. As Henrietta is honing her burlesque craft in preparation for her first performance, we learn about Jean’s dynamic life as a burlesque dancer in the 1940s and 1950s. Utilizing burlesque as a …

Design For Disassembly - A Circular Approach, Wajiha Pervez

Theses and Dissertations

As the world becomes increasingly aware of the need to better care for the environment, innovative business models are helping to counter the damage of the fast fashion system - a phenomenon in the fashion industry whereby production processes are expedited in order to get new trends to the market as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Designing products with a focus on their renewability can shift the product-consumer relationship. The closed loop concept of a “circular economy” is emerging as a viable and promising solution to the current linear business model.

This study explores the possibilities of a more mindful …

A Window The Color Of Her Sunburn, Joana Stillwell

Theses and Dissertations

I use video and material fragments to investigate the collapse of virtual and physical spaces as memories, lived environments, and digital interfaces become overlaid and interchangeable. I am interested in the capacity for technology to propose alternative strategies in which to engage with the world as we continue to extend ourselves in new and enduring methods. Seemingly unremarkable fragments offer new potentials in questioning meaning, worth, and care within spaces of downtime, boredom, and play.

This document accompanies my thesis exhibition a window the color of her sunburn. It provides background information on selected fragments and residues from my own …

Sound Perception:Encapsulating Intangible Voice Memories In A Physical Memento, Mona Mahmoud Makhlouf

Theses and Dissertations

We live in a very busy world with a variety of sensory stimulation including the olfactory, visual, tactile, and auditory. The five senses are triggered by our surroundings and help us to form meaning about the world.ⅰ Based on where someone grows up, she or he is introduced to various sites and sounds, affecting how they interpret the world. Sounds relate meaning through the association between hearing, memory and an event. Hearing is one of the learning processes, in which individuals give, receive, and store information. We typically rely on our five senses, which contribute to the process of understanding, …

Women Self Actualization: A Narrative Of A Performative Gender Constitution, Hala A. Gabr

Theses and Dissertations

In a traditional Middle Eastern society, men and women have been confined within society’s gender definitions. Those imposed social constructs condition men differently from women by dictating expected behaviors, establishing a hierarchy of gender positioning and enforcing definitions that limit abilities and potential.

Based on postmodernist philosopher, feminist and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir and postmodernist American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, gender is not an inborn role, but rather created through stylized repetition of acts informed by society, named performative acts. For de Beauvoir and Butler, gender can never be a stable identity (Butler 1988).

Informed by Butler’s …

Skinface, Islam Shehab

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout history, skin manipulation was primarily practiced for cultural, tribal, or religious purposes. In the contemporary landscape, skin manipulation has been objectified and commercialized. This is exemplified through bio-upholstery, foreign materials under our skin and changing the skin structure.

This thesis investigates skin manipulation, with the intent to focus experimentation on the skin’s lines of cleavage, a topographical map drawn on our skin and used to define the direction where skin has the most and least flexibility. The aim is to connect and explore materials that can be used as a second skin, while at the same time examining and …

Synergy: Game Design + Qur'an Memorization, Sultana Jesmine Moulana

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of digital technology has transformed nearly every part of our daily lives, including the way we learn and memorize. Such transformations raise interesting questions for one of the most long-standing and demanding memorization tasks in the world: the memorization of the Islamic holy book, The Qur’an. For Muslims, The Qur’an is a timeless, sacred text, cradling within its covers many profound images, stories, and parables. Despite rigorous research in the fields of game design and memorization techniques, very little work has been done in combining these two areas of research to create a game-based memorization experience of The …

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.