Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

Life Of Things, Things Of Life, Shiyue Wang

Masters Theses

In a world often captivated by the grand and explicit, my thesis, Life of Things, Things of Life explores the quiet yet profound narratives hidden within everyday objects. Drawing on my background in data design, I adopt a methodology that intertwines subjective narrative with rational analysis and challenges traditional hierarchies of value. Through processes of observation, collection, archiving, and re-contextualization, I elevate what is often overlooked as mundane and fleeting. This thesis not only uncovers the narrative potential of ordinary objects but also repositions them as protagonists in their own right, urging viewers to reconsider their conventional roles not as …

Space Between: Navigating Openness, Torie Stotz

Masters Theses

In a predominantly human-made, constructed world, I am exploring how I can manifest the natural world with a hand made screen divider system, based on form and structure, that replicates that of a work of nature, more specifically simulating dappled light. Questioning sustainability through the limitations of terracotta clay, while introducing a passive, bioclimatic design, I explore how a fragile, rounded, hollow fired system impacts its structural integrity and its ability to embed nature like qualities in modular form. Clay is brittle when thin, dry, or water absorbing material is added; it absorbs water slowly, needs to be a certain …

Homeward Bound: Moving Homes, Moving Home, Ella Nadeau

Masters Theses

The built environment has a powerful way of showing where our human attention and care is, a magic trick of emphasis and deemphasis. We proudly display our assets, wrapping them in light and gold while we shun the background people and places, choosing ubiquitous skins of plastic or brick in an effort to remove them from our visual language. Since we have had people we have had spaces to place them in but where some spaces relay the message that the person inside is a gift to the world, the majority chant a tired monotony of oppressive apathy: you do …

Furnicreature, Yijing Huang

Masters Theses

Project "Furnicreature" reimagines domestic furniture and furnishing as unique 'creatures' with anthropomorphic features such as 'facial' expressions, 'body' gestures, dynamic movements, as well as distinct personalities, to foster interactive experiences. By blending the inanimate with the animate and adding humor into the approach, the 'Furnicreature' project not only cultivates mindfulness, empathy, and care towards possessions but also promotes humility and responsibility. Its storytelling and dynamic design inspire imagination and prompt reflection on oneself, surroundings, and relationships. With sustainability as a long-term goal, Furnicreature aims to encourage a departure from everyday challenges and foster a more mindful and empathetic engagement with …

Dimensional Dialogues, Farida Abousteit

Masters Theses

Dimensional Dialogues, a multi-installation series, offers us a place to interact with language in a way that is whimsical and transcends our need to understand and comprehend language. We remove the tensions of language barriers by finding beauty and personal connection to typography, now scaled up to a human scale and reacting in real time to our movements. A process begins from ancient practices of designing Arabic Calligraphy, to creating Graphic Outputs of that calligraphy, to technologically heavy and new works in creating 3D models of these works that can be projected and respond to human movement. These installations, in …

“Touching The Untouchable”: Time As Material And The Fragmented Self In The Maximodern Era Shori V. Sims © 2024 Shori V. Sims All Rights Reserved Shorisims., Shori V. Sims

Masters Theses

In the conventional division of disciplines, film/video/moving images and stationary sculpture are categorized as formal and conceptual opposites. In my work and in this thesis, I am arguing that moving images constitute a form of sculpture in the style of assemblage by the manipulation of time around them. Yes, the image is flat and stationary on its own: but the cut of time which it represents exists multi-dimensionally (spatially and temporally) to be combined in a collage-like manner. In my practice, moving images constitute a form of assemblage that manipulates time and space in ways normally attributed to sculpture.

This …

Kelly Gang's Last Stand, Alejandro Toro, Special Collections, Fleet Library

11th Baker & Whitehill Student Artists' Book Contest 2025

Entry for the 11th Baker & Whitehill Student Artists' Book Contest. Opening reception and award ceremony Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 6:30pm, Fleet Library, Main Reading Room. Juror: Roger S. Williams.

Surface Tension, Berett Wilber

Masters Theses

Land is the premise upon which all questions of identity, belonging, and consciousness are set.

Our relationship to land is simple and complex. On one hand, in our daily experience there is no daylight between body and land. On the other hand, our relationship to land is intensely mediated through design in the form of tools, ritual, technology, tradition, and law. Language and design are primary mediums through which land is transformed into a material resource and commodity.

Understanding how designed systems craft our understanding of land can help us recognize their limits — and open our eyes to the …

Unruly And Unresolved: A Shared, Precarious Survival, Sara Inacio

Masters Theses

I'm just a little rat trying to survive,

To exist and not be perceived.

Building a home,

In a place unnatural to me.

Destroyed and rebuilt again,

I've learned to live in the toxic world you've created.

In a world that is not made for my belonging, I’ve had to find my way, to exist and build with what’s within reach. Such a constant state of construction feels oddly familiar and comfortable to me, home is always in the process of becoming. As I build, I think about how the home building process always takes up the space of others, …

Asili, Husna Abubakar

Masters Theses

ASILI is a Swahili word meaning ORIGIN, SOURCE, and ESSENCE. It can also mean the fundamental principal of a culture. It is not cognitive, it is metaphysical.

The work that I do explores the preconceptual, prespatial and pretemporal organization of culture, specifically African culture and even more specifically, Swahili culture.

I use multiple techniques to interpolate a visual voice to an othered people both continental and abroad. I explore the mythoform that connects the mystical and dive into what of it that becomes a practice within Swahili culture. I take experience from my life as a Swahili woman, from the …

Variations On Noise, Clinton Van Arnam

Masters Theses

Variations on Noise is a three-part collection: an index, a set of interviews, and a perspective on a working practice in graphic design and sound.

If noise is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, how do we define it and use it as a catalyst for dissonance and change? As a designer, I use noise algorithms to generate pseudo randomness and break up repetitive textures. As a musician, I use noise to create scores and performances that challenge our perception of what is comfortable and uncomfortable.

Seven interviews with designers, artists, musicians, and a Tibetan monk offer ways to approach the …

The First Gate, Ji Zou

Masters Theses

Upon months of indecision on how to verbally communicate my thesis, I decided on the following format for my written thesis at this point in my practice. I consider this to reflect fragments of a larger practice which draws upon the influences on a subjective subconscious. My communication style has always been very transparent, straight to the point, and efficient, while the concepts I’m exploring often occupy a space that can’t be fully located through a short series of references and research. That space is constantly moving, expanding, changing, and ebbs and flows between opacities even to myself. I want …

Navigating Transience, Nina Liu

Masters Theses

With advancing age, does the act of collecting and collections serve a purpose? Experimental psychologist Daniel Krawczyk claims that the act of collecting is deeply embedded in how the human brain registers time. Building upon the premise of Krawczyk’s research, I delve into a journey of collecting as I trace its evolution from childhood to adulthood, and its significance amidst the rapid digitalization of the modern world.

Through the lens of the transitional object and with a commitment to the preservation of memories, this thesis examines the intricate relationship between humans and their possessions. It proposes that the intimate activity …

Building The Body, Jasmine Flowers

Masters Theses

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how …

Entre Manos Y Barro: Innovando Con Tradición, Jose Mata

Masters Theses

"Entre Manos y Barro: Innovando con Tradicion'' (Between Hands and Clay: Traditional Innovation) dives into sustainable and ethical innovations of traditional Zapotec ceramics. It discusses how introducing thoughtfully designed tools, like a specialized caja humeda (wet box), can enhance artisans' workspaces while preserving the cultural essence of their craft. This initiative emphasizes innovations that honor traditional methods and focus on community involvement.

The thesis is grounded in the principles of ethical innovation, which emphasize respect for traditional techniques, community participation in the innovation process, and the sustainability of both the craft and the environment. These principles shape the development of …

Intangible Shells, Elena Bulet

Masters Theses

The following essay mimics the constant disruption of a fragmented memory. It reflects on intergenerational gendered family dynamics since the civil war and dictatorship-era Spain and how memory articulates narratives of belonging within the matrilineal lineage. A process of excavation departs from personal memories, familial archives, contemporary interviews, theoretical readings, photographic reenactments, and observations of traces in the landscape of Almayate’s town. The author attempts to retrace her roots, as well as her family history, acknowledging the impossibility of making personal histories tangible.

Sircling The Cquare, Latika Balachander

Masters Theses

As we journey into an increasingly virtual and intangible reality, is there an opportunity for our tactile fabrics to journey with, and even reorient us? Can they exist in our future worlds to remind us of the value of current traditional, low-tech practices that we may soon forget?

Referencing the fundamental fabric languages of knitted and woven structures, this collection of garments, that I term “Earthsuits,” embody the stages of metamorphosis as we adjust to a new phase of our perceptive reality. With an emphasis on circling, we loop through virtual squares like screens and pixels, to the circles of …

A Thesis, Or Digressions On Sculptural Practice: In Which, Concepts & Influences Thereof Are Explained, Set Forth, Catalogued, Or Divulged By Way Of Commentaries To A Poem, First Conceived By The Artist, Fed Through Chatg.P.T., And Re-Edited By The Artist, To Which Are Added, Annotated References, Impressions And Ruminations Thereof, Also Including Private Thoughts & Personal Accounts Of The Artist, Jaimie An

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exercise in, perhaps a futile, attempt to trace just some of the ideas, stories, and musings I might meander through in my process. It’s not quite a map, nor is it a neat catalogue; it is a haphazard collection of tickets and receipts from a travel abroad, carelessly tossed in a carry-on, only to be stashed upon returning home. These ideas are derived from much greater thinkers and authors than myself; I am a mere collector or a translator, if that, and not a very good one, for much is lost. I do not claim comprehensive …

Winter Solstice, Jingwen Cao

Masters Theses

For a long time, I have been thinking about what contemporary photography is, what its position is, and what the relationship is between artists and audiences. At the same time, I was developing my concepts and photographic directions and trying to make my work and my perspective on photography relevant. Winter Solstice includes a series of essays that locate my thinking and my work. Its title references the longest night of the year.

The position of photography has changed significantly over the past few decades. The way people read photos is also changing. Perhaps because of reverence for art and …

Going To The Sea, Lingyi Kong

Masters Theses

“Good-bye Icarus” is a work that aims to blend art, history, and environmental exploration through illustration, an interactive graphic novel, visual documentation, and programming language narratives.

A year of coastal life in Rhode Island has provided me with endless inspiration in terms of design language. I’ve ventured into blending dynamic visuals from TouchDesigner with illustration, a pioneering approach as far as I’m aware.

My narrative is based on seaside scenery and mythology metaphorical elements, making image programming to capture the essence of waves a focal point and central experiment of my work. Furthermore, after crafting a dynamic design visual language, …

Moving Studio, Emilia Miekisz

Masters Theses

This collection of essays chronicles my journey through the MFA program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), exploring the concept of a “moving studio” and its influence on my creative process. From the fluidity of morning routines to the comfort found in Sunday pancake traditions, the essays delve into the intersections of personal experiences, artistic inspiration, and technological innovation. Through reflections on animation projects like “Wakey Wakey” and “Mr. Fragile,” I examine the transformative power of storytelling and the emotional connections fostered through my work. The essays also explore the evolution of perspectives, from initial resistance to embracing …

I Am Becoming., Dai Asano

Masters Theses

This is a collection of essays documenting my grappling with the idea that time is always in motion. When you say now, it is not now anymore, but we are still in now, a new now. How can I stay in the now without being swept away by the current of time? Describing a film by Ozu Yasujiro, Deleuze writes, “The vase in Late Spring is interposed between the daughter’s half smile and the beginning of her tears. There is becoming, change, passage. But the form of what changes does not itself change does not pass on. This is time, …

Trans-Species Communication, Fueled By Efforts Of Remediation, Naomi Canino

Masters Theses

Using science fiction pop culture and films as a basis to reposition the way that we think about communicating with plants as if they are sentient beings capable of human-like qualities, the process in which I intend to understand communication will be nestled in this fantastical, sci-fi realm of envisioning the world.

By analyzing existing forms of communication between humans, other living entities and themselves, I am challenging existing perspectives in order to propose new speculative processes of bio-based augmentation that can amplify a connection to plants. In order to pursue this exploration, I have chosen a real site in …

Folding (And Unfolding): A Site-Responsive Strategy For Reusing Construction And Demolition Waste, Jennifer Ansley

Masters Theses

Discarding—in its most reductive formulation— is a sorting operation that makes distinctions between materials (as well as objects, people, communities, and landscapes) based on perceived value. In her book Waste of the World, Nicky Gregson, therefore, argues for a more careful collection-curation strategy that revalues and re-signifies “waste” to make it available for repair and reuse. Gregson, however, points to limited space and infrastructural capacity as a potential barrier to the development of new material handling strategies. My design responds by proposing a network of walls and paths that operate in each of the sites I’ve identified as an …

New Craft: Craft Practices In The Digital Era, Paulina Bereza

Masters Theses

Advancements in technology point to a thriving future through the allure of new tools and the promise of enhanced performance. With the current environmental crisis, military invasions and broader global conflicts, how can we utilize new digital media in a way that dismantles oppressive positions of power? Looking towards the future, I explore the potential of materiality and new methods of making, to reshape our relationship with the environment and each other. I collaborate with newly adopted forms of intelligence, artificial and automated, to express and reconcile the accelerated cultural shift. From ancient fibres to digital circuits, what will the …

Absence Leaves A Mark: Illustrating Filipino Migrant Stories, Nina Martinez

Masters Theses

From July to October 2023, I volunteered at Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a New York City-based grassroots organization run by Filipino im/migrant workers dedicated to combatting labor trafficking. Every meeting opened with the same reminder: stories shared in this room do not leave it. Illustration became a tool for respecting the privacy of the members, many of whom were undocumented. Avoiding faces, I copied down objects, places, maps, and handwriting.

Absence Leaves a Mark explores the idea of illustration as field note when working with migrant populations. Beyond depicting visual witness, illustrated field notes can contain findings from research and …

Remade Radical: Design Artifacts Of A Third World Future, Yasmine Hassan

Masters Theses

Remade Radical draws inspiration from the existing practices of informal making and reuse prevalent in Black and brown immigrant and working-class communities in order to reimagine maker culture and the field of industrial design as a whole. These improvisational practices–known by a number of different names across the globe, including jua kali (Kenya), gambiarra (Brazil), jugaad (India), and even hood engineering (United States)–are oftentimes viewed as inevitable byproducts of waste and artifacts of besiegement from the world’s wealthiest nations. Yet within these practices lies a tangible counterpoint to the material excess and rampant consumption made possible through the continued exploitation …

Designed Impermanence, An Alchemical Inquiry, Dani Epstein

Masters Theses

Designed Impermanence: Transformative Shapeshifting, A Decoded Alchemical Inquiry is a methodological deconstruction of our relationship to the built environment.

Our present existence is governed by craft and material hierarchies, conformed perceptions, and socioeconomic contextual drivers. Recognizing these tendencies, formats, and desires are critical in order to construct proposed introductions to re-envision alternative methods of building future realities. Redesigning new parameters through shifting physical configurations serve as indexes for visual propositions to redefine our existence through perceptions of time, adaptation, and materiality.

This research is centered around four themes: material craft ecology, adaptive alchemical constructions, reactionary behavioral assemblies, and evolving responsive …

From One Nature To Another, Sarah Mann

Masters Theses

Lichen‭, ‬fungi‭, ‬and soil each represent a microcosm of nature‭. ‬They are all quintessential examples of complex symbiosis‭, ‬yet they are often treated as lifeless materials‭. ‬But what if we took a moment to connect with each one on a daily basis‭ - ‬would that impact the way we envision the future‭? ‬

For most of us‭, ‬our homes won’t be radically changing any time soon‭; ‬therefore‭, ‬From One Nature to‭ ‬Another‭ ‬invites us to bring these entities inside and‭ ‬reflect on their possibilities as collaborators‭. ‬Each piece was carefully researched and designed to‭ ‬provide the correct atmospheric …