Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Destination Unknown, Dongheng Yang

Masters Theses

Since the end of my undergrad years, I’ve been noticing my increasing tendency to not want to talk much about my work. What is it that lingers inside of me behind such silence? What story could one possibly talk about his studio practice, when he has little to say? Well, this thesis documents the thoughts behind this silence, which, I have to admit, have fueled my works in the past two years. I investigate postmodern phenomena and literary analysis on pop culture in East Asia, including hikikomori and decisionism, to better understand myself and the world around me. Constantly faced …

A Part Apart, Spenser Atlas

Masters Theses

I am fascinated by connections. Things that click, snap, slide, and hold. I care about the ways in which objects meet, looking for answers in the space between. What binds one thing to another?

I believe the world is presented to us in pieces. It’s hard to say how it all comes together. It's easy to believe things are shapeless and detached from each other. Connection is a bridge, a way of linking one thing to another that reveals interdependence, and eventually moves outwards to express a correlation between pieces, once assumed to be discrete and isolated.

This work is …

Garden Etiquette, Kai Wasikowski

Masters Theses

Garden Etiquette is an ongoing project concerned with landscape photography, environmental conservation, and the way they have both served the settler colonialist agenda. I focus specifically on the conservation ideologies shaped in New South Wales (NSW) Australia and New England, United States of America (USA) in the late nineteenth century and the settler visualities that underwrote them. Both countries’ histories were marked by photography and conservation’s common function of mythologising land as empty space—to be invaded, extracted and occupied, and wilderness—to be territorialized and protected, albeit, in distinct ways.

With British, German and Polish settler ancestry, born and raised on …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

A.R. Futuristic Scenario In Seun, Yookyung Lee

Masters Theses

Due to social distancing policies during the coronavirus pandemic, people have increasingly turned to digital platforms to fulfill what they previously enjoyed in face-to-face interactions. The high demand for virtual world services, called “metaverses,” has sparked discussions about the possibility of completely replacing the real world, which has raised questions about the role of architects in dealing with physical spaces. However, it is widely believed that digital elements will merge into the real world instead of completely replacing it, which makes augmented reality (AR) a key technology to study in the context of architecture.

In “Learning from Las Vegas,” Robert …

Moving In, Moving Up, Moving On : The Adaptation And Preservation Of Chinese Diasporas Through Food, Jieqi Yao

Masters Theses

Moving In, Moving Up, Moving On explores the processes of Chinese culture and space in America of adaptation, assimilation, and preservation that underlie food changes. As Chinatowns across the US have evolved and residents have relocated, former centers of Chinese cultural identity have progressively transformed into restaurant districts with increasingly diverse populations and space gentrification.

The thesis argues that food is central to preserving cultural memory and reducing the generation divide. In the context of the Chinese diaspora transformation, culture has changed food in different spaces, and it gives people more choices to acquire and exchange information and values through …

Tracing As Process, Lesley Su

Masters Theses

Tracing is a way to observe, document and translate, to be anchored in the physical working, to find personal occupancy in the built environment.

By establishing one-to-one relationships with the physical context, tracing enables us to comprehend objects in multiple dimensions. Through tracing, we can explore how two-dimensional drawings can be transformed into three-dimensional objects, and vice versa, objects can be documented through drawing to capture the essence of reality.

Based on materials and motion, research on tracing techniques guides me into how tracing could act as a process of art and architecture practice.

Temporary Urbanism-Spatial Democracy In The Temporary City, Shijie Li

Masters Theses

This thesis is committed to exploring and discussing the way people behave in the temporary urbanism, perceive and deploy their space arrangement rights and how this nourishes relationships between people, between people and society, and brings a greater sense of spiritual identity and belonging to people.

The modern city is the result of the spatial distribution of material production, urban space is political and oriented to the distribution of power, and citizens are deprived of the subjective qualification and right to participate in the creation o f urban cultural space. Many factors have led to the monopolization of human participation …

Navigating Contextualism: An Architectural And Urban Design Study At The Intersection Of Climate, Culture, Urban Development, And Globalization Case Study Of Dire Dawa, Ruth Wondimu

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates architectural typologies that have dominated the world especially in the context of Ethiopia. It critiques the de-contextual nature of the modernist and related typologies through the lens of climate, socio-economic fabric, and urban design. It then focuses on Dire-Dawa University, located in the eastern part of Ethiopia, by investigating the authenticity, functionality, and contextuality of the architectural designs as well as their relationship with the people, urban landscape, and culture. Finally it provides design interventions that mitigate the climate related problems through local solutions.

Press Play, Karan Kumar

Masters Theses

"Press Play" arises from a conviction that a predilection to play is not an infantile diversion; instead, it extends our human ability to magnify, augment and shape reality. This thesis moves through different sites —all metaphorical playgrounds— where cultural repertoires are altered, negotiated, and invented through play. Each playground is a laboratory for innovation and a catalyst for developing a mental aptitude for reimagining ways to occupy familiar structures: the slide, swing, carousel, jungle gym, and bench as navigational spaces. The thesis becomes an experiential landscape through situations, processes, methods, and stylistic movements.

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive, Alia Varawalla

Masters Theses

Globalization and mass migration has propelled a hybrid existence, as individuals that occupy multiple geographies we live in a constant state of translation. Our museums and cultural institutions are in opposition to this; static, preserved and de-contextualized. At the intersection of printmaking and architecture, this thesis proposes a living archive to document the collective migratory journey across sites, materials, and hybrid identities. A network of centers for knowledge sharing and production centered on India and its diaspora. As art practices and people migrate, cultural production evolves with its context, gaining new meaning as it changes hands generationally and globally.

Moving At The Speed Of Trust, Sun Ho Lee

Masters Theses

Moving at the Speed of Trust is a workbook of strategies — practices, definitions, and techniques — to nurture community-building in support of inbetweeners who live between power structures and cultures and are often left out. Inbetweeners are those individuals whose lives are in transition through recent immigration or forced translocation from Asia to America.

These strategies revolve around threads of trust: kin, giggles, vulnerability, and shared experience. With these threads, we can question power. We can preserve stories, expand the ways we connect, shift perspectives on what is “standard,” and cultivate a community rooted in understanding. To understand each …

Surfacing: A (Loose) Manual On Unlayering / Stuff-Making And Hypervisibility, Zoë Pulley

Masters Theses

This is a (loose) manual on a method I like to refer to as surfacing.

A method that synthesizes narrative through the use of surfaces such as textiles, paper, web & video to reveal the spectacularly ordinary parts of Black life within a growing design practice.

A method I (currently) practice in three (evolving) steps:

Unlayering and piecing together stuff (rememory)

Acknowledgment of ancestry through stuff-making (kin)

Consciousness of oneself and the place / time / space in which the work is being disseminated (hypervisibility)

This is a manual that profiles a (current) design practice of a Black female maker …

Connective Movements, Ian Keliher

Masters Theses

Connective Movements describes the winding, associative thoughts gathered from long conversations with colleagues and internal dialogue with writers, philosophers, and filmmakers. Using the visual essay, I follow points of interest through labyrinthine and idiosyncratic logics. Collage and montage results in an assemblage of visual ideas both analytic and personal. Although the outputs vary, my body of work has been informed by a sustained inquiry into moving image with a focus on small moments and subjectivity: cloudwatching can spin into thoughts on communication, or simple, everyday words burrow into experience and memory. With this aim, I use the constituent parts of …

Form Follows Feeling Follows Form, Harshal Duddalwar

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I explore ways of expression at the intersection of form, feeling, and storytelling; through my lived experiences. I emphasize the act of documentation, encouraging introspection and reflection as a means of creating a body of personal work. I also talk about developing my visual vocabulary and language to express these narratives, along with strategies and plans for making personal work outwardly visible.

Hearts And Minds, Steven Knapp

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of how lived experiences, a sense of dark humor, and creativity translate into my studio practice. Through images, material exploration and pointed interactions with the audience I encourage people to embrace nuanced views of difficult topics that exist in our world.

I Buried The Fireworks Under The Tree, Sihan Zhu

Masters Theses

Unreachable memories always surround me. I've been trying to extract logical parts from my chaotic memories, hoping to find a connection with the world within the soundless, intangible black fireworks stored in my retina under the grand fireworks display. When I first encountered intaglio printmaking, I impulsively drew subconscious memories on the plate, arranging them along some chaotic storylines. Gradually, I realized that I needed to create my own logical structure. So I started using specific visual symbols and repeating them, using the repetition of the printmaking process to search for logical clues. Printmaking with its special rhythm allowed me …

Searching For New Landscapes, Halim Lee

Masters Theses

“Searching for New Landscapes” ventures beyond familiar environments to explore new territories in graphic design.

By changing our environment and patterns, looking at things anew with a fresh perspective, and transforming the tools we use, we can spark new insights and catalyze evolution for growth.

This study proposes getting away from known environments and breaking existing habits by responding instinctively and rapidly to unexpected prompts.

The collected works and writing underpin the importance of thinking flexibly with a lighthearted “why not?” attitude and looking at things beyond existing definitions.

These methodologies are further applied to the action of teaching, to …

Objects And Apparitions: A Portable Museum, Yesuk Seo

Masters Theses

My work transcends the boundaries between painterly printmaking and sculpture. Through hand-pulled silkscreen prints, I create abstract pixelated images depicting our constantly changing relationship with meaning and reality. Memories are often glamorized and distorted whether it is our childhood home, our neighborhood, or the city. My practice archives my family history and traces patterns in memory and space by using invisibility as a phenomena to render newer explorations of abstraction, in time and in urban landscapes. Objects & Apparitions: A Portable Museum, pairs moiré patterns of ghostly printmaking with wooden objects in specific arrangements. It captures my nomadic journey between …

One More Time, I Love You —— 我有所念人，隔在远远乡, Jingjing Yang

Masters Theses

"One More Time, I Love You ——我有所念人，隔在远远乡" is a thesis project that delves into the profound nature of "obsession," which surpasses the boundaries of life and death, as well as the mortal world and the underworld. The interpretation of this type of obsession varies among individuals, and my understanding of it originates from the traditional Chinese myth concerning the afterlife journey. According to this myth, upon departing from the mortal realm, the deceased traverse the Bridge of Helplessness, cross the Forgotten River, peruse their past, present, and future lives on a Three Lives Stone, and then partake in the Soup …

Rotten And Falling, Khwanchira Chindamanee

Masters Theses

Abstract

I am an artist printmaker fascinated by the theme of impermanence as manifested through the cycle of birth, aging and death. Death is not the end of the cycle, however. Death begets transformation, via decay, of one form into another or perhaps others.

During my time at RISD, I received a scholarship to study Japanese paper making in Iowa. The experience was transformative for both my printing and soft sculpture. Later, I learned about mycelium, and began incorporating this living element into my work.

This thesis reflects on my primary source of artistic inspiration, the hup taem murals of …

Superbland, Dougal Henken

Masters Theses

"A thin wafer is placed in the mouth of a kneeling woman and becomes flesh. A man masturbates quietly in a darkened room to a 3D model of a popular film actress. A car drives through an abandoned town and decelerates as it approaches a sign reading “Slow Children Playing.” A man fastidiously mows an artificial lawn while watching the sun dip low over a vast desert horizon. Superbland opens up new paths in understanding graphic design within the realm of the hyperreal. It begins with a study of simulation in graphic design contexts, building upon established forms of meaning-making …

A Room Full Of Pigeons And Three Spectators, Dina Khorchid, Dina Nazmi Khorchid

Masters Theses

My work explores themes of identity politics, domesticity, land and memory access - in relation to my own lived experiences as a Palestinian refugee, a daughter of a missing war casualty and an artist.

In this thesis book, I present a cumulation of thoughts, emotions and findings, along with a selection of works from the last two years.

During my time at the Rhode Island School of Design, messenger pigeons took over my studio, channeling physical and mental realms of grief and remembrance. By looking closely at the bird’s aesthetics and behaviorisms in my first semester, their resting deceased bodies …

Citizens Of The English Language: Sociolinguistic Perspectives On Postcolonial India, Prateek Shankar

Masters Theses

This paper introduces the concept of "extralingual citizenship," which I define as an expansion of translingualism to include the ethnoracial logic of the nation-state and demonstrates the entanglement of language, governance, and education in the policing of knowledge infrastructures and discursive practices. I am interested in the codification of postcolonial disparity into the teaching, social performance, and material assessment of English language users, and the infrastructural disqualification of World Englishes (and their amalgams) in favor of a standardized English. I frame extralingualism as a kind of citizenship, shifting the focus of English pedagogy/practice from the syntactical/etymological concerns of language …

The Approach: A Promise Of Warmth Inside, Louis Cohen

Masters Theses

Walking up those stairs is always a treat. The tacit knowledge that you are moving towards a hidden gem: a space most don’t know to find. Salt water, wood smoke, and roasted coffee perfume the air. But the best part of all is the intention. This is not a space to go to out of necessity or convenience. This is a space for slow sips and long reprieves.

This thesis explores many themes, but at the heart is the idea of The Approach: how we come to an object is just as important as the actual moment when we meet …

Entrelazados, Agustina Markez

Masters Theses

Entrelazados is composed of a series of photographs from my trip to Argentina summer of 2022. I explore my immigrant Argentine identity and displacement in relation to turmoil, thinking about political disruption of everyday life, within the passage of time This work aims to give an inside look on the mundane daily life of my family, capturing the quiet moments in our everyday life. I used film and collage to have a closer connection to the medium I was using to capture these moments. Through sewing, inks, and physical collage of materials, I got to form an intimate relationship with …

Cuando Lloro, Melissa Medina

Masters Theses

There are moments where I am suddenly hit with a deep sentimental longing for a time that no longer exists, one that has transformed into a deep nostalgia, one that becomes more and more conflicted as time passes. Often thought of as a yearning for a recent past, or homesickness, nostalgia can be difficult to define. Although the concept and emotion associated with nostalgia may seem familiar, the word is in fact complex. Nostalgia, for the immigrant, is an escape from their marginalization; an opportunity to embrace the complexities. Painting then becomes an embrace, a direct connection between the present …

Disobeying, Mari Claudia Garcia

Masters Theses

Disobeying constitutes a deeper conceptual and formal inquiry into themes that have been permanently present in my art practice since I started thinking about them in 2008. My concerns are anchored in a socio-political study of communication and language as impacted by power relations, politics, micro-politics, and censorship. In this thesis, I particularly focus on the way in which I see censorship in relation to protest through my recent work, on account of the relevance these issues have for me after living most of my life in Cuba under a totalitarian regime.

Through this writing exercise, I also intend to …

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Princess Chives, Yuxuan An

Masters Theses

Princess Chives is the greatest contemporary ruler of Chiveism. Princess Chives brilliantly, comprehensively, and resourcefully promoted and developed Chivesism, taking it to a whole new level.

Princess Chives ideology is a powerful ideological weapon against everything, and it serves as the foundation for all of the work of the entire party, army, and country.

We must always raise the great flag of Princess Chives’ ideology, to fortify the minds of the people of the country with Princess Chives’ ideology, and adhere to the use of Princess Chives’ ideology in all work. To militarize the mind is the fundamental mission of …