Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Expanded Skin, Jihoo Kim

Masters Theses

Our digital interfaces have been degrading human sensory intelligence by limiting our body to only vision and the first two fingers. Despite the high level of available technologies, we do not fully utilize them due to our lack of awareness of its applicability in more various aspects than just media being consumed. It is also because of its inaccessibility in terms of human–computer interaction (HCI) beyond our sense of sight and touch screens. Those technologies have been key elements in all of my works, since my ultimate position is to redirect the technology in a way that could enhance human …

Bug Chaser, Peter Rogers

Masters Theses

The veins of the leaves were bustling roadways, complex interactions that occurred at such a distance from my own anthropocentric understanding, they may as well have inhabited their own universe.

Dwelling within the infinite wonder of these microcosms, I coined myself a nickname that I abode within intimately: Bug Chaser. Perhaps I had heard the term on the news, or caught one of the teachers use it in passing, but as far as I was concerned, the term was entirely of my own creation.

“I’m a bug chaser!” I announced triumphantly to my kindergarten class.

“You mustn’t use that word,” …

Under / Over Looked, Kopal Seth

Masters Theses

Across the stages of migration, I have confronted emotional and social complexities. The farther I am from my roots, the more I want to strengthen my connection to India. Through a process of observation and reflection on every day, grows the desire to house a cultural identity within my work. Here, encounters between past, present and future layer atop history and memories.

To reclaim the kindred character of the craft culture of my country, I rediscover those values that resonate within me through recontextualised forms, clay acts as my drawing tool to outline social structures, psychology, traditions and nostalgia.

Web Trauma And Haunting Images : Experimentations On Materiality, Installation, And Operation Of Screens, June Yoon

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to compose dynamics among the screens, images, and space for viewers to confront what we easily ignore: the haunting ghosts of mistreated humanity in this age of web-trauma.

Tension In The Curve, S.K. O'Brien

Masters Theses

This artist’s book is a meditative narrative on my making and exploration of materiality.

It’s the best way to allow you entry and understanding into how I see.

Finding the tension in the curve and the lines and shadow and light that are created,

These new forms that appear when stress occurs help me understand…

In The Flesh, Courtney Sierra Johnson

Masters Theses

This thesis is written in two parts:

Part one discusses the history of artistic swimming and its correlation to understanding the fluidity of gender. I adapt the analysis to interpret the underlying theme of critical theory. Tying to my work, I use the notion of the fountain to justify the theory of abjection towards the body and the suppression of natural bodily behaviors within society. Furthermore, the fountain explores water as a symbolic place of equality and gathering.

Part two was written during quarantine of the Coronavirus pandemic. It describes my inability to complete my original thesis and how my …

With Eyes Unclouded, Tiffany Tang

Masters Theses

Tiffany is interested in creating purposeful connections and direct relationships through this vehicle of functional work. The scale of the work is made for the tabletop, asking to be handled and enjoyed. Her work takes a lot of time. Everything she does to the piece has a purpose. There are many stages in the process, and each informs what the next step will be, leading to the work existing as an accumulation of experiences. The use of colors and patterns are a form of inviting joy into the work. Blue greens, dark teals, serenity blues, pastel pinks, rosy quartz, palest …

Internal Resonance, Xiangyu Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the interaction between my inside and outside worlds. It includes my discussion towards Zen methodology, homeostasis, nature, antiquity, inner order and the concept of Qi. It can also be seen as a process that scrutinizes my daily life and looks deep into those things which slowly echo in my body and push me to make my own response.

Mimesis : Human-Centered Digital Profiling Visual Identity, Yangyang Ding

Masters Theses

Digital profiling is the process of gathering and analyzing information that exists online about an individual. Platforms who provide services always have control of this powerful tool. As a result, I used Twitter API as the principle medium to conduct 'digital profiling' as a third party. The visual identity of the new digital profile is not an ads interest list anymore, but a graph that stores personal information that could be used as an avatar. On top of the new visual identity, I speculated several possible applications of the new visual outcome. The idea put forward in this thesis is …

Night Knights: Reminding Children That Their Nighttime Fear Isn't Something They Have To Face Alone, Ji Hyung Moon

Masters Theses

Night Knights are shining toy guardians that children bring to life through play. They engage children’s imagination that inevitably fuels their nighttime fear, and provide a chance to create stories of bravely confronting their fears through their Night Knights.

Kainan Liu, Kainan Liu

Masters Theses

Selection of furniture is a very personal thing. Its scale and social attributes also determine that it is rarely sent as a gift. So, it seems to me, that furniture belongs to the category of personal goods, which is a concept worth pondering. What kind of relationship do these mere worldly possessions, these so called "mine" things, whether these are vehicles, houses, furniture, clothes or accessories, have with us? When we say the word "mine", it is a self-definition with confident possessiveness and the free extension of this definition in choice? Or is it a instinctive behavior that you need …

Surviving In A Gregarious World, Shiyang Yao

Masters Theses

Contemporary living leads to advanced communication and transport networks that people nowadays are more likely to live in a solo life. Even so, society has incorporated perceptions of single people and a biased assumption that single people are lonely. Loneliness is a big problem, but being single isn’t a problem that needs to be solved. Some people choose to be single. We should challenge the social norm that being alone is the same as being lonely. My research begins with my own experience growing up in China, but the bias against single people happens everywhere regardless of country or culture. …

Experience The World: How The Ever-Present Accessibility Of Hands-On Opportunities & Play Enhance Logistical Learning, Mary E. Chavez

Masters Theses

Living in a digital age, it is imperative--now more than ever--that children engage in hands-on, experiential learning activities to ensure that their ability to relate to the world is not compromised by technology. Children actively need playful, open-ended and self-directed mental stimulation for their young brains to develop and grow. Public school standards stifle a child’s right to succeed in alternative strengths and inhibit opportunities for self-exploration and self-expression. Game design and fort construction are examples of accessible, hands-on activities in which a child can creatively immerse themselves. In doing so, they can begin to interact with the tangible world, …

Lift A Life, Vidur Madhav

Masters Theses

This project analyzes the role that culture and demographics play in interventions within a pre-existing system network. The research is geared towards understanding how healthcare systems demand different solutions across cultural and geographical boundaries. My work acknowledges and highlights the unimportance given to non-clinical services which results in a stark contrast between the ground reality versus the theory of healthcare design. To approach these larger domains of region-specific healthcare problems, I conducted research in the form of case studies, interviews, and on-site observation on three levels: urban tier 1, urban tier 2, and rural. The resultant design, essentially a culmination …

Utopian Fantasy, Yue Zhuo

Masters Theses

I design furniture and objects to express my utopian fantasy to people. I hope users can imagine the fantasy through the interaction with my furniture and objects. While people are interacting with my works, they become part of the fantasy. My works are the NPCs (nonplayer characters) of a game created by myself, called Utopian Fantasy.

My works are creature-istic, anthropomorphic, and always interactive. They are inspired by nature and everyday life. This series of works I created during my time at RISD express my appreciation for the underwater world and the Internet. My designs beg for interaction and play. …

Cross Your Fingers, Ayumi Kodama

Masters Theses

My work is warm, flavorless and light. Warm in the colors I use and the materials I choose. It is also the feeling of being at home or somewhere familiar. Flavorless because it is honest, humble and respectful of the material and its transformation it goes through into its final form. As a designer, I am the advocate for the material and its possibilities. I listen with my hands and let the material guide me. Light in its weight literally but in hue too. It is open, natural and subtle. My work has many layers, packed with many memories and …

Glurp, Glurp, Glurp, Zihe Gong

Masters Theses

My thesis is an accumulation of many different things. It contains a body of work that consists of furniture, objects, sketches, illustrations, and spontaneous thoughts, as well as improvised writings and images of a variety of things that have largely influenced my own making. For me, design is a discipline that does not come into being through a linear direction. Similarly, I believe that a thesis does not comprise just one single narrative, culminating from one starting point. The process of designing and making is more like the way one prepares a meal - all of the ideas and research …

+ One : A New Companionship, Vivien Mengjiao Han

Masters Theses

+ one is a service that will make pets and their senior owners’ companionship better. By using the home surveillance camera that users already had and machine learning technology to create a matching system that will match with other owners and pets who have similar characteristics in the community, and recommended the appropriate design or products to the user. Our products not only have a series of multifunction daily necessities for both pets and their senior owners but also have a DIY section. The users can download design patterns, and create it at home, experience it before actually buy our …

Erik Degiorgi, Erik Degiorgi

Masters Theses

Where I started two years ago is a very different place from where I am today. At the outset of my time at RISD I knew very little about what it meant to be a designer. I lacked confidence, yet still entered this program with strict ideas about the nature and outcome of my work.

Over the course of four traditional semesters and two winter sessions, I gradually moved away from my original, self-imposed fears and constraints. Not coincidentally, my work expanded into areas I had not conceived of previously. It has been an illuminating journey, and while I am …

Rootless, Lilla Szekely

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt to understand the relationship of my art to nature and my sense of rootlessness. I have been imprinted by the places I have lived in yet disconnected from them as well. I am often situated on the 'other side' and as my perspective has learned to shift between the global and the local, between the outsider and insider gaze, I have come to describe this ability as being 'rootless'. I believe this condition is more common in America, the country of immigrants than anywhere else. Our memories are often re-told in the form of stories …

3, 2, 1, Omar Lalani

Masters Theses

Decreation is a term coined by Simone Weil, described as the program in which we “undo the creature in us” , to submit back to God what God has given us - the self. This project has been a personal duty and life long pursuit presented to me in my early religious upbringing. Direct experience and research have broadened this pursuit to discussions around perception, phenomenology, body awareness, and fear of death. In painting, I reflect on the answers provided in these philosophies and place upon it the important job of examining the construction of the self as well as …

This Feels Familiar, E. Winslow Funaki

Masters Theses

This is a book about in-betweenness. It’s an examination of how we identify people and objects, the categories we use to do so, and those that don’t fit squarely into one or the other. It considers the grey areas of identity--race, gender, species, function, living, inanimate. It slips and slides through the ambiguous and indefinite, forever moving, always simultaneously being “both,” “all,” “neither,” and “none.”

Slice Of Life : Theater Of The Dinner Table, Kate Pincus-Whitney

Masters Theses

Through re-imagining the radical emotional, psychological, political, poetic, and story telling power of food, I use the theater of life to set the stage of the table. Conjuring discussion with Chronos and Kairos, the meal is placed within the liminal; where all bodies are simultaneously present and absent. The painting is as much about life as they are about death. Investigating contemporary life and myth making, I explore the mapping of culture through the objects we consume. I view the tablescape as a place of narrative portraiture. Sometimes the table acts as a shrine, other times a commons or a …

Recipes, Camille Chew

Masters Theses

Ingredients and materials can be manipulated and combined to create something new-a transformation akin to alchemy. Vegetables are chopped and brewed into soup; clay is glazed and fired into sculpture; flour. sugar. butter and eggs bake into a cake; ink is pressed into paper to make prints. These processes are acts of magic that are performed in kitchens and studios every day.

After spending all day working in the print shop, I always feel most refreshed and contented once I've cooked a meal and sat down to enjoy it. This past year I began bringing baked goods to class crits …

The Things Of Mind, Yini Luo

Masters Theses

My thesis research shows my thinking and reflection on environmental changes around me in the past and especially the past two years. Through the experience between the city and nature, my research has clarified my different perspectives and explored the expression and reproduction through the print media and glass media.

Slick And Lumpy : Heavy Cream, Emma Fague

Masters Theses

A conversation with myself. A look inside my mind, process, and feelings. Slick and Lumpy. Creamy, oozing, leaking, dripping. Poured, molded, and sewn. Not a body, but my body, big and bursting and spilling out. Two things placed next to each other and observed. Lots of dessert, frosting, squishing, covering. A conversation with a painting, with a building technique. Fetish and healing, leather, vinyl, latex. Private and public space. Identity, imposter syndrome, digital fabrication. Combining and subtracting and stuffing. Is it appealing, sexy, charming, or revolting, ugly and gross?

U+16e99, Bobby Joe Smith Iii

Masters Theses

The general understanding and professional practice of graphic design have been shaped by the perspectives, needs, and desires of white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men in imperialist, capitalist societies. The tools, substrates, professional networks, institutions, processes, theories, grammars, and values that have come to define the discipline have been formed from this position. Consequently, graphic design primarily serves the needs of the settler in settler colonial regimes like the United States. This reality has prompted many designers like myself who come from colonized communities or whose identity troubles this rubric to question the framework of the discipline and our position within it. …

He Makes The Figs Our Mouths To Meet And Throws The Melons At Our Feet, Josh Meier

Masters Theses

He Makes the Figs Our Mouths to Meet and Throws the Melons at Our Feet investigates the relationship between the painted image and the cast subject. By compressing the visual contradictions of pictorial and physical space, my work argues for a simultaneity of conditions and emotions. I am interested in how two material realities can hybridize to produce a new, unanticipated, re-imagined self-portraiture. This thesis contextualizes my recent works within historical frameworks and discourses including other artists’ writings and artworks, philosophies of abjection, feminist and queer theories of embodiment, poetry, film, and stream-of-consciousness memoir.

This Side Of The Air, Madeline Peckenpaugh

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I have chosen to present a collection of stories throughout my life that continue to impact my practice, along with journal entries, gathered notes, and small to large conversations I've had with my peers, parents, visiting artists, and professors. These collection of stories take place in Wisconsin, Philadelphia, and Nepal, ranging in small moments to a span of seven years. I've been writing down words and clues that could lead me to find the thesis-worthy definition of my work and practice. As if someone or something else other than myself holds the knowledge I'm incapable of locating. …

Father Figures, Chris Regner

Masters Theses

I work serially, using autobiography as a jumping-off point for satire, humiliation, and explorations of the grotesque. My paintings tackle a variety of topics, including religious and cultish indoctrination, the use of technology and its effect on societal discourse, and stereotypical notions of masculinity that find their way into every subject I explore. Using my personal experiences as a foundation, my paintings have questioned archetypes found within these themes, all the while challenging my own values and beliefs. I position myself as an anti-proselytizer, complicating the easy answer and presenting morally questionable individuals with the intent of causing contradictory interpretations …