Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Habitually, Sunha Joo

Masters Theses

This book is a journal of the conscious looking into my most unconscious behaviors. I documented and observed my unconscious habits, and tracked where they originally came from. Observing myself was both the process and the result of the work. I played a triple role throughout the process. I was an object, an observer, and a conduit. I wrote and became a subject of the writing. I used various forms, styles and voices in this book to align the work experience of these constantly changing roles with the writing experience and to embody different perspectives.

As a result, this book …

Materializing Conflict And Resilience, Neta Ron

Masters Theses

As I was growing up, making objects felt like a superpower. It was, and still is enchanting to take an idea and transform it to an existing, tangible thing. I grew up in a family that encouraged self-sufficiency and creativity. Art has always been a great part of my life and it is an anchor that I rely on when I feel that I need to strengthen myself emotionally. In the last two years, I have been focused on understanding what is the role of making in my life, and why I am attracted to making jewelry. My work allows …

The Last Objects, Melissa Tyson

Masters Theses

All material carries a past. Whether we acknowledge this lineage or not, it exists. It may be to our advantage — as a way of orienting ourselves in our world — to consider the cycles of creation and destruction intrinsic to the objects and materials that surround us. By deliberately pushing material into its next incarnation, and tracing the history of objects, I simultaneously reach forward and backward, determining my place in the world.

My experience as a jeweler has led me to an understanding that what is true for metal is also true for us: matter is neither lost …

Good Times, Tim Stoelting

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I set out to show an exaggerated display of the manipulation consumers face everyday Attaching stories to objects drastically increases their value. In benign settings, this might elevate a simple trinket into a family heirloom or drive a bidding war for a piece of gum chewed by a celebrity. On the adverse side, a story can play with our emotions to turn a desire into a need.

In this way, fear-based stories are a particularly powerful motivator; they can drive people to the most extreme actions. When used as a tool, fear can persuade even …

The Emotional Intelligence Of Machines, Lokesh Zope

Masters Theses

Technologies today claim to be capable of detecting human emotion. When such technologies appear on our everyday objects, how will our interactions be like? Can these objects know when we are frustrated with them? Wouldn’t that radically change the field of user experience design? However, would people be scared of such capability?

Born from this curiosity, this thesis project is a speculative and an experimental approach that explores the overlap of the fields of User Experience Design, Affective Technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. This exploration is aimed at investigating its need and illustrating a newly designed adaptive nature of domestic appliances. …

Love View, Wudi Hong

Masters Theses

There are many kinds of love, but for some people, romantic relationships are the most meaningful element of life, providing a source of deep fulfillment. I am designing a new service to track, rethink, and improve relationships with people who move to a new environment and are separated from loved ones or for those who are in unsatisfactory relationships. People in long distance relationships lack physical interaction and the ability to share feelings daily. I am working towards designing a digital service and accompanying physical tools which aim to strengthen and maintain close personal relationships across distance for people.

Jettison All Stories : Experimenting With Our Relationship To The Physical, Alyssa R. Mayo

Masters Theses

At the start of this project I set out to explore the concept of ownership, if and how it is changing and what that meant for the work I would do in the future. In the field of industrial design, matters of ownership are important considerations we must grapple with. Things, the products of our design process, are 1. Subject to new (or maybe not so new) models of ownership, responsibility and maintenance, and 2. No longer limited to forms that are owned in a traditional, physical sense that is easily understood.

The matter of form – physical vs. digital …

Body (Less) Fitness, Dan Gioia

Masters Theses

It’s too cold outside. You stubbed your toe. You had too much Chipotle. You didn’t have enough Chipotle. There’s no shortage of reasons to abstain from exercise on any given day.

Designing a product or system to get someone to exercise is almost anti-design. So much of design is making things seamless and easy for whomever your user may be. You want to make it easy for people to accomplish things they want to do. But designing to get someone to exercise? You’re trying to get someone to do something unpleasant. You’re asking your user to sweat, strain, exert, and …

Embracing Traditional Chinese Culture Through Design, Jiaxuan Li

Masters Theses

As a designer from China I am constantly focused on my passion for design of China, This interest comes from both my commitment to deep-rooted Chinese traditions, and my concern with regards to the gradual loss of traditional cultural values within contemporary society.

As a product designer, I really like designing daily object, through exploring the relationship between consciousness and behavior. I consider this connection in order to make objects more meaningful to users.

This project discusses the current situations of Chinese traditions and cultural values, and the challenges they face to survive in the contemporary world. My mission is …

Breathe, Iggy Choi

Masters Theses

Everything around us is interesting, but we Keep so busy we miss out what is importance. When we first get a gadget we get excited for few months, but soon we lose interest and seeking for something new and cooler. We are constantly hurt, tired, stressed, overwhelmed, but we are not aware because we are so focused on the future. We need to reset to get back on our track. We need to stay aware and remember our first excitement in order to refresh our purpose and focus. Life would be better if we step back, breathe, and notice what …

Perceptual Alchemy, Evan Voelbel

Masters Theses

The farther we peer into the depths of human consciousness, the subatomic realm of quantum physics or the vast expanse of the observable universe, the more our notion of an objective physical reality or a predetermined, public, external world is challenged. With each new door we open, an entirely new set of questions is revealed. The world we perceive is never a direct representation, but even knowing how constructed our perception of an external reality is, are we capable of letting go of it? Through perceptual alchemy, my work probes the threshold between our constructed reality and the ‘external world’, …

Multiple And Moving, Maia Chao

Masters Theses

This document maps my negotiation of the art practice as experienced in school. It is a record of development, evaluation, narration, articulation, reflection, argumentation, and continual redefinition. I consider the physical and social realities of the studio practice as they relate to my needs, values, and desires on a personal and global scale. Flitting between the mundane and the fundamental, the center and the margins, this thesis reflects my mental topography as a series of parts whose relations to each other are multiple and moving.

From Florine To Flocking : Observations Of A Painter - Printmaker - Embellisher, Elizabeth King

Masters Theses

I am a painter-printmaker-embellisher. The hierarchy of these labels shift to best suit the needs of each piece. Making an image that encourages looking takes precedent over how it is labeled. A quickly read painting is the enemy. I weave together complex passages on the surface to function as a speed bump, to slow down the viewer’s navigation of my paintings. I value color, pattern, and texture above a narrative. Borrowing the palette of Florine Stettheimer and the repetitive touch of Edouard Vuillard, my paintings teeter dangerously between being about the idea of decoration and being decorative. Domesticity, femininity, and …

The Little Girl (Kinda), Hanna Kim

Masters Theses

My work has always been about the personal relationships I've had in the past. It is driven by the

nostalgia of what was, and how it came to be within the present. It is not the act of languishing in a better time or the need to replay a scenario from when life was thought to have been easier. It is replaying the past that makes me chuckle, even if at the time the said event was not so hilarious or amusing. While I am heavily influenced by the psychological workings of the human mind and sociology, I ultimately decided …

Scripting Allographs, June Shin

Masters Theses

Scripting Allographs* examines typographic principles and their pervasive impact on ways of seeing and making through design. This body of work demonstrates the many faces of typography and type design and the way they inform allographic thinking. It employs type as the primary tool and medium for scripting possibilities, embracing their differences, idiosyncrasies, and imperfections. Beginning with a focus on close observation of small details and ending with an approach that invites and celebrates variability, this thesis offers a glimpse into a design practice from the lens of a typographer, type designer, and educator.

Design Syncopations, Mary Yang

Masters Theses

Design Syncopations is an inquiry into space and intervention. Central to this work, is the orchestration of scenarios to prompt visual, auditory, and physical engagement. My background as a musician strongly informs this practice as I borrow from and disassemble musical structures—time, rhythm, composition, and counterpoint. Through designed prompts and invitations, I incorporate musical themes of chance and improvisation, setting up programs, altering spaces, and interrupting existing conditions. Working at the intersection of sound and design allows me to conduct audience-led musical performances, reprogram gallery spaces, and collaborate with artists and musicians. The ensemble of works adds up to a …

Bodypart + Object, Creama Wong

Masters Theses

This thesis is about exploring the possibilities of combining objects with physically realistic body parts. This book is just the beginning of a whole new fantasy.

Content-Aware : Investigating Tools, Character & User Behavior, Llewellyn Hensley

Masters Theses

Content—Aware serves as a platform for investigating structure, corruption, and visual interference in the context of present-day technologies. I use fragmentation, movement, repetition, and abstraction to interrogate current methods and tools for engaging with the built environment, here broadly conceived as the material, spatial, and cultural products of human labor.

Physical and graphic spaces become grounds for testing visual hypotheses. By testing images and usurping image-making technologies, I challenge the fidelity of vision and representation. Rooted in active curiosity and a willingness to fully engage, I collaborate with digital tools, play with their edges, and build perceptual portholes. Through documentation …

Identity Production, Boyang Xia

Masters Theses

What are we talking about when we talk about identity? People are likely to define themselves in terms of what is relevant to their time and place, in other words, context. This indicates that identity is not a fixed definition, but more of a malleable construction; it develops its attributes via context. I am constantly recalibrating the relationship between the two. Context is ubiquitous, unnoticed, coexistent and interchangeable. Identity is reflexive, fragmented, shapeable and fluid. Identity Production explores and unveils how identity is adapted and manifested in contemporary conditions, as well as its external validation which paradoxically defines this indefinable …

Otra Vez : Hierarchy As Designer, Jordyn Alvidrez

Masters Theses

Methods of hierarchy are often represented in graphic forms. They shape our world into subjective places/spaces of belonging or oppression. The need for order is a human condition. There is constant tension between the utility of ordered systems against the manipulative and ultimately subjective manner in which they are created. Where there is a system, there is a story. The narrative the hierarchy tells is just as crucial to me as the mechanics.

I position myself within various hierarchal systems as a way to understand the logistics of their becoming, but also, to manipulate (or justify) my cultural and ethnic …

Frame-Work, Drew Litowitz

Masters Theses

We view the world through a series of frames: contexts, mediators, constructs, oversimplifications. We place frames around things to isolate them and better understand them — to control them and define a context for our audience: magazines, book covers, wayfinding, signage, graphic overlays, subtitles, logos. These frames label, augment, enhance, and explain things for us. They also become habitual frames of mind, granting us fluid access to familiar subjects through consistency and reliability.

But how does the time we spend inside these controlled, reductive frames affect the way we interact with and interpret our realities? What is left out of …

Deceptive Fragility : Characteristics And Fabrication Methods Of Extra Thick Weft-Knitted Spacer Fabrics, Anastasia Onegina

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates technical and performance capabilities of extra thick flat-knitted 3D spacer fabrics. Several combinations of knitted structures and fibers are suggested for thermal and impact protection, general insulation, architecture and construction. Methods of constructing three- to seven-layer spacer fabrics up to nine inches thick are explained.

The Untold Tale, Yan Zeng

Masters Theses

Inspired by Manchurian heirlooms and family traditions, I create intricate textiles as narratives that viewers can empathize with, vehicles for expressing my own memories and cultural background. I have told many stories through my textiles in the past, but my thesis tells a very special one: it is a story that I have been afraid to make known for nearly 20 years, a dark fairy tale based on my childhood traumas and experiences; it is the story of a girl who was lost in a deep forest and struggled to find a way out. My thesis collection is composed of …

How To Become Ocean?, Elaina Runge

Masters Theses

A shifting viewpoint transforms into multiple perspectives to explore surface and depth.

By compressing time into an instant, or expanding a moment out in infinite directions, patterns reveal and obscure themselves.

A process that is both rational and intuitive emerges through the use of different systems to approach the unknown.

The ocean operates as a metaphor. The beyond guides the search of one who is tethered to the shore.

Plastic, linen, silk, elastic, glass, cellulose, protein: fold, curve, bend, distort, resist to create forms that are neither unfamiliar nor named.

Blue, blue-grey, blue-green, blue violet, azure, cobalt, sapphire, lapis lazuli, …

Talistones : A Handful Of Help For Homecoming Soldiers, Atulya Changanty

Masters Theses

We are creatures of habit influenced by our environments. We function on a 24-hour clock known as our circadian rhythm that is dictated by the solar cycle, seasonal shifts, and our daily schedules to determine our understanding of time to que our behaviors. The circadian rhythm can be disrupted by trauma to the brain, shift in lifestyle and habits, or inability to determine the passage of time and can lead to profound effects on mental health. Soldiers who are transitioning out of military service into civilian life, particularly those who have experienced combat, are an archetypal population who encounter damage …

Floop : Improving Eating Habits, Namrata Phirke

Masters Theses

All of us strive to eat breakfast daily, and a lot of us fail. 10% of all Americans skip breakfast daily, and the number increases sharply to 23% for the people in 18-34 age group. Something changes distinctly when people turn 18. This age group includes students who transitioned from their home to college. This shift severely affects eating habits. At home, our parents look after us and make sure that we get the optimum nutrition as we grow. But life isn’t so smooth in college. We realize the importance of our parents who used to worry about our health …

Impractical Community, Zixin Xiong

Masters Theses

Zixin lost her phone and she went on a journey with a girl to find it. During the journey, they collected cellphones to let these machines get a good rest; they explored a sandwich city and took a risk to follow an insect who ate people’s profiles. They were trapped in a forest of lies and heard about lots of silly questions, etc. After experiencing these weird adventures, Zixin found a new friend underground and dove into a magic river to live with her.

The Impractical Community is a magic realist fiction that reveals the disadvantages of our technology in …

Retooling : Experiments In Digital Apprenticeship, Ryan Ferguson

Masters Theses

Over the past decade, rapid advancement in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning has led to an abrupt shift in the skills we designate as “human” and the skills we delegate to machines. This shift can be characterized, to some degree, by the transformation of tacit knowledge–knowledge that is difficult to transfer or quantify, into explicit knowledge–a language that machines can both understand and act on. An adjacent surge in democratized education platforms has made it possible for anyone to begin learning a new skill. Mastering a skill however, especially hands-on skills, often requires a level of tacit …

Thesis, Robert Joseph Anspach

Masters Theses

This is a seemingly didactic account of the nature of the mind, art, and the end of the world. It is probably not very good and the author does not stand by what is stated within it, but has to turn something in in order to graduate. Maybe do not read it.

Dermis, Julia Betts

Masters Theses

I create situations that hold onto spaces or things. That psychic energy can be transferred to a viewer. I’m curious about this transference and The Aesthetics of Disengagement and the empathetic nature of making work.

I often engage the viewer through overwhelm (such as: texturally, amount of objects, length of performance, mark making…) to create anxiety/tension around a body or around how a body relates to space. To create this overwhelm, I use ritual, repetitive labor that is between obsessive and meditative. In this boundary, I wonder about whether art is healing or can be. I’m interested in creating spaces …