A.V.O Boyz: The Rise Of Afrobeats Through Dance, Oumou Fofana

Capstones

Afrobeats music has been number one if the African continent for nearly a decade and it is now attacking the international market, thanks to support from major American superstars and the killer dance moves created by African dancers. http://www.oumoufofana.com/capstone/

The Process Of Loss, Isidro Pentzke Jr.

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

This paper proposes that digital media has changed the way art is viewed and experienced. This investigation into technology unpacks the effect that technology has on our society. Through the process of photography and digital media, the exploration of social interactions with technology is observed. The observation that is highlighted in this artwork is multilayered, which includes the digital rituals and the acceptance of new digital social norms. In addition, an argument is made that due to this change in social acceptance to the new digital world, there seems to be a disconnect between those who are engrossed in the …

Art That Heals, Christina Cardona

Capstones

Beryl Brenner was a creative arts therapist for 40 years, and helped veterans heal from war traumas through art all across the city. For the past 11 years, she was at the Brooklyn Campus of the VA NY Harbor Healthcare system in Bay Ridge, where she developed the art therapy program. https://christinacardona1.wordpress.com

An Exploration Of Artist Housing In Greater Boston, Ma, Clairessa Morrow

Honors Projects

Boston is a city bursting with art and culture. However, many of the artists and craftspeople who create this environment are being driven out by external factors. This project examines the personal experiences of artists in the Boston area to gain their insight on present issues and their perceptions for the future.

Making The Grade: Do Art Museums Have An Impact On Student Achievement Within Low Socio-Economic Communities?, Alison M. Rebmann

Museum Studies Theses

This thesis evaluates the connections between art museums across the country with their communities. With many of the country’s museums located in city centers, there is a large population of children who live within the vicinity of art museums. Many of these children also come from low socio-economic backgrounds. They may not have access to the resources needed to gain access to art museums. This thesis examines what art museums are doing to ensure all community members can experience what they have to offer. Four main categories are examined in this research: (1) the price of entry to the museum, …

Might Be Tragic: The Lonely Voyeur In Narrative Art, Alexandria Canchola

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper discusses the work displayed as it might have been seen in the exhibition, Might Be Tragic. The work is inspired by and draws from narrative fiction, blurring the distinctions between our perceptions and our creations of reality. When one observes a narrative, they are unwittingly fulfilling voyeuristic tendencies by vicariously experiencing others realities or falsehoods. The exhibition challenges how narrative can function in a space. The process of walking through the exhibition, Might Be Tragic, brings the book, Not That Tragic, to life in a three-dimensional format exploring the intimate relationship one has with …

Audio To Architecture: House Music As A Form Generator, Polina Timchenko

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Contemporary music undergoes similar process of creation to that of the design process through computation and variation. House music as a representation of contemporary culture has a layered structure that allows specific characteristics to identify it as house music. Song components can vary and mix in different orders that form new dynamic compositions. I am going to explore the idea that every house music component can be translated into geometry with the use of parametric design techniques.

A Renaissance Of The Visual Arts In Worship For Churches Of Christ, Heather Heflin Hodges

Doctor of Ministry Theses

This Doctor of Ministry thesis presents the results of a project in which a group of four artists from across the United States met via video conference to create liturgical art activities that can be integrated into the Sunday morning worship for Churches of Christ. The problem identified at the beginning of the project was a lack of integration of the visual arts in worship in Churches of Christ. I understood this lack to be due in part to an iconoclastic heritage in Protestantism as well as a focus on rational intellectualism and desire for simplicity in worship as a …

Looking Past The Images: Art And Film As Propaganda Apparatuses, Alexander Schumm

Theses

This paper aims to show that art and film can operate as propaganda in subtle and unintentional ways. Jacques Ellul called such propaganda “sociological propaganda.” Recent work in philosophy has relied on the notion of intention in defining how propaganda works to affect the beliefs and attitudes of its recipients. This paper argues that intention is not a necessary condition for messages to be propagandistic and works to decouple propaganda from intention. Because our current models rely on intention in defining propaganda, recent work in philosophy cannot account for sociological propaganda. Ellul’s gestures toward defining propaganda explicitly feature intention as …

A Queer Politics Of Imperceptibility: A Philosophy Of Resistance To Contemporary Sexual Surveillance, Andie Shabbar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis journeys through a series of events to develop a concept of “imperceptibility” as a mode of resistance to contemporary sexual surveillance. The events I examine include biometric recognition of gender and race at airport security checkpoints, the heteropatriarchal colonial surveillance of Indigenous peoples at Standing Rock, various protest actions, and the political potentials of glitch art. Exploring their unexpected points of connection, my goal is to bring into view acts of resistance against sexual surveillance that already operate below and above the threshold of everyday perception.

The project advocates for a philosophy of resistance that underscores the political …

The Event Of Blues Music And The Effects Of Technology On The Artistic Event, Adam Rejak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of this dissertation is to find out whether or not blues music is an event. I explore what constitutes a musical or artistic event in modern times and to see how this has changed in relation to earlier periods. I also identify its essential formal elements. I divide blues music into two categories, namely, its technical playing qualities (the micro) and its historical changes (the macro). This division frames the entire project and illustrates that in order to discuss an artistic event, we must account for both its technical and historical aspects. I examine several theories of the …

Remains To Be Seen: Recollecting Memory, Nathanael Kooperkamp

Masters Theses

Abstract

Remains to be Seen, a multi-media installation, provides the opportunity for reconfiguration, re-contextualization and re-remembering of visual memory. Geoffry Cubit, a historian of memory, has noted that “memory has no fixed, stable, unitary meaning to which we can invariably recur: it has always been, and legitimately, a concept in flux and under review”.[1]My work in this exhibition (and as discussed throughout this paper) addresses the unstable and revisionist nature of memory—both culturally and individually. Additionally, I attempt to address how memory (collective, visual, familial and individual) is implicated in the creation of selfhood, of personal narrative, …

Art As Storytelling: A Process Of Discovery And Creativity Applied In The Medium Of Story Branding, Luke T. Marchesani

Selected Honors Theses

Storytelling finds its purpose in the origins of humanity. The advent of technology, hardware, and software has created an intersection of ubiquity of storytelling opportunity and scarcity of storytelling ability. For this reason, the storyteller needs to be “enlightened”. This thesis presents a comprehensive storytelling process that equips the storyteller to turn words into artistic expressions, specifically in the artistic medium of branding. Through story branding, artistic pieces that tell stories are branded through multiple techniques that spread the story’s idea through an entire population.

Subjectivity, Passion, And Mystical Intuition: Nietzsche's Early Writing, Joseph Leivdal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

For Nietzsche, the subject is aesthetically creative, meaning that the subject is a dynamic process of self-transformation that involves not only the subject’s sense of self, but the meaning of their world. In my first chapter, I look at "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense" to show how Nietzsche deconstructs rationalist epistemology in order to show that knowledge and meaning are an aesthetic activity. In my second chapter, I look at "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" to argue that Nietzsche sees creativity as a passionate, sublime overflow, a rupture with the present that artistically …

Un/Dead Animal Art: Ethical Encounters Through Rogue Taxidermy Sculpture, Miranda Niittynen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Beginning in 2004, the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists began an art movement of taxidermied animal sculptures that challenged conventional forms of taxidermied objects massively produced and displayed on an international scale. In contrast to taxidermied ‘specimens’ found in museums, taxidermied ‘exotic’ wildlife decapitated and mounted on hunters' walls, or synthetic taxidermied heads bought in department stores, rogue taxidermy artists create unconventional sculptures that are arguably antithetical to the ideologies shaped by previous generations: realism, colonialism, masculinity. As a pop-surrealist art movement chiefly practiced among women artists, rogue taxidermy artists follow an ethical mandate to never kill animals for the …

Paving The Way For Merleau-Ponty’S Eye And Mind In Organizational Communication Studies, Johan Bodaski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The body is a sense-based medium that creates and interprets organizations. Bodies create organization. An aesthetic theory of organizational communication reveals the significance of the body to the organization. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of aesthetics offers a theory of aesthetic organizational communication that is yet to be developed. Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic essay on painting, Eye and Mind, describes the body as the medium through which painters turn the world into painting. His philosophy of painting builds bridges between aesthetics, the body, and organizational communication.

In chapter one, four theories of organizational communication are described: communication constitutes organization (CCO), text/interpreter, ventriloquism, and …

I Cut Off My... Voice: An Autoethnography Of An Artist And Art Educator With A Brca Genetic Mutation, Nicki Lynn Hornbaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The effects of BRCA genetic mutations on artists and art educators had not been known. Autoethnography is a qualitative method for writing about personal experiences through a cultural lens. I used my personal experiences within a BRCA positive community to understand shared experiences among artists and art educators with this genetic mutation. This study aimed to explore the commonalities that are occurring within this subgroup. Anxiety and emotional stress played a role in most of the respondents‟ lives, affecting them in numerous ways. Most of the respondents underwent salpingectomy, oophorectomy, and mastectomy surgeries which led to further emotional and physical …

Soundscape Composition: Music As Environmental Activism, Megan A. Reich

Honors Program Theses

Soundscape composition is an emerging genre of experimental music that incorporates sounds from natural environments. While soundscape composers utilize a wide variety of mediums, techniques, and performance contexts, they share a common purpose of encouraging audiences to question and reflect on their relationship to the environment in the age of the “Anthropocene,” enabling listeners to re-connect to the places in which they live through sound. This study asks how soundscape composers use their music as a rhetoric that communicates environmental issues in ways that depart from typical portrayals in mainstream media. Drawing from the works, interviews, and writings of a …

And Where Is The Body?, Tyler Durbano

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In combination with a Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, and where is the body?, this dossier offers the following as accompanying components: an extended artist statement, a transcribed interview with artist Francisco-Fernando Granados, documentation of my artwork and my curriculum vitae. The section containing documented artwork provides a selected overview of my creative research and material exploration made during my time at Western University. These components complement my creative research and expand on ideas of queer identity, performance, vulnerability, assemblage and drag that are explored in my thesis exhibition.

Convenient Camouflage, John Alleyne

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Major influences in my work are most notably derived from the collages of Romare Bearden, paintings done by abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and the multidisciplinary practice of Rashid Johnson. This list of artists has been my influence for the past academic year as a result of personal research, some of which was conducted at the Museum of Modern Art, the TATE Modern in London and Musée du Louvre in Paris. My aim in my artwork and in this thesis is to change the perception of Black people, specifically Black men and boys, and to challenge stereotypes …

Selfie-Portrait, John Shield, John Shield

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The selfie has become the currency of today; boldly stating: I was here, this is how I felt, and, most importantly, I exist.

This has become our self-reflection. Exploring the self-portrait, as have countless artists of the past, Johnny Shield uses the various selfies as reference for his sculptural works - both empty vessels and sculptural busts. Made from glass these fragile objects are all doomed to break. You, the viewer, are witnessing a truly damned object: the central portrait uneasily rests on a pedestal that is actively electrolytically corroding. While on display, this pedestal will lean more and more …

White Gilt, Daniel Schmidt

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

White Gilt

This exhibition is a dissection of American masculinity and institutional oppression. The systematic mistreatment of people within certain social identity groups is supported and perpetuated by society. My work is a personal investigation of this flawed system, my place therein and its ramifications.

The fragility of masculinity provokes immeasurable violence. Whiteness can be stereotyped as a toggle switch between bland culture, and self-entitled bigotry. These works are a confrontation with the dark parts of the human psyche, and the fears surrounding vulnerability, power and sexuality.

Through discomfort we can deepen empathy and cultivate progress.

Daniel Schmidt

A Woman's Gaze, Emily Fiore

Honors Theses

My work merges my passion of thinking politically and artistically. This series, A Woman’s Gaze, is an extension of my Political Science thesis, where I focused on artists who combat the male gaze by representing women’s lives realistically, from a woman’s perspective. These paintings focus on intimate scenarios from women’s lives where the male gaze is absent. The large scale imagery brings visibility to these otherwise private moments.

The Federal Art Project: Intentions, Goals, And Legacy, Meghan Bentley

Honors Theses

Created under the umbrella program called the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project (FAP) was a unique program that attempted to put struggling artists back to work and aimed to preserve artistic skill in American society. This thesis examines the efficacy and legacy of the Federal Art Project by examining the legitimacy of the criticisms levied against the FAP, the effect the FAP was able to have on the American public and arts community, and closes by examining the findings of these claims within the context of a collection of local FAP paintings. While …

Steel Sculpture: A Study Of Monumentality, Abigail Golodik

Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of steel sculpture and how each form varies in characteristics and prominence depending on size, shape, and color. I am inspired by graphic design and clean forms, and wanted to realize this aesthetic in my sculptures. The thesis work includes four steel sculptures made of two inch pipe and other maquettes and sketches to show the construction process.

Through sharp angles and clean lines, I play with perspective, making viewers feel the presence and tension of my forms. I begin with sketches, construct maquettes, and use these as a blueprint during the final production. Drawing …

Milestones, Naomi Letourneau

Honors Theses

My sculpture is inspired by cairns, mounds of rocks that represent a memorial or landmark and serve as markers along a trail. These sculptures were created combining digital fabrication and traditional sculpting methods. Inspired by milestones in my own life, the goal of this series is to encourage self-reflection in order to remind us that we all must find balance while on our own paths.

Film Stills, Kevin Jordan

Honors Theses

Film cinematography has always fascinated me, particularly the way composition, color, and lighting augment the subject's mood and can evoke an emotion out of viewers. I want to emulate this in my portraits, with the goal of transporting the viewers into another world.

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

Double Splinters, Theresa M. Daddezio

Theses and Dissertations

Awareness of matters outside oneself can be heightened by a repetitive task, one that requires a meditative focus on the rudimentary of movement. The construction of a line is a projection from a fixed point that creates a multiplicity of lines, synapses, and connective fabric in the mind that project outward to any possible or arbitrary point. When assembling our reality, our eyes operate as the mediators of such points, drawing in visual clues to the world around us. Sight is composed from the movement of light particles alongside of individual and collective memories that construct what is.

A Document That Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction And Reality, Seth Lewis

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

In A Document that Transcends Itself: Between Abstraction and Reality, I first present a historical analysis of photography that complicates traditional assumptions of how photographs operate in the world. Rather than functioning as merely an objective record, the photograph takes on a dual status as both a document and an abstraction from reality. The photograph’s ability to selectively decontextualize the origins from which it came from and present itself as something other than what it simply records becomes the core of my artistic practice. This paper will also discuss my conceptual investigations into how we perceive photographs when they …