Art and Design Commons^™

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

The Impact Of Instagram Usage On Body-Esteem In Young Women In College, Kirsten Etzinger

Honors Projects

Instagram as a platform is increasing in popularity, especially among young women. Young women may use Instagram to keep up with their peers, follow trends, or as a way to express themselves. However, it is evident that young women can be negatively affected by the content they are exposed to on Instagram. This study examines the impact that increased Instagram usage can have on body-esteem in young women in college by evaluating their degree of Instagram usage, motivation to use social media for body comparison, and feelings of body-esteem. An online survey was conducted with BGSU college-age female students and …

Small Town To The World Wide Web: Designing A Website For A Local Business, Madison Cozzens

Honors Projects

The Raspberry and The Rose is a small business in Medina, OH, and had a multitude of visual communication issues that needed to be solved. But what's an online presence without a website? "Small Town to the World Wide Web: Designing a Website for a Local Business" focuses on fulfilling a local business's need for a strong online presence. It dives into how a user's experience on the website can impact brand loyalty, foot traffic, and overall perception of a business. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide insight into how a non-e-commerce website can impact a business.

Improving Academic Success: Creating A College Planning Resource For Students, Hannah Grunden

Honors Projects

Academic performance of students is a major concern for colleges, especially with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Research has shown that active involvement, the development of self-regulation skills, and improved mental health all have a considerable impact on college students’ academic success. Colleges like Bowling Green State University need to consider how they can use these factors and leverage resources to improve student performance. In this project, a solution is proposed in the form of a college/personal planner which is directly based off research on early academic success. While further, more specific research is needed to fully understand the issue and …

Zentangles For Mental Health Awareness, Rachel Immel

Honors Projects

The world is starting to see the rise of a stress related epidemic. Finding time to balance the struggles of everyday life, like academics, finances, careers and relationships, while also maintaining personal mental health is becoming increasingly difficult. This is what prompted me to use my project as an opportunity to help people relieve stress and create a community through the use of art, especially during a time where social interaction has been severely limited due to COVID-19.

My project is a series of live-streamed Zentangle art classes I hosted personally that were open to the public through Zoom. Zentangle …

"My Self Is The Art Is": An Art Installation Exploring Self-Reflection In Art-Making, Alexis Rubertino

Honors Projects

This is an art-installation which explores the following question: How does self-reflection play a role in art-making, particularly involving tacit artist-viewer communication?

I consider the self to be the recognition of a sum of experiences which constitute a sense of being: the self is experiential baggage that actively shapes the way one experiences the world. Artists must analyze their self and assume the viewer’s self to fulfill the intention of their art.

Art, loosely defined, points at or interacts with life and living – artists gather materials (visuals, ideas, audios, objects, etc.) and combine them to provide juxtapositions which create …

Quarantining And Dining, Madeline Flagg

Honors Projects

Quarantining and Dining captures and reflects the many ways in which comfort is provided through food. The project content was collected through food culture research, interviews, and observation and then mediated through Instagram. The Instagram feed has a designed aesthetic architecture and branding system that makes it distinct and identifiable. The Instagram account name can be found @Quarantininganddining. Although the project is rooted in Midwestern food culture, the perspectives provided are from across the United States, as well as from numerous occupations in order to express a diverse range of perspectives. The Instagram account encourages interaction and an exchange of …

Bubbles & Bought-Ins: Reevaluating Price Movements In The Art Market, Silas Wuerth

Honors Projects

Employs two tests for bubbles in the art market. First, a right-hand forward recursive augmented Dickey-Fuller test to identify explosive price movements. Second, a test for the statistical significance of hedonic regression price index coefficients after controlling for equity market performance. Finds strong evidence for a speculative bubble in the pre-Great Recession "Post-War & Contemporary" market. Evidence for this bubble diminishes but does not dissipate after accounting for the effect of failed sales on index returns.

Evulation Of The Usability Of The Libraries Page With Bgsu Students, Rebecca Lord

Honors Projects

This research project explores the usability and usefulness of the “Libraries” webpage located within students’ MyBGSU account through usability testing. Usability testing is a method in which participants are asked to complete tasks within a platform (e.g. webpage, mobile app, etc.) that mimic a typical user in order to understanding their behavior, challenges, and thoughts about it. Ten Bowling Green State University (BGSU) students of various majors and years were randomly selected and asked nine questions about their opinions regarding the “Libraries” page, such as what they like and don’t like, and what they find useful, as well as things …

Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Through Body Adornment, Linore Huss

Honors Projects

I conducted a series of interviews with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder survivors or their family members and completed an interactive body of work in body adornment and jewelry that reflects their stories. Last year I decided to focus on the people behind the trauma rather than the trauma itself, which I feel connects the survivor and the viewer more deeply than presenting a general image. Each piece draws from a survivor's personal story, the titles pulling from interview quotes, and the interaction with the viewer representative of each personal struggle.

Retirement Reboot: A Website Redesign, Christina Gillen

Honors Projects

A website could be created with the latest technology, but after a few years it will still need to be updated. This is what happened to Swanton Health Care and Retirement Center’s website. This project is designed to remedy the problem by creating an entirely new website with updated content, images, and interactive features to bring Swanton Health Care’s online presence back to life.

Lingua Franca: An Analysis Of Globalization And Language Evolution, Abigail Watson

Honors Projects

This project details the evolution of languages and how globalization and advances in communication have effected smaller language groups. A world community in which communication is standardized by a Lingua Franca is in most cases harmful for isolated language groups without many speakers. The extinction of language is harmful for human society and culture, and there are many different ways to help prevent language extinction.

This project includes an essay, an animation, six illustrations, and a coloring book that all relate to endangered languages.

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety, Rebecca Schroeder

Honors Projects

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety is a triptych video and artifact piece inspired by the abstract analysis of my dreams. It recognizes worries held within my subconscious and brings them to life through graphic design, photography, and video. The process of creating provides a new perspective of looking at both art and occupational therapy as methods of solving emotional distress.

I have recorded over 80 of my dreams in the past year. In these dreams, regret, grief, and anxiety are common themes. These themes are represented in three triptychs that cycle through past, present, and future problems. The cycling of …

A Resident Advisor’S Guide To Students With Perceived Eating Disorders, Danielle Smith

Honors Projects

Abstract
According to an extensive 2013 survey conducted by the National Eating Disorder Association which examined 165 different college campuses to see what was being done on campuses nation wide to spread awareness about disorders as well as treat them. There is still a significant gap in perceived need and available counseling or nutritional services by staff specializing in eating disorders on college campuses throughout the country” (National Eating Disorder Association). Therefore, the purpose of this honors project is to develop a comprehensive training guide for resident advisors on Bowling Green State University’s campus to utilize in order to support …

Learning To Swim: The Act Approach To Living With Depression, Ashley Martinez

Honors Projects

This illustrated self-help manual was designed as a basis for treatment for individuals of a wide range of ages experiencing depression. The therapeutic base of the manual is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which outlines the pathology of depression as problems in functioning rather than problems in the individual. The ACT theory of depression views problems in functioning as centered around the way negative emotions are perceived and processed through language and problematic actions or inaction as a result of cognitive distortions. Because of problems with language, the manual is illustrated to help the reader understand the foundations of ACT …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …