Art and Design Commons^™

Panoramic Sham, Andrea Vail

Theses and Dissertations

Panoramic Sham is sunset and sunrise, a walk through a field of wildflowers or a day in the forest. It is that moment when a light breeze tousles your hair and chirping birds reaffirm vitality. Panoramic Sham is also a heap of outdated home goods that once transformed our living rooms into artificial habitats. I reimagine decommissioned domestic goods as a way to confront trends of mass-production, habits of consumption and to explore systems of artifice, authenticity, and the consumer haze perpetuated by contemporary American society. Comprised of synthetic materials and manufactured to impersonate nature, these 20th century cast-offs provide …

Reynolds Bath House, Amy Turnage

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: This project explores the ritual of leisure, social interaction, and reflection in a democratic* space. Water is the universal experience. The program for this site examines the ritual of bathing and the role of intimacy within a public domain. *democratic: absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

Thinking Bodies And Sensational Minds: Affect And Embodiment In Contemporary Art, Sandra Burke

Theses and Dissertations

The human subject is profoundly interdependent, in relation to other people and to the surrounding environment, both “natural” and technological. Western dualistic thinking creates bounded and oppositional categories and generates a conception of human subjects as autonomous, self-sufficient beings that are transparent to themselves and in control of self, other, and world. This contributes to the ongoing inequalities in society and supports normative hegemony. This dissertation argues that it is imperative to insist on the intersubjective, permeable, and contingent qualities of existence. While this project is preceded by a great deal of theoretical criticism of Western metaphysical dualism, we must …

Held, Erika Diamond

Theses and Dissertations

My work is a symptom of my ongoing quest to achieve immortality. I perpetually attempt to make permanent the traces we leave behind and the impressions we make upon each other. I use the body to portray boundaries – between the skin and the heart, comfort and disquiet, holding and letting go. The objects I make serve both as an agent for physical contact and as the commemoration of an ephemeral interaction. I create personal fossils, revealing the interstices formed when two bodies come into contact with one another. I use materials that reference endurance and longevity to record transient …

Student Education & Character Building Center Adaptive Reuse Project, Latonia M. Ricks-Chavis

Theses and Dissertations

There are many programs throughout the world and in the state of Virginia that have been developed to change the outlook of youth on a broader spectrum. Youth in at risk communities face a different set of parameters and are often mislabeled as "bad kids". Many of these youth simply need an environment filled with positive energy. This redesign will create an environment that guides through intuition and the understanding of angles and markers that are considered universal in all languages. The space will open up a world that is non-institutional and without the normal boundaries and pressures of typical …

Hybrid Gulf — Excavating Future Identities, Robert Canak

Theses and Dissertations

This Project examines the coexistence of two cultures?–?in this case the host Gulf, and the imported Western?–?and addresses certain problems that still need attention. This Project celebrates the creation of the third, hybrid, culture as a result of their intermingling. In this Research, Postcolonial Theory? and Transitional Object Theory? are used as conceptual frameworks, and are combined with Archaeology and Design as a practice. On a personal level, the Project evolved out of my cross-cultural origin and experiences. On an academic level, the Project serves as an experiment, trying to fill the gaps in the Gulf region’s search for identity. …

Green Relationship, Fadel Imad

Theses and Dissertations

Green Relationship is a design solution attempting to raise awareness toward the environment and reduce consumerism. Waste generation and pollution have become major concerns of many governments, municipalities, organizations and individuals around the world since they are affecting human wellbeing and the environment. As an MFA student with VCUQatar, I chose to use design to contribute in protecting the environment hoping to make a difference in life. The thesis includes a research and a design component. The research explores the recycling programs and facilities in Qatar, the governmental and private sector actions toward waste generation and collection, as well as …

Personified - Objects With Personalities That Illustrate Applied Empathy As A Mechanism To Document Qatar’S Changing Phenomena., Maryam Al-Homaid

Theses and Dissertations

In the past, a user’s interaction with objects was usually limited to a core function. Whereas today, there is a trend toward objects that can offer multi-layered experiences with the potential to not only serve a core function, but to communicate information and emotion. These interactions offer a give-and-take relationship between the user and the object, with the potential for characteristics, individualistic features, and even personalities to appear. Interactions with such objects provide the potential for empathic relationships to form between human and object. Empathy becomes the bond that gives a user the opportunity to view the world from the …

Mass Customization! An Approach Through Generative Design, Aamina Karim Malik

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Historically, design has been associated with unique, handmade products and utilities; however, the advent of the Industrial Revolution introduced the system of mass-production, which generated a recurrent and ambivalent problem: the lack of customized products. Generative Design redresses this issue. This new design method is based on a system of rules, which produce a design that maintains individuality and character. Generative Design takes one away from natural elements and the distinct personalities of designs and products. Forming a design out of certain algorithms and sets of rules constricts it to artificiality and separates it from the natural. Hence, Generative …

Mob2030 – A Place Between Solitude And Collaboration, Xuan Liu

Theses and Dissertations

The design of an experimental interdisciplinary design lab–MOB 2030–within a waterfront building in Richmond, Virginia, provides an opportunity for designers to find infinite inspirations. The tools of interior design are used to manipulate a wide range of functional and formal elements to define designers’ relationship to space, work and nature. The final project provides three studios, three galleries, rooftop and waterfront landscapes, and collaboration steps connect other spaces together.

Hospital: A Creature Of Duality, Gordon Mccormick

Theses and Dissertations

Hospitals can no longer be thought of as simply healing machines--they are healing organisms. It is Nature that permits every miracle of medicine, and it is Science that permits our understanding of medicine. By combining the two into a single idea, we aim to strike a balance between the duality of Nature and Technology, in order to design a space that relies more on the healing powers of Nature and less on the intrusiveness of Technology.

Bakhtin’S Carnivalesque: A Gauge Of Dialogism In Soviet And Post-Soviet Cinema, Randy Davis

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines fifteen films produced in seven political eras from 1926 thru 2008 in Soviet / Post-Soviet Russia. Its aim is to determine if the cinematic presence of Bakhtin’s ten signifiers of the carnivalesque (parody, death, grotesque display, satirical humor, billingsgate, metaphor, fearlessness, madness, the mask, and the interior infinite) increase in their significance with the historical progression from a totalitarian State (e.g., USSR under Stalin) to a federal semi-residential constitutional republic (e.g., The Russian Federation under Yeltsin - Putin). In this study, the carnivalesque signifiers act as a gauge of dialogism, the presence of which is indicative of …

Senses In Synthesis: Imaginative Sensing In The 19th Century, Jesse Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

During the late 19th century, arts and literature had a surge of sensory awareness, made manifest through sensory analogy, intersensory metaphor, and synaesthesia. This dissertation explores this phenomenon through a study of five poets and artists: Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Barlas, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Using imaginative sensing, these artists transformed the relationship between artist and observer, assigning greater responsibility to their audience while simultaneously asserting artistic control of their work. Their fascination with sensory mixing and multisensory awareness demonstrates unique ideas about perception and embodiment, ideas that have sparked both controversy and imitation. I begin …

Poiesthetic Play In Generative Music, John Priestley

Theses and Dissertations

Generative music creates indeterminate systems from which music can emerge. It provides a particularly instructive field for problems of ontology, semiotics, aesthetics, and ethics addressed in poststructuralist literary theory. I outline how repetition is the ultimate basis of musical intelligibility and of memory in general. The extension of these abstractions beyond tonal music to sound in general is afforded by the concrete iterability of audio recording media. Generative systems delineate a music that is repeatable in principle and in certain qualities, though not in specific forms; a music that produces emergent complexities from novel combinations, retaining the potential to surprise. …

Literary Landscapes: Mapping Emergent American Identity In Transatlantic Narratives Of Women's Travel Of The Long Eighteenth Century, Leah Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines intersections of the development of maps from the Native American-European encounter to the establishment of the New Republic and transatlantic British and American narratives of women’s travel of the long eighteenth century. Early European and American maps that depict the Americas analyzed as parallel “texts” to canonical and lesser-known women’s narratives ranging from 1688 to 1801 reveal further insights into both maps and these narratives otherwise not apparent. I argue that as mapping of the New World developed, this mapping influenced representations of women’s geographic and social mobility and emergent “American” identity in transatlantic narratives. These narratives, …

Technologies And Artworks: An Interdisciplinary Exploration Through Ihde And Latour, Kathryn Lynch Thibault

Theses and Dissertations

Technologies and Artworks: An Interdisciplinary Exploration through Ihde and Latour discusses and applies the phenomenological framework described by the philosopher of science and technology Don Ihde, in his text Technology and the Lifeworld, in relation to recent artworks of sculpture and performance that incorporate technologies. The study considers closely Ihde’s embodiment, hermeneutic, and alterity variants for the purpose of developing conceptual tools to investigate the complicated human-technology relationships present in the works considered. A subsequent discussion of psychasthenia and its relationship to Ihde’s embodiment variant demonstrates the limitations of Ihde’s approach and the need for additional sources in order to …

Old World, New Media: Cross-Cultural Explorations With Camera And Analytic Text In Cusco, Peru, Scott Dupre Mills

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract OLD WORLD, NEW MEDIA: CROSS-CULTURAL EXPLORATIONS WITH CAMERA AND ANALYTIC TEXT IN CUSCO, PERU By Scott DuPre Mills, PhD. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014 Major Director: Dr. Nicholas A Sharp, Assistant Professor, Department of English This dissertation draws on my field research in Cusco, Peru, documenting Old World methods of making Andean musical instruments. The cross-cultural interactions I engaged in are concretized and documented in the ethnographic film I shot at the time and in my experimentation with original music …

English Composition 100: Best Practices For Online Instruction, David Paschal Narendra Makhanlall

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to explore the process of teaching English Composition in the asynchronous online format and to make recommendations for the best possible approach for continued student success. The teaching of English Composition is a complex subject and no two teachers will have the same approach. This matter is further complicated when online instruction is explored. An instructor cannot transplant an in-class course into the online format and expect the same results. This dissertation explores the best possible approach to teaching English Composition in an online environment with the use of multimedia applications. This exploration will …

Unloosed: Designing Participatory Objects, Laura Schlifer

Theses and Dissertations

The ubiquity of technology has mediated the means of receiving content through digital networks; users have complete control over receiving, shaping, and sharing information. In contrast to the inherent elasticity of these networks, physical pieces of communication often manifest through a closed and highly controlled process. However, the increased prominence of user-interaction with media provides an opportunity to evaluate the design process as it applies to the creation of physical objects. Throughout much of my work, I investigate the potential for unloosening the control of designed objects by inviting others into the design process. By considering the audience as active …

Rhetorical Ripples: The Church Of The Subgenius, Kenneth Burke & Comic, Symbolic Tinkering, Lee A. Carleton

Theses and Dissertations

Humor has long been an effective way to engage difficult sociopolitical topics in a way that avoids polemical confrontation and provides opportunity for pleasure, catharsis and self-knowledge. In the context of today’s polarized politics and protest, creative satirical performance that deploys “symbolic tinkering” can provide a “comic frame of reference” that, according to Kenneth Burke, more effectively conveys its message while providing reflexive insight. The satirical Church of the SubGenius naturally practices this rhetorical frame in their multimedia creations. Using the lens of Burke’s Attitudes Toward History, this essay is an analysis of SubGenius rhetoric with a focus on …

Dr. Who?: The Science And Culture Of Medical Wear Design, Patricia Duignan

Theses and Dissertations

The multi-million-dollar medical uniform industry has not utilized advancements in garment and textile technology that could positively impact the protection of healthcare professionals and patients. In most cases the uniforms meet basic requirements – they clothe the professional in a recognizable way. Little innovation in design, function and performance, has been applied to these garments. This is particularly evident in the case of the stereotypical white lab coat worn by many physicians, despite evidence indicating that these lab coats may carry contamination and play a role in the spread of deadly bacteria. Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) are among the most …

Pools / Dreams / Parental Gaze, Tal Gafny

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a testimony of thoughts and ideas that have been circulating in my studio for the past few years, in their current form. It is also an experiment in writing an autobiographical piece of prose. It was written parallel to, and after, making the film Double Take with Perrin Turner. The film is an exploration of a number of relationships, related and sometimes haunted by one another. I wish for this text to operate not only as an after-the-fact recollection of thoughts, but also in relation to what will follow it – similarly to the way a trailer …

Designing Connection, Laurie K. Culshaw

Theses and Dissertations

Social connection is an essential human need. Personal connections exist at a variety of depths and within different types of relationships. Small daily choices determine the strength of those connections and their impact on our well-being as individuals and as a community. Modern society and technology have altered the speed and channels of connection, increasing communication but decreasing meaningful connection. It is critical to understand how the methods of communication affect the depth of connections. Through a series of participatory graphic design projects, I analyze the strengths and weaknesses of one-on-one, small group and community connections within an established taxonomy …

Side A, Side B, Hong Zhang

Theses and Dissertations

I believe that aural and visual language can contribute and inspire one another. Sound evokes the emotions and the senses. It is a catalyst for our imagination. It can be combined with imagery for the purpose of communication, harmoniously or contrastively. Both have corresponding characteristics—color/timbre, brightness/pitch, length/duration, scale/volume, composition/rhythm—and thus provide ways of transforming each other back and forth as input and output. Computer technology has increased the ease of transforming and manipulating the two. In my thesis project, I explore sound visualization, sound/image transformation and combination.

Assessing Design Thinking Through The Activation Of A Social Challenge In Higher Education: An Academic Inquiry, Amin Matni

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an inquiry that documents, identifies and assesses the effectiveness, circumstances, and potential resources related to addressing the gap between social needs and higher education as stated in the National Development Strategy 2011-2016. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the response of the students on the collaborative, human-centered, result-oriented aspects of design thinking while addressing the eating experience topic, an articulated theme from the wicked problem of obesity. The eating experience theme provided students from design, business and engineering majors a contextualized topic to test design thinking in a series of workshops conducted in three different …

Co-Creation: A Study Of Intimacy And Control, Erin Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

Drawing from ongoing revitalization initiatives in Richmond, Virginia, this adaptive reuse project creates a structured dialogue between public and private expression to create a more immersive gallery experience for viewer and practitioner. The gallery experience is twofold; traditional object-based display and nontraditional process-based display. Preservation of the historic fabric of the existing Handcraft building at 1501 Roseneath is integrated with the transformative potential of introducing voyeuristic opportunities in creating a community arts center. Notions of voyeurism will center around ideas of visual connection and physical separation. This project questions if tactics of voyeurism, which inherently create physical barriers, can facilitate …

Exploring Environments, Idil Cilingiroglu

Theses and Dissertations

My search for creative inspiration often leads to explorations in natural and built environments. Being physically immersed in an environment offers endless vantage points, as well as points of focus; allowing all senses to function as receptors of surrounding data. Observations stimulate thoughts and ideas, which inspire experiments. Projects are born, sometimes out of the smallest details. In a series of projects I explore the possibilities of using physical environments as primary source of inspiration and input in the creation of tools that function in design contexts.

The E-Volving Picturebook: Examining The Impact Of New E-Media/Technologies On Its Form, Content And Function (And On The Child Reader), Stella K. Reinhard

Theses and Dissertations

The technology of the codex book and the habit of reading appear to be under attack currently for a variety of reasons explored in the Introduction of this Dissertation. One natural response to attack is a resulting effort to adapt in a bid to survive. Noël Carroll, leading American philosopher in the contemporary philosophy of art, touches on this concept in his discussion of the evolution of a new medium in his article, “Medium Specificity Arguments and Self-Consciously Invented Arts: Film, Video, and Photography,” from his Cambridge University Press 1996 text, Theorizing the Moving Image. Carroll proposes that any …

Fluid Realities: A Light On Life's Journey, Neta-Grace Coleen Shepherd

Theses and Dissertations

Images of nature and family comprise the gestural and abstracted interpretations of my life events. I use my photographs as inspiration for my work. I fuse layers of color, light, and line into glass and onto wood to suspend a personal memory. I want to capture those moments that flit by in life and envelop them in the media.

In my fused glass work, I manipulate color, light, and line. In these pieces, I layer frits and sheets of glass onto an abstract sculpted relief of fiberglass and fuse them into one thick slab. The sculpted relief creates a textured …

Mobile Indoor Positioning For Augmented Reality Systems, Robert B. Glass

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the creation and setup of a prototype that allows users of the device to interact within an indoor real world environment and a virtual environment simultaneously using high-tech common technology. The prototype is comprised of a small mobile device such as a cellular mobile phone, Raspberry Pi computer, a battery powered handheld Pico projector, and software developed for the Android OS. The software can easily be ported to other mobile and non-mobile operating systems. The mobile device must contain accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscope embedded sensors as well as 802.11 wireless network chip. The prototype software implements an …