Art and Design Commons^™

Input / Output, Zach Scheinfeld

Masters Theses

Input/Output emphasizes the processes and systems that create engagement, narrative, and meaning in graphic design, as opposed to singular inputs and outputs. In a series of experimental frameworks, ranging in form from 3D printed objects to browser-based painting tools, variables are put into the hands of the audience and user, creating conditions that are prime for retooling, repurposing, world-building, and play. Throughout, an open dialogue and feedback loop is formed between interface and user, author and reader, and teacher and student, where power, agency, and structure are in constant circulation, resulting in the emergence of unexpected forms, speculative technologies, and …

What Could A Trans Book History Look Like? Toward Trans Codicology, J D. Sargan

Criticism

This article draws on critical trans studies and queer archival practice to propose a book historical mode that extends what we know about the premodern trans experience beyond the recovery of individual biographies. Instead of turning to textual sources for the identification of transness, the author looks to Susan Stryker’s call for the “recuperat[ion of] embodied knowing as a formally legitimated basis of knowledge production.” Bibliography, he suggests, makes claims of objectivity that engender a particular reluctance to respond to such calls. But the lived reality of archival research is one of affective embodiment. Affect theory is an area that, …

“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson

Criticism

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …

Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project, Jacinta R. Saffold, Kinohi Nishikawa

Criticism

On October 27, 2021, the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) sponsored the first in a series of virtual interviews about the Essence Book Project. Founded by Jacinta R. Saffold, the BSA’s inaugural Dorothy Porter Wesley Fellow, the Essence Book Project is a database of the books that appeared on Essence magazine’s bestsellers’ list from 1994 to 2010. In talking about the project with Kinohi Nishikawa, Saffold highlights how Black best-selling books contribute new paths of inquiry to bibliographical scholarship and explains why it is important to archive contemporary Black print culture. Presented in this article is a modified version of …

Craftivism And Cottonian Bindings: “The Handiwork Of Greta Hall”, Helen Williams

Criticism

Edith Southey, Edith May Southey, and Sara Coleridge Jr. covered Robert Southey’s books in vibrantly printed dress fabrics, creating a collection that came to be called “the Cottonian Library.” This article is a manifesto for Cottonian bookbinding to be studied as feminist literary activism. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the book trades to the domestic and unremunerated ways in which women contributed to Romantic period book design, suggesting that the new feminist Craftivism can prompt us to historicize and to acknowledge the significance of Cottonian bookbinding as a practice that cannot be omitted from any history of …

Beast And Man In India: Undoing John Lockwood Kipling’S Imperial Citation, Oishani Sengupta

Criticism

This article posits that John Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India (1891), the illustrated compendium on animals that mixes discussions of colonial cross-species entanglements with personal reflections on transforming local arts and crafts in India in the service of imperial power, is a multiauthored book. Centering the presence of Indian illustrators as central to Beast and Man’s texture, this essay uses the term “imperial citation” to highlight the range of strategies Kipling uses to overtly and covertly appropriate the labor of Indigenous creators within the fabric of this volume. By placing the material text within the context of colonial …

“In The Cards”: The Material Textuality Of Tarotological Reading, Jesse R. Erickson

Criticism

This article examines deep-seated relationships that inextricably bind the material makeup of divinatory card decks to their multifarious literacy functions. Unpacking the deceptive underlying complexities in these objects requires both an ontological analysis of their multicultural rootedness and a speculative exploration of their propensity for memetic adaptation. The concept of “reading” cards as textual objects has typically existed on the fringes of Western literacy paradigms. In reality, however, considering the rather commonplace use of pedagogical objects such as alphabet cards and flash cards, the practice of reading cards should be recognized for its considerable role in literacy instruction. In looking …

Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm, Mark Alan Mattes

Criticism

Settler accounts of the Cayuga Native American Soyeghtowa (Logan), such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, interpret his famous mourning speech, “Logan’s Lament,” as the words of a melancholic, noble savage and vanishing Indian. This essay decolonizes settler accounts of Logan’s words and deeds such as Jefferson’s book by considering Indigenous relationships to a once-living memorial on Shawnee land in central Ohio, the Logan Elm, which nineteenth-century settlers apocryphally identified as the site of Logan’s speech. Drawing on scholarly work on Indigenous writing and historical media by Native American and settler intellectuals, as well as local …

Warp/Weft/Word: Inscriptive Materiality, Epistemological Violence, And The Inka Khipu, Travis Sharp

Criticism

Many competing theories of the Indigenous inscription practice known as the khipu have been offered, from L. Leland Locke’s long-standing postulation that khipus are accounting devices, to Walter Ong’s description of them as aide-mémoire, to Gary Urton’s more experimental theory that they constituted an early form of binary composition. Just as fraught is the history of the khipu, which were utilized by the Inka, intermediated by Spanish and Catholic authorities in their legal and religious systems, and, finally, banned and burned as seditious and sacrilegious. Contemporary khipus are primarily limited to those used by herders, but Chilean American poet-artist Cecilia …

On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon

Criticism

What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy’s found-object installation Library of Congress, one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy’s …

Instances Of The Spirit (Glossary), Kamari A. Smalls

Masters Theses

This thesis offers a performative methodology to engaging with the worlds and ideas that these words have generated in the form of a glossary. The list of words include: Ancestor, Anointing, Attune, Breath, Conjure, Conversion, Dance, Erotic, Ephemera, Ethervism, God, Girlhood, Hallelujah, Imagination, Improvisation, Jazz, Knowledge, Love, Liturgical, Magic, Memory, Performance, Prayer, Remnant, Repetition, Ritual, Root, Sacred/Secular, Silence/Stillness, Sound, Spell, Spirit, Testimony, Water, and Witness. Personal reflections, contemplations and expansions from other writing, and passages that come out of Black feminist thought, Black girlhood studies, and Black performance theory exist here simultaneously. This glossary demonstrates the theory, theology and lineages …

Cyberflesh: The Me I'Ve Made For You, Jordan Metz

Masters Theses

This thesis deals with the impact of digital life on individuals by examining how real things become virtual bodies of information. Throughout this text, I weave key theoretical and literary references between my own thoughts and experiences which led to the work that appears in this book. I find it useful to attend to the spaces in between entities, theories, and technolo- gies. In these undefined spaces lies the spiritual dimension of media, the everyday magic that makes digital life possible. These ‘in-betweens’ are the site of transcendence granted by technology. In my practice, I’ve learned that things have a …

New Mapping, Dowon Yoo

Masters Theses

Tools determine the shape of most of the worlds that are manufactured or measured. Taking the Earth as an example, territory is shaped and transformed by the tools of the earth's plate movement, the sea, and humans. A map, a recognized territory, is represented through numerical instruments, mathematical formulas, and visual devices such as lenses.

The instrumental perspective is one of the powerful lenses that will work effectively into the past, present, and future. So I started to apply an instrumental perspective to digital space. Digital space which is Non-physical has become one of the most important worlds for contemporary …

To Melt, Huanzhe Hu

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on the need for a reevaluation of the relationship between humans and nature in the face of the current ecological crisis. The author argues that the dominant anthropocentric orientation, which sees nature as a resource to be exploited for human benefit, has led to over extraction and resource abuse, disrupting the balance of ecosystems. Instead, the author suggests adopting an ethical framework based on mutual understanding and appreciation, breaking the "hunter's gaze" and fostering empathy for non-human life forms. This thesis also explores the potential for new forms of communication and engagement with nature, such as through …

Vanitas, Sae Jung Oh

Masters Theses

Vanitas is a tribute to the missing pieces within the reconstruction of human memory, places, and data. It is a cartography of words, including home, apartment complex, reconstruction, mourning, archive, memory, memorialization, a god within, collective memory, photogrammetry, cyberspace, omnipresence, meandering, heterotopia, alleyway, construction site, and mirror. I invite readers to meander in the map of relations and be lost in the topography. What can you discover when you meander? What happens when you renounce being a subject and become an object seamlessly blended into the topography?

Distance: A Collection Of Studies Of Human-Computer Interaction To Explore Human Emotions And Relationships, Jinha Kang

Masters Theses

In today's society, technology has become an indispensable part of our lives, permeating our daily routines to the point where it feels as essential as the air we breathe. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the profound impact of technology, revealing its dual nature. While video conferencing bridged distances and connected people, the excessive use of social media drove wedges between them. As a multimedia artist, this thesis focuses on harnessing the positive potential of technology. Specifically, the objective is to employ technology as a medium to create art that fosters meaningful connections among individuals and conveys intricate emotions and complex …

Curiosity Beyond The Hidden, Yi Young Kim

Masters Theses

What lies beneath the surface of vessels? This captivating thesis explores the hidden world within, drawing inspiration from traditional Korean ceramics and employing coil-built sculptures. By focusing on the hollowness of vessels, this study unveils their profound interconnectedness and inherent uniqueness.

Through spontaneous stacking of claylike glazes and textured elements, the artwork reveals mysterious processes and transformations within these vessels. Exposing the intricacies of hollow spaces, viewers are invited to contemplate the mesmerizing realms concealed within.

Intertwining elements of Korean heritagewith intricate structures, this artistic endeavor

sheds light on the hidden and challenges preconceived notions of everyday existence. The work …

Movement, Mechanization, And Coexistence, Yukyung Chung

Masters Theses

A movement is a tool that expresses the subject I pursue, ‘mechanization of human beings’. There are many technologies that replace humans these days, such as artificial intelligence. This makes me skeptical and afraid of being replaced as an artist in the future. Paradoxically, people, including myself, are enthusiastic about it, indicating that we do embrace the mechanization process as a society.

I will reveal this phenomenon of coexistence by demonstrating the possibility that machines cannot replace us, through motion experiments where rules increase, first starting with the reliance on intuition. I will explore not only the things that machines …

Green + White = Pink, Dora Chen

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to explore the unknown forces that are constantly shaping our lives. I am intrigued by the intangible connections that link people, objects, and places together, and how they manifest across space and time. As a ceramicist emphasizing both interiority and tactility, my work will dissect layered ideas of closeness and disruption in order to reveal a nuanced understanding of how we exist in perpetuity with what can’t be seen. I wish to explore this topic through carefully directed installations that emphasize intimacy and engagement among audience members. Through inspiration from my past experience, childhood memories, as well …

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

Beyond The White Box: Building Alternative Art Spaces For The Black Community, Elijah Trice

Masters Theses

BASED ON THE SYSTEMIC BIASES AND LACK OF SUPPORT FOR BLACK ARTISTS & DESIGNERS IN THE PRIMARY ART MARKET, THIS STIGMA DISCOURAGES BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES FROM PURSUING A CAREER IN THE CREATIVE ARTS. MY GOAL IS TO UNDERSTAND THE UNDERLYING ISSUES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THIS DISPARITY, BY ANALYZING THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF BALTIMORE CITY AS A CASE STUDY.

Metaphors In Materials And Imagery For Self Reclamation And Empowerment, Janice Lardey

Masters Theses

As an experimental multidisciplinary artist, my creative process draws inspiration from daily experiences and encounters with the mundane. I am particularly interested in West African textile cultural practices, specifically the use of symbols and basic geometric forms to communicate through materials (specifically fabrics) and the role these images and forms play in African culture. In my work, I am developing my own distinct vocabulary of symbols and patterns, inspired by these practices.

My artistic practice explores a wide range of themes related to women, sustainability, loss, everydayness, wear and tear, degeneration, the transitory nature of life, and material effects, often …

A Body Finding Freedom Within Itself, Malda Smadi

Masters Theses

When a dislocation of any type occurs, whether geographical, emotional, or spiritual, the disorder pushes the self to retreat to safety. For me, that safety is in my body. It is in this place of retreat where I locate my original home.

In this space of translocation, I forage for materials from my surroundings and places that I belong to. Moving between Dubai, Damascus, Beirut, and Providence, I shape a reality dependent on what is available. I then transform these materials, searching for the forms and relationships that emerge while meditating on home and the body as a moving vessel …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Physical Documentation Of Censored Incidents Liberates One From The Doubts Of Existence., Winnie Cheung

Masters Theses

Clouds are free. Hovering aimlessly, they drift with no set forms, looking down on humans high from the sky. As an artist, I explore the freedom between humans and nature, with ‘cloud’ as a carrier, and extend its definition to the perspective of Chinese society and individuals through the format of jewelry.

As both a translator and jeweler, I am acutely aware of the ongoing censorship of language and events in Mainland China. My jewelry documents a diverse range of texts in China that expose the societal constraints imposed on its people, a miserable contrast to the freely floating clouds. …

Sanctuary, Harsha Kejriwal

Masters Theses

When I first arrived in New England, I was accustomed to thinking of winters as short but pleasant periods. For me, winter was a break from the strong and relentless sunlight of summer in Central India. But the contrast between my childhood winters and the same months in the Northeastern United States was dramatic. Statistically, Providence has an average of five hours of sunlight a day whereas Central India enjoys 9.5 hours during its coldest months. This pronounced change in light piqued my interest. I was struck by the various phenomena created by natural light during these cold months. Sunlight, …

Overlooked Modi Vivendi, Natalia Silva

Masters Theses

Traditional gender roles, performance of heterosexuality, marriage, parenthood, and a large variety of other societal expectations manifest themselves in the domestic realm, both intangibly and spatially. The design of domestic spaces has historically catered towards heteronormative living stereotypes, marginalizing people whose way of living challenges the norm. Even in the present day, designers with non-user clients — developers, investors, real estate firms, etc. — will design with heteronormative households in mind. The rise in feminist and LGBTQ+ rights movements has allowed for non-heteronormative modi vivendi (ways of living) to be more vocally and visibly present in the sociopolitical and cultural …

Manifesto Of Poor Images: Re-Imagine Guggenheim In The Post-Digital Age, Mengning He

Masters Theses

What is the role and value of low-resolution digital images, or "poor images," in a culture dominated by high-resolution and hyper-realistic digital media? This thesis investigates poor images from several perspectives: their technical characteristics, viewer’s experience, creative process, and artistic content.

With low-resolution as the defining characteristic of poor images, these pictures challenge the unceasing longing for ever-higher image resolution. While they seem unstable and untrustworthy, they challenge the obsession with higher resolution, offer an ambiguous visual experience, and provoke nostalgia. Poor images are open to appropriation, allowing users to become editors and co-authors. In the process of image-making, poor …

Bridging Empathy, Qianwen Lu

Masters Theses

As a jeweler, ally, and sympathetic witness to the traumatic stories of survivors, my work aims to support the process of reconstruction and reintegration for victims and the greater community. To move beyond isolation, resentment, and debilitating helplessness requires care and support. I want my jewelry to act as catalysts in the healing process by straddling both sides of the trauma-induced situation, to create greater awareness and empathy. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence shows that women are more likely to become victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or other forms of physical and psychological abuse in unhealthy emotional relationships. These …

Intertidal No. 1, Adriana Dutra, Anna Madruga, Ashley Lang, Asmahan Karam, Brigitte Kim, Chloe Kelly, Claire Chan, Dana Craighead, Elizabeth Brown, Elsie Wordal, Gavin Hart, Gazelle Chen, Alexandra Hardcastle, Ian Pines, Isaac Rudnick, Jack Fowler, Jade Stankowski, Janae Pabon, Jenna Dierkes, Joshua B. Venz, Josie Doan, Maddie Stein, Madison Gonzalez, Malia Weingarten, Noah Ackerman, Noelle Amey, Maxwell H. Johnson, Rebekah Lee, Rebekah Shane, Sam Mosteller, Sarah Chayet, Sarina Vachhani, Shelby Anderson, Sophie Stoll, Sydney Lehr, Taylor Lozano

Intertidal

For the first year ever, Intertidal has surfaced to showcase the art of Cal Poly's students and faculty. An 'intertidal zone' is an area where the ocean meets the land--hidden during the high tide and exposed during the low. Our journal embodies the moment where the tide recedes, revealing stories previously hidden.