Art and Design Commons^™

This Trash Is Someone Else's Problem, Lauren Goodman

Masters Theses

This Trash is Someone Else’s Problem reimagines object design practices through a decolonial lens that embraces responsive approaches to the local environment and the communities that steward it. It advocates for design justice and social equality. The physical work was developed from discarded scraps of industrial waste harvested from the Providence area, such as wire fencing, oil drums, rebar and steel tubing. It was created without the use of expensive tools, machinery and materials in favour of a less extractive approach to design. In conjunction with the studio work is a series of community gatherings focused on low-fi ceramic pit …

Psychological Well-Being Through Music Listening, Majed Boughanem

Masters Theses

Design has gotten good at delighting and stimulating us in the short term. Could we design products that are good for us in the long run?

In this project, I looked at positive psychology for concepts to develop into features of products and use music listening as a vehicle for integrating them. I propose three music-listening features that help exercise and cultivate emotional regulation strategies:

1_The Reaction Tile

2_The Monofilter

3_The Vibelist

Each feature represents one or multiple strategies from the Process Model of Emotional Regulation.

Beacon Public Library: Expanding Radical Civic Care For An Uncertain Future, Katrina Machado

Masters Theses

Stressors like climate change will put strain on our communities, making them more vulnerable. I am asserting and expanding the role of the public library as a civic space for radical care and community resilience. This work explores the ways in which the public library, as an existing institution, could adapt to the needs of its changing environment and community. Interventions are visualized by a librarian’s jumpsuit and library apron, an adapted library book cart, public signage, and a re-imagined library card.

I imagine a public library that pushes the bounds of its physical building and actively and compassionately serves …

Compromised Values: Charlotte Posenenske, 1966–Present, Ian Wallace

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fabricated in unlimited series and sold at cost, the sculptures produced by Charlotte Posenenske between 1966 and 1967—modular wall reliefs, interactive cubic structures, and tubular geometric units whose installation requires collective decision making—were meant to confront both the artwork’s commodity status and the limitation of its consumption to a privileged elite. Nevertheless, Posenenske’s work has been effectively recuperated by the art system: first, in the 1980s, through a series of exhibitions and publications organized by her estate; and second, with her inclusion in Documenta 12 in 2007, which reintroduced her work to the market. Since the artist’s death in 1985, …

Sartorial Semiotics: Constructs Of Gender And Female Sexuality In Post Wwii American And European Cinema, Patricia Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cinematic costume design functions as a system of visually-perceived, material and indexical signifiers, an effective and compelling language further informed by styling and embodiment. Sartorial semiotics support and inflect role characterization, while equally underpinning or subverting tropes generated by ideological paradigms. The following methodological approaches were adopted in scrutinizing this topic: Roland Barthes’ application of semiotic theories to the domain of fashion in The Language of Fashion, and Laura Marks’ discussion of the dialectics of optical and haptic visualities in apprehending film images in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.

By examining the costume …

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, And Cultural Intersection In Los Angeles, 1973–1988, Liz Hirsch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inevitable Associations: Art, Institution, and Cultural Intersection in Los Angeles, 1973-1988 considers alternative institutions and cultural intersections in bicentennial-era Los Angeles. I look at the spatial, social, and artistic convergence of Los Angeles artists rarely seen as allied, through close examination of alternative cultural infrastructure that came out of a federal jobs program called the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) and cohered around a building located at 240 South Broadway in downtown. I use the model of association—alliance through shared purpose—to demonstrate moments of convergence and interconnection. Through an analysis of the formation of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), …

Polyrhythms, Kevin Costante

Masters Theses

This work strives to integrate seemingly ‘distant’ practices into a concept by emphasizing their differences. A syncopation between a maker and designer, a planner and improviser. A search for commonalities in the middle of what otherwise creates conflict. I cultivate a space to play alongside my inherent formalities by incorporating color and movement. I find rhythm persists uninterrupted through the discrepancies of my process and inspirations. I want to see it in the outcomes of my work.

How can I be compatible with this world of rudiments and structure and also comply with my reliance on ‘chance’?

Ars Technica, Bayan Mashrequi

Masters Theses

It’s easy to forget that we are living in an age of wonders, where the ability to perform feats that would have seemed divine miracles to our ancestors, has become mundane and routine to us. Even for people who are practitioners of this Modern Magic, the artificers and the sorcerers, the wonderfulness of the endeavor becomes difficult to appreciate most times.

Ars Technica serves a two-fold purpose here: for the uninitiated and the novice, this book aims to inspire and enable students, engineers and tech aficionados by highlighting the connection between mythology, literature, history and folklore with the wonders of …

The Art Of Microbe Maintenance: Value And Applications In Design, Yujin Hwang

Masters Theses

My thesis centers around designing microbial systems and objects for a sustainable future. I propose ideas to bring microbes into the home in order to make people understand them as a part of the environment. Through deep consideration of how my microbe based material could change across national and social contexts, I create accessible, attractive and friendly-looking design objects with microbes that address people’s fear of microbial life. I strive to facilitate the intersection and interaction between people and technologies in ways that are ultimately harmonious for the well being of both.

My ultimate goal for my thesis is not …

Formulating 3-Chloropropyltriethoxysilane Modified Silica Nanoparticle Sprays As Hydrophobic Transparent Coatings Onto Cotton Textiles, Mikaela C. S. Mendoza, Gilbert U. Yu

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Cotton textiles were transformed into hydrophobic fabrics via the application of 3-chloropropylthriethoxysilane-functionalized silica nanoparticle spray coatings. Silica particles were measured to be < 50 nm, as determined by dynamic light scattering (DLS). The incorporation of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HTAB), a surfactant, into the nanosilica alcohol-based sprays resulted in a suspension that was stable for at least a week. Stability and turbidity tests of samples point to smaller particle size (silica nanoparticles = 24.3 ± 8.5 nm) as the main contributor to possibly providing transparency, as evidenced when sprayed in colored (black) textiles, while still contributing to hydrophobicity/ superhydrophobicity of the cloth.

Distilling The Narragansett Bay, Parker Ives

Masters Theses

My thesis is an investigation of material vernacular and a celebration of process and material. I am manipulating locally sourced materials to pull out unexpected qualities in order to distill a unique identity associated with a place and the things that give that place its character.

The resulting work focuses on distilling the Narragansett Bay through the lens of three categories. Reminiscence, Impression, Composition. These works fall into the categories of being reminiscent of a place, impressed upon by a place and composed of a place.

This thesis is not a conclusion of this area of inquiry, rather it seeks …

Eventhub Application: Sharing Medium For Popup Stores / Events, Coby Hong

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

Creation of Full Stack web application using technologies MongoDB backend, REST API services, and React.JS front end. Web application centered around providing a news feed for local businesses and popup events to post / share their listings on. Users can log on with their Google account to traverse the website.

Design And Culture: A Transdisciplinary History, Maurice Barnwell

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Design and Culture: A Transdisciplinary History offers an inclusive overview that crosses disciplinary boundaries and helps define the next phase of global design practice. This book examines the interaction of design with advances in technology, developments in science, and changing cultural attitudes. It looks to the past to prepare for the future and is the first book to offer an innovative transdisciplinary design history that integrates multidisciplinary sources of knowledge into a mindful whole. It shows design as a process that expresses goals through values and beliefs, functioning as a major factor in contemporary cultural life.

Starting with the development …

An Evolving Process: Patterns And Objects, Shreya Tuli

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates my life experiences,inspired by the surroundings in New England and India.

My process is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. I integrate diverse media moving fluidly between two dimensional and three dimensional work, creating multiple layers of pattern and objects.

Ctrl Shift, Kit Son Lee

Masters Theses

CTRL SHIFT makes a case for design under contemporary computation. The abstractions of reading, writing, metaphors, mythology, code, cryptography, interfaces, and other such symbolic languages are leveraged as tools for understanding. Alternative modes of knowledge become access points through which users can subvert the control structures of software. By challenging the singular expertise of programmers, the work presented within advocates for the examination of internalized beliefs, the redistribution of networked power, and the collective sabotage of computational authority.

Taking Care, John Dixon

Masters Theses

We’ve come to live our lives on a quest for what we deem as efficiency, but has our view on the matter been focused on the wrong measures? Taking Care investigates efficiency utilizing a variety of different comparative measures through the creation of 8 chairs. When our emphasis on certain variables is shifted, is mass production the most efficient means of making? What about one-off production utilizing local materials? Does industry’s approach to ergonomics focus on efficiencies benefitting the employer while sacrificing those of the employee? Working from a Wendell Berry quote contrasting care to efficiency as a point of …

Dress Your Chair, Yumeng Gai

Masters Theses

Upholstery is the dress for furniture. As apparel for humans, upholstery has the power to shape the identity of furniture. By changing different upholsteries, furniture will have fresh identities that bring vitality to both the furniture itself and the surrounding environment. And during the process of changing “cloth” for furniture, people will build a deeper relationship with the furniture they already have.

Print Foundation: Student Guide To Graphic Communication, Yeyoung Kim

Graphic Communication

This book covers the foundation of print technologies and information related to graphic communication and aims to resolve the absence of the graphic communication textbook for beginners. While there are plenty of professional and technical resources for students, it can be challenging to read professional books without prior knowledge on the subject. This book will also clarify the difference between the Graphic Communication major and the Graphic Design major at Cal Poly SLO.

The project began with the student survey on what they would want to be included in the introductory textbook and some of their additional suggestions were followed. …

Dive, Aparna Sarkar

Masters Theses

In my thesis paintings, abstracted bodies collide with sticky shapes and residues in otherworldly spaces to form a queer, diasporic mythology. Bodies are slick, crusty, diaphanous, partial, chunky, other—they vary in legibility, suspended in emergence and expulsion from the environment. Multiple selves make these works. One asks sensorial questions of painting: what feelings, memories, and experiences can I transmit through color and material? I embed the smell of marigolds, the swi!t temperature change of the California desert, or the thick haze of a three a.m. dance floor make-out. My trusting self follows visions of color and shape, believing that they …

Dotphotozine Issue 10, June 2021, Students Of The Csusb Art Department, Thomas Mcgovern

Dotphotozine

No abstract provided.

Personal Positioning System, Laura Diez De Baldeon

Masters Theses

Personal Positioning System (PPS) is an exploration of spatial memory in an unstable world. While the GPS gathers many different, shifting data points in order to provide us with an apparently stable representation of our position, a longitude and latitude in the earth’s grid, PPS offers alternative forms of mapping based on a more flexible unit: memory. PPS reverses the directionality of the GPS and returns to the fragmentary; it disperses rather than unifies, offshooting in different directions, overlaying the intimate on corporate territory, chasing the shifting flow of geographical information. It conceives of design as a spatial practice, one …

Open Articulations, Matthew Bejtlich

Masters Theses

Open Articulations invites an exchange between human and environmental worlds through cycles of improvisation, reflection, and rebirth. It is a study of how exchanges emerge, what forms they can take, how they are mediated, and how we can sustain them with each other and with our surroundings. Through our coordinated immersion in landscapes and our spontaneous creation in them through frameworks encouraging play, we channel the spirit of a jazz drummer riffing with his midnight quartet, exchanging rhythms, images, sounds, movements, and textual fragments. A gentle breath, a flickering sensation, a gesture: expressions of a specific time rooted in a …

Refiguring Relations, Daphne Hsu

Masters Theses

Refiguring Relations sets conditions for interdependence and visualizes the affective relationships that people have with one another. Through scripts and participatory experiences, my work explores, challenges, and formulates expressions of collaboration. I extend spaces of overlap between individuals to encourage connection and alliance building, however temporary, slow, or small. In reading experiences, both print and digital, models of circulation and accessibility allow the audience to see and affect each others’ interactions. This thesis assembles methodologies and blueprints for reciprocal engagement, between designer and collaborators, designer and participants, and among participants themselves.

Future As Medium, Georgie Nolan

Masters Theses

FUTURE AS MEDIUM through critical examination develops a working premise for advancing designed visualizations of the future. In an effort to build new models of practice that consciously work towards the future, I undertake a set of delicate negotiations rooted in critical inquiry as well as creative production, all expressed across three temporal contingencies: yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I work the terrain of the past as an assembled archive of speculative worlds created by architects, designers, and artists, and problematize the mediation of futures through a close reading of their world-building tools. I use this archive to make sense of …

Jettisoning The Frame: Strategies For Designing At The Threshold, Will Mianecki

Masters Theses

Jettisoning the Frame: Strategies for Designing at the Threshold explores graphic design’s capacity for facilitating critique and understanding of accelerating systems of technological control and complexity. Working across archives, architectures, and infrastructures, designing at the threshold is an approach that takes the opacity of systems and subjects alike as a starting point from which new possibilities, configurations, and relations emerge. It is a loose methodology predicated on shifting, jettisoning, and reorienting the role and frame of the designer from objectivity to subjectivity. From neutrality to implication. From scientific to messy. From solutionism to something else.

The Relativity Of Value, Lai Xu

Masters Theses

My practice is an inquiry into the fluctuation of value. To deconstruct the simplistic consumer tropes of mundane/luxury, simple/complex, or hidden/obvious, I experiment with speculative forms of hybridization using interactive media platforms to create an alternate temporality. Microscopic moments open the door to design opportunities. Through field observations, image sequences, data, and archives of artifacts, I roll out the simple signifiers of symbolic value to pause attention while also exposing the paradox of our consumptive behaviors.

What Do I See Between 2 To 8 O'Clock, Youtian Duan

Masters Theses

We record our daily life, our daily emotions. But maybe we lie to ourselves. Or our expression is a kind of hope: what we want to look like or want others to think we are like. Unfortunately, it’s usually not our natural appearance, not the honest thoughts in our hearts. Maybe we don’t understand ourselves.

I like to record my dreams. In the dream world, sometimes I relax, sometimes nervous, and unconsciously wander around. That is the real me. In my unconscious dream state, I identify myself, know myself, again and again. I can live in peace with a world …

Community, Harana & Karaoke: Towards A Theatrical Design, Ryan Diaz

Masters Theses

Community, Harana, & Karaoke: Towards a Theatrical Design explores graphic design’s potential as theatrical staging for building community and practicing the difficult and complicated art of loving others through performance.

Studying graphic design as harana, the traditional Filipino custom of romantic serenade, offers a framework to view both mediums as social architectures that propose and transform proximities of relation between people. As in harana, graphic design facilitates in naming, grounding, and organizing social relationships; in taking these affective environments as content and form, both arts align with the nature of performance and staging. Through practice, research, and abstraction, the graphic …

Making Meaning, Eric Loucks

Masters Theses

Making Meaning explores mental health through the lens of a contemporary craft-based design practice. Themes of identity, catharsis, connection, flow, teaching, and community create a framework for understanding the role craft plays in developing and maintaining a healthy mindset. The physical pieces that result from this approach are meticulously made, highly considered, and given the quality of contemporary heirloom: a piece that promotes a kind of emotional connection and wellness in their owner.

Transformers: Versatile Apparel For A Sustainable World, Zihan Amy Peng

Masters Theses

This collection and book were inspired by a TED talk called “I broke up with fast fashion and you should too” by founder of The UpCycle Project Gabriella Smith. After I heard this inspiring talk, I reflected a lot on my own habits of clothes shopping during different life stages, how I became a fan of fast fashion, and how Covid-19 has impacted the way I shop and dress. I soon dug further into the ugly truth about the fast fashion industry’s environmental impacts, how their marketing strategies lure the general public to consume more products, and potential solutions to …