Interactive Arts Commons^™

Art In The Data-City: Critical Data Art In The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism, Conor Mcgarrigle

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter considers the role of digital art practice, with an emphasis on the Irish context, in what is described as the data-city, that is a theorisation of this contemporary urban condition so infused with opaque data-driven systems that almost every action is described by and enacted through data. The ubiquitous deployment and action of data assemblages – the networks of hardware and software that enable data-capture regimes – in urban space are changing the nature of the city itself in ways that are not readily apparent. Critical data art practices it is suggested, provide a method to highlight and …

Stranger’S Window, Nation’S Mirror, Kyoko Hamaguchi

Theses and Dissertations

In this text, I consider my identity as a Japanese immigrant in the United States during a global pandemic and its impact on my understanding of home as a liminal space. In particular, I discuss notions of home in relation to my work as an artist including two works that utilize the home-sharing platform Airbnb and three works that deal with the dichotomy of inside and outside.

The Last Prisoners Of War: How Nazi-Looted Art Is Displayed In U.S. Museums, Monica May Thompson

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

How art museums approach NLA is important today because much of the public relies on museums for their education. NLA cases are especially controversial because they are not only legal battles, but ethical ones so museums have to be extra careful approaching them. Even if the museum has won the legal battle the public may not see them as winning the ethical one therefore they might want to avoid displaying this information to the public. However, as we can see with the previous websites, it actually looks worse for museums not to be open and honest about their NLA pieces …

Combat Artist, Delvin Goode

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The integral bond that unites the American citizen with the selfless men and women of the Armed Forces will be strengthened through my juxtaposition of uncommonly complementary crafts. “Combat Artist”, featuring high-quality ceramic mugs, unique packaging, pristine painted panels, and kindred graphics will bridge a gap that enhances relationships between these two worlds through a shared love of country and shared culture. The resultant works create fantastic windows into my military life communicating messages full of humor, patriotism, and love. I aspire to masterfully unite ceramic techniques with proven principles of design distributed across all mediums within my work, culminating …

Evolving Perspectives: How Research, Age, And A Global Pandemic Alters The Mind's Eye In Costume Design, Audrey Reed

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how various factors can affect how something is viewed and appreciated. It specifically relates to James and the Giant Peach the musical as it is as a halted production for the VCU theatre due to COVID-19. This document encompasses facts about Roald Dahl’s life, details about my designs for the production, as well as how a global pandemic affected the life of theatre. Included in this document are research and renderings.

Reanimator/Reflection: 
Creating Mirrors Through Time 
With Ai, Sound, Video And Live-Generated Art In The Dark Age Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Eric Millikin

Theses and Dissertations

For my MFA thesis exhibition entitled Reanimator/Reflection, I used artificial intelligence to create three new works of sound and live-generated video art, each based on mirror reflections and 100-year-old racist post-pandemic horror literature by early 20th century American author H. P. Lovecraft. The themes of these writings mirror the issues of our current time. The primary works of Lovecraft that I referenced in the exhibition are “Herbert West: Reanimator,” (1922) a serialized tale about graduate school experiments which attempted to return the dead to life during a plague, and “Nyarlathotep,” (1920) a prose poem that suggests even our dreams …

Photography & Visual Perception, Rachel Leigh Bell

Open Educational Resources

This online class introduces students to the basic materials, terms and methods of digital photography. Students will be introduced to the digital camera, including camera settings and controls, but can also work with any photographing device. This is a hands-on class and students will photograph subjects indoors and outdoors, upload, edit, and print image files. Students will complete photo assignments throughout the semester as well as a final project that incorporates the techniques and themes covered in the course.

Landscapes Of Light And Text And Layer: A Projection Poetry Performance, Jason Nelson Dr.

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

A digital poetry performance in seven locations. This online performance mixes pre-recorded video of projection poetry in seven places/landscapes around SE Queensland, Australia with a live digital poetry reading.

The theme of this performance is landscapes of change, exploring places in SE Queensland impacted by bushfires, deviated by floods, altered by drought, damaged by weapon testing, trees thousands of years old, home of non-human creatures and the revealed geology that roads carve.

Using pico/portable projectors, digital poet Jason Nelson, will add a poetic light-based skin to these landscapes, recording the results, replaying them during the performance. As the projection videos …

Productive Misreading In Intermedia Art: Four Approaches By A Musician, Jeff Morris, Elisabeth Blair

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This discussion examines the evolution and lessons of four artistic performance works that engage with text and imagery with the mindset of a composer, rather than as an author or visual artist. The works involve computer music, improvisation, video art, generative art techniques, and challenging aesthetics. An analytical discussion reveals that different forms and mechanisms of reading are manifest in the artworks, and reflections upon these elucidate the intermedial nature of reading and the productive, expressive potential of interfering with these processes.

Snake Tube Adventure Racing… And More!, Jane Marie M. Tardo

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around using a specialized blend of art, design, and craft to interpret political narratives through fabricated products. These objects weave contemporary commentary and consumer indulgences into sculptural cultures. Each product is designed to mimic its own marketed culture—offering an enticingly tactile, interactive experience that is equal parts confusing, concerning, and delightful. The products are accompanied by investment opportunities in the form of popular, limited released merchandized objects, such as hats and patches. Using humor and subtlety, my gamelike installations explore arenas such as agency, autonomy, intimacy, and dueling realities in a time of ecological collapse and cultural …

The Object Memory Palace, Amra Causevic

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in orchestrating instances of potentiality or concrete possibilities that proposes the futurity of play through means of touch, activation, assembly, and interaction within art spaces. The installation mentioned is composed of found objects and repurposed materials that address themes of place, memory, object-ness, and the archive, through gestural means of poetics and map making. It is an invitation to create new logics and find moments of empathy, connectivity, and hopes for a collective.

Exploring A Qualitative Approach To Arts Advocacy And Evaluation, Lycette C. Belisle

Undergraduate Theses

The quantitative impact of the arts has become an increasingly important factor in determining the overall value of a project, and is often used to determine acceptance of submissions, public recognition and funding disbursement. This project evaluates current understandings of how the arts function within society, popular methods for determining the value of the arts and explores how qualitative reasoning can be utilized to communicate the value of supporting artistic endeavors. While placing a numerical value on the arts based on data collection can be important, this project will aim to evaluate the implications of relying so heavily on facts …

Dunidedcudigunadie, Lawrence Reid

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist discusses his Master of Fine Arts exhibit, titled DUNIDEDCUDIGUNADIE. The exhibit is to be held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, TN, from April 2nd to April 10th, 2020. A live reception will be held the evening of April 3rd, featuring a performance with the work, titled Look at You!

The following thesis explores the artist’s formative years – investigating how childhood experiences combine with artistic and theoretical influences to inform his art-making process.

Reclaiming Beercraft- A Sensory Experience, Zishan Zeng

Theses and Dissertations

The senses are mainly a source of arousal, enjoyment and pain and are of vital importance for the human body. They are also important because sensory perception is typical of many cultural artifacts and is given unique intensities and extensions, shapes and meanings through them (Heywood, 2017). As Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa stated, “architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world, and this mediation takes place through the senses” (Pallasmaa, 2012). To make architecture truly meaningful, it should be able to awaken all the senses.

The way we feel, smell, and even taste is hard to capture. …

Pantomime: The History And Metamorphosis Of A Theatrical Ideology, Karl E. Toepfer

Open Educational Resources

This book offers perhaps the most comprehensive history of pantomime ever written. No other book so thoroughly examines the varieties of pantomimic performance from the early Roman Empire, when the term “pantomime” came into use, until the present. After thoroughly examining the complexities and startlingly imaginative performance strategies of Roman pantomime, the author identifies the peculiar political circumstances that revived and shaped pantomime in France and Austria in the eighteenth century, leading to the Pierrot obsession in the nineteenth century. Modernist aesthetics awakened a huge, highly diverse fascination with pantomime. The book explores an extraordinary variety of modernist and postmodern …

So . . . We're Going For A Walk: A Placed-Based Outdoor Art Experiential Learning Experience, Priscilla Anne Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Schools in the United States often emphasize making children competitive in a global economy while neglecting the importance of developing citizens who are ecologically responsible. Problems of climate change, loss of biodiversity, mass extinctions and degradation of the natural environment, are often ignored. Some researchers have suggested that children lack unstructured play time in nature, have an increased amount of screen time, lack mindfulness, and are insulated from the natural world. Many children rarely have significant experience with nature's wildness. It is common for people to experience a sense of placelessness in the hyper-mobility of present times where "globalizing" agendas …

Chamindika Wanduragala Interview, Vincent To

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Chamindika Wanduragala is a Sri Lankan American visual artist, cook, DJ ( DJ Chamun), puppeteer and stop motion animation filmmaker based in Minneapolis. Her work deals with personal experience through mythic stories. She is also the founder and Director of Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop, which supports Native/POC in developing creative and technical skills in contemporary puppetry.

Bio from: http://chamindika.com/index.html

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Its Skin Is My Skin, Bryan Page

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text examines the complexity of attempting to empathize with bodies that are vastly othered from my own. This broad yet nuanced subject crosses epistemological boundaries and complicates the dualities between both the mind and body, and between the corporeal and the virtual. My desire to better understand the conditions of another’s experience originates from a painful traumatic loss which caused me to feel isolated and incomplete. In response to this suffering, I long to emotionally connect with other beings and create artwork that attempts to bridge the qualia of individual experience.

I am interested in the capacity (or lack …

Queerness, Witchcraft, And Embodied Presence: Aesthetic Knowings Of What A Body Can Do, Megan Bigelow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Taking as a point of entry the critique of representation and affirming the limitations of the cuts that language makes, this capstone project explores the imbrications and assemblages between Foucault’s concept of subjugated knowledges, witchcraft and other body-based ways of knowing and being, and the consciousness of non-human forms such as plants and through the framework of non-representational theory, process philosophies, aesthetics, queerness, and the concept of difference itself.

Since such theories themselves are living, breathing entities, this capstone project explores the ideological split that has occurred between sacred and secular beliefs, moving through different figures such as nuns and …

Dance Of Exile: The Sakharoffs’ Visual Performances In Montevideo (1935–1948), Pablo Munoz Ponzo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life-work chronology of the dancers and choreographers Clotilde von Derp (whose surname then was Sakharoff) and Alexander Sakharoff, who were exiled in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 1941 and 1948. During their stay in the Rio de la Plata region, the Sakharoffs stirred up the art scene by performing extremely detailed dances with great attention to costume design. This thesis begins with a review of the reception of the dancers’ performances by the artistic and cultural circles in Montevideo, arguing that the Sakharoffs’ “queer” trajectory resonated with the Uruguayan artistic community, influencing the creation …

Simply Mo., Marjolijn Jaliene Oskam

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

Small portfolio presentation of design work by Marjolijn Oskam, branded under simply mo. The poster includes school work as well as professional work.

Roses & Thorns, Stephanie Alaniz

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This written thesis has been created alongside the thesis exhibition shown in the Laura Mesaros Gallery at West Virginia University (displayed March 18th to March 22nd). The work presented consisted of drawings, bookmaking, and various forms of printmaking and collage. This body of work is meant to create an analysis of insecurities and body positivity we associate with our physical selves. This work is a collective experience that has been a collaboration with over 80 participants. The number of participants help to create a larger overall collective voice. By creating this collective voice, we can experience these feelings together and …

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II. Section …

Kioto Aoki Interview, Austin Sandifer

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Kioto Aoki is a conceptual photographer and experimental filmmaker who also makes books and installations engaging the material specificity of the analogue image and image-making process. Her work explores modes of perception via nuances of the mundane, with recent focusing on perceptions of movement between the still and the moving image. She received MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a 2017-2018 HATCH artist in residence at the Chicago Artist Coalition.

https://kiotoaoki.com/

Jeffrey Augustine Songco Interview, Yara Cruz

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio:
Jeffrey Augustine Songco (b. 1983) is a multi-media artist. Born and raised in New Jersey to devout Catholic Filipino immigrants, his artistic identity developed at a young age with training in classical ballet, voice, and musical theater. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the USA including the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. In 2017, he was featured in the publication Queering Contemporary Asian American Art, and he was the Installation …

Laboratoire DéBerlinisation: Art, Finance, And The Legacies Of Colonialism In Contemporary African Art: An Interview With Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the …

The Vanishing Line, Jacopo Mazzoni

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is an exploratory effort to bridge the rift that political and monetary powers created between art and technology. In my practice, these socio-political motivations are exposed through the creation of non-utilitarian inventions that use different technologies as charged metaphors. I research mass media language and construct interactive pieces while borrowing strategies from the entertainment industry to make environmental, social, and political issues more palatable than documentary films or raw data could. In my work, technology is regarded as a semidivine entity with supernatural powers that can both elevate and reduce the human experience. My work functions differently according …

Making Sounds, Patrick Costello

Theses and Dissertations

Using collaboration and performance as tools, I situate my personal story, my body, and my skills and interests within a contemporary landscape that is intersectional, full of partialities, and rooted in evolving ecologies.

Art Interventions And Disruptions In Financial Systems: An Interview With Paolo Cirio, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Prior to the release of the 2016 Panama Papers and 2017 Paradise Papers – leaked documents that uncovered the movement of funds through offshore tax havens – conceptual artist Paolo Cirio’s (b. 1979) project Loophole for All (2013) revealed and documented the mechanics behind offshore financial centers. In this interview, Cirio expounds upon his investigations of offshore banking practices, describes his projects for instituting alternative financial models, and explains his hacktivist (i.e. Internet activist) strategies that engage with legal and economic systems. Defining the foundational movements that inform his work, Cirio in turn illuminates his methods of direct provocation and …