Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Viewer-, Author-, And Ownership In The Work Of Andrea Zittel, Amanda M. York

Theses and Dissertations

Andrea Zittel invites others to collapse the distinctions between artist, viewer, and collaborator by interacting with her usable works. This thesis explores the process of interacting with Zittel's works, and how it affects viewer-, author- and ownership.

Comfort Toys: Coping Tools For Children With An Epileptic Parent, Benjamin Evjen

Theses and Dissertations

When a caregiver suffers from epilepsy, a child can often feel frightened, vulnerable, and alone whenever a seizure occurs. In my thesis project I intend to help children negotiate this struggle with the use of therapeutic toys. Through play, children can navigate feelings that are often overlooked by adults. The visual appeal, simplicity, and materials used in their creation help facilitate comfort through sensory cues. By applying coping mechanisms to deal with stress caused by the passage of time, provide tactile comfort, and equip the child with tools to take action, their emotional needs are met. These toys address an …

Expressive Cartography, Boundary Objects, And The Aesthetics Of Public Visualization, Patricio Davila, Dave Colangelo, Robert Tu

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

Aesthetic visualization projects that incorporate users, community stakeholders, multiple modalities and technologies necessarily emphasize the way that an artistic visualization can be both an artifact and a process — a conceptualization of aesthetic visualization that is useful for thinking about visualization in general. In this paper, the authors propose the concept of the visualization as boundary object, a move away from the indexical claims of visualization and instead towards an acknowledgement of the entangled nature of social, political, economic, cultural, technological and environmental actants. Through a description of the In The Air, Tonight public visualization project, the authors suggest that …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

Is This Art?, Susan Joyce

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Is This Art?

Fringe Exhibitions began in 1999 as an independent curatorial practice. My primary area of research was the intersection of art, science, and technology. I decided go this route because I was interested in finding a way to engage the contemporary art audience. I was inspired by Eduardo Kac, an artist I first worked with as a curator on an exhibition featuring his “Holopoems”. I continued working for several more years organizing exhibitions in university art museums and galleries where support for this type of interdisciplinary work and experimentation was well received and encouraged. The research I conducted …

Disrupting The City: Using Urban Screens To Remediate Public Space, Jean Dubois, Dave Colangelo, Claude Fortin

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

For over a decade, human-computer interaction (HCI) research placed a great deal of emphasis on studying interaction, engagement, and appropriative practices in online technology-mediated social environments. Moving forward, however, we see computing systems increasingly designed to support digitally-augmented face-to-face interactions in public settings. As far back as the nineteen seventies, new media artists anticipated this interactive potential of digital public displays to foster new forms of situated interactions in urban space, quite distinct from mobile computing in that they altogether exclude online connections or exchanges. Drawing on examples of practice, this paper discusses and show-cases some of the key creative …

Curating Massive Media, Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

The European Union’s media art initiative Connecting Cities and New York-based Streaming Museum are two recent examples of curatorial models that operate through large, networked, digital displays. This growing exhibition category combines expressive media architecture and telecommunication elements to engage ‘trans-local’ sites and diverse publics in complex media spaces. By investigating the confluence of exhibition making, public art and urban experience, this article explores the relationship between spectacle and criticality with respect to shifting notions of space, identity and ‘the common’.

Note: At the time of writing, Dave Colangelo was affiliated with Ryerson University.

Imagining New Possibilities Through Social Practice, Sarah O. Hull

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

In my practice, I have significantly questioned the role of the arts in social change. I have explored various forms of social practice, especially political art,public art and community art. Social practice lives in-between the world of art and social action and can add an important voice to both. Still, social practice, (like all forms of art) is limited and cannot be the sole source of social change. It is by working with others already organizing for social change, but bringing in the unique skills and perspectives of an artist that social practice is most effective. In this thesis, I …

Clairvoyant Learning: The Strangeness Of Playing Games, Jeremy Shipley

Graduate School of Art Theses

In retelling multiple stories of my research, this document serves as a quest to archive my interest in games as evolved systems of play that continue to manipulate the way we view literacy. In describing the subtly of these terms while examining the folkloric histories that contextualize the language of this media, I have doubly manipulated the form of my paper to be like a choose-your-own-adventure tale, reflecting the estrangement of time and authorship unique to the narrative space in games. Unlike the formal structures found in literature or cinema, games animate collaborative and nonlinear systems that return the craft …

The Leadership Hub, Michelle E. Healey

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Leadership Hub Senior Honors Creative Thesis comprises a website and creative design book. It organizes and designs leadership within the JMU community within four key areas.

Experimental Boss Design And Testing, Joseph P. Mistretta

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the years, gaming has developed rapidly from simple pixel-based experiences to fully blown three-dimensional worlds. As developing technologies improve, so does the complexity and flexibility of what can be created. Encounters, along with all aspects of any gaming experience, have evolved along with the technologies that create them. These intense combat instances, often times referred to as “bosses”, represent a chance for the developer to challenge player skill, cooperation, and coordination. In addition to being major challenges, encounters also allow players to feel a sense of progression as they learn and adapt to mechanics incorporated within an encounter’s design. …

Visualizing Relationships Between Related Variables: Improving Physics Education Through D3.Js Network Visualizations, Stephanie Friend

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

phiMap is a web application started by Cal Poly professors and students to aid professors in teaching physics. I developed Javascript visualizations for phiMap that serve to simplify the processes of both teaching and learning physics. These visualizations aim to present relationships between physics variables in an easy to understand manner, and they could eventually have a huge impact on physics education.

Locative Media As Remix, Conor Mcgarrigle

Books/Book Chapters

While data-driven art is not new, recent developments in technical, artistic, and social spheres have coalesced to produce new opportunities for artists and activists who remix data with space and place to form locationally specific political critiques of great power and flexibility.

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

An Expanded Perceptual Laboratory: Public Art And The Cinematic Techniques Of Superimposition, Montage And Apparatus/Dispositif, Dave Colangelo

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of the moving image in public space extends the techniques of cinema— namely superimposition, montage and apparatus/dispositif—threatening either to dehistoricize and distract or to provide new narrative and associative possibilities via public art. These techniques also serve as helpful tools for analysis drawn from cinema studies that can be applied to examples of the moving image in public space. Historical examples include the multi-screen experiments of Charles and Ray Eames; and contemporary public projections such as Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection, Robert Lepage’s The Image Mill, my own project entitled Workers That Live in the Mirror, …

More Is The Same, Tyler Reeves Nansen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Nansen, Tyler, M.F.A. Spring 2015

More Is The Same

Chairperson: Associate Professor Trey Hill

More is the Same is the result of my examination of the perception of space in relation to architecture and landscape. By embracing modern concepts of the grid, formalism and design, this compilation of personal experiences and memories, manifests as post-minimal sculptures. However, when considering the hierarchy of importance in my work this involves pure visual perception over any specific narrative. The final product is an exhibition which elicits a perceptual experience for its viewer.

My work is about space and the creation of visual interactions, …

This Is Not A Trend, Michael T. Workman

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

ABSTRACT

Workman, Michael, B.F.A., May 2015 Art

THIS IS NOT A TREND

Faculty Mentor: Elizabeth Dove

This is not a trend is a multi-media art installation that examines the valuation system of contemporary art by creating an absurd situation that mimics a real commercial experience. The manner in which value is placed on art is artificial. Both the monetary and intellectual value of art is decided mostly on the reputation of the artist, their fame, and how well their work is marketed to the public. These characteristics are marketed to art consumers in order to sell them an authentic “art” …

Virsa: The Contemporary Value Chain, Samreen Zahra Mrs

Theses and Dissertations

"Handicraft" means a useful or decorative object made by a craftsman who has direct control over all stages of production. Handicrafts have always had a greater value, an identity of their own that is reflective of their place, culture and materials, as well as a sense of belonging to a particular place and time. With the ever-growing mass production that followed the Industrial Revolution, we lost those crafts to multiple reasons: one being cheaper, industrial-made products reducing the demand for handicrafts, and another being a shift in consumer tastes. Most craftspeople hardly earn enough to survive and fulfill their basic …

The Land Scouts: Guide Book, Katie D. Ries

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

The Land Scouts promote modern land stewardship and are open to all. The Guide Book gives an overview of the scouts as well as information on getting started earning badges and hosting a troop.

The Immersive Medium: Art, Flow, And Video Games, Christopher M. Yalen

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

In this article, the question of whether or not video games could be considered art is explored, as well as what this means for video games as cultural products. Using an interdisciplinary approach, I suggest that there are some games we can consider “art”, and that these games are not only different aesthetically speaking, but are also different from a media-effects standpoint. The article consists of three main sections, an aesthetic review, a content analysis, and a pilot study. In the aesthetic review, I employ different perspectives from aesthetic philosophy in order to come up with criteria for what an …

Performance Sculpture--An Exploratory Collaboration Between Sculpture And Dance, Cesia G. Kearns

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Kinetic sculpture suggests new visual possibilities when combined with dance. Wishing to explore such avenues of interaction for sculpture, this artist sought to develop pieces that could be incorporated into choreography. An artist and a choreographer wove their concepts and styles together to create a performance art piece that rose from the reciprocal influences of interactive sculpture and dance. The creative process included development of concepts, visual imagery, and movement as the artist and choreographer shared ideas. The choreography of the original dance influenced the form, structure, and conceptual elements of the sculpture, which was developed in reaction to the …

Wonders Of Wisconsin: A Study On Insect Macrophotography, Brenna L. Decker

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This past year I have been honing my skills as an entomologist and as a photographer. My solo exhibition “Wonders of Wisconsin: A Study on Insect Macrophotography” not only presents my personal progress, but also represents an overarching theme of a liberal arts education: connectivity. Everything we see or learn on campus and throughout life is connected. This audience-engaging exhibition has provided a visual for the connections between the fields of science and studio art, the art movements of New Objectivity and Relational Aesthetics, and between human and insect life.

The final exhibition opening on May 1^st at 5:30pm …

Rieglematica: Re-Imagining The Photobooth Through Female Performativity And Self-Portraiture, Allison E. Riegle

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores the historical significance and advancements of automatic photobooth portraiture from the late 1800s onwards, focusing specifically on the intention behind the photobooth’s creation and the significance and cultural implications of its introduction into society. As it gradually became a staple of modern society, regularly visited by citizens to have their portraits taken, numerous artists sought out the photobooth as both a studio and a stage in which to document performative self-portraiture. The space and aesthetics of the photobooth have inspired artists to re-envision the confines of the booth and use its automatic function as a point of …

Violence Against Women: An Artistic Intervention, Kathryn Douglas

Graduate School of Art Theses

We have many tools available to impede violence against women. Legislative circles, educational systems, and advocacy groups all work tirelessly to eradicate these heinous crimes and serve the victims of abuse. However violence against women is still described as “‘the most pervasive human rights challenge’ in the world today”.¹

For some it can be difficult to view socially engaged art making as an essential component of women’s advocacy compared to immediate housing, legal counsel, help hotlines, and the education of women. Blurring the lines between activism and art history, this relatively new art form is often embraced by marginalized …

The Design Of Compelling Narratives, Miasha K. Vicino

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

While storytelling is an essential form of communication and has been used to help humans make sense of the world and prepare for the future for thousands of years, compelling narratives are designed storytelling systems that encourage the audience to get involved and make active thought and behavioral change. Another significant aspect of compelling narrative design is that they are not resolute. While stories have definite endings, the end of a compelling narrative should be a “call to action”, an opportunity to engage further and invest time, effort, or aid back into the narrative’s cause. The challenge for designers is …

Measuring The Effects Of An American Physiological Society’S Phun Week Activity On 2nd Grade Students, James Edelman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the last few years the United States has been on the decline in the fields of science and technology. The American Physiological Society (APS) has developed a program to engage young minds with scientists. Physiology Understanding Week (PhUn) is the APS initiative to use interactive experiments to engage school-age children with science and physiology. Even though PhUn Week has been going on since 2005, systematic assessment of the activities effects is rare. Here, we sought to assess if an APS PhUn Week activity enhances physiology understanding and interest in science in second grade children form a rural area. The …

In The Air Tonight: An Uncommon Interface For Common Concern, Maggie Chan, Dave Colangelo, Patricio Davila, Robert Tu

School of Film Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is concerned with addressing social concerns with large-scale, multi-modal media art that uses digital networks, reactive architecture, and the city as semiotic resources. As artists and designers who are involved in socially engaged practice, we see an important role in foregrounding political and social issues through networks and architecture, negotiating and furnishing access to both while shaping compelling interfaces that allow people to contribute by amplifying an area of common concern. We discuss some previous work by Davila and Colangelo and focus on our latest project, In The Air, Tonight, which aims to visualize local wind patterns combined …

The Art / Crime Archive: An Anti-Boredom Space, Paul Kaplan, Brian Goeltzenleuchter, Dan Salmonson

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

This paper reports on an ongoing web-based project devoted to the study of deviant art and creative crime called the Art / Crime Archive: www.artcrimearchive.org. The Art / Crime Archive (ACA) is a collaborative laboratory, teaching center, and web-based platform devoted to the study of this space. The ACA is organized by an artist, a criminologist, and a computer engineer. The working process of the ACA involves locating, archiving, and discussing visual, audio, and text artifacts that support this shadow space. The work product is a dynamic archive which can be configured for a multiplicity of contexts—art exhibitions, academic …

Geology – Future Continent, Joy Wulke

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

Terra Mirabila, a multi-media presentation illustrating the geological story of Stony Creek Granite back through complex sequence of geological events that spanned some 600 million years of early history.

Locative Histories: Exploring The Continued Influence Of Early Locative Media Art, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

This paper, which draws on aspects of my doctoral research, traces the influence of early Locative Media Art on the current form and application of location-aware technologies. The mechanisms and impulse for this influence are introduced and analyzed and it is proposed that they point to new approaches in the consideration of the agency of Locative Media art.

I return to the origins of Locative Media at the Karosta workshop and the ambitions of early practitioners to argue that the practice was based on a prescient analysis of the potential for ubiquitous networked location-awareness. From this analysis was developed an …