Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Away From Keyboard: Practical Applications Of Antifascism, Amber Sarelle Easley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

My work sits uncomfortably between and across the disciplines of activism and art. This tension is typical of Socially Engaged Art: a social interaction proclaiming itself as art. I aim for these interactions to center antifascism in interrogating the complex interrelation between digital spaces and the streets outside our front doors, as antifascism is the only appropriate response to the blatant fascistic aspirations that is both digitally and physically present.

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

Digital Transformation And Design For Maintainability In Industrial Design, Ahmed Tarek Mohamed Fathy, Salwa El Ghareeb, Yasser Shaban

Journal of Art, Design and Music

In this paper, we explore the impact of the rapid digital transformation in Applied Arts and Design and its influence on the realm of Maintainability. We examine how CAD, 3D modeling, have revolutionized the conceptualization and prototyping stages, enabling precise idea communication and immersive representations. Specifically, we focus on Design for Maintainability (DfMn) and its critical aspects such as repairability, serviceability, maintainability, and reliability, which significantly affect cost and user satisfaction. By leveraging this tool, designers can create highly maintainable and user-friendly products. The transformative potential of this tool in industrial design is highlighted, providing promising avenues for future research …

Transcendent Boundaries: The Impact Of Art Festivals On Rural Revitalization In East Asia, Yili Peng

MA Theses

This thesis explores the intricate relationship between biennial art festivals and rural development, offering a comprehensive analysis of how these cultural events contribute to the socio-economic development of global art exchange. Anchored in the study of biennial culture, with a historical lens on the pioneering Venice Biennale, the research digs into the evolution of biennial events from exclusive art gatherings to transformative cultural phenomena with global outreach and impact. It underscores the role of these festivals in fostering international cultural exchange, enhancing contemporary art visibility, and influencing social and economic landscapes in East Asia.

Bridging Cultural Disconnects: Implementing Social And Emotional Learning Through The Use Of Action Research And Community Responsive Pedagogy Through The Art-Making Process, Rajeev Colleen Haymond

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis project will explore the intentional implementation of social and emotional learning strategies while being grounded in a community responsive pedagogy in an art classroom. The big idea was to be intentional when incorporating social and emotional learning teaching strategies to offer a safe space that will aide in bridging the cultural disconnect that I have observed in the classroom. Through building on the five SEL competencies such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making students were able to build up their sense of pride and self. Through the use of action research, I was able …

Poster, Performed: Understanding Public Opinions Of Authorship In Generative Artificial Intelligence Models Via Analogy, Wylie Z. Kasai

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Over the last decade, generative artificial intelligence models have advanced significantly and provided the public with several tools to create new works of art. However, the true authorship of these works has been debated due to their training on web-scraped data. Serving as an analogy to these larger models, Poster, Performed is an interactive artificial intelligence exhibition project that uses image assets submitted by the public to create poster compositions with custom image processing algorithms. During the course of a four-day exhibition, visitors were asked to identify the exhibition’s primary artist from five options: (1) participants who submitted image assets, …

(Meta-)Physical Artworks: Digital Augmentation In Art Observation, Macy A. Toppan

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Augmented art— the subgenre of art that incorporates physical and digital artwork— is a rapidly growing field driven by advancing technology and a new generation for whom that tech is a given. Yet the presence of media like augmented and virtual reality in exhibition remains a controversial subject. Rather than focusing on the many theoretical debates about whether digital pieces can qualify as "good" art, we study it in practice through the eyes of the casual art observer. This paper highlights the audience in a within-participant study that asked viewers to take in a physical sculpture intentionally built with virtual …

Structura Lux, Anton Pleshka

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In the evocative realm of installation art, my creative research

navigates the nuanced interplay between light and space, with the

ambitious goal of transforming the viewer’s perceptions through

immersive environments. This venture is more than a creative journey;

it is a phenomenological exploration that emphasizes the primacy

of lived experience in artistic expression. My installations, through

manipulation of light and form, evolve into conversations between my

intentions as an artist and the experiences of the audience, crafting

moments that intentionally elicit a wide spectrum of responses and

challenge the traditional confines of visual storytelling.

Envisioning Futures: A Photovoice Study On How An Urban Afterschool Program Empowers Caregivers To Be Agents Of Change In Their Community, Ellen Mays

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

As part of comprehensive whole-family out-of-school-time programming, parent engagement and education play an important role in addressing achievement and opportunity gaps in low-income neighborhoods. Parent groups have the potential to be a unique space of social justice work by creating supportive, innovative spaces to build social capital and organize around common action goals. This photovoice study looks specifically at “Parent University,” a parent out-of-school-time meeting group that focuses on empowerment education by providing opportunities for parents to meet, engage in rich consciousness raising dialogue, identify areas in need of change, and create and implement action for social change. This study …

In Shame I Will Find Paradise, Taehee Whang

Theses and Dissertations

As a Korean American non-binary digital artist and designer, my recent explorations have focused on using voice as a medium to articulate nuanced feelings of displacement and the intricate relationships between language, identity, and expression. This journey expands beyond my personal experiences with gender dysphoria, delving into the lives of non-binary and transgender individuals undergoing gender-affirming voice therapy. Through my thesis research, I have developed interactive multimedia installations inspired by dialogues with individuals such as Umico Niwa, who traveled to Korea for voice feminization surgery, and Jeong Yoon Lee from Hyperlink Press, a four-year participant in Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). …

Zaytouna: Rooted Histories In Uprooted Memories, Naima M. Almajdobah

Theses and Dissertations

Palestinians, whether living under occupation or—like myself—in the diaspora, experience a complex journey of displacement and dispossession stemming from the Nakba of 1948. This reality shapes our collective identity, rooted in our connection to our homeland.

Zaytouna explores an under-researched topic: the relationship between the olive tree and uprooted Palestinians. It reveals a rich tapestry of narratives that encompass the quintessential and everlasting relationship between a land and its people. The resulting interactive archival installation consists of two parts: audio recordings from Palestinians in the diaspora, which capture their memories and voices; and visuals, which represent the storytellers’ places of …

Attitudes Of Experiential Designers Across Design Disciplines, Danielle Degarmo

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

The expanded use of the term scenography is widening its understanding of the word to encompass many experiential design disciplines beyond its origin in theatre. At its essence, scenography is the culmination of a designer’s collaborative efforts to take a prompt, whether it be a client program, a script, or other, and produce a holistic assemblage of experiential design elements to spatially engage an end user. Many experts in across design fields have acknowledged that there is disciplinary cross over among those practicing in experiential design fields in terms of design output or intention. By means of designer surveys and …

Performative Mixing For Immersive Audio, Brian A. Elizondo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Immersive multichannel audio can be produced with specialized setups of loudspeakers, often surrounding the audience. These setups can feature as few as four loudspeakers or more than 300. Performative mixing in these environments requires a bespoke solution offering intuitive gestural control. Beyond the usual faders for gain control, advancements in multichannel sound demand interfaces capable of quickly positioning sounds between channels. The Quad Cartesian Positioner is such a solution in the form of a Eurorack module for surround mixing for use in live or studio performances.

Diffusion/mixing methods for live multichannel immersive music often rely on the repurposing of hardware …

Negative Estrangement: Fantasy And Race In The Drow And Drizzt Do’Urden, Steven Holmes

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This essay introduces the concept of negative estrangement to help understand current cultural interventions into the norms of depicting fantasy races. First, this essay builds on Shklovsky’s concept of estrangement to describe the literary practice of negative estrangement, wherein artists craft “more evil” foes based on hybridized amalgamations of stereotypes to create antipathy toward a subject, be it monster or fantasy race. This practice is sometimes used in service of confronting the issue of race and racism, despite seeming to reify or rearticulate racist stereotypes.

This essay builds on Tolkien’s argument in favor of creating “more evil” foes to exemplify …

Excerpts From An Anti-Standardized “수능”: A Design-Fictional Approach To Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"Excerpts from an Anti-Standardized '수능'” experiments with design fiction to disrupt overly rehearsed ways of thinking about Korea’s past(s), present(s), and future(s).

Balanced Blended Space: Proposing A Universal Theoretical Framework For Combinative Reality, David Smith, Frederick Bianchi

Publications and Research

In today's fragmented societies, a unified framework for communication and collaboration across different realities is crucial. We introduce Balanced Blended Space (BBS) as a framework for describing combinative reality, encompassing virtual, physical, and conceptual realms, all intrinsically connected. Interactions within these environments shape our perceptual space. This paper outlines key axiomatic assumptions, criteria for a universal framework, and fundamental terminology. We identify deep symmetries enabling the BBS framework, including Cognitive and Computational Symmetry, Physical and Virtual Symmetry, Mediation Pathway Symmetry, Space-Time Symmetry, and Sensory Symmetry. We propose tests to determine its viability, emphasizing virtual intelligence as a collaborative partner. We …

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 …

Step 10, Jinhong Cai

Masters Theses

Step 10 is an experiment on provoking empathy through

abstracted elements within my studio practice. I am

proposing to craft an emotional piece without leaning

on my identity. This written thesis consists of two parts:

narrative prose and an explanation of my studio practice.

While the installation is entirely devoid of cultural or

personal references, this text-based thesis is full of them

because it is intended to inform whoever is interested in

learning more about the motive behind this creation.

The questions I bought into the thought and creation

process are: Can a piece of art still successfully bring

out …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

The Benefits Of Art Therapy On Stress And Anxiety Of Oncology Patients During Treatment, Helen Shiepe

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Within the last ten years research on art therapy and its positive impact on oncology patients’ stress and anxiety during treatment has been minimal. Oncology patients whether they are children or adults when diagnosed experience similar reactions due to their diagnosis, treatment, and in some cases end of life care. The current question is whether or not art therapy does have a positive impact on decreasing the stress and anxiety with oncology patients while undergoing treatment. Deane, Fitch & Carmen (2000), discussed art therapy as a healing art that is “intended to integrate physical, emotional, and spiritual care by facilitating …

Digitizing The American West: Analyzing Rhetoric In Red Dead Redemption 2, Amalia Mcevoy

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

High-budget, long-form storytelling games offer dozens of hours of content for audiences to explore and learn from. Although far different from sitting and reading a book, there is a distinct connection to be made between how literature is experienced and how audiences can experience a narrative-heavy video game. Based on this connection, there are bridges to be built between video games and literature, understanding how one field can benefit from the other as well as how one field can be informed by the other. An analysis of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 using reader response theory can illustrate …

Expressive Marks: Art In The Age Of Augmented Reality, Carson G. Levine

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Augmented reality (AR) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) introduce new considerations for the long-standing debate of what it means for digital art to be “real.” However, the ability to create AR experiences is limited to those who are technically skilled or who can afford to consult someone else. This paper addresses the need for an accessible tool that enables artists of all technical backgrounds to expressively create marks in AR. The solution includes a mobile application called CrayonAR. The system was designed to be modular, minimal, and physically engaging, and was developed in Unity using ARFoundation and Firebase Storage and Realtime …

Eco-Interoception: What Plants, Fungi And Protista Have Taught My Body, Sara Riley Dotterer

Art Theses and Dissertations

To me, ecology is the relational, full-body awareness that I am made up of and deeply connected to everything around me; and for better or worse, this is reciprocal. I form ecotones, an ecological transitional zone between two ecosystems, with the world around me. I use this ecotonal lens to blur binaries and dissolve boundaries between me and the world “outside my body.” During my Masters of Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University, I have continuously explored and represented the lives of various more-than-human species outside of my body, including plants, fungi and protista through an ecotonal lens. Although these …

Dirt Circus: Queering Sports And Home Through Filth, Hannah Patteson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This monograph accompanies the MFA Thesis Exhibition, “Dirt Circus”. I outline the history of circus and carnival culture and the ways in which queer identities are expressed through these artistic modes. I describe the nonconforming expressions of gender in these arenas through bearded ladies, aerialists, clowns, and the freak show. I then explore various groups from the 70’s to present day, including Bread and Puppet Theater, The Cockettes, and Split Britches, who utilize performance to further their ideologies of gender freedom, anti-capitalism, and sexual liberation. I compare our differing uses of cheap art and public engagement within the realm of …

Elsewhere: In Defense Of Daydreaming, Alex Braden

MFA in Visual Art

Much like music, organic life is an absurd, improbable, and serendipitous instance. I set circular, electric, acoustic, and magnetic forces in motion and allow them to coalesce freely in the hopes of synthesizing unexpected moments of beauty, connection, and harmony.

Uni_Form Space: Exploring Environment Through Fashion+Architecture, Alanzo Price

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Henry Van de Velde advocated for the German concept, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ which translates to ‘total work of art’. This concept became popular during the Art Nouveau Movement around the 1890s when architects began utilizing their knowledge of scale to design fashion and other everyday objects like silverware. Though this concept has produced intriguing designs, architects still shy away from design processes that seem ornamental assuming that they will not produce work that is ‘architectural’. The goal of this project is to create an architectural environment by curating designed elements that use a recognizable design language present in fashion and architecture. The …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

The Landscape Does Not Care It Is A Landscape: A Utopian Pessimist Journey In Kentucky., Shachaf Polakow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

These thesis and exhibition, invite the viewers to travel through different places in Central and Eastern Kentucky. The region’s landscape, like many other American landscapes, is often known to the public through the settler colonial lens—a lens that ignores Indigenous peoples’ history in the region. The work in the exhibition is a response to landscape art's history and its complicity with American settler colonialism- art that was recruited to create a new identity for the settlers and for the country from the beginning of the American Colonial Project. Landscape art was a crucial part of this effort, presenting the land …

Someone, Stop Her! The Musical (The Gallery Show): The Thesis Document., Hannah Dewitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis document accompanies a body of work that is radically vulnerable, personally political, and emotionally complex. Through my work, I challenge myself and my audience to sit with discomfort and create an environment suitable to generate a nuanced appreciation of pain that approaches its acceptance through humor, confessionalism, and the subversion of tropes against themselves as an act of counter-mimicry. This document situates my work within art-historical context with a primary focus on performance art and applies insight from each artwork referenced to further analyze and defend my own work. Additionally, I use texts relating to Camp sensibility, binary …

Ideation And Iteration For Creatives, Sandee M. Chamberlain

KSU Distinguished Course Repository

This course addresses the development of visual literacy including concepting, initial approaches of creating an encompassing aesthetic, creating timelines for production, and exploring the refining aspects of creative production. Students will devise an advanced creative problem and provide a documented account of their creative journey to present as a process journal at the end of the course.