Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Skinface, Islam Shehab

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout history, skin manipulation was primarily practiced for cultural, tribal, or religious purposes. In the contemporary landscape, skin manipulation has been objectified and commercialized. This is exemplified through bio-upholstery, foreign materials under our skin and changing the skin structure.

This thesis investigates skin manipulation, with the intent to focus experimentation on the skin’s lines of cleavage, a topographical map drawn on our skin and used to define the direction where skin has the most and least flexibility. The aim is to connect and explore materials that can be used as a second skin, while at the same time examining and …

Synergy: Game Design + Qur'an Memorization, Sultana Jesmine Moulana

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of digital technology has transformed nearly every part of our daily lives, including the way we learn and memorize. Such transformations raise interesting questions for one of the most long-standing and demanding memorization tasks in the world: the memorization of the Islamic holy book, The Qur’an. For Muslims, The Qur’an is a timeless, sacred text, cradling within its covers many profound images, stories, and parables. Despite rigorous research in the fields of game design and memorization techniques, very little work has been done in combining these two areas of research to create a game-based memorization experience of The …

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.

Sound Perception:Encapsulating Intangible Voice Memories In A Physical Memento, Mona Mahmoud Makhlouf

Theses and Dissertations

We live in a very busy world with a variety of sensory stimulation including the olfactory, visual, tactile, and auditory. The five senses are triggered by our surroundings and help us to form meaning about the world.ⅰ Based on where someone grows up, she or he is introduced to various sites and sounds, affecting how they interpret the world. Sounds relate meaning through the association between hearing, memory and an event. Hearing is one of the learning processes, in which individuals give, receive, and store information. We typically rely on our five senses, which contribute to the process of understanding, …

Women Self Actualization: A Narrative Of A Performative Gender Constitution, Hala A. Gabr

Theses and Dissertations

In a traditional Middle Eastern society, men and women have been confined within society’s gender definitions. Those imposed social constructs condition men differently from women by dictating expected behaviors, establishing a hierarchy of gender positioning and enforcing definitions that limit abilities and potential.

Based on postmodernist philosopher, feminist and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir and postmodernist American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, gender is not an inborn role, but rather created through stylized repetition of acts informed by society, named performative acts. For de Beauvoir and Butler, gender can never be a stable identity (Butler 1988).

Informed by Butler’s …

Art And Medicine: A Collaborative Project Between Virginia Commonwealth University In Qatar And Weill Cornell Medicine In Qatar, Amy J. Andres, Thomas R. Himsworth, Alan Weber, Stephen Scott

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Four faculty researchers, two from Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, and two from Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar developed a one semester workshop-based course in Qatar exploring the connections between art and medicine in a contemporary context. Students (6 art / 6 medicine) were enrolled in the course. The course included presentations by clinicians, medical engineers, artists, computing engineers, an art historian, a graphic designer, a painter, and other experts from the fields of art, design, and medicine. To measure the student experience of interdisciplinarity, the faculty researchers employed a mixed methods approach involving psychometric tests and observational ethnography. Data …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …

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 …

Climbing Mt. Rainier, Kathleen O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations

My work addresses notions of the American landscape through image, memory, and experience. Using found images, video, and a variety of materials to make objects I investigate the intersection of external representations of landscape in American culture and internalized desires of landscapes.

So Much Apparent Nothing, Emily Mcbride

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains reflections on motivations behind selected works leading up to and including my thesis exhibition so much apparent nothing. Through journal excerpts and analysis of my own psychology, I attempt to put into words my thoughts concurrent to my making, indirect as they may be. The following text shares my personal conflicts and ideologies surrounding art-making, the permanence of objects, and the acceptance of an identity in flux.

A Mapping System As A Method In Experiential Culture Learning And Engagement, Faisal Mohammad

Theses and Dissertations

From my observation as a new resident in Education City, I recognize a need for cultural awareness and communication amongst those studying and working in this particular area. With this project I propose a different experience, a new way to use experiential learning as a mechanism to change people’s predetermined opinions about one another and disrupt personal biases in order to foster cultural awareness and friendship.

A mapping system or wayfinding strategy to navigate a new city is the beginning of a visitor’s experience in a new place. This new experience is one way for users to identify locations through …

Adornment And Modesty A Symbiotic Relationship Between Surface Design And Social Behavior, Hawa Stwodah

Theses and Dissertations

The impulse to beautifying clothing through acts of adornments or embellishments is an innate characteristic of humans. The added decorative details are used for identification and visual communication by the wearer and comprehension and visual appreciation by the viewer.

This thesis investigates the recent attention to female modesty, labeled as the Modesty Movement--the community that has developed around the apparel segment of the Movement and the framework of the behavior encompassing the participants within Movement. Additionally, the thesis focuses on adornment through the lens of textile/surface design (embellishment) specific to the Greater Middle East and the northern provinces of India …

Embodiment Of Empathy: Experiencing Disease Through Design, Noha Fouad

Theses and Dissertations

Today, more than 400 million individuals around the world have diabetes. This number is expected to grow to more than 600 million by 2023. However, diabetes is more than just a statistic. It is an incurable, psychologically nuanced disease, with daily battles and far-reaching complications. The lives of those afflicted undergo permanent physical and psychological changes.

Reading the stories of diabetics, or hearing them share their experience may elicit an immediate yet often fleeting sense of realization. How, then, can this brief moment of awareness be prolonged? How can a non-diabetic feel diabetes? More importantly, why should they? This research …

Egyptianization: Culture Hacking As A Method, Hadeer Omar

Theses and Dissertations

In a broad sense, cultures undergo a metamorphoses due to the external influences and systems impacting the evolution of internal identities. Conversely, Individuals within cultures react to those external influences and systems.The act of hacking a culture is an opportunity to challenge an existing or imported system in order to bring about change and improvement. An aspect of culture hacking is to create messages of satire or irony in order to criticize, or completely reject established systems within cultures.

Post Arab spring, Egyptians practiced culture hacking by applying their cultural tools to external systems and influences, producing a process of …

Adaptability In A State Of Flux, Yasmeen Suleiman

Theses and Dissertations

“[that] which does not change does not endure” – Henri Bergson

Numbers only quantify the development Qatar is experiencing. In Doha, the city is a physical manifestation of these changes. The general approach to development follows a ‘tear down, build new’ model. Potential value is lost in what is discarded, despite necessity and convenience. This study addresses the topic by dispelling the assumed need to destroy in order to build. In doing so, it examines existing vernacular spaces that are often overlooked. The main application is analyzed through agents of space, such as buildings and the urban environment with varied …

Choreographic Space, Kelsey Sheaffer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, Choreographic Space, and accompanying exhibit is an arrangement of contemporary work being done in the cross-over between movement, drawing, sound and architecture. The thesis develops a lineage of choreographic thinking through a fissure in the classification of a dance as necessarily the body in motion. Through the link of the “choreographic object,” Choreographic Space asks how an interdisciplinary exploration of the principles of movement can reveal novel ways to think about the body in space.

The Curiosity Of Con, Petrified Breath, And An Accident Known As Blue., Steven Randall

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis installation emerged from an interest in visualizing breath. The resulting work came to exist at the intersection between art, biology, and performance.

The unicorn tapestries were used as a generative point of departure to explore the preservation and transformation of images through time, by time, and with time. Reproductions of the six tapestries were each etched into paper and then submerged into solutions of Phenol Red dye, Ferric Ferrocyanide (also known as Prussian Blue), and various forms of sodium chloride. Exhaled breath was used to encrust these images of the tapestries into physical objects which gradually crystallized and …

Communicating The Overall Experience Of Research Through Various Approaches Using Art: A Case Study Of The Prothonotary Warbler, Hannah Huddle, Lesley P. Bulluck, Sarah E. Faris

Rice Rivers Center Research Symposium

Recommended Citation

In general, scientific research has publication of data as the end goal. The process and experience, which are of great importance in art disciplines, is not necessarily represented or valued. However, science has an inherent element of art to it, which deserves to be shown. I have been studying Prothonotary Warblers with a team from the VCU Biology Department to learn how I can reinterpret the research in a way that bridges the gap between the experience and typical scientific products. The research team measured spatial and temporal variation in warbler prey abundance (caterpillars and mayflies) and assessed …

Remnants, Angel D. Jones Mrs.

Theses and Dissertations

Angel Jones

Artist Statement

My mixed media collages address issues concerning the outcast, the overlooked, and the underprivileged. My inspirations come from what I experience and perceive around me. My purpose in life is to use my art to address social issues that involve children. For example, I focus my attention on issues ranging from homelessness to mental illness. I am passionate about how vital these concerns are to our success as human beings.

To express my ideas, I layer a variety of materials and textiles. The materials include fragments of photographs, drawings, and objects. The textiles include articles of …

G.A.M.E.: A Hypermedia Edition Of James Mcneill Whistler’S The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, Amy Colombo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, G.A.M.E., refashions James McNeill Whistler’s book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, into a hypermediated facsimile text and archive. By remediating the text, the socio-historical context of the Victorian time period in which Whistler lived is reestablished, making his book more accessible to twenty-first century audiences. The era studied in this dissertation includes the expansion of the idea of celebrity, the power of the press, and the concept of art for art’s sake from 1863 through 1892. In order to showcase these concepts, archival materials, such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and published pamphlets, from this period were …

Belt Melon Grass, Andrew M. Francis

Theses and Dissertations

This essay was written largely after the completion of my thesis exhibition which shares its title. An integral aspect of the work was the after-­hours maintenance it required. Below I describe the unforeseen personal significance that labor came to hold and the way in which it functioned as a healing ritual. Through this work, and those leading up to it, I have a reinvigorated awareness of the importance of therapy as an aspect of my art­making, of which this thesis is a testament.

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, …

Trying To Exit Here, Leigh C. Suggs

Theses and Dissertations

There is an in-between space during the act of seeing. The in-between space lies on the spectrum of the reality in front of us and what our brain tells us. It is within this suspended moment an individual can experience an unaltered and unaffected vision. While this moment is fleeting, it defines the highest peak of personal experience. It is my belief no two people will ever experience the same vision during this suspended time. And after it passes, the sigh/vision can never be the same. We are constantly bearing witness to the inexpressive, and this fleeting moment is something …

Proactive Conversation, 3d Printing, And An Old Nintendo, Tesha C. Ellis

Undergraduate Research Posters

Abstract

One hundred years from now, it would be a true historical treat to be able to showcase 20th and 21st century digital entertainment by presenting video game consoles in mint condition for interactive, educational, play. Arguably, it would be more enlightening and informative for future audiences to be able to physically engage with the electronic artifacts instead of simply observing them behind glass. With the use of 3D technology, components of video game systems can be preserved, and then printed as needed for repairs. It will help keep them functional for future researchers, educators, and enthusiasts.

Dispersal: A Multidisciplinary Investigation Of Plant Life, Alexandra E. Arzt

Theses and Dissertations

Using plants as a basis for exploring the interstices between the human and nonhuman, this thesis investigates ideas of awareness, intelligence, deep time, animism, and the fluctuating human perception of the agency of Nature. It outlines environmental art practices since the 1950s involving vegetal life. In addition, the paper provides a critical analysis of plant perception of Jakob von Uexküll’s work and theories of vital materialism and “critical plant studies” while noting recent studies in plant neurobiology. In my work, plants become active participants via their movement, seeding, and smell. This study takes the form of imitation, purposeful symbiosis, anthropomorphism, …

Avatar, Cyborg, Icevorg: Simulacra’S Scion, Guido E. Alvarez

Theses and Dissertations

I propose a theoretical framework that describes how avatars incorporate media as an inherent part of their nature and find a hosting body in cyborgs to navigate and spawn in media. I propose the birth of a new scion that combines avatar, medium and cyborg into a conceptual being that I call “ICEVORG.”

The ICEVORG expands beyond representation into the actual physical world by means of media transgression—more specifically, by the use of the Strange Loop also known as Metalepsis ICEVORG find an effective soil to thrive and interrogate our ideas of reality by means of iteration, expansion, fragmentation and …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

Cute As A Button, Marta R. Finkelstein

Theses and Dissertations

Cute As A Button explores powerlessness, vulnerability, illness and addiction all wrapped up in tender buttons and a cute, cuddly creature. Using animation, sculpture, sound and an intimate space, I surround the viewer in a saccharine nightmare, one that references the dark underbelly of the cute and the sweet. The visual and aural elements are representative of the psychological and emotional states of powerlessness, which are overcome by the act of making and exploring a medium over which I can have complete control.

Rituals, Our Past, Present & Future. Glimpses Of Islamic Enrichment, Othman Mohamed Khunji Mr

Theses and Dissertations

A Muslim should be encouraged to comprehend the benefit

and value behind every aspect of Islamic practice and wisdom,

and not just practice their religion because they were told to do

so. The products proposed in this thesis aim to achieve this by

inviting and encouraging a Muslim to practice The Five Pillars

of Islam while comprehending their value through the use of

modern means such as Arduino technology, 3D printing and

visual computing programing.

I am provoked by the fact that the circle of Gulf-region Muslims

I’m surrounded by, and have been exposed to since childhood,

belong to one …

The Orphanage Of Things: A Narrative Of Abandonment, Malaz Elgemiabby

Theses and Dissertations

In Sudan, 110 babies are abandoned in the streets of Khartoum every month. The majority of abandoned children are born out of wedlock. Young women with illegitimate pregnancies are often ostracized by their families and society, and the lack of emotional, financial and legal support has led many to take desperate measures, including the abandonment of their children. Relinquishing mothers exist like ghosts in Sudanese society. The only evidence of the mother’s experience is her anonymous, abandoned child. In order to understand and examine this phenomenon, I used ethnographic performance art informed by design research practice (Performative Research Design). I …