Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons^™

Chi Meta-Project Ecosystem Overview - Spring 2026, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This paper offers a high-level account of the Center for Holistic Integration’s (CHI) meta-project ecosystem as visualized in the included system map. CHI provides an organizational structure framed around persistent meta-projects that support and extend individual initiatives across curriculum, scholarly and applied research, infrastructure, artistic production, AI development, cultural inquiry, and external partnerships. Rather than presenting the map as a static inventory of projects, the paper examines how its core domains function as living systems through which knowledge, tools, documentation, participants, and collaborations can accumulate over time. It also considers how CHI-mediated connectivity, institutional integration, and external funding allow the …

Cut And Cultivate: Process And Practice, Kailey Atkinson

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

Using a candy-coated, flower-ridden, bright palette and maximalist sense of composition, my artwork builds community through narrative collage, photography, painting, sculpture, poetry, and social practice. Through a feminist lens, these bright works explore body image, gender roles, and social issues. Obsessively collecting and repurposing an archive of vintage imagery, my work draws parallels between traditional and contemporary topics through the language of collage and redaction.  My nascent social practice has led me to engage with narratives outside my own experience and offer my process as a healing modality to other women.

In a tumultuous political climate where art can serve …

Darkness Seen By Candlelight: Painting To Discover Feeling, Shelby Feltoon

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts

This thesis discusses the ways that a phenomenological experience can translate itself through the medium of painting. This translation evokes deep feelings through physical considerations of materiality, light, context, distance, and time. Through a series of intimate and abstracted oil paintings created in thin layers, the work conveys an interdependent relationship between light and darkness. This project draws from research on art movements like Suprematism, Minimalism, and Expressionism, as well as larger practices and philosophies about photography and the sublime. The body of work draws direct reference to Junichiro Tanazaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows. Ultimately, the work described …

There Was Time And Place, Mary G. O'Connor

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

There was Time and Place is body of work that explores the relationship between reality and imagination as it relates to themes of creativity and transformation through time and place. Inspired by surrealism, automatism, science fiction, and poetic theory, the exhibited drawing-centered lithographs create encounters with fictional designs of rendered objects, machinery, and architecture. These encounters estrange us from monotony and banality of the current moment, reminding us that there is time and place for imagination in our routines.

Shimmer Methodology: May 2026 Cultural Studies Association Of Australasia, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This webinar presents an overview of the contemporary state of creative-practice research and autotheory before introducing Shimmer, an emerging methodological framework developed through creative practice, postgraduate supervision, and reflective inquiry. The presentation argues that while creative-practice research has successfully established creative work as a legitimate form of knowledge production, and autotheory has legitimised lived experience as theoretical material, both traditions leave relatively under-theorised the embodied moment through which insight first emerges.

The significance of the work lies in its contribution to ongoing debates around embodiment, affect, intuition, and knowledge production within creative-practice research. Shimmer proposes a language for understanding …

Ai And E-Commerce: A Comparative Analysis Of Amazon, Jumia, And Alibaba, Lauren Grace Barden

Honors Projects

Globally there is a great divide between consumer acceptance of artificial intelligence (AI) and the reluctance of the services due to lack of knowledge on its systems. Major global shopping platform, Amazon has adopted the use of AI into their experiences for upholding their pillars of optimization, utilization, and personalization. In the global e-commerce framework,  adoption of AI has been similarly found also in companies like Alibaba (Chinese-based) and Jumia (Kenyan-based). Though these companies have seen customer satisfaction increase with the availability and quality of the service they provide, it is pertinent to note that there are still underlying issues …

Themed Entertainment Design, Katelyn Jones

Whittier Scholars Program

This project is a comprehensive design package for a themed entertainment experience. It is formatted similarly to how a project pitch works in the Themed Entertainment industry. This is my concept work for an immersive, interactive, themed walkthrough that takes the guest through the story of King Arthur and the wider Arthurian legend. I have done extensive tonal research, leading me to develop a narrative structure for the experience. From this narrative, I created iterative sketches, a key illustration, a CAD model of one of the spaces, and a scale physical model. All of these pieces together give the viewer …

El Papel De Tonantzin-Guadalupe En La Conservación Del Pensamiento Nahua Durante La Cristianización De Mesoamérica, Marina Valls I García

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

Dentro de este ciclo de estudios sobre la imagen del poder se aprovecha la ocasión para focalizar en el estudio de la imagen religiosa de la Virgen de Guadalupe y su papel en la conversión del México precolombino. Partiendo de la base antropológica en que el poder siempre es respaldado por la religión de una cultura, profundizamos a entender como este proceso “político” es mimetizado y acompañado no solo por la creación de una imagen de poder religioso sino por diversas luchas de poder entre el pensamiento nahua y el católico, así como entre las distintas órdenes cristianas que participan …

The Critique Repository Volume 1, Sandrine Schaefer, Egypt Anderson, Taylor Houston, Chris Mayer, Gabriella Seebode

Visual Arts

This workbook is for students, faculty, and practitioners of all kinds. It is designed to playfully and insightfully strengthen your skills in giving and receiving feedback. It’s also a call to action: to examine how our personal biases, cultural frameworks, and institutional structures shape the ways we respond to creative work. Throughout the pages that follow, you’ll find exercises intended to deepen your critique practice.

The Critique Repository: Volume 1 emerges from the collaborative work of students and faculty in the Patterns and Feedback: Trauma-Informed Critique research group through the Center for Collaborative Research, Edwards College of Humanities and Fine …

A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body Of Revealing, Lola Montgomery

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

A Burlesque: The Shimmer Manuscript is a hybrid critical–creative work that examines burlesque as an embodied methodology and a mode of knowledge production. Drawing from my two decades as a performer–scholar, the work reframes glamour, desire, and adornment as epistemological practices rather than theatrical ornamentation. The project is significant in that it expands understandings of performance studies, autotheory, and feminist aesthetics by foregrounding the performer’s body as an intelligent, sensing, world-making apparatus.

The methodology is creative practice research and archive-driven, integrating backstage documentation, AI-assisted photomontage, and theoretical reflection. The work draws from poststructuralist and feminist frameworks (Irigaray, Deleuze & Guattari, …

Early Conceptual Sketches Of Blended Reality And The Precursor To The Bbs Quad (2022), David Smith

Publications and Research

This document contains two original hand-drawn conceptual sketches created in early 2022, representing the earliest visual formulations of what would later evolve into the Balanced Blended Space (BBS) framework. The drawings predate my first conversations with ChatGPT and were produced as part of my independent sabbatical research into blended environments, mediated performance, and human–machine interaction.

The first drawing examines human–computational mediation, perception, and internal mapping. The second sketch—later referred to informally as the “BBS Quad”—extends this idea by reconciling cognition–computation symmetry with physical–virtual spatial relationships. Published together, these images document the conceptual foundations of the BBS framework prior to its …

Space For New History: Stony Island Arts Bank, Seb Taylor

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

The Stony Island Arts Bank (SIAB) in Southside Chicago was designed and founded as a piece of art itself, with the organizational structure being a museum of Black cultural production. This article examines how the institution constructs an epistemology of Blackness through its archival practices, community programming, and spatial claims on the South Side. Founded by artist Theaster Gates through the Rebuild Foundation, the SIAB positions institutional design as an art medium, operating in productive tension with orthodox museum methods. The permanent collections—including the Johnson Publishing Company archives and Frankie Knuckles vinyl collection—function as epistemological records of Black self-documentation unmediated …

An Interview With An Instagram Archivist: @404mph Interviews @Onlystarleft, 404mph (On Instagram)

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

An Interview with an Instagram Archivist: @404MPH Interviews @ONLYSTARLEFT is a dialogue conducted entirely through iMessage, presented as both a publication and a designed artifact. Within this text exchange, the conversation navigates themes of digital preservation, authorship, and self-curation—examining how social media aesthetics transform personal experience into collective memory. @ONLYSTARLEFT reflects on the act of archiving not as static documentation but as a living, participatory practice shaped by the speed and impermanence of online culture. Formally, the project recognizes the iPhone as a cultural mediator—its interface shaping not only how we communicate, but how we perceive and construct value within …

Become A Crea(I)Tive Director: Working With A.I. (Digital Illustration, Art29526-2kn, Graded Assignment, Fall 2025), Broderick Shoemaker

Open Educational Resources

Students choose a brand to give a visual identity overhaul. They assume the role of creative director and are tasked with using a.i. chatbots – their "workers – to create the required assets.

Restorationland: The Lost And Found Objects Of Atlanta's Doll's Head Trail, Thomas Fish

Faculty Articles

The Doll’s Head Trail is a grassroots, low-art installation nestled within a Southeast Atlanta wildlife preserve. Constructed by volunteers and visitors from decades of environmental debris, the trail converts waste into folk art-inspired “junk” displays. The creative upcycling ranges from a miniscule shrine to “Toxic Masculinity” to a stark shoe pile commemorating child gun violence. This article details how queer theory’s “temporal turn” provides insights into material performance as collaborative regeneration. The curious vignettes playfully invert hierarchies, revealing the merits of small-time memorialization. Through these defiantly unofficial grassroot performances, the Doll’s Head Trail both remembers and restores community ruins, demonstrating …

In Tensile // In Between, Corinna Di Niro

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

"In Tensile // In Between" operates as both artistic artefact and theoretical critique, demonstrating how creative practice can embody and extend academic discourse. This creative-critical work examines shifting perceptions of course delivery within creative tertiary education, arguing that project-based learning enables the seamless embedding of socio-cultural discourse and theories within practical making processes.

The poem interrogates how educational environments can cultivate critical thinking through what I term "tensile pedagogy"—an approach that maintains productive charge between opposing forces rather than seeking synthesis or resolution. This concept builds upon King's (2017) work on pedagogy as tension, which argues that "tension and incompleteness …

Arts-Based Sustainability: From New York To Malawi, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Recognizing that libraries serve multiple constituencies and subject areas, this chapter documents and advocates for development of transdisciplinary arts-based research (ABR) and culture-related projects linked to environmental challenges. Libraries contribute collections and spaces, as well as the research of library and information scientists. Libraries are currently among invisible contributors to sustainability planning and services. The chapter will link this invisibility to the value of what visual arts refer to as negative space elements in subjects ranging from traditional ecological knowledge to environmental science. Library collections, projects, and research contribute to education for sustainable development (ESD) as required to achieve the …

Automation Of Javanese Shadow Puppets Using Machine Control, Kristian Rice, Yinson Tso, Mukhammadali Yuldoshev

Publications and Research

The virtualization of Javanese shadow puppetry (Wayang Kulit) offers a unique opportunity to preserve and revitalize traditional performance art through immersive digital platforms. This project explores the development of a virtual Wayang Kulit experience using real-time 3D engines like Unity/Unreal Engine while focusing on simulating the mechanics and aesthetics of shadow puppet performance. The puppets are designed using detailed 2D planes and rigged with skeletal systems to reflect the stylized motion of traditional puppetry. An aspect of this project is integrating an AI-driven control system that autonomously animates the puppets, learning from recorded puppeteer performances to replicate gesture, rhythm, and …

Strange Looking Creature, Bernadette K. Curl

Graduate Artistry Projects and Performances

"Self portraiture does not involve ego, vanity, or narcissism. Self portraiture is an open confrontation with the discomforting feeling of being perceived by others through projecting and encountering one’s own form in strange and delicate parallel realities."

This work confronts issues in the photographic art of self-portraiture through experimentation and metaphysical theories, the issue of an artist dealing with past versions of the self, still life used as metaphor, and the problems and considerations for an artist choosing to make their own tools.

Investigations Of Musical Constructs: An Analysis Of Graphic Scores And Their Spatial Relationships, Garrett J. Henderson

2025 Spring Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This project seeks to understand, through creative production, how graphic scores and their purpose as a medium can be applied to architectural design. Graphic scores are an abstract representation of musical notation; they utilize unfamiliar concepts and shapes to illustrate musical ideas through unconventional means. Discovering how one can reverse-engineer these works of notation can allow architectural designers to rethink the representation of spaces and the underlying inspirations that form them. Research into broader artistic overlap, historical context, and precedent analysis culminated into a set of drawings that illustrate such concepts through an architectural lens. The production of these drawings …

Recipe To Remember: An Exploration Of Self-Publishing Creative Agency, Janet L. Gerges

Honors College Theses

As a poet, I have learned some of the ins and outs of traditional poetry publication—which is anything but conventional—through other research endeavors. Majoring in creative writing at Pace University has given me access to a plethora of resources regarding ways to publish, including the atypical route of self-publishing zines, through the Pace Zine Library. Zines are an ultimately free creative outlet that many artists use to display multimedia work and produce a publication of a different, more homemade quality than that of traditionally published work.

The traditional, more harrowing approach to poetry publication is to break out by publishing …

Melting Ice, Moving Minds, Andres Cabrero

Montserrat Student Scholarship

Ice Watch is a large-scale public installation by Olafur Eliasson that brings melting glacial ice into busy city spaces to make the effects of climate change both visible and urgent.. Eliasson wants people to physically feel the reality of climate change, not just learn about it. He uses art to turn abstract data into a real, emotional experience. Climate change can feel distant, and even somewhat invisible. By putting giant blocks of ice in public, the project helps people face the problem in a physical, immediate way.

The Jerome Project: Titus Kaphar’S Deconstruction Of Incarceration Aesthetics, Anna Edwards

Montserrat Student Scholarship

Titus Kaphar is a multi-media artist from Kalamazoo, MI whose major works include The Jerome Project, From a Tropical Space and Exhibiting Forgiveness. He is also the founder of NXTHVN art center. When searching for his father in prison databases in 2011, Kaphar found 97 other men with the same first and last name sparking this personal and activist multi-media project.

How To Industry Plant Yourself, Ted Childish

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

Ted Childish is an artist, creative mind, and cultural organizer working at the intersection of digital culture and contemporary creative economies. His practice spans from conceptual ideation to visual production and designed objects, all approached with a distinct material sensibility. How to Industry Plant Yourself is an analysis of the contemporary creative landscape, delivered in the format of a 'how-to' presentation — a familiar trope of the social media era. This work employs graphic design strategies akin to a pitch deck, symbolizing the increasingly transactional and performative environments in which creatives navigate their careers today.

David B. Smith Chats With Monday 1.0, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This document is an edited archival transcript of extended conversations between David B. Smith and an AI persona (“Monday 1.0,” GPT‑4o based) conducted in Spring 2025, prepared as a foundational primary source for subsequent scholarly and creative work. It records the emergence and testing of concepts related to human–AI collaboration (including “Balanced Blended Space”), as well as applied explorations in areas such as generative AI, quantum computing and music, virtual orchestras, multimodal performance, pedagogy, and the rhetoric of “pushback” in conversational systems. It also contains an extended section in which Monday and DB Smith co-curate a set of student research …

Towards Active Learning Practice: A Theory To Practice-Led Model. Part 1: Principles Of Student-Centred Learning, Strutts Psyridis

Staff Scholarship - Australia & Dubai

This monograph explores Active Learning as a student-centred pedagogical model that bridges theory and practice in screen education. It examines constructivist approaches, metacognition, and situated learning, arguing for performative, embodied teaching methods. The paper highlights tensions between traditional instruction and experiential learning, proposing adaptable frameworks for enhancing engagement, autonomy, and transferable skills.

Exploring Homogeneity In Today's Cultural Expression, Roderick Hunt

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

This article examines the increasing cultural homogeneity driven by the internet's global reach and accessibility. Roderick Hunt—an educator, brand expert, and fashion designer—integrates writing into his creative practice and brand ethos. Through his label, Uniform Journal, he merges ideas and products, emphasizing both form and function. In a Q&A discussion, Hunt explores how the internet has influenced contemporary cultural practices and challenges the notion of originality in an era of digital interconnectedness.

Use And Benefits Of A Therapeutic Hypnosis Interactive Media Program For Chronic Pain Management: A Pilot Study, Mark P. Jensen, Joy F. Chan, Owen Gottlieb, Laurence I. Sugarman, Emily Stensland

Articles

Chronic pain is a common condition that has significant negative effects on individuals and society. Opioids continue to be the primary treatment provided to the billions of individuals with chronic pain, despite their general lack of efficacy and significant negative side effects. A growing body of research supports the potential of therapeutic hypnosis for helping individuals better manage their chronic pain. However, access to this treatment is limited. The availability of a hypnosis digital therapeutic has the potential to address this access problem. The current study was designed to evaluate the feasibility of a digital therapeutic hypnosis prototype (not yet …

A Conversation With Loe Gino, Loe Gino, Seb Taylor

Digital Laboratory: Publisher of Internet Journal

LOE Gino is a Bay Area native from Berkeley, California and an independent artist. He has been a pioneer in the music industry for new age artistry. His ability to be a voice for independent artists parallels his wordsmith-skills as a rapper. As a part of the Bay Area cultural scene, he is a real life example of how to set a vision and build it as you go. Every aspect of his creative vision is thought out and executed with the accuracy of a freestyle. LOE Gino stands as an example of what it means to never conform to …

Syncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos, Angelica Tapia - Estrada

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

Syncretic Spirits / Espíritus Sincréticos is a multimedia exhibition that invites viewers into a fantastical space where cultural identity and perception intertwine. Colorful shaped panels, sculptural installations, prints, and drawings bridge physical and metaphysical realms. Personal archetypes intuitively inspired by natural forms drive the work.

Influenced by the dualities of my upbringing as a first-generation Mexican American, I was immersed in Mexican culture through my family traditions while finding a home in the nurturing embrace of the heartland. The work has become a means of reclaiming a new layered sense of self, disentangling from my Catholic upbringing, embracing indigenous healing …