Visual Studies Commons^™

The Institute Of New Feelings: Plastic Identities And Imperfect Surfaces, Weijian Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

Digital media are moldable spaces where an image is simultaneously a thought. This instance and flexibility enables digital existences to be malleable, transformative, situational, and unstable. They are plastic images. Video games generate digital bodies that are a fusion of subjectivities and cybernetic simulations, in a perceivable and ambiguous process. Such bodies are extensions of ourselves, being girlish, imperfect, unfinished and happening—digesting and emitting clusters of feelings, regardless of our biological gender and age. The performative experience of play is progressively departing from spectacle, gambling and competition, and increasingly shifting towards an emotional journey of alternate realities, spreading subjectivities into …

Open / Close: Assimilating Immersive Spaces In Visual Communication, Anika Sarin

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in two spaces obverse to each other: open and closed. An open space develops organically based on how people inhabit it. Interacting with an open space is a dynamic, sporadic, multisensory, immersive, and subjective experience. In such spaces, we are confronted with an alternative aesthetic, one that is in conflict with the seamlessness of a closed space. A closed space is anchored on definite variables like structure, use and boundaries. While interaction between people and space is important, the space is tightly controlled and interaction is designed. Through this thesis project, I present a method that metaphorically …

Iain Muirhead, Iain Muirhead

CGU MFA Theses

Artist IAIN MUIRHEAD seeks possibility in a world of massive change. His work cultivates instability and chases an ungrounded experience. Systemic complexity and creative destruction are characteristic. Muirhead uses paint, objects, photography, installation, and video to break apart and reconfigure form and space. Terror often looms. Entropy gives way to emergence.

Humorous Field - Field To Humour = 幽默地誌 - 地致幽默, Kwok Kin So

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

This is an experiment in spatial humour, and this assumption of humour can be applied to any urban space. Since this project starts with Lingnan University’s support of its Artist-in-Residence Program, it would seem appropriate to base the experiment around the university campus. Two straight lines were laid on the map of Tuen Mun. The lines extend to East-West through the ridge. The line to the South stretches across the valley and ends on the South coast. Two transects span a wide variety spaces and urban life in Tuen Mun. They would become the premises of this experiment. Exploring the …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

The World Of The Cat's Table: Literature Through Production Design Analysis, Andrea J. Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje is a rich piece of literature that has a diverse set of characters confined to one pivotal location, a ship. Just as the novel builds a world around its characters, in this project I attempted to build a space around immersive design choices.

Production Design is a visual response to analytic reading. By taking a written piece or concept and creating the physical/visual atmosphere for the work, a production designer’s job is to create the overall look and tone of a creative production, be it for a film, play, or museum space. This is …

Communicating Through Space: An Exploration Of Interdisciplinary Relationships Between Architecture And Theatre Through Practical Application, Erin E. Hunter

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Space as an expression of ideas is a relevant topic both in theatrical design and architectural design. Both create worlds, places in time, and experiences. The theatre is a platform where architectural ideas can be explored on a real scale. Audiences can make associations based on representation on the stage and connotations from popular culture. Theatre is more temporary than architecture by nature, and therefore theatre can reference architectural ideas in temporary settings to tell a story. By analyzing the physical characteristics of a space and the societal and cultural conditions that created it, a theatre set can isolate moments …

Avatars Of Oneself, Patrick L. Miller

Sophia and Philosophia

Zoe is an American woman who has found that “drawing the line and standing firm has always made me feel like a bitch, and, actually, I feel that people saw me as one too.”[3] For two years, however, she played an online role-playing game using a male character where “as a man I was liberated from all that.” She made mistakes in her unfamiliar role, but learned from them. “I got better at being firm but not rigid,” she says; “I practiced, safe from criticism.” Case is an American man, who plays a similar game but always appears as a …

A Borrowed Language, Yvonne Osei

Graduate School of Art Theses

Art has the potency of mediation: bridging human differences, questioning voids in historical trajectories, negotiating spaces of relevance, and most importantly, being signifiers that embody the absent. I speak in a borrowed language, a multilingual visual tongue, inspired by a culmination of Western and African Art modes of practices to create charged platforms for multicultural communication.

My art presents visual portals that allow for intercultural and interracial mingling as issues of colorism, present-day colonialism, gender inequality and the politics of dress are foregrounded for collective deliberation. The essence of the work is often activated and brought to its full potential …

Palimpsest, Mary Stephen

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

This interactive booklet features the “fictional documentary” Palimpsest directed and edited by Ms. Mary Stephen, Artist-in-Residence for 2nd Semester 2015/16, Lingnan University. Readers can understand more about Mary’s works by viewing videos she previously directed and scriptwritten, including A Very Easy Death, Labyrinthe, and Ombres De Soie.

To see the videos of Ms. Mary Stephen, you would need to use this booklet and your device:

Step 1: Download the free application Aurasma
Step 2. Start following marystephen
Step 3: Scan the images with [　]
Step 4: Tag once to view full screen and tag twice …

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety, Rebecca Schroeder

Honors Projects

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety is a triptych video and artifact piece inspired by the abstract analysis of my dreams. It recognizes worries held within my subconscious and brings them to life through graphic design, photography, and video. The process of creating provides a new perspective of looking at both art and occupational therapy as methods of solving emotional distress.

I have recorded over 80 of my dreams in the past year. In these dreams, regret, grief, and anxiety are common themes. These themes are represented in three triptychs that cycle through past, present, and future problems. The cycling of …

關於雨傘 : 創作、情感、記憶, Suk Mun, Sophia Law

Research Expression through Art : Visual Studies Faculty

這是一本關於雨傘運動、藝術創作與情感記憶的書。

The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, And Cinematic Narration In The Digital Age, Jordan Lavender-Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The New Reflexivity” tracks two narrative styles of contemporary Hollywood production that have yet to be studied in tandem: the puzzle film and the found footage horror film. In early August 1999, near the end of what D.N. Rodowick refers to as “the summer of digital paranoia,” two films entered the wide-release U.S. theatrical marketplace and enjoyed surprisingly massive financial success, just as news of the “death of film” circulated widely. Though each might typically be classified as belonging to the horror genre, both the unreliable “puzzle film” The Sixth Sense and the fake-documentary “found footage film” The Blair Witch …

Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, …

Grizcode: A Web Series About The University Of Montana From The Student Perspective, Darien W. Gostas

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The point of this paper is to explore the development, purpose, and challenges of making the web series, GrizCode. It is not as scientific, as it is a narrative of what came to be. The goal of GrizCode was to paint a picture of what student life is like at the University of Montana, giving tips and life advice while celebrating and parodying what it means to be a “Griz.” It consisted of floating head type interviews of students over a green screen background of animations, with fun upbeat music that would keep the audience engaged and promote a joyful …

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.

On Air, Hoi Yee, Debe Sham

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

The booklet features various artworks created by Ms. Debe Sham, Artist-in-Residence for 1^st Semester 2015/16, Lingnan University. These include The 3^rd Party, an interactive installation that incorporates galvanized zinc pipe with mirrors and pads, and the new Rainbow Series, with connected chairs created for ON AIR exhibition held during her residency at Lingnan. Readers can understand more about Debe’s works through various commentaries given by her mentors and members of Department of Visual Studies.

As part of the residency program, Ms. Debe Sham also taught 2015 Studio Practice Course, entitled Stepping Out: Form & …

Photography, Writing, Literature: A Book Review Article Of New Work By Brunet And Beckman And Weissberg, Geert Vandermeersche

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

後桃花源記 : 錦田-釜山藝術交流計劃 = In Search Of The Peachland : Art Exchange Project Between Kam Tin And Busan, C&G 藝術單位, Openspace Bae, Department Of Visual Studies, Lingnan University, Mudwork

Visual Studies Programme : Students’ Monographs

《後桃花源記》是一個涉及許多不同層次的交流計劃，當中包括來自韓國釜山和香港錦田的6個藝術單位(5位藝術家和1個藝術組合)、12位來自嶺南大學視覺研究系的學生。他們在2015年2月底前往韓國釜山參觀當地不同的藝術機構、藝術空間和藝術院校，與當中一些藝術家、策劃人和藝術學生對談。在交流過程中，大家都不難發現香港和釜山，這兩個遠離國家首都的沿海城市，所面對因城市發展和重建而產生的問題，均十分相似。在3月份，兩位來自釜山的藝術家:金大洪和金美英也進駐錦田。各藝術家與參與學生一起在錦田進行創作，並於2015年3月21和22日，把作品在地呈現，之後更以文獻方式在C&G藝術單位展示。

‘In Search of the Peachland’ is an art exchange project involving many different layers of idea exchanges amongst different parties: including 6 art units from Kam Tin and Busan (5 artists and 1 artist group), 12 students from the Visual Studies Department of Lingnan University. They went to Busan for a field trip in the end of February, 2015, to visit different art organizations and art students in Busan. During the trip, it was not difficult to find out that both Hong Kong and Busan also encounter similar problems, when undergoing intensive urban development and redevelopment. After the field-trip, …

Grids And Gestures: A Comics Making Exercise, Nick Sousanis

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Grids and Gestures is an exercise intended to offer participants insight into a comics maker’s decision-making process for composing the entire page through the hands-on activity of making an abstract comic. It requires no prior drawing experience and serves to help reexamine what it means to draw. In addition to a description of how to proceed with the exercise, this piece also includes conceptual grounding in the form of a brief theoretical discussion of the ways comics convey meaning as well as personal notes on the development of the exercise and how it has been used.

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Revision In The Multiversity: What Composition Can Learn From The Superhero, David Hyman

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Constant and ongoing revision is the compositional tactic through which many contemporary superhero narratives negotiate the powerful struggle between reiteration of the genre’s past, and creative expression of its future. Instead of a gradual succession of improved renditions of a text, each one effacing and superseding the imperfections of its predecessors, revision is revealed as the production of multiple versions whose differences and diversities are “capable of being in uncertainties”, as Keats describes the creative attitude which he terms Negative Capability: ontologically equal textual variations that wear their inconsistencies openly, and reject the pressure to resolve their multiplicities into the …

Pim Pedagogy: Toward A Loosely Unified Model For Teaching And Studying Comics And Graphic Novels, James B. Carter

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The article debuts and explains "PIM" pedagogy, a construct for teaching comics at the secondary- and post-secondary levels and for deep reading/studying comics. The PIM model for considering comics is actually based in major precepts of education studies, namely constructivist foundations of learning, and loosely unifies constructs inherent therein with other available frames and frameworks for studying comics. As such, the article fills a dire need in the scholarly literature on comics pedagogy and paves a way for those who seek to teach comics courses in the future but who need direction and for those who seek to study/read comics …

Mallory Makes Meaning: How One 8th-Grader Made Meaning With A Graphic Novel, Aimee A. Rogers

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article presents how one 8^th-grader, Mallory, made meaning with Amulet: The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi. Data was collected via a think-aloud procedure, a retrospective think-aloud, questions specific to the book and an interview. The data analysis indicates that Mallory was able to use a breadth of reading strategies, applied to both the visual and textual modalities, in order to make meaning with the graphic novel text.

Prancing Shadow Connecting Worlds, Tiffany D. Randle

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The practice of being conscious about the environment and how shadows, light, and movement create an intellectual space for different interpretations allows the viewer to make their own associations. Concrete, the ground that people of different shades walk on, to one person can look and seem like an ethereal and unknown environment, but to another may seem like a moving body of liquid. When artists stop and look at the simple things such a concrete, and water, or passersby they can capture a moment in time that transcends the mundane and suddenly the artist is in a position to present …

Artificial Infinite, Brandon Daniels

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis examines the complex history of the sublime, specifically the sublime Void of the Romantics and the newer concept of the technological sublime. From there, I examine the genre of science fiction and it relationship to the sublime, the Void and the grotesque. I use specific examples such Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and a few others to better understand and apply these concepts. Beginning with these examples, I start to posit what role special effects play in how these films embody these philosophical concepts.

Building on this foundation of research, I go on to …

Culture On The Move: Depression-Era Documentary And Migrant California, Joseph Entin

Criticism

California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal Narrative by Jan Goggans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Pp. 368. $40.00 cloth.

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

Seeing The Sacred, Emily Potter

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Seeing the Sacred is a multidisciplinary arts project exploring the purposes of sacred art and its relationship with community identity. The project highlights three common purposes of sacred art: to represent a worldview, to express identities as members of a community, and to connect with something bigger than ourselves. This Capstone Experience/Thesis Project developed through an intersection of three primary interests: visual art, community engagement, and religious studies. This project includes an overview of the CE/T’s origins and evolution, a written analysis of research goals and experiences, a review of relevant literature, a series of related artwork, and a collaborative …

Situating Urban Moving Images: Illuminating Place, Annie Dell'aria

Graduate Student Publications and Research

No abstract provided.