Visual Studies Commons^™

Pathos, Winter 2016, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Philip King

Volume 10 No. 2

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.

Magic At The Crossroads: The Rise Of The Video Essay, Morganne Tinsley August

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the birth, rise in popularity, and evolution of the video essay, a subgenre of the essay found recently in online literary journals. Chapter one provides a brief history of the alphabetic essay as it expands to include photo essays, audio essays, and essay-films. The second chapter outlines the history of the online literary journal and John Bresland’s role in the introduction of the video essay as it appears in online journals. Chapter three contains an examination of the way image, text, and sound function in video essays and the tools and strategies essayists are using to create …

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 …

A Theory Of Participation: Joining The Cast Of 'Heavy Rain', Matthew Bryan Oliver

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Video game scholars have gone through an arduous process of defining video games as their own art form that communicates to its audience in as different a way to other art forms as they to each other. This article compiles much of this research and engages in a ludonarrative analysis of Heavy Rain to show that video games offer a unique narrative structure where players step vicariously into the positions of video game characters and create their own story through that interactive relationship. Heavy Rain, specifically, uses an innovative system of controller mechanic interaction and visual cues to encourage this …

Illusory Perspectives: Edward Weston, Jeremy Razook

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

Photographer Edward Weston was famously able to capture unexpected beauty—no matter if his subject was fruit or human. This essay locates Weston's artistic vision within the modernist movement of the first half of the twentieth century and uses two well-known images to illustrate Weston's unique talent for transcending the boundaries between human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, being and nonbeing in his desire to encourage the experience of introspection and contemplation in viewers.

The Graphic Gregor Samsa: Can Kafka's Creature Be Brought To Life?, Samantha J. Sacks

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

A Fire To Keep Me Warm, Hannah Isabel Sparagana

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Artist Statement - A Fire to Keep me Warm

The process of creating this film was in many respects non-linear and highly organic in its evolution. I cannot pinpoint an exact moment when the project was solely decided upon and its structure formed, whether it was to be a dramatic narrative, a visual poem, an experimental essay. Even in its final stages I have discovered this labeling to be non-essential. Rather, I would have the viewer interpret the work, navigating the piece solely through the montage of images, sound and rhythm. In my experience, this is what meaningful and inspired …

The User Is Dead, Long Live The User: Creation Through Consumption In The Context Of The Reader And The User, Anna Wheeler

Senior Projects Spring 2016

In her essay "Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?" Hito Steyerl claims that “the internet is not dead. It is undead and it's everywhere."

In his essay "The Death of the Author" Roland Barthes writes: "It is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the Reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author."

The figure of the reader and the figure of the user have, at different times, been placed on the consumer side of a consumer-producer opposition. The term "user" was coined by developers to describe a certain type of consumer-- one that …

Mutual Aesthetics, Joseph D. Sherry

Honors Projects

At first glance, it may seem surprising that I’ve paired Murnau and Ford. Murnau is considered a modernist whose style is rooted in Germany’s stylistic heritage and is best remembered for films noted for their artful aestheticism and technical innovation. Ford, on the other hand, is recognized as a classicist, best remembered today for his mastery of Hollywood narrative filmmaking, in particular the genre of the western, a position crystallized in his famous self-description: “My name’s John Ford. I make Westerns.” Yet despite their diametrically opposed positions on the relationship of film to art, both directors were noted for their …