Fine Arts Commons^™

The Materials Of Traditions, Victoria Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

The homes we grow up in have a great impact on the homes we create as adults. Many of the traditions I saw in my childhood home were expressions of love within our family. These everyday traditions helped not only to build bonds within my nuclear family, but also with the chosen family I have formed as an adult. Repeating these traditions, or at least my best memory of them, has helped me in building my own home now. The ways I interact with my friends often reflects those same traditions I learned from home. I brought a few of …

Examining The Perceptions Of Fake News, Verification, And Notices On Twitter, Brendan Patrick Gwynn

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of social media platforms has had a significant impact on the conventional model of gatekeeping. With increased access to information--as well as the ability to contribute to the public discourse--individuals no longer need to rely on the mass media for news. These realities have led to increased conversations surrounding credibility in the digital age. Although not a new concept, fake news has become increasingly common in recent years. The web--particularly social media outlets, like Twitter--have enhanced the spread of misinformation. To combat this, social media platforms have introduced gatekeeping features like verification marks and warning labels. However, questions …

Narrative Archetypes And Paratextuality: Analysis Of Three Films By Christopher Nolan, Alycia Burnett

Theses and Dissertations

Nonlinear films display unconventional narratives that leave ambiguous endings that create rewatchability, making audiences want to rewatch and review the films. These films also create conversation on social media outlets and infiltrate discussion on popular culture. This rhetorical analysis examines narrative structure, narrative archetypes, and paratextuality of three nonlinear Christopher Nolan films: Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet. By examining how these different forms of narrative display the moral messaging and structure within each film, this analysis provides context in how nonlinear narratives promote rewatchability and create continuous paratexts. Through Nolan's films, nonlinear film styles create more than rewatchability as Nolan specifically …

An Eye To The Sky: Describing Characteristics Of Weather App Users Through Q Method, Danielle Wardinsky Hallows

Theses and Dissertations

The world revolves around weather information - whether the need is to understand, prepare for, or navigate weather. Although traditional television viewership of weather forecasts are on the decline, mobile weather applications are becoming the new media medium for weather information. In fact, the total number of app downloads in the weather market reached 69.5 million at the end of 2021 (Statista, 2021). As a result, understanding the characteristics of weather app users and what those users are looking for is pertinent to research regarding weather communication. While weather is an ongoing phenomenon sought to be understood by people for …

Water Bearer, Whitney Harris

Theses and Dissertations

My work explores fantasy and mythological archetypes. The exhibition features works on paper depicting mermaids, and a fountain featuring two figures submerged in water, one spitting into the other's mouth. I use black ink and glazes to create variegated surfaces. In these works, I reimagine ideas about power and intimacy.

Play Among The Shadows, Xiong Wei

Theses and Dissertations

This article elaborates Xiong Wei's inspiration and experience from different cultural, political, social systems and art environment as a Chinese artist living in the United States, and the logic and methodology of how he went from a social realist sculptor to a contemporary artist.

Dream/Reality, Mercedes Llanos

Theses and Dissertations

Mercedes llanos explores the surreal aspect of dreams as they concern with waking life issues, mainly focusing on power-roles in domestic partnerships embedded in a South American patriarchal upbringing. In her dreams, she subconsciously navigates the repression of freedom firsthand experienced, and that of the transgenerational woman collective.

Long Time, Jacob V. Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Jake Reed’s work is driven by the idea that architectural ornament can be imbued with meaning not native to its construction or use. To find that meaning, he deconstructs and reassembles elements from the architectural and ornamental histories he studies, using the growing climate crisis as a generative framework.

Objectified: Forced Marriages And Bitter Reality Of Violence Against Women In India, Anurag Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

Domestic violence against women is an ongoing problem in India. With cases rising ever higher, the time has come to talk openly about the uncomfortable truths behind arranged marriages, which foster injustice and often lead to violence against women. The wedding dress is a symbol of purity in traditional Indian weddings, but in the case of marriages that turn abusive, it can become a symbol of oppression and patriarchy. During the research phase of this investigation, women once stuck in abusive marriages—treated as objects—talked about the objects that made them feel trapped and explained how these everyday objects became silent …

Misled Youth, Mark Tan

Theses and Dissertations

I’m a first-generation Canadian who was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario by Asian immigrants. I have migrated to the United States and lived here for 7 years. Through my work, I express the emotional value of preconceived notions, disconnectedness, and longing in search of finding place and acceptance within a community. Drawing from memory, personal narrative, emotion, and perception, I manipulate data into lines, forms, and materials through a subjective human experience from the lens of a non-citizen. By projecting the migration movement of my family lineage from China and the Philippines to Canada as well as my path …

Spectrum Of Shit, Hannah Hiaasen

Theses and Dissertations

Contending with the loss of a parent to a mass shooting in their workplace, a newsroom, I find myself suspended in time, in an office. Post-its, fans, button-ups, snow globes, clipboards, reporters notebooks, scrap paper, jot downs, keyboards hold me up. I crave the comfort of repetitive cumulative hand work. Quilting, weaving, and cutting away help me breathe, haptically process and memorialize these grieving objects, this grieving person. Weed-wacking towards intimacy, my work employs a range of materials to mourn the mundanity of a workday, fantasize transformative justice, and steward embodied grief to the surface. My only speed is slow-- …

Until Its Calmness Can Claim You, Gabrielle Mchugh

Theses and Dissertations

This is an invitation to pause //

This is an externalization of my inner landscape, a highlight of what I value in my everyday and what comprises my lexicon of a sacred space. The following is a journey of nets, quiet, the sacred, space, and the in-between; where I share research and questions that are the foundation for my thesis work, Until Its calmness can claim you.

// This is an invitation to find moments of quiet in the noise

Until One Resembles The Other, Chad E. Mundie Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

A written accompaniment to Chad Mundie’s thesis exhibition titled Until One Resembles the Other, conceived during the years 2021-22 and installed at The Anderson Gallery, Richmond from April 9-22nd.

The following writing explores themes of labor within the home, generational knowledge, interiority, exteriority, and emotional residue through a series of essays surrounding areas of interest within my practice. The writing concludes with documentation of the show and an accompanying explanatory text.

Dregs / Lessons From The Things Around Us, Juan-Manuel Pinzon

Theses and Dissertations

The writing in Lessons From the Things Around Us is in support of the work in my MFA thesis show, dregs. I detail the progression of my making and thinking over the last two years. I expand on the material and personal relationships that have manifested themselves in the work and influenced my approach to the things that surround me. Finally, I point to a more expansive definition of Craft, rooted in its material sensibilities, and the possibilities already present in the field that this definition creates.

Defiantly Childlike: Using Aesthetic Resistance To Heal, Sarah K. Reagan

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines an alternative processing mechanism surrounding the act of healing after traumatic experiences in life. Using a methodology of iterative patterning and tool-pathing, a collection of inflatable garments and wooden mannequins analyzes defense mechanisms learned in early childhood development. This work highlights an essential body of recent scholarship that takes cuteification seriously to restore a childlike approach to mastering fear. This paper will review the definitions of cuteness and childlike humor and then describe how visual culture has implemented these components to subvert established power.

Dungeons And Devised Theatre: A Study Of Tabletop Gaming And Its Application In Playwriting And Character Development, Sabrina E. Becker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the connections and application of tabletop gaming in theatre. It looks at the initial process that was used in devising a play from tabletop gaming and also the applications of using tabletop gaming to further character development. This paper serves as a journal of first-hand accounts and interviews during this process so you may be inspired to build your own process either based in what you read here or discovering your own. There is a sample excerpt of the play to show what can be accomplished as well as other artistic works that came …

It Takes A Muscle: Wholes, Holes, And Other Voids, Saar Shemesh

Theses and Dissertations

IT TAKES A MUSCLE¹

In the BELLY of the BEAST, the HUMAN

in the deep end of a SWIMMING POOL

in a GRAVE, looking up/out from within

at the base of a CRATER, ABYSS, PIT

the room as a CRADLE, INCUBATOR

architecture as MOTHER MOULD.²

____________________________

¹ Title is borrowed and abbreviated: Spectral Display, “It Takes A Muscle To Fall In Love,” 1982.

² For what American-English delineates as ‘mold,’ British-English uses ‘mould’ and is more specific in its technicality. The former doesn’t distinguish in spelling between mold (fungus) and mold (mould). I’m not particularly a fan of …

Mending Art Classrooms: An Exploration Of The Benefits Of Collaborative Artmaking For Underinvested Black Youth In Richmond, Virginia, Jazmine M. Beatty

Theses and Dissertations

This arts-informed research study explored the experiences of local community artists and educators working to radically transform and heal the experiences of underinvested Black students in Richmond through collaborative arts engagement. Through a series of seven one-on-one interviews with Black teaching artists in the Richmond community, I was able to uncover how collaboration has and can continue to improve the well-being and livelihoods of Black students in Richmond. Also, by tapping into the local Mending Walls mural project, I was able to make a tangible connection between the Richmond community, art, and collaboration. An analysis of the interviews led to …

Phantom Scripting, Huiyu Yang

Theses and Dissertations

scripted performances enacted by human beings for the purposes of ordering the world. This “world” is seen as being comprised of social things such as male and female relationships; personal or individual things such as the untaught dispositions inherent in human beings; or nonhuman things such as rain, animals, or spiritual powers.

We Miss Each Other, As In We Are Missing Each Other, Lily L. Randall

Theses and Dissertations

I am interested in the way metaphors efface the terms of their comparison and what utility COVID-19 has when positioned within a metaphor. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, metaphors touch the subject, symbolized by the plus sign (+) or the crossing of the signifier into the signified. In the fall of 2019, I presented a performance in which three participants strategically shared saliva, nasal, ear, and vaginal swabs to therapeutically address my chronic illness. Currently in 2021, our conceptions of bodily sharing revolve around the extreme contagiousness of COVID-19. There is a demand to visualize this contagion as if “respiratory droplets” were …

Do You Feel Me? A Study On Synthetic Companionship And Digital Escapism, Camille S. Breslin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the human experience and the landscape surrounding atypical methods of connection within the doll community. First hand testimonies of loss, isolation, depression and how dolls, synthetic companionship, and AI technology might be the saving grace for emotional stability.

A Dumb Mouth From Which The Teeth Have Been Pulled, Anna Sofie Jespersen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper consists of a series of scenes in which various narratives with proximity to the truth plays out. within it I aim to articulate the dispersed subjectivity and forensic aspects to my work, as well looking at the perverseness in the desire for proximity to the fantasy, utilizing the self as a vehicle of desire.

The Curtain Fell, Opal M. Ong

Theses and Dissertations

Opal Ong’s paintings and drawings are rooted in but larger than memory. The work is flat and graphic. With this practice, Ong makes do with the living memories that haunt her. This process is not nostalgic or sentimental. Instead, it is a meditation on a kind of loss without resolve.

Agenda Setting In The Digital Age: The Impact Of Mass Media And Social Media On The Topic Of Sexual Harassment, Melissa True Gibbs

Theses and Dissertations

The news media plays an important role in communication. The function of the media in a free society is to inform the public, be a watchdog of government, provide a voice for the voiceless, and help determine which issues should be discussed in the community. The power of the mass media to guide the social agenda and influence the public's perception of what issues are important has been questioned in the digital age. This study examines traditional agenda-setting in the digital era to understand how the theory functions in a computer mediated society. The #MeToo movement acts as a case …

Influence For Change: Consumer Perceptions Of Social Media Influencer Engagement In Social Responsibility, Lauren Elizabeth Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Social Media has become a place for Social Media Influencers (SMIs) and brands to interact with users. For decades, brands and companies have been engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility, which has recently become highly visible through social media. While not brands, SMIs have also started engaging in and creating social responsibility content on social media platforms, such as Instagram. An experimental design study of 421 participants was conducted to examine and compare consumer perceptions. Using self-presentation theory as a framework and experimental design, this study analyzes consumer perceptions of brand and SMI credibility and authenticity when engaging in social responsibility …

Exploring Mentions Of Pornography In Popular Television Shows, A. Lucia Pollock

Theses and Dissertations

While pornography has become highly accessible, another way in which pornography is present in media is through discussion in movies and television shows, which is often framed through casual reference, by way of a joke, or in a teasing manner. A content analysis of 55 episodes that reference pornography—looking specifically at the framing of pornography in individual scenes—provides valuable insight into the media ecosystem surrounding pornography and its potential impact on adolescents. Using cultivation analysis and framing theory as a theoretical basis, this study analyzes the inclusion of the terms, “porn,” “porno,” and “pornography” in popular television shows.

Interview, Elizabeth Naiden

Theses and Dissertations

An exploration of work by Liz Naiden in the form of a conversation discussing light and dark, attention and proprioception, and design and architectural theories of space in installation works. Addresses the role of voice, speech, and reading and speaking aloud, performing for oneself, and performing for others.

< Justice > And < Open Debate >: An Ideographic Analysis Of < Freedom Of Speech >, Emily Ann Spackman

Theses and Dissertations

< Freedom of speech > is a foundational ideograph in the American and more broadly, Western, tradition. Yet this term is not static in its meanings or commitments to social action. The current debate around cancel culture is the site of renegotiation of < freedom of speech > in relation to other terms such as < open debate >, < justice >, < marginalized >, < tolerance >, < democracy >, and < power >. This study is an ideographic analysis of two artifacts that represent two sides of the < freedom of speech > discussion: “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate” and “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” Following McGee’s theory and method, this research examines the diachronic definition of < freedom of speech > through the U. …

Fractured Selves, Gearoid Dolan

Theses and Dissertations

Fractured Selves is a self-portrait that examines the histories and points of conflation and diversion of my four public personas. In the style of a Zoom meeting, they chat with a host against animated backgrounds. Interactivity creates non-linear consuming of the content and user directed navigation through four timelines

Signal To Noise: Harmonic Temperaments And Patterns Of Interference, Dylan A. Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

An audio/visual exploration of historical tuning systems. Most contemporary Western audiences will seldom if ever encounter harmony outside of post-Renaissance tuning conventions. This presentation highlights some of those pre-orthodox harmonic relationships which existed throughout most of history. The corresponding paper documents correlates in recent advances of acoustic ecology.