identifier: Ali, Aisha  (2020) Test First in a Discrete Area.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Test First in a Discrete Area

format: text text text text text text

abstract:
This document is twofold:

A monograph focuses on a series of investigations into collaboratively generated narrative structures. My collaborators are my friends, human and otherwise, including the cats I live with, Marty, Nalah, Oliver, and Pikkul, and my fellow artists, designers, and tinkerers, Florence, Andalah, Atanas, and Craig. Using strategies of classification, categorization, repetition and improvisation, narrative structures are expanded with varying degrees of legibility. The investigation takes the form of a series of case studies of writing including beading and works on paper (stacks, pages, books) that engage with the questions: What personal narrative possibilities emerge from writing and making at the edge of narrative? How can these narratives be used to surface, shape and depict understandings of mundane experience? And how do these narrative possibilities emerge and change when primarily working collaboratively? I frame this investigation through the narrative theories of Ursula K. Le Guin, Trinh T. Minh-Ha and Peggy Phalen. Le Guin’s “carrier bag" narrative proposes a non-linear, esoteric, and personal accumulation of the everyday which my collaborators and I approach through photographic collection and organization. In creating this work, it became necessary to write of intangible experiences, while maintaining privacy and subjectivity. I repurpose Trinh T. Minh Ha’s “speaking nearby” as a way to write about intangible experience without claiming knowledge or expression of it, and Peggy Phalen’s performative “writing towards disappearance” to emphasize privacy and subjectivity in written experience.

The work is transformed and contextualized within fifteen exhibitions and numerous collaborative projects produced over the past year with my friends and frequent collaborators, Craig Rodmore, Florence Yee and Atanas Bozdarov. Expansive appendices, which are by no means secondary to the monograph, document and develop this larger collaborative project.


identifier: Holmes, Jessie  (2020) Sentiment Debris.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Sentiment Debris

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

subject: sentimental value, biographical objects, self-extensions, poetic methodologies, narrative methodologies, human psyche, object narratives

abstract: Sentiment Debris is an exploration of biographical objects and personal narrative. This research examines the ontology of sentimental value, what biographical and sentimental objects are and how an object can impact one’s personal narrative.  Through an audible-visual installation my intention was to separate the narrative from the object to further study object narratives and the ways in which one may or may not relate to sentimental objects.  Furthermore, I have investigated how objects can become self-extensions, in turn contributing to a diversified and constructive understanding of narrative for artists, writers and the collective subjective.  Sentiment Debris discusses the ways in which the past leaves an impression on the future and how sentimental or biographical objects acts as vessels through time and space; a preservation of nostalgia and an Ode to the value of narrative, thus, reinforcing a conjunctive concatenation, a story with no end.


identifier: Ashraf, Amreen  (2020) An Uneasy Terrain: An Immersive and Speculative Research-Creation.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: This thesis contemplates the “politicization of vision” by exploring contemporary visualizing technologies that use body and facial recognition to map data in physical and virtual spaces. Through a technological review, this thesis analyzes the emergence of the “social media filter” and examines how this technology not only allows users to morph, alter and extend their digital bodies, but also creates data. Through the literature review I argue that this data contributes to “knowledge creation” for artificial intelligence systems, hence politicizing technologies of vision. Informed by my role as an “active subject” living in a surveilled urban environment, I pay attention to emotions as a guide throughout my creative process. Methodologically, this research-creation renders an immersive and speculative installation engaging bodies in physical space, whereby the audience-participant is materially and virtually present in the projected and captured data. This research-creation contains two pieces that work in tandem; the written document and the installation together make up “An Uneasy Terrain”.


identifier: Salha, Huda  (2020) After the Last Frontiers: Palestine Between Memory and the Anticolonial Art of Resistance.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract:
Abstract

After the Last Frontiers, my thesis exhibition, aims to raise questions about forms of oppression and violence practiced by the oppressive colonial powers in Palestine and, by extension, the world. The thesis explores the possibilities of artists’ contributions to social and political change by shedding light on my motives, narratives, and art practice, and by comparing my artworks to those by artists who have tackled similar issues. The art produced for this thesis exhibition is intended to act as an anticolonial form of resistance and activism. The exhibition consists of installations of objects that represent sites of memory, reviving the collective memory of people and land. In my case, I wish to commemorate the places that were stolen, the over 750,000 displaced Palestinians and their descendants, amounting to millions, the thousands of Palestinians killed since 1948, the hundreds of thousands of acres of olive trees uprooted, and the over 500 Palestinian villages and towns obliterated. Based on relevant historical and archival artifacts, this practice-based thesis exhibition underscores the significance of documentation and archival material in memory tracing/maintaining, and its relevance to the Palestinian case, and, in turn, the Israeli hegemonic narrative in the West.


identifier: Bozdarov, Atanas  (2020) For Example: Ramps and Other Objects.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: For Example: Ramps and Other Objects

subject: access, design, disability

abstract: This thesis examines the lived experience of the disabled body and takes its relationship with the built environment as a starting point for investigating access. The research employs interdisciplinary strategies of repair and modification, mimicry and repetition, improvisation and speculative proposals, and utilizes critical design approaches to increase awareness, provoke dialogue and confront misconceptions about what constitutes accessibility. Incorporating sculpture, drawing and graphic design, the work in this thesis is concerned with exploring the intended function, use and uselessness of design art objects to highlight the unseen conditions of disability and design. This practice organizes itself around forms of failure: structural failure, failure of personal mobility devices and failure in disability culture and arts scholarship. Through material engagements, humour, absurdity and urgency as expressed in makeshift constructions, this thesis asks how the localized failure of artist-designed forms can draw attention to failures of access within larger systems.


identifier: Sea, Morgan  (2020) A+ COMICS! an anarchistic, autoethnographic approach analyzing and adapting an absent, abject, AMAB abomination (aka ABOMINATRIX); and also, accommodating an author’s adult ADHD & anxiety awaiting an apocalypse… academically approved, ACAB.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: comics, transgender, trans lit, cartooning, queer, Cartooning, illustration, writing, comics, cartoonist, autoethnography, autobiography, graphic medicine, adhd, anxiety, depression, powers of horror, abjection, capitalist realism, trans feminism, tumblr, Transsexual, transgender, trans art, saphic, bisexual, Saskatchewan born artist, colonizer, canadian, trans woman, gay, lgbtq, lesbian, t4t, w4w, very attractive woman, some kind of genius, just gorgeous and funny too,

abstract:
Morgan Sea went to grad school to make comics and avoid being ground into the dirt by capitalism.

While trying to understand Kristeva’s theory of the abject, her magical adhd brain made a tangled web of connections between obscure marvel comics, trans misogyny, and the monstrous feminine. She wrote and illustrated a 14-page comic about a transsexual, legally distinct She-Hulk type character named the Abominatrix. Attempts at writing and illustrating another comic about mermaids were derailed by an extended depressive episode, so Sea doubled back and handwrote an experimental thesis exploring the creation of her Abominatrix comic.

The results are handwritten autoethnography of process, formal and informal research, cartooning experimentation, and mental illness navel gazing. This thesis is a piece of performative research where documentation of process combines with the original art to create another art object.

Through this research, Sea was able to experiment with cartooning and find her writing and illustrative voice, build a portfolio, and survive a few years in our late capitalist hellscape.

TAGS FOR THE ALGORITHM:

Identity politics: Transsexual, transgender, trans art, saphic, bisexual, Saskatchewan born artist, colonizer, canadian, trans woman, gay, lgbtq, lesbian, t4t, w4w, very attractive woman, some kind of genius, just gorgeous and funny too.
Methods: Cartooning, illustration, writing, comics, cartoonist, autoethnography, autobiography, graphic medicine, adhd, anxiety, depression, powers of horror, abjection, capitalist realism, trans feminism, tumblr,
Advisors: Fiona Smyth, Dr. Michelle Millar and Shannon Gerrard
Artists that vaguely have to do with this project: Lynda Barry, Joe Sacco, Jack Kirby, Steve Gerber, Buzz Dixon, Stan Lee, John Buscema, John Byrne,
Things Disney owns: Hulk, She-hulk, Fantastic Four, Abomination, mutants, most superheroes, Spider-Man.


identifier: SILVER, JONNY  (2020) Investigating The Perfect Crime.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Investigating The Perfect Crime

abstract:
ABSTRACT
At first appearances, this thesis covers old ground about the impact of technology on humanity, but a closer look reveals an escalation of the stakes in contemporary society. This project hopes to raise more questions about ceding privacy, autonomy and individuality. I take my lead from Jean Baudrillard’s book, The Perfect Crime: the Murder of Reality, which provides the conceptual model for my analysis, art installation and studio-based research. I use an experimental approach that creates associations between writings, images and visual objects in juxtaposition. Rather than trying to solve the crime, I use the crime as a lens to examine the cultural narratives generated by Baudrillard’s theory while constructing a representational world of the crime in my thesis exhibition. I probe the act of changing from real to virtual with writings by Baudrillard, cultural critic Byung-Chul Han and historian Yuval Harari and I incorporate time by drawing on the writings of physicist Ilya Prigogine and philosopher Henri Bergson whose concept of “duration” defines time without space. Is the murder of reality a paradox? Or is there a complete elimination of the real to create a unipolar situation, a disembodied humanity? What does the collapse of representation leave us with?


identifier: De Zen, April  (2020) A Misinformation Blueprint: Mapping warnings in an agile communication system.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text image image image image text

subject: misinformation, information disorder, fake news, communication media.

abstract: This thesis provides a high-level view of misinformation that builds an interdisciplinary framework for research to aid in future interventions. It utilizes Buchanan’s wicked-problems approach of design thinking to investigate the drivers of misinformation and where it appears in the chain of communication. There are many forms of inaccuracies throughout the exercise of informing ourselves through communication media. This thesis works to identify misinformation’s placement within information disorder, identify drivers of misinformation and highlight the potential entry points of misinformation into communication media. This research aims to allow us, as a society, a clearer direction for combatting a phenomenon of this size. The final output is a ‘blueprint’ of misinformation shown through a visual ecosystem of information disorder and a system map of communication media. The system map is used to draw attention to two things: (1) Where the drivers of misinformation have the potential to materialize and (2) The channels of communication which are subject to different valves of control. The final ‘blueprint’ is transformed into an interactive display to encourage engagement and awareness.


identifier: Li, Jingpo  (2020) ARCS An Augmented Reality Consumption Reducing App.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Augmented Reality, Reducing, Sustainable Consumption, Sustainable Consumption Awareness, Consumption Behavior Awareness, Value-Action Gap, Engagement System, Speculative Design, Research Through Design.

abstract: Climate change is a “wicked” problem resulting from overconsumption. This thesis illustrates the importance of addressing sustainable consumption and aims toward helping consumers change their shopping patterns and live a sustainable life in the long run. AR may help in increasing environmental awareness of consumption, providing available information on sustainable consumption, and ways to reduce the Value-Action Gap through the design of AR Consumption Reducing System. By employing the mixed methodology of Research Through Design and Speculative Design, a prototype AR tool with an engagement system for sustainable consumption decision making named ARCS (AR Consumption Reducing App )was developed. Two personas were developed following the speculative design methodology in order to show how the prototype could lead from a probable and plausible to a preferred future.


identifier: Patterson, Pam  (2000) The self which enacts learning, a research with/through the Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA).  PhD thesis, OCAD University.

type:
Thesis (external)
NonPeerReviewed

abstract: This thesis reveals and clarifies through creative research practices and forms a movement towards, and a recognition of, embodied arts learning through and as a result of an association with the Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA), a particular feminist art educational community. Interpretive inquiry on a present learning process both locates and frames this research. The components which inform this interpretation include: a study of the associated literature on feminist art communities, a participant research study with the BAAWA community presented as a notated theatrical performance script, and an exhibition. They relate to and through each other in a complementary relationship and record the various values, perspectives and orientations I have taken on at different occasions in my learning. It is the relationship and specificity of these occasions or events which point to naming my learning process as curriculum as I have understood it from, and applied it beyond, BAAWA. This research is multi-layered, multi-textured, dialogic, open and aesthetic and points to the particular complexities, needs, and practices of contemporary North American women artists in reaching to name, affirm and expand their practices as artists.


identifier: Huard, Adrienne  (2020) Dayna Danger, Thirza Cuthand and Bannock Babes: Desire in Two-Spirit and Queer Indigenous Visual Culture in Relation to Land.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Indigenous, Two-Spirit, queer, visual culture, desire, curation

abstract: Engaging with the interdisciplinary artistic practices of Dayna Danger, Thirza Cuthand and Bannock Babes, this paper discusses the importance of desire within Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous visual culture with ancestral ties to the Canadian Prairies. These artworks strive to reclaim Two-Spirit representation as a means to engage with prospering queer Indigenous furturity. In conjunction with these artists, using the curatorial and critical practices of David Garneau, Cathy Mattes, Michelle McGeough, and BUSH Gallery guides this research to link Two-Spirit curatorial methodologies. Given the lack of critical and curatorial methodologies that tend specifically to Two-Spirit ontologies, this paper acknowledges the fluidity of Two-Spirit identities in relation to land and locality, and therefore, is a summary of these research findings within my scope. Using Eve Tuck’s desire-based research frameworks, Gerald Vizenor’s concept of native survivance and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s knowledge of Biskaabiiyaang, they provide insight on navigating ideas around Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous visual culture and curatorial methodologies. These artist and curatorial practices demonstrate certain commonalities: the importance of cultural and spiritual safety, kinship ties and relationships to the land.


identifier: Pan, Penny  (2021) Curating Multisensory Experiences: The Possibilities of Immersive Exhibitions.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Immersive exhibitions, Multisensory Experience, Curatorial Strategies, Digital Technology, Phenomenology, Scenography, New Media

abstract: The immersive exhibition is a specialized exhibition genre flourishing in the 21st century. It creates illusions of time and space by applying multisensory display methods to envelop visitors in a three-dimensional virtual world. The enhanced sense of presence facilitates public engagement. Not only have immersive exhibitions transformed audience experience, they have triggered discussions on the evolution of the museum and how curators can productively incorporate new technology. Based on interdisciplinary theory and the case studies of Grande Experiences (Melbourne) and teamLab (Tokyo), this thesis addresses issues around defining, developing, and curating immersive exhibitions. I discuss the genre’s operation from three perspectives: managing the physical space by using nonlinear thematic frameworks and dynamic displays; curating audiences’ subjective immersive experience by applying natural sensory interactions, mediator-based interactions, and collaborative participation; and identifying multisensory stimulation as immersive exhibitions’ critical attribute. These aspects hold possibilities for implementation in all museum contexts. The purpose of this thesis is to offer curators and exhibition creators practical guidelines on reshaping existing displays and collections with immersive design and technology. Immersive exhibitions encourage museums to rethink the possibilities for enabling and diversifying connections between art, technology, and the public in the digital era.


identifier: Leung, Lilian  (2021) Future through Memory - Virtual Storytelling in Toronto's Chinatown.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: image image image text

subject: Belonging & Othering, Chinatown, Chinese-Canadianism, Cultural Preservation, Culture & Heritage, Decolonization, Dialogue, Diaspora, Interactive Documentary, Collective Memory, Generative Design, Memory Studies, Virtual Reality, Volumetric Media

abstract: Future through Memory is a study in the affordances of virtual production through co-design as a method of civic engagement, placemaking and placekeeping in Toronto’s Chinatown. The title “Future through Memory” hearkens back to Wendy Chun’s text, The Enduring, Ephemeral, or The Future is a Memory (2008). Using participatory action research as the central methodology, co-creation workshops were held with individuals within the Toronto Chinatown community to develop what Pierre Nora’s describes les lieux de mémoire (site of memory) in "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire" (1998) within an interactive documentary using WebVR (A-Frame). This study explores the use of collective memory, oral testimony, transmedia storytelling and 3D photogrammetric scans as a method to highlight the agency of participants within the community, the diaspora experience and discussions of identity. This project takes a decolonial theoretical framework and is centred on developing a collective memory — “collective, plural, yet individual” (Nora, 1989), questioning traditional structures of historical representation within virtual reality.


identifier: Gregory, Alexandra  (2021) Fragmented Flora: Digital Embodiments of Being in Time and Space.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text video

abstract: Fragmented Flora: Digital Embodiments of Being in Time and Space consists of the curation of a digital environment that utilizes the affective qualities of physical space; featuring an animated piece Still life with fallen fruit (2019) by Elisabeth Belliveau, the video We Weight on the Land (Winter) (2019) by Eve Tagny, interactive poem Fin (2018) and sound piece xi xi 息息 (2019) by Xuan Ye, and a live stream floral installation Flowers in Time and Space (2021) by Hayley O’Byrne. This work problematizes the ways in which humans interact with and act upon matter by conceptualizing the ways in which permanence and materialism are discussed and valued, as they intersect with the digital. The theoretical grounds of the project focus on the concepts materiality (as it relates to how matter moves through, exists, and transforms in space); temporality (as it relates to decay); and individuality (as it relates to senses and sensory triggers). The curatorial methodology engages the challenge of evoking the tangible and affect of qualities of physical experiences through an online exhibition.


identifier: McCloskey, Karly  (2021) Chimera: Queering the Myth of the One.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Chimera: Queering the Myth of the One

abstract:
Drawing from personal experiences, I investigate connections between orientation, desire, gender and otherness, questioning how desire affects bodies and if orientation is an embodiment of time. Considering these questions, I am also researching the concept of ‘human.’ What does it mean to be human? What is the difference between human and non-human? How are the two entangled? All points of my research intersect at the monster—the chimera.

The chimera is an embodiment of the innate entanglements of all. Through contamination as collaboration, a term drawn from Anna Tsing’s A Mushroom at the End of the World, I investigate how we transform and are transformed by our encounters. This embraces auto-ethnographic poetry, photography, and filmmaking. Through imagination, I speculate on ideas of otherness, hybridity, and metamorphoses. I approach research through playfulness, seeking joy in all steps of thinking and creating. My material exploration informs and is informed by the theories I read. Through imagination and intuition, seemingly dissociated areas of investigation align and entangle, revealing threads of myself along the way. Contamination as collaboration is the lens through which each aspect of my material and theoretical research are perceived. Traces of myself and those I encounter are suspended together in this intricate web. My studies expose the intimate entanglements I recognize within myself while simultaneously welcoming others to find their own involvement. I invite you to join us—we begin with noticing.

Over the last two years I wrote a poetry book and created a looping analogue film exploring the murky in-betweens of existence, the politics of being/feeling connected, shared impressions, affective contagion, attunements and difference in itself4. Through material and theoretical research, I investigate how such entanglements affect bodies. Hybridity is a means to investigate possible futures informed by queer theory and intersectional feminism. Through speculative fabulation, I approach worldmaking in a way that embodies the pleasures and pains of becoming.

A separation so astounding
screaming and whispering
in synchronous union
A splitting of thoughts
A fusion of truths
Discomfort in this
harmony of
fear
loathing
excitement
pleasure


identifier: Akhtar, Muhammad Arsalan  (2021) HeartBeat - An interactive installation to reflect the sentiments of Canadians during pandemics like Covid-19.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: pandemics, sentiment visualization, interactive installation, Internet of Things, public art

abstract: Social media has given citizens an avenue to express their views on various subjects in their personal lives, policies, and even a way to communicate with each other about their sentiments and emotions. This is key during a pandemic such as Covid-19 where the world is facing a global impact and the need for a pandemic-related public art framework has been sought globally by art societies and researchers to revitalize the society. However, due to the pace of this pandemic, most city art strategy papers require a framework for pandemic related public art especially in Toronto which has an agenda of moving towards becoming a smart city and public art should reflect that. This thesis investigates how might public art installations reflect the sentiment of smart communities in a pandemic. I designed 'HeartBeat', an interactive installation and visualization to reflect the emotions of citizens during the pandemic using Research Through Design and user-centered design approaches. The goal is to reflect the sentiment of Canadians during the current pandemic. HeartBeat uses tweets from Canada and visualizes the popular emotion groups during the pandemic period in an interactive installation. To evaluate HeartBeat, I conducted case study evaluation for various time periods and semi-structured interviews by selecting experts such as artists, designers, curators, policymakers, and data journalists. The contributions from HeartBeat could provide designers and artists exploring the pandemic to consider these design choices and methodologies; discussion shows the ways available to understand emotions of citizens during a pandemic in a smart city; detailed process design and technology stack architecture for pandemic related public art which could be used as public art frameworks during pandemics.


identifier: Casalino, Rebecca  (2021) Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples

format: text text

abstract: Queers living in the urban centre of Toronto have a strong history of resistance and deviant practices that skirt social norms in presenting and disseminating queer knowledge and art. These practices include the self-publication of zines, newspapers, posters, wearables, and art objects made as multiples. These materials, unlike popular mass media, are presented by and for queer audiences allowing for more nuanced, complicated, and affective understandings of the city's queer communities. Using an object-based approach grounded in Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, I present queer multiples as guideposts for understanding the inherited queer history of Toronto and its influence upon contemporary artists. For Proud Deviants and Queer Multiples, I curated an exhibit comprised of a multi-generational slate of queer artists, multiples and Toronto’s queer history by showing works from my collection. In tandem with the multiples, I have juxtaposed queer archival materials such as scans of the covers of publications like The Body Politic and gendertrash, as well as the map of the Toronto Purchase. The combination of multiples and archives chart moments of tension and jubilation for queers living within the heteronormative colonial and institutional frameworks of Toronto. By using an artist-curator methodology, this exhibition creates the opportunity to consider the past, present and future of queer art-making in Toronto.


identifier: Bandodkar, Priya  (2021) Activating Indofuturism: Applying a lens adapted from Postcolonial Futurisms.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text image image image image image image image image image image video video video video video video

language: en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en en

subject: Indofuturism, decolonisation, Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, alternative future, futurism, speculative design, critical design, dark design, thought experiments, world building, manifesto, physical computing, tactile interface, virtual reality, creative coding, 3D art, volumetric video, dance performance, digital media, interactive installation

abstract: In this research, I envision what a speculative future for India might look like without its colonial past to activate a largely unexplored futurism discipline for India, called “Indofuturism”. Serving a multifold intent, the lens of Indofuturism imagines an alternative future for India without a history of colonisation, reclaims aspects of its pre-colonial culture that were lost through colonialism, and highlights pressing social conditions and critiques prejudices prevalent within contemporary Indian communities. Considering the overlaps in postcolonial experiences of Indian people and historically colonised people worldwide, the emerging methodological lens of Indofuturism seeks insights from existing Postcolonial Futurisms. I apply Speculative Design and its subsets Critical and Dark Design as methodologies, and Thought Experiments as a method, to create five Indofuturist artefacts that illustrate this proposed vision of Indofuturism. These artefacts are built as interactive installations using virtual reality, 3D art, creative coding, physical computing, volumetric video, and dance performance with the intent of creating multiple avenues of engagement for the audience. They are narratively linked in a storyworld using a World Building framework, which leads to the tenets of Indofuturism distilled through this research and disseminated as an Indofuturist Manifesto.


identifier: Laroia, Manisha  (2021) Sketches in Voice User Interface: Relational Conversations with Virtual Personal Assistants in Domestic Spaces.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text video video

subject: Voice User Interface, Sketches, Interaction Design, Autoethnography, Conversations, Conversational AI, User Experience, Iterative Prototyping, Virtual Personal Assistant.

abstract:
Sketches in Voice User Interface explores the conversational and evocative aspects of peoples’ interactions with no-screen embodied voice user interfaces (VUIs) in domestic spaces. The project uses an annotated research through design methodology to create a series of Sketches in Voice User Interface for relational conversations with users. The research involves an autoethnographic study of existing voice-based virtual personal assistants (VPAs). Informed by these precedents Sketches in VUI are designed through iterative prototyping to explore ways in which VUIs can go beyond the existing virtual personal assistant in our everyday conversations. Unlike the conventional voice-based VPAs (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) operating on the commands of the user, the Sketches in VUI drive conversations and take an agentive role in human-computer conversations.
Using the design research approach, this project serves as a bridge between two key contextual voices in the domain of conversational technologies. On one hand, is the tech industry’s case for usability that VUI is ‘the most natural interface.’ On the other hand, is the social sciences case critically calling VUI ‘an artificial nature’ and questioning if conversations with a machine are conversations at all.
The project concludes with an ‘experience study’ to enquire into the experience of participants as they converse with the designed Sketches. The study observes how participants react to the Sketches (behavioural response) and how they feel (emotional response), comparing them to their experience of existing voice-based VPAs, captured via videography and qualitative interviews. The study findings along with the designed Sketches form an annotated portfolio of generated knowledge about relational conversations with embodied voice user interfaces in our intimate spaces.


identifier: Pines, Sebastian  (2021) Penning the Ghosts of Ourselves: An Exploration Into Spectral Play.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: Penning the Ghosts of Ourselves: An Exploration Into Spectral Play presents my experiments into the creation of spectres through autobiographical game design. This supplemental document explores my interdisciplinary process in game design, creative writing, and book illustration and design which resulted in the physical publication of the solo role-playing game in Dwelling. In Penning the Ghosts of Ourselves, I present the research, documentation, and reflection on this process of self-interment through autobiography, as it is undertaken through both players of Dwelling, and myself as its creator.


identifier: Sugawara, Maari  (2021) What Cyborgs Can( ’t) Do about Japanese Identities: Japaneseness as a Product of the Internalized Euro-American Gaze.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text video video video video video video

subject: Japaneseness, Data Colonization, Soft Nationalism, Cyborgs, Eurocentrism, Self Orientalism, Decolonization, Deconstruction, Politics of Translation, Shanzhai, Speculative Fiction, Digital Media, Japanese Studies, Critical Race Studies

abstract:
This art-based research project problematizes constructed postwar Japanese identity by unraveling the links between Japan’s Eurocentrism, the country’s active invitation of the Orientalist gaze, and the artificial amnesia of its colonial aggression towards other Asian countries.

Needing to take advantage of Orientalist projections by dominant Western powers, postwar Japanese national and cultural identity resorted to self-Orientalism. The “Japan Brand” Strategy— the government-owned production site of “Cool Japan” imagery and cultural policy, not only created a liberated and humane image of postwar Japan globally but it was also devised as a mechanism to induce a collective amnesia that allowed Japan to disregard its colonial past and engender a soft nationalism. This narcissistic discourse celebrates the rise of the Japanese economy, affirming the country’s superiority while distancing itself from the imaginary “impoverished” continent of Asia. Through time, Japan’s self-defined “pure originality”—which emerged as a counter-narrative to Japan’s being infamous for its ability to imitate to the West—became internalized by the Japanese, along with the new marketable versions of Japaneseness. Japan’s self-Orientalism was an unexpected side-effect of playing US’s “Japan” (a subordinate’s double identification) and its dependence on the dominant West.

Using shanzhai (meaning “fake” and the idea that nothing is original), my art project aims to rethink constructed Japanese identities as delinked from the idea of “originality” and devoid of internalized Orientalism. Employing speculative fiction tropes to communicate the contingency of Japanese identities, my art project defamiliarizes current discourses surrounding Japanese identity. Contributing to the fields of Japanese studies and visual cultures, my art project is a visual assemblage employing photography, videography, contemporary digital media, stock materials, and speculative fiction narratives to create a speculative world.


identifier: Safavi, Arash  (2021) this is NOT a drill: An Expedition in Iranian Diaspora Through Photography, Calligraphy and Poetry.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: image text

abstract: The Iranian diaspora is a young and growing community that came into existence mainly after the Islamic revolution of 1979. In this study, I review historical contexts of the Iranian diaspora while comparing it to the common definition of “diaspora”. The Iranian diasporic community shows many of the common features of diasporas, however, it does not have a unified and united relationship. This community includes a multiplicity of genders, sexual orientations, religions, ethnicities, regions, political beliefs, and socioeconomic backgrounds, making it an intersectionally diverse community. The members of the Iranian diasporic community maintain an internal hierarchical relationship among themselves while congregating to form a community. Through qualitative research methodology, archival research, self-reflection, practice-based research, participant observation and a series of informal conversations, I investigate the underlying reasons for this divided and separating relationship. This diversity and separation create many different and even contradictory stories for its members. In this project, I seek to reflect upon Iranian Canadian diasporic subjects' stories in visual forms using photography, typography, and calligraphy in Canada's culturally diverse society. Furthermore, I revisit the art of translation within diaspora to argue for the complexity of the concept of diaspora and how hybrid translation can help members come closer together. I demonstrate how storytelling within diaspora assists the community in restructuring its lost cultural identity and establishing a social space to belong, in the time of spatial and cultural dislocation.


identifier: Shirokova, Maria  (2021) Can You Hear Your Drawing? Creating synesthetic experiences through an audio-visual web interaction.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: video video video video video image text image image image image image

subject: interaction design, multimodality, multi-sensory interface, colour music, exploratory creativity, synesthesia, chromesthesia, audio-visual web application, conversational tool, apparatus, metaphor

abstract: This research focuses on creating audio-visual web interaction inspired by the synesthetic experience. Synesthesia is a neurological condition where the processing of data by one sense activates others. This project hypothesizes that interactive digital artworks enable people to touch music, hear colours and expand their creativity and senses. They evoke synesthetic associations and activate certain senses’ vocabularies, and people start seeing a correlation between visual and audio experiences. This research explores the role of metaphor as a theoretical framework, conversational tool and design approach in the multimodal digital space. This project’s outcome is a web application that opens an empathic dialogue between people who experience synesthesia and those who are eager to learn what it is and what it is like to have it. Users can map their audio and visual senses’ associations by documenting and sharing them in the digital environment. This research applied research through design methodology by expanding the audience’s role from testing and observing to participating.


identifier: Dutta, Sananda  (2021) Empathy through data: Loneliness through the lens of data visualization.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text other other other

subject: Data visualization, empathy, sensitization, statistical numbing, humanizing data, affect, metaphorical visuals, multi-sensory, Iterative prototyping, Research for Creation, Human-centred design.

abstract: This research examines strategies aimed at fostering empathy through data visualizations. Loneliness experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic (during May, July and September 2020) is used as a case study to explore alternate ways of representing data. Along with ways to humanize data representation and curb Statistical numbing, this research uses metaphors to encode sensitive data to help visually represent people suffering loneliness in Ontario during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research amalgamates ‘affect theory’ with concepts of ‘arithmetic of emotions’ and ‘compassion fade’ to try and create a solution for issues related to the ways in which we respond to sensitive issues. By employing the mixed methods of research for creation and iterative design development, this thesis comprises 1) a written document stating the research process; 2) a series of iterations leading to a data visualization for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and 3) an interactive web-based data story.


identifier: Zheng, Yutong  (2021) Rethinking qi and Tai Chi through New Media Technologies.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Digital performance, Cross-cultural communication, Interactive technologies, Traditional Chinese Arts, Tai Chi, qi, Contact Zone, Culture Hybridity

abstract: Due to its ambiguous nature, the Chinese cultural concept qi (also known as chi) can be confusing and misunderstood. By expressing qi through sound and haptics with the help of interactive technologies, this thesis project proposes a transcultural design approach based on the postcolonial notions of the “Contact Zone” and “Culture Hybridity”, which can potentially rectify some misunderstanding of qi and Tai Chi in a sensual “language” with the aid of interactive technologies. Motion tracking, haptic technology, machine learning for gesture recognition and sound design have been used in this translation process to provide real time feedback and enable participants to understand qi in an interactive Tai Chi performance. With this work, I hope to open up new opportunities by using new media technologies as a bridge to understanding cultural arts and practices.


identifier: Baibolova, Aisulu  (2021) The [Un]Making of a Mankurt: Soviet Legacy and Post-Soviet Identity.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract:
This thesis paper documents the research and process into Kyrgyzstan’s history and the notion of post-Soviet identity through the research-creation and decolonizing methodologies. The study focuses on personal narratives, mythologies and Indigenous Central Asian knowledge to analyze Kyrgyzstan’s turbulent history and cultural memory loss as a result of that. As an artist, I explore the notion of losing one’s identity in colonization and its residue in the current times. Through illustrating an ancient Turkic legend called the Legend of the Mankurt, I am making open source material that is educational and interactive.

Keywords: imperialism, postcolonial, Post-Soviet, mankurt, memory, decolonizing methodologies.


identifier: Woods, Justine  (2021) I love you as much as all the beads in the universe: a garment-based inquiry into re-stitching alternative worlds of love.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: This Master of Design thesis research engages with a praxis of decolonial love through garment construction and beadwork as a practice-based method of inquiry. This research centres decolonial love as methodology with the expressed purpose to physically and conceptually re-stitch alternative worlds that are grounded in ethical practices and based on respect, empathy, reciprocity, consent and love. Engaging in decolonial love as praxis, the artistic production of this MDes thesis re-frames pattern drafting, garment construction and stitching methods within decolonial and relationship-based contexts. This MDes thesis (both written and visual) prioritizes, and foregrounds, all of the relationships that make up my identity as a Penetanguishene Aabitaawikwe and centres these relationships as praxis towards building alternative worlds of love that honour, celebrate and mobilize Indigenous internationalism, intercultural solidarity, co-resistance and liberation.


identifier: Neidhardt, Nicole Roessel  (2021) Stories Held in a Time Traveller's Hogan.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Indigenous Futurisms, Diné, Navajo, Storytelling, Diné Aesthetics, SNBH, installation, land-based, Time Travel, Diné Time Travellers

abstract: The wor(l)ds contained in this MFA thesis document and accompanying MFA exhibition, Stories Held in a Time Traveller’s Hogan, offer glimmers into Diné Time, Diné Aesthetics, Indigenous Futurisms, and Sa’ąh Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhǫ́ǫ́n.  These Diné Knowledges reach across time and space to Diné Ancestors, to Diné Time Travellers, to the Land, and to family.  These connections are held within constellations of temporality and relationality that are created by stories.  Throughout this re-search journey, I began to wonder, how do we activate the Land as Time Machine?  What happens when portals, or spaces of fluid time energy on the Land, start making their own stories?  Diné Time Travellers open up a space for these questions.  They are masterful weavers of time, story, and Diné Aesthetics.  Their weavings illuminate pathways for dreaming expansively outside of colonial realities.  For this thesis project, the Diné Time Travellers wanted to visit the Sacred Mountains to spend time with their stories that reside in the Land there.  This document and exhibition are alive with those stories.


identifier: Sobhan Sarbandi, Arshia  (2021) Navigating the Latent: Exploring the Potentials of Islamic Calligraphy with Generative Adversarial Networks.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: GANs, Islamic Calligraphy, Arabic Calligraphy, Digital Calligraphy, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Generative Adversarial Networks

abstract: Islamic calligraphy is a substantial cultural element in the countries that share Arabic script. Despite its prevalence and importance, Islamic calligraphy has not significantly benefited from modern technologies, and there are considerable gaps between the affordances of digital tools and the subtle requirements of this domain. This project explores the use of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) as an option that can fill the gap between digital tools and fundamental aspects of Islamic calligraphy, and as a new tool that can expand the creative space of artists and designers who use Islamic calligraphy in their works. This study also promotes an informed approach toward using GANs with a focus on domain-specific requirements of Islamic calligraphy. Some of the potentials of using GANs in Islamic calligraphy are depicted through analyzing the results of a GAN trained on a custom-made and regularized dataset of nasta’līq script. The results are also used to make calligraphy pieces with a new mode of expression.


identifier: Li, Jun  (2021) Cybernetic Interaction: A Cybernetics-inspired exploration of audience participation.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Cybernetics, Interactivity, Feedback, Audience participation.

abstract: Cybernetic theory and interactivity have much in common, including human interrelationships between modern technology and how they define the whole interactive process. This thesis project explores the concepts of cybernetics and a possible way of engaging remote participants in interactive art. It leads to a contemplative future direction for cybernetics-inspired interactive artworks. By employing the methodology of Research Through Design (RTD), this thesis project develops a series of related supporting experiments and a social media-based interactive prototype that utilizes a machine learning model as a case study is developed to demonstrate the research and concludes with a discussion of identifying the interaction and the potential way of engaging participants. Overall this thesis describes an interactive tweeting experience not only focuses exclusively on the remote participants but also includes other audiences in a different site.


identifier: Sinclair, Olivia Mae  (2021) Soft, Sloppy, Stories.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Soft, Sloppy, Stories

abstract:
Typically, books made from fabric are intended for infants, as a safe space to learn to read. However, my books are made for lovers, survivors, artists, her, him, them and me. The primary focus of my research is investigating and exploring the aesthetics of “Sloppy Craft” and textile-based publications. The publications examine power dynamics in female- and male-identifying relationships. In the secondary area of my research, I explore mental illness and trauma-based memories. The final collection of books borrows visual language from sketchbooks and journal entries. The books have an unfinished quality to help visually demonstrate the worsening of mental health. These books are intended to be interacted with in a gallery setting as they are created in relation to the scale of the body and how the body may interact with the books. The form, appearance and tactility of the books is a connection to the physical worsening of depression and distress through deconstructive elements such as fraying and ripping. My project invites open dialogue on mental health issues, but primarily anxiety and heartbreak.
Key Terms: Sloppy Craft, Materiality, Textiles, Punk, Archive, Trauma.


identifier: Saraiva, Stefania  (2021) Conflicting Modernities: Venezuelan art in the 1950s and 1960s.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: Cinetísmo (kinetic art) is the best-known artistic movement to have emerged from Venezuela in its modern period. The works of the major artists of this movement, Carlos Cruz- Diez, Jesus Soto, and Alejandro Otero, are prominently displayed in Venezuela’s major cities, and have been exhibited internationally. This movement, however, does not begin to cover the complex political, social, and economic realities experienced in Venezuela’s modern period (1945-1970s), but rather hid the uneven qualities of the modernizing efforts. For this reason, another collective, El Techo de la Ballena, under the aesthetics of Informalism, Dada, and Surrealism appeared in Venezuela in the 1960s, and sought to challenge the methods of Venezuela’s modernization and the works of Cinetísmo. The objective of this thesis paper is to examine and compare the works of Cinetísmo and El Techo de la Ballena in order to analyze how they represent Venezuela’s history of uneven modernity. I argue that the Venezuelan state’s embrace of Cinetísmo as emblematic of its modernist and nationalist ideals of progress—one which continues to dominate the history of Venezuelan art in the international community as well as inside the country as the most important modernist aesthetic movement—misconstrues and overshadows the importance of the complex relationship between art and politics in Venezuela’s modernization.


identifier: Valcin, Nadine  (2021) Our Home and Haunted Land An Exploration of Space, Memory and Virtual Reality.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract:
Our Home and Haunted Land: An Exploration of Space, Memory and Virtual Reality
is a linear virtual reality experience that examines the colonial histories embedded in the names of a number of Toronto spaces. It incorporates research-creation and decolonial methodologies to expose the violent legacy of the land with live on. The project uses virtual reality as a means to challenge what Sara Ahmed calls the “whiteness” of our societal and physical space by reinserting a simultaneously historical and futuristic Blackness in profound allyship with Indigeneity.
The project explores the following questions: how can immersive digital storytelling be used to decolonize space and embody history and memory? How can virtual space be used to visualize the cultural and historical relationship between physical spaces? The following tensions are at the core of this project: an “invisibilized” history that permeates the construction of our society; names that allude to a past that remains largely unknown; counter-archives that seek to tell stories that challenge the dominant history.


identifier: Radman-Livaja, Ivana  (2021) Visiting and Narrating: An Interspecific Tale of Melancholia.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Anthropocene, Melancholia, Sustainability, Book Design, Sustainable Book Design, Decolonization, Decolonizing the Book

abstract:
My research uses sustainable book design as an outlet for studying the destructive dialogue between humans and the earth in the Anthropocene epoch. I investigate the effects of the Anthropocene on my own mental health, particularly attuned to moments of enlightenment and depression that arise as a result of the realities of human-made climate change. Our impact on earth has consequences that are both physical (droughts, flooding, illnesses/pandemics, etc.), and mental (stress, anxiety, depression, etc.). Exploring the phenomenon of loss of language in the depressed mind, I examine what experiences would improve this condition. This search leads me to the comfort I find in reading books and through the practice of finding myself in the written word. The acknowledgement of written language in books as both destructive (historically and culturally in Indigenous communities) and healing (as a sanctuary for independent mental and emotional growth) is the point of interest in this research.

Books exist as a vessel for communication, capturing historical shifts in societal values. In this way they serve as a dynamic timeline. Books move through space and thought, reflecting and dictating moments past, and also imagining futures. They are physically still and contained but breathe through their connection to other literary works — fiction and nonfiction. This research will live similarly, communicating the present and future outcome of our time on earth as a result of our past; our actions, while fleeting, influence the reaction of the land. In my material explorations and compositions, I view the land as body and the body as text — relational vessels for interspecific communication.


identifier: Perlin, Alexandra  (2021) Concealing and Revealing: Information Design to Strengthen Civic Literacy in an Age of Digital Communication.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

type: Thesis PeerReviewed

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subject: Civic Literacy, Media Literacy, Information Design, Data Visualization, Illustration, Graphic Design, Infographic, Installation, Sculpture, Civic Education, Media, Technology

abstract: This thesis work responds to emerging issues in media and civic awareness in Canada, exploring how design can be used to highlight, examine and expose characteristics of the digital space in order to enhance young citizens’ media literacy. As the opening chapters will establish, younger Canadians are experiencing a unique combination of factors that render them insufficiently prepared to participate as digital citizens. These issues are compounded by digital threats to democratic values such as the rise in manipulative or propagandistic content, as well as intellectual silos created by algorithmic filtering. The title of the thesis, “concealing and revealing” speaks to our relationship with the digital space that is all at once present, immediate and yet, invisible, and elusive. My creative work aims to illuminate the invisible power dynamics perpetuated by digital tools using information design and data visualizations, presented through a large sculptural installation and a series of illustrated notebooks. The projects’ research focuses on teens and young adults, but the outcomes provide information that is pertinent to citizens of all ages. The projects rely on critical discourse analysis, semiotics and practice-led approaches to research. The theoretical framing of the projects apply Marshall McLuhan’s media theories to explore how we as a society may begin to evaluate our political experience in the digital age, in order to better understand the lasting impacts on citizenship and liberal democracy.


identifier: Chasse, Jenna  (2021) How to Make a Queer Counterpublic.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: How to Make a Queer Counterpublic

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abstract: Situated at the intersections of ethnography, relational aesthetics, and curatorial practice, this thesis explores and promotes the radical aspirations of queer worldmaking through an analysis of COVID-19 specific queer exchange across digital spheres. Drawing from queer theorists, Lauren Berlant, Michael Warner, and José Muñoz alongside the creative contributions of three fellow queer artists, Madeleine Lychek, B Wijshijer, and Racquel Rowe, a critical future – one that is ripe with queer desire, exchange, and intervention – is embodied within both the making and writing components of this project. The aim of this work is to unearth everything you wanted to know about sex (but queer theory forgot to tell you). That is, to discuss the kinds of exchange that queer theory has too often omitted from its discourse which is typically the kind that heterosexual culture is unable to name. This might be things like fucking your friends, fucking for money, fantasizing about sex with objects, masturbating with strangers online, camming, and so on. It might also be the kind of sex that doesn’t immediately read as pleasurable or erotic, but rather, perplexing or awkward. A collaborative worldmaking project that began as a theoretical query of capitalist economies of exchange, this thesis is an interventionist curatorial undertaking wherein a group of queer collaborators exhibit their sex and exchange as it is mediated by publics. From here, we can think about how proliferation of these publics might inform new modalities for queerness and what this could mean for the making of queer utopia. Though the process of creating queer worlds is never this linear, this thesis interrogates the heteronormative present, looks towards a queer future, and exhibits a host of exchanges, pleasures, and sex that lie at the center of this worldmaking process.


identifier: Barnett, Deborah  (2021) Leaf Love.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Leaf Love

subject: material research, autoethnography, skin, abject, origins, stitchery, literary letterpress, Claudia Benthien, Elizabeth Grosz, Astride Lorange, Gertrude Stein, feminism, sculpture, multidisciplinary, books and media, paper, art of the book, artists’ books

abstract:
My auto-ethnographic, in-practice creative thesis Leaf Love, explores the parameters of what it is to be encased in ‘experienced’ female skin. I draw upon the techniques of lived-experience as a literary publisher and fine press printer to create unconventional book objects representing the body ego. In reflexive dialogue with the structures that emerge, this material research aims to disrupt values and standards inherent in book culture and in the perceptions of the body as we know and accept them.
The title Leaf Love, asks for reflection to our roots in nature to initialize space for new beginnings. Leaf Love is a hands-on inquiry into obscurity, transparency, intimacy, and the visceral nature of the body through process, and shares the affect born in repetition and endurance. By addressing ways of intervening on text, creating references to skin in my book objects, and interrogating the dated parameters still resonant in book making, I present my research outcomes with the purpose of stimulating active reconsideration of hegemonic constructs of love and loss.


identifier: Chen, Nuo  (2021) Digital Fashion Metamorphosis: Fold and Unfold.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: The constraints of the current COVID-19 pandemic stimulate the urge for fashion brands and designers to explore 3D technology and utilizing digital space for fashion creation. Being a fashion designer, this urge inspires me to situate my thesis project at the intersection of fashion and technology. I use research-creation as a research approach to engage differently with digital fashion design creation. During my research, I stumbled upon the ancient technique of origami and was drawn to the intricate technique it holds. I also see the possibility embedded in further manipulating the form of origami in digital space through image-based 3D reconstruction photogrammetry technique and 3D software. This thesis project aims to explore how digital body and digitized origami can be combined as an innovative method to influence and create digital fashion design. The creative outcome, Neo-Metamorphosis is a video formatted origami-inspired futuristic fashion runway show. Overall, my thesis project aims to explore new perspectives of digital fashion and stimulate artistic inspiration.


identifier: Cao, Shunrong  (2021) In Forgotten Daydreams: Performing in Biosignal-Generated Visualizations.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Daydreams, Biosignal Visualizations, Performance, Interactivity, Mixed Realities, Hybridity, Multi-discipline, Duality

abstract:
This research project is a performance in an interactive installation that projects the live human biological signals into narrative visualizations. It aims to cultivate consciousness of the participants to daydream about the unlimited prospects for their bodies and the world.

  The objective of this master thesis is to explore the realm of art and technology in mixed realities by combining craftsmanship and narrative visualizations. It aims to unpack an immersive and interactive hybrid space for daydreaming and to influence everyday life experiences.


identifier: Rondeau, Alexander  (2021) Mud, Hay, Plywood, Pheasants: Towards a Rurally Embodied Queer Curatorial Practice.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: queer, rural, curatorial practice

abstract: This thesis is a twofold project that explores a queer and rurally-embodied curatorial methodological approach to exhibition making in rural Northeastern Ontario. The central focus is around an experimental presentation space I launched in the pheasant coop on my family farm in Kerns Township called Between Pheasants Contemporary. Secondly, this thesis also includes a critical contextualization of two artworks in the inaugural exhibition, tethers, featuring queer Métis artist Andrew Harding, and Luke Maddaford, a queer artist from rural Saskatchewan. tethers, which concerns itself with queer and anti-colonial critiques of nationalist mythologies attached to the aesthetics of circulated visual and material culture in the rural, serves as a case study to explore how Between Pheasants Contemporary is poised to readily respond to the unique cultural fabric of Kerns Township. Mud, Hay, Plywood, Pheasants: Towards a Rurally Embodied Queer Curatorial Practice answers the following research questions: How does rural cultural production differ from — and even oppose —  urban, metronormative queer cultural production? What, then, is a rurally embodied queer curatorial methodology and exhibition making practice? Why do curatorial projects excel in non-institutional and experimental spaces in the rural North? What makes BPC’s programming approach differ from regional artistic discourse, while also challenging urban queer curatorial discourse? As this thesis unfolds, I draw upon the importance of a deep reading of local communities to inform curatorial practices outside of the centre, and how a queer, anti-colonial methodological approach to exhibition making challenges both existing artistic discourse in this area of the rural North, and queer urban discourse. Using Scott Herring’s notion of ‘critical queer rusticity’ and Mary L. Gray’s concept of the ‘boundary public’, I identify the specific underpinnings that sustain and produce a rurally embodied queer curatorial practice.


identifier: Hopple, Sam  (2021) The Affect of Images.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: The Affect of Images

abstract: The Affect of Images is an experimental exhibition in publication form. It addresses the subjective nature of the interpretation of images and their affective responses by looking at the works of six contemporary photographers whose practices investigate maternal exposures, self-portraiture and re-enactment. It discusses the therapeutic aspects of photography by introducing techniques in phototherapy and how they are used in each photographer’s artistic practice. The selected works explore how the body and the lens work in collaboration to successfully explore concepts of memory, identity, representation, parent/child relationships, vulnerability, grief, and time. Weaving personal narrative, visual analysis and photo theory, this text contributes to an emerging dialogue on reframing the de/constructed and re/constructed image as a mechanism for healing and identity awareness. This work also explores the labour of curatorial practice as a therapeutic tool for self-awareness and healing. Photographers under examination include Clarisse d’Arcimoles, Jess T. Dugan, Catherine Opie, Chino Otsuka, Jo Spence & Rosy Martin and Andrea Jenkins Wallace.


identifier: Cooper, Meghan  (2021) Basic Goodness: Creating a Uniform for a Modern-day Devotee.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: This thesis investigates the science of yogic living: living in harmony with nature and expanding consciousness through meditation. It discusses how the clothing we wear can support this way of living. Wearing white/light clothing is an ancient, science-based tradition maintained by yoga practitioners. The thesis culminates in the creation of a line of clothing called ‘Basic Goodness Clothing’. The line consists of light colour clothing made of organic cotton, illuminating a way of living a specific modern yogic lifestyle. The thesis begins with an account of what art and artmaking mean to me and how this meaning includes clothing, in principle, and Basic Goodness Clothing in particular.


identifier: Peters, Jevonne E (Jevi)  (2021) Hypervolition: Our Sacrifice of Choice.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Hypervolition: Our Sacrifice of Choice

subject: hypervolition, internet of things, power, governance, privacy, desire, control, new media art, interactive installations, immersive world building, computer science, machine learning, speculative fiction, artificial intelligence, machine learning, theory and criticism, immersion

abstract:
Advanced segmentation and customisation (called hyper-personalisation) are often touted as the future of experiential marketing, and comes in the form of personalised experiences, tailored search results, and recommendations on what to do based on past behaviour and traits. The personalisation is achieved through the deployment of algorithms that observe us and extract scraped information to abstract what it deems to be relevant. Byung Chul Han describes what we are experiencing as an “aperspectival panopticon,” in that the surveillance is no longer from a central location, but is omnipresent. Issues of interest include what is considered normal and who determines it, the effects of the mass adoption of these technologies, the corruption of algorithms by capital, and the subtle control on the various levels of collectivism within societies.

This research critically examines the evolution of discipline and governance within society,  our relationship with technology, our desires and how we influence them and how they can be influenced,  our tendencies to customise experiences for ourselves, the proliferation of the use of algorithms in our everyday lives, and  introduces a new term, hypervolition, which is defined as inability of consciousness to distinguish our true desires and choices, from our algorithmically deduced and imposed desires and choices. I define the Jevinian Orders and Phases related to the term, which extends Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, and Han’s ideas on the neuronal within the framework of Jean Baudrillard’s hyperreal, and creatively express the concepts through the art works "My.o.T," "Inter Alia," "In Plain Sight," and "The Resistance".


identifier: Bakan, Nina  (2021) Making Kin: Subverting Ocularcentrism Through Sympoiesis and Tentacular Thinking.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: This thesis argues that interspecies kinship, termed ‘making kin’ after Donna Haraway – counters the humanist underpinnings of ocularcentrism within contemporary art and visual culture. Ocularcentrism, the prioritization of sight over all other senses, stems from the legacy of European humanism and its corresponding system of sensory hierarchies. Within the humanist worldview, sight acts as a lens through which objective reality can be discerned, devoid of emotion, cultural difference, or subjectivity. However, truth is never universal, and historically the humanist definition of ‘humanity’ has been limited to a Eurocentric ideal. Making kin acts in opposition to this legacy of exclusion. Through the dual logics of “tentacular thinking” and “sympoiesis” making kin seeks to extend empathy and care across gender, race, and biological boundaries. This effort to bridge difference functions in opposition to the exclusionary politics of ocularcentrism and the humanistic worldview. Examining the work of three artist-led collectives (The Institute of Queer Ecology, BUSH gallery, and the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, specifically their collaboration with Christina Battle titled, Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens) I will critique how their practices subvert the ocularcentric paradigm through embodied acts of kinship with the non-human world.


identifier: Basu, Rittika  (2021) Age and Interface Equipping Older Adults with Technological Tools.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject:
Older Adults,
Technological Tools,
Accessibility Design,
AgeTech,
Gerontechnology,
Gerontological Design,
Human-Computation Interaction,
Digital Citizenship,
Computer Literacy,
Digital Literacy,
Human-Factors,
Technological Acceptance Model

abstract:
Older adults around the world experience physical, psychological, social and economic issues that hinder their learning processes, performance in simple daily activities and other factors that facilitate a healthy lifestyle. Human factors associated with ageing such as poor motor skills, weakening of hearing/eyesight, slower reflexes, low stamina and deteriorating attention span/memory obstruct them from using digital tools like younger adults. Although the degree of impact may differ from person to person, these factors could be considered a gradual and dynamic process. In today’s age, it is crucial to be aware of one’s surroundings, to be updated with the latest news, to be improving one’s knowledge and to remain socially connected. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic made us realize that access to a steady internet is a necessity and not a luxury.

In recent years, several communities have observed that older adults find using the internet and technologies challenging. In 2019, statistics by Pew Research Center presented that only 53% of people aged above 65+ years owned smartphones. The objective of this project is to promote digital literacy, and to empower and build confidence among older adults. This research will provide insights and factual data and introduce strategies to improve human-centred design services specific to the older population intended to help them in the process of embracing modern technology. Surveying the current research on the issues regarding the challenges older adult's face while using technology, the research outcome involves an accessible online publication specifically tailored for the target user demographic, to teach them how to use technology. The second outcome of this research is a web-based platform containing tutorials for older adults about performing various tasks via smartphones and computers.


identifier: Adlington, Marilyn  (2021) Shifting Spaces Outside of Time: Constructing Counter-Narratives Through Collage.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: collage; counter-narrative; contemporary art; colonial-capitalist critique; non-linear temporality

abstract: This paper explores how the methodology of collage refuses notions of linear temporality through the production of counter-narratives. As a framework for analysis, counter-narrative becomes a useful lens to understand the types of critiques that collage can engender by examining the power and privilege that art history, mass media, and constructions of identity hold in a multiracial world. By focusing specifically on the potential of collage to visualize non-linear approaches to piecing the world together through objects of material culture, this research fills a gap between collage as practice, social critique, and pedagogical methodology by weaving these notionstogether to expose a dynamic interplay between storytelling, history and pedagogy. Engaging the multidisciplinary artistic practices of three emerging contemporary artists working with collage in Canada, Jasmine Cardenas, Aaron Jones, and Anna Binta Diallo provide generative insight to challenge monolithic visual culture to reconcile histories of erasure, oppression, and colonization. Questioning and reconstructing these notions through the production of counter-narratives become a crucial method of resistance to situate radical imaginings in their histories. Ultimately, their work with collage is a direct assurance that another world is possible.


identifier: Gemmell, Cassandra  (2021) The Metrics of Monstrosity & the Visuality of Crime Detection; from the Victorian era’s Photographic Archive to Artificial Intelligence.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract:
In my thesis I seek to address the visual history of mapping criminality, or aberrance more broadly, onto the social and material body as well as the environment. I argue that - from the photographic and cartographic practices of the Victorian era to the contemporary development of
biometric facial recognition and AI which seek to predict crime and track COVID-19 - exists a genealogy of visual- spatial rendering of identity and nation and oppressive systems of
classification. I would like to reframe Victorian era scientific practices such as phrenology and
physiognomy as well as anthropometric photography as producing a visual archive of aberrant cartography. I draw parallels between the visual archive produced from these practices with
Enlightenment era social mapping of poverty and pathology. In our present context, I argue that these visual practices which configure and trap identity in their visual-spatial matrix - persist as a spectral presence haunting contemporary visual-spatial technologies. I situate maps as visual evidence of a system of classification that also provide powerful narratives of monstrosity/
aberration vs the social norm which have historically, and continue to be, powerful political tools in
the constructing of realities. Ultimately, this thesis will take a critical, multi-disciplinary, and
historical approach in questioning AI algorithmic objectivity by situating it in a longer genealogy of
visualising and classifying aberrant bodies.


identifier: Taqi, Samia  (2021) Nishaan: Urdu Textuality as a Site of Transnational Agency.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

format: text text text

subject: Urdu script, calligraphic abstraction, dhikr, decolonial aesthetics, transnational

abstract: This thesis is an interrogation of the Urdu calligraphic script using different material explorations of drawing, painting and found objects. Through interaction with this script, I trace the shift in the letter-form’s evolution as a religious edict to cultural signifier and contemporary construct of transnational and decolonial rhetoric. Theoretically scoping Iftikhar Dadi’s scholarship on ‘calligraphic abstraction’, through the lens of Walter Mignolo’s ‘decolonial aesthetics’, Crang and Ashmore’s ‘transnational spaces of things’, I consult Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s ‘decolonizing methodologies’ to embrace Urdu [script] as a pedagogical tool – through visual art installation, and as methodologically employed in the practice of Sufi dhikr. Investigating the influences and confluences of colonialism on my aesthetic tastes as a transnational subject, I reflect on its reverberation on my artistic practice, in my frequent lettering of the Urdu script. Through research and reflection, I inquire how South Asian patterns inform transnational praxes. Linking ‘calligraphic abstraction’ and dhikr, I observe the transnational’s situation – in decolonial aesthetics.


identifier: Chuck, Natalie C.  (2021) Intimate Spaces.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Intimate Spaces

abstract: Drawing from Claire Mortimer’s historical framing of the romantic comedy, I argue that Hollywood cinema since the 1930s has been developing a genre with plots limited to heteronormative conceptions of love, intimacy, success and sex. My research project Intimate Spaces is a limited series of six episodes with characters created to interrogate the stereotypical nature and predictable flow of intimacies depicted in the mainstream genre. My aim is to destabilize the dominant form by taking up what Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner theorize as ‘normal intimacy’. The script of Intimate Spaces is a reflection on the idea that normative relationships require constant work, what Laura Kipnis notes as a capitalistic reality. Pulling from my personal archive of writing as a queer, BIPOC, first-generation Canadian woman, I alter the romantic comedy genre, making it a site for mutual interpersonal understanding. I present these stories episodically, as a way to center non-conjugal intimate relationships alongside romantic ones, focusing individually on diverse examples of intimate scenes – parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, friends and roommates.  These imagined stories were developed and are set in the context of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto. They depict how being jolted into this time of isolation has altered ordinary life differently for each of us, placing new emphasis on our intimate experiences.


identifier: Billick, Noa  (2021) THIS PAPER IS MADE OF BOOKS.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: THIS PAPER IS MADE OF BOOKS

abstract:
The purpose of this project is to demonstrate value of the book as art and to highlight the power of narrative. To expose the archive of self, I pull from various theorists, ranging from Walter Fisher and Umberto Eco to Albert Camus and Julietta Singh: touching on a unique set of subjects creates a balanced space to ask new questions. This project pushes boundaries to prove a point, and reframes the book less as a literary form than a shifting cultural object. THIS PAPER IS MADE OF BOOKS is about many things, but is really about books, how we communicate and what we trust to hold that communication: not only the object but the oral tradition it intermingles with, too.
I will argue that books are special and unique, and irreplaceable: the book is both symbol and object, and needs to be reintroduced as such to demonstrate its actual value. First, this project uses autoethnography as a research framework and a methodology, which allows me to look inwards and share outwards, respectively. Second, from both object and print perspective, bookmaking is another methodology and lens through which I observe the book; and last, keep your mind open to seeing books in places you wouldn’t expect.
This is a paper made of books, and therefore is a book itself. This book is broken into parts, each referring and expanding on one key idea: the book as self and as archive. This book’s research is rooted in bookmaking and its evolving process, closely followed by Jewishness and its sharing nature. This book is balanced: it contains humour, seriousness, personal anecdotes, and theories; it is a clear refusal of obsolescence. This book embraces its reader, welcomes them, and invites them to participate. This book shares a softness, a sensitive and personal approach to a thesis, in a way that invites discussion, reflection, and welcomes all to the table.


identifier: Mozafari-Lorestani, Sara  (2021) Thirding with Nine Thousand Memories Moqarnas, Siah Chador and Disoriented Spatial Memories A performance-installation that visualizes an imaginary space to explore relationships between space, memory, identity, and social relations.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Space, Memory, Displacement, Identity, Architecture, Soft Architecture, Wearable Architecture, Siah Chador, Tent, Veil,

abstract: Thirding with Nine Thousand Memories is an exhibition, supported by this thesis paper, that aims to exemplify the correlation of space, memory, displacement, and identity. Through the lenses of immigration, art, and architecture, I revisit my memories to address how, as a woman, I move back and forth between the real space and the mind space to create an imaginary space, reconfiguring my situation in society and developing a sense of belonging. The exhibition features a performance installation that articulates three different spaces: the Firstspace or real space, the Secondspace or memory-attached unattainable space, and the Thirdspace or imaginary space that emerges from the first and the second spaces through the process of Thirding. Using the moqarnas as a metaphor to represent a memory-attached space that exists in my mind and the siah chador, both in the sense of a veil representing memories and of a tent representing a home or a shelter, I explore how displacement and memory shape identity and social relations, foregrounding my struggle to find a place to call home. The piece applies the moqarnas as a geometrical and spatial allegory for autobiographical and cultural stories and memories. It uses the moqarnas’s facility for conversion and innovation to convey this central idea. It also defines the poetic, metaphoric, and political character of the siah chador in the sense of a black veil and a black tent.


identifier: Marcoux, Camille  (2021) History Sticks to your Feet.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: History Sticks to your Feet

subject: Decolonization, Landscape, Chthulucene, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Geological Era, Climate Change, Indigenous Knowledge, Donna Haraway, Alexis Shotwell, Ana Lowenhaupt Tsing, Paulette Regan, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

abstract:
This thesis addresses current concerns around climate change and geological time through Decolonial literature, seeking responses for change through the position of a critical settler. I use a process of observation and breakdown of the non-native and highly invasive Phragmites australis found on a site located in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve to think through the complexities of colonialism in the land I inhabit. The incessant remodeling of Phragmites australis paper pulp allowed me to actively think through making.
Throughout autoethnographic research, I realized that if I want change, I need to radically accept the reality I live in and address the feeling of shame that arises within me, to move beyond this paralyzing feeling. To help me through my thinking, I have supported my research with Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna Haraway, Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times by Alexis Shotwell, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada by Paulette Regan, and Decolonization is not a Metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. I also learned that Decolonization requires more than theories: it demands concrete material change. As the journey towards Decolonial ways of being and making is far from over and as I aim to work towards concrete change beyond the studio, I use site-specific engagement and lyrical performative approaches to unsettle my work and participate in the cultural side of the process.


identifier: Clarke, Liam  (2021) Vocal Synthetics: Designing for an Adaptable Singing Synthesizer.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

abstract: Technological music tools such as digital audio workstations and electronic music instruments have enabled musicians without formal training to create music that is heard by millions of people. The automation by software and hardware can create compelling productions without limitations from performance ability. However, the automation of vocals is particularly difficult because beyond pitch and timbre, the vocalization of language requires additional parameters for control. As the production of a vocal synthesizer and its vocal palettes is complex, the current market sees these difficulties represented through products that have limited voices and do not adapt to vocal trends. This project demonstrates a tool that allows producers to use a simple typing interface for the input of words, allowing the output to be integrated and controlled by modern digital audio workstations. Using a machine learning solution, the tool is not  dependent on large stores of audio data once a model is trained and since it contains a simple method to create new voices, it can keep up with evolving musical trends and vocal styles. The aim is to bring the human voice into the realm of digital music production  enabling a music maker to include a large range of vocal styles within their production tool set. This paper outlines the design and development of the tool and culminates in a piece of music that illustrates the value of applying design thinking research strategies to an artistic and technical challenge.


identifier: Aikawa, Leeay  (2021) H(Om)ecoming to Cosmic 'I'.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: H(Om)ecoming to Cosmic 'I'

format: text image image image image image image image image image

subject: Spirituality, authenticity, earth-based knowledge, healing, zen, buddhism, spiritual ecology, being, yogic, yoga, season-based, mental

abstract: H(Om)ecoming to Cosmic ‘I’ is an ontological, metaphysical investigation of what it means to be authentic in our time. It addresses the intertwined relationship between making, healing, knowing and our being i.e., not the physical existence but rather the essence of a person. Since spiritual practice and art practice inform each other in my research, Here x Now = How is a key function in the methodology for my making. This methodology sustains my experience of ‘what is’ without limited thought or knowledge which, according to Indian thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti, has its source in the past as a product of time and thus finite. In addition to this, I explore Zen with an inquiry with open mind to discover ‘what am I?’ The research advances into analysis of our fundamental being by looking into Heidegger’s Dasein as ‘the way,’ along with Earth-based spirituality, and combines the opposites of West and East thinking on Nature, or the moments of the Divine. Inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul (1925), and informed by practice-led research, my studio practice is divided into four parts and reflects four seasons. The research ultimately suggests reclamation of spiritual ways of knowing for restoration of wholeness and an evolving process of our consciousness.


identifier: Melnicky, Nicole  (2021) Imagining a Queer Utopia: A Manifesto.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: Imagining a Queer Utopia: A Manifesto

format: text slideshow

abstract:
In the thesis of Imagining a Queer Utopia: A Manifesto, I evoke the spirit of a utopic, futuristic Bluefire Phoenix Bird—Rising into its Future Destiny; the power of utopia manifested through dreaming and imagining of a liberated future. I envision a utopian world that transcends our karmic pasts, flaws, and dystopian realities, achieved through the Phoenix’s renewal and transformation. A blue Firebird is reborn from its own preceding ashes, suggesting an acceptance of queer vulnerability, expressing individuality and liberty. We break free and heal from our political pasts by allowing love to surface through shedding, leading us towards a more hopeful and liberated future.

In my Master of Fine Arts Thesis, I explore the methodologies of Queer Utopia by José Esteban Muñoz, Queer Threads by John Chaich, Queer Abstraction by David J. Getsy, Camp by Susan Sontag, Utopia in Performance by Jill Dolan, dreaming, kitsch and pride through painting, textiles, and fashion. By utilizing colourful digital prints, innovative embellishment, and unconventional materials, I generate a surrealistic space in which the possibilities of the future become tangible through the process of imagination. In my research, installation, and fashion garments, I transmute emotions and thoughts through bold, confrontational colour, dreaming, and through the imagining and union of an autonomous twin soul love. Hence, creating a powerful gateway or threshold into a liberated utopian universe. Through fashion and painting, I generate an expansive ocean, a dream space, in which our queer desires of love become manifest in physical reality.


identifier: Longair, Elyse  (2021) In Defense of The Simple Image.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: In Defense of The Simple Image

abstract: In Defense of The Simple Image, extends key theorist Hito Steyerl’s poor image and suggests the simple image as a new construct to value images with. Steyerl suggests that the poor image creates a new value and hierarchic scale to view images, challenging our traditional notions associated with photography’s rich images. My dissertation builds upon Steyerl, arguing instead for a simple image that re-imagines the role of images away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world. With this continual bombardment of manufactured realities, our shifts in focus to appearances rather than the product, function, or reality itself. For me the simple image allows us to rethink and reflect on the role of imagination, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures. Primarily using collage and collage aesthetics, my practice explores how fragmented worlds of a reconstructed past may challenge our notions of time and reshape our thinking of the future.


identifier: Stocking, Erica  (2021) MOTHERGINGER, THE STORE: A CONTAINMENT SYSTEM OF ONTOLOGICAL IN/DETERMINACY.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Sculpture, Installation, Performance, Store, Phenomena, Onto-Epistemology, And-Not, Grammar, Container, Void-Potential, Limits

abstract: This thesis seeks to articulate a Sculpture as a phenomenon that can be experienced from inside and outside simultaneously in response to a non-linear conception of time. Through my practice-based research, I situate distraction as a productive form of knowing and utilize an onto-epistemological framework to explore performance as the labour of intra-action that materializes the art object (or phenomenon). I position containment as a technology to understand the entangled nature of humans, environment, and economy, and I explore Motherhood as a condition that requires an individual to be both subject and object. I draw on the work of many theorists, but central to this paper are the discussions of gender, material and ethics that I encountered in the work of Silvia Federici, Karen Barad and Zoë Sofia. Through my methodology of simile making, I situate the historical costume of Mother Ginger as an ongoing iterative artwork that invites viewers into it to reflect on relationships to the material and consumer world around us.


identifier: Willis, Donica  (2021) Dear Classroom: A speculative look into post-secondary classroom design.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

subject: Decolonization, Speculative Design, Delinking, Post-Secondary Classroom, Action Research, Participatory Research, Material Culture

abstract: Historically, classrooms have been a space of rigidity and unchanging order. From the very desks we were assigned as ‘our space’ within the learning space, to the abuse of Indigenous peoples in Indian Residential Schools, to the frequent use of corporal punishment by teachers to maintain order. Over the past decade there have been numerous changes and strides for creating more inclusive and desirable experiences for students within the education system. As an example, the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD U) located in Toronto, has been a prime example of a historical institution taking action at 145 years old – with cluster hires of Indigenous and Black faculty and the introduction of more classes and curriculum with a decolonized approach.  While the work is being done, there remains a gap in decolonizing education when thinking about the physical aspects of the post-secondary classroom. This MDes thesis explores how Speculative Design might act as a tool in creating decolonial discourse around the design of classrooms leading to more inclusive and desirable futures for students.  The thesis attempts to (1) introduce and share concepts of Speculative Design and futuring of educational models in decolonizing the classroom at the post-secondary level; (2) to engage in participatory action research that offers interactive cases (positioned as ‘classroom mysteries’) for facilitating dialogue and responses, and (3) to consciously remove the ‘expert-non-expert’ power dynamics in gathering research data, and creative outcomes. The intersection of Speculative Design (imagination) and Action Research (action) methodologies allows for a more inclusive data collection approach that centralizes open dialogue and imagination confirming that the use of Speculative Design as part of the research process can be a successful tool in imagining and creating more desirable and inclusive spaces for students; and can create a space where critical dialogue around decolonizing post-secondary classrooms can occur.


identifier: Geraghty, Matana Joelle  (2021) The Need to Convey Experience.  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: The Need to Convey Experience

subject: Accessibility, Disability, Ethnography, Identity, Inclusive Design, Co-Design, NVLD, Non Verbal Learning Disability, Non Verbal Learning Disorder, Art, Therapeutic Art, Art Therapy.

abstract: Online media has become a forum for heart-felt, first-hand accounts of what it’s like to live with Non-Verbal Living Disability (NVLD), an obscure, misunderstood neurological condition for which there is no clinical diagnosis. The personal stories of those with symptoms helps to validate the existence of their condition through the lived truths experienced. This Auto-Ethnographic study explores the question how might the researcher’s art practice support the NVLD community with a creative tool to convey their own lived experiences, and further, how can blog postings by the community offer insight and inspiration for the development of the tool? Narrative Inquiry is used as the primary method for data collection and analysis and the researcher acts as a proxy for the research subjects in the development of the visualized tool. The study reveals a range of common experiences from persons with NVLD and that these experiences are translatable into visual components (colour, shape, line etc.) that convey their lived experiences.


identifier: Fisher, David M.  (2022) 이뭣고 - Imwotgo – What Is This?  Masters thesis, OCAD University.

title: 이뭣고 - Imwotgo – What Is This?

subject: AI Indexes (General)

subject:
Sculpture
3D Digital Process
Deconstruction
Figuration
Inflection
Abstraction
Non-Duality

abstract:
My research is interdisciplinary; I come to it from a medical background in Reconstructive Plastic Surgery. My methodology is further informed by mindfulness practice and my enquiry into the philosophy of consciousness. My research methods provide creative opportunities to allow me to come to an inflection point between a figure and its abstraction.

While I maintain an advocate of the Scientific Method, I have recently become more spiritual in my thinking. I question the value of Dualism, Specifically Cartesian Dualism (and its effect on the future of the planet and of interpersonal relationships). I am becoming more in favour of an outlook more in line with Non-Duality.

The central concept of this project is the use of abstraction and figuration as a metaphor for mind and matter. I use this metaphor to evoke consideration of non-duality.

Various 3D data acquisition strategies – photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and 3D modelling are used. The sculptural forms generated are then further altered within 3D interface environments. In contrast to my practice as a Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon, in my creative research, my sculptural works are driven by a Deconstructive process. This process involves the digital reduction of 3D data of the human figure through sequential subtractions. This approach aims at finding the Inflection Point(s) between a human figure (or its anatomical subunits) and its (their) abstraction(s) inside a computerized environment. I create 3D forms that may be perceived as figurative or abstract, influenced by one’s line of sight. The artwork achieves a non-dualistic state; neither figurative nor abstract, but both. In this way, it can be considered a metaphor for non-duality. Other processes involve the digital superimposition of forms through which I challenge the concept of individuality and separateness hinged on the notion of a bounded self and a clear demarcation between subject and object. Other digital modelling strategies are also explored to further investigate the boundaries and spectra between figurative forms and their abstractions. These forms are then 3D printed. Some of these are then cast in bronze. This series of sculptures were exhibited in the Ada Slaight Gallery, OCADU, 100 McCaul Street in March from the 2nd to the 5th, 2022.